CarolC,

Re your post of 07 Mar 04 - 08:57 PM

Once again, your quote does not demonstrate what you said it did. Your quote was:

"Many Palestinians, while holding Jordanian citizenship, consider themselves Palestinians first, resenting being called Jordanians (Culturgrams)."

Okay...but this does not mean they were originally living in what is now Israel or the occupied territories. As I said, Transjordan was created as a British client state. The regime which named it Jordan were (I think) Bedouins installed by the British. The majority of the population is Palestinian, and many of them already lived in what is now Jordan before partition. Your quote can refer to them.

As an analogy, many Newfoundlanders consider themselves Newfoundlanders first and resent being called Canadians. This doesn't mean they came to Newfoundland from anywhere else. On the contrary, they were there before it became part of Canada. Many Palestinians were in Jordan before it became Jordan. They may feel like the Newfoundlanders do.

One thing your link does provide is a breakdown of Jordan's ethnic makeup. Guess what? Palestinians are the largest single group, at 50% of the population. So let's see, we have a 98% Arab state, in Palestine, and more of its people are Palestinian than from any other subgroup of Arabs. In what sense then is it not a Palestinian Arab state?

So Far Wolfgang has responded well to your oil points; "Jordan has oil, but it has not yet been exploited" seems to be the Jordanian Government's position. Who am I (or you?) to argue with them? Certainly it's more Oil than Israel has!

Remember, I didn't say Jordan had a lot of natural resources, just that it had a lot of natural resources relative to Israel. North America it ain't--but we knew this.

By the way, CarolC, I think you're being unnecessarily hostile towards people who don't agree with you. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians have violated people's Human Rights--they have, for example, killed people. I think both you and I have to accept this or we would be in deep denial. So supporters of either side can be "for Human Rights" in general, and can understand or justify the violation of human rights in specific cases. (If not, both sides should just burn in hell and we can stop talking.) So our argument comes down to: which of those cases are justifiable? This is a gray area, not a black-and-white either-or, and I don't feel the need to impugn anyone as a Nazi or cast aspersions on their morality because they see things another way.   

In this context, to say that your opponents in an argument might not be "for human rights" or that "Hitler would be proud" of them amounts to mere insult-slinging, the latter especially in a thread about anti-Semitism where you know many of your interlocutors are Jews.   

Bobert, somehow I KNEW you didn't really mean to nuke 'em :-)