The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #39117   Message #555810
Posted By: Troll
21-Sep-01 - 11:03 AM
Thread Name: Anti-semitic and inflammatory editorial
Subject: RE: Anti-semitic and inflammatory editorial
Good morning, Lepus. It's a beautiful day.
I simply wanted to know what piece of that areas geography you were refering to since my answer would be based on that.
I fail to see how you can say that the Zionists stole " huge portions of it from the natives and set up a "Jewish State" there." when the State of Israel was set up and approved of by a majority vote of the UN. The reasons were complex but stemmed in part at least from the Holocaust and the horror that the world felt because of it. But it goes back even farther than that in gentile Europe. A case in point is the Balfor White Paper in 1917(?) in England where a Jewish homeland in then Palestine was recommended.
Although their travel was severely restricted, Jews from Europe had always traveled to Israel and there had been Jews living in Plaestine ever since the Diaspora so the idea that the land "belonged" to the Arabs is not quite accurate. It passed from Roman hands to Byzantine to the Caliphs to the crusaders to the Turks to the British Empire.
There were always Arabs, Christians and Jews living there with the Arabs always in the majority population-wise but not necessarily in influence.
When the State was declared in 1948, there was already a low-level war going on in Palestine. The Palestinian Arabs were told (by the Syrians and the Egyptians) That they should ignore the offer of the provisional govt. of ben Gurion to stay and be an equal part of the new country. Instead, they should flee to the refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan and return when the war was over. It would, they were assured, be a short one, the Jews would be pushed into the sea, etc. They were wrong.
Where am I going with all this?
The point is simply this. I agree that Israel should not be on the West Bank and should build no more settlements there. That should be the Palestinian homeland just as Israel is the Jewish homeland as per the UN vote in 1948. Some restitution should be made to those made homeless by the building of the settlements. I have no arguments with that.
But Israel has a legal right to exist. You may question the reasnos for it's existance but not its legality.
BTW< I think the Kurds should have a homeland. I don't know if the Roma would want one. Perhaps an international passport though how you would regulate it is beyond me. They'd probably settle for being left along.

troll