BS: Caliphate

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 10:06 AM

"Ergo, I guess the folks occupying the area prior to 3000 years ago have prior claom over "The Jews" & the land should be teturned to them, then."

Let the Canaanites put in a claim then.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 10:11 AM

Greg F.
Maybe if you can find, today, any folks who as a polity, a folk with an historic memory, controlled what is now Israel then maybe your 'ergo' would have meaning. The fact is those folks don't exist. They assimilated into the prevailing culture, or otherwise disappeared from history. The Jew/Israelites/Judeans, conversely, have such a history: Exile,return; exile/return; exile/return; exile/return while during the exile periods there was always Jewish presence in the homeland.
As it stands your 'ergo' is 'absurdum'.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 10:38 AM

John, I was simply commenting upon the sophomoric claims of Boo, BB & Co. RE: "my claims of prior occupation are better than your claims of prior occupation" & therein lies your 'absurdum'.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 10:41 AM

Jim,

:"you are the one who claim them to be terrorist implicated in the mass murder of refugees, the use of chemical weapons and the ethnic cleansing of Bedouins -"

These have been YOUR claims, not mine- I have asked for your factual evidence and you have failed to present any.


But you have established that you would rather lie than have a reasonable discussion based on facts.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 10:48 AM

GregF,

So you will allow "claims of prior occupation" as long as they are not by Jews?

The post you are complaining about are in reply to the claims that the Palestinians have a MORE valid claim to the land by prior occupation, which YOU state is not true.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 10:49 AM

"my claims of prior occupation are better than your claims of prior occupation"

I don't think anyone has made that claim Greg but some have claimed that the land belongs to the Arabs and that the Jews were stealing it from them.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 10:54 AM

2"These have been YOUR claims, not mine"
Yes they are - throughout all your arguments to use your own arguments - prove otherwise!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 11:01 AM

Jim,

YOU have show you are a bigot and anti-Semite according to the EU.

Your last few posts prove you are a liar.


All of this is proven- Now YOU prove otherwise.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: pdq
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 11:19 AM

"1695-6
The Dutch scholar and cartographer, Adriaan Reland (Hadriani Relandi) , wrote reports about visits to the Land of Israel. He was fluent in Hebrew and Arabic. He documented visits to many locations. He writes: The names of settlements were mostly Hebrew, some Greek, and some Latin-Roman. No settlement had an original Muslim-Arab name with a historical root in its location. Most of the land was empty, desolate, and the inhabitants few in number and mostly concentrated in Jerusalem, Acco, Tzfat, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza. Most of the inhabitants were Jews and the rest Christians. There were few Muslims, mostly nomad Bedouins. The Arabs were predominantly Christians with a tiny minority of Muslims. In Jerusalem there were approximately 5000 people, mostly Jews and some Christians. In Nazareth there were approximately 700 people - all Christians. In Gaza there were approximately 550 people - half of them Jews and half Christians. Um-El-Phachem was a village of 10 families - all Christians. The only exception was Nablus with 120 Muslims from the Natsha family and approximately 70 Shomronites."

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 11:52 AM

It's a damned shame so much of the world knows how to read and write. To draw maps. If they hadn't figured out how to record their history and the battles they've fought (remembering that history is usually written by the winners, but lots of everyday folks keep diaries about events) they would have forgotten a lot of the small details and might not be parsing the dispute so finely today.

Some of you are harking toward the Ur status of things - back how it was in The Very Beginning. Whenever that was. It isn't going to happen. Today's Americans aren't going to move off of the continent if they find that they have no blood quantum of American Indian. Protestant former Scots aren't going to move back to Scotland from Northern Ireland. White South Africans who are still in South Africa are probably going to stay there. India Indians who live in various nations around the world are going to stay where they settled. Etc., etc.

Events in recent history - lets make that the last couple of hundred years - are plenty to keep people busy. It lets the Armenians fight with the Turks about how much land they are really entitled to, it lets the Kurds continue to try to carve out their historic homeland from Turkey as well as northern Iraq. It lets Japan fight with Russia about some inhospitable islands off the coast of Siberia and yet a logical extension of the Japanese archipelago. It lets American Indians continue to fight battles to prove they were tribes and receive compensation for lost assets (just because they protested the Dawes rolls in 1887 doesn't mean they weren't Indians). It lets ethnic regions artificially joined by colonizers fight to disassociate. The fact that European Jews left Europe under the worst of possible conditions and moved into the thousands-of-years-ago-historic-homeland of Jews in Jerusalem means they displaced the people who had been living there for a very long time since they left (if they were ever there to begin with). There are bound to be some misunderstandings.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 12:16 PM

If certain folks were to limit themselves to more recent times rather than several milennia ago they'd be forced to face some very unpleasant (to them) truths, SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Musket
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 12:16 PM

So the airstrikes by the criminal Israeli forces that have killed a couple of hundred innocent men women and children in the last week are ok then because a lying scrap of parchment from a couple of thousand years ago justifies murder.

Nice.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 12:22 PM

Those are Reland's IMPRESSIONS as a tourist, PeeDee - a late 17th Century "how I spent my vacation". He didn't take a census, nor was he a resident. Interesting, but hardly conclusive.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 01:11 PM

"If certain folks were to limit themselves to more recent times rather than several milennia ago they'd be forced to face some very unpleasant (to them) truths, SRS"

Agreed.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 01:22 PM

I agree with that also.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 01:47 PM

I find it interesting that in this thread when the history of the region was first invoked it was to legitimize the Arabs' claim to it but when the same history is invoked in support of the Jews' claim to it all of a sudden it's all; "that is ancient history anyway it's only recent history that counts".

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 02:07 PM

"it's only recent history that counts"


You mean it is only the RIGHT recent history that counts.

Military occupation BY ARABS in 1948, driving out the previous Jewish Population is RIGHT, and approved of.

Military occupation BY ISRAEL in 1967, resettling Jews in the West Bank is WRONG, and disapproved.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: pdq
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 02:12 PM

In Mark Twain's book "Innocents Abroad" he travel through the Holy Land and observes that it is dry, inhospitable and nearly empty. That was 1867, many years after Adriaan Reland observed similar things, although Reland was more of an accurate historian than Twain, and entertaining curmudgeon.

The Arabs started the modern push to flood the Holy Land with their people after Balfour declared that a Jewish State would be carved out of Ottoman-occupied territory, around 1917.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 02:34 PM

PeeDee, Clemens' "Innocent's Abroad" is humor. Its not a documentary. You going to be quoting Walt Disney movies next? Or Flip Wilson?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 03:44 PM

There are several issues being tangled up in propaganda here and about the only person talking historical sense (Musket is talking some political sense) is John on the Sunset coast.

There is a time after which conquest and control confers legitimate domain - for example the Norman Conquest. That leads to two questions. First, how long is that time? Second who can reclaim after the removal of a conquering power?

The (Islamic) Ottoman Empire kicks off about 1300. It's gone (and this date is more critical) by a date that I'd put somewhere between 1919 and 1922.

I assert (and the Zionists here disagree) that none of the resulting treaties mandates etc derive power from a previous legitimate authority. They are accordingly in my view based on recent (ish) invasions and subjection. If (as many here will argue) several hundred years of English rule of Ireland did not confer historical authority, then the shorter periods since the mid-1920s do not cut the mustard.

So, the Ottomans being gone and the English etc not having legitimacy, who does have a legitimate claim to the areas that JohnotSC so usefully dubbed "the Levant".

Option 1 would be the then occupiers. That would leave most of the area vaguely Arab with a few Jewish hotspots - mostly Jerusalem (it seems - I am open to more historical detail here). If that is a sound foundation then a quick look at a map will show territorial expansion on a considerable scale by the Zionist (linguistic disconnect intended) state.

Option 2 would be the pre-Ottoman occupants. We seem to remain unclear who they were and where their descendants now are and whether they have a claim to statehood. It is however clear, whatever BB says, that the Jews (to use a perhaps not entirely apt collective description) were at the highest watermark, not very much there and had not been so for centuries and maybe more. To look at this further we'd need to look more closely at the issue of territorial abandonment (compare the Falkland Islands).

My current view (on balance) is that a Zionist claim to a historical right to so much land looks distinctly iffy.

I'm not yet persuaded that we need to look back 3,000 years or more to find a logical view on entitlement.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 05:29 PM

I can see what you mean to some extent, Richard; but you seem to me to pay insufficient regard [in fact, none at all] to GB's mandate from The League Of Nations, which was internationally regarded by treaty at end of WW1 as a recognised arbiter in such matters; which mandate, as has been pointed out above, subsumed the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

And as to

"My current view (on balance) is that a Zionist claim to a historical right to so much land looks distinctly iffy"

what IYO is the conclusion to be drawn from this. Abolition of Israel? Starting from the somewhat dreary, but surely incontrovertible axiom that the only place one can start is where one happens to be, that scarcely appears a viable option, does it now? I mean, dash·it·all, dontchaknow, there the bloody country is, and it isn't just going to go away, or vanish just·like·that into the ewigkeit...

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 06:12 PM

The League Of Nations, which was internationally regarded by treaty at end of WW1 as a recognised arbiter

Very much like the United Nations of today, which Israel consistently ignores.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 06:57 PM

"Very much like the United Nations of today, which Israel consistently ignores."

And for very good reason, see: UN, Israel & Anti-Semitism

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 09:25 PM

You bet, Boo - play that anti-Semitism card again.

Predictable. Boring. And still silly.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 11:29 PM

The League of Nations had no mandate from those whose lands in the Levant it claimed to give away.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 01:41 AM

Oh, come on Richard. We surely don't have to go again into all the biznis of the fact that the bit of land at issue here had been for centuries part of the Ottoman Empire, which had ceased to exist as a consequence of Turkey's having been an ally of the losing side in WW1, so the disposal of its parts had, by greement of the victorious side's members, come under the aegis of the League of Nations when it was formed; and as this bit had been captured in 1917 by General Allenby so was at the time under de facto British government...

All of which you know perfectly well. You really are too intelligent to imagine that retrospective Bridge-Law almost a century later is going, even emotionally, to trump the internationally recognised settlements internationally agreed in the years following 1918.
Might as well question the legality of the Nuremberg Trials at this time of day.

Meanwhile, an answer to my question, please. What is to be done about the fact that the State of Israel, little as the great and powerful Bridge may like the fact, is there, and unlikely to cease to be there? Are you at one with Hamas, Isis, Muslim Brotherhood et al, that it must be swept into the sea? Or what?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 02:40 AM

"YOU have show you are a bigot and anti-Semite according to the EU.
If I am an Antisemite, so is Chomsky, Haaretz, Jews for Peace, all the Israeli soldiers who have testified to the behaviour of the Army in Gaza, every Jew who is critical of Israeli policy in Gaza, every Jew who is now describing what is happening in Israel as 'ethnic cleansing'... and as was Einstein when he warned of the risk of fascism in the State of Israel due to the behaviour of the Israeli freedom fighters following Independence.
Last year I watched a film where six retired heads of the Israeli Secret Service all of whom were critical to the point of condemnation of Israeli behaviour in Gaza - the last one made it clear that he believed what was happening was comparable to Nazi Germany.
You are using those who died in Nazi gas ovens as a shield, much as you are claiming that Hamas is using the Palestinian people as a human shield, to justify behaviour that is recognised as an abuse of human rights and, in some cases war crimes.
You quote the E.U. definition because it suits you, yet you totally disregard their condemnation of Israeli behaviour as well as that of the U.N. and many of the nations of the world - and all of the war crimes and human rights organisations - by your logic, all of these are 'Antisemites' as well - I have never claimed anything that they haven't said or are still saying over and over again.
Not only is hiding behind the dead to excuse and support your extremism and inhumanity, a despicably and cowardly act, but in attributing Israeli war crimes and atrocities to 'The Jews' rather than the Israelis, you are a prime example of Antisemitism yourself -it is something I would expect from David Irving and the like.   
The first person I ever heard describe Israel as 'fascist' was the daughter of Holocaust survivors; her mother made a point of showing me her tattoo.
I grew up in a family who supported the dream of the State of Israel even before its establishment.
My father went to Spain because of what was happening to the Jews in Germany; he fought alongside Jews from Europe and America who were there for the same reason he was.
You claim I am an Anti-Semite, yet you have never once produced a single statement of mine attacking the Jewish people - on the contrary, by describing criticism of Israel as "Antisemitism" it is you who accuses the Jews of facilitating Sabra/Shatila, of using chemical weapons and heavy artillery on civilians: men, women, children, schools, hospitals - on establishing a doing on for a decade long blockade to starve the Palestinian people into submission - not the Israelis, but 'The Jews', according to you.
You say you have not - where in all your postings have you been anything but totally supportive of every single action of the Israeli regime?
You have yet to produce one single example of my attacking or even criticising the Jewish people, yet you describe me as an Antisemite and demand that I prove I am not - PROVE I AM - that is how natural justice works (go and read it up if you don't understand it, which you obviously don't).
The Israeli regime has betrayed the Jewish people and turned their dream into a nightmare, and you, with your strutting extremism, have supported that betrayal wholeheartedly.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 04:05 AM

Regret that I must agree with this bit at least of Jim's post --

"The Israeli regime has betrayed the Jewish people and turned their dream into a nightmare"

As I never tire of saying, present-day Israel as it has evolved is one of the greatest disappointments of my entire life (even tho it must be admitted that it remains the only outpost of anything approaching a modern civil entity in the region). I do not think I am alone in this.

What, if anything, can be done about it, I wonder?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 04:09 AM

"greement of the victorious side's members" - precisely, MtheGM.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 04:23 AM

Richard: You really have not taken on board that I was replying to your fatuous assertion that "The League of Nations had no mandate from those whose lands in the Levant it claimed to give away", by pointing out that the entity "whose lands" we are here concerned with, the Ottoman Empire, whose lands these had been for centuries, had ceased to exist; and so one of the vital functions of the newly formed, by agreement of the victors of the recent conflict, LoN, became to determine what should become of its component parts. So whose lands, precisely, are you claiming the League had no warrant, or 'mandate', to give away? It had a warrant, or mandate, from all those upon whom victory had devolved the responsibility of establishing order amongst the chaos inevitably left by so destructive a conflict as had just occurred. And who should that be but the victorious allies?

A precise answer, please.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Musket
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 06:41 AM

I don't think the dead women and children were around in the days of The Ottaman Empire, let alone when scriptures claimed lands a couple of thousands years ago...

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 09:37 AM

To have legitimacy in such determinations the League of Nations needed the proper consent of and derived from the peoples of the lands in question. I almost cannot believe that you don't get it.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 10:30 AM

Which particular 'peoples', Richard? There was a mixture of nomadic Bedouin, indigenous Arabs, and Jewish settlers who had occupied much of the land by actual purchase, ie by paying in actual hard cash money for the parts of the land they colonised, this payment being made to the Turkish landowners under the Ottoman regime, who had freely agreed to sell their land. That is how the settlements in Galilee and around Lake Tiberias (under its various names) were established. The idea that the Jewish settlers just came in & settled on land without anyone's by-your-leave is one of the great myths. But of course, after the Turkish withdrawal, and the consequent mandate given to the British by the League of Nations, all sorts of new accommodations needed to be made. But why you should have any objection to those who had paid its then legitimate owners for land continuing in possession of it, I cannot see. It's you who just are not getting it.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Musket
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 10:37 AM

When bulldozers forcefully remove people who were born on a piece of land whilst some bloke nods his head with an old book in his hand, you tend to feel Balfour, The Ottoman Empire and the bronze age aren't all that relevant to those who become displaced, contrary to The Human Rights Charter...

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 10:43 AM

"When bulldozers forcefully remove people who were born on a piece of land whilst some bloke nods his head with an old book in his hand"

So obviously those JEWS that were driven out of the West Bank in 1948 ( as well as the ones driven out of the OTHER Arab nation ) should get their land back, and the Palestinian Arabs who settled there after 1948 should be removed.


Or do you not think that JEWS have the rights you are giving Arab Muslims ( Since a number of Arab Christians were also driven out at that time).

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Musket
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:05 AM

What the fuck have Jews got to do with it?

A government is using it's predominant religion as an excuse for land grab. Got nothing to do with religion, either side. Religion is an excuse, not a fact.

1967.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:10 AM

They were driven out by the Arab League BECAUSE they were Jews.

Do you agree THEY deserve their land back?

YES OR NO.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:14 AM

Don't be silly MtheGM. Anyone can buy a house, or a garden. That is a private transaction. It may, if done correctly, confer title to the land bought. It does not make the buyer a conduit for representation of the people of the region.

Those with the relevant titles might very well be a proper electorate for the communities occupying the land so bought. But only those areas.

Now compare those areas with those that Israel now claims to rule.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:14 AM

"YES OR NO."

Good luck with that.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:15 AM

What about 1967? That was when Israel took back the land that the West Bank Jews had been driven off of, and had been settled by Arabs after 1948.

I know several Palestinian families- They had homes in Ramallah, a Christian town, and were driven out in 1948 by the Arab League. So when can I expect the Palestinian Authority to vacate their property?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:18 AM

If it were that simple, BB, it would have been solved by now. What they "deserve," who is "entitled," and what is "fair" - all difficult questions in the layers of activity.

But those who support Israel all-out 100%, with blinders on, who can only see jewish victims struggling to find a place in the world after WWII are not seeing the abuses Israeli politicians have visited on their neighbors. Leon Uris wrote lots of novels and managed to create a romantic view of Israel that many people have since then had to get over, to see how she actually behaves herself today.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:26 AM

"Those with the relevant titles might very well be a proper electorate for the communities occupying the land so bought. But only those areas."


So those areas with NO resident population, such as MOST of the land of Mandate Palestine in 1921, have NO proper electorate, and can be transferred by the nation controlling it (Turkey, as the follow-on to the Ottoman Empire) to the league of Nations , which placed it under Mandate.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:32 AM

And those who claim that Israel is not permitted to defend itself?

I see how Hamas behaves, yet am criticized for judging them by that behavior.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:34 AM

It is NOT unreasonable to require that the same standards that are applied to Israel should be applied to the others in that region, and that not doing so is an indication of bigotry.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:47 AM

You're going to have a tough time showing that whole areas of "the Levant" had zero population (except for Jews) at all relevant times - particularly if you take account of a recent "right to return" (NOT one based on religious texts from bazillions of years ago)

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:58 AM

Now c'mon, SRS - all that land was given to the Israelis BY GOD. Doesn't pay to trifle with God's Will.

Do be careful or you'll end up on the BeeBoo Anti-Semite Enemies of Eretz Yisrael List.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 01:07 PM

OK, there is also confusion on jewish v. hebrew - the jews didn't exist, according to their own mythology, until the hebrews got out of bondage and decided to dedicate themselves to their god and become jews. Both hebrews and arabs are semites, a term for humans who evolved for the deserts in what is often referred to as the levant, wih big noses for the dryness etc, and they have hated each other since before the hebrews got into bondage in the first place. And nobody knows how they got there (into slavery and far away from their home), but the chances are that either the people who hated them sold them, or that they were captured in a war and taken by the people who ended up bonding them, but then why didn't they take the arabs too, and either way you have resentment between the hebrews and the arabs. Then you add in a god who has chosen the jews, and forget rational discourse between the 2... so back at the dawn of time when people are talking about the Mess o'Potamia they should not talk about jews, that is an anachronism.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 01:27 PM

I'm sure I'm already on it. Israel has a real knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory when it comes to peace talks.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 01:29 PM

Ya got it in one, SRS. And apparently they don't ever learn - Israel's been doing it for decades.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 06:22 PM

"Israel has a real knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory when it comes to peace talks."

I would posit that if you were to do a little research on the number of proposed agreements accepted by Israel and rejected by the other side since 1947 and posted the results, Greg wouldn't be so quick to honk his approval.