Can you look at this map and say Israel does not systemically appropriate land?

I await Glenn's response to that almost idiotic post before mine. I can't really untangle it.

I think Glenn has given up. When both the facts and the law are on my side, people quickly run out of room to argue against my position.

To protest a logical fallacy like an apples to oranges comparison is hardly "nearly idiotic".

It's a Macbeth. (Full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.)

Hiya, Glenn. You're asking all the right questions and making the right statement, however, your response is falling on barren ground. From everything I've read of the poster, Oralloy, he is entrenched in the doctrine that 2000 years ago, a god gave all of Palestine to the Israelis, today commonly referred to as European Jews while there are a some Jews who've always lived in the area of the Levant....the poster believes all this land, Palestine, belongs to Israel and the Palestinians are interlopers and "vermin" who should be kicked out.

There is a sect called "Christian Zionism" in America and elsewhere in the world that believe only when *ALL* the Jews return to "Zion" aka Palestine, will (the Messiah aka Jesus) the promised deliverer of the Jewish nation, prophesied in the Hebrew Bible&*, be able to return. Therefore these "Christian' adherents for all thing pertaining to "the Holy land" is rooted in deep spiritual belief. As regarding the poster Oralloy's zealotry, well, he is just as strongly determined as PM Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to steal as much of the West Bank, irrespective of the US and Europe's opposition or any laws which say Israel is occupying illegal territory; in Oralloy's mindset, a god's word given 2000 years ago, supersedes any modern day version of what is right or wrong.

Religious zealots are in many ways akin to those who suffer from a defective gene. Sometimes a mental gene which is imperfect may have its version of events conceived in aberrational psychic opinions.
_________

Below, I would like to introduce arbitrarily my two cents:

*The Old Testament was written by the Jews so the statement that "Jews are the Chosen People of God" seems logical, especially since they are writing their own bible that reflect them and their ethnic culture. Judaism, Monotheism, gave birth to the offshoots, Christianity and much later, Islam. There was once upon a time when all three religions lived in peace, respecting the other's religion. Today, Christians' theology claim only 144 Jews will be permitted into heaven and the Jews wonder who was the real father of Mary's baby called Jesus. Islam, well, what can one say about it except the extremists have tarnished it almost beyond recognition with the Islamic culture refusal to join the 21st century.

Nothing will change in Israel. You can bet your home on it.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/01/world/meast/mideast-israel-west-bank/

Following is an article I read a few days ago. It's rather longish but it's most enlightening and gives us an insight into the possible future of Israel and realistically the kind of nation it is today.
_________

Israel, a Jewish Republic?
By KAI BIRD. DEC., 2014

Israel has an identity problem. Is it a Jewish state that provides legal and material preferences for citizens of Jewish ancestry? Or is it a secular nation-state, but one that happens to be rooted in Jewish culture and the Hebrew language? For more than six decades Israeli politicians have maintained a useful ambiguity about this deeply existential question. But no longer.In elections in March, Israel’s voters will be forced to confront stark choices about the country’s national identity. In the absence of a formal, written constitution, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has embraced a game-changing “nation-state” bill that would award “national rights” only to Jewish citizens.

The outcome of this crossroads election is by no means certain. Initially, polls suggested that Mr. Netanyahu might well cement his hold on power and accelerate Israel’s rightward drift. But the recent forging of a new political coalition between Isaac Herzog, leader of the left-center Labor Party, and Tzipi Livni, leader of the Hatnua, a small center-right party — who was sacked from the cabinet earlier this month, as Mr. Netanyahu called for new elections — suggests that there may be a viable electoral alternative. Mr. Herzog and Ms. Livni oppose the Jewish nation-state bill. They are old-fashioned Zionists, wedded to the notion that all of Israel’s citizens, Jewish or otherwise, are entitled to equal democratic rights. And unlike Mr. Netanyahu, they both understand that Israel’s continued control over the post-1967 occupied territories threatens its democratic character.Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence guarantees “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” So Israel may be a “Jewish state” in a cultural sense, but at least no more so than America can be called a “Christian state.” Israel was never intended to be a theocracy.It is also home to less than half of the world’s people who claim Jewish ancestry. Twenty percent of its citizens are not Jewish, but rather Muslim, Christian and Druze. And this minority is growing.

Furthermore, most of Israel’s citizens who do claim Jewish ancestry are in fact secular, nonpracticing Jews. A large majority of its million-plus Russian immigrants are not even recognized as Jewish by the Orthodox rabbinical courts.

A Jewish nation-state law would discriminate against these non-Jewish citizens — but it could also provide the quasi-judicial pretext for denying Palestinians citizenship if the ultraright get their way and Israel someday annexes the occupied territories. This is a bad idea in every conceivable way. In reality, Israel is a multiethnic, vibrant and largely secular society. This is clearly not a tragedy. It is actually what most of the country’s original Zionist founding fathers envisioned — a new, modern state in ancient Palestine where those Jews who so desired could become citizens of a nation like any other modern nation-state. “Israelis” would be seen not as members of the Jewish Diaspora, but citizens of their own state.

Hillel Kook (1915-2001), an early Zionist leader from the Revisionist wing, thought of the new Israeli state as a “Hebrew Republic” — a place where Jews could leave behind the Diaspora. Instead of being Jewish Americans or Jewish Frenchmen, their identity would be defined in the first instance by their chosen citizenship in the new Israeli state — and not their Jewishness. They would be Israelis first — and would choose or choose not to practice their ancestral religion, just as most Frenchmen are Catholics who never attend Mass.

Over more than six decades Israelis have created a distinct national culture, largely based on their language — always a key ingredient to any national identity. And this cultural identity is wholly separate from mere religiosity.

Dare we call Netanyahu and his ilk "Authoritarian" and discuss the moral and political implications?

This definition of Israeli identity — one based on the Hebrew language and culture rather than religion — is a very good thing for the prospects of peace.

The Palestine Liberation Organization and most Arab leaders already recognize the reality of the Israeli state. So why would Israeli leaders now want to define their identity from their neighbors’ in religious terms?
Why does Mr. Netanyahu want to define his nation-state with precisely the same phrases used by Hamas, a nonsecular, fundamentalist party dedicated to the formation of an Islamic republic? Mr. Netanyahu himself is a secular politician. His insistence on a “Jewish state” seems to be only a prescription for endless conflict with his “Muslim” neighbors — and perhaps today a tactic to postpone further negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state.

The notion of a Jewish state is ultimately political poison for the Jewish Diaspora, and specifically for American Jews. If Israel is seen as a Jewish state, then the implication exists that some or all of America’s seven million Jewish Americans “belong” in Israel. They do not. They belong in the United States, and they’re not going anywhere.American Jews have thrived over the last hundred years, and in doing so they have enriched the secular and multi-cultural ethos of the United States. They can practice their faith as well or better in America than anywhere else. Their relation to the state of Israel is precisely the same as that of Irish-Americans to Ireland, or Italian-Americans to Italy.

For all these reasons, talking about a “Jewish state” destroys a useful and wise ambiguity. Instead, Israelis need to celebrate their “Israeli” national identity. They should talk about Israel’s cultural and technological achievements. And talk about Israel’s security, too, and where its borders should be drawn so that the endless conflict between Arabs and Israelis can finally come to an end.
Kai Bird is the author, most recently, of “The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/26/opinion/israel-a-jewish-republic.html?src=recg&mabReward=RI%3A6&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Recommended&pgtype=article

Those are gamesmanship that has been going on since 1967, and any and all rhetoric of any left-leaning party will have no chance in winning elections in Israel. Those are the facts that repeats itself over and over.

The biggest problem is that the international community will not act on demanding equality for the Palestinians living in Israel. All while the Zionists continue to expand their settlements and displace Palestinians from their homes and land.

Everything else is just noise.

It's hopeless.

Quit your lying. You know very well that you've never seen any such argument from me.



It is a basic historical fact that the land belongs to the Israelis and that the Palestinians are interlopers.

The Palestinians earned the label vermin. If they end up kicked out, it'll be their own fault. They were given more than enough chances to make peace with Israel.



As has already been established, this is Israel's land. The only thieves here are the Palestinians.



As above, quit your lying.



You militant Atheists are a prime example of such religious zealotry.

(Note my qualifier "militant". Non-militant Atheists please take no offense at my comment.)



Ha!

Lies lies oralloy. Genetics say Palestinians were there continuously since everyone was Canaanite including Jews. As much Pal homeland as Jews. And Pals never left.

It is irrational to declare the sovereign of a country based in who lived in that land the first.

Here in the US the first tribes of aborigines who settled in the land were the Apaches, the Sioux, etc. By "inheritance" these people should be the "right owners" of most of the land in the USA.

But, "they lost the war" against the England/European conquerors and colonists.

The winner takes it all.

The current State of Israel WON the war against the opposites of its existence.

And, it is illogical, out of question, the scenario of a sovereign nation existing INSIDE another sovereign nation.

The proposed Palestinian State must never ever come into existence inside the State of Israel.

Period.

As always, all the falsehoods are in your posts and not in mine.



Wrong. Genetics say the Israelites are the population indigenous to the West Bank. Genetics say the Palestinians came from somewhere other than the West Bank.

I don't know. If the Palestinian "state" comes into existence absent negotiations for peace, Israel will retain ownership over all of Area C. The Palestinians will be stuck in isolated Bantustans. That's not too bad of an outcome.

You persistently misread what the genetics actually say. You're doing it again. You're wrong.

DNA says that during the Bronze Age, the Palestinians were part of the same Canaanite population as the Israelites. But Canaanite culture collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age, and the former Canaanites went on to form separate, smaller Iron Age cultures. DNA says that the Israelites and the Palestinians were separate populations in the Iron Age.

That means Iron Age Palestinians were a different culture from Iron Age Israelites. The Palestinians came from someplace other than the West Bank.

Under a different situation, you perhaps most likely might be right; however, when modern Israel came into creation in '48, she was given 56 percent of the land and the rest belonged to the Palestinians. It was understood that TWO PEOPLES were to live on that land, the size of New Jersey. At the time the Palestinians rejected the proposition because, understandably, the land was theirs and had the trappings of a burgeoning society/state with hospitals and universities; all their neighbors recognize such as distinctly Palestinian land for the Palestinian natives.

After the 1967 war Israel became more emboldened and began grabbing more and more land which belonged to the Palestinians. The world community saw the crimes Israel was committing by occupying land on the West Bank.

The same thing occurred with Jerusalem. Israel wanted to join the UN. The UN refused to allowed the zionist nation to join until it promised not to annex Jerusalem which is supposed to be an *OPEN CITY* for all the major religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Israel lied, saying up and down they would not touch Jerusalem. The UN relented and allowed the Lilliputian nation to join. As soon as Israel were allowed to join she set about making Jerusalem the capital of Israel. This has infuriated the world community. The US, so far, has refused to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.*

It has always been suggested and known that TWO STATES should exist side by side in Palestine, so to infer a Palestinian state would be inside of modern Israel is simply ridiculous. Israel has been warned over and over about trying to capture land that belong to the Palestinians who do not possess an army, only stone age tools to fight Israel's mighty superior army with the US giving Israel the military edge over every one of her neighbors.

*Hillary Clinton, a diehard supporter of Israel (this *reverence* for Israel is more political than anything else) might relent and allow the US embassy to move to Jerusalem but the consequences might be quite a nasty backlash.

Stop making things up. Israel has not captured any land whatsoever after 1967.

In fact, since 1967, they've repeatedly offered to give up land to anyone who will make peace with them.



You anti-Semites do not speak for the world when you falsely accuse Jews of committing imaginary crimes.



Jerusalem has been Israel's capital since the beginning of the state.

This does not infuriate anyone who is not an anti-Semite.



The land in question does not belong to the Palestinians.

And Israel does not need to capture it, given the fact that they are already fully in possession of it. All Israel needs to do is refuse to give up possession of what they already control.

That should be easy enough to manage. All these unilateral moves by the Palestinians are the perfect excuse for Israel to not give up any more land.

The Palestinians can have all their little Bantustans recognized by Europe and the rest of the world, and Israel can remain fully in possession of all of Area C.



Given the fact that we're going to be heading into 16 more years of Bush presidency (eight years apiece for Jeb and his son), I don't think we'll have to worry about what Hillary will or won't do.

However, the only backlash over moving our embassy would be some pathetic whining by some impotent anti-Semites.

Not captured; stole. Palestinians have no legal right to their property/home.

What a wonderful democracy!

You're a Jewish bigot, idiot, and one without any ethics.

What a waste of energy responding to that poster, Ci, like really. I keep him on permanent ignore because he simply doesn't know any better. If he could get a brain transplant there might be some hope. He serves as a wonderful tool for the rabid Israeli right-wingers,

Says the clown who cannot point out a single fact that I am wrong about.

Plenty of people have pointed out that your facts are false but you are too stupid and blind to see them.