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

This debate over "Israel's right to exist" is a bit irrelevant. Israel exists whether you want them to or not. And the Israeli military is going to defend that right, with nukes if necessary.

However, Israel has demonstrated a willingness to return to 1967 borders, but only in exchange for peace.

So the Palestinians have a choice. Do they want to keep waging war? Or do they want Israel to return to 1967 borders?

It seems clear that the Palestinians have chosen to abandon the possibility of a peaceful return to 1967 borders, and instead have chosen to try to kill more innocent people. So it will fall to Israel to draw the borders of the future Palestinian state as they see fit.

My guess is the eventual Palestinian state will be based on the Mofaz Plan, which breaks the Palestinian West Bank into northern and southern parts; withdraws all settlements east of "the wall"; annexes everything west of "the wall"; and keeps the Jordan River Valley under Israeli military control (albeit with no settlements).



Seems fair to me.

Maybe there should be three Palestinian states instead of one: Gaza, North West Bank, and South West Bank.

Why should they since they didn't do it before but created own countries?

I don't know if there is any reason why they should. It is just what I'd like to see happen.

Well, they never wanted "to re-establish of the Byzantine Empire on that land" - would be contrary to the idea behind the crusades (see vexillum sancti Petri) ...

What were you saying about resorting to ad-hominem attacks when you find your position untenable?

I'm sorry about your poor stomach btw.

And un-Jewish too, let it be said.

I have at no time questioned Israel's right to exist. That straw man will elicit no response from me.

The origins of the Jewish-Muslim conflict in the middle east are actaully quite undestandable, but they require one to lay aside ideological preconceptions and look at the history of the region since 1917. Allenby entered Jerusalem in 1917, and Palestine was for practical purposes liberated from Turkish control. The Sykes-Picot agreement had already determined that the middle east would be divided into British and French spheres of influence, and this was to modified by the intervention of Winston Churchill when he was Balfour's subordinate after the war, in order to secure the known oil fields of what the British stubbornly insisted on calling Mesopotamia, and what we know of as Iraq. Setting up the Palestine-Transjordan mandate while retaining contol of Palestine by the British irritated the trumped-up Hashemite royal family, but not enough to be a casus belli. But the people of Iraq were not pleased with British masters, nor with a monarchy of "foreigners" imposed on them, and insurrrection was frequent and prolonged there in the 1920s. These rebellions were brutally repressed by the British, and the young RAF commander on the scene, Arthur "Bomber" Harris who would head Bomber Command in World War II claimed that obliterating villages from the air had a salutary effect on the rebels. Of course, that was arrogant stupidity, and it only hardened and spread resentment against the British in Iraq. Predictably, it strengthened the nascent pan-Arabist movement, and the young officers movements of the middle east, the later being opposed to monarchies imposed on them by foreigners and comprised of Arabs who were, to them, foreigners.

World War II changed things considerablly. The western allies decided to attempt to supply the Soviet Union through "Mesopotamia" and Persia, and to that end poured troops and transport organizations into Iraq, while engineering the take over of Persia by a puppet government. Predictably, the Iraqis rebelled, and predictably the British responded with immediately, murderous military repression. In Persia, the American representative was Norman Schwartzkopf, whose son of the same name would commannd the international coalition in the first Gulf war.

In Palestine, the British, for their own benefit, attempted to raise several battalions of troops to help defend Egypt and the Suez canal. This process actually came before the war. Jews in Palestine were enthusiastic, for what ought to be obvious reasons. The Muslims of Palestine were less than thrilled, and the upshot was that several battalions of Jews were formed, trained and armed (the British cherishing a viper in their bossom--these same men would lead the anti-British terrorism between 1945 and 1947), while only a single "Arab" battalion was raised, which the British promptly pronounced unreliable. The Jewish battablions formed a brigade which fought for the Brits in North Africa and Italy, gaining military experience, and an arsenal which they would put to good use after 1945.

After the war, the Irgun, which had been founded in the 1930s, used those militarily experienced officers and the equipment they had been issued by the British for their insurrection agains the British, and for the murder of Arab leadership in Palestine. The Irgun was founded on a "revisionist" Zionist theme, "The policy of the new organization was based squarely on Jabotinsky's teachings: every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state" Long before the time when Oralloy alleges that Arabs began murdering Jews, Jews were murdering Arabs, forcing land claims against Arabs whose occupation of their lands was traditional, but backed by no documents, and, after 1945, carrying out terrorist acts against the British occupation forces. The stage was already set for the Jewish-Arab war of 1948.

For their part, the members of various young officer movements, opposed to western imposed monarchies and bent on successful rebellion, quickly saw the potential of demonizing Jews as the murderous agents of the British occupation. The threat of rebellion lead rulers in Iraq, Egypt and Jordan to take militay action in 1948, as well as in the French mandates in the Lebanon and Syria. Eventually, these young officer movements would blame defeat in 1948 on the foreign and foreign imposed governments, and use that as a basis for successful rebellions, and the establishment of the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party (the bastard child of pan-Arabism and the young officers movemet) and the short-lived United Arab Republic.

In Persia/Iran, Mohammed Mosedegh was democratically elected under the terms of the Persian constitution, which was promulgated before the First World War, and not a product of western imposition, although emulating western democratic ideals. Mossedegh's program, very popular witht the Persians, was to emasculate the power of the Shah who had been imposed on them, and to nationalize the petroleum industry. The Brits didn't really give a rat's ass about the Shah, but they cared very much about the oil. MI6 convinced Central Intelligence to help them overthrow Mossedegh, and a newly elected and to that point naive Eisenhower authorized their operation, without understanding the full, intended scope (which probably explains Eisenhower's "once bitten, twice shy" attitude in 1956 when he told the Anglo-Frech to piss off). Mossedegh was overthrown in a phony coup, the Shah firmly re-established on his phony throne, and Israel's Mossad was brought in to set up and train the Shah's new "secret" security apparatus, the SAVAK. The hatred of Israel by the Persians is completely understandable in this context. The SAVAK were only a secret to the citizens of westen democracies--nobody in the middle east had any illusions about them, where they came from, nor who their Israeli-British masters were.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Prior to 1947, the Jews in Palestine were almost exclusively of European origin, even those who were born in the Palestine were descended from Jews who had come from Europe. It was only after 1947 that Jews from other parts of the middle east were brought in in significant numbers. Your beef with the term European Jews is ludicrous, as is most of what you post which you allege to have some historical basis. European Jew is a value-neutral term, it simply refers to the nations of origins of the people refered to--your paranoia notwithstanding.

Oh the irony . . . yes, the German nationalists loved to prate about kultur. The concept is still racist in that you are assuming that the culture makes the people industrious, and the culture is a product of the dominant ethnic group and their values. The success of the emirates of the Persian Gulf gives the lie to any claims about cultural "industriousness."

By the way, when, after 1947, the Israelis began to round up native Jews from middle eastern countries, many of them, most notably from Yemen and Oman, showed up at the air strips with the camels, their goats, their sheep, their felt tents and their heavily veiled women. They are the ancestors of the most unyielding, right-wing, militaist political groups in Israel. I see no significat difference between the people they were, and the people most Palestinian Muslims were before the madate. Your horseshit about culture and industriousness is racist.

Your hopes for what the government of the Republic could accomplish in the face of the heavily armed existing Protestant paramilitaries are silly, or would be if the outcome were not sure to be so tragic.

Kosovo was divided between three nations, and you seem to have neglected the point that a world war has intervened, the Serbia became a part of Yugoslavia, and that all the states of the former Yugoslavia have broken away. How long was Kosovo "a part" of Serbia? Nine months, ten months--before the First World War broke out? Calling a protectorate a part of the power which is supposed to protect the people and the territory simply enshrines the kind of nationalistic banditry which the Serbs would carry out against all their neighbors if they could get away with it. The only problem i have with NATO is that they didn't hunt down and exterminate the murderous Serb paramilitaries who were responsible for the atrocities in Kosovo.

I don't hate Serbs, i hate right-wing, murderous Serb paramilitaries, just as i hate right-wing, murderous American paramilitaries and would-be terrorists. I don't expect an ideological fanatic like you to understand.

The ancient Jews did not contol the south of the Lebanon, or the Golan Heights, and the modern Israelis only control them by right of military conquest. Calling it repossession of stolen property just shows how hysterically twisted your ideological viewpoint is.

The middle east is a region which for thousands of years, long before anyone ever heard of a Jew, has been a fluid, volatile mix of many different peoples. That you single out Jews and say this is their homeland, and the homelad of no other clearly demonstrates that you have an agenda going on here with has no basis in either histoical precedent nor reality.

I don't and haven't questioned the "right to exist" of Israeli. I do question and deny the right of right-wing, militarist Israeli governments to seize murder Palestinians and seize their lands. The governments of Israel for 60 years have always negotiated in bad faith--promising justice and peace while brining in hordes of settlers and turning a blind eye to illegal settlements on lands which they have formally recognized as belonging to Palestinians.

I despise the governments of Israel. I pity the Jews and Palestinians who are therefore their victims.

An ad hominem attack--the idiotic "net-speak" term you use here--is inappropriate. Argumentum ad hominem means that rather than address your claims, i simply make disparaging remarks about you. But that is not the case. I have consistently pointed out that you are wrong, and why. For as much as you may not like having it pointed out that you just make **** up, it is not a personal attack, and it is predicated on the objections i have made to your claims. Grow up and stop whining.

Why are any other invaders "illegitimate," but the Jews are legitimate? According to their own legends, they did not originate in Palestine. According to their own scriptures, they invaded Palestine and, murdering as many of the previous occupants as they could, they stole it from its former inhabitants. You have only arbitrarily decided that it is a Jewish homeland. Your position is farcical--the results of such attitudes are tragic and awash in the blood of innocents, including innocent Jews who have paid the price for such insane hubris.

Amen to that!

Yes. "What I want" and "what the Crusaders wanted" are two very different things.

The Crusaders wanted to capture Jerusalem, for Xiantity. I, on the other hand, think Jerusalem is best left in Jewish hands.

I think it would be nice to see Constantinople back in Xian hands however. Damascus too.

I, again, point out the fact that the Serbs were no worse than any of the other former Yugoslav nationalities when it came to committing atrocities. And they were the victims of atrocities just as often as they were the perpetrators.







The only thing I am referring to as stolen property is the West Bank.

The West Bank is Israel's homeland, and the Israelis have every right to reclaim it.







No, the West Bank really was their ancient homeland.







The West Bank is Israeli land, not Palestinian land. And it is hardly murder for Israel to defend themselves from Palestinian aggression.







The Labor governments negotiated in good faith -- particularly under Ehud Barak. All they got for their trouble was Palestinians murdering Israeli children until their government collapsed, followed by people falsely accusing them of not having negotiated in good faith.

After what happened to Ehud Barak, there really is no further reason to take negotiations seriously.







The main settlement construction is occurring west of "the wall", on land that Israel is going to annex in any case. It is hardly an excuse for the Palestinians to derail negotiations.

You certainly make claims that I am wrong.

You try to obscure the fact that your claims have no merit by making false accusations against me.






I, again, point out the fact that you've never cited any case of me making things up (nor will you, given the fact that I have never done so).






The Kingdom of Israel was located in the West Bank. There is nothing arbitrary about it.

My claims have merit because by your version, no one lived in Palestine from the time that the Jews were driven out by Tituts--70 CE--until Arabian Muslims showed up in the 7th century--a ludicrous contention. I know that you didn't actaully say that, but that is the inferential statement if you intend to claim that all non-Jewish Palestinians are descended from the perpetrators of that invasion. Therefore, i have pointed out that you are making up **** because you wrongly characterize the history of the inhabitants of Palestine. It is not a false claim because Palestine was and always has been occupied for as far back as the historical record goes, and that includes the Jewish scriptures which recognize that it was inhabited when they first invaded.

When you claim that the Palestinians are descended from the invasion by Arab "holy warriors" in the 7th century, you are making things up. Too bad if you don't like hearing that, but it's true whether or not you want to acknowledge it.

While it is true that for a time, the Jews occupied what is now called the West Bank, it was occupied before they arrived, and it was occupied after the Romans drove them out. You continue to ignore that the Bedu have been in Palestine (principally in the Negev today, in the distant past they migrated all over the middle eastern desert--indeed, Bedu means a wanderer in the desert) for as long as, if not longer than the Jews. Ethnologists believe that the Bedu were originally cattle herders, but that climate change and the encroachment on their grazing land by the temple societies of Mesopotamia 4000 years ago turned them into herding nomads, reliant principally on sheep and goats. You ignore that the Aramaeans and Hellenized inhabitants of all descriptions have inhabited Palestine for thousands of years. If we were to believe your version, there were Jews, who were drive out almost 1950 years ago by the Romans, and then the evil Arab Muslims showed up in the 7th century. By your account, on infers that the Jews just magically sprang into existence in Palestine, no one was there before them, and that they can therefore claim an exclusive right to call Palestine their homeland. Your position is absurd. It would be laughable, had not so many people died because of just this sort of stupidity.

Pointing out that Jews once had an alleged kingdom (i don't see how a bandit holdout rises to the level of a kingdom, but i'll grant the point for discussion) in what we now call the West Bank, and using that as a basis to claim that that gives them an exclusive right to call Palestine their homeland certainly is arbitrary, and quixotic, and likely founded on either crypto-racism or hatred for Muslims. I would not be surprised, however, to learn that you are motivated by both hatreds.

You have no basis and have provided no basis for your claim that the Serbs were victims of atrocities as often as they were the perpetrators of atrocities. Even if that were true (and i don't concede it), you ignore that they committed atrocities in lands which were not their ancient and traditional homelands, a point you attempt to hammer about the Jews--even though you can't make the case that the Jews have any right to make a claim that Palestine is their exclusive homeland.

I make comments about the south of the Lebanon and the Golan Heights, and you tell me that it is not stealing to repossess one's land. When i point out that the south of Lebanon and the Golan Heights were never a part of Jewish lands prior to 1978 and 1967 respectively, then you fall back on your "I was only talking about the West Bank" sing-song. Your rhetoric is a mess, and you ought to embarrassed by how often you contradict yourself or make absurd statements.

In your post #4373912, replying to me . . .



Make up your mind about what you claim is stolen property.

The West Bank has been the ancient homeland of many people. Your decision to claim that the Jews and no others have a right to claim it is arbitrrary and quixotic. Too bad if you don't like having that pointed out to you.

So you've got one government which you claim negotiated in good faith, and are willing to ignore all the other Israeli governments which have not negotiated in good faith. How convenient to your silly rant. It is hardly murder for Palestinians to defend themselves against Jewish aggression.

You claim that the illegal settlements are hardly an excuse for derailing negotiations. For 30 years and more, the various Israeli governments have promised to end settlements on Palestinian land, and they've been lying. What excuse is there for Israel to "annex" land west of the wall? What excuse was there for the wall in the first place--other than protecting the ground on which the government intended to allow fanatical, right-wing Jews to settle? Your view is so distorted it's problematic to see how anyone can get through to you.

Well, take away the oil in the emirates, and could the countries be as wealthy as Germany that has few natural resources? I think not.

So, if a culture makes its adherents industrious, why would that be racist? Just because Germans evolved a culture that promulgates industriousness is no reason to claim anything is racist. I mean a German baby, if adopted by some other nationality, with a "manana" culture (no culture specified), the baby might not grow up to be industrious. But, keep the German baby in the German culture, and I believe it is more likely to grow up reflecting the German culture's promulgating industriousness.

Or, the Asian and Jewish culture promulgates entrepreneurship outside of its respective nations. So, a Jewish or Asian baby might grow up to be an entrepreneur within the Asian or Jewish culture. Put the same baby in an American household, as an adopted infant, and the child might grow up to be a civil servant.

My definition of "racism" is when one thinks that an individual has "INHERENT" traits based on the individual's ethnic/racial makeup. Well, that is not what I am saying. It is the culture. Pure sociology.

So, yes, Germans raised in the German culture are more likely to be intellectually superior to a whole host of other Europeans from other cultures. Oh, and I forgot, and more industrious too!

Now, if a Jew (myself) is praising the German culture, then that must mean something. Get it?

Note I did not talk much of the Jewish culture, and only made an obscure reference to the Irish-American culture (as told to me by an Irish-American that Irish-Americans relate it to each other).

Many of us public school folk did not learn the "classy" Latin phrases, not having a "teaching order" as our teachers. In my opinion, it reeks of pseudo intellectualism. Not that you are not a true intellectual; it just reeks of it, in my opinion.