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

Germany has used up much of its natural resources, but their industrial wealth was based on iron and steel, and for that they had the iron ore deposits, the coal deposits, and the forests from which they made fuel in the early days. They also had some small mineral deposits. During the Nazi era, they simply seized the natural resources they wanted from those whose nations they overran--they did much the same thing in Belgium and northern France in the First World War. These days, of course, like so many industrial nations, they simply buy what they need from others, and their economy relies on the value added process. So your use of Germany as an example is bullshit--they use the value added process to buy the resources they need just as the emirates use their oil resources to buy what they need. Kultur ain't got nothin' to do with it.

In the first place, you haven't established that culture makes people industrious. In the second place, you are willfully ignoring my claim that cultures are products of the peoples who practice them--hence the inherent traits which are alleged making your claim racist.

Given your posting history at this site, i have no reason to be impressed that you are praising Germany. A stupid position is a stupid position, no matter the alleged prejudices of he who articulates it. Your claim about industriousness is a stupid position to take.

I attened public school, there was no "teaching order" involved, you racist pig. I do not and never have claimed to be an intellectual. No argument is "an adhom" if the person speaking refutes the argument. So, for example, when i point out that you have failed to demonstate that culture produces industriousness, and that therefore your "logic" is flawed and doesn't support your argument--subsequently pointing out that you are an idiot is just added entertainment. But is is not an ad hominem argument.

I am not surprised that you don't understand that.

So, this has quieted down a bit.

I know a family in Jerusalem and I'm hoping to go there. I've never been to Israel before.

I do not have to prove that "culture makes people industrious." To be a racist, I would have to say that people are "inherently" industrious, and other people are "inherently not industrious". I said neither. I only said culture makes the people. Why a culture is what it is, is not part of my point. But let us just say that the German culture is superior to some other European cultures.

If there are any nationalities that have a history of their people running around barefoot, I could not say that culture is equal to a culture whose people wear shoes. Just from the lack of tetanus in the "shoes culture," I would say it is a superior culture.

Or, take a culture that has developed a number system and written language. I would say that culture is superior to the culture that has no written language or number system.

Needless to say, the adherents of a culture that can read and write and count will have an advantage over a people whose culture are non-readers/writers and have little concept of numeracy.

This is not racist. It is sociology.

Israel properly insists on a quid pro quo relative to the cessation of settlement expansion, which is on Israeli-owned land.


An End to Israel's Invisibility: No Peace without Recognition
By Michael B. Oren, October 13, 2010, The New York Times

Nearly 63 years after the United Nations recognized the right of the Jewish people to independence in their homeland — and more than 62 years since Israel's creation — the Palestinians are still denying the Jewish nature of the state.

"Israel can name itself whatever it wants," said the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, while, according to the newspaper Haaretz, his chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said that the Palestinian Authority will never recognize Israel as the Jewish state. Back in 1948, opposition to the legitimacy of a Jewish state ignited a war. Today it threatens peace.

Mr. Abbas and Mr. Erekat were responding to the call by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, enabling his government to consider extending the moratorium on West Bank construction. "Such a step by the Palestinian Authority would be a confidence-building measure," Mr. Netanyahu explained, noting that Israel was not demanding recognition as a prerequisite for direct talks. It would "open a new horizon of hope as well as trust among broad parts of the Israeli public."

Why should it matter whether the Palestinians or any other people recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people? Indeed, Israel never sought similar acknowledgment in its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Some analysts have suggested that Mr. Netanyahu is merely making a tactical demand that will block any chance for the peace they claim he does not really want.

Affirmation of Israel's Jewishness, however, is the very foundation of peace, its DNA. Just as Israel recognizes the existence of a Palestinian people with an inalienable right to self-determination in its homeland, so, too, must the Palestinians accede to the Jewish people's 3,000-year connection to our homeland and our right to sovereignty there. This mutual acceptance is essential if both peoples are to live side by side in two states in genuine and lasting peace.

So why won't the Palestinians reciprocate? After all, the Jewish right to statehood is a tenet of international law. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 called for the creation of "a national home for the Jewish people" in the land then known as Palestine and, in 1922, the League of Nations cited the "historical connection of the Jewish people" to that country as "the grounds for reconstituting their national home." In 1947, the United Nations authorized the establishment of "an independent Jewish state," and recently, while addressing the General Assembly, President Obama proclaimed Israel as "the historic homeland of the Jewish people." Why, then, can't the Palestinians simply say "Israel is the Jewish state"?

The reason, perhaps, is that so much of Palestinian identity as a people has coalesced around denying that same status to Jews. "I will not allow it to be written of me that I have ... confirmed the existence of the so-called Temple beneath the Mount," Yasir Arafat told President Bill Clinton in 2000.

For Palestinians, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state also means accepting that the millions of them residing in Arab countries would be resettled within a future Palestinian state and not within Israel, which their numbers would transform into a Palestinian state in all but name. Reconciling with the Jewish state means that the two-state solution is not a two-stage solution leading, as many Palestinians hope, to Israel's dissolution.

Which is precisely why Israelis seek the basic reassurance that the Palestinian Authority is ready to accept our state — to accept us. Israelis need to know that further concessions would not render us more vulnerable to terrorism and susceptible to unending demands. Though recognition of Israel as the Jewish state would not shield us from further assaults or pressure, it would prove that the Palestinians are serious about peace.

The core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the refusal to recognize Jews as a people, indigenous to the region and endowed with the right to self-government. Criticism of Israeli policies often serves to obscure this fact, and peace continues to elude us. By urging the Palestinians to recognize us as their permanent and legitimate neighbors, Prime Minister Netanyahu is pointing the way out of the current impasse: he is identifying the only path to co-existence.

http://able2know.org/topic/162853-1

I want the UN to designate a homeland area for Catholics, Lutherans, Agnostics, Atheists and Mormons. They can use any spurious historical nonsense they want to put it into practice.

wow, i looked at the map and said "A skunk sat on a stump, the stump thought the skunk stunk and the skunk thought the stump stunk', i tried to say it as fast as i could, it was a bit tough but i was able to do it, certainly not as easy as the phrase in the initial post

If one of the religions you mention actually had a long-standing homeland, and the UN deemed it a nation, perhaps such a homeland would be valid.

Hezbollah has effectively taken over Lebanon, and has largely ruined it.

http://www.slate.com/id/2271511?wpisrc=newsletter

Good, then we can give Utah to the Mormons.

By the consensus of most of the rest of the world, Israel "owns" this land illegally, and their insistence that it belongs to them is truly one of the obstacles towards any kind of peace settlement.

This demand of "recognition" by the Zionists amounts to their self-serving effort to deny the Palestinians' claim of Right of Return, and to attempt to legitimize their repression of the Palestinian peoples both inside and outside of Israel by having them proclaim that Israel "is for the Jews."



What would open a new horizon of hope as well as trust among broad parts of the world's public would be Israel's cessation of construction outside of the green zone.



What the Zionists have to recognize is that the Palestinians' connection to that land is just as long as the Zionists claim theirs is. The Palestinians have just as much a right to sovereignty there as the Zionists claim for themselves.

This is the very foundation of peace.



This tenet to which Oren refers is all based on the discrimination of the Palestinian peoples by a bunch of bigoted European countries that all but ignored the historical connection to that country of the Palestinians, and their right to self-determination therein. The Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine barely mention "existing non-Jewish communities," the UN's resolution 181 ignored the fact that the Palestinians existed everywhere in Palestine including in areas that were to be handed over to the Zionists. Democratic principals were thrown out of the window to accommodate the Zionists' discriminatory ethnocentric ends. President Obama merely perpetuates this bigoted idea.

The Palestinians can't simply say Israel is the Jewish state because they'd be betraying their own rights to that land.



Indigenous to the region? Please, the Zionists were more European than Judean if they were Judean. Many Zionists don't even have lineage to Judea, their Jewishness deriving from other peoples who had converted to Judaism. But this argument of a supposed indigenousness is neither here nor there. Claims of indigenousness do not give the Zionists the right to discriminate against and oppress the Palestinian peoples.

The actual core of the Israel/Palestine conflict is the Zionists' refusal to recognize the Palestinians' rights to the land in favor of the former's ethnocentrically motivated "state for the Jews." In that regard criticism of Israel's policies are well founded, but Israel's policies are merely means to that discriminatorily and oppressively bigoted end.

What would go a long way in nullifying the danger presented by the extremist regimes in the Middle East is for Israel to stop repressing the Palestinians, make indemnifications thereof, and give them their due.

We all know that will never happen. And "never" means never.

It is clear that you feel that the present negotiations are a joke, and that the Pals are entitled to the land occupied by the state of Israel. Moreover, you feel that the Pals have a right of return, which would destroy Israel, even though few of the original Pals who abandoned their new state are still alive. I am surprised that you are not in Palestine being measured for a suicide belt. CI, who admits to being an anti-Semite, would be happy to hold your hand.

I've never noted that, Advocate.

Let's take away all the armaments supplied by the US and give them to the Palestinians. How do you think the battles will be fought then?

Advocate, You "people" love to call those who disagree with the land take-over from the Pals by the Jews as anti-Semite. You're wrong in every way; I am not an anti-Semite. I have worked for Florsheim Shoe Company, and they have promoted me to a management position in the company that eventually allowed me to work in management for the rest of my working career after I left Florsheim.

I've had several Jewish bosses who have treated me fair, and they also "promoted" me into higher levels of management.

So, you don't know what you are talking about from the get-go. I have visited Israel, and had the opportunity to talk to both Jews and a Palestinian woman who spent a couple of hours talking to us. Her family has lived in Palestine for many generations, and she lives in the old city where their family owns two homes - which is unusual. Our Tour Director, Gilad Peled, from Jerusalem also told us about his thinking and feelings about living in Israel, but mostly worry about his young family - his wife and baby. We also had the opportunity to eat at a Palestinian restaurant in Haifa where the service was wonderful, and a patron talked to us.

Your label of anti-Semite only cheapens it when you use with without understanding who you use it against.

I also know that many Jews are against the occupation of Palestinian lands. If they are anti-Semites, I will wear that label with pride.

I had many Jewish friends when I lived in California. All of them were against Israel's occupation of Palestine land. In fact, they said they thought the conservative governments had no intention of leaving Palestine land. They also said that's why former Prime Minister Yitchak Rabin was killed by an Israeli.

BBB

It's not just the present negotiations that are a joke. They've all been pathetic jokes.

The Palestinians are entitled to enfranchisement in a pluralistic democratic system in all of the land covered under UN res. 181.



Why shouldn't a necessarily discriminatory and oppressive state not be destroyed in favor of a pluralistic and truly democratic one?

The original Palestinians, who didn't "abandon the new state" as much as they were ethnically cleansed from those lands that the Zionists arrogated, and their descendants have every right to return as stipulated by UN res. 194.



Your puerile emoting is risible. Violence from their extremists has only hindered the Palestinians' cause. A non-violent approach would have been, and still is, the best approach to resolving this conflict.

I agree 100%. Gandhi was successful with his non-violence.