Reply #3: I'm shocked that this post has been presented here, in [View All]

[Colorado Blue]

what we are attempting to make a fair and balanced forum to discuss delicate and painful issues. This is agit-prop, not news.

Why not simply draw an "X" on Israel and say, "Bomb Here!"?

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It is not news that Israel was created to provide a homeland for the Jewish people, who have lived in diaspora for 2,000 years as well as continuously IN Israel and on the West Bank, and within surrounding Arab states. The need for such a refuge was pressing following the Holocaust and even though Britain, who then controlled the region, began limiting sales of land and withdrawing support for Israel following the war, due to pressure from the Arab majority, the state was created with the blessings of the UN.

However Israel is NOT monolithically Jewish and has many citizens who are Muslim, Christian, Druze, Arab - and could have had many more except that the provisions for a two-state system in Israel, which would also have created an ARAB state, were immediately rejected and war was immediately declared, in 1948.

This post is completely ignoring the genesis of these many decades of war, in the refusal to accept the Jewish presence at all. It is completely ignoring the expulsion of 800,000 to 1,000,000 Jews from Arab lands, beginning the 1940's. It is completely ignoring the decades of war and terrorism that have followed, to this day.

There could have been a Palestinian state, much larger than the one now proposed, in 1948. This could have been a far more cosmopolitan and culturally rich, diverse region, not a war torn area of terrified and divided peoples.

Instead, war was declared on the Jews, numbering about 600,000, by Arab states whose population totaled some 50,000,000, and whose resources were vast. War and terrorism have followed in successive waves, for DECADES.

If territories were lost in that war, and if anger and pain have resulted, why is there now surprise?

Furthermore, labelling Israel "rascist" and "apartheid" is ridiculous. In the first place - and what makes the whole situation even sadder - Israeli Jews and regional Arabs are of the same race, except for those few remnants of far flung tribes who have straggled home from Ethiopia and India. Moreover, Arab citizens of Israel are CITIZENS of Israel, with full rights. This is not a South Africa situation. The Occupied Territories, as the poster well knows, came under Israeli control as a result of armies poised to overrun the state. There are plenty of links to the 6 Day War on this forum. If anybody wants another one I will add one.

If the citizens of the OT territories have been treated like enemies, that is probably because they have been enemies. Only recently, since the death of Arafat, have the Palestinian people shown a clear will to form a democratic state of their own in favor of continuously attempting to destroy their neighbor.

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As far as to the claims of people being chased away, from everything I've read some people got chased away. However, many Jews were and have been victimized as well. Most of the Arabs who fled the fledgling state of Israel, from what I can determine from OBJECTIVE sources, were from urban areas. The land WAS in disrepair, and had been the property, not of any Arab state, but of the Ottoman Empire, for centuries. Before that, there had been wars, crusades, and Rome.

Meanwhile, Jewish people have been living in Israel, continuously, since Biblical times. Their rights have not always been respected. There were murders of Jewish settlers as well as pressure on Arabs. Indeed, there were gangs of Jewish terrorists as well as gangs of Arab "fedayeen", who victimized Jews.

Meanwhile, land was PURCHASED by Jewish settlers. More would have been fairly purchased, had not the British, at a particularly horrible time in Jewish history - following WWII and the Holocaust - decided to stand in the way of such land sales, lock Jewish refugees from the horrors of Europe in concentration camps and prevent them from emigrating to Palestine - the one place in the world where they were wanted.

Indeed, I don't think the British role in stirring up hatred for Jews among the Arab population can be underestimated. The powerful Arab Legion, headquartered in Transjordan, was heavily armed and led by an Englishman.

What was at stake? A powerful and independent set of states in the Eastern Mediterranean, who would have challenged British hegemony in the area - gateway to the Orient and to the all-important oil fields. Meanwhile, Arab discrimination against Jews was exploited. Arab ownership of oil carried a lot of weight. War might have been hard to avoid in any case, given nascent Arab nationalism. With interference from the Great Powers and the oil companies, it was practically guaranteed.

One could go on and on. In modern times, one could mention Darfur, for example, because it is pointless and blinding to look at Israel and NOT look at the Middle East and surrounding regions, as a whole. It is irresponsible to look at I/P and not look at the violence within the Arab community, as well, and it is historically inaccurate not to accept that this violence has had a cause and effect dynamic in Israel.

One could also point out that language like that presented in the article is quite similar to language used to justify war in Iraq: Saddam Kills His Own Citizens, and so forth.

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The person who posted this presents herself as an objective individual whose ideal is to see two peaceful and democratic states living side by side: Israel and Palestine. Indeed, efforts are underway to disentangle the two, end six decades of war, withdraw from the settlements in the O.T. and smooth the path to peace. Even now, violent militias in surrounding states as well as within Palestine threaten the process.

Given that warfare and terrorism have been practically constant since the 1940's, and that Arab leadership in surrounding states as well as within Palestinian regions has been geared both to talking about war and waging war up until quite recently, I think it's a miracle we even retain the humanity and the tolerance to try and work this out.

Beyond the obvious historical flaws in the presentation, how is such unbalanced invective supposed to support that goal?

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Sometimes I wonder, what the hell's the point? No matter how hard one tries, if the other side really feels this way, why bother trying to make peace?