Why the Palestinians fight

[bob x]

And are you somehow saying it is uncommon for folks to want or fight to get their land back?

I wouldn't really dignify what the Palestinians have been doing as "fighting": randomly killing people on the other side doesn't actually accomplish that.
It is not unusual for countries which have lost wars to arm themselves and try to reverse the war's outcome, look at Germany after 1918, but neither is it unusual for a nation to accept that the war is lost, look at Germany after 1945; or to try it for a while and then give up, look at Taiwan after 1949.

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by bob x

I wouldn't really dignify what the Palestinians have been doing as "fighting": randomly killing people on the other side doesn't actually accomplish that.
It is not unusual for countries which have lost wars to arm themselves and try to reverse the war's outcome, look at Germany after 1918, but neither is it unusual for a nation to accept that the war is lost, look at Germany after 1945; or to try it for a while and then give up, look at Taiwan after 1949.

Here you go again with your crass bias. Germany did not lose Germany. Taiwan is Taiwan. Palestine is Israel. So what you talking about.
You are a smart guy Bob. I often like and agree with what you say but on this issue your prejudice is so overt as to be laughable.

Tao

[Muslimwoman]

This makes rather grim reading but very interesting:

Annapolis: Broken peace process | Spero News

This part made me stop and thing:

The prospects of progress growing out of the Annapolis meeting is made all the less likely due to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s insistence, backed by the U.S. Congress, that the Palestinians, despite having formally recognized Israel, also recognize Israel as a “Jewish state” before substantive issues can be negotiated. Given the sizable Palestinian minority in Israel and concerns that it would legitimate past and future Israeli efforts at ethnic cleansing, this demand is something that the Palestinian government could never agree to and appears to be designed to prevent the peace process from moving forward.

[bob x]

Germany did not lose Germany.

100% of Germany became "occupied territories", initially with a heavier footprint of foreign troops than Gaza and the West Bank have ever experienced. 30% of Germany's territory was taken away permanently (proportionally comparable to what Palestine lost in 1948) with the displacement of 2 million from their homes: you don't hear much about them because they resettled decades ago; Germans, unlike Arabs, take care of their own. Germany regained independence because, of course, the Germans did not take up habits like murdering every American, English, French, or Russian civilian they could manage to kill, or training their children to throw rocks at the soldiers, or vowing to fight forever until the outcome of 1945 was reversed, or refusing to accept any independent Germany that did not hold every square inch that had been in the Third Reich.
To be sure, the Americans and British did make plain from the start their intent to restore self-governance as quickly as possible. However, the Russian occupation continued for slightly longer than the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza so far has. Would Gorbachev have withdrawn if the Germans had been killing Russians all those decades, and were continuing to demand the return of Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad? I think not.
Muslimwoman: should the Germans be required to formally recognize that Silesia, Pomerania, and Prussia are "Polish lands", even though there are still some Germans living there? Would that be an outrageous thing to ask? Willi Brandt did not think so: he gave that recognition way back in the 1960's; that is why Poland made no fuss about German reunification.

Taiwan is Taiwan.

??? You seem to be under some mistaken impression that a separate country called "Taiwan" existed before 1949, and continued to be what it had been. The millions of Chinese who were expelled from the mainland had had no connection to the island before: they lost their homeland, totally, and are never getting it back; they took over someone else's home instead. Of the people who had been on the island (formerly the Japanese province of "Formosa") before: the Japanese-speakers were all expelled (lost their homes, are never getting them back); the Aborigines were almost completely exterminated (less than 1% of the population now); and the Chinese-speakers descended from the 17th-19th century settlers (about 80% of the population) were given no voice in the governance of their home for four decades.

[Tao_Equus]

Bob you love Israel so much why dont you go live there?

Thanks for the history lesson on Taiwan/Formosa.

The allies following the fall of Berlin did not force out Germans and import another people. Trying to compare what happened in Germany with what happened in Palestine is maybe meat for your own prejudices but that is all I can see. Bob ranting on his pro-Israeli bigotry again. Whatever I say is wasted.. You are a broken record of the poorest quality, a fascist, exterminationist, muslim hating bigot. So wheres the point?

Tao

[farhan]

The Palestinians act like no other nation in the history of the world had ever lost territory in a war before.

Firstly it was not a war, it was more like Ashkenazi colonisation. Secondly, no other nation has been driven out of its land like this in recent history. Aryans, Germanes used to do it long time ago. More or less the same thing happened to Jews too. But the only people who are allowed to do it in modern times is Israel. And they call it "jewish right of return".

Well if a bunch of blonde haired, blue eyed, white skinned "semites" have the right to return to a land that a bunch of full-blooded semites left 2000 years ago, then palestenians have got the same right too. If Israel has the right to kill 1000 lebanese & destroy half of country's infrastructure for the kidnapping of two soldiers in occupied territories, a few jewish women & childern blown up in a bus shouldnt hurt the so called global conscience. After all its a game of blood & real state.

The only thing peace process is supposed to bring is a legitimisation of apartheid. There can never be peace between one state with nukes, & the other with assurances.

[Muslimwoman]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

i appreciate some people just can't accept that the israelis would do anything in good faith - perhaps they ought to question the palestinians a bit more closely when fatah (not even hamas) are saying one thing in annapolis and another to their own constituency - DURING the conference:

PMW - Latest Bulletins

Hi BB

I have been looking for this story in the international media but can't find anything. All I can find are blogs and every one seems to have the same title. Maybe I am googling the wrong keywords? Do you have any further links?

Salaam
MW

[bob x]

The allies following the fall of Berlin did not force out Germans and import another people.

In 30% of the formerly German territory, yes that is exactly what they did.
The remainder of the territory, Germans still lived there, but under military occupation, just like Palestinians live under military occupation. The difference, obviously, is that for most of Germany this state of occupation gave way to restored self-governance fairly quickly-- but as I say, the reason for that difference has much to do with the difference in how the Germans behaved.

Trying to compare what happened in Germany with what happened in Palestine is maybe meat for your own prejudices but that is all I can see.

What happened to the Germans was considerably worse, at first. It did not last as long, however.

You are a broken record of the poorest quality, a fascist, exterminationist, muslim hating bigot.

Exterminationist??? You are the one who makes excuses for the real exterminationists here. Nobody has ever tried to *wipe out* the Palestinians. As has been pointed out, they are multiplying quite nicely. The total number of non-combatant Palestinians killed by Israelis throughout the entire history is in the high thousands but not tens of thousands (precision, obviously, is impossible, but the order of magnitude can be determined): depending on your perspective that is either a large number (a few times as many as 9/11) or a small number (less than one day's work at Auschwitz), but spread over half a century it is too small to influence the population growth.

[madeinrussia89]

It is too small to influence population growth so it should be casually tossed aside?

It is genocide.

[bob x]

It is too small to influence population growth so it should be casually tossed aside?

No, I did not say that.

It is genocide.

No, not even remotely. Genocide means an attempt to wipe out the population.

[bananabrain]

mw - you won't find this stuff in the international media, because they don't translate what gets said in the arabic media. organisations like pmw and memri (for all that they are explicitly intended to rebut palestinian propaganda and thus argue for a pro-israel stance) do this job rather well. there are plenty of opposing organisations that do the same on the other side, i treat both with caution, but thought it was worth pointing out how schizoid palestinian politics is - not that israeli politics is anything else!

farhan, if what you have obviously been taught is true, are you at all interested in the fact that half of the population of israel is made up of sephardim and jews from arab lands? iraq, egypt, libya, iran, syria, lebanon - they all expelled their jewish communities which had been there in some cases for 2500 years. do you support the right of the jews of iraq to leave israel and go back to iraq? will you support the restoration of their property and the restitution of their rights? because if not, then i think you are ignorant of the actual facts.

tao, you are increasingly sounding more and more hysterical, like you have taken leave of your senses. please try and calm down.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Muslimwoman]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

mw - you won't find this stuff in the international media, because they don't translate what gets said in the arabic media. organisations like pmw and memri (for all that they are explicitly intended to rebut palestinian propaganda and thus argue for a pro-israel stance) do this job rather well. there are plenty of opposing organisations that do the same on the other side, i treat both with caution, but thought it was worth pointing out how schizoid palestinian politics is - not that israeli politics is anything else!

Thanks for the info BB, my husband arrives tomorrow so I shall ask him to look it up in the arabic press.

I have no doubt both sides are schizoid, which doesn't leave me with much hope for peace.

I have been trying to read up on the 'peace' talks and keep reading that Israel is insisting that Palestine recognises Israel not as a state but as a specifically 'Jewish state' before they will negotiate. Do you know if this is true? I find the reports a little worrying as it sounds like ethnic cleansing waiting in the wings. Do your papers mention this?

Salaam
MW

[bananabrain]

mw, unless your husband reads a lot of the palestinian press, he won't pick up on this either. however, believe me, anyone who discusses the i/p question for any length of time is familiar with accusations of "genocide", "imperialism", "nazism", "ethnic cleansing", aimed at everyone and anyone. it does nothing to help anyone concerned and just polarises debate.

nonetheless, in the interests of honesty and transparency, suffice it to say there are a small number of parties in the israeli political system that advocate what they call "transfer", basically methods of ensuring a jewish majority inside the israeli borders, whatever they turn out to be. there's a spectrum, from the few loonies on the right who want to forcibly expel all non-jews from the west bank to those who try and influence the route of the security wall to put arabs outside and jews inside (known in the anti-israel lexicon as a "land grab") to those who advocate a wholesale border alteration to, say, include large west bank enclaves like gush etzion in exchange for the "triangle" region which is almost entirely populated by arabs, but inside the 1967 "green line". however, suffice it to say that there is at least 50% of the israeli population that would *absolutely* not permit such actions; they are not without morals or memory.

on the other side, there is a similar code for the ethnic cleansing of jews, which is termed, depending on who's speaking to whom, as "liberation of the *whole*of palestine" (ie, including the bits jews live in, which tends to be the line taken by pan-arabists and radical secular groups like the PFLP and DFLP) "liberation of islamic land" (ie, everywhere that's ever been part of a caliphate, from tel aviv to seville, popular with hamas and islamic jihad) or fatah's "soft" version, "the inalienable right of return of the palestinian refugees", which would necessarily involve a couple of million arabs moving to israel proper, which would be unlikely to be painless or peaceful.

needless to say, almost everyone in this debate appears to the other side to be negotiating in bad faith. like bob says, the palestinians seem to be the only group of the C20th that have maintained their refugee status (largely due to the rest of the arab world using them as a whipping boy for israel) and actually attempted to pass it on to their children rather than making the most of a bad job, like the germans of east prussia, the ulyensk cossacks, the jews of spain, the arabs of al-andalus, the turks of salonika and the greeks of constantinople who do not see return as feasible, workable or even particularly desirable and certainly not worth dying or killing for.

as i said to our clever friend farhan above, a just and equitable solution must necessarily involve the entire transferred population - not just the palestinian refugees, but the jewish refugees from arab lands who almost all live in israel now - which includes several hundred thousand egyptian jews, who lost everything when they were forced to leave after living there for more than 2,000 years. have you heard of philo? he was from alexandria, where there was a huge jewish community in the C1st BCE. is the egyptian government going to give them back their houses and property? i doubt it. could they compensate palestinians in place of this? you bet they could. but this is precisely how the palestinians are held hostage by the rest of the arab world. in fact, the fact that the israelis never seem to mention this issue of the jewish refugees from arab lands makes me think that either they're not interested in a real, equitable solution or they're saving it for such time as the palestinians are prepared to get serious and be realistic. it depends whether i'm feeling cynical or not.

in case you're interested, here is a site that commemorates the 1941 (note, before the establishment of israel) pogrom that marked the beginning of the end for the 2,600 year old jewish community of baghdad: The Farhud (Farhoud). MIDRASH ben ish hai lecture.

there are, in short, two sides to every story and i don't see the baghdadi community (to which i myself belong) queuing up to demand compensation and a return to iraq - so you'll understand why the ideological refugee-ism of the palestinians sometimes rings a little hollow with me, despite the undeniable, terrible and unjustifiable injustices that have been inflicted on them by israel among others, so don't think i am insensitive to this or dismiss it in any way, shape or form.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Muslimwoman]

Hi BB

Thank you that was interesting reading.

I would have thought the arab press would run the story of the Palestinian tv programme with Israel no longer on the map, if only to whip up yet more support & hatred. (clearly I am in cynical mode today).

I wasn't really thinking of the right of return but more about the arabs that still live in Israel and whether they would be ejected from Israel if it was recognised as a Jewish state. The fact that there are now Jewish only roads leads to me to believe that may be the case.

It is all just such a mess.

I am afraid I have never accepted the view that others have accepted their fate so you should too. Two wrongs have never made a right in my book.

I just wish both sides would live their faith and stop fighting and shouting about it. There is right and wrong on both sides but constantly pointing to the other side as the black hat wearers, while thinking your side wears the white hat hasn't ever got them anywhere and I doubt it ever will.

Maybe I should take up knitting and forget about politics, it is all driving me nuts.

Salaam

[flowperson]

Hi...It used to be that the "memory hole" of history was very deep and wide. Many who desired knowledge about the "foundations" of any matter could explore the nooks and crannies of historical events in the "hole" and make their minds up for themselves, so long as they had access to a library.

I'm not saying that such things are no longer possible, as you BB so eminently and frequently show us all, but the the whole of the operations of the corporate and media controlled world have most of us sitting in the "short attention span theater" almost all of the time now. Sadly so are most of our leaders and their oblivious and unctuously obedient staff members who only watch the fluctuations of poll numbers.

These days the "memory hole" has been purposely been made shallower and shallower by greed and lust for power and control. And that has been magnificently accomplished by the advert-supported media and their global ability to switch the focus on important issues to shorter term considerations. The faster that happens, the less we all understand about the past. And that all puts the great mass of the world's people in Jeopardy. Now relatively very small events can put many of us at risk because of unresolved past conflicts which we know little or nothing at all about.

I don't knit. I'd rather be fishing in the pond at the"OF" Corral.

flow....