I seriously do not understand how that can be a good point, and the reason I never answered it is that I thought it was too ridiculous to answer.

Does the fact that other refugees settle somewhere automatically make the plight of all other refugees in the world their fault?

If I stole your house, surely you wouldn't accept that as OK if someone else, somewhere else in the world decided they were OK with someone else stealing their house.

There's a name for kicking people out of their homes against their will: it's called ethnic cleansing. It is no way justified, tempered or 'placed in context' by mentioning that it happened to other people who got over it.

The key thing to remember is that the people who were ethnically cleansed did NOT want to become citizens of other countries, they did NOT want to forget about it; they wanted to go to their homes, which is a very fair and legitimate demand.

It is a demand that is surely more fair and legitimate than millions of Jews from all around the world, who have never lived in Palestine, having an automatic right to migrate there at any time and set up their lives on the remains of the ethnically cleansed Palestinians.

Phil, placing the blame on the refugees that were ethnically cleansed for not accepting their ethnic cleansing more graciously, while exonerating the racist state that ethnically cleansed them and allows people from all over the world to take their place based on an anachronistic definition of race/religion/ethnicity is really not a good point.

Saif

We are a people, and we deserve to self-govern.

That we came to this via external circumstances and stimuli is the way reality works.

EVERY assertion is an assertion. It does not come to be without making waves, literally.

The shift among the Jewish people from walking apologies, to walking self-assertion is permanent, at least among those that have experienced that catharsis.

Among those that are Jewish, the question remains of how do we right wrongs that we observe and acknowledge, and how do we currently regard and treat our neighbors.

The expansionist Zionist parties (Likud, Israel Beitenu) disregard their neighbors. They treat them like insects. (Similarly to how they had been and fear being treated by the Islamic parties of Hamas).

The moderate Zionist parties (Kadima, Labor) regard their neighbors conditionally. IF they treat us well, we will treat them well.

The liberal Zionist parties (Meretz) regard their neighbors also conditionally, but seek to create the good conditions that they hope their neighbors will respond to in kind.

All Zionist parties though. NONE seeking for Israel to not exist as a Jewish partioned state.

None imagining that a one-state solution in which the Palestinian majority supports a religious party and solution (rather than a primarily civil) results in anything but bloody civil war (with a partition as the nearly inevitable result anyway).

The moral questions of what is proposed, should also be asked of those that describe Zionism as racism.

What would the theoretical young people in the room think about forced removal of Jews from Israel?

(Would that be racism? Objected to? Or accepted like Jim Crow was for the 80 years prior to the mid-50's?)

To not disclose that answer is to indulge in intentional opportunist moral ambiguity.

That you do not comprehend the answer means you are indulging in bigoted close-mindedness.

The problem is with the actions of the Israeli state, because they are borne out of the fundamental racism at the heart of the Zionist ideal, which assumes that the goal of a Jewish state should be the most important thing in the world, and that the millions of Palestinians that would suffer from it are at most an unfortunate footnote.

Therefor, to answer your previous question, as a consistent opponent of racism in all its forms, I, and millions of anti-Zionists, would object to the forced removal of anyone from Israel, and would object to any racist constructs of nationalism there.

Instead, what we would call for, is a secular democratic nation state where whatever God you believe in, whatever tribe you think you belong to, whatever baseball team you support and whatever race you believe yourself to be does not in any way impact your citizenship.

To argue against this by saying that the Muslims would then kill the Jews is at best stupid, at worst bigoted and criminal. This is no different from the arguments that slave-owners made about maintaining slavery, that segregationists made about maintaining segregation, and that apartheid South Africa's leadership made about apartheid: "If we give them freedom they will murder us all."

History has shown, in all these cases and many others, that once the oppression is over, the oppressed doesn't really care to go out of their way and take revenge. They are all, after all, normal people who want to get on with their normal lives, and once their oppression is over, are very happy to get along with it.

Further, the real racism in this statement is to justify Israelis ethnically cleansing Palestinians, murdering them, locking them up behind walls and persecuting them, on the premise that the Palestinians COULD do the same. This is pre-emptive persecution and makes pre-emptive war sound very intelligent.

Also, by this logic, every crime in history can be justified: "We had to commit this genocide, they would've done the same to us."

This is utter bullshit. If the Israelis stop suppressing Palestinians, Palestinians have no reason to care to suppress Israelis.

Please stop this idiotic racism of yours and let's learn to live together in peace, where genocide is not Ok, whether it's pre-emptive or not.

There is no racism in Zionism as constructed as the self-governance movement of the Jewish people.

Actually, the flipside is true, that prohibition against the Jewish people self-governing is in fact a racism (or ethnicism).

In the case of Palestine, the situation is not so simple as the civil-minded coexisting in a single state (as appealing as that hope would be), as there are historical and regional precedents that conflict with your rosy assertion that "They are all, after all, normal people who want to get on with their normal lives, and once their oppression is over, are very happy to get along with it".

Your history denies that the holocaust occurred, or presumes that it was inconsequential to the chain of events, and does not effect the math of what is possible.

The holocaust did occur. The Jewish refugees of Europe were not accepted anywhere in Europe or the US, and decided for good or bad reasons that Israel was the best option for them.

They were not accepted in their natural numbers into Palestine prior to WW2, during the early stages of Nazi persecution, post WW2, and post Israeli independance.

There is no precedent of even conditional acceptance of large-scale Jewish residence even as peers prior to Oslo.

As a small and easily managed minority, there was often acceptance, as there is often acceptance in fact between Israeli and Arab residents (even among some of the settlements), but no acceptance of even significant minority.

In contrast to the rhetoric, there is nothing resembling genocide occurring in Palestine. ("Genocide" is a specific term referring to the organized intended annihilation of ALL of a people. There definitely is persecution, which is an example of a wrong policy, but not of an essence of racism.

Palestinians deserve self-governance. Jews do similarly.

Your rosy pictures of Palestinian intent, does not bear out to a level of satisfaction. There are too many Islamicists that regard even the presence of Jews in the region at majority or near, to be a violation of the Islamic right.

The construction of states is that, a construction. Jurisdictions are chosen, not inherent.

In that construction, the two-state solution is far preferable as realizing self-governance for a much larger proportion of the society than majority rule in an imposed single state.

Its time to accept it. Israel exists, will for your and my lifetime, and most likely for generations if not millenia.

The options that we have are how the states will get to live in relation to one another.

Personally, I am becoming more and more sympathetic to the ulimate goal of a binational solution, partially because I recognize that Palestinian refugees are never going to give up on their to pre-1948 Palestine, to the towns and villages that are now part of Israel. However, I think your notion of a secular democratic state is a mistake. Any solution that requires the privatisation of the distinctive ethnic, religious and national affiliations of Arabs and Jews would be unworkable. Whatever you feel about Zionism or the creation of Israel, the reality is, a strong Israeli identity has emerged, and Jews and Israelis are very attached to the idea of a Jewish state as a means of defending and protecting Jewish rights.

I think a more realistic model for an Israeli-Palestinian state would a be a consociational/federal solution along the lines of Belgium, post-1995 Bosnia, Northern Ireland, rather than a completely deconfessionalized unitary state like post-apartheid South Africa. Are you familiar with the group Alternative Paletsinian Agenda, which has proposed 2 states (with borders roughly along the lines of the 1947 partition proposal) within the framework of a federal union?

Thanks for your comments, indeed you do make a very important point which I think more and more people are beginning to concede. While I personally favour a completely secular state, it does seem that such a solution might be slightly unacceptable to a majority of people.

Perhaps a binational state, or a federal state is a more suitable option given the religious sensitivities and the special identity that both sides have. This is an immensely important debate whose time will come, but since this is a debate usually carried out among rational honest non-racist people, it is usually a very civil one.

But yes, ultimately, I agree that perhaps in a unitary or binational staet, so sorts of concessions need to be made for religious identity, and perhaps even reconciling the state with some benign ethnic-cleansing-free aspects of Zionism, like the cultural aspect of it and maybe the spiritual aspects.

I yearn for the day where this will be THE debate we have about the Middle East, and we don't have to deal with nutjobs telling us that Zionism is necessary and that ethnic cleansing was a necessary tragedy we have to live with.

Yes, answers such as Operation Keelhaul, or the assasination of hundreds of thousands of ethnic germans fleeing form Eastern Europe. By the way where is Salomon Morel? Is he happy living in jewland among his equals?

You said: "Your history denies that the holocaust occurred, or presumes that it was inconsequential to the chain of events, and does not effect the math of what is possible."

Where on earth did you get that? This is a serious accusation that should not be bandied about lightly. You do not know me, yet are willing to pass such judgements. Speaks volumes.

You said: "Actually, the flipside is true, that prohibition against the Jewish people self-governing is in fact a racism (or ethnicism)."

What kind of utter pathetic bullsh1t is this? By this twisted "logic" of yours, saying that Christians should not self-govern America is racist.

America is a land that is 80% Christian, if you say that the country should be run by Christians and everyone else should have second-level rights, you're (rightly) branded a bigot. If you say that everyone should be equal under the law, you are NOT a racist.

In your beloved Israel, and in what passes for a brain in your head, to say that Jews should self-govern the whole land (of which they make up less than 50% of the population) is correct, but saying that everyone should live in equality is racist.

George Orwell would piss his pants laughing at this. The most pathetic part about it is that I know for a fact that you actually believe this, and are not just saying it to score points. Which is really pathetic.