Phil,
Daniel Levy, Dan Fleshler, myself and many others do reconcile
commitments to progressive values and Jewish concerns. They are no more
contradictory than for people who are activists for women, gay rights,
African Americans, Latinos, etc. It’s not hard for us to be Zionists
and progressives, but you just can’t accept that. I don’t think it’s
productive to argue one set of values against another; we are all
entitled to make choices based on things that matter to us, so long as
we don’t harm others. I feel totally correct in my efforts at arguing
for a peaceful two state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.
against the long term. I’m in favor of solutions for the long haul,
although I certainly do see the possible of evolution (e.g., the
possibility of regional trade unions or even confederations in the
distant future). You also seem to understand that two states is the
preferred and rational resolution to the conflict. If two states do not
emerge soon, it’s hard to see any kind of solution. Although the rights
of Arab citizens of Israel
– equal in law but not in fact — should be advanced to full equality,
the Jewish people have a historic need for a state – a sovereign safe
haven that could defend Jews from persecution. Sadly, as we see in the
matter of Iran’s overt hostility and its headlong effort to obtain
nuclear status, even Israel’s existence is not an absolute guarantee of
Jewish security. But the Arab Middle East has an especially poor track
record in accommodating or even tolerating minorities.
live in freedom and equality with other Americans. But this was not
always the case. When I was growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, Ivy League
universities and just about all medical schools had quotas against
admitting “too many” Jews. Before that, from 1924 on, Jews could not
freely immigrate to the US; this was true of other non-WASP populations
as well, as quotas favored Northern and Western Europe over Southern and Eastern Europe, not to mention Asia and Africa.
trapped under Nazi occupation. They were explicitly targeted and hunted
down as Jews, and most were murdered. The “civilized world” did
precious little to safeguard or rescue Jewish lives. The US was
particularly bad in this; many historians have noted how the US State
Dept. instructed immigration officials to make it difficult for Jews to
obtain legal immigration visas. My parents were refugees from Poland
who managed by share luck and pluck to obtain immigration visas in the
spring of 1941, despite the overt hostility of the consular officials
they dealt with. They happened to have embarked from Yugoslavia,
days before the Nazi invasion of that country; if they had had the
misfortune of still being in Poland at that time, they would not have
gotten out.
succeeded in making it to Palestine during the 1930s, even though
Palestine was not yet free of British rule.
that these people’s lives were saved. But (understandably) they were
not welcomed by the growing nationlaist movement of Palestinian Arabs,
led by the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, an open ally of Hitler.
alongside our fellow Americans. But if this “Golden Land” as the
Yiddish saying goes, remains so for Jews, it will be an exception in
the long, sad sweep of Jewish history. Spain, Poland and Germany were all at one time lands where Jews lived in peace and prosperity.
Hi Ralph,
I generally find your view too roseate and in the past. I can’t disagree with your descriptions of Europe and the U.S. in the past. They are factual. My difference involves issues like “short-term” when we are talking about generations of Palestinians who have gotten it in the teeth again and again since ’48 and have seen their lands evaporate.
Yes, my father faced quotas as a student in N.Y. I have faced none. You seem to regard this as a brief oasis in time. I don’t have your Holocaust background, and maybe that is why I think this is the bold future, the American freedom I’ve savored. I think that war is over.
The key issue for me is trying to extend the minority rights we Jews here enjoy to minorities in Israel and in the occupied territories. It is The fundamental hypocrisy of the American Zionist experience; and it never happens. Again and again I have observed Jewish organizations overlook the humanity of the Palestinians and Lebanese in ’06. Only worrying about Jewish “blood.” Sometimes, yes, they use that word too. Though it is absolutely true that progressive Zionists have spoken up for Arabs, and good for you, they get rolled by the big organizations, and then they lie still for it. Even now Levy’s J Street won’t oppose AIPAC, it is working with AIPAC in a sense. Though I accept that AIPAC is talking territorial compromise (But is it talking fairness? I doubt it).
So my beef with you is that you regard Jewish persecution as eternal and long-term, and this Palestinian persecution as short-term. I don’t think it’s short-term. It’s ongoing and seems to me an absolute reflection of the way Zionism has worked its way out.
I would have been a Communist back when Trotsky was a communist, I would have been a Zionist when Walter Benjamin and Arendt were Zionist. I have that fervor for the persecuted in me and that Jewish luftmensch love of visionary ideas; I would have risen with those causes.
I would have abandoned Communism in the 40s or 50s (egad) and I would certainly have abandoned Zionism by now had I ever embraced it. It’s not just about a liberation struggle anymore. It’s on behalf of a military power that scares its neighbors and gets scared back in the Middle East, and on behalf of the richest American subgroup, us, Jews. I don’t require liberation. I would never seek refuge in Israel and neither would many Israelis, who are seeking foreign passports. Zionism has worked out to be expansionist and militarist and at dagger points with its neighbors forever. A central element of Zionism is dual loyalty; it’s built in. It required Weizmann’s advocacy to Balfour in ’17; and lately it has required the Israel lobby and Endless Passes from the Superpower to do whatever Israel pleases. It’s a dead end. Zionism has worked out this way, with Arabs having second-class citizenship. I do think it’s hard to reconcile progressivism with Zionism. They seem at odds. Progress is moving toward diversity, Zionism is about forms of cultural conservatism, including perhaps honorable forms of that, the desire to preserve the Jewish people. Anxiety about Jewish numbers/assimilation propels Zionism, as fears of persecution propelled it in days gone by.
I really think Jews have to get past Zionism and embrace modern ideas of diversity. Whether one state or two state, I want the Jewish state to show greater respect for Arabs’ humanity. I believe Jews have superior feelings toward others, I grew up with this and am struggling with it still. And Alterman is guilty of it, not quoting any Arabs in his piece, it’s a form of arrogance…
Back to you.
Oh. P.S. David Bloom of Adalah-NY adds this: “22,000 Israelis have died in Israel’s wars & attacks since independence. The most Jews have been victims of violent anti-Semitism outside Israel
in that time was the bombing of the community center in Argentina. What sense does it make, if one’s objective is survival of the Jews, to put them all in one spot so someone can nuke em all at once?” And of course there are all the Israelis seeking foreign passports…
You're both irrelevant.
What a beautiful response, Phil. Thank you. I am curious to hear Ralph's response. I'm sure he'll delve into more heart-wrenching stories of past persecution, some true and some not, in order to obfuscate the present matter at hand. That is the Zionist method, and fortunately, thanks to people such as yourself, it no longer works so well at all.
I would also like to invite you to confront Ralph on the notion of "Iran's overt hostility." There is no such thing. Iran is obviously just attempting to defend itself from the aggressor Israel and its U.S. ally, having seen what they've done in Iraq and elsewhere, and surely having read Israeli policy documents on what they intend to do in the future for their "security," such as those written by Richard Perle et al for Netanyahu back in '96, which eerily came to fruition once said men rose to power in the U.S. Iran is targeted in these Israeli plans, and they obviously won't take such things lightly, given the evidence of Iraq.
Also, I wonder if Ralph is one who feels that there is an "anti-semite gene," as some Jewish academics have actually had the gall to suggest. The persecution complex certainly comes through in his writing. I understand, of course, that this is a sensitive issue, and I'm always left to wonder where the personal history begins and ends versus the beginnings and manifestation of the Zionist ideology. I think that's one of the toughest things to ascertain in these discussions, and as a "non-Jew" (is that a kosher way to describe myself?) I wonder if I should even be tackling the subject. But since Zionism has such an impact on my life as an American – the tax dollars I pay, the wars fought in my name, etc. – I feel like I must confront these issues.
Ralph makes the familiar point about Ivy League quotas.
Now Jewish students make up 20 to 30 percent of the students at the 8 Ivy leagues. I don't know the statistics about professors, but from my experience they probably comprise 30 to 40 percent of the professoriate.
I wonder when people like Ralph will be satisfied with Jewish power and dominance, and will finally abandon their persecution complex? Will it be when Jews comprise 50 percent of the student body at Harvard? What will it take to admit that you are the single most powerful ethnic group in the US?
And when will you admit to yourself that growing resentment of Jewish dominance in this country is driven by economic and class resentment, not ethnic animus, the same economic reasons as resentment toward the WASPS of the past?
WASPS don't exist anymore as a coherent ethnic group, and given the horrible misallocation of wealth during the wars of the 20th century, I sometimes say to myself, "good riddance." I personally can't wait until Jews cease to exist as a coherent ethnic group in this country, because their effect as the power elite has been just as bad, if not worse. I hope I live to see the day, that Jews are as embarrassed for their past exclusiveness, their warmongering, their elitism as the WASPS have become.
Additionally, I would like to say that the US never owed the Jewish refugees from Europe anything, any more than it owed the refugees from India, from Africa, from Asian countries anything. Stop your balling about supposed US callousness to Jewish needs. The US needs to learn, has always needed to learn, to live within its borders, and part of learning that lesson is attending to the needs of US citizens, not the persecuted citizens of other countries.
Phil,
In seeking a goal, rather than keep your eye on the prize and encourage it, you shoot from the hip at those that are advocating for the same goal.
Its as if the resolution of the conflict (long-term) to a mutual good, is irrelevant, that the short-term irritations are more important to you.
You want to make the difference between Alterman and you, or I and you, whether some settlers should be permitted to perfect title on the land that they currently reside, then STICK TO THAT.
Its a resolvable question.
Expansionist Zionism is at odds with progressive values. Zionism itself is an expression of it.
Do you advocate for the dilution or unjustness of US sovereignty, because we are no longer fundamentally threatened in the world?
I don't hear that. I hear you touting Walt/Mearsheimer's contention that supporting Israel is not in US interests, as if US interests were synonomous with goodness.
It sickened you that progressive Zionists were very angry with Hezbollah or Hamas for shelling Israeli civilian towns, and conducting abductions as hostage taking for vicious murderers.
It sickened us progressive Zionists, that the left ignored the actual events of terror, abduction and shelling, in favor of the "resistance".
That is emotional now. If we came to understand a common set of facts (real ones) maybe we'd agree more. But, you don't consider that the facts that you interpreted weren't (or might not have been).
Also Phil,
If you had been a communist in the 30's, then came to hate communism in the 50's, and extend that to hating the exagerations of the new left, then you'd be a neo-conservative.
The conflicts that you identify as the polar ones, aren't any more.
The most important point that I took from the Alterman article was the degree that Israel (like Europe, like the US) is fundamentally cosmopolitan commercial. (Not cosmopolitan social.)
In picking your fights, I think you pick the wrong ones.
And, this one is an attack on liberals, in the attempt to be a "radical". And, then like the neo-orthodox Kahanist movement that regards occupying the land as the primary commandment instead of the 10 (including "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's possession"), you also selectively criticize.
WHERE is your criticism and remedy of empire US for example? WHERE?
"Justice"
When those that are at war seek to justify their cause, they use the term "justice". "We demand justice for OUR people".
When those that are in conflict seek resolution and peace, they also use the term "justice". "We seek justice for ALL people."
Peace is NOT constructed from justice, but from mutuality.
Phil is right to describe many aspects of the way Palestinians are treated as a one-way street, an oppression. My sense is that Ralph agrees with that.
But, it is certainly NOT exclusively a one-way street. Terror on civilians does occur. Intent to remove Israel from the map of sovereign nations does occur. (By states and militias).
It is irrational to ignore.
The rooting for the underdog is appealing still, but an element of it is adolescent relative to seeking the goal of full maturity as a nation.
Israel is valid in the foreseeable future for its prospect of becoming a just society, an example of universalism expressed through the particular. Its not there yet. It takes work and backbone to get there. It does not get there by potshots or hatred.
There is the journalism of the great effort actually towards accomplishing it, not only the journalism of the injustice.
It is my sense that Phil is NOT invested in improving Israel, maturing Israel.
I don't even get the sense from his choice of articles, that he is invested in the project of maturing the US, just addressing irritating slivers (as we all do by virtue of living only at one place at one time).
"The rooting for the underdog is appealing still, but an element of it is adolescent relative to seeking the goal of full maturity as a nation."
I'm so sick of these types of statements – what I call "academic obfuscation" – and Zionists and their sympathizers are experts at it. I mean, what the hell does that mean exactly? Palestinians are being slaughtered and treated like animals (the animals that Zionists think they are) and we're supposed to ignore that as an "adolescent appeal" and look towards the "full maturity of a nation?" You don't have to be Noam Chomksy to see the illness in this statement (Noam practices his own brand of Zionist sympathizing, but that's another can of worms altogether). Despicable, Richard.
How do american jewish zionist reconcile the historical record that shows that, they, the jewish zionist in the u.s as well as in britain did everything in their power to stop the immigration of jews into those two countries, and thusly making themselves directly culpable for the loss of the lives of innumerable european jews.
if the memory of the lives taken due to the holocaust from the world jewish community is to be honored, then when are jews going to hold the zionist movement responsible for not having allowed the immigration of jews into places other than palestine and then the only ones that seemed to be allowed in were the young and the strong.
how truly pathetic for a people to continnue to bow to such a group and movement.
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/rabbi_quotes/weissmandl.cfm
Excerpts from Awake my Glory (Chapter: The Leaders of Israel)
757. On Dec. 17, 1942 both houses of the British Parliament declared readiness to afford temporary residence for endangered persons, but on Jan. 27 a spokesman for the Zionists stated that the Jews opposed the motion because Palestine was omitted.
758. The New York papers (Feb. 16, 1943) publicized Rumania’s offer to the 70,000 Jews of Trans-Dniestria at the price of $50 each. On Feb. 24, Stephen Wise the president of the American Jewish Congress and leader of U.S. Zionists publicly denied the authenticity of the offer and declares that no collection of funds “would seem justified”. The Jewish Agency in England also ridiculed the news of the Romanian offer. But Undersecretary of state A. A. Berlo affirmed privately that the Rumanian government had actually made such an offer to the State Department. Some time later, when all the Jews who could have been rescued had been annihilated, the facts of the offer were confirmed by Bartley Crum, an expert on affairs of the Near East, who declared that the 70,000 Jews could easily have been transported through Turkey by a few days travel in trucks, but the State Department had refrained from publicizing the news of the offer due to Jewish (Zionist) pressure.
760. In 1944 the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People called upon the United States to establish a War Refugee Board. Stephen Wise came before an especial committee of Congress to object to this proposal.
761. In 1948 President Roosevelt planned to open gates of America to 150,000 refugees, and Great Britain agreed to follow suit. When Roosevelt’s emissary Morris L. Ernst came to England, the Zionist leaders declared: “This is treason. You are undermining the Zionist movement”. As a result, Roosevelt informed Great Britain that the project must be abandoned: “We cannot put it over because the dominant vocal Jewish leadership won’t stand for it”.
762. In 1947 Congressman William Stratton sponsored a bill to grant immediate entry to the U.S. of 400,000 displaced persons. The bill was publicly denounced by the Zionist leaders, and it was therefore not passed.
763. On Feb. 23, 1956 J. W. Pickergsill, the minister of immigration was asked in the Canadian House of Commons: “Would we open the doors of Canada to Jewish refugees?” He replied: “The government has made no progress in that direction, because the government of Israel… does not wish us to do so”.
764. On July 15, 1971 the Zionist leaders, through Herman Weissman the president of the Zionist Organization of America, successfully opposed an effort in the U.S. Congress to allow 30,000 Russian refugees to enter the United States.
766. Had Jews in America, Canada, England, Australia, South Africa and Switzerland and elsewhere followed the Torah-leaders, the story would have been entirely different. Rabbi Weissmandl of Nitra poured out his heart’s blood in the effort to save Jewish lives, but the “reform” (assimilationist) and Zionist leaders of the deluded Jewish masses in the free countries turned a deaf ear to his impassioned entreaties.
כל ציונות יותר מדי
Seliger's historical summary is misleading. The vast majority of German and Austrian Jews were able to leave, and the United States took in a very large number despite the Great Depression, and as I remember up to the beginning of WW2 the Zionists never filled the quota alloted to them for entry into Palestine because Jews preferred living in E. Europe to emigrating to Palestine.
Before the Mufti tried to work with Hitler — relatively unsuccessfully as far as I can tell, the Zionists were quite openly allied with Hitler because they shared compatible goals and a similar ideologies.
The mass murders of Jews started with Operation Barbarossa (invasion of the Soviet Union).
I have often wondered why while I looked at archival data.
I believe that the Germans expected the UK to negotiate a cease fire after the German Nazis conquered the continent. Instead the British media and the British government took an increasing hard-line. Without some sort of settlement, there was no way for Jews to leave E. Europe.
The German Nazis blamed Jews in the media and the Cousinhood for the refusal to negotiate a settlement, and they saw a conspiracy between wealthy Jews, the Zionists and Jewish communists in what looked like an attempt to surround Germany and steal the victory that the Germans had just won.
The hitherto pro-Jewish Nazis that worked with the Zionists had no counterargument, but the Germans still had no plan for Eastern European Jews until they saw the willingness of liberated Soviet nationalities to kill Jews without compunction as collective revenge for the crimes of Soviet Jewish leadership.
So was there a way to rescue the Jews of E. Europe? If there had been a peace settlement between the UK and Germany sometime before the invasion of the Soviet Union, evacuation of Eastern European Jews would have become possible.
Why was there no settlement sometime in late 1940? In October 1940 Stalin was arguably a much more evil dictator than Hitler. Hitler had always wanted an alliance with the UK against Stalin. Why didn't it happen? If it had, Jews might have been able to leave E. Europe practically unscathed.
Obviously, the UK had had a long term policy of preventing the unification of Europe under any power whether it were Napolean or Hitler, but was it really worth the number of British lives it cost especially when Hitler was generally much more responsive to his allies than to his enemies?
Hitler even at times showed an ability to express concern and care for Jews. During the Anschluss, Hitler made sure that his late mother's Jewish doctor was protected in one of the best hotels in Vienna.
So were the anti-Jewish Nazis unreasonable in their suspicions?
If I look at 1938 German Nazi and Zionist writings about Jews in Europe, there is much more scorn and animosity in the Zionist literature than in the German Nazi publications.
Had desire for the negation of the Diaspora turned into a desire for negation of a good portion of the Diaspora population that had so stubbornly resisted Zionist ideology about emigration to Palestine?
Is this feeling expressed in the harsh anti-Nazi political line of Zionist Jews in the media even though a continuation of the war after Dunkirk practically guaranteed the deaths of large numbers of Jews? (Probably the Zionist leadership did not expect the mortality to be as large as it ultimately was.)
Anyway, I could almost agree with Mafish Palestine, for the debate is almost irrelevant.
I have to echo the first Clinton campaign.
It's All About the Economy
Before the Iraq War, the State of Israel had probably cost the USA something around $2-3 trillion in constant 2000 dollars — in total and not just for aid.
In their recently published book entitled The Three Trillion Dollar War, The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, Columbia Professor Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Professor Linda Bilmes calculate the cost of the Iraq War, into which the USA was manipulated by Neocons acting as a Jewish Zionist special interest, at over $3 trillion dollars in 2008 dollars.
This amount must be added to the cost of Israel to the USA.
[Read the Entire Article!]
Bullshit Martillo.
Zionists were NEVER allies of the nazis. The United States did NOT take in a "large number" during the depression. They took in a trickle and strictly according to racist originating quotas by geography, and Jews were a minority of the immigrants from each country at the time. Mass murders of Jews occurred long before the invasion of the Soviet Union.
You are a lame revisionist, Martillo.
Higginslads,
You don't have a clue what I'm talking about, but you ridicule anyway.
You seem to apply the South Africa/Israel parallel, but it isn't.
The lack of sovereignty of the Palestinians is unjust. The lack of due process as to title claims within Israel and the West Bank is unjust. The pass requirements and roadblocks are unjust.
Zionism is not that. The Zionism that you oppose is a single flavor of it, a flavor that does not resemble the country as a whole. Israel is an unusually cosmopolitan commercial culture currently. (The degree of COMMERCIALISM is it largest flaw, one that America shares.)
That is a single response to a very difficult pre-existing AND exasperated situation.
Even if all of Ralph's historical claims are accurate, he never addresses the elephant in the room. Namely, why does all this persecution give the Zionists a free pass to engage in a colonialist crusade and invasion of another country? He claims the Jews have a right to a country, but ignores the cost to the indigenous people. Zionists committed massacres, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and wholesale theft to steal a country. Israel and Zionism thus perpetuate all the worst stereotypes about Jews.
"Hopefully, we Jews will always feel at home here in the US, alongside our fellow Americans. But if this "Golden Land" as the Yiddish saying goes, remains so for Jews, it will be an exception in the long, sad sweep of Jewish history. Spain, Poland and Germany were all at one time lands where Jews lived in peace and prosperity."
Talk of "fellow Americans" rings hollow from someone who is obviously keeping his bags packed.
Ralph, I think it's sad that you can't bring yourself to trust your gentile neighbors, but then it's an attitude that you have spent a lifetime with and I don't think anything is going to change it now. What I'm more worried about is the damage to the society when a powerful ruling class shares this mistrust of yours.
It seems almost guaranteed to result in disastrous decisions, doesn't it?
Witty says: It is my sense that Phil is NOT invested in improving Israel, maturing Israel.
Well this does sound pretty reasonable and humane. But it is our sense that Israel has alwas been a genocidal State and that the vast majority of its Jewish citizens have always ben either complicit or willing to turn a blind eye to the facts. And that the political culture has in fact been getting worse and worse. Phil is a moderate who believes somehow that Israel can improve, but those of us to the left of him dont see how it will improve until it ceases to exist.
You all do realize that you're pissing in the wind, right? Israel exists and is stronger than ever. The Arab world has been defeated enough times that they're learning to live with reality- with justice.
With Israel.
They may not like it, but tough luck.
Israel exists. "Palestine" doesn't.
That won't change- ever.
'Higginslads,
You don't have a clue what I'm talking about'
No one does Richard, you included. But you knew that, didn't you? That's the point, isn't it? When in doubt, obfuscate. When dead-set certain, obfuscate some more. All obfuscation, all the time.
It tires me out when I can be bothered trying to read it, so I can only imagine the effect it must have on you. But then, you and SOG and our new friend madfish are fueled by the Project, the Cause… defending the tribe and attacking it's critics. The idea that you are doing yeoman work for your people must I guess have an endlessly galvanising effect.
Maybe one day you will put that energy to work for the nation you live in.
'Israel exists. "Palestine" doesn't.
That won't change- ever.'
If you say it loudly and often enough, it HAS to be true, eh?
And I'd be careful chuntering on about how Israel is a state and Palestine isn't.. I mean, it's not that long ago Israel wasn't a state either. Does this mean the aspirations of pre-state Zionists, from the late 1800s thru 1948 were as illegitimate (being held by stateless people) as those of the Palestinians now?
Richard,
The appeal for anybody who takes interest in Palestinian question to look for greater evils committed somewhere else is as disingenuous as, I'm sure, it is heartfelt.
The problem is that with so many conflicts on the planet of 6 billion people it would take people lifetime to learn about, let alone respond to all the human rights abuses that are being perpetrated. This, of course would mean that nobody would ever do anything about anything.
I have a useful, if banal, analogy:
Imagine my next door neighbour: lets say he mistreats his wife: beats her up, locks her up, treats her like dirt, withholds money, access to doctor, tells my husband (he doesn't really talk to me) with a straight face that women "only understand when they are slapped about";
Do you really suggest that I should undertake the journey of discovery about what is the prevalence of domestic violence in England and Wales and start lobbying the Parliament to do something about it, INSTEAD OF acting right now?
Shouldn't I call the cops, speak to all my neighbours, put her in my kitchen, feed her, let her stay till she can get court injunction, or bungle her into the car and take her to the women's refuge?
By dealing with my neighbour rather than all the ills of the domestic violence in England am I really discriminating against my neighbour's husband out of some racist gene I have "anti-neighbouristm"?
If my neighbour was my cousin, or my brother, should I pause before acting? Should I reason with him? Try to improve him from within? For fourty years?
We rarely choose our battles: They find us, and hit us in the gut. The sense of fairness is pretty primodial in human species and implying, as you do, that Mr. Weiss is somehow lacking ( how exactly?) for choosing to be outraged by treatment of Palestinians rather than, say, Haitians, is assuming that our choice of causes we get outraged about should be guided by logic and not by heart.
Using your approach, if my wife beating neighbour was my brother, I should, out of loyalty to him (after all, his wife is nothing to me) start collecting for victims of Darfur, (and buy earplugs, lest his wife's screams continue to prevent me from getting good night sleep).
Glenn Condell,
If you say it loudly and often enough, it HAS to be true, eh?
I don't have to say it at all. It would still be the case.
The Philistines would have had a state IN PEACE in 1937 with the Peel Plan, but they violently rejected it.
They would have had a state IN PEACE in 1939 with the MacDonald White Paper, but they violently rejected it (and Jews would have even been restricted from BUYING land from Arabs).
They would have had a state IN PEACE in 1948 with UN 181, but they violently rejected it (and actually claimed that the UN had no such mandate!).
They could have had a state IN PEACE in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza from 1948-1967 without any Jews- because the Arabs had ethnically cleansed every last one; but they violently rejected it. In fact, that's exactly when they established Fatah (1959) and the PLO (1964).
They could have had a state IN PEACE after 1967, but instead, the entire Arab world issued the Khartoum Resolutions:
A. No peace with Israel
B. No recognition of Israel
C. No negotiations with Israel
They would have had a state IN PEACE in 2000 with the Oslo Accords, but they violently rejected it- as always.
The Arabs will just have to learn to "make do" with their own 99.9% of the Middle East- including all of the oil, and stop trying to steal OUR tiny 1/10th of 1% without oil. The Philistines won't have a state here in Israel, and if they don't stop their violence, they won't even exist here anymore. They will have to go to their own land- elsewhere.
Mafish,
Even though in the past there was not clarity that Palestinians identified as Palestinians primarily, that is NOT the case currently.
There IS a Palestinian nation, comprised of those that live there, and identify with those that live there.
And, a nation deserves to self-govern rather than be governed by others, and rather than be forcefully removed.
There are MANY ironies as to Palestinian status and Palestinian law. For example, in Lebanon, Palestinians that are now grandchildren of refugees, born and raised in Lebanon, are NOT Lebanese citizens, not permitted to be.
It was originally intended as solidarity, but now becomes complicit in the oppression of Palestinians.
In Jordan, Palestinians were afforded Jordanian citizenship, and West Bank Palestinians are still permitted to use passports under Jordanian citizenship.
Another tragic irony of Palestinian assertion of progressive or democratic, is that under Palestinian law, no land sales are permitted from Palestinians to Jews.
Its "understandable", but NOT an improvement as far as justice or democracy is concerned.
Mafish *:(and actually claimed that the UN had no such mandate!).
If you cannot imagine how such an argument may be possible, you don't have much imagination.
I doubt anyone reading Phil's blog is unaware of the list you present.