(Photo: Electronic Intifada)
From the Reuters article “Settlers seek takeover of East Jerusalem area“:
Israeli settlers are waging court battles to evict dozens of Palestinians from homes in an East Jerusalem neighborhood, a move threatening to widen Israel’s rift with U.S. President Barack Obama over settlements.
They are trying to reclaim plots of land in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood which they say were owned by Jews before Israel’s creation in 1948. They have already won property rights to six Arab homes, whose residents were subsequently evicted.
Palestinians and an Israeli rights group say settlers are trying to evict a further 27 Arab families from 28 buildings.
“Stop ethnic cleansing,” reads a sign erected outside the home of Maher Hanun, a 51-year-old father of three, who faces a July 19 deadline to evacuate the structure in Sheikh Jarrah, near the walled Old City of Jerusalem.
Such acts could cloud Israel’s relations with its main ally, the United States.
Collective Jews don't have a right to individuals' homes, any more than collective Palestinians have any intrinsic national right to individuals' property. I assume that you know that the West Bank was in fact ethnically cleansed of Jews, whereas Israel as a whole was NOT historically ethnically cleansed of Palestinians. Civil rights for all, everywhere, is the progressive message.
We can talk about Civil rights for all in a progressive sense Richard when both sides are on equal footing, meaning both sides rights are equally being acknowledged, respected, and ensured… But to talk about Civil rights for all while there is no equal civil rights for the Palestinians, being occupied and oppressed by the the Israeli Zionists with the help of their brainwashed friends in the USA, to begin with seems non-progressive to me …
So you advocate the return of the refugees right Witty?
I knew someone would jump in with the old reversal gimmick — "we wuz ethnically cleansed first" — before I even opened the comments thread. These people just cannot grasp that they are the invaders, the Arabs are the indigenes.
Marion, the equivalency canard is Richard's precious, his Ring of Power, his Golden Calf. The "genocidal mind-set" of the Palestinians equals the actual murders of Israel. The crude rockets launched by individuals equals the armed might of an externally supplied state, the collective punishment and imprisonment of the Palestinians equals the free access to the world of the Israelis. He will never, ever let it go. If Richard Witty lived near Auschwitz he would probably wonder why all the lucky Jews got to go to summer camp and he was stuck on the old kampf And he loves to make broad contentions like that "I assume that you know that the West Bank was in fact ethnically cleansed of Jews," with absolutely no citations or reference. What on earth is he talking about?
Alternating periods of grandiosity and paranoia, with a persecution mania, and a coarsening or eliminating of any moral or ethical boundaries. That's you brain on ziocaine. Kids, don't fry your Yiddisher kop to a crisp. Keep away from the stuff. If anyone offers you a hit on the ziocaine pipe, just say No! Sure, it'll make you witty, but is that what you want?
I wonder if the settlers know that if we went back to who owned what in 1948, Jews would only own about 7% of historic Palestine. I know the vast majority of Palestinians would be happy with that.
Would Israel be better if it was a democracy and not a religious state? This aim towards a pure Jewish state is a flawed concept. It incites fundamentalism. Look at Pakistan. Israel is right at the doorstep of Islam in the geographic sense of things. If they can find a way not to brutalize the local Muslim populations, whose land they continue to steal, they might be able to live there for centuries to come. Can they figure this out, or are they bent on self-destruction?
Since I basically I agree with him, I asked him the same question or a variation of it. If he answered it, I missed it.
"I assume that you know that the West Bank was in fact ethnically cleansed of Jews," with absolutely no citations or reference. Well obviously there must have been such incidences. Simply think of the old Jewish communities in Jerusalem or other places. And in the larger scenario revenge from the Palestinians suddenly confronted with many refugees wouldn't be a surprise either. The problem is the selective emphasis. I am assuming selectivity is a feature the partisan always only finds in the argument of the other side. The Magnus Zionist will in the near future write about a book that lately drew my attention too: http://books.google.de/books?id=Mzg0i6FJHUUC&... It may be interesting, since so far Google books lists no reviews.
Does it mean that internally displaced Arab citizens of Israel can now reclaim their villages? Alas no, because Israel is Jewish for Arabs and democratic for Jews.
No. I advocate for Palestinians' day in court, to assert their INDIVIDUAL title rights, and if individuals can prove beyond the high bar of justification for the removal of a current resident, that they be allowed to return in that circumstance. Unlike most Zionists, I DO recommend that the laws of the 1950's that prohibited physical return, day in court, and annexed abandoned property, be overturned. But, that the remedy to the wrong is compensation so that the PRESENT to the future is improved, rather than some return to an arbitrary past beginning point. Another large problem with the right of return (any of them), is the problem of proof. Should Israel, or Palestine for that matter, just take the word of a prospective returnee? Even if the refugees take jobs from current Palestinian residents. These are problems that a sovereign Palestinian administration would have. As successful business people that can't get everything done in their day state, "That is a problem I'm happy to have." Courts are better arbitrators than mobs. Relative to democracy there are: 1. Dollar votes (capitalist economy) 2. Person votes (one person- one vote) 3. Mob (one decibel, one vote) 4. Courts (one compelling argument, one vote)
It just so happens that I was walking through Sheikh Jarrah last week and saw these signs. I had a good laugh. There were a few ignorant foreign-leftist idiots (Mondo people know the type!) hanging around, supporting the Arab liars and land thiefs. This area was a largely Sephardi Jewish neighborhood prior to 1948. Former Chief Rabbi Ovadya Yossef even had his Bar Mitzva in the neighborhood synagogue. After 1948, the Arabs there slaughtered the remaining Jews (some 75 or so bodies of massacred Jews in this neighborhood have never been found) and took over the properties and homes. Trans-Jordan, which, after unifying both East and West Banks of Palestine, renamed itself Jordan, took control of that part of the city as well as the remainder of the West Bank. Arabs who squatted on those properties now claim to have lived there for 4 million years. In other parts of the city, there are similar Arab claims. However, land titles going back to and managed by Turkish, British and Jordanian authorities prove non-Arab ownership. Consistently. Repeatedly.
Courts apply rulings based on documentary evidence which anyone can see and verify. Real estate disputes with lying Arab land thiefs does not constitute ethnic cleansing. Nice sign, though. Completely false claim, but that never stopped you guys.
There is no claim of collective ownership. The Arabs are claiming PERSONAL ownership of individfual houses and pieces of land – but ong-standing land-ownership records going all the way back to Turkish rule rpove these arab claims are false.
Mooser, Why do you repeat that you "know" what I think? You are very far off very frequently. Proof. The Jewish population of the West Bank and old city of Jerusalem in 1967 was in the few hundreds. IIn 1928 before the Hebron pogroms, the population in the West Bank was in the range of 10% of the total population. There are laws on the books of the PA that allow for punishment by death for consented sale of land to a Jew, which has been reported in Haaretz and Al-Jazeera as being enforced during the last two years. Maybe it was by "choice". Maybe they weren't terrorized and had the right to return to their former homes.That was NOT during a time when Israel threatened then Jordan. The current population of Israel proper, is close to 20% Arab, including Druze, Bedouin and Palestinian. NOT ethnically cleansed. Maybe some individuals and groups attempted it, but it was rejected in fact, and over the long term. It is NOT illegal to sell land to an Arab in Israel for example. It is a difficulty that 90% of the land in Israel is titled to the Jewish Agency, which they lease to others. The vast majority of land held by the Jewish Agency is leased to Zionist groups, not all. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled a few years ago, that the Jewish Agency could NOT have racially based screens to its land sales. (Only applied in a token manner, unfortunately). The Palestinian model for land ownership is not all that different. Most land is expected to be held in a national trust, leased or permitted to individual Palestinians, on a racial screen basis.
Its not a question of "first", but of parity. Three generations in, the Zionists LIVE THERE.
Rowan poses some untruths for the gullible. Was King David Jewish or Palestinean? Jews are, in fact, the indigenous people of Israel. There is no preceeding claim by any existing nation. Arabs have moved into the Holy Land chasing jobs with the Jews; that is who the Arab population of Israel grew so dramatically in the past century. And they mostly came from what is now Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Calling Arabs "indigenes" is like calling Poles in Chicago or Irish in Boston or Muslims in Paris or Sydney "indigenes". One of these claims, incidentally, has already been made, in Australia… More another time..
This is almost correct. "Historic Palestine" includes all of Jordan and parts of Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Most of that was controlled by Arabs – and still is, today. The problem is that the Arabs want ALL THE REST OF IT, too. No room for Jews where Arabs live. Oh, same is true for Christians. Check out Nazareth and Bethlehem and you will ssee what I mean. I just WISH some Arab neighbors on you… then you'll see..
Chu, Israel does not "brutalize" "Local muslims". Terrorism happens the other way around…. Israel does not "steal" Arab land… unless you assume that the whole world belongs to Islam (study a bit about Islam and you will see…) Israel is not bent on self-destruction. Suicide and homicide as forms of religious practice is a curiously Islamic practice. Or haven't you heard any news in the past 25 years or so?
Had you actually read the linked article in Phillip's post, you might have read that the Israeli owners of these properties in this old Jewish neighborhood "are winning legal battles in Israeli courts which recognize documents from the Ottoman and British mandate eras showing that Jews owned plots of land in East Jerusalem where Arabs built homes." This is precisely what I had written in earlier comments. Arabs steal land in Jerusalem then, when faced with documentary evidence even from the Islamic Ottoman rule they lose in court and then they cry "ethnic cleansing". What a bunch of lying Arabs. And you fall for their crocodile tears? Read the article carefully yourselves and see.
Jerusalem Jake Why are you living there? Israel does not "steal" Arab land. -OK they occupy. Israel is not bent on self-destruction. -Didn't say they were, Hasbarah.
"Another large problem with the right of return (any of them), is the problem of proof. Should Israel, or Palestine for that matter, just take the word of a prospective returnee?" But Israel does exactly that with regard to the Jewish Law of Return.
"It is a difficulty that 90% of the land in Israel is titled to the Jewish Agency, which they lease to others" About 800,000 dunum in Israel was purchased but 2,000,000 dunum was confiscated under the absentee property owner laws.
" Poles in Chicago or Irish in Boston " have property rights and are not in danger of having their home and land confiscated. "Jews are, in fact, the indigenous people of Israel". Many people lived there. Check out a historical timeline of the region. http://israelipalestinian.procon.org/viewresource...
Witty is as usual being partially truthful and partially not, and again he makes a false equivalence. According to all the various accounts I've read, the number of Jews who were forced or chose to leave the West Bank was around 10,000 or less. There were around 2500 Jewish civilians who lived in Old East Jerusalem (most Jews in Jerusalem at the time lived in the Western part) and were taken in by the Jordanian Army and. per their request, handed over to the Israelis after the Jordanian conquest of East Jerusalem. By rights, these can be considered as ethnically cleansed, because, even though they were treated well and given a choice, its understandable that a choice to stay might have entailed considerable danger given the hostilities between non-Jewish Arabs and Jews. The rest of the Jews ethnically cleansed came from the Zionist Gush Etzion region, and their numbers were only in the few thousands. They were not given a choice as far as I have read. Under the Partition Plan census, there were only 10,000 Jews in the land set aside by the UN for the Arab State. Since Israel usurped about half of that land, the number of Jews who had been living in what became the Jordanian controlled West Bank was considerable less than 10,000. So what Witty considers ethnic cleansing is around 10,000 Jews. But when it comes to the Palestinians, of whom 750,000 were forced to flee or expelled from their homes, Witty goes off the rails and says," whereas Israel as a whole was NOT historically ethnically cleansed of Palestinians" . This is a ludicrous and maliciously false statement. Apparently Witty is rewriting the mean of ethnic cleansing such that if every last person is not ethnically cleansed, no ethnic cleansing took place. By this cockeyed standard even Nazi Germany did not ethnically cleanse Jews, since some 20,000 German Jews remained in Germany after the end of Nazi rule. There are two main reasons that the Palestinians were not completely ethnically cleansed. One: when the IDF commander, Ben Dinkelman, refused an oral order from Ben Gurion to ethnically cleanse Nazareth, after having given the city's dignitaries his promise that they would not be forced to leave if they surrendered. Ben-Gurion, loathe to put his orders in writing or posterity, and leery of a possible backlash from the Western Christian world for ethnically cleansing Christians from a town with great significance for worldwide Christians, backed down. (Note: Nazareth was a part of the Arab state set aside by the UN under the partition plan but captured by Israel in June 1948.) And two: By the late summer and early fall of 1948, most Palestinians were aware that if they left their homes they would not be allowed to return. Those who had left Haifa in April, some of whom were literally driven into the sea by Haganah bombardment, petitioned repeatedly to return to their city but were consistently denied. The same goes for those from other cities who were forced out earlier in the year. So the Palestinians were much more steadfast in remaining when they knew that they would not be allowed to return after the hostilities ended. The time frame saw some of the most brutal campaigns and massacres by the IDF, as the attempts to ethnically cleanse had to become more deadly in order to succeed. In the end Ben-Gurion decided that complete ethnic cleansing was a military impossibility at that time. And of the 150,000 Palestinians that remained, some 50,000 were part of a settlement with Jordan that gave Israel more territory in the Little Triangle, and its estimated that around 50,000 or so were Palestinians who had been forced to leave but were successful in returning and were not discovered or apprehended by Israel, which had a standing order in the early 1950's to shoot to kill any Palestinian crossing the border with Jordan, regardless of whether they were armed or unarmed, man, woman or child. According to Israeli archives, the Israeli military and government were well aware that over 90% of those early border crossings were of unarmed civilian Palestinians simply seeking to return to their homes. If Witty can't see that as ethnic cleansing then he is being morally dishonest.
"Arabs who squatted on those properties now claim to have lived there for 4 million years." Not so different from Israeli's who squatted on Arab homes after 1948.
But the courts accept Jewish deeds from prior to 1948 but not Arab deeds. It doesn't seem like a fair system.
What about those giant keys they always show. Are you telling us those foot long keys are fakes?
"Was King David Jewish or Palestinean?" Was King David a real person or a myth?
Again, Jake, many of us have already mentioned that we have Arab neighbors or friends and don't have any problems with them. Maybe its your bigotry that causes your Arab neighbors to dislike you? Poor JES keeps trying to insist that Israel isn't like the Jim Crow South and you keep mouthing off like a bigoted Southern white of the era and making his job all the harder. You're making our points for us, Jake.
King David was probably a filth-encrusted sheep boy of indeterminate descent. There is no archaeological evidence that there was ever a 'First Temple'.
Great post. Witty's is a gambit already popularised by Amos Oz. It's the Anita Shapira type of history: an unspecified number of Palestinians just sort of disappeared (no Zionist agency), while an unspecified number of Jews were subjected to vicious ethnic cleansing (by, by implication, genocidal Arab maniacs). It's how to acknowledge '48 without actually doing so, while attempting to retain the old myth of an innocent, beleaguered Israel threatened by millions of Nazi-like Arabs.
I am pretty sure that a Palestinian more versed in his history and society will recognize your approach as ultimately bad. Weren't there structure too that villages communally held the land e.g. of certain villages. How much of the whole land was that? How much was individually hold. How far would you go to meet the other culture according to their own customs, versus using an individual law that many communities may not have had? How many didn't take along their papers since they intended to return? Why do I always have the feeling that mob for you is reserved for groups of certain people while others are simply a nation or community? Maybe you mainly associate it with the left. Would you consider the above described communal land-owning structures as mob?
As archives opened by the Turkish government are said to ultimately prove some Jewish ownership claims false or falsified.
Fool. There is a much better reason that Arabs have not disappeared from Israel. In 1948, Arabs FLED. They did so because they had no experience with a Jewish government and fully expected the Jews to do to them what they had been howling they would do to the Jews, i.e. kill everyone. By the Six Day War in 1967, Arabs had considerable experience with Jewish rule. They knew that there would be no massacres, no genocide, no ethnic cleansing. Indeed, Arabs who had remained inside Israel in 1948 got ISRAELI CITIZENSHIP and had become freer and richer than Arabs living elsewhere in the region. Therefore, the Arabs generally did NOT flee in 1967 – and this is how Israel came to control all these Arabs (who later began calling themselves "Palestinean"). Of course, Arab-controlled territory always became Jew-free. Your accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing when clearly it is the Arab states that are guilty of this merely indicates the depth of your antisemitic depravity.
Indeed. The whole enterprise of Biblical archaeology becomes more embarrassing for the Zionist myth for each discovery that is made. Even the early Zionists acknowledged that if there were any descendants of the 'United Kingdoms', the present-day Palestinians were probably them. (Incidentally, in his historical masterpiece Kringla heimsins Snorre Sturlason claimed the Norse gods came from present-day India. Do Norwegians have a valid claim on that land? ;))
Rowan, you are despicable. I was at the Temple Mount just this morning. NO archeological evidence? Tourists and academics have been studfying it for centuries…. Bigot. Ignorant bigot.
Is Light really Darkness?
In the USA, people who steal land are called thieves and dealt with by the courts. Same thing in Israel. If you don't like the rule of law, perhaps you might prefer one of the Arab societies….
Suicide and homicide as forms of religious practice is a curiously Islamic practice. Or haven't you heard any news in the past 25 years or so? I would suggest it's you who haven't 'heard any news in the past 25 years or so'…
You fail on the factual arguments. This is why you can only convince the gullible. As for Arab neigbors, have yhou noticed that Arabs are darmatically over-represented in the prison population wherever they are immigrants? That they are major headaches for local police depts and are overwhelmingly repsonsible for extraordinarily beastly and violent crimes? Check out Holland, Belgium, Australia, Britain, France, etc….
Israel occupies its own territory, same as Egypt, Lebanon, etc. Jordan is occupying the majority of Historic Palestine. Do your research. Beware of propaganda. Be open-minded, you can find the truth.
I'm sure the extremely fair Israeli courts have already returned to the rightful owners the houses that were stolen from the Said family, from Ghada Karmi's family… No?
Ummmmm, Jewish suicide bombers? Hindu/Christian/Buddhist suicide bombers???? But when it comes to Islamic suicide bombers, they even are willing to die to murder OTHER MUSLIMS. Check out WEEKLY MASSACRES in Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, and more…. Go read a paper. Even Mondowiess….
Thanks tree, ( I sometimes wonder what tree you would choose, so I get a more precise image?) I never read about the shooting order, or I forget. Do you remember were you read it? Border crossing by refugees has been mentioned by many though. As it was a constant tale, including deals to force Jordan to prevent it from their side. Rather viciously at times it seems.
Again,just the thing a bigoted white Southern circa 1950 would have said. Thanks, Jake, for proudly displaying your bigotry.
Ottoman records go back to the Islamic Turkish Ottoman Empire that ruled for 7 centuries until WW I. Not Jewish deeds. British records go back to the British Mandate, from WW I until 1948. Not Jewish deeds. Evidence-based court rulings are not a fair system? Darkness, you are a silly bigot.
I have keys, too. They prove nothing. When someone kills a landowner, changes the locks and shows the keys, does this prove ownership???
I don't know those families. However, there are a couple hundred thousand Arabs in Jerusalem who DO own their own homes. And the courts support legal ownership. I have no problem with that. I do take offense at land thieves (who often got hold of that land by murder). You are defending the wrong party here.
There are documented land-ownership records that prove things. This is how the Israeli courts deal with claims by the Russian Orthodox Church, Arabs who really do legally own homes in Jerusalem, and Jews who really do own land in Jerusalem – even if Arab squatters and land thieves have moved in.
The same thing happened in Shiloach. This is a neighborhood right next to the Old City of Jerusalem, outside the Southern Wall. Until 1948 it was Jewish. primarily housing Yemenite Jews. In 1948, the Arabs/Jordanians/Palestineans ethnically cleansed their lands and either massacred or evicted every single Jew under their control. Arabs moved into the newly-vacated houses. Today, these same Arabs claim to have lived there "for centuries" – even though telephone books from before 1948 show Jewish names at these addresses and Ottoman land-ownership records show Jewish owners of these houses and plots of land. Arab land-thieves are liars and often murderers, as well. There are piles of documents to prove this. They are also the true perpetrators of ethnic cleansing. No amount of slanderous charges will change these facts.
Transjordan was incorporated into the British mandate for Palestine as an autonomous region, that never made it part of Palestine, regardless of how much dolts like yourself insist on claiming otherwise. Regardless, the about 7% Jewish ownership in 1948 which I am referring to is in what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories. As for Palestinian Christians, I've heard many lament about how much better off they were before Zionists took over the region, and I've heard multiple anti-Zionist Jews state the same. Considering that, I wouldn't wish Zionist neighbors on anyone, and if you don't like having Arab neighbors, I recommend you look into emigrating somewhere outside of the Middle East.
There is no village to reclaim. Additionally, tenent palestinian farmers have no right to the land just because the actual owner allowed them to till it.
I doubt that such a statistic exists. There is a huge problem for it. It would be racial profiling and in Europe that surely would be against EU and national laws. But I see you are moving closer and closer to the Nazi mindset: http://books.google.de/books?id=0PzzDmT0JM4C&... Are you feeling comfortable with that? I just checked the latest diverse crime statistic, there is no special category for Arabs. They are either grouped among foreigners or they are Europeans. So there is no factual basis for your attempt at perception management.
Oh yeah, I forgot. There weren't any people living in the land that you now call Israel so God decided to give it to the Jews who were suffering from the Holocaust in Europe. Then the greedy Palestinian Arabs decided that they weren't happy enough with Jordan and they wanted Israel too and a defenceless one-day old Israel managed to beat the evil Arabs (like David and Goliath). Now the genocidal Arabs have resorted to terrorism to achieve their goal of driving all the Jews into the sea. Am I right?
Ermm. King David Hotel attack or did that one just slip your mind? What about the various Irgun attacks and Stern gang. Or maybe the settler that decided he wanted to bomb a Palestinian school? And yes, you do get suicide bombers of other religions – the Tamil Tigers (who are Hindu) invented modern suicide bombing. Oh and by the way, suicide is one of the ultimate sins against God in Islam
Its mentioned in Morris' "Israeli Border Wars: 1949-1956". I also vividly remember a short peace by the late Ami Kronfeld, of Jewish Voice for Peace, relating his experience during the 1967 war and relating it to Uri Avnery's experiences in the late forties and early fifties. Both of these former Israeli soldiers talked about the orders to shoot civilians in 1948(Avnery) and again in 1967(Kronfeld). Kronfeld used to have a website but since his death I haven't been able to relocate many of his articles. Essentially, as I remember it, Avnery confirmed that during the earlier time period he became aware of the "shoot to kill" orders with respect to returning refugees, and Kronfeld backed him up by mentioning his own experience after the 1967 war when he refused a standing shoot to kill order after hearing a baby cry. He still captured the refugees and forced them back to Jordan, as he explained, because he was young and unsure of what else to do, but it was the beginning for him of his profound questioning of the underpinnings of the state of Israel. If I find the article again I will post it. As for "tree", I love them all, most especially madrones(arbutus menzeissii) and redwoods(sequoia sempervirens). But if you have to picture me, think more along the lines of corylus cornuta(beaked hazel), or acer circinatum(vine maple).
But the reality is that there are NO Jews in the West Bank, and that there ARE over a million Paletinian Arabs in Israel. It indicates intent.
Bring proof of your slanderous claims! I Love it! Jews PROVE that they own something and the antisemitic idiiots say it was falsified. You can't with morons!
Thanks for the tip, I will work on 'open-mindedness', Hasbara. You might try Huffington Post. It's possible to sway opinions there with your weak talking points..
I love it! I show that Arabs integrate much more poorly than other immigrants and they call ME a racist! I follow in the footsteps of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan who was never afraid of telling the truth, even if his critics called him a racist. I am proud to speak the truth. P.S. Even ignoring the remarkable levels of crime and violence among Arabs in the West, consider the extraordinary leels of violence INSIDE Arab societies… And you know I am right… Hurts, doesn't it?
BRing proof to your absurd claims. I dare you! Ask the Christians of Bethlehem if they prefered Israeli rule or Palestinean Authority rule. Oh, they have mostly fled since Yasser Arafat took over. Check it out for yourself.
There WERE people living here before – mostly Jews with some others. This was the case for centuries, until approx the beginning of the 20th century. The rest of what you say is correct. Thank you.
Chu, you are falling for propaganda. You have lost already.
Shafiq, you prove my point. To pretend that Jews are terrorists, you struggle to find something from over half a century ago, before the founding of the state of Israel. Yet to prove my point, I can show you headlines from any day of the week! Please don't accuse Hindus of inventing suicide bombings – can't you give the Arabs ANYTHING to be proud of???? :-) If suicide is a sin in Islam, why do the most fundamentalist Muslim clerics preach it and value it so highly? They even approve suicide of each other!! (Sunni vs Shia, as in Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, etc.)
I know. I'm horrid. :-)
It is irrelevant whether Arabs integrate more or less poorly than others. Blowback from our involuntary support for Israel ethnic cleansing and colonization constitutes a national security threat to the United States.
Thank you, tree, for that exposition. Witty leaves me floored. I slip and fall on all the unction.
Gosh, Jake, I wonder what will happen when Phil gets back and reads your comments. That should be a lively debate. I'm looking forward to it.
Turkish Ottoman Empire that ruled for 7 centuries until WW I Make that 5 centuries, if you put both Ottoman reigns together.
Interesting, interesting. Palestinian thieves stealing Jewish property and land. And faking keys. Interesting images you present here.
Today, these same Arabs claim to have lived there "for centuries" – even though telephone books from before 1948 show Jewish names at these addresses and Ottoman land-ownership records show Jewish owners of these houses and plots of land. If the owners and their families were killed who claims ownership now? The Jewish national fund? The Israeli state? And it's not a complex pattern, is it, it was simply was Arabs killing Jews but not the other way round?
No, the onus of proof is on you. If YOU think that Israel is "stealing land" PROVE that it belongs to someone else. So far, all the evidence, INCLUDING THOSE FROM ISLAMIC RULE, demonstrate Jewish ownership. Same for absurd accusations of Ethnic Cleansing. Prove it. All the evidence shows that Muslim control routinely practiced (and still practices!) ethnic cleansing (against Jews in Israel, against Christians in Darfur, many more). Your claims that Israel commits such crimes requires some proof. But there isn't any. Thus, the photo of the protest sign that accompanies this article is misleading at best, slanderous at worst. Typical "Palestinean" propaganda.
Sometimes it is the estate of the dead, e.g. grandchildren. This is the case in Hebron, where Arabs slaughtered or expelled the entire ancient Jewish community in 1929. Real ethnic cleansing. Sometimes it may be govt authorities. In Sheikh Jarrah, the titles were owned by a Sephardic Community Center, especially over the Synagogue. An Arab neighbor had moved sheep into the synagogue. It was just a few years that the court evicted this Arab land thief and his sheep and returned the Synagogue to the Sephardic community. I have been there.
Colin, Arabs fail to integrate EVERYWHERE, not just in the USA. Same all over Europe, Australia, Asia. Arabs being major rapists in Australia, drug pushers in Asia and car thieves in Europe has nothing to do with US govt foreign policy.
Oh, are you going to erase all the inconvenient facts I post? Is that how you bigots "seek the truth"?
You are misreading what I write. They are either French, Italian, German … citizen, than they are registered only according to crime, sex or age, juvenile versus adults or they aren't citizens, I am talking about "Arabs" than they aren't registered as citizen but as foreigners. Fact is whenever one looks into statistics, and there may well be some, the things you say usually turn out to be to have no foundation in reality. Nothing I wrote was about integration. You surely have a Nazi-mindset. That's not my problem. It's yours.
Ah, how wonderful. Just as blacks. Right? That's racism pure. The problem is even if people like David Horowitz spread the fake there is no truth to it. So pray tell me, why are they doing it? Feeding the rage? David Mills did a wonderful research on the topic: http://undercoverblackman.blogspot.com/search/lab... But interesting that these matters constantly stay the same. The Nazi's Jewish rapist born again as Arab.
http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2009/04/exclu... http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2009/04/exclu... Look justice is not a one-way street. If somebody like you calls me an antisemite or idiot, I feel deeply honored.
But the reality is that there are NO Jews in the West Bank Settlers are not Jews? Or the settlements aren't the West Bank?
The redwoods are impressive, but I am not sure if I ever consciously saw madrones. I like vine maple and hazel. My favorite cousin called me birch (betula alba) sometimes. I always liked to visit really old trees and old churches. Have you ever visited Methuselah? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah_(tree) Thanks, for the notes above.
Sheikh al Hilaly, the chief Islamic Authority in Australia, is on record for saying (among other things) that Muslim men are permitted to rape white Australian women. Several pack rapes of white women by Muslim rapists, some Lebanese, some Pakistani, were considered the worst rapes ever on that continent. Hilaly himself was once caught in a stolen car driven by someone else. There is loads on this particular "religious leader". Google for news reports yourself. When Muslim men rape women (or other men!) and SAY during the act that they do it for Allah because dhimmi deserve to be raped, don't call the reporter a racist. The Muslim rapists are rapists. P.S. I know they have the same problem in Jordan. Probably elsewhere, as well.
Yeah, the riots in Paris were fomented by… Parisians. They happened to be Muslims, but you want to ignore that inconvenient fact…
1) Your sources come from Abu Dhabi (look carefully). They are not reliable. 2) The Pal involved says that they got the land from the Jordanian govt and provide no other proof of ownership. 3) Do you really think that during the Islamic Ottoman Turkish rule, Jews would have been able to control land and claim ownership if they had no legal ownership? The court is fully justified in evicting land-thieves and denying their claims to ill-gotten property.
Its actually 6.5%. But the apples to apples level of Palestinian ownership by the same standards would be in the 25% range. The MAJORITY of land was unoccupied commons or state land.
Israel is not a religious state. Its a national state.
My, you must have read some very interesting 'history' books. Even the Labour politician and author Yizhar Smilansky, who took part in the 1948 ethnic cleansing operation, managed to acknowledge some of the essential facts in his seminal 1949 novella. I've previously quoted a sentence from it here, but perhaps I should quote it again: 'Another and possibly better option, however, would be to begin differently, and to mention straightaway what had been the purpose of that entire day from the start, “operational order” number such and such, on such and such a day of the month, in the margin of which, in the final section that was simply titled “miscellaneous,” it said, in a short line and a half, that although the mission must be executed decisively and precisely whatever happened, “no violent outbursts or disorderly conduct” — it said — “would be permitted,” which only indicated straightaway that there was something amiss, that anything was possible (and even planned and foreseen), and that one couldn’t evaluate this straightforward final clause before returning to the opening and also scanning the noteworthy clause entitled “information,” which immediately warned of the mounting danger of “infiltrators,” “terrorist cells,” and (in a wonderful turn of phrase) “operatives dispatched on hostile missions,” but also the subsequent and even more noteworthy clause, which explicitly stated, “assemble the inhabitants of the area extending from point X (see attached map) to point Y (see same map) — load them onto transports, and convey them across our lines; blow up the stone houses, and burn the huts; detain the youths and the suspects, and clear the area of ‘hostile forces,’” and so on and so forth — so that it was now obvious how many good and honest hopes were being invested in those who were being sent out to implement all this “burn-blow-up-imprison-load-convey,” who would burn blow up imprison load and convey with such courtesy and with a restraint born of true culture, and this would be a sign of a wind of change, of decent upbringing, and, perhaps, even of the Jewish soul, the great Jewish soul.' –S. Yizhar, Khirbet Khizeh, transl. Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck, with an afterword by David Shulman, Jerusalem: Ibis, 2008, pp. 8-9
Israel is an ethnic fundamentalist or more properly an ethnic monist state. As such, it is a good deal more extreme than Nazi Germany. My blog entry entitled (Revisionist) Zionists Desiring Arabs includes a discussion of ethnic monism.
As for land ownership durring the British mandate period, see their figures here: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/A-Sur... Again, I'm sure the vast majorty of Palestinians would be happy to go back to pre-'48 land holdings.
Of course they would. The losers always want "do overs."
Except for the fact that Jews were there before the Muslims… Take the Nashashibi family for example, they migrated to Jerusalem in 1469 AD, more than 1400 years after the Jews were attacked by Romans. The Nashashibi family, ironically was one of those wealthy families that sold large parcels of land to Jewish immigrants in the mid-late 19th and early 20th centuries. Of course they scammed the Jews out of their money by charging them 10X what the and was worth. Nonetheless the Jewish citizens made the land viable!
Why would they be happy? The Palestinians only owned about 6% according to historical records!
Quoting long strings of irrelevant text do nothing to deny the facts that I presented. Who ever taught YOU to debate? The fact remains: Israel has a large and GROWING Arab population while the Arab world has massacred or expelled all the Jews who lived there for millennia. The Pal Authroity even demanded that the Gaza Strip be given them entirely free of Jews, completely, 100%, even Jewish graves had to be removed. Guess which side really practices ethnic cleansing to this very day?
What about Neta Golan? What about Allegra Pacheco? Two of the more famous Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank? Have they been ex-communicated from their Jewishness because they don't fit your stereotype of good Jewish girls, hanging out with Palestinians as they do. There are numerous Jews in the West Bank who live peacefully alongside Palestinians, and then there are the greater number who live on stolen land in Jewish only enclaves. The fact is that Jewish Israelis who come in friendship to the West Bank are accepted as equals and friends, and those who come thinking themselves as superior are not viewed as friends, and why should they be. It indicates intent. Its funny how the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians doesn't seen to indicate any intent to you., But the removal of less than 10,000 Jews does. Nor does the continual theft of Palestinian land to set up Jewish only enclaves indicate any intent, nor the dual legal system in the Occupied Territories that allows Israel to treat the Jewish settlers in a much more genteel civilian court system, while forcing a punitive military court system on the Palestinians who live in the same area. Why does that not signal intent to you? What a hypocrite you are. If you can't judge Jews and non-Jews by the same rules, then you have no right to a pretense to humanism.
You said, '[i]n 1948, Arabs FLED', and asserted that '[t]hey did so because they had no experience with a Jewish government and fully expected the Jews to do to them what they had been howling they would do to the Jews, i.e. kill everyone'. In 1949 Yizhar Smilansky, who took part in the ethnic cleansing, explicitly acknowledged – in a novella that is regarded by most as one of the masterpieces of 20th-century Hebrew literature – that there were explicit orders to expel the native population, and to destroy their homes, orders that were indeed carried out. I'll give you points for denying the import of Yizhar's novella in rather more succinct terms than Anita Shapira, though.
"So far, all the evidence, INCLUDING THOSE FROM ISLAMIC RULE, demonstrate Jewish ownership." "All the evidence shows that Muslim control routinely practiced (and still practices!) ethnic cleansing" These two sentences don't go together well.
Muhammed Fadlallah, a well known Lebanese cleric, called the 9-11 hijackers mere suicides. Several Lebanese christians carried out suicide attacks on IDF and SLA soldiers. http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2006/12/t... And the Tamil Tigers are Hindu and practiced suicide bombing before any Palestinians, get over it.
Andrew says: "Muhammed Fadlallah, a well known Lebanese cleric, called the 9-11 hijackers mere suicides. " Well, then it's a good thing for those virgin-eating martyrs that they sought religious advice not from Fadlalah from one of the THOUSANDS of IslamFascist sheikhs who support suicide for the glory of Allah! The point remains: sucide-homicide is a peculiarly Islamic practice, invented in the Islamic world, practiced in the Islamic world, glorified in the Islamic world – and now that we live in a global community, available everywhere in OUR world, too.
Andrew, this is simple. Arab landowners in the early 20th century would sell land to Jews and then return, kill the Jewish buyers and move back into the homes they just sold. In Hebron this was practiced repeatedly. Thus the land-ownership records show the correct owner being a Jew, though the trend was to kill and expel Jews. In the late 20th century, the practice modified. Arab land-owners would sell land to Jews, then move (with their big money – they got much more money from Jews for the same property than they would get from Arabs) to Jordan or Syria and bleat to gullible activists like Horowitz and Weiss that the Jews had somehow "stolen" their land. Now that the Pal Authority has imposed the death sentence on any Arabs who sell land to Jews, Arabs have even more incentive to lie and claim that they have been robbed, when in fact they are the robbers. It's not that complicated. All verifiable facts, too. Check it out.