# John Ryan

If you consider anything in my article or in my reply to #mac to be fiction - please specify where I have got it wrong.

Israel an apartheid state? With an Arab population in excess of 1 million being 20% of the population and possessing the same voting rights as the Jewish population?

What does that make the 21 Arab states with virtually no population other than Arabs - at last embarking on a revolution to get the same voting rights as the Israeli Arabs? See if you can find a church in Saudi Arabia. Are you prepared to brand these States as being apartheid?

# MaNiK JoSiAh

I am more than happy to answer any reservations you have about my articles. Fire away.

Here is the Singer again, flogging the same dead horse.

Doesn't he realize that the world is changing, that fewer and fewer people accept the Israeli/Jewish propaganda that seeks to whitewash the brutal regime that has held the Palestinians under a crushing, cruel, illegal occupation since 1967?

"By their works ye shall know them."

http://dangerouscreation.com

Response to David Singer's response:

(quote)
1. Hamas breached the ceasefire.

Well, I've seen the contrary stated, _with_ a good deal of supporting detail.
How about you provide appropriate supporting detail (events, dates, etc)?

Incidentally - to respond to some other comment - the editors of OLO
shouldn't reject an article like Singer's out of hand - but they should
at least ensure that a factual issue like this is dealt with accurately,
and if the facts are in dispute, the nature of that dispute should be
made clear.

(quote)
2. Israel's historical claim to the West Bank dates back to biblical times

And the Palestinian refugees' claim is that they and/or their families lived
there continuously until 1948. How can you overlook this and expect to be
taken seriously?

(quote)
Arab claims to self-determination were to be recognized in 99.999% of the
Ottoman Empire lands captured by the British and French in the First World War.

This doesn't help those living in the remaining 0.001%

(quote)
Israel's legal claim is founded in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine
and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Details ?? Including, specifically
(1) where in these documents are the boundaries of a future Jewish state
specified, and what were those boundaries ?
(2) what in those documents authorises (or even suggests) expulsion of the
Palestinians currently living there?
(3) what, precisely, indicates that those documents created legal rights for a
future Jewish state, rather than just suggest the future possibility ?
(4) if these documents legally created a future Jewish state, what was the UN
doing, in 1947, when it was debating the same issue again?

(quote)
The UN Partition Plan was rejected by the Arabs.

It doesn't seem as though the Jews accept it either

continued response to David Singer's response

(quote)
3. Israel will never agree to the Arab right of return as the Jewish National
Home would lose its Jewish majority. To you this may seem unreasonable. To the
Jews it would turn Israel into a 22nd Arab State. The Jewish majority is not
yet prepared to commit suicide.

If this is an appropriate way to consider the issue of two different groups in
a particular region (it's obviously not) you would naturally equally ask why
should the Palestinian majority in the (British-era) Palestine be prepared to
commit suicide?

The fact that you seem to be capable of considering only one of these two
questions and not the other illustrates why I can't take your opinions
seriously.

(quote)
4. Mc Ewan spoke these words - not me.

Yes, I never meant to suggest otherwise.

(quote)
5. Jews were also thrown out of their homes in the West Bank and Gaza in
1947-1948 when they legally lived there.

Yes, and I think that's wrong, too. Do you?

(quote)
The Arabs preferred to keep their
Palesinian Arab brethren in refugee camps for the last 63 years rather than
resettling them within their own countries.

As did their Jewish brethren, their Australian brethren, etc. (Or have I
misunderstood your meaning of the word "brethren"?). Refugee policy is a
separate debate. But for folk who (or their families) came from Israel,
Israel is primarily where they should be allowed to return.

continued response to David Singer's response

(quote)
6. Offering to cede Israel's legal claims in 95% of the West Bank is
remarkable.

If Israel were entitled to all of the West Bank, it would indeed be remarkable.
The question whether Israel is entitled to any of the West Bank is touched on
above.

(quote)
20% of Israel's population of over 7 million are Arabs. You might tell me how
many Jews now live in the 21 Arab nations.

I don't know. If you think it's relevant to any of the above you're welcome to
tell me.

If there were Jews who were expelled from these countries and
continue to be excluded, but who want to return, and if I were denying that
such people should be allowed to return, then this would be a pertinent
debating point. As it is, it's not.

#David G

The world certainly is changing - especially the Arab world - as over 100 million Arabs try to overthtow 40 years of despotism and autocratic rule in an attempt to gain the right to elect their leaders in free and fair elections.

Seems to me that what they are prepared to die for is very much like the rights Israeli Arabs have enjoyed for the last 63 years.

The West Bank Arabs made their democratic choice in 1950 to unify the West Bank and East Jerusalem with Jordan and become Jordanian citizens. Unification was enjoyed by them until 1967 and Jordanian citizenship was theirs until 1988.

They are now certainly entitled to press for their own state - but 17 years of failed negotiations make it fairly clear this is not going to happen. The parties are simply too far apart in achieving a negotiated settlement.

Is the risk of another war and ongoing death and suffering by both Jews and Arabs worth the continuing effort to create an independent state that was rejected by these selfsame Arabs in 1937, 1947, between 1948-1967, and in 2001 and 2007?

I might be flogging a dead horse - but in the case of the West Bank Arabs the horse has already bolted. The opportunities created between 1937-2007 are not likely to return.