To Giovanni della Mirandola (Part 2)

The Churchill White Paper did make clear that where the words "in Palestine" were used in the Mandate they did not mean "all of Palestine". Churchill was forced to do this when he had to appease the French by giving 78% of the territory slated for the Jewish National Home to Emir Abdullah who was on the way to help his brother out in Damascus with an armed force of 300 supporters. This vast slab of Palestine originally designated for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home was instead to become an exclusive Arabs only state today called Jordan.

Thank you for sending the link to the article which you sent to support your statement that "Israel does not claim sovereignty over the West Bank (see Haaretz, today, as just one reference)."

The article says nothing of the sort.

Be prepared to substantiate any statement you make by referring to the precise source you use - not just a general reference to a text book but the actual page.

Generalities are a waste of time and space

Ron, I have read your article several times -I have no desire to attack you or support you, just to state my reaction to your article on Sand's book.

Surely all that you are, all that you have achieved and all that you have lost comes from your Jewish/life experience - not just your, personal journey - also the respective journey's of your family members including those who were murdered by the Nazi's.

You have spoken so openly about your life as a Jew and conveyed a sense of bewilderment with those experiences. I find what you have communicated to be utterly sad and wonder if you feel the grief which must be there when one comes to believe that ones identity is a lie. Or is it that Sand's book provides you with the 'academic' proof you need to justify the position you took before reading it?

Are you saying that one book, written by one man has brought you to this place? It appears that he is now your God, you identify with him - he is now your people. You have at last found a way to opt out of the responsibility of being Jewish, now you can metaphorically return to playing war games but this time minus the childhood confusion and pain,I think you are still in hiding.

How can you or anyone talk of Palestine without talking about Hamas? It is Hamas who govern Palestine and they are sworn to kill every Jew on the face of the earth! I think Israeli's have 15 seconds? after the siren sounds to find shelter before a bomb hits - you cant even microwave an egg in that time How can any Australian with our history of mistreatment of the Indigenous people of this land dare to throw stones at Israel and to do so with passionate consistency? Perhaps in this way we get to feel better about our selves - as we place our sins on the goat and send him out into the desert of Israel.
K.

To Rose Anon

The first time the Palestinians are mentioned is in the 1964 PLO Charter.

They define themselves in the following terms:

"Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation."

Being Arabs and being an integral part of the Arab nation - can you please explain what constitutes their distinct identity that sets them apart from the rest of their Arab brethren?

Mr. Singer,

Thank you for your response.

To your concerns about specifics and generalities, and in regards to your specific question, I would only repeat what I explicitly said as well as tried to implicitly convey, through brevity, in my previous comment: I am not interested in discussing this issue at length in this extremely limited forum as it, in my view, proves unfruitful. The pay-off of voice exposure for time invested is limited, and efficiency is everything.

I would also add that you seem to make the same mistake as that of which you accuse me by making specific claims with little documentation or support. The difference is that I admittedly have engaged in nothing scholarly in this debate, while you seem to maintain that you have. Were either of our arguments to be placed in front of any sort of academic review, I can assure you they would be laughed at.

After having looked around at your extensive list of opinion pieces I have to conclude that you are of the Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Brigette Gabriel, and Glenn Beck type when it comes to making an argument. A quick Google search, maybe a random statement taken out of context, and -‘voila!’- you have academic proof. I had a particularly good time reading your recent Six Day War article and then referring to your “source.” And I had thought Michael Oren’s account was slightly biased.

I will simply conclude that many of the things you assert as fact are simply analyses, obviously biased ones that align with your own “Palestine is Jordan” ideology. If you were to look in any truly scholarly account of the creation of Jordan, such as those of Beverly Milton Edwards, Richard Held, Fred Halliday, Albert Hourani, and Phillip Hitti, just to name a few, you would probably find overwhelming divergence from your point of view. I would say your misrepresentation of the fact is slightly frustrating, but that would just be wasted emotive language.

With respect.

To Giovanni della Mirandola

As I said in my last post:

"Be prepared to substantiate any statement you make by referring to the precise source you use - not just a general reference to a text book but the actual page.

Generalities are a waste of time and space"

You apparently are not going to rise to the challenge. That is your prerogative. Readers will make their own judgement.

Perhaps you might still like to answer this question which is posed to you for a third time:

"No people with a distinct identity lived in Palestine. As I pointed out Jews, Moslems and Christians lived there. What distinct identity do you claim this population shared other than the same postal address? How would you compare their identity to say the Kurds or the Copts?"

I hope when you answer the question you give some specific authority to support your claim.

David,

you need to do your own research. I'm not going to waste my time, as you clearly do, on this website . . with poorly referenced materials and hand picked excerpts some of which are out of date.. Reading some of your arguments are pretty amazing.

Maybe you can invest in travelling to the region and finding out for yourself? Maybe you can make friends with someone Palestinian who can show you around both areas?

As Mr Giovanni pointed out to you above, that’s the thing with academia. You need to take the body of text not just excerpts. Likewise, you can’t put ‘Arab’s’ in a box and call them all the same and try and use that as a ticket to kick them out of that region. Explain to me how Europeans all have distinct and separate identities? (dumb huh)

If it appeared that you were at all interested in understanding a different view from your own, I would be willing to help you, (and I would have liked that) but you are clearly entrenched in a particular ideological bias and even if we showed you the sun, you would disagree it existed and cite an outdated text that claimed otherwise. Therefore I will use my time in something more productive in the future than reading from you.

The sad thing is that, you’re clearly passionate about this topic, yet you choose to subscribe to extremist ideologies, which are not helpful. Your ‘Jordan is Palestine’ approach and approach of ‘these people don’t exist’ is kind of a waste. No one who knows this region and topic (unless they are an extremist such as yourself) will listen to you, and clearly the UN is not buying it.

I trust one day you will be enlightened through either your own research or experience