Logic,

I note that you take one sentnce of mine and ignore the rest...unable to refute anything, so you disingenuously "misinterpret" "Jews live very nicely around the world". Now, the only other conclusion to draw is that you haven't an iota of knowledge about life for Palestinians under occupation or those in diaspora. These millions of human beings cannot live "very nicely" either under occupation, in refugee camps and neither are they able to leave. You need to psend at least a week with a Palestinian family in gaza to have some inkling about what they are up against.

The "Jews" who Boaz-David was lamenting the fate of, are not occupied or persecuted...and please enough of 60 years ago; there is no monopoly on suffering. The Palestinians need help NOW , just as the Jews- and others- did in the last war...and there is not a race or religion on earth that has not been persecuted at some time in history.

And Sgarnot, where did I advocate any ethnic cleansing- of Israel or anywhere? Put up or shut up.

Sunisle, when you entertained the question “where will you send the Jews?", it sounded like you support ethnic cleansing. I apologize if I misunderstood.

Strewth,

1) I already said this format is too limited for in-depth discussion. It certainly doesn’t allow for deconstructing a book’s worth of fabrications. Refrain from this game of “I take your failure to challenge” or I will assume you agree with every unchallenged point in every Zionist book from Herzl to Dershowitz.

2) When you thought wrongly that Arabs couldn't buy land in Israel, you called it "Apartheid". Jews really can't buy land in Palestinian-ruled territory. You remain silent on "Palestinian apartheid". Why must Palestine be Judenrein?

3) Re Clinton’s “parameters”, read Dennis Ross’s “The Missing Peace”. I assume you agree with all his points that you don’t specifically challenge.

4) I never said anything about the Palestinians recognizing Israel’s right to exist. Again you make incorrect assumptions about my views.

5) According to the UNSCOP report of August 1947, the Jewish state would have 498,000 Jews and 407,000 Arabs and others -- a 55% Jewish majority. Jewish Jerusalemites were entitled to vote in the Jewish state, raising the practical majority to 60%. It was known that hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees would further increase this majority, and indeed almost 700,000 came within a few years. (And if not for the war, many would have come earlier.) If there had been no 1948 war and no nakba, the Jewish state would still have an immediate and fast-rising Jewish majority, and this would be bolstered by the further waves of immigrants.

6) We disagree about “simple moral facts”. The UN voted to partition the country, which meant Jewish sovereignty would be imposed on an Arab minority and Arab sovereignty would be imposed on a Jewish minority. It isn’t perfect; in politics, nothing is. Arab sovereignty is imposed on minorities without their consent in almost two dozen countries. Jews live as tiny minorities everywhere but in Israel. Arabs can be a minority in a Jewish state. It isn’t a tragedy.

sunisle

I did not take one sentence of yours and ignore the rest. I basically challenged you about your premise that the Palestinians were the indigenous people of the area implying that they had superior rights to be there.

I too feel badly about the plight of the Palestinians but how does their condition give them the moral superiority to preach that the Jewish Israelis all leave? Are the Palestinians in Lebanon doing better? And why do you suggest that the Jews can all simply leave their homeland and live somewhere else and that the Palestinians can not? Why the difference? Why can´t they each develop their separate patch and exist side by side. The Israelis live well in their patch why can the others not do the same?

The simple truth that many cannot face is that there is currently no Islamic nation that is doing well. All blame western imperialism for their problems ignoring the fact that other recently occupied nations are prospering - Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Poland, Hungary to mention a few. Vietnam is moving ahead. India is tipped to be one of the next world powers while Pakistan with an almost identical colonial history is struggling. Indonesia is trying to buck the trend and I wish them success. But they are having to fight terrorist bombs and vicious fundamentalism.

What is wrong with the Muslim nations? Why did the oil rich billionaire Arab Sheiks not help the Palestinian refugees instead of leaving them in squalor? Muslims in this country have shown that they are excellent citizens. The fault is clearly not with Islam but somewhere else.

Logic,

(Which clearly you are not)- "Arab Sheiks" are not dropping bombs from helicopter gunships, shooting from tanks and armoured vehicles, destroying homes and farms with bulldozers,( not to mention murdering people with them too), violating international law and plain murdering people with impunity. ISRAEL IS..so don't put this tragedy on "Arab Sheiks"...and get with the facts...they speak for themsleves.

All the PREVIOUSLY occupied countries you mentioned do not have the IOF thugs persecuting them. Vietnam is recovering from the US atrocities...as one day Palestine will...WHEN THE ISRAELI THUGS START OBEYING INTERNATIONAL LAW.

And I couldn't care less about Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu...IT IS ISRAEL THAT IS THE AGRESSOR- THE RELIGIOUS SECT OF THE PEOPLE THERE IS IRRELEVANT. So, we are talking about Israelis, not Jews....it is absurd and obscene to think that anyone belonging to this religious sect can go to a land they have never even been to and take it- whilst the indigenous people of that land languish in refugee camps.

The thugs from Brooklyn who go to Israel have no more kinship to the land than the man on the moon. Meanwhile, the men and women who have keys to their houses there are prevented by Israel from going home- AGAINST INTERNATIONAL LAW.

A question- do you care about international law?

sunisle

You say "..it is absurd and obscene to think that anyone belonging to this religious sect can go to a land they have never even been to and take it- whilst the indigenous people of that land languish in refugee camps."

If by religious sect you mean Jewish faith do you actually believe that these people have never ever been to Israel and that the names of cities like Jerusalem Bethlehem Nazareth etc are not names of Hebrew origin? And are you denying the existance of the so called Sephardi Jews who arrived with the Muslim Caliphate?

And talking of INTERNATIONAL LAW why did the Palestinians not accept INTERNATIONAL LAW and the UN partition of the British colony of Palestine? And I presume that you exempt the Palestinians who attacked the Jewish citizens in Hebron and elsewhere in defiance of INTERNATIONAL law from the title of thugs.

And by inference I suppose you are suggesting that India was not persecuted by "IOF thugs" whoever they are and Pakistan was, and this explains the difference in prosperity and individual freedom between the two.

And why the reference to "the thugs from Brooklyn", how many of this unexplained group went to Israel and why should they be denied as long as they obey INTERNATIONAL LAW and go to a territory established by INTERNATIONAL LAW which accepted them?

Incidently how do you describe the bombers who murdered 3000 New York citizens and whose efforts were financed and encouraged by a group led by Osama Bin Laden a rather rich member of an aristicratic Saudi Arabian family?

Will you dismiss all of this as Zionist propaganda or would you prefer to blame it on the American imperialists or perhaps the multinationals. Try the communists thay haven´t been blamed for anything for a long time.

sganot:
1)It's OK, why not just say you haven't read 'Apartheid Israel'?
2)If I "thought wrongly" that "Arabs" couldn't buy land in 93% of Israel, demonstrate my 'error', don't just assert it. "Why must Palestine [ie the occupied West Bank] be Judenrein"? Who knows what might be possible if and when the Occupation ends. In a binational state of Israel/Palestine embracing all who presently live between the sea and the Jordan, & those potential citizens currently in exile in refugee camps, all of its citizens could live wherever they choose AS EQUALS. Oops, don't choke on your coffee!
3)Read Dennis Ross, Zionist - what was your word? - "wingnutter" and WINEP-member? Dennis Ross's book is - what was that expression of yours? - "full of fabrications".
4)Diddums.
5)UNSCOP report, eh? There's just one teensy problem: you left out 105,000 Bedouin. 407,000 + 105,000 = 512,000 Palestinian Arabs to 499,000 Jews. Are you sure you're on top of this subject now? "JJerusalemites entitled to vote in the Jewish state"? Cite your source. And those ultra-orthodox, weren't many - gasp - anti-Zionist? Now they'd be itching to vote for Ben-Gurion's mob, wouldn't they? As for the "700,000" that "came within a few years" - uprooted from Iraq, Yemen etc (by covert Zionist campaigns) to take over the homes and lands stolen from the Palestinian refugees, they cannot be imported into a discussion of Palestine in the late 40's. In fact, but for the Zionist conquest of Palestine and the Nakba, they'd most likely still be living in their respective homelands. You lot wanted the land, but its people had to go to accomodate your obsession with ethno-religious exclusivity.
6)The entire anachronistic Zionist project from its inception was predicated on carving a Jewish state for an immigrant population out of a mostly non-Jewish land, two-thirds of whose inhabitants in the late 40's were still non-Jews, AGAINST THE WISHES OF THE MAJORITY OF ITS POPULATION. That was a bad idea from the beginning and we are living with the sorry results today. No, it isn't a tragedy - to you.