Logic and Sganot....

don't you guys 'yet' see the problem ?

Sunisle mentions 'INTERNATIONAL LAW'

Strewn mentions 'AS EQUALS' and reconsructs the numbers to fit his scenario etc....

History and common sense tell us that 'as equals' is probably the most naive of all statements when it comes to Muslims and Non Muslims
which include Orthodox and plain 'religious' Jews.

Strewns comment totally ignores (OR ...is it skilfully camoflages) the Hamas Charter of TOTAL "Islamic" (not 'Arab') control of the whole area.

In each case where you folk are arguing from numbers or international law, you are disputing the other parties view,sources,facts, and are spinning them to suit your own desired outcome.

I repeat, does it surprise you that I rest on the side of ethno/Religious cleansing ?

Do you REALLY believe that you can persuade the other side to adopt your view ?

When Sunisle and Strewn goto Redfern, contact the senior Aboriginal Elders (or to Fitzroy if Melbourne) and indicate that they have now vacated their property, which is to be returned to the 'rightful' owners, (but they will continue paying the mortgage) because truly Indigenous people of Australia have the same rights not to be 'occupied' as Arab Palestinians.....then their chirpings and mutterings might have some credibility.

After Jesus had fed the 5000, and then the 4000 he asked "Do you not yet understand"? (They were worried about 'not having bread').... so interestingly, the next thing Jesus does is heal a 'BLIND' man.
'What do you see' He asked "I see men, like trees walking" i.e. BLURRED.
Do you guys see trees or men ?

sunisle, cc: Logic,

If “no Islamic nation …is doing well", it isn’t because of Israel! Even if one accepts your hopelessly one-sided analysis about the violence in Israel/Palestine, this only explains the condition of about 0.5% of Muslims. What about the other 99.5%? In truth, the violence goes in both directions, and like most Muslims, most Israelis come a background of recent liberation from colonization, occupation, enslavement, and worse, but Israel is doing much better than the Palestinians who were offered independence simultaneously.

Re "thugs from Brooklyn", you clearly don't know Israelis. Few are from the USA, fewer from Brooklyn, and still fewer are “thugs”. One researcher found that there are four times as many Israelis in the USA as Americans in Israel. (I think he underestimates the imbalance.) If indigenous people are to return to their native lands, far more will go from the US to Israel than from Israel to the US!

You don't seem to get that Israel is the Jewish homeland. Like many countries throughout the world (Armenia, China, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Japan, Poland, Spain, and Taiwan, to name a few), we have a special relationship with a diaspora population, and this is partly expressed in preferential treatment re immigration and acquisition of citizenship. This is quite legal, and very much the international norm. If the Palestinians ever accept the independence they’ve been offered, their state too will have a discriminatory "Law of Return", and they’ll bring “thugs” from Brooklyn, Beirut, and Brisbane who weren't born here, have never seen the land, and have no more kinship to it than the man on the moon.

Strewth,

You and Davis tend to conflate JNF land with all of Israel. The JNF was founded to buy and prepare land for Jewish settlement, and acts as a kind of Jewish “wakf”. It doesn’t sell land to anyone, Jew or non-Jew. The Supreme Court recently ruled that because of the JNF’s special relationship with the state, its land-allocation policy is unfairly discriminatory. But the JNF only owns 13% of Israeli land.

Continued…

Sunisle said:

*Thugs from Brooklyn have no more connection with the land than the man on the moon*....

Sun.. mate.. do you want to put money on that ? how about a million ? :)

Step 1
Goto New York of even Melbourne, Sydney ..anywhere in fact, and look up the phone book and find the 2 names "Levi" and "Cohen". There are plenty.
Step 2 Learn some Judaism and Jewish culture, and discover that both these names have been preserved biologically/Genetically all the way down history from Aaron, brother of Moses. (i.e. direct connection)

Step 3 Goto Jordan, and then take a guided tour to PETRA where you will find.. wait for it... sit down... AARONS TOMB.

The promise from God to Abraham concerning the land was carried through to Aaron/Moses and confirmed time and time again.

So, with all due respect, these biological descendants to the land have a pretty good claim no matter where they happen to be currently.

SOLUTION TO MIDDLE EAST version 3
(Sunisles version... as I understand it)

Your view is (correct me if I'm wrong)

a) Palestinians be allowed to return to land/homes they fled from (or were driven from, depending on which history u read).
b) Israelies currently living on this land should be kicked off and sent who knows where.
c) Israel then becomes 'Palestine' with a large population of Jews and Arab Muslims.
d) They will all now live in harmony because "they should".
e) They will never squabble over resources, water, farmable land etc, nope..they will just have a quiet talk and work it out.
f) Hamas will magically disappear along with their 'Charter'.
g) Jerusalem will have lions,lambs and maybe a few Squirrels lying down together at Temple Mount, and the Orthodox Jews will simply 'change their minds' about 3000 yrs of Jewish heritage.
h) The UN, Humanist society, and Left wing Political groups and you will pat them all on the head, -peace now reigns.

PROBLEM SOLVED (?)

Do you see any difficulty with this... maybe just a tad like a dream ?

Goodness, what a waste of time this is...it is impossible to talk facts and rationale to 1. a person who refers to a book written thousnads of years ago by men wandering around in a desert.....so what if a person from New York has a name like Cohen...Does that mean tha all the Davies', Thomas' and Owen-Bennetts' from around the world can go to Wales and expel the people living there and take their land?

2.a person who goes on and on about being Jewish...smooish...who cares? Get over it...it isn't important....humanity is.

Get with the plot...this is about intertnational law and human beings in need becasue they are occupied by other human beings.

I have had a busy day( and worthwhile) at work and feel that you do need to get real...can't be bothered to keep stating the facts...they obviously mean nothing to you...oh, and the constant prattle about biblical times- can all the Papadopolous', Hatzianisis' etc around the world now go and take homes from the people living in Greece? - Because Homer wrote about it years ago?

And the person vilifying milllions of human beings he/she does not know becasue they are Arab/Muslim/ Palestinian , racism is for the ignorant.

On the argument between Sunisle and Boaz re ethnicity: have either of you read Arthur Koestler's book "The Thirteenth Tribe" (not sure of the date, lost my copy). Koestler said that Ashkenazi Jews are probably not semitic at all, (therefore had never set foot in Palestine) but instead were the scattered descendants of the Khazar kingdom whose king had converted to Judaism - and all his subjects had to follow suit - in order to avoid an awkward choice between Islam and Christianity. When invaded later these non-Semitic Jews fled north, to what is now East Europe,populating what became the Jewsih ghettoes of the cities. Perhaps some of you scholars know more than I do, but given the accuracy of genetic testing these days, this would be an easy way of resolving the ethnicity debate. I won't hold my breath, but until Koestler is proved wrong I have the right to question Boaz's arguments about ancient bloodlines etc. In short, the Levis and Cohens are probably no more pure than the rest of us, and all this may explain why many Israelis have fair hair and blue eyes. This may seem like a minor quibble but since being able to prove that you are "Jewish" gives you the right to migrate to someone else's land, and exclusive rights to own it, the matter is of more than academic interest.

sunisle

You keep claiming that you are talking about facts.

One of the principal facts which you claim is that the Arab Palestinians are the indigenous inhabitants. This is clearly not so. They were certainly the majority when the first Eastern European immigrants arrived at the beginning of the 19th century but never indigenous. Arriving immigrants from Europe did not have guns and purchased their land. This sort of thing happened in Wales, in France, in Taiwan and elsewhere often without the support of the majority. Nevertheless in these other countries they all moved on.

If we use your logic Australia would allow only the aborigines and people of British and Irish descent. The Arab, Lebanese and Turkish immigrants would certainly have to go as they were not represented on the first fleet or in early colonial times.

In Egypt the Arabs would now have to leave as the Copts and perhaps some of the Jews were well in evidence long before invading Arab armies arrived and have been there ever since. In fact they have been treated badly and encouraged to leave.

Also you quote International law. A UN resolution partitioned the British colony called Palestine into two sections. In violation of International law the surounding people started a campaign of terror intending to "throw the Jews into the sea." The Jews defended themselves successfully and later did the same against invading foreign armies from outside the Palestine area who attemted to illegally invade the UN accepted state of Israel, hardly in accordance with International law. This is not to say that Israel has not also violated International law

I am not at all happy with the way Israel is prosecuting its defence at the moment and there I could find myself often agreeing with you but at least there are demonstrations against the Israeli goverment actions in Israel itself. I would like to see a similar action in Gaza but am not sure that public demonstrations for peace with Israel are very accepted there.