Larry... speaking as a Christian.. I don't see any skeric of 'Christian claim' to Jerusalem. The only thing of significance to us, is the connection with the history of the Israelites, and the particular geographical places of interest. But 'claim' ? not a chance.
The primary "claim" has to be for the Jews.. Israel.. because whether you accept it or not, it was established by G-D. If the Old Testament says anything, it says this 'on turbo'.

We all know the history of the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in AD70ish, so if we want to find a 'villain' why not make a class action against the current "Roman" government in Italy ?

After that great crime against humanity, various others came in on the coat tails of the Muslim invaders, so.. they were basically in receipt of stolen property/land. Living on stolen land is one thing, keeping it against the determined efforts of the original owner is another -As the Palestinians have discovered.

Now.. in the Australian context, I suppose you would begrudge the Aboriginals from taking it back if they could ? Personally I would not. The problem is.. we are simply too overwhelmingly powerful.
They have the high moral ground in the strict legal sense..we do not.

The Jews have the high moral ground in re-claiming stolen land, and they HAVE military clout to back it up.

Some here don't share my view of history and try to justify the establishment in piecemeal legal ways. (Logic is one) To me.. its really simple. If you have the basic claim, and the clout.. its yours. But that claim is meaningless apart from the promises of G-D, otherwise all claims are relative to purely human factors.

Even on that score I'd have to say the Jews win, approx 1400 yrs continuous (except for 2 exiles) presense, interrupted only be a Roman land grab. Then Muslim terrorists invaded, and so forth.
Jews are now saying "Our turn....again." and I say.. 'all power to them'.

The most compassionate response to Palestinian suffering is complete removal, relocation and compensation.

I don't support the Boaz view but when it comes to a historic claim on Jerusalem, everyone knows it was the Jewish city with the Temple. The Christian claim is not very strong. The Islam religious claim is very tenuous.

Jerusalem is not mentioned directly in the Q'uran. The reference is to a distant city which some scholars argue is not Jerusalem. The visit by Muhammad to Jerusalem (?), if that is where it occurred is a fabled account which modern rationalists cannot believe.

Muslims have made it a holy place to them and have built (converted a Church to) a Mosque on the site where archaeologists consider the ancient temple was. They also have built on the site one of the finest buildings of all time, the Dome of the Rock which effectively stymies any building of a new temple.

Other than these religious buildings the only real claim Muslims can logically have to Jerusalem is the structures built by the Turks during their long occupation and the time some of them spent there. Israel has guaranteed the diverse holy sites and allowed the various faiths to visit them and worship them. They are the only administration which has done this.

Notice that there are not many Commentaries condemning Israel's right to possess atomic artillery, which is the main political danger now in the Middle East, because it is causing Iran to become even more dangerous. And which means that Iran lawfully has the right of protection.

The position has not only proven the UN as useless but the US which pretty well gave consent for Israel to go militarily nuclear - as a law-breaker

Now because Pax Americana as our unipolar global commander still agrees to Israel having become a dangerous viperous atomic state next to non nuclear states - George Bush similar to Richard Nixon must be due for impeachment.

If the world public is asking for scientific reasoning rather than religious decisionmaking, the above is surely it.

As do others, I get hugely frustrated and angry with Israel's bloody own-foot shooting, and the "My country right or wrong" types are simply appalling. But Lowenstein is a Grade A divisive creep, who should be given no time whatsoever. He uses the word "Zionist" in the same derogatory and meaningless way that American Protestants (used to?) use the word "Jew".

Extract from 1994 article in "Australian Jewish Democrat":

...it will be enough here to venture the notion that since the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, at least three Zionisms have been abroad. These may be labelled Zionisms A, B and Bl, the first having positive connotations and the other two negative.

Zionism A is the legitimate national independence movement of the sorely-tried Jewish people, which expressed itself in the creation — admittedly (sometimes) at Arab expense — of the state of Israel after the Holocaust and the Second World War. It is a powerful but benign influence in Jewish communal affairs.

On the other hand, Zionism B is an ugly outgrowth of colonialism; it is an ethnocentric Jewish movement which has expelled tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from their homeland and has denied civil, political and land rights to those who remained. Except as a cynical Zionist A argument, the Holocaust has almost no significance.

Zionism Bl, the other negative Zionism, is that of the traditional antisemites of the British National Front, the Australian League of Rights and similar bodies. Here, Zionism is seen as a modern manifestation of the eternal Jewish drive to world domination through both capitalism and socialism. The Holocaust, if it happened at all, was a thoroughly understandable gesture of irritation on the part of Christendom. One of the best known of the sacred texts of these groups, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", originally a Tsarist Russian concoction, was widely used by the German Nazis as a school textbook. It has since been republished in a number of Arab countries…

Jews are naturally inclined to identify with Zionism A, even if numbers of them may not agree with particular policies and actions of the Israeli government or of local Zionist organisations. Whether members of "real" Zionist bodies or not, their feelings for the continued existence of Israel as an identifiable Jewish state are strong, and they tend to see themselves as Zionists — even if only in this limited sense. The right of Israel to exist is never in question.

Larry: you obviously haven't been up to date with your reading. My most recent article in The Engage Journal (February 2007) (www.engageonline.org.uk) explicitly distinguishes between two staters, and anti-Zionist fundamentalists (See below a citation).

Any true moderate has to critique extremists from both sides. The problem with many on the Left is that they attack Israeli extremists and their local supporters, and completely neglect Palestinian extremists and the local apologists.

Philip

"As I have argued elsewhere in relation to the academic boycott of Israel debate, pro-Israel groups have had some success in targeting elite groups in Australian society. However, many grassroots activists are more sympathetic to the Palestinian narrative rather than the Israeli narrative. It is evident that campaigns based solely on defending all Israeli actions or at least all current Israeli Government policies are not working, or at least are not convincing many non-elite groups in the community.

Arguably there is a case for adopting both new lobbying content and new lobbying strategies based on incorporating a wider range of perspectives, and a more diverse group of advocates. Pragmatic alliances with sympathetic leftists who support Israel’s right to exist (irrespective of their views on specific Israeli policies) are essential for any broad defense of the State of Israel".