yvonne

You still miss the point. Perhaps you don't want to accept it. Jews and Christians and others forced out of Muslim lands have the same right to live in the middle east as Muslims. They cannot go back to their homelands because of the incredible anti Dhimmi bias, that is why they had to leave.

There is a conflict in rights here between the Muslim Middle Easterners who want their homes back and the Jewish Middle Easterners who want their rightful freedoms. The Islamic states are practicing a restriction on religious freedom which is unacceptable in the modern world.

You write "We're discussing a Jewish nation here. Not just a democratic nation." So it is OK to have a Muslim nation or a Christian nation but not a Jewish nation. And an 8th generation Jewish person has the same rights rights to live where their (great great great great great) grandparents lived as a non-Jewish person. The problem is that the Muslims denied them their rights.

And your view that the situation in Israel is the threat to the world shows a complete misunderstanding of Islamic fundamentalism. There is a powerful minority in the area which would not stop at Israel. What was the Bali bombing about? Have you forgotten that already?

Unfortunately they control the world's major oil reserves. I expect that you drive a car, buy plastic products and imported goods brought here on oil fired ships. They could create havoc in their wishes to make us all Muslims.

Israel has been made a focus, it is not the real issue. The world made such a mistake once before with a dictatorial movement.

Logic

I doubt anyone would accept a comparison between Arab countries and Nazi Germany. Maybe the dictatorships in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria have some common aspects but none are occupying, laying claim to or stealing other country's territory, as Nazi Germany did.
But you are tending toward racism when you make in the same breath representations about dictatorial movements, all Arab people, all Arab Governments, and terrorists minorites without specifying exactly which you think is dictatorial or like Nazi Germany.

Steve

Show me the map of Barak's claimed final proposal. I am well aware of all the others Arafat rejected.

God you are so authoratitive and a stand-over merchant in showing you can decide what the Arab world wants and doesn't want. How do you know they are not serious about the 2002 peace offer? Why can't you accept it as genuine? Surely it has got to be as genuine as those biased and blatantly provocative Israeli proposals that would have seen the creation of a bantu-stan Palestine and much of the remaining Palestinian land available to be stolen by the Israelis. Did they really think Arafat or any Palestinian would tolerate the suggestion they weren't entitled to large tracts of their own and would have to negotiate them away?

Absolutely stupendous arrogance.

And you seem to be clinging grimly and rather bravely to the attitudes that allowed those disgracedful proposals to be regarded as reasonable. The ionly real objection anyone has is over the resettlement of refugees. That is surely open to negotiation. Borders aren't.

It's time to drop the prejudices and change your attitudes Steve. The rest of the world are changing.

Keith I was taken by your comment;
“but none are occupying, laying claim to or stealing other country's territory, as Nazi Germany did”

I think your forgetting :
-That a large chunk of Kurdish lands have been ‘re-settled’ with Iraqi Arabs- in recent times ( including the most oil rich areas).
- The Berber in north Africa have lost land & status to invading Arabs ( & continue to suffer)
-The Turkmen minorities are increasingly loosing land & identity to the majority Arabs
-The original inhabitants of Egypt were not the Arabs who currently dominate the country
- The Jewish tribes that inhabited the Saudi peninsula in pre-Islamic times have now been extinguished & their lands stolen.

Just because trendy left wing academics & journalists in the west don’t want to talk about it, & the Arab media are not allowed to talk about it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…

Though you are right in one respect -the Arabification of minorities through the Middle East is not the same as Nazi Germanys invasions -it’s been far more enduring & extensive

keith

Shows how superficially you read these posts!

I never referred to all Arab people and Governments as being terrorists or anything of the sort. I simply referred to the way the world ignored the Nazi threat to its cost and that so many people are now ignoring the entirely different but also dangerous threat of Islamic fundamentalism. This movement also worries Muslims, and the Indonesians have expressed their concerns.

Lebanon, once a majority Christian country is now, due to pressure on Christians, predominantly Muslim. Many people think that the same is intended for Israel. Having pushed nearly a million Jews out of their ancestral homes these refugees are understandably concerned that there is now a threat to take over Israel and push them out of there.

My point is that it is morally bankrupt to criticise the loss of homeland to Muslims and not show equal concern for Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims.

Regarding the influx of European Jews this was accompanied by the introduction of modern agriculture enabling the land to support the extra population, putting no additional ecological strain on the area, in fact extensive planting of forests has improved the environment.

If Israel had not been there do you really think that the Palestinians with their present agricultural techniques could have supported their rapidly expanding numbers, or that the Shia and Sunni would not have been killing each other? The Arab world has to modernize or die, this has nothing to do with Israel which occupies such a tiny proportion of the available land.

Sounds harsh, but it is reality, something which has never been a strong point in the tax payer funded sheltered workshop of the academic left.

Yvonne: "I’m fascinated by sganot’s authorative take on my view on Jewish history."

Authoritative take? I just said we disagree.

Yvonne: "Perhaps you didn’t like the issue I raised in the last paragraph, which made you dismiss it."

I didn't dismiss anything. As I said, the last paragraph just seemed unrelated to what you wrote earlier, and I didn't understand what point you were trying to make. I still don't.

Yvonne: "...everything that is happening on that piece of land... are precisely because Jewish people want a homeland which is amongst a greater majority who are not Jewish."

I disagree.

1) Not everything has one particular cause.

2) The Jewish people have a homeland, and it has a Jewish majority. It would be surrounded by non-Jews regardless of where it is located. So what? Even the Chinese homeland is surrounded by an area where "a greater majority" is non-Chinese.

Yvonne: "We're discussing a Jewish nation here. Not just a democratic nation."

Israel is a Jewish state and a democracy. There is no contradiction – many democracies have particular national/cultural/historical/linguistic/religious/etc. identities. "Jewish nation" is a different term, not synonymous with the State of Israel, and includes Jews everywhere.

Yvonne: "it is disingenuous to suggest that the territory settled was not occupied by a people who also have a claim."

I never said otherwise.

Yvonne: "Here in Australia we have come away from the historical rationalization of ‘an empty land waiting to be settled by productive people’."

Very nice, but Australia remains on the map, with a population descended mostly from European immigrants. And many Palestinians also seem to want to occupy Israel, as if it were an empty land, unoccupied by others.

Yvonne: "Maybe the rest of the world then just needs to wait until one side runs out of cash."

This idea might only work in some theoretical situation where the two sides were isolated from the rest of the world. But they're not, and they really cannot be.

Happy Passover and Good Easter to all who celebrate.

Keith, cc: Logic, Horus

1) When Syria demands the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, it lays claim to Israeli territory.

2) Syria is not occupying, laying claim to or stealing other country's territory? Ask the Lebanese.

3) Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria all have border disputes with neighboring countries.

4) None of the above makes them comparable to Nazi Germany.

5) Your message to me is little more than personal insult and a restatement of questions already answered. Like Arafat and everyone else, you and I are entitled to our opinions about Israeli and American peace proposals. Same thing with the Arab League’s plan. We all have our views about what is disgraceful and what is reasonable. I’ve already explained my specific objections to the Arab League plan.

Is it serious? If the Arab League accepts Israel’s offer to meet, discuss it, and start negotiations, that might be an indication of seriousness. As a “take it or leave it” offer, it isn’t serious, and will end up in the dustbin of history.

In the past, Arab states that wanted to make peace and to compromise on various maximalist demands had difficulty doing so alone. Likewise, some Palestinians (at times including Arafat) have indicated that while they desired various compromises, their Arab and/or Muslim brothers prevented such steps. Thus, a group framework such as the Arab League could provide the support that each Arab leader needs to make peace. I hope so. But the Arab League cannot force an agreement that either Israel or the Palestinians reject.

Keith: “The ionly real objection anyone has is over the resettlement of refugees. That is surely open to negotiation. Borders aren't.”

You don’t know (in both cases). The Arab League says neither is negotiable. The Oslo agreements demand a negotiated solution regarding both. The fact is that in previous negotiations, both sides were open to border adjustments and variations from the Green Line. Israel says that the solution to the Palestinian refugee problem must be found in a Palestinian state and/or the host countries, not in Israel – a position I support.