Why doesn't Israel have a right to exist?

[Coito ergo sum]

I suppose Israel has no right to exist, since it was only established when many of its citizens rose up, seized the land and formed their own government.

By that logic the US has no right to exist. Neither does the People's Republic of China. Or the French republic, for that matter - hell they cut off their sovereign ruler's head! And how about Germany? The German republic as we know it today was established only after the nation that the Germans themselves established was conquered and occupied. The list goes on for quite a while...

Or... maybe a nation has a right to exist once other recognize that right, whether they happen to like the reality of it or not.

Give it back to the First Nations this instant, you invader and mass murtherer.
And the French republic gained its right to exist when the legitimate Capetian line died with the Duke of Bordeaux, grandson to Charles X.

That's what "they" want you to think. It was really a backroom deal that only those with inside knowledge know anything about.

[Beatsong]

In case gawd doesn't see this, I'll take that position.

Israel has no right to exist because they set themselves up as a state on a territory that wasn't theirs in the first place...

The territory "in the first place" - ie immediately before the creation of Israel - was the British Mandate of Palestine. And it was the British' own plan - developed since 1917 and formulated in cooperation with the international community - to eventually cede control of it and divide it into two sovereign states along ethnic/religious lines. The jews accepted that plan; the Arab League didn't and chose to wage war and try to invade. If you want to complain about people not respecting the wishes of the owners of a territory, you should surely address that complaint to the Arab League and the Palestinians.

There seems to be a widespread myth about the formation of Israel that sees the jews as just setting up shop willy nilly on the country that was "Palestine". This is just ignorance - such a country never existed.

[Coito ergo sum]

+100

[laklak]

Israel has a right to exist because they have the military strength to ensure their continued survival, and more importantly, the political will to use it. Rights grow from a gun barrel, full stop. If the Arabs ever get their shit together to the point they can take out Israel (and us, if we honor our promises to them) then they'll have a right to the land. Until then, too fucking bad.

[Rob]

That wasn't the case for Israel in 1947, was it? After 1947, I would imagine an open immigration policy ought to be Israel's business, no?

To be fair, Israel, through their attentions in Britain, managed to have immigration policies go in their favor. Even after the few brief eruptions of violence(under British control of course) where they reduced immigration as a direct result of, soon immigration was swung wide open again. When the idea of a homeland for Jews was moved from a religious ideal to a political ideal, somewhere around 1907 I think. I forget his name, started with a T, wrote a book and this started a movement that eventually resulted in the formation of Israel. If I remember correctly originally he had lobbied in England for a swath of land to call home to Israel and they gave offered Uganda(or some other African nation starting with a U, pretty sure it was Uganda) which a coalition of Jews turned down.

Edit - At this point I looked in my books for a quick refresher.

THeodor Herzl wrote the book and eventually went through with the Uganda proposal to attempt to have that as an eventual location for a Jewish homeland(though at the time it was expressed it was not permanent). The Zionist council turned it down and eventually Britain gave them the Balfour Declaration

My point is that it was a travesty that Israel formed in the lands that were Palestine. They had an opportunity to go elsewhere, though I realize there would be problems with whatever area they went to. Additionally, Coito, considering the ratios of people that were living within the borders of Palestine when Israel formed(yes I realize Palestine was never an actual state, I am calling it this for ease) there had to be, and there were many Palestinians displaced. I can't find the book that delves into this but as I remember it there were equal number of Jews and Palestinians living in what was to be Israel(this does not account for those who lived outside of the borders of Israel in Palestine). You can rest assured, there were thousands upon thousands of displaced Palestinians.

We really have the English to blame for Israel and their Balfour Declaration. Despite what I consider to be an injustice to a large population of people, the question of the right to exist is meaningless. It doesn't matter if someone thinks Israel has a right to be there; they are there. As such anyone who thinks they shouldn't exist should get over themselves and deal with reality.

[Coito ergo sum]

My point is that it was a travesty that Israel formed in the lands that were Palestine.

Why? There were Jews living there.

Palestine was never a country. It was a region. That's all. From 1453 to 1917 it was part of the Ottoman Empire. After that, it was part of the British Mandate for Palestine. There were no Palestinians - ever. They were Arabs. That's all. There was no Jordan. There as no Lebanon. There was no Syria. There was no Iraq. None of those countries existed, ever.

They had an opportunity to go elsewhere, though I realize there would be problems with whatever area they went to. Additionally, Coito, considering the ratios of people that were living within the borders of Palestine when Israel formed(yes I realize Palestine was never an actual state, I am calling it this for ease) there had to be, and there were many Palestinians displaced. I can't find the book that delves into this but as I remember it there were equal number of Jews and Palestinians living in what was to be Israel(this does not account for those who lived outside of the borders of Israel in Palestine). You can rest assured, there were thousands upon thousands of displaced Palestinians.

The vast majority of "displaced" ARABS (there were no Palestinians prior to the formation of Israel), left when the Arabs invaded Israel in 1947 and 48. They blew out, hoping to follow the tanks back in after Israel was destroyed, only it wasn't.

All the Jordanians and Syrians and Iraqis "could have gone elsewhere..." Why is it incumbent on the Jews to go, and not the Muslims?

We really have the English to blame for Israel and their Balfour Declaration. Despite what I consider to be an injustice to a large population of people, the question of the right to exist is meaningless. It doesn't matter if someone thinks Israel has a right to be there; they are there. As such anyone who thinks they shouldn't exist should get over themselves and deal with reality.

To "blame" for Israel? We also have the Brits to blame for Jordan and Iraq too. And, we have the French to blame for Lebanon.

Israel has just as much right to exist as the fucking Muslim countries. Lots of Jews and Christians were expelled from Syria and Jordan, and huge swaths of Christians were booted out of Lebanon.

[Rob]

Coito, I know you can read. I explicitly said that I know there never has been a state with the name of Palestine. I was using it as a name for a nameless people as they have in turn called themselves. I find it easier to call people by their desired name.

I was trying to point out that the pressure the Jewish community used on Britain is a direct result of the problem you see in the Middle East. They could have gone elsewhere when Herlz proposed Uganda(which would of meant less conflict) but they rejected it in a desire for a religious return to their homeland.

Citations for the statement about your perceived displacement of Arab peoples whose homes were in modern day Israel? If I can find my misplaced book I can get you citation(horrible time for my book to go missing)

And yes to blame. If you are not ignorant of the Jewish efforts to complete a religious return of Jerusalem and are aware of the historic events leading up to the formation of Israel(and beyond) then you can quite clearly see the English are to blame. And yes I say the English people are to blame as well as the Jewish people for what I see as an unethical expulsion of PALESTINIANS(or Arabs if you must). And yes, I find it unethical every time it happens. Muslims were unethical in their treatment of Christians in the above mentioned examples. Americans were unethical in the treatment of Native Americans.

[laklak]

Plenty of blame to go around. The Belgians for the fucking mess in the Congo(s), the Dutch and English for South Africa, the English for Nigeria, the Germans for Namibia, the French for Niger and Dahomey, the Portuguese for Mozambique and Angola. The Spanish and Portuguese for Central and South America. Go back far enough and blame the Chinese for Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. A bit further and it's the goddamned Rift Valley Africans fault for the whole lot of us.

But the worst, by far, is the blame the English bear for the U.S.A. It's their damn fault we're dealing with Sarah Palin now. Put THAT in your Pommie pipe, you Imperialistic War Mongering fucking Colonial dickheads.

[Beatsong]

LOL. You shitting us? You're the ones who insisted on throwing your toys out of the pram and making your own country, just because we expected reasonable tribute paid for the privilege of drinking a Great British Cup Of Tea.

And then to make matters worse you go "enshrining" some half-cocked quasi-libertarian nonsense in written documents as if the world is never gonna change, providing precisely the justification that the Palinites of this world want.

We gave you cricket and Carry On movies; you gave us Dubya and Seth. Nah - you can take responsibility for your own fuckin mess.

[laklak]

Cricket? Lol. Here's a namby-pamby cricketeer hitting a ball with a canoe paddle. Looks like he should have taken the short bus to the stadium. EDIT - "trying" to hit a ball with a canoe paddle. See the cute little stick things in the back? Definite short bus material.



Here's a real man playing a man's game:



Don't get me started on that poofter "soccer" stuff. Girls and little kids play that here.

EDIT AGAIN: Tea? Try a cuppa Joe, man. Black, hot an' bitter. Just like I like my women.

Tea. Lol.

[Seth]

Being muslim is not title, being from a line that's lived there for centuries, if not millenia is.

Only if you can hold it against those who would take it from you. It's called "The Right of Conquest" and it's been a feature of human civilization for, oh, I dunno, perhaps 25,000 years or more.

The last political entity with clear title was the ottoman empire,

Horseshit. The last political entity with clear title is Israel, because they took it and have held it against every Arab who has tried to take it away from them. And they've been quite generous in the process, returning Sinai and other bits they conquered AFTER BEING ATTACKED by the selfsame Arabs without provocation in 1967.

"Politics is just warfare by other means." After Von Clausewitz.

We substitute international diplomacy and treaties for the Right of Conquest when we can, but in the end, land belongs to those who can take it and hold it against all comers. The Jews have been extraordinarily successful in that regard, and their title is as clear and absolute as anyone's.

The "Palestinians" lost, so they are just fucked. They should appeal to Syria or Jordan or Egypt someone else to become citizens, because "Palestine," like the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantium and a thousand other nations in history, has ceased to exist.

[Seth]

the issue is those cut dick sassenachs acting like they owned the place and had never left it and had found squatters on their lands.

If they didn't oust people out of home and livelihood (a lot of those colonies are built on lands that were agricultural shortly before construction starts), and took only what was sold freely, at a fair price, and treated their long standing palestinian citizens fairly (when 20% of population get only 6% of parliamentary representation, that tells you that a) something is wrong if that pop is separate enough from the rest that representation should be drawn on those lines and b) gerrymandering or other manipulations seem all too likely) yeah, the issues might be lessened enough as to be dealt with among polite people.

The Palestinians are lucky that Israel didn't just do what innumerable other conquerors have done, which is to wipe out the losers, root and branch.

Israel claimed it, took it, and has proved capable of holding it. That's all the "title" that any nation has to its lands...the ability to hold it against invaders.

[Svartalf]

Being muslim is not title, being from a line that's lived there for centuries, if not millenia is.

Only if you can hold it against those who would take it from you. It's called "The Right of Conquest" and it's been a feature of human civilization for, oh, I dunno, perhaps 25,000 years or more.

The last political entity with clear title was the ottoman empire,

Horseshit. The last political entity with clear title is Israel, because they took it and have held it against every Arab who has tried to take it away from them. And they've been quite generous in the process, returning Sinai and other bits they conquered AFTER BEING ATTACKED by the selfsame Arabs without provocation in 1967.

"Politics is just warfare by other means." After Von Clausewitz.

We substitute international diplomacy and treaties for the Right of Conquest when we can, but in the end, land belongs to those who can take it and hold it against all comers. The Jews have been extraordinarily successful in that regard, and their title is as clear and absolute as anyone's.

The "Palestinians" lost, so they are just fucked. They should appeal to Syria or Jordan or Egypt someone else to become citizens, because "Palestine," like the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantium and a thousand other nations in history, has ceased to exist.

Fuck righty of conquest, or we should all be collectively responsible for the crimes of israel, since it was us who kept Palestine under our colonial heel and prevented it from constituting itself as a proper state, with the appendant defence structures before we let the jews take over and gave them modern weaponry in bulk and at basement bargain price...

they didhn't just lose, they were fucked up the arse from day one and told to like it.

[Seth]

Americans were unethical in the treatment of Native Americans.

No more unethical than the Sioux were in the treatment of the Crow...for one small example.

The notion that the Indian Nations were all peace-loving noble savages is just so much revisionist bullcrap.

The various Indian tribes fought as viciously among themselves prior to the arrival of Cortez, much less the Pilgrims, as the Jews and Palestinians ever have.

When Europeans came along, in most of the eastern part of the nation, relations were actually quite friendly between the Colonists and the Indians for a long time. The Colonists, under British rule, purchased lands from willing Indian sellers. They negotiated treaties and by and large lived together harmoniously. Yes, there was warfare and raids by both sides, but they were not the official policy of the Colonies. They went to great lengths to maintain the peace and compensate Indians when whites violated treaties and boundaries, recognizing that they were in the minority and could not afford to go to war with the Indians.

As the population of the country grew and expanded westward, conflicts increased, and after the Revolutionary War, the Manifest Destiny concept affected US government policy regarding the Indians, but even so our government took great pains, overall, to treat the tribes as "domestic dependent nations," where the tribes cooperated.

Many western plains tribes did not cooperate and waged war on the US and the settlers. Treaties were negotiated and broken, as much by the tribes as by the settlers, and in the end the Indian Wars of the west resulted in the defeat of the Indian tribes. Unique in the world at the time was that the US did not simply extirpate or absorb them, we actually carved out Indian reservations upon which they could practice their traditional forms of government and society largely without interference by the government.

Yes, there were attempts at assimilation, but those proved futile in the long run, and the situation has largely stabilized.

The bottom line, however, is that land is for the living, and for those who can take and hold it, and there were more whites than Indians who needed lands to settle, so they took the land and held it. That solidifies their title in every important way because that's how it's been done for thousands upon thousands of years.

You have this romantic notion that national boundaries are "ethically" determined. They aren't. They are determined by who has the power to define them and hold them against intruders. It's just exactly that simple. It always has been, and it always will be.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I think I'll post "Seth is alive" just to see him argue against it.