back and forth with zionism part 2

my words from facebook thread w/ an undergraduate (who has asked me to remove his identity from this post) at Yeshiva's replies. Interesting conversation, but can you tell who is entirely one sided? I'll give you a guess, I don't think it's me.

Stephen Wang:
I support Israel's current campaign against Hezbollah, in so much as if Hezbollah (and Hamas for that matter) want to promote themselves as worthy governments that are supportive of their peoples they should not be participating in kidnapping and indiscriminant missile firing. Israel has no choice but to fight back and target Hezbollah, lest this struggle continue tit for tat.

However. I am disgusted by many of the views in this thread regarding the Palestinian people. Palestine and Israel, in their desires for legitimacy are not much different, it is wrong to lump all Palestinians into the same box and to label them as the problem. It doesn't seem like anybody wants to actually debate as witnessed by Ahmed's posted email. By the way, it is wrong to post a private message without the other parties explicity permission, I don't understand how you can rant about respect and such things while expressing none yourself.

Pro-Israel advocates like Jaclyn seem to forget... or not know Israeli history. Jaclyn equates the Palestinians as a group that enters your dorm, takes advantage of your hospitality and tries to take your room from you. This is clearly a over simplication and misleading metaphor. Ahmed tried to clarify to you, however you did not respond, probably because you did not care to.

Ahmed's reasoning concerned Israel's legitimacy and Palestinian's losing their land. To Jaclyn, this matters not because Israel's legitimacy is taken as a given. It is a shame when people do not know or care about actual facts and then touts their going to Oxford when they are 16 (who cares?).

The fact is this. Israel exists because of a chain of favorable events, nothing to do with Biblical prophecy or land ownership. Come to think of it, if you read the Bible, you will see that the Israelis were cast from Israel and there has been no signal that they are entitled to Israel at this time. The Ottoman's lost WWI and the Jewish immigration into the area increased (the Ottoman's allowed small numbers of settlers into the land known now as Palestine). After WWII the land was again divided by the British to the Jewish people after the Jewish terrorist groups attacked them and occupied the area. There was a resolution to give the land to the Jewish people and establish the state of Israel. Public sentiment after WWII was extremely favorable to the Jewish people (as it should have been) and bolstered their case for the creation of a Jewish state.

The Palestinians DID occupy those lands that are now Israel. Borders change in times of war and it is understandable. However the Palestinians were displaced following the creation of Israel and it is not difficult to see how they believe the land is/was theirs and should be taken back. Israelis should recognize this struggle as there was a time when there was no land for the Jewish people and they were people without a home.

It is sad that people like Jaclyn in her support for Israel must hate and identify anything other than her views as propaganda and lies. Hate was not something I learned at school.

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anonymous @ Yeshiva:

Blah blah blah. Are you done yet? Allow me to sum up your little "mind-numbing" argument: Israel has no right to exist. Terrorism is justified.

That about it?

Now here's a key difference between Israel and the so-called "Palestinians" -- the majority of Israelis voted in left-wing parties (Labor, Kadimah) dedicated to giving away more land (and kicking more Jews out of their homes) for the prospect of peace. The so-called "Palestinians" voted in Hamas, the majority of them support kidnapping Israeli soldiers and firing missiles at Israel. I think that's a pretty huge difference.

Israel's right to exist is not up for debate. It exists and is not going anywhere. The Jews have returned to their homeland -- we not only have the historical and religious claim to the land, but we the legal right to western Palestine -- Israel -- as well (please see the Mandate for Palestine).

As for the so-called "Palestinian people," there is no such thing. It's about time we started calling a spade a spade here. They are Arabs, part of the Arab nation, living in what was once the geographical region called Palestine. Every Jordanian is a Palestinian Arab just as every Jewish Israeli is a Palestinian Jew. Until about 1967, there was no mention of any "Palestinian nation" -- most Palestinian Arabs rejected this idea, claiming it was an invention of the "Zionists" and that they were part of either Syria or the Arab nation. In fact, the Jews were known as "Palestinians" before that -- hence the Jerusalem Post was once called the "Palestine Post," and the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra was created by the Zionist Jews.

There is no such thing as Palestine, inasmuch as it denotes a distinct nation or a sovereign state (which never existed). Palestine was the name given to the Jewish state by Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 CE (after he crushed the Bar Kochva Revolt) in order to humiliate the Jews (he named it after the biblical enemies of the Jewish people -- the Plishtim, or Philistines). Just imagine, if Hadrian had not decided to rename Judea to Palestina, and on every map throughout the ages and throughout the various empires it said "Judea." Would we now be fighting the Judean terrorists?

To quote Golda Meir: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian Arab nation . . . Palestine is a name the Romans gave to Eretz Yisrael with the express purpose of infuriating the Jews . . . . Why should we use the spiteful name meant to humiliate us?

"The British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation's supposed ancient name, though they couldn't even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastin a fictional entity."

So why the myth of a Palestinian people?

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism."
--Zahir Muhsein, PLO executive committee member, in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, March 31, 1977 and Pakistan Today.

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Stephen Wang <---- that's me!

You are absolutely ridiculous. It really bugs me when people formulate a summary in their heads about what they are reading without actually reading. I was not questioning Israel's legitimacy as a nation nor was I justifying terrorism. However you took it upon yourself to quote the zionist 'why palestine sucks' guidebook word for word and lump me into the anti-Israel crowd, that was big of you.

My point was that the land that everyone wants to be theres has changed hands repeatedly throughout history. As anglos were not the first to inhabit America, the jewish peoples were not the first to inhabit the area known as Palestine; it was the Philistines.

Let's not use the Old Testament as a proof of legitimacy; yes God said that he promised the land to the Israelites but it also said God himself would bring the Israelites out of their exile. What do you know, that hasn't happened yet. The religious foundations are best left alone. Zionism is an invention void of religious context, in fact it is founded in Theodore Herzl, who began Zionism as a path to escape anti-semitism.

Historical foundations are not much better. The land went from the Philistines to the Israelites to the Romans to the Muslims and Ottomans. Each group had boundaries established as well as a functioning ruler and governmental system. You are saying that Palestine has no right to exist because there is no such thing as a Palestinian in the way that there are Israelis. This is a game of semantics that you are playing though. Reduce the names to Arabs and the Israelites. Both historically had claim to the geographic region of Palestine and both lost it. It is only natural for both groups to take what they lost back. Israelites won the land from the Philistines the same way that the Arabs won the land from the Romans.

If there are no Palestinians there are no Israelis. We can refer to them as Arabs if you like, encompassing the Syrians, etc., just in the same way the Jewish people were scattered throughout the middle east and eastern europe. The Israelites did not originate in "palestine" any differently from Arabs that originated there. Do not mistaken biblical reference to "children of Israel" as that is a reference to Jacob. Jewish culture grew from its roots in Israel, is it no different that Arab culture reached its pinnacle of greatness from the same location.

Terrorism is terrible and woe unto those that use it, let's not forget though that at its root this is a struggle for reconquest of a land that was lost. Yes Hamas and Hezbollah engage in terrorist activities and they are wrong to do so. But because they engage in those activities does not subscribe their entire population to the same beliefs just because they were democratically elected. Those groups are the only ones that have demonstrated action on the humanitarian front for their people. And also let us not forget that it was the Muslims and the Arabs which allowed the Jewish peoples into their lands to take refuge as they were being persecuted by the Christians and the Romans.
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anonymous @ Yeshiva:
I don't know what to correct first -- your gross distortion of history or of Judaism. I love it how you presume to tell us all what Judaism has to say on the issue of Eretz Yisrael. I was wondering, which yeshiva did you study at?

The "Zionist 'Why Palestine sucks' guidebook" huh? Where can I find me one of those? :)

The Philistines were not the original inhabitants of Israel. The Jews conquered the land from the Canaanites. The Philistines occupied 5 cities on the coast of the Jewish state. They have no connection to any Palestinian Arab, save for a similar name (thanks to the Romans and some clever PR by the Arab world after 1967)

In any case, the Jewish people's religious claims to the Land of Israel are very strong, and they do not need to be left out of any discussion. Zionism did not begin with Theodore Herzl. For over 2,000 years Jews have prayed thrice daily for the return to Zion. Since the destruction of our Temple we have yearned for its reconstruction. At every Passover Seder we say a small prayer "Next year in Jerusalem." Needless to say, if you think our claims to Eretz Yisrael started with the secular Zionist movement, you are sorely mistaken.

That said, many people are not religious, and will not accept the Jews' religious claims to the land. We of course have historical claims also -- our presence there predates any opposing claim, and the land of Palestine was always associated with the Jews throughout history, regardless of who controlled it. Other than a couple short-live kingdoms Crusader kingdoms, only the Jews had a nation in Palestine.

Furthermore, if you're not satisfied with the religious and historical claims, the Jews have a legal claim on the land. The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, adopted in 1922, states that the Jewish people are to reconstitute their national home in Palestine.

There was never such thing as a "Palestinian nation," and the Palestinian Arabs are not entitled to another state in any way. The Arabs already have 22 states, including a Palestinian Arab one. Jordan is on 78% of the land which rightfully should have been part of the "Jewish national home." Jordan was created in 1946 because the British, perfidious Albion, outright lied to the UN to serve their own self-interests.

So I'm sorry if you or the Arabs don't like the fact that the Jewish people have returned after thousands of years in exile to reconstitute their homeland on the remaining 22% of Palestine, but frankly, tough. Israel's not going anywhere.

As for your last paragraph, the majority of the Palestinian Arabs voted in Hamas -- a well-known terrorist organization that openly states its aims of destroying Israel and exterminating the Jews. And this is supposed to be ok because they "demonstrated action on the humanitarian front for their people?" Let us not forget that a certain German dictator and his party also provided "action on the humanitarian front for their people." The Nazis were voted into power with a plurality of the vote (not even a majority like Hamas had). They also wanted to exterminate the Jews (assisted by Palestinian Arabs like the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini of course).

It was also the Muslims who treated the Jews as second-class citizens under their dhimmi laws and the Arabs who expelled over a million Jews from their lands (confiscating billions of dollars in assets) since 1948. What exactly was your point again?

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and drum rollllll, my latest response:

Stephen Wang <--- me.

Do I need to study at a yeshiva to participate in this conversation? I wonder how many people in this thread have any talmudic study. i didn't realize there was a restriction on who can comment.

First of all I do not believe I said that the Philistines had any connection to Palestinian Arabs. I did however say that the Philistines existed in Canaan prior to Jewish arrival in the area. My point was, and i'll repeat myself, that the land of Palestine changed hands many times, and it is not accurate to historically attribute it to "belonging" to a particular group any more than another. From the Canaans, to the Jews, to the Arabs, to the Romans, to the Ottomans, Assyrians, Persians, Byzantines, etc etc etc.many people have laid claim to the land and established rule over it. Israel may have been the first large scale monarchy the region had experienced, but monarchy does not equate to indefinite and infinite property rights across time.

Contrary to your claim, there have been many nations erected in Palestine; namely the Babylonians and Assyrians.. and the Romans. Are spans of ownership 200-300 years+ count as "short lived"?

One could say that any number of cultures could name Palestine as their national home. Whose claim is stronger, your statements don't present the Jews as having a claim any more compelling than anybody else's.

The meat of the argument is that there were large populations of Jews and Arabs that existed in Palestine which gradually pushed the Palestinian Arabs out at the conclusions of 1948 and 1967. The Jews repopulated in the area due to gradual immigration towards the tail end of the Ottoman empire; the land was just as much these Jews' home as it was their Arab neighbors that they cohabitated with. However consider the fact that in the 1920s there were 800,000 Palestinians compared to 80,000 Jews in Palestine. To me it was a mistake but an eventual occurence in history that war broke out and one side had to leave.

I will not defend Hamas, you and I both know that they have done more harm than help. However, although you will keep trying to put holes in this, the Muslims were the only ones that offered land and assistance to the Jews in the intial periods of anti-semitism. Your claim of a million expelled Jews, is that an aggregate from the last 100 years? 200 years? It is pretty well known that it was the large influx of jewish immigrants after the mandate of palestine that prompted the Arabs to incite the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. Expelling a million Jews? I do believe it was the immigration of at least 10,000 Jews a year as zionism became a rallying call against anti-semitism.

It was interesting that you plucked a choice quote by Golda Meir, when she said there was no such thing as Palestinians she also said...

"There was no such thing as Palestinians. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist."

Did you ever think the Palestinian national identity was a product of the Zionism that threatened the livelihood and property of Palestinian Arabs living in Palestine before being thrown out and having their country taken away as Ms. Meir warmly acknowledges? If you ignore the rest of this post, at least answer that question. I don't know how most people on this board are willing to take a perspective where their "opposition" becomes less than human and are so willing to embrace the death of their neighbors.