Language - Hebrew. No matter where in the world Jews have always shared Hebrew as a common language. Though for thousands of years Hebrew was not a spoken language it was universally used by Jews as a language for prayer and ritual observance, as well as study. There are letters between wide-flung Jewish communities and rabbis written in Hebrew, since that was the language they shared. For example there are letters from communities in Europe asking rabbis in what is now Iraq questions about matters of ritual observance. The letters were written in Hebrew, and clearly the correspondents were able to understand each other.
Jews and other inhabitants of Israel learn to speak Hebrew on arrival there, but Jews in other parts of the world speak the language of the place where they live. Most Jews will have known some biblical Hebrew, enough to follow a synagogue service, but that doesn't necessarily mean they could carry on a conversation in Hebrew. More European Jews spoke Yiddish rather than Hebrew, though again, their first language would have been that of their native country, be it German, Polish, or Russian.
Culture - Judaism. Judaism is not simply a religion wherein you go to synagogue on Saturday, say a few prayers and call it a day. It is an all encompassing way of life. It defines virtually every aspect of a person's daily existence. It is, quite simply, a culture, and it was shared by Jews the world over. Some communities developed different particular customs, or interpreted certain laws in different ways, but the foundations were the same everywhere.
Not all Jews adhere to Judaism. And it's a big leap to say that it's an all encompassing way of life. For Orthodox Jews it may be an all-encompassing way of life, but that's not the case for most Jews.
http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles2/demographics.htm The National Jewish Population Study of 1970 revealed 47 percent of American Jews claimed synagogue membership. More recent localized demographic studies showed figures ranging from 26 percent in Los Angeles to 84 percent in St. Paul. Taking an average by population size, it gives us approximately the same figure as the NJPS.
History - clearly the histories of Jewish communities diverged in the diaspora, but we all share the same history up to the Roman exile. Not to mention the fact that many Jewish communities maintained contact with other communities around the world, and that the history of the Jewish people, at least in Europe, is marked by repeated migrations, such that the histories of many of these communities are incredibly intertwined. As for Israel, Israel is actually the central thread running through all three things discussed here. Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people. Hebrew arose in Israel, Judaism arose in Israel, and the shared ancient history of the Jewish people the world over is the history of the Jews in Israel.
Converts become part of the Jewish people through learning. One cannot simply be tapped on the head and declared Jewish. You study for conversion. You learn Hebrew, you learn Judaism, you become part of the culture, and in doing so you become another link in the unbroken chain of Jewish history. I'll grant you that there are some sketchy things that go on today, and perhaps this Peruvian thing is one of them.
I actually find your position kind of humorous. Your argument against the existence of a Jewish people is that there were converts to Judaism who were therefore not ethnically Jewish. And yet you keep accusing me of racism, when you are the one who is trotting out arguments based in race. There is no unitary Jewish race. There is a Jewish people, or nation if you prefer.
Even if you don't accept the fact of shared Jewish history, language, and culture (in which case I would simply say that you clearly don't know the first thing about Judaism, and perhaps if you're interested in having informed opinions you should find a university with a good Jewish Studies Department), the Jewish people exist by virtue of the fact that we recognize ourselves as a nation.
No, the Zionists declared the Jewish people to be a nation, although history proves otherwise. There's no contradiction on my part. I said the 'Jewish people' is a fabrication. The fact that some Peruvians - and Madonna - can convert to Judaism and then declare that they have a homeland in Israel is ludicrous.
As for sharing a history up to the Roman exile, I didn't realize you were that old.
Anyway, I really have no interest in Judaism. I couldn't give a fuck about it. I'm interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Regarding Germany: "German law allows persons of German descent living in Eastern Europe (Aussiedler/Spätaussiedler ("late emigrants"; de:Aussiedler), see History of German settlement in Eastern Europe) to return to Germany and claim German citizenship. As with many legal implementations of the Right of Return, the "return" to Germany of individuals who may never have lived in Germany based on their ethnic origin has been controversial. The law is codified in Article 116 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, which provides access to German citizenship for anyone "who has been admitted to the territory of the German Reich within the boundaries of December 31, 1937 as a refugee or expellee of German ethnic origin or as the spouse or descendant of such person"."
Regarding Greece: "Various phenomena throughout Greek history (the extensive colonization by classical Greek city states, the vast expansion of Greek culture in Hellenistic times, the large dominions at times held by the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire, and the energetic trading activity by Greeks under the Ottomans) all tended to create Greek communities far beyond the boundaries of modern Greece.
Recognizing this situation, Greece grants citizenship to broad categories of people of ethnic Greek ancestry who are members of the Greek diaspora, including individuals and families whose ancestors have been resident in diaspora communities outside the modern state of Greece for centuries or millennia([10])
"Foreign persons of Greek origin", who neither live in Greece nor hold Greek citizenship nor were necessarily born there, may become Greek citizens by enlisting in Greece's military forces, under article 4 of the Code of Greek Citizenship, as amended by the Acquisition of Greek Nationality by Aliens of Greek Origin Law (Law 2130/1993). Anyone wishing to do so must present a number of documents, including "[a]vailable written records ... proving the Greek origin of the interested person and his ancestors.""
The difference being that very few Jewish people have any ancestral connection to the land of Israel, apart from the small number living there at the turn of the 20th century.
But just simply converting to Judaism gives someone the 'right' to emigrate there. Though Palestinians are excluded from returning to their homeland by Israels racist laws.
Go back and read that bit about Greece again. I've put it in bold above. Replace "the modern state of Greece" with Israel and you essentially have Israel's right of return exactly. As for Palestinian refugees, this sounds callous, but they are victims of war. In essence shit happens, and once it does it very often cannot be undone. There are ethnic German refugees from Eastern Europe (they were expelled in the wake of WWII) living in Germany today (taken in, by the way, because of Germany's right of return law) many of whom would like to return to their old homes in Eastern Europe but are barred from doing so. There are probably over a million Jews living in Israel who fled out of fear or were forced out of Arab countries after Israel was established, leaving behind them vast amounts of wealth (many of these communities owned vast amounts of land) which I'm sure they'd love to be able to reclaim, but that is very clearly not going to happen either. Frankly I pity the refugees, but my outrage is really at the Arab countries that house them, legally barring them from citizenship and equal rights and forcing them to live in squalid refugee camps so that they can exploit their suffering to tar Israel.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Just for kicks, and cause I'm curious, I'll repeat the question, and open it up to anyone aside from Byrnzie who wants to answer. Are the Palestinians a nation?
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Just for kicks, and cause I'm curious, I'll repeat the question, and open it up to anyone aside from Byrnzie who wants to answer. Are the Palestinians a nation?
Hmmm ... They are certainly a distinct cultural or ethnic group. A nation is debatable, although I'd say they at least approximate a (loose) confederation of groups of people ... Tribes is not the right word here ... Ethnic enclaves? They do not appear to be a politically organized body of people under a single government at this time.
I don't give a FUCK what ANYONE thinks or believes. The Palestinians HAVE EVERY FUCKEN right to RETURN! Who the FUCK are any of us to say they DONT. Seriouslly, do you people have any hearts??? Israel has all these programs to send a Jew to Israel but you're telling me that the Palestinians have NO right or CANT go back to THERE country and land?? Here's me using my FIRST Amendment right, FUCK OFF to ALL who say they CANT. I don't a fuck who you are too...
There are probably over a million Jews living in Israel who fled out of fear or were forced out of Arab countries after Israel was established, leaving behind them vast amounts of wealth (many of these communities owned vast amounts of land) which I'm sure they'd love to be able to reclaim, but that is very clearly not going to happen either. Frankly I pity the refugees, but my outrage is really at the Arab countries that house them, legally barring them from citizenship and equal rights and forcing them to live in squalid refugee camps so that they can exploit their suffering to tar Israel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exo ... Arab_lands Iraqi-born Ran Cohen, a former member of the Knesset, said: "I have this to say: I am not a refugee. I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee". Yemeni-born Yisrael Yeshayahu, former Knesset speaker, Labor Party, stated: "We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations". And Iraqi-born Shlomo Hillel, also a former speaker of the Knesset, Labor Party, claimed: "I do not regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists."
Frankly I pity the refugees, but my outrage is really at the Arab countries that house them, legally barring them from citizenship and equal rights and forcing them to live in squalid refugee camps so that they can exploit their suffering to tar Israel.
Sure, poor Israel. You deny the Palestinians their right of return under international law because you are a racist, expansionist state, but it's the Arab countries fault. They won't assist Israel in it's ethnic cleansing campaign and therefore they are to be condemned. Frankly, I find your attitude pretty despicable.
http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann10142009.html 'When Arab states support and sustain the Palestinians, it is much more from genuine altruism than from bogus racial solidarity. But to the extent that Arabs do not do all that is expected of them - do not take in the Palestinians, do not invite them in as fellow-Arabs, the reason is simple. The Palestinians are not fellow-Arabs. They have no home, no 'homeland' if you like, but Palestine. Wondering why their 'brother Arabs' do not to take them in makes as much sense as wondering why Northern Irish Protestants would not welcome as brothers their 'fellow Anglophones' from Dublin or Watts or the slums of Kingston, Jamaica.'
Thirteen Israeli air strikes hit Gaza Strip
Friday, 2 April 2010
Israeli planes have carried out 13 air strikes on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources have told the BBC.
Four of the strikes took place near the town of Khan Younis, where two Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes with Palestinian fighters last week.
The Israeli military has told the BBC the operation was targeting four weapons factories.
The strikes are the most serious for more than a year, says the BBC's Jon Donnison from Jerusalem.
The director of ambulance and emergency in the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Dr Muawiya Hassanein, said that three children including an infant were slightly injured by flying debris.
Witnesses and Hamas officials said the Israeli raids targeted metal workshops, farms, a milk factory and small sites belonging to the military wing of Hamas.
'Retaliation'
"Israel will not tolerate terroristic activity inside Gaza that threatens Israeli citizens," the Israeli military said in a statement released to the BBC.
Palestinian news agencies reported that Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets over parts of Gaza on Thursday warning residents of retaliation for last Friday's killings of the soldiers in Khan Younis.
They were the first Israeli soldiers to be killed in hostile fire in Gaza in over a year. The military wing of Hamas claim responsibility for those attacks.
Hamas said police stations and training facilities were among the targets of Israel's overnight raids.
Tensions in the region are running high after a recent Israeli government announcement of plans to build 1,600 new homes for Jewish people in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as a capital of a future state.
Militants in the Gaza Strip have recently stepped up rocket fire directed at Israel.
On Wednesday, they fired a rocket into an empty field in southern Israel, but there were no reports of casualties or damage, military sources said.
Post edited by Byrnzie on
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Corso
so poor I can't afford to comment on the PJ forum Posts: 201
Meanwhile, looks like the Israelis are doing all the can to scupper any peace proces:
What's new? Same old song and dance... I read most of this thread and some of this shit reminds me of the history between the American Gov and the Native Americans.
Meanwhile, looks like the Israelis are doing all the can to scupper any peace proces:
What's new? Same old song and dance... I read most of this thread and some of this shit reminds me of the history between the American Gov and the Native Americans.
True. You have one side making concession after concession (treaty) and ceding more and more of their land, and the other side lying through their fucking teeth, stealing more and more land, and murdering and oppressing the native population at will - while also confining them into reservations (Palestinian enclaves - South African style Bantustans).
The American settlers also claimed self-defense. Some things never change.
I have never seen so much hate towards the jews as I see on this board. some of you make me sick. Why don't you just admit it. You hate the jews. :evil:
I have never seen so much hate towards the jews as I see on this board. some of you make me sick. Why don't you just admit it. You hate the jews. :evil:
There is no hate against jews. There is anger, revulsion, etc. against the zionist Israeli government, with all its implications.
So let me get this straight Byrnzie. Nationhood is defined by having a state, and so the Palestinians are not yet a nation? If that is the case then by what right can they claim a state of their own? And you think that it is ok that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon (to focus on one country, but this holds for the others as well) are legally barred from acquiring Lebanese citizenship and equal rights under the law, and are forced to live in refugee camps despite either having been born there and lived their entire lives (which makes the idea that they are refugees somewhat strange) or have been residents of Lebanon for over 60 years? Even if you think that all the blame for the refugees should be put on Israel (which I do not agree with, but that is beside the point), the treatment of the refugees by their Arab hosts is nothing less than immoral.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Badbrains, I'm very sorry, but the Palestinians do not have a right of return, and here I am speaking in practical, not philosophical terms. As a sovereign nation Israel has the right to define itself as a democratic and Jewish state. Were millions of Palestinians to be granted a right of return (and here I'm assuming they would act on that right) Israel would either have to cease being a democracy or cease being Jewish. As a practical matter Israel will therefore never agree to such a right, and as a matter of principle (to bring principle back into the discussion) Israel shouldn't have to. Yes, the refugees are victims. But the destruction of Israel (even by non-violent means) would, to my mind, constitute a grave historical injustice. Were the refugees wronged? Sure, but two wrongs don't make a right.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
I have never seen so much hate towards the jews as I see on this board. some of you make me sick. Why don't you just admit it. You hate the jews. :evil:
There is no hate against jews. There is anger, revulsion, etc. against the zionist Israeli government, with all its implications.
Yeah, I'm going to disagree with you redrock. This is purely my own intuition, but I definitely feel that at times the tone in which Israel is discussed by certain people here belies a hatred that goes beyond political disagreements and anger over policies. And yes, I know that people will say that I am trying to shut down dissent by invoking Antisemitism. I am doing no such thing. Antisemitism exists, and more often than not it is expressed in its modern incarnation as anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism. That is not to say that one cannot be anti-Israel without being antisemitic, only that it is legitimate to question and examine the motivations for vehement anti-Israel sentiments to see whether they conceal antisemitism. If anyone is interested in hard data I refer you to Dr. Charles Small, director of The Yale Initiative for the Study of Antisemitism.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Meanwhile, looks like the Israelis are doing all the can to scupper any peace proces:
What's new? Same old song and dance... I read most of this thread and some of this shit reminds me of the history between the American Gov and the Native Americans.
True. You have one side making concession after concession (treaty) and ceding more and more of their land, and the other side lying through their fucking teeth, stealing more and more land, and murdering and oppressing the native population at will - while also confining them into reservations (Palestinian enclaves - South African style Bantustans).
The American settlers also claimed self-defense. Some things never change.
What concessions have the Palestinians ever made? And don't tell me they "conceded" Israel to the Israelis.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
So let me get this straight Byrnzie. Nationhood is defined by having a state, and so the Palestinians are not yet a nation? If that is the case then by what right can they claim a state of their own?
By the same right that Israel declared itself a state: U.N resolution 181.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16/henry-sieg ... ocess-scam
UN General Assembly Partition Resolution 181 of 1947, which established the Jewish state’s international legitimacy, also recognised the remaining Palestinian territory outside the new state’s borders as the equally legitimate patrimony of Palestine’s Arab population on which they were entitled to establish their own state, and it mapped the borders of that territory with great precision. Resolution 181’s affirmation of the right of Palestine’s Arab population to national self-determination was based on normative law and the democratic principles that grant statehood to the majority population. (At the time, Arabs constituted two-thirds of the population in Palestine.) This right does not evaporate because of delays in its implementation.
http://www.danielpipes.org/185/declarin ... nd-the-plo
Despite the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination, following upon UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty and national independence.
By stages, the occupation of Palestine and parts of other Arab territories by Israeli forces, the willed dispossession and expulsion from their ancestral homes of the majority of Palestine's civilian inhabitants was achieved by organized terror; those Palestinians who remained, as a vestige subjugated in its homeland, were persecuted and forced to endure the destruction of their national life.
Thus were principles of international legitimacy violated. Thus were the Charter of the United Nations and its Resolutions disfigured, for they had recognized the Palestinian Arab people's national rights, including the right of Return, the right to independence, the right to sovereignty over territory and homeland.
The Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), in Algiers on 15th November, 1988. It unilaterally proclaimed the establishment of a new independent state called the "State of Palestine" but at that time the PLO had no control of any territory:
'...in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations (1919) and in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the community of nations had recognised that all the Arab territories, including Palestine, of the formerly Ottoman provinces, were to have granted to them their freedom as provisionally independent nations.
Despite the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination, following upon UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty.'
What concessions have the Palestinians ever made? And don't tell me they "conceded" Israel to the Israelis.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16/henry-sieg ... ocess-scam
The problem is not, as Israelis often claim, that Palestinians do not know how to compromise. (Another former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, famously complained that ‘Palestinians take and take while Israel gives and gives.’) That is an indecent charge, since the Palestinians made much the most far-reaching compromise of all when the PLO formally accepted the legitimacy of Israel within the 1949 armistice border. With that concession, Palestinians ceded their claim to more than half the territory that the UN’s partition resolution had assigned to its Arab inhabitants. They have never received any credit for this wrenching concession, made years before Israel agreed that Palestinians had a right to statehood in any part of Palestine. The notion that further border adjustments should be made at the expense of the 22 per cent of the territory that remains to the Palestinians is deeply offensive to them, and understandably so.
Nonetheless, the Palestinians agreed at the Camp David summit to adjustments to the pre-1967 border that would allow large numbers of West Bank settlers – about 70 per cent – to remain within the Jewish state, provided they received comparable territory on Israel’s side of the border. Barak rejected this.
The clearest and most direct piece of international law that affirms the right of the Palestinian refugees to be repatriated is Article 11 of UN General Assembly Resolution 194, ratified on 11 December 1948. Vis-'-vis the situation in Palestine, the General Assembly declared that
'the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for the loss of or damage to property which, under the principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.'
The resolution also created the Conciliation Commission for Palestine, which it instructed to 'facilitate' the aforementioned purpose. This resolution has been affirmed by the General Assembly over 40 times (most recently in General Assembly Resolution 45/73 of 11 December 1990), and represents the strongest claim under international law for the inalienable rights of repatriation available to the Palestinian refugees. Its language is clear and exacting, yet its goal remains as far from realization as the day the resolution was enacted.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Articulating several principles upheld by Resolution 194 and applying them on a universal scale, the Declaration states in Article 13(2) that '[e]veryone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and return to his own country.' In a similar vein, Article 17(2) declares that '[n]o one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.' These provisions would seem to support the contention that the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 hostilities should be allowed to repatriate. Although, strictly speaking, the Declaration is not legally binding upon the member states of the UN, it effectively articulates the standards through which stateless Palestinian refugees can make a plausible case for their own repatriation.
Fourth Geneva Convention:
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 provides more legal authority for the Palestinian refugees' case. Israel has signed and ratified the Convention, and therefore its provisions can be construed as applicable, even retroactively, to the events of 1947-48. Article 49 states that 'ndividual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.' Since Israel has actually carried out such mass population transfers of Palestinian refugees by means of force and psychological warfare, it stands in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
While there is no explicit language in the Convention regarding its retroactive application, the expulsion of the Palestinian refugees from their homeland represents a violation of the spirit and letter of international law articulated repeatedly prior, during, and after the war of 1948. Article 49 of the Convention embodies the opinion of the international community regarding persons displaced during war, and further buttresses international opinion on the right of return of the Palestinian refugees as enunciated by UN Resolution 194.
And you think that it is ok that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon (to focus on one country, but this holds for the others as well) are legally barred from acquiring Lebanese citizenship and equal rights under the law, and are forced to live in refugee camps despite either having been born there and lived their entire lives (which makes the idea that they are refugees somewhat strange) or have been residents of Lebanon for over 60 years? Even if you think that all the blame for the refugees should be put on Israel (which I do not agree with, but that is beside the point), the treatment of the refugees by their Arab hosts is nothing less than immoral.
Has it occurred to you that maybe the Palestinian refugees aren't seeking Lebanese, or Jordanian, or Egyptian citizenship? That what they in fact want is to be able to return to their homes which were occupied by the Zionists in 1948 and 1967?
It's Israel that's forcing them to live in refugee camps by denying them their right of return under international law.
Badbrains, I'm very sorry, but the Palestinians do not have a right of return, and here I am speaking in practical, not philosophical terms.
Why don't you try speaking in terms of International law instead?
Man yosi, listen to what you're saying bro. They don't have a right to return to there OWN land....wow, yosi, don't you guys (I know the GOVERNMENT doesn't) have any hearts??? Do you guys know how you look and sound to people everywhere when you say something like that??? Man, is the world really this fucked up?? Do people honestly believe that?? Unfortunately, "SOME" actually do.....
......no yosi, it is I that's very sorry you feel that way. It's a shame, It really is.
"In the Israeli discourse about roots there is a degree of perversion. This is an ethnocentric, biological, genetic discourse. But Israel has no existence as a Jewish state: If Israel does not develop and become an open, multicultural society we will have a Kosovo in the Galilee. The consciousness concerning the right to this place must be more flexible and varied, and if I have contributed with my book to the likelihood that I and my children will be able to live with the others here in this country in a more egalitarian situation - I will have done my bit.
"We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli republic where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of the law. Anyone who is acquainted with the young elites of the Israeli Arab community can see that they will not agree to live in a country that declares it is not theirs. If I were a Palestinian I would rebel against a state like that, but even as an Israeli I am rebelling against it."
I have never seen so much hate towards the jews as I see on this board. some of you make me sick. Why don't you just admit it. You hate the jews. :evil:
There is no hate against jews. There is anger, revulsion, etc. against the zionist Israeli government, with all its implications.
Yeah, I'm going to disagree with you redrock. This is purely my own intuition, but I definitely feel that at times the tone in which Israel is discussed by certain people here belies a hatred that goes beyond political disagreements and anger over policies. And yes, I know that people will say that I am trying to shut down dissent by invoking Antisemitism. I am doing no such thing. Antisemitism exists, and more often than not it is expressed in its modern incarnation as anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism. That is not to say that one cannot be anti-Israel without being antisemitic, only that it is legitimate to question and examine the motivations for vehement anti-Israel sentiments to see whether they conceal antisemitism. If anyone is interested in hard data I refer you to Dr. Charles Small, director of The Yale Initiative for the Study of Antisemitism.
:roll: I can guess who you may refer to with this post. I know one of them. You may feel 'victimized' and want to believe this as it is an easy argument, but it's simply not the case. Israel's actions commands this kind of vehemence.
Let's not, yet again, go down that path - we 'attack' Israel, therefore we must be jew haters. :roll:
Israel would either have to ...... cease being Jewish.
.
You hit it on the nail. Fear of Israel not having a majority of inhabitants being jewish. This relates to the arabs in Israel not being granted the same rights as jews.
Comments
Jews and other inhabitants of Israel learn to speak Hebrew on arrival there, but Jews in other parts of the world speak the language of the place where they live. Most Jews will have known some biblical Hebrew, enough to follow a synagogue service, but that doesn't necessarily mean they could carry on a conversation in Hebrew. More European Jews spoke Yiddish rather than Hebrew, though again, their first language would have been that of their native country, be it German, Polish, or Russian.
Not all Jews adhere to Judaism. And it's a big leap to say that it's an all encompassing way of life. For Orthodox Jews it may be an all-encompassing way of life, but that's not the case for most Jews.
http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles2/demographics.htm
The National Jewish Population Study of 1970 revealed 47 percent of American Jews claimed synagogue membership. More recent localized demographic studies showed figures ranging from 26 percent in Los Angeles to 84 percent in St. Paul. Taking an average by population size, it gives us approximately the same figure as the NJPS.
No, the Zionists declared the Jewish people to be a nation, although history proves otherwise. There's no contradiction on my part. I said the 'Jewish people' is a fabrication. The fact that some Peruvians - and Madonna - can convert to Judaism and then declare that they have a homeland in Israel is ludicrous.
As for sharing a history up to the Roman exile, I didn't realize you were that old.
Anyway, I really have no interest in Judaism. I couldn't give a fuck about it. I'm interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Norman Finkelstein & Israel W. Charny - Institute on The Holocaust and Genocide
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCKTKMFTprM
Norman Finkelstein & Ranaan Gissin - Former Advisor to Ariel Sharon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLB8DfhnJD0
thanks, i hadn't seen that 2nd one before
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Go back and read that bit about Greece again. I've put it in bold above. Replace "the modern state of Greece" with Israel and you essentially have Israel's right of return exactly. As for Palestinian refugees, this sounds callous, but they are victims of war. In essence shit happens, and once it does it very often cannot be undone. There are ethnic German refugees from Eastern Europe (they were expelled in the wake of WWII) living in Germany today (taken in, by the way, because of Germany's right of return law) many of whom would like to return to their old homes in Eastern Europe but are barred from doing so. There are probably over a million Jews living in Israel who fled out of fear or were forced out of Arab countries after Israel was established, leaving behind them vast amounts of wealth (many of these communities owned vast amounts of land) which I'm sure they'd love to be able to reclaim, but that is very clearly not going to happen either. Frankly I pity the refugees, but my outrage is really at the Arab countries that house them, legally barring them from citizenship and equal rights and forcing them to live in squalid refugee camps so that they can exploit their suffering to tar Israel.
Hmmm ... They are certainly a distinct cultural or ethnic group. A nation is debatable, although I'd say they at least approximate a (loose) confederation of groups of people ... Tribes is not the right word here ... Ethnic enclaves? They do not appear to be a politically organized body of people under a single government at this time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exo ... Arab_lands
Iraqi-born Ran Cohen, a former member of the Knesset, said: "I have this to say: I am not a refugee. I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee". Yemeni-born Yisrael Yeshayahu, former Knesset speaker, Labor Party, stated: "We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations". And Iraqi-born Shlomo Hillel, also a former speaker of the Knesset, Labor Party, claimed: "I do not regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists."
Not yet, but they would be by now if it weren't for you bunch of lying, thieving bastards.
Edit: I hope that's the answer you were looking for with your obvious baiting.
Sure, poor Israel. You deny the Palestinians their right of return under international law because you are a racist, expansionist state, but it's the Arab countries fault. They won't assist Israel in it's ethnic cleansing campaign and therefore they are to be condemned. Frankly, I find your attitude pretty despicable.
http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann10142009.html
'When Arab states support and sustain the Palestinians, it is much more from genuine altruism than from bogus racial solidarity. But to the extent that Arabs do not do all that is expected of them - do not take in the Palestinians, do not invite them in as fellow-Arabs, the reason is simple. The Palestinians are not fellow-Arabs. They have no home, no 'homeland' if you like, but Palestine. Wondering why their 'brother Arabs' do not to take them in makes as much sense as wondering why Northern Irish Protestants would not welcome as brothers their 'fellow Anglophones' from Dublin or Watts or the slums of Kingston, Jamaica.'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8600285.stm
Thirteen Israeli air strikes hit Gaza Strip
Friday, 2 April 2010
Israeli planes have carried out 13 air strikes on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources have told the BBC.
Four of the strikes took place near the town of Khan Younis, where two Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes with Palestinian fighters last week.
The Israeli military has told the BBC the operation was targeting four weapons factories.
The strikes are the most serious for more than a year, says the BBC's Jon Donnison from Jerusalem.
The director of ambulance and emergency in the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Dr Muawiya Hassanein, said that three children including an infant were slightly injured by flying debris.
Witnesses and Hamas officials said the Israeli raids targeted metal workshops, farms, a milk factory and small sites belonging to the military wing of Hamas.
'Retaliation'
"Israel will not tolerate terroristic activity inside Gaza that threatens Israeli citizens," the Israeli military said in a statement released to the BBC.
Palestinian news agencies reported that Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets over parts of Gaza on Thursday warning residents of retaliation for last Friday's killings of the soldiers in Khan Younis.
They were the first Israeli soldiers to be killed in hostile fire in Gaza in over a year. The military wing of Hamas claim responsibility for those attacks.
Hamas said police stations and training facilities were among the targets of Israel's overnight raids.
Tensions in the region are running high after a recent Israeli government announcement of plans to build 1,600 new homes for Jewish people in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as a capital of a future state.
Militants in the Gaza Strip have recently stepped up rocket fire directed at Israel.
On Wednesday, they fired a rocket into an empty field in southern Israel, but there were no reports of casualties or damage, military sources said.
True. You have one side making concession after concession (treaty) and ceding more and more of their land, and the other side lying through their fucking teeth, stealing more and more land, and murdering and oppressing the native population at will - while also confining them into reservations (Palestinian enclaves - South African style Bantustans).
The American settlers also claimed self-defense. Some things never change.
There is no hate against jews. There is anger, revulsion, etc. against the zionist Israeli government, with all its implications.
Yeah, I'm going to disagree with you redrock. This is purely my own intuition, but I definitely feel that at times the tone in which Israel is discussed by certain people here belies a hatred that goes beyond political disagreements and anger over policies. And yes, I know that people will say that I am trying to shut down dissent by invoking Antisemitism. I am doing no such thing. Antisemitism exists, and more often than not it is expressed in its modern incarnation as anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism. That is not to say that one cannot be anti-Israel without being antisemitic, only that it is legitimate to question and examine the motivations for vehement anti-Israel sentiments to see whether they conceal antisemitism. If anyone is interested in hard data I refer you to Dr. Charles Small, director of The Yale Initiative for the Study of Antisemitism.
What concessions have the Palestinians ever made? And don't tell me they "conceded" Israel to the Israelis.
By the same right that Israel declared itself a state: U.N resolution 181.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16/henry-sieg ... ocess-scam
UN General Assembly Partition Resolution 181 of 1947, which established the Jewish state’s international legitimacy, also recognised the remaining Palestinian territory outside the new state’s borders as the equally legitimate patrimony of Palestine’s Arab population on which they were entitled to establish their own state, and it mapped the borders of that territory with great precision. Resolution 181’s affirmation of the right of Palestine’s Arab population to national self-determination was based on normative law and the democratic principles that grant statehood to the majority population. (At the time, Arabs constituted two-thirds of the population in Palestine.) This right does not evaporate because of delays in its implementation.
http://www.danielpipes.org/185/declarin ... nd-the-plo
Despite the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination, following upon UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty and national independence.
By stages, the occupation of Palestine and parts of other Arab territories by Israeli forces, the willed dispossession and expulsion from their ancestral homes of the majority of Palestine's civilian inhabitants was achieved by organized terror; those Palestinians who remained, as a vestige subjugated in its homeland, were persecuted and forced to endure the destruction of their national life.
Thus were principles of international legitimacy violated. Thus were the Charter of the United Nations and its Resolutions disfigured, for they had recognized the Palestinian Arab people's national rights, including the right of Return, the right to independence, the right to sovereignty over territory and homeland.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Palestini ... dependence
Palestinian Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), in Algiers on 15th November, 1988. It unilaterally proclaimed the establishment of a new independent state called the "State of Palestine" but at that time the PLO had no control of any territory:
'...in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations (1919) and in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the community of nations had recognised that all the Arab territories, including Palestine, of the formerly Ottoman provinces, were to have granted to them their freedom as provisionally independent nations.
Despite the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination, following upon UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty.'
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16/henry-sieg ... ocess-scam
The problem is not, as Israelis often claim, that Palestinians do not know how to compromise. (Another former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, famously complained that ‘Palestinians take and take while Israel gives and gives.’) That is an indecent charge, since the Palestinians made much the most far-reaching compromise of all when the PLO formally accepted the legitimacy of Israel within the 1949 armistice border. With that concession, Palestinians ceded their claim to more than half the territory that the UN’s partition resolution had assigned to its Arab inhabitants. They have never received any credit for this wrenching concession, made years before Israel agreed that Palestinians had a right to statehood in any part of Palestine. The notion that further border adjustments should be made at the expense of the 22 per cent of the territory that remains to the Palestinians is deeply offensive to them, and understandably so.
Nonetheless, the Palestinians agreed at the Camp David summit to adjustments to the pre-1967 border that would allow large numbers of West Bank settlers – about 70 per cent – to remain within the Jewish state, provided they received comparable territory on Israel’s side of the border. Barak rejected this.
Yes they do. Stop lying.
http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/d/Co ... ils/i/2152
UN Resolution 194:
The clearest and most direct piece of international law that affirms the right of the Palestinian refugees to be repatriated is Article 11 of UN General Assembly Resolution 194, ratified on 11 December 1948. Vis-'-vis the situation in Palestine, the General Assembly declared that
'the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for the loss of or damage to property which, under the principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.'
The resolution also created the Conciliation Commission for Palestine, which it instructed to 'facilitate' the aforementioned purpose. This resolution has been affirmed by the General Assembly over 40 times (most recently in General Assembly Resolution 45/73 of 11 December 1990), and represents the strongest claim under international law for the inalienable rights of repatriation available to the Palestinian refugees. Its language is clear and exacting, yet its goal remains as far from realization as the day the resolution was enacted.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Articulating several principles upheld by Resolution 194 and applying them on a universal scale, the Declaration states in Article 13(2) that '[e]veryone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and return to his own country.' In a similar vein, Article 17(2) declares that '[n]o one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.' These provisions would seem to support the contention that the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 hostilities should be allowed to repatriate. Although, strictly speaking, the Declaration is not legally binding upon the member states of the UN, it effectively articulates the standards through which stateless Palestinian refugees can make a plausible case for their own repatriation.
Fourth Geneva Convention:
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 provides more legal authority for the Palestinian refugees' case. Israel has signed and ratified the Convention, and therefore its provisions can be construed as applicable, even retroactively, to the events of 1947-48. Article 49 states that 'ndividual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.' Since Israel has actually carried out such mass population transfers of Palestinian refugees by means of force and psychological warfare, it stands in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
While there is no explicit language in the Convention regarding its retroactive application, the expulsion of the Palestinian refugees from their homeland represents a violation of the spirit and letter of international law articulated repeatedly prior, during, and after the war of 1948. Article 49 of the Convention embodies the opinion of the international community regarding persons displaced during war, and further buttresses international opinion on the right of return of the Palestinian refugees as enunciated by UN Resolution 194.
Why don't you try speaking in terms of International law instead?
Has it occurred to you that maybe the Palestinian refugees aren't seeking Lebanese, or Jordanian, or Egyptian citizenship? That what they in fact want is to be able to return to their homes which were occupied by the Zionists in 1948 and 1967?
It's Israel that's forcing them to live in refugee camps by denying them their right of return under international law.
Man yosi, listen to what you're saying bro. They don't have a right to return to there OWN land....wow, yosi, don't you guys (I know the GOVERNMENT doesn't) have any hearts??? Do you guys know how you look and sound to people everywhere when you say something like that??? Man, is the world really this fucked up?? Do people honestly believe that?? Unfortunately, "SOME" actually do.....
......no yosi, it is I that's very sorry you feel that way. It's a shame, It really is.
Why doesn't it just declare itself a democratic state? I agree with this fella:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html
Shattering a 'national mythology'
Ofri Ilani
"In the Israeli discourse about roots there is a degree of perversion. This is an ethnocentric, biological, genetic discourse. But Israel has no existence as a Jewish state: If Israel does not develop and become an open, multicultural society we will have a Kosovo in the Galilee. The consciousness concerning the right to this place must be more flexible and varied, and if I have contributed with my book to the likelihood that I and my children will be able to live with the others here in this country in a more egalitarian situation - I will have done my bit.
"We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli republic where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of the law. Anyone who is acquainted with the young elites of the Israeli Arab community can see that they will not agree to live in a country that declares it is not theirs. If I were a Palestinian I would rebel against a state like that, but even as an Israeli I am rebelling against it."
Let's not, yet again, go down that path - we 'attack' Israel, therefore we must be jew haters. :roll:
End of story.
How about just adhering to the law terms? Of course they have a right to return.
You hit it on the nail. Fear of Israel not having a majority of inhabitants being jewish. This relates to the arabs in Israel not being granted the same rights as jews.
Historical? Again mention of historical ...... :roll: Injustice for whom?
I see one wrong that could be put right if only Israel would adhere to the UN resolutions