What's the fucking deal with Palestinians?

Colorsblending9 wrote:

Israel isn't ethnically cleaning anyone, there is no genocide, there is no massmurder.

No, of course there isn't.

Meanwhile...

Tutu enters Gaza to start investigation into deaths
The Guardian, Wednesday May 28 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/28/israelandthepalestinians.southafrica
'Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop, met the former Palestinian prime minister and Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Gaza at the start of a much-delayed UN investigation into the shelling by the Israeli military of a Palestinian house which killed 18 members of a single family in Beit Hanoun.'

Tutu was sent by the UN human rights council to lead the inquiry only days after the incident in November 2006. However, the Israeli government did not give him a visa and complained that the council was politicised in its criticism of Israel.

Yesterday, after several months of delay, Tutu crossed into Gaza from Egypt at the Rafah crossing point, which is usually closed and almost never used for UN or diplomatic visits, but where he did not require any Israeli travel permit.

Tutu met Karen Abu Zayd, the head of the UN relief and works agency, which supports Palestinian refugees, and then met Haniyeh, one of the leading Hamas figures in Gaza who was sacked as prime minister last year.

Tutu was to tell Haniyeh that he strongly condemned militants firing rockets from Gaza into southern Israel and the killing of Israeli civilians, but he was also to speak of his criticism of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, according to a source travelling with him.

Today Tutu will travel to Beit Hanoun to talk to survivors of the Israeli artillery strike. All the dead were from the Athamna extended family, among them 14 women and children. They were asleep in the house when the shells struck early in the morning.

As they poured out of the house they were hit by more shells - a wave of six or seven in total. It came only a day after the Israeli military had ended a six-day incursion into Beit Hanoun, which had left 50 Palestinians dead.

After the shelling incident, the Israeli military said it had fired "preventative artillery at launch sites" from which militants had fired rockets a day earlier towards Israel, but there had been a "technical failure" with the artillery gun.

Although Tutu was not given a visa to travel to Gaza, Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, did travel to Beit Hanoun at the time, and to the Israeli towns around Gaza, and said there had been a "massive" violation of human rights in Gaza.

The UN human rights council then sent Tutu on a fact-finding mission to "assess the situation of victims, address the needs of survivors and make recommendations on ways and means to protect Palestinian civilians against further Israeli assaults".

evenkat wrote:

But it is an ethnicity and guess what it is a nationality too since there is a country now called Israel! We can trace them to Middle East going back thousands of years. The bottom line they were chased out of the Middle East and have traveled across borders like millions of the other peoples have over the thousands of years. However just like in the Middle East they were chased out of Europe by being treated inhumanely.

None of this gives them any right of soveriegnty over the land in Palestine.

evenkat wrote:

But doesn't your statement support the Israelis too? If you're argument is the land belongs to the Palestinians, however over the past 40-60 years the Israelis have control over that land. So should the Palestinians get over it just like the Native Americans, Celts and Australian Aboriginals?

My birth home is an old Dutch settlement which was originally a Native American settlement called Penpotawotnot.

There's a difference between some spurious claim relating to Ancient history and 60 years. Did you actually read my post above?

evenkat wrote:

But it is an ethnicity and guess what it is a nationality too since there is a country now called Israel! We can trace them to Middle East going back thousands of years.

And no ethnic state has any legitimate claim over a piece of land. The Zionist enterprise of establishing an ethnic Jewish state in Palestine was illegitimate from the beginning. What we're talking about here is a race war. One ethnicity claiming sovereignty over territory belonging to, and inhabited by, people that didn't fit that particular mould.
Your talk about Biblical history is just pure nonsense.
We're discussing the present situation in the Middle East. I.e, the illegal occupation and Intrnational law. Still, keep moving the goal posts. I mean, this is purely verbal jousting here right? And it's not a serious issue. It's not as if hundreds of thousands of people are presently living in conditions of extreme poverty and danger.
It's a level playing field between two equal parties, right? Both parties are in the wrong and need to make concessions, right? The Palestinians need to renounce violence and need to recognize Israel, despite the fact that Israel in it's present state is in breach of international law on over 60 resolutions, and despite the fact that Israel has refused to declare it's own borders, thereby making Israel an open-ended concept. And what concessions does Israel need to make? Oh yeah, they need to cease their illegal settlement building. Nevermind the 1967 borders. That's just international law. And why should any American or Israeli care about that, right?

evenkat wrote:

the fact is a large portion of the Israelis came from Europe after WWII as they were still being treated like shit and unwanted in Europe which is the reason that the UN gave the Jews portions of Palestine. So why did the Jews have to leave their homes in Europe? Lets give them back their homes in Europe then. Oh that's right it's ok to treat Jews like shit and it's ok for Europeans (governments) and others to take lands away from people and treat them like shit but it's not ok for the Jews/Israelis to do so? But many Europeans would argue the Jews don't originally come from Europe (or do they?)... but hmmm where did they come from then?....hmmmm Middle East...Palestine?

It's doubtful that any of the Jews who settled in Palestine after WW2 had ever set foot there before. So how could they claim it as their home?

Michael Neumann:
'The Zionists and their camp followers did not come simply to "find a homeland," certainly not in the sense that Flanders is the homeland of the Flemish, or Lappland of the Lapps. They did not come simply to "make a life in Palestine." They did not come to "redeem a people". All this could have been done elsewhere, as was pointed out at the time, and much of it was being done elsewhere by individual Jewish immigrants to America and other countries. The Zionists, and therefore all who settled under their auspices, came to found a soveriegn Jewish state.'


'Zionism was from the start an ill-considered and menacing experiment in ethnic nationalism. Neither history nor religion could justify it. The Jews had no claim to Palestine and no right to build a state there. Their growing need for refuge may have provided some limited, inadequate, short-term moral sustenance for the Zionist project, but it could not render that project legitimate. The mere fact of later suffering cannot retroactively convert a wrong into a right: my attempt to usurp your land does not become legitimate simply because I am wrongly beaten by someone else, far away, when my project is near completion. Nor did the well founded desperation of the Jews during the Nazi era provide any justification for Zionism; at most it provided an excuse. If someone is murdering my family in Germany, that does not entitle me to your house in Boston, or my "people" to your country. All Jews fleeing Hitler were indeed entitled to some refuge. One might even suppose that it was the obligation of the whole world, including the Palestinians, to do what they could to provide such refuge. But this is not the whole story.
For one thing, those with ample means to provide refuge, and those who are responsible for the need, have by far the greater share of responsibility. The Palestinians fell into neither category. Even more important, there is an enormous difference between providing refuge and providing a sovereign state. No amount of danger or suffering requires this, and indeed it may conflict with the demand for refuge. Simply to control one's own affairs isn't always the safest alternative. Arguably, for instance, the Jews were safer in the United States, where they are not sovereign, than they ever were in Israel. This is not only a fact but was always a reasonable expectation, so the need for refuge is also no basis for Zionism...

If there are any great lessons to be learned from the Nazi era , they are to watch out for fascism, racism, and ethnic nationalism. Supporting Israel hardly embodies these lessons.'

evenkat wrote:

It basically appears both sides want their own ethnic state. Again two sided.

When you say that 'It [] appears both sides want their own ethnic state', I assume you came to this conclusion after looking at some evidence for it? Therefore, can you please provide some evidence that the Palestinians are looking for their own ethnic state. You may have forgotten that Arabs and Jews lived happily side-by-side in Palestine for hundreds of years before the Zionist enterprise led to the present day bloodshed.

evenkat wrote:

The Palestinians need to agree with the pre-1967 borders which means they too must accept and finally agree to give land to the Israelis. They too must stop the violence and let the Israelis live in peace.

The Palestinians have already agreed with the 1967 borders. The violence will stop if and when Israel withdraws to the borders in accordance with the International consensus - excluding the U.S - which is in favour of a two-state solution along those same borders.