I think I have posted sufficiently on this subject. Sccttgem I know you will come back to accuse me of supporting terrorism, anit-semitic & probably being a terrorists myself. People like you is why discussion is stifled & why this conflict will probably never e resolved. Go in peace & maybe someday you will find in your heart to acknowledge the truth that the palestinans do not deserve their suffering or their position.

Excuse me? People like me? All I seek is the truth. And I haven't seen enough truth to make me change my feelings. The article you just posted helps enforce that truth.

I have never said that the Palestinans "deserve" their suffering or position. What I have said is that they have largely bought that suffering and position on themselves by their own actions.

All of your diatribes in your earlier post today (in answer to my last post) just repeat the same tired propaganda that I have answered several times in this thread.

But I also wish you go in peace. I wish that you promote peace not the acts of terrorism committed daily by Palestinans. There was a truce, broken by Hamas rockets being sent against Israel, not by Israel. I wish that you become enlightened by the real truths here, not the propaganda you choose to believe. Maybe then there could be real peace.

The Palestinians could do much to help their cause by stop raining missiles down on Israel from an area Israel already returned to them .

Theirs is a self inflicted plight.

As to the right of return . They have no more of a right of return than native Americans have to reclaim Manhattan Island. The whole concept is absurd.

The reality in this world is that land ownership is contingent on your ability to defend it. Thus was it ever so. If you think it is not so ,then just ask the hundreds of Americans who have recently been forced from their lands by the use of eminent domain laws.

Hello again:

Because the Israli's don't throw people off the roof...

excon

There are far too many responses for me to read them all, so if I add anything new I suppose it to be surprising.

At the inception of the partition of Palestine, America was very reluctant to support it, and later was going to abstain from the U.N. vote. However, Americans have always had a keen eye for the underdog and for the oppressed; after all, most Americans at that time came from colonies of the Imperial Crown and had been crushed by European oppression. And here again was another example of a people being crushed by European oppression, so it was only natural to support the Jew against European Elitism.

Why do we continue to support Israel; for the same reason we support any ‘good principled freedom loving people?’

Why does the USA support Israel?

Perhaps it is because Israel supports the USA.

In the UN, only two members have consistently voted the same way as the USA on almost every topic. The two members? One is Micronesia. The other is Israel.

Then there is the fact that Israel's intelligence network has supplied the USA with important information it has needed to keep this country safe and stop its enemies.

How about the fact that Israel trades openly with the USA for all sorts of goods and products from fresh food to electronics to automobiles to grey goods. That computer you are using... about half the parts and about half the programming were developed in Israel for Microsoft or other companies.

How about intergovernmental military assistance? Israel's elite fighting units regularly trains with the USA's elite fighting units. We cross-train our fighter pilots. We cross-train our security and anti-terrorist agencies. Israel grants the USA its only truly safe harbor for US naval vessels in the entire Middle East.

How about their sharing of Medical technology and other scientific breakthroughs. Israel is the world leader on prosthetic technology (a product of bombs always going off around them, I guess). They have gladly and openly shared this technology not just with the USA, but with all countries. They are also the worlds leaders in the development of agrarian technology... development of better farming methods and technologies. This they also share with the world.

Then there's the whole Democracy thing. We are supporters of democracy. Israel is one of perhaps 3 democracies in the Middle East right now, and the others are shakey. We should be supporting the only fully developed democracy in the Middle East.

And how about the fact that we OWE Israel big time for holding off on responding to attacks by Saddam Hussein in 1991 so that we could maintain the coalition against Iraq in the first Gulf War. Israel took a big hit at our request. No other country in the world has ever taken that many hits from a declared enemy as a favor for a friend. Israel did it because WE asked them to. And we have asked them to hold off on responding to other provocations by their enemies as well since then (and before as well). We owe them for that. They did us a favor... a bunch of them actually. You don't turn your back on that sort of favor.

I could go on all afternoon discussing what we and the rest of the world get in return for supporting Israel. But I doubt that those who have made up their minds really care what we get in return. They are stuck on the idea that Israel is somehow the aggressor in the Middle East, and that all problems in the Middle East stem from our support of Israel. And they may even be right... the Middle East may indeed be a powder keg because of Israel's existence. I doubt it, since it was a powder keg for 1500 years before Israel ever existed as a modern state. But perhaps they are right.

So what?

You don't abandon friends because your enemies want you to. That's just stupid. You stick by your friends and you fight the enemies together. You help each other out against the mutual enemies that are trying to kill you both. You don't abandon them in the hopes that the enemy will suddenly love you for it, because they won't.

Israel is our friend. Probably the most reliable friend we've got in the world... with the possible exception of Micronesia. Even England hasn't always been on our side all the time on all issues. Israel pretty much has, and where they have not agreed with us, they have allowed us the luxury of trying to convince them to go along with us anyway. We even disagree on friendly terms with Israel in the few cases where we don't agree. You don't turn your back on a friend like that.

Elliot

I wish I had been here for the "debate" between Fitnahpolice vs. excon and ScotGem. I would have had a thing or two to say on the subject. Those of you who know me from the other sites I have posted on know what I mean.

Ah, well, maybe next time.

In the meanwhile, excon and ScotGem, you have my respect for fighting the good fight with respectful posts and by laying out the facts. Good job, guys.

Elliot

Is this a joke! Elliot :)


Now that I have read the entirety of the posts, as painful as it was, I can only conclude that there was little substance, and many ad hominids. False premises were as common as fleas on a camel, and history completely disjointed and often completely ignored. Frankly, few were interested in the historical facts about how Israel came into being. As I recall Tomder did make an attempt but was just ignored, so I don’t know just what you may have contributed that would have offset the raw ignorance so often displayed.

Making blanket statements such as this is very easy. If you found anything that was historically inaccurate or a false premise, please identify them. Until I see proof to the contrary, I will stand by my posts as factual.

First, my comments were a summation of the whole of the thread, and not directed at any specific individuals.

And second: I will not be drawn into a tit- for- tat verbal argument on each sentence in the thread; however, in your very first post, #6 I believe, there are several false premises.

1) I quote you: “Seriously, the establishment of the Jewish state of Isreal stems from the guilt of the world at turning a blind eye to the Holocaust while it was happening”.

You really need to do some serious reading about what was happening before, and at the time war was declared by Germany. And particularly about the British concentration camps on Cypress and the boat loads of Jews with no place in the world to go but Palestine, and then murdered at sea by the British… that has more bearing on Americas support than anything you have suggested.


2) “…most of the land was actually given or sold to them. And what was sold was generally non arable desert that the Arabs didn't want”.

Land was sold all right, at about twice the going rate… Perhaps land the Arabs didn't want, but the Palestinians did.


2) “…because the only reasons it has enemies is purely irrational religious hatred.

This is nonsense; as nonsensical as the anti-Semite argument that came along later in the thread.

Of course there were several worse offenses by others, on the other side of the issue.


EDIT: I might add: This nonsense about the Jews “Terrorism” is simply that…nonsense… they were freedom fighters against the British terrorism against them.

First, Even though you didn't direct your comments at any specific individual you responded to a note from ETWolverine praising what excon and I had said.

Sorry, but your points don't disprove or even contradict what I said. Are you trying to say that the rest of the world was totally unaware of Hitler's final solution? Are you saying that when the concentration camps and other elements of the Holocaust were finally revealed, that the world was not aghast, at least publiclally, over it? I stand by my statement that a major part of the reasons that countries voted for partition was due to guilt over the Holocaust. The British interment camps, not concentration camps, were not pretty. The British took a black eye over their treatment of refugee jews and deservedly so. And yes it played a factor in partition, but again by making countries feel guilty. Whether the Arabs gouged the Zionists or not, the fact remains that they obtained much of the land they settled in legally.

Why is it nonsensical that Israel's enemies are enemies due to religious hatred?

Finally, you have to be kidding, a terrorist is a terrorist no matter what side they fight on. Yes, the Irgun were fighting for jewish freedom and a jewish state. But they did it by bombing both military and civilian targets. That's terrorism!

What I find odd is that we seem to be on the same side here. We both support Israel and their right to exist as a jewish state. I just don't do it blindly to Israel's faults or the lessons of history.

I expect Elliot will speak for himself.

You say, “The British interment camps, not concentration camps, were not pretty. The British took a black eye over their treatment of refugee Jews and deservedly so.”.

No, we are not on the same side; I am not a British apologist. I well understand, from Irish history, the concept of pitting one religion against another, and that was not the British way in Palestine. Britain declared war on freedom; Britain and the betrayal of the Hebrew people should not we white-washed by calling what they did a “black eye”. It was no less than a continuation of the Holocaust!
As to your comment, “a terrorist is a terrorist no matter what side they fight on”: Abstract thought concerns the investigation and analysis of very general principles and concepts which rises to a level above particular instances. For instance, when this or that violent behavior is called "terrorism" we may ask, abstractly and generally, "What is terrorism?" and ask, for instance, what is the difference between terrorism and freedom-fighting, concentrating perhaps on the slogan, "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter" and ask whether that slogan is true? This may lead to the question of whether terrorism and freedom fighting are really, as the slogan suggests, mutually exclusive, so that the same individual or group cannot be both. Your answer appears to be Yes, while mine is no. So again, we are not both on the same side.
The greatest danger of abstract thinking, as we all know, is that it may rise so far above particularities that it loses contact with them, and we may find ourselves indulging in the abstract and quite literally not knowing what we are talking about.

It's because we support democracy and do not support hatred, extremism, terroism and Muslim fundamentalism. We also know that if Israel is gone, the muslims will go after Europe later.
There are some things as convictions, beliefs and honor

You seem to read into things what you want to see not what was actually said. I really don't know how you arrive at referring to me as a British apologist. As to being on the same side I was referring to supporting Israel.

I just spent a little time doing some research on the Cyprus camps. Nowhere was I able to get any sense they were as you portray them. The Holocaust was the deliberate extermination of jews, I don't see any justification for even suggesting that the British attempt to control immigration to Palestine could be considered like that.

When you attack innocent civilians that's terrorism. I'm not talking abstracts.

I still haven't seen any proofs to support your previous blanket statements.

If you look at the middle east, you have old time thugs, who kill the innocent and each other, and you have the Jews, who who are targets of most of the thugs going way back. Though relatively small in number, the thugs pretty much run it, and the ones who are just making a living, keep quiet like sheep, cause the thugs would cut their throat, as quick as they would the Jews. So you can back the thugs, the Jews, or the other sheep. One thing for sure, you better get on one side or the other, even though no side is perfect, sitting on the fence won't help when both sides are shooting over the fence. Since the thugs don't like you either, the choice is clear, send the Jews all the bullets they ask for, and if you have to, you may have to shoot a few sheep, because that's the favorite hiding place for thugs.

No Refuge from the Holocaust
The gates of Palestine remained closed for the duration of the war, stranding hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe, many of whom became victims of Hitler’s Final Solution. After the war, the British refused to allow the survivors of the Nazi nightmare to find sanctuary in Palestine. On June 6, 1946, President Truman urged the British government to relieve the suffering of the Jews confined to displaced persons camps in Europe by immediately accepting 100,000 Jewish immigrants. Britain's Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, replied sarcastically that the United States wanted displaced Jews to immigrate to Palestine “because they did not want too many of them in New York.”10
Some Jews were able to reach Palestine, many by way of dilapidated ships that members of the Jewish resistance organizations smuggled in. Between August 1945 and the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, 65 “illegal ” immigrant ships, carrying 69,878 people, arrived from European shores. In August 1946, however, the British began to intern those they caught in camps in Cyprus. Approximately 50,000 people were detained in the camps, 28,000 of whom were still imprisoned when Israel declared independence.11
10) George Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East, (NC: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 23.

11) Aharon Cohen, Israel and the Arab World, (NY: Funk and Wagnalls, 1970), p. 174.

Yes, and many deny the Holocaust ever existed, too.

If you want to go on believing that “World Guilt” is behind the establishment of the State of Israel be my quest. If you believe the Brit’s were fine chaps who got a little out of line, be my quest; after all, they are pretty cleaver at hiding their history, just ask the Catholics in Ireland.

By the way: the term Terrorism is an abstract term, not a concrete term; that is, it is a concept with-out a concrete object.

First, that quote jives with everything I've learned about what happened with British attempts to keep jewish refugees out of Palestine. But it does NOT support, in the least, your statements that it was a continuation of the Holocaust.

Yes, there are people who try to rewrite history denying the Holocaust. But what has that got to do with anything that has been said in this thread, especially by me?

Third, lots of countries that have a mostly proud history have their darker moments. Our treatment of the native americans is a prime example of that. The british have a lot to be ashamed of in their treatment of the Irish and their role in Palestine among other chapters. But I'm not going to condemn the whole country because of such chapters. Just as I won't condemn Israel because of some of the times they stepped over the line. I will condemn those times though as I have.

You have still failed to show any proof behind your statements. Everything you have said and shown supports what I have said and not your extremist position. I will go in believing what I have stated because it fits the facts of history.

You make the same judgmental error as the Arab in respect to attributing blame to America and Israel. Is it fair or just to hold the Father guilty for the Sins of his son; similarly is it fair or just to hold the Leaders and Councils of a government responsible for the Sins of her people? I say no, and the Arabs say yes.

To compare the Sins of the British Crown with the Sins of America or Israel is a great error in logic.

You may deny I have proved the premises in your post #6 to be in error, and your position as that of a British apologist as untrue… but the facts speak much louder than your denial.
:rolleyes:

Do you even know what a fact is? This is getting ridiculous, you have proven nothing. Every fact you have presented backs up my position. You clearly have biases that blind you to the fact, you see everything only through the blinders you have imposed on yoursefl so that you ignore real logic and real facts.

I stand by the statements I have made with the proofs I have offered. I have no fear that people not as biased as you will see that I am neither in denial and that you have proven nothing.

You really need to take a look at the preposterous claims you made again:

Seriously, the establishment of the Jewish state of Isreal stems from the guilt of the world at turning a blind eye to the Holocaust while it was happening.

Let me also remind people that the jews did not come into Palestine as conquerors like Americans and Indians.

It also deserves our support because the only reasons why it has enemies is purely irrational religious hatred.


Guilt!

Conquerors!

Religious hatred!

These sound more like judgments formed based upon the reckless assertions of enemies, and not upon those of impartial witnesses.