Originally Posted by
exchemist
Originally Posted by
SowZ37
Originally Posted by
exchemist
Originally Posted by
cosmictraveler
One of the unique features of Judaism is that it denotes BOTH a religious adherence AND a racial group.
But looking at Palestine they also do the same thing being Muslim and Hamas within causing a racial group to evolve.
Since Israel was imposed on the Palestinians and the Israelis have expropriated their land (and continue to do so every day via the settlement programme) it is fairly understandable, if politically counterproductive, for the Palestinians to feel as they do about the Israelis.
As I recall it that land was won after a war with the Palestinians who started a war against Israel but lost it. Now after losing that land they want it back. Would the Palestinians given the land back to the Israelis if they had won the war, i'd think not.
No, Palestine is not a proper state at all, being more or less like an apartheid-era bantustan, still less one defined by ethnicity or religion. Palestinians are mostly ethnically Arab and mostly muslim, as are numerous others states in the area. They do not occupy a state defined by religion or ethnicity. Nobody would argue being anti-Palestinian was a racist position to hold.
As for the war, yes but this was precipitated by the imposition of the state of Israel. You mention it as a war against Israel but fail to ask yourself how Israel came to be. That is where the problem lies.
Israel only came into existence in 1948 as a result of immigration of Jews to Palestine (a lot of it illegal), from the 1920s and during the postwar British mandate, and the growth of Jewish terrorism, which eventually led to a UN partition plan, and the carving out of Israel from what had hitherto been Palestinian territory. The immigration started in response to the Balfour Declaration, which in retrospect can perhaps be seen as one of many cases of British high-minded high-handedness, as it essentially held out the promise of giving away somebody else's property. Perhaps this is all glossed over in the USA. But it is an uncomfortable fact.
Regardless of how it came about, or if it should have been established, Israel exists now and the people born there have a much a right to their homes as anyone.
That's highly debatable. If you are the child of a conquering invader who has appropriated someone's land, do you in fact have a right to remain there?
Yes, though if the rightful owner of a piece of land can be tracked down the land should be returned. But I still have the right to live in the country. Unless you are arguing heritage gives someone a right to live in a country, and someone's skin color or 'race' owns something. The implications of that argument are both racist and absurd. Heritage/ethnicity is an arbitrary concept. How many generation back, exactly, until the ownership of a land leaves one ethnicity and transfer to another? I want an exact number. Then give me the reason why, after we've gone far back enough, those people have a legitimate claim over that land. More than likely, those people were not the first inhabitants of that land. More than likely, the 'original' inhabitants were conquerors, too. So let's kick them out. Let's track down until we find the direct descendants of the first humans to step foot in that land. But even that is arbitrary.
It is evil and nonsensical to tell someone they no longer have a country just because their parents were conquerors. What gives you the right to live in a country if being born there doesn't give you that right?
I've never met a single person capable of answering these questions at all, probably because the whole concept of race is invented, but you're welcome to try.
The entire premise that an ethnicity owns something doesn't make sense. If a given swath of land or artifact is old enough that the actual owners can't be found, sure, giving it to whoever identifies with those people makes sense. Saying the children of Israelis who were born in Jerusalem don't have a right to be there but people who've never stepped close to the city, but their grandparents have, doesn't make any sense. I can imagine a good case made that both children have equal claim to the land. But how could you justify kicking the former out and keeping the latter there without entirely racist reasons?
Israel exists and that fact can't be ignored. People have homes and swaths of land they own with as much legitimacy as anywhere on the planet, because all 'ethnicities' have homelands they killed people to get. That doesn't make it right to conquer, but we aren't talking about punishing conquerors and returning property to the people kicked out. We are talking about the grandchildren and great grandchildren of people who migrated to Israel after a complicated political move.
48Likes
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
