@JLeslie “I think Israel likely will not allow a Palestinian to be a Prime Minister or head of the army. That’s my guess.”
So are Palestinians ACTUALLY equal if they are only ever allowed to be a minority? Is Israel ACTUALLY “the only Democracy in the Middle East” if this is the case or is it only pretending to be? Can we really point to Arab Israelis as these beacons of justice that Israel is a fair and just society?
@JLeslie “They can come back to their actual piece of land? That’s what some Palestinians want, they want a mall or school torn down.”
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194: ”...refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at 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 loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”
Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War:
Article 49: “Individual 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.
Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their s as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.
The Occupying Power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated.
The Protecting Power shall be informed of any transfers and evacuations as soon as they have taken place.
The Occupying Power shall not detain protected persons in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war unless the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
That’s the relevant International law that Israel is bound by. Either Israel respects the United Nations and obeys international law, or it rejects in, In which case, how can it even be a state if it doesn’t seem to legally recognize the entity that created it? So yes, Palestinians who were forced out at the Nakbah should be allowed to return to their actual homes. That’s what it says in the UN resolution. That’s why you don’t ethnically cleanse people, destroy their homes and then build malls and schools on that land. Their homes should be rebuilt and they should be compensated for back rent (and this applies to Iraq and other countries that expelled Jews in reaction to the Nakbah).
And this isn’t for all nations through history (that’s a straw man) it’s for modern nations since WW2. After WW2 the world got together to make rules and safeguards to prevent the horrors from ever happening again.
@JLeslie “My husband’s car was stolen the day we got engaged, we don’t still try to get it back.”
But you acknowledge that every day that person had your husband’s car they were committing a crime (“possession of stolen property), it wasn’t just the first day. That’s the point. It’s an ongoing crime. Would you say that eventually the vehicle belonged to the thieves after a few days? weeks? months? years, or if they found it years later stored in mint condition (or even upgraded) in a garage somewhere, wouldn’t you expect it back? I certainly would.
@JLeslie “My family was pushed out of Latvia, I don’t try to go back and reclaim where they lived”
My understanding is that Latvia is figuring out how to make restitution and it’s an ongoing process? I’m not an expert and I would certainly support anyone’s right to return to their property if they were illegally forced out or descendants in the case where the denial is perpetual. I.e. If Israel had allowed people to return, and people chose not to then their descendants wouldn’t be entitled to either, but as long as Israel continues to commit the grave crime of preventing people from returning, their descendants should be entitled to return as well.
@JLeslie “The Palestinians didn’t accept the UN decision.”
Nobody would. The Sykes–Picot Agreement promised the land to the Palestinian people in exchange for rising up against the Ottoman Empire to win WW1. Which they did. The allocation of land was completely disproportionate to the population and if Israel had not violently displaced hundreds of thousands of Arabs in 1947 then they would only have had a tiny majority in the Jewish state. As we’ve already discussed, that’s a major problem for Zionism, because it necessitates maintaining political rule over non-Jews. The Nakba was necessary. The Zionists were writing about it. They were bombing and killing Arabs for decades prior.
@JLeslie ”...but even if the early Jewish settlers had never been aggressive in any way the Palestinians flat out rejected the decision”
You think the early Zionists had never been aggressive? From the onset of the Zionist project, they understood that a Jewish State would necessitate ethic cleansing and atrocities. The early Zionists leaders wrote about it. The word they used was “transfer.”
“With compulsory transfer we [would] have vast areas…. I support compulsory [population] transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it. But compulsory transfer could only be carried out by England…. Had its implementation been dependent merely on our proposal I would have proposed; but this would be dangerous to propose when the British government has disassociated itself from compulsory transfer. .... But this question should not be removed from the agenda because it is central question. There are two issues here : 1) sovereignty and 2) the removal of a certain number of Arabs, and we must insist on both of them.” Ben-Gurion, 1937
“In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority…. There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%.”
Ben-Gurion, 12/30/1947
The Zionists weren’t these peaceful people who were ruthlessly attacked out of nowhere and were forced to respond. They were planning for decades how to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians and steal their land. They committed many acts of violence in the early years (as did Arabs).
I think you’re ignorant of the history and how brutal it was. And it’s not your fault. There’s been a lot of rewriting history to cover up many of the wrongs committed by the Zionists and propagandists pushing lies about how Israel was created e.g. “a land without a people and a people without a land.”
@JLeslie “You don’t believe Israel should exist either, so it’s almost pointless. ”
For most of my life I believed Israel’s right to exist and supported a two-state solution. I was also mislead about the origin of the Israeli state and thought Israel was attacked, unprovoked by its neighbors. Also Israel was more of a victim when it was more vulnerable to terrorism. I remember Saddam’s Scud missiles and praying the patriot missiles would be able to intercept them. But after the assassination of Rabin, Israel really started to take a turn. It achieved a political stranglehold on both American political parties and began to act with complete impunity. I have strong suspicions that Epstein may have blackmailed world politicians and powerful donors at the behest of Mossad. The expansion of illegal settlements, and brutality increased dramatically. I began to understand that the Israelis weren’t the victims the US media was portraying them to be, but in fact they often engaged in provocative actions like raiding Al-Aqsa Mosque on holidays and then playing victim the the Arabs inevitably retaliate. The Iron Dome has been amazing at preserving innocent Israeli life, but it has also lead the Israeli people to feel emboldened to antagonize the Arabs.
Israel’s genocidal response to October 7th is historical and I think disqualifies it as worthy of statehood in the way that the holocaust disqualified Nazis from holding power in Germany. I think Israel deserves the political death penalty for its atrocities and a new state should be created in the way that South Africa was reborn. It’s the only way to move forward, and like I said, will result in less violence against Jews in the long run.
So while I think it was a mistake, I think the original state was a legally created nation by the UN.(if immoral against the rights of the Palestinians) and therefore had the right to exist. I would have handled things differently in hindsight as I said above, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think Israel has a right to exist, until they committed genocide. That did it for me.
@JLeslie “You only look at it from the Palestinian perspective not the Jewish one.”
The vast majority of the sources I listen to and read on Israel are Jewish (intentionally so). Here is a non-exhaustive list of Jewish-run sources or Jewish people I have read and listened to on the topic of Israel:
B’Tselem
Haaretz
Ilan Pappéé
Norman Finkelstein
Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss
Sam Seder
Jon Stewart
Abby Martin
Michael Brooks
Katie Halper
Simone Rimmon Zimmerman
Stephen Kapos
Composing members:
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Composing members:
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