Why do people love israel so much??

[andyfox]

Well, you know I once posted that neither of them were worthy of the land and that the best solution would be if they killed each other off. So I'm not unaware of the depredations of the Palestinians. I was not a great fan of Abba Eban, but his mot that "the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity" is right on the button.

But your assessment that the "Arabs" had 900 times the land is not relevant. That would be like telling the Cherokees that the Indians have 900 times the land, why do you have to live right here? They had a nexus with that land for a long time.

Also, Jews historically fared much better living among the Arabs than they did among Christians. The Jews that were rioted against in Palestine were the Zionists, who claimed that the Palestinians didn't exist. Zionism was needed because of European and Russian oppression, not Arab.

The one sentiment in your post that I agree with, and I think it's the crucial point, is: "Time to move on, guys." That's why I was glad when Arafat departed from the scene and will be glad when Sharon does too. Hopefully there will be a new generation of leaders on both sides that are ready to move on. It's been long enough, hasn't it?

[MMMMMM]

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But your assessment that the "Arabs" had 900 times the land is not relevant. That would be like telling the Cherokees that the Indians have 900 times the land, why do you have to live right here? They had a nexus with that land for a long time.

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Ah but it is relevant. Reason: the groups apparently are in unresolvable conflict. Both have claim to the land, but obviously separation will work better than integration. So the Arabs can give up 1/900, especialy seeing as they have laws and customs in place which oppress the Jews, and therefore they are much responsible for the conflict in the first place.

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Also, Jews historically fared much better living among the Arabs than they did among Christians. The Jews that were rioted against in Palestine were the Zionists, who claimed that the Palestinians didn't exist. Zionism was needed because of European and Russian oppression, not Arab.

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Now THAT'S irrelevant, because you and I are now discussing not why Zionism was needed overall, but why the Jews deserved a separate tiny protected enclave in the midst of a vast sea of oppressive Arabs, on land which was claimed by both Jews and Arabs. The comparative argument you presented, while true, does not hold water here because we are specifically discussing only the Arab/Jew aspect at the moment.

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The one sentiment in your post that I agree with, and I think it's the crucial point, is: "Time to move on, guys." That's why I was glad when Arafat departed from the scene and will be glad when Sharon does too. Hopefully there will be a new generation of leaders on both sides that are ready to move on. It's been long enough, hasn't it?

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Agreed, but even once the leadership issue becomes favorable for resolution, the problem still is not solved due to the intractable nature of fanaticism amongst the militants.

There could be in place the two most dovish leaders imaginable, and still Hamas et al would be attacking and vowing to not stop until all of Palestine is regained. Hence Israel should obliterate the origination of each attack, that is, the immediate area from which an attack is launched, and the infrastructure and leadership of the group which launched it. That is the only way that militant fanatics can be dealt with; else they will simply keep attacking--even if Ghandi were to be leading the Israelis and Martin Luther King the Palestinians. The die-hard militants are an intractable and ungovernable force which crave either total victory or death, and that part of the equation sadly isn't going to change anytime soon.

[twowords]

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But your assessment that the "Arabs" had 900 times the land is not relevant. That would be like telling the Cherokees that the Indians have 900 times the land, why do you have to live right here? They had a nexus with that land for a long time.

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Ah but it is relevant. Reason: the groups apparently are in unresolvable conflict. Both have claim to the land, but obviously separation will work better than integration. So the Arabs can give up 1/900, especialy seeing as they have laws and customs in place which oppress the Jews, and therefore they are much responsible for the conflict in the first place.


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Israel has worked off this assumption since its existance, believing that the Palesetinans would simply find new homes in Jordan since they were all Arabs so whats the difference. Considering the disastorous results, clearly the concept that the Middle East is a homogenous Arab state entity is false. Also, the 1/900th part of the Middle East contains a vital holy place in Islam. The pophet Mohammed stopped in Jeruselem briefly before returning the heaven. If only he'd have stopped in Bagdad or something.

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Also, Jews historically fared much better living among the Arabs than they did among Christians. The Jews that were rioted against in Palestine were the Zionists, who claimed that the Palestinians didn't exist. Zionism was needed because of European and Russian oppression, not Arab.

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Now THAT'S irrelevant, because you and I are now discussing not why Zionism was needed overall, but why the Jews deserved a separate tiny protected enclave in the midst of a vast sea of oppressive Arabs, on land which was claimed by both Jews and Arabs. The comparative argument you presented, while true, does not hold water here because we are specifically discussing only the Arab/Jew aspect at the moment.


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Whoa, you missed the point. You claim Arab states oppressed Jews and gave them the boot in a worse or equivalent way as ISrael has. Andy corrects notes that Jews were second-class (along with Catholics) but far from oppressed in the Arab Middle East (had freedom of prayer, etc). It was their oppression in Europe which fueled Zionism. And most importantly, it was largely the creation of Israel which lead to 20 Century violence against Jews in Arab states and subsequent expulsion. This was a cause and effect, in response to the creation of Israel and its subsequent actions. I really do think you're way off here.

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There could be in place the two most dovish leaders imaginable, and still Hamas et al would be attacking and vowing to not stop until all of Palestine is regained. Hence Israel should obliterate the origination of each attack, that is, the immediate area from which an attack is launched, and the infrastructure and leadership of the group which launched it. That is the only way that militant fanatics can be dealt with; else they will simply keep attacking--even if Ghandi were to be leading the Israelis and Martin Luther King the Palestinians. The die-hard militants are an intractable and ungovernable force which crave either total victory or death, and that part of the equation sadly isn't going to change anytime soon.

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I personally believe strong, more benevolent leaders would have been huge over the years. Some of these ME leaders were just often so despicable, hard-line anti-peace, or incompetent: Ben-Gurion, Meir, Begin, Netanyahu, Sharon on the Israeli side, and certainly Arafat. Others like Rabin, Barck of Israel, and Sadat of Egypt at least tried and got close to peace. Rabin was assasinated by Israeli extremists, Sadat by Islamic counterparts in Egypt (whoops this might help your point). Still, replacing Arafat would have been nice in the Clinton years in 2000 when they were tantilizingly close to an agreement, and Barack was ready to deal. Arafat was widely blamed for the missed opportunity.

[MMMMMM]

Hi twowords,

I may not have clearly made my point. I agree that European and Russian oppressions of the Jews fueled Zionism far more so than did Arab oppressions.

I'm just arguing that given that the Arabs and Jews seem unable to get along, and both have claim to a tiny sliver of land, that land ought to go to the Jews since:

1) the Arabs have 900 times more land in the region anyway,

AND

2) a major reason the Jews and Arabs can't get along is that the Arabs oppressed the Jews, historically speaking--and even today have laws denying equal rghts to Jews in their own countries. So in essence, the historical enmity is MAINLY THEIR FAULT, and continues to be, since they do not see beyond nor repudiate their backwards and discriminatory laws, policies and religious hatreds.

It's sort of like when the Jim Crow laws existed in the southern part of the USA. The enmity and inability to get along between the races WAS MAINLY THE WHITES' FAULT, because they did not see beyond and repudiate their discriminatory and oppressive laws and policies (at that time). Hypothetically speaking, if such laws and policies had continued until today, then I would think the blacks would be justified in demanding and being granted a country of their own carved out of part of the USA, so that they would no longer be oppressed by unfair laws and discrimination in the greater land mass.

[DVaut1]

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Also, Jews historically fared much better living among the Arabs than they did among Christians. The Jews that were rioted against in Palestine were the Zionists, who claimed that the Palestinians didn't exist. Zionism was needed because of European and Russian oppression, not Arab.

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Now THAT'S irrelevant, because you and I are now discussing not why Zionism was needed overall, but why the Jews deserved a separate tiny protected enclave in the midst of a vast sea of oppressive Arabs, on land which was claimed by both Jews and Arabs. The comparative argument you presented, while true, does not hold water here because we are specifically discussing only the Arab/Jew aspect at the moment.


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Whoa, you missed the point. You claim Arab states oppressed Jews and gave them the boot in a worse or equivalent way as ISrael has. Andy corrects notes that Jews were second-class (along with Catholics) but far from oppressed in the Arab Middle East (had freedom of prayer, etc). It was their oppression in Europe which fueled Zionism. And most importantly, it was largely the creation of Israel which lead to 20 Century violence against Jews in Arab states and subsequent expulsion. This was a cause and effect, in response to the creation of Israel and its subsequent actions. I really do think you're way off here.


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Just to repeat what twowords and Andy are saying here, but even at the end of the 19th century, there were only 5,000 Jews living in the Israel/Palestine area (knowing that no name will satisfy all parties - and granting that calling the area Israel when referring to the pre-1948 era is somewhat of a misnomer) - and these Jews had rather harmonious relations with the Arabs in the area; and this had more or less been the status quo since the Middle Ages.

From Tessler's seminal work on the subject of the history of the conflict, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:

<font color="blue">"At the dawning of the modern age, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, only 5,000 or so of the estimated 2.5 to 3 million Jews in the world resided in Palestine, a terroritory which itself had a population of roughly 250,000 to 300,000 at the time. So as far as the Jews of the country are concerned, their presence was limited not only in magnitude by also in dispersion, involving concentrations only in Jerusalem and three other cities of special spiritual significance: Hebron, Tiberias, and Safad.

The history of Jews in Europe, where about 90 percent of the world Jewry lived at this time, had for centuries been characterized not only by political inequality and personal humiliation, but also, frequently, by physical persecution. Individual Jews might on occasion prosper, or even attain positions of privilege and influence through service to prominent notables and officials. Further, though continuing themes in European Jewish life, intolerance and abuse were much more intense in certain times and places than others. On the whole, however, the Jewish communities of Europes were powerless and dependent and were often the target of anti-Semitic outbursts, many of which were associated with Christian religious fervor. Jews living within the Byzantine Empire were the target of four major campaigns of forced conversion, in 560, 621, 873 and 930, and there were similar campaigns in France in the sixth and seventh centuries, as well as later. Jews were massacred in France and Germany during the Crusades, and there were anti-Jewish riots in England during the Middle Ages. In the late thirteenth century Jews were expelled from England, and they were expelled from France as well the following century. There were also violent outbursts against the Jews of Germany during this period. On one occasion, for example, nearly two hundred Jews were slaughtered in Frankfurt after the Jewish parents of a boy who was forced to convert to Christianity tried to prevent his baptism. In addition, Jewish riots occured in Austria in the fifteenth century.

The persecution that Jews had known for half a millenium or more in the Christian states of Europe was largely absent in Muslim Spain, which experienced a golden age of the eighth century under the rule of the Umayyad dynasty based in Cordoba. On the contrary, Jewish life was full and prosperous for almost four hundred years, even after the most puritanical Almoravid and Almohad dynasties based in Morocco took control of the area in the eleventh and twelfth centuries respectively."</font>

As Tessler lays out, one of the reasons modern political Zionists like Herzl chose the settle in Palestine (although Palestine was not the only option for some like Herzl, who also proposed establishing a Zionist state in Uganda - again, to escape European anti-Semitic persecution, not Arab) was not only the motivation to reconnect with the land of their ancestors, but also because Jews had fared much better at the time assimilating with Arabs, with whom they had relatively friendly and concordant relations with (and again note that Herzl's The Jewish State, the work that spurred on modern political Zionism, was Herzl's response to incidents such as the Dreyfus affair, which had left Herzl so jaded toward modern Europe, and its virulent anti-Semitism, that he felt Jews had no choice left but to leave Europe and settle elsewhere); in fact, the success of the first wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine at the turn of the 20th century was due in no small part to the cooperation of Palestinian-area Arabs, who aided modern European Jews in the practices and techniques of agriculture, which many of the members of the first Aliya had no knowledge of. Many Arabs more than welcomed the initial immigration of European Jews to the area, who brought with them the then-innovative technologies and knowledge of a now-industrialized Europe.

Long story short: the "Zionism is a movement borne out of Arab oppression" seems completely unsubstantiated by everything I know about the subject. I really have no idea how you came to such a conclusion, M. It truly does seem to run against anything I've ever read.

[DVaut1]

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Hi twowords,

I may not have clearly made my point. I agree that European and Russian oppressions of the Jews fueled Zionism far more so than did Arab oppressions.

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I'm not saying that Arab oppression had nothing to do with Zionism - because perhaps there's something I've missed. So while I won't rule out the possibility entirely, I challenge you to cite me any instance of one prominent Zionist from the beginning of the movement who claimed that Arab oppression had influenced the movement. I seriously doubt you'll succeed in doing this, as I've read absolutely nothing about early Zionism being spurred on by Arab oppression. There weren't many Jews living under Arabs - and those that were, if you look above (even historically) were living in peace and comfort.

Just to be clear about the time period I speak of, I want to see some evidence of anything from the very early beginning of the Zionist movement in the 1860's, through early 20th century - let's say the start of WWI (although serious, modern political Zionism did not begin in earnest until the 1890s). Cite any work from an early Zionist who claimed that Zionism was a movement to escape Arab oppression.

Again, and remember - Zionism was a movement from Europe to Palestine; Jews chose to leave Europe to live with Arabs (in fact, the early Zionists were highly dependent on a close, working relationship with the Arabs who were there). Consider this strongly.

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I'm just arguing that given that the Arabs and Jews seem unable to get along

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Arabs and Jews have a rather long track record of 'getting along' in various points in time during history - including the early stages of the Zionist movement.

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2) a major reason the Jews and Arabs can't get along is that the Arabs oppressed the Jews, historically speaking--and even today have laws denying equal rghts to Jews in their own countries. So in essence, the historical enmity is MAINLY THEIR FAULT, and continues to be, since they do not see beyond nor repudiate their backwards and discriminatory laws, policies and religious hatreds.

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Again, not true - Arabs and Jews have, at various points in time, lived closely together, quite successfully, for long periods of time, to the betterment of both cultures. See my previous post. A major reason Arabs and Jews don't currently 'get along' is because they have serious political disagreements with one another - not necessarily a history of religious acrimony. Current rhetoric may lead you to believe otherwise, as the current conflict manifests itself as a religious one - but it's certainly dominated by politics and not by the realm of the spiritual.

[MMMMMM]

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I'm not saying that Arab oppression had nothing to do with Zionism - because perhaps there's something I've missed. So while I won't rule out the possibility entirely, but I challenge you to cite me any instance of one prominent Zionist from the beginning of the movement who claimed that Arab oppression had influenced the movement. I seriously doubt you'll succeed in doing this. Just to be clear about the time period I speak of, let's say anything from the very early beginning of the Zionist movement in the 1860's, through early 20th century - let's say the start of WWI.

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It's really besides the point I'm trying to make. If Arab oppression of Jews did not "fuel" Zionism, even slightly, that does not change my point that Arab oppression of Jews existed and that it is a contributing reason the Arabs and Jews have historically had problems, and a partial justification for Israel to have been given to the Jews. I'm really not trying to argue the historical origins of Zionism here.

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Arabs and Jews have a rather long track record of 'getting along' in various points in time during history - including the early stages of the Zionist movement.

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Yes, at times and in places they have gotten along; I'm not saying all didn't or never did. The history is checkered. Arab countries however have long had oppressive laws and treatment of the Jews and continue to do so to this day. Arab/Jew problems go back many centuries and a lot of it boils down to Islamic insistence on being the DOMINANT religion and politics (instead of merely being an EQUAL religion), and to laws denying non-Muslims equal rights--plus a certain amount of plain anti-Jewish sentiment (often with a background religious component).

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Current rhetoric may lead you to believe otherwise, as the current conflict manifests itself as a religious one - but it's certainly dominated by politics and not by the realm of the spiritual.


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Yes, the conflict today is in large part political, especially as regards Israel--but it is by no means entirely political.

However, you cannot simply dissociate the religious from the political when it comes to Islam. Islam is anti-secular in thrust, by its very nature; and with its emphasis on bringing the world into conformance to God's laws (as spelled out in the Koran), it is philosophically not well-suited to divorcing the religious from the political.

So yes, much of the conflict today is political but there is also an underlying religious component that cannot be ignored. And historically that religious component always existed even when and where there was peace between the Arabs and Jews. Basically, it is the position of Islam that it is not to be equal with other religions but must become dominant, and that Muslims must work to bring not only themselves, but the world itself to submission under God's laws. Eaxpmles of this in the political realm are many laws in Arab countries denying full legal rights to non-Muslims. Many of those laws still exist and are enforced today. And that in my opinion is partial justification for Israel being given to the Jews, so that they can have a tiny haven safe from the oppressions by Arab laws and customs which exist throughout most of the rest of the Middle East.

[andyfox]

"The Arabs" have as much to do with the Palestinians as "The Indians" have to do with The Cherokees. Zilch. And the reason for "the conflict in the first place" was that the Zionists said that Palestine was a land without people. It was not. That was the genesis of the conflict.

The reason why the Jews "deserved" a homeland was because of antisemitism in Europe and Russia. That's where the vast majority of Jews resided and where they fare the worst. No Zionist writer of any political stripe ever mentioned the conditon of the Jews anywhere else as a reason for their longings to either return to Zion or to have any kind of homeland.

It's not just the dovishness of future leaders that would get the job done, but the competency as well. I agree with you that mere sentiment will not do the trick. Leaders have to be strong and smart statesmen as well, especially in light of the fanatacism that motivates many of the actors in the conflict.

Whenever I despair of this ever happening (for example, when I saw the hideous march in Iran this week), I think of Begin and Sadat. Begin was a terrorist and Sadat a fascist earlier in their careers, both hardhearted military men; Egypt was Israel's most implacable foe during the 1940s and 1950s. And yet they managed to grow and to forge a peace that has lasted many years now.

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I'm just arguing that given that the Arabs and Jews seem unable to get along, and both have claim to a tiny sliver of land, that land ought to go to the Jews since:

1) the Arabs have 900 times more land in the region anyway

[/ QUOTE ] this is silly for two reasons. "They both lay claim to a tiny sliver of land." i haven't read the rest of this thread, so maybe i'm misinterpreting what your saying, but the heart of the current arab resentment of israel is not its existance, but the policy towards the W.B. and the Gaza strip, as well as israeli presance in the golan hights (syria's beef) and the lebanese border. the average arab has conceded that israel isn't going anyhwere. The part about 900 times more land is silly also. Arabs is a broad term. muslims christians druze etc... sunni's shiites kurds etc... The jews have israel, the real contemporary beef is about the plight of the palestinians. no sighting ajeminiangmkjafjhfy's quote, as the iranians aren't arabs.

[andyfox]

"Arab oppression of Jews existed and that it is a contributing reason the Arabs and Jews have historically had problems, and a partial justification for Israel to have been given to the Jews."

Jews were not oppressed in Arab lands. Muslims considered Jews and Christians people of the "book" and considered that their religion should be respected. This is precisely what caused problems for Jews in the western world and in Russia: their religion. While Jews were considered dhimmi, and thus were not of the same status as Muslims, oppression is the wrong word to apply to Jewish life in Arab/Muslim states. No historian who has studied Jewish existence in Arab states comes to this conclusion.

Thus, Arabs and Jews did not have historical problems of anywhere close to the magnitude of the problems problems that Christians and Jews had. Jewish treatment in Arab states had absolutely nothing to do with the Zionist movement and the justification for the formation of the state of Israel. There is nothing in any of the Zionist writings about the condition of Jews in Arab states.

BTW, Israel defines itself as a Jewish state. I can move to Israel and I immediately become a citizen. My daughter in law cannot do so. The problems Arabs have in Israel boil down to Jewish insistence on being the DOMINANT religion and politics (instead of merely being an EQUAL religion), and to laws denying non-Jews equal rights--plus a certain amount of plain anti-Arab sentiment (often with a background religious component).