Quote from: RPGPunditI mean shit, they've been at it since at least the slaughter of the Canaanites, so why stop now?

Didn't you say you were a historian?

Quote from: droogDidn't you say you were a historian?

A religious historian, yes.

RPGPundit

Been to Israel, enjoyed the feeling of all the people with the guns around me being fellow Jews.  Felt incredible passion upon standing before the Kotel.  Understand the moral ambiguities surrounding Israel's creation, but in the end back my tribe.

  But you know what?  I'd settle at this point for trading the current land area of Israel for empty territory in a friendly nation--the US has plenty of land in the West, f'rex--and ripping out every single building, ruin, and the entire western city of Jerusalem and the old city, replanting it in the New Yisroel, and let the Palestinians take the utterly empty and unimproved area until G-d decides to settle the damn issue himself.

Quote from: droogThere are two ways to get a permanent peace in Israel:

1. Ethnic cleansing on a fairly grand scale.

2. The one-state solution.

1. You forget that a good # of Israelis and Palestinians live outside "tha Holy Land"

2. This answer irks me whenever I see it. Israel was created to be a safe haven for Jews if any other country decided to make trouble like in the 30's. Since the Palestinian birth-rate is MUCH higher than the Israeli, they'd be the majority within a few years in such a state. And then a lot of the trouble of the past 60+ years really wouldn't mean much. Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza are the Palestinian lands, the Jordanian gov't just won't acknowledge that.  

Now, I'm not advocating total removal of Palestinians from Israel, but if Israel was created to be a Jewish Democracy and has made substantial accomplishments in its time (given the obstacles), it needs to continue its current function while the US/EU/UN/etc. pressure the Arab States to let the Palestinians live in places better than camps, as poverty breeds violence.

Quote from: dsivis2. This answer irks me whenever I see it. Israel was created to be a safe haven for Jews if any other country decided to make trouble like in the 30's. Since the Palestinian birth-rate is MUCH higher than the Israeli, they'd be the majority within a few years in such a state.

Too bad. That's democracy.

Quote from: dsivis2. This answer irks me whenever I see it. Israel was created to be a safe haven for Jews if any other country decided to make trouble like in the 30's. Since the Palestinian birth-rate is MUCH higher than the Israeli, they'd be the majority within a few years in such a state.

Wow, sort of like how there were way more blacks than whites in South Africa. So of course they couldnt let the black folks vote, then the whites would be out of power!

And when you say "Israel was created", you do realize there were people already living there right?

That turn of phrase suspiciously reminds me of Columbus "discovering" America.

Quote from: RPGObjects_chuckAnd when you say "Israel was created", you do realize there were people already living there right?

That turn of phrase suspiciously reminds me of Columbus "discovering" America.

   "A land without people, for a people without a land" is the somewhat infamous phrase.  On the other hand, Theodore Hertzl's utopian Zionist novel Altneuland had an Arab as deputy prime minister and a villain in the form of a racist rabbi who wanted to deprive Arab-Israelis of their citizenship. In other words, a working one-state solution. Zionism is *not* neccessarily racism.  There's a strong tradition of progressive Zionism that saw Arabs as partners rather than as obstacles.  Hell, theoretically the Arabs and Jewish settlers should have been allies in throwing off the British colonial mandate.

    Unfortunately, there were a number of unfortunate obstacles to such a happy convergence of interests.  The Jewish settlements were often put on land that was bought from absentee landlords, thus throwing off the Arab tenant farmers.  Jewish settlers using more modern agricultural methods--once they actually learned to farm--became competition in the local market.  The fact that the British colonial power was the guarantor of a Jewish "homeland"--note that word, it did not automatically mean "independent state"--in Palestine lead to conflation of British colonial control with the Jewish settlement movement.   And lastly there was suspicion and prejudice on the part of much of the Zionist settlers...although not nearly as bad as the appalling savagery the Arab mob could summon in incidents like the Hebron Massacre.

      Zionist ruthlessness was forged by the conflicts in the 1920's and 1930's out of a combination of increasing closed-mindedness and desperate self-defense.  When the Shoah hit...well, can you blame the Zionists for freaking out and taking a whatever it takes attitude?  They'd seen the world at large shut down Jewish emigration to safe countries.  Jewish emigration to Palestine was shut off almost completely, and restricted even further after WWII when thousands of camp survivors needed someplace to go.  The Zionist leadership basically decided "screw this, we're going to create Israel if we have to kill every last Tommy and Arab who gets in our way".  People tend to get tunnel vision when six million of your brethren have just gone up the chimney.  It's not like they were predisposed to trust the Gentiles who'd been screwing them over since the Bar Kochba revolt.

     This is the reason why, while acknowledging the ambiguities and sins made by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel, I am still a stone-cold Zionist who believes the one-state solution is a no-go.  Maybe it could have worked back then with a bit more sweet reason on both sides.  Now it's a non starter.  An unspoken part of the "never again" oath is "never again will we rely on or trust the goyim to safeguard us".  We don't trust you, we don't think you ultimately have our best interests at heart, and we know you'll sell us out when the guilt over the Shoah, the power of the American Jewish lobby, and the support we get from the millenarian Christian fundamentalists fades away.  

     Harsh, but given our history, not an entirely unfounded conclusion.

Quote from: Samarkand...when the guilt over the Shoah, the power of the American Jewish lobby, and the support we get from the millenarian Christian fundamentalists fades away...

Israel ceases to exist?

Quote from: droogIsrael ceases to exist?

    You don't think Israel's nukes are pointed *just* at the Arabs, do you?   As an episode of "Yes, Minister" put it, "Oh, our nuclear deterrent isn't to guard against the Russians.  It's against the French!  After all, you never know..."

I might have the germ of an idea for a V&V session.