Delftsman

"No one (Arab or Jew) has a "right of return". Jews who fled Arab persecution from 1948 to 1956 should have no right of return to Arab lands, and Arabs who ran away in 1948 and 1967 should have no right of return either. This should end all argument. Yet the Jews accept this judgment, while the Arabs reject EVERYTHING."

What fantasy world did this guy come from? The Jews claim that not only those Jews who left from 1948 to 1956 but even those who have no connection with the country whatsoever have the right to emigrate to Isreal! Palestinians who were born and raised there, on the other hand, who leave to study abroad, are regularly denied re-entry since they aren't considered citizens. Doesn't it strike you as odd that someone born and raised in a place doesn't belong there whereas someone born and raised in Russia or some other place and who doesn't speak a word of Hebrew is welcomed with open arms (even provided with initial funding)?

Tomorrow if we told every person who didn't have a great-great grandparent who had lived in Isreal to leave the place, it would be 99% Muslim. (The fact that a good portion of "Isrealis" are somehow blue-eyed with blonde hair might just tell us something don't you think?) Listening to the completely groundless and inaccurate stuff you quote, I get the feeling that U.S. Christians are still fighting the last crusade in an attempt to drive the Muslim infidels out of the "holy land."

Reread Karlo, Shoebat was referring to the jews that left the surrounding Arab states (unlike your prior assertion, there WERE jews living throughout the ME at the time) at the creation of Israel as a modern state. Those Jews living in, say Syria, were frightened at the consequences should they remain with the tensions that arose from the creation of Israel. He states that those jews had no "right of return" to those states at the cessation of hostilities, even though they were BORN in Syria., likewise, those Arabs that fled Israel proper at the creation of Israel in 1948 have NO RIGHT OF RETURN, likewise those Arabs that fled the lands that Israel took in winning a war that was STARTED by the Arabs in 1967. The Arabs that stayed in Israel proper in 1948, BECAME FULL CITIZENS of Israel. they are 20% of the citizenry!

This man was one of the LEADERSHIP group of the PLO. Like when Saul became Paul, he turned his view around 100% when he had a chance to compare what he had been taught AS A PALESTINIAN with what the real FACTS were. HE lived the Palistinian experience, he commited acts of terrorism against Israel, he was a fervant Muslim. Then he opened his eyes and went beyond what he had been told was the "truth" all of his life and realized they were ALL lies.

I never denied that Jews were living in the Middle East. But I doubt very much that they were a majority population in any large area.

The land that comprises modern day Israel was very sparsely settled in 1948, and almost 80% of the Arab population left when the Jews arrived, thinking to join with their "Muslim bretheran" in Jihad to destroy the Jews, which they believed would be a short term proposition, given the disparity of their numbers. They were wrong.

Jews were minority populations in the Arab countries, they were more than happy to leave to live in Israel.

Hmmm. When the Zionists "arrived" in the country, the Arab population simply left their houses and belongings and took off, to be with their Muslim brethren... Hmmmm....

Basically YES. They knew there would be an all out war and wanted to be on what they thought would be the winning side.

And it wasn't "Zionists coming in to take over the country" It was the UN doing it's typically piss poor job of settleing international problems.

Hmmm. When the Zionists "arrived" in the country, the Arab population simply left their houses and belongings and took off, to be with their Muslim brethren... Hmmmm....

No they tried to establish a foothold in Jordan, where they got their asses handed back to them, many were killed by the Jordanians, Egypt didn't want the malcontents either, and they faced a similar fate there also. Go and re-read history Comrade.

And Karlo, those weren't "US christians" I was quoting, it was "palestinian" ex-terrorists.

"It was the UN doing it's typically piss poor job of settling international problems."

I'm pretty sure the Zionist movement predates any UN responses to it. As for the "malcontents," people tend to be malcontent when foreigners move in and confiscate their land. If the Palestinians were "malcontents," I suppose we should start using this word to describe the "malcontent" native Americans who opposed European encroachment. Or we can talk of the "malcontents" in Sudan who oppose the people who raze their villages.

As Ben Gurion once said in a moment of candor:

"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country."

-- David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky's Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan's "Zionism and the Palestinians pp. 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

YOU called them "malcontented", Not I.
I inferred that they were seeking to join a muslim army to destroy the jews coming to the area.

Yes, why DON'T we use an out of context statement made NINE years before the founding of Modern Israel, DONE by a UN mandate/Charter to illustrate just how eeeeevil the Joooos are and of course the poor wittle "Palistinians" are just made of nothing but sweetness and sugar; "they're just misunderstood" when they place a bomb on a schoolbus, in a dance club, or a nursing home.

I still find it incredible that You would deride
one who used to be in a leadership position of the group you admire so much. You asked
what kind of "fantasy" world he came from. Well, it was from the "fantasy world"created by the "palistinian" movement. He was born into it, he lived it, he participated in it, He would have died for it,he killed for it; and amazingly, he overcame it.

So tell me, You, at the very least admire the movement, if not outrightly support it, yet you would call a former leader in the movement as being a fantasist if he states anything against the movement, after all, YOU'Ve read Chomsky, so of course, you know the background and
situation better than a person who grew up in it and was part of it.

F.E.T.E.

I was about to be excited for you, "wow 10 comments", then I saw it was just you battling with Karlo, LOL.

SlagleRock Out!

This logic is common and completely flawed. The line of logic goes something like "You don't support Israel's confiscation of Palestine so you support every terrorist group that opposes Israel." "You don't support the American attack on Iraq, so you support Saddam." Such logic leads to very wierd conclusions don't you think? Following similar reasoning, one could just as well say, "You don't support Farrakhan so you support the KKK."

Putting such flawed logic aside for the moment, the bottom line is there was a significant non-Jewish Palestinian population living in Palestine prior to the Zionist movement. These people were in the majority. They didn't invite Europeans (i.e., in the form of Jewish Europeans) to come in and take over their land. The problem now involves a fait accompli since the state of Israel exists, so a peaceful solution should be found. But any solution still must address the fact that land has been stolen and people displaced. If my grandfather stole something from your grandfather, it's ridiculous to expect me to feel remorse or apologize for what my grandfather did. But if I'm still living in your grandfather's house and your living out on the street, it's reasonable that you'd want some compensation. Palestine was, for the most part, stolen. The fact that the theft was done by a group that Christians have a special fondness for and was perpetrated against a group that Christians feel particular animosity towards changes nothing.

In the post above Karlo’s makes two statements that we are supposed to take at face value. First, he claims that Zionist stole land from Arabs. But actually, Zionists bought land from Arab landlords willing to sell. His second claim is that Arabs out numbered Jews prior to the Zionist immigration. In an article I have just read, Karl Marx is noted to have written that in 1854 “Jerusalem had 15,500 inhabitants, including 8,000 Jews and 4,000 Moslems (Arabs, Turks and Moors).” Hmmmmm… so maybe Arabs didn’t out number Jews in the Holy Land before the Zionists.

Please read

Stories of Dogs by Nathan Weinstock
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/weinstock.htm

Like Mr. Shoebat, Mr. Weinstock was an Anti-Zionist but has since totally reversed his position. My God bless and protect them both.

Is Jerusalem Palestine? If it is, the modern Jewish state has certainly expanded. As for the Zionists, it sounds like arguments for European expansion into the Americas. (All the native Americans sold their land, right?)