Fixed

or at least understand their principles; in the sense of enlightenment entitlement, wanting to understand the here and now.

I had no intention of starting a discussion about religion. Where I grew up, religion no longer existed in the society. Later, as an adult, I discovered that religions exist and tried to understand them, to fathom their history, or at least understand their principles; in the sense of enlightenment, wanting to understand the here and now. That's all.

I can follow Mr. Kevvy's thoughts that in many autocracies today substitute religions are used for brainwashing. In any case, it's not religion that drives Russia's soldiers to their doom, but pure violence and centuries of servitude. ...off topic.

Assisted by the Russian Orthodox church https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/03/21/russias-orthodox-church-paints-the-conflict-in-ukraine-as-a-holy-war

Assisted by the Russian Orthodox church https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/03/21/russias-orthodox-church-paints-the-conflict-in-ukraine-as-a-holy-war

I consider the Russian Orthodox Church not as a religion, but as a department of the FSB for agitation and propaganda. It's always existed, it's just called differently now and its officers dress a bit strangely today.

Fixed

or at least understand their principles; in the sense of enlightenment entitlement, wanting to understand the here and now.

I meant enlightment in the sense of Voltaire ... knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses.

In its lust for justice, Israel is doing exactly what Hamas wants –and guaranteeing another generation of misery.

.......For years, Israel has undermined the peace process with the more moderate Palestinian political faction, Fatah, which governs the West Bank and supports a negotiated two-state solution. Mr Netanyahu has simultaneously enabled Hamas, which seeks Israel’s total destruction, allowing it to be propped up by cash from Gulf states.

The idea, as he reportedly told colleagues from his political party back in 2019, was to keep the Palestinians divided, and hence keep a sovereign Palestinian state off the table.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Mr Netanyahu said.

“This is part of our strategy: to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

Not a great idea, it transpires. What Israel should have done, and should try to do in the longer term now, is demonstrate that it’s serious about working with Palestinians who choose diplomacy over bloodshed.

If you back desperate people into a box, if you convince them the peaceful option will lead nowhere, you are driving them towards violence. It doesn’t excuse that violence. But it’s bad, counter-productive, shortsighted strategy.

Mr Netanyahu’s government has repeatedly made peace-minded Palestinian leaders look like impotent fools, and made their approach look like a dead end. All that does is add legitimacy, in some Palestinians’ eyes, to Hamas’s twisted alternative of a bloody struggle to the death.......

Fixed

or at least understand their principles; in the sense of enlightenment entitlement, wanting to understand the here and now.

I meant enlightment in the sense of Voltaire ... knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses.

I understood what you meant, I was supplying what the creators of religion want for those that follow them.

And in my opinion, widening the conflict does not make it any better but only worse.

Therefore we should look back at how Israel was founded in 1948, and the Principles used.

Here founded by the United Nations by means of a story I do not know of, because I was only too young for not having been born then.

But also that it should be agreement between separate states for letting such a thing happen, and that conditions were different that time.

More that it perhaps should be nations for not any states, because next only United States instead, for becoming an internal conflict when still widened.

For this we should perhaps also look at how the United Nations became founded, for only a result of an earlier conflict, and here World War II.

That is the problem in a nutshell, namely that for not any agreement reached it only becomes wars for ensuing and next also lasting.

I do not take a part Gary, but only that it becomes tit for tat all the time.

Here the Palestinians should distance themselves from Hamas when still having a self-owned territory at their disposal, and here inside Israel.

Only that it perhaps becomes for recognized borders and next it becomes widened when it could spill above the border and next into neighboring countries.

Such a thing makes it only worse for not any better and therefore should be prevented from happening.

But here perhaps becoming the assumption of the Palestinians that they have a right to occupied land when already living there before.

The only problem is that Arabs as a whole could be expansionistic as a whole for only wanting to expand regardless.

So here Israel was awarded the country for only area when still being the victim of Holocaust and therefore also their land.

It should be better with that of sharing, but here only Israel and the Palestinians, for not any Hamas or Hezbollah for only external parts.

For this it becomes still only a war, which never will end before a peace agreement is reached for also on the table.

I note that Israeli's have reacted to the Statement of the Secretary General like a child next to the empty cookie jar with chocolate smeared all over their face.

Let that be a lesson to those that support rump.

António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations wrote:

It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.
The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.

I read here the well-known anti-Zionist impulse of Southern Europe's socialists, in the person of the Portuguese António Guterres. They and with them the UN has not been neutral in this conflict for decades. At least, he said "56 years" and not "75 years". So, there's some progress even among the left. Because this is what most critics of Israel truly mean and intend: "Palestine be free, from the river to the sea." No, never!

Nevertheless, I think Wiggo's post correctly and concisely describes Benji's political philosophy regarding Palestinians: Divide et impera

I have a question. Am I to understand that after WWII the Jewish were given land, Israel, as a war reparation? Who made this decision to give them land? Why wasn't this land taken from the belligerent? Did the person/country/group giving the land own it to give away? If they didn't own it did they obtain permission from the owner to give it away? Was this yet another act of the infamous line in the sand gang? If it was given away without permission would the real owners be justified in reclaiming it?

My long in the previous, so apologies.

Why not hostile here for not any belligerent when still only enemies?

But more the land given to Israel by the United Nations for only the founded it was itself, except not any Holocaust here.

Only that the United Nations was founded as a result of World War II, when it could be having five main parts for that of winners.

Here that of disagreement became that of agreement instead when separate countries chose to agree on a common solution, and here for the world.

The sad thing is that when still both Russia and China having veto powers, it could be still winners, except that one vetoed the other out.

So when perhaps a misunderstanding, only with intent for not any casual here instead.

Deliberate should be still only intentional, for also the implicit it could be.

I have a question. Am I to understand that after WWII the Jewish were given land, Israel, as a war reparation? Who made this decision to give them land? Why wasn't this land taken from the belligerent? Did the person/country/group giving the land own it to give away? If they didn't own it did they obtain permission from the owner to give it away? Was this yet another act of the infamous line in the sand gang? If it was given away without permission would the real owners be justified in reclaiming it?

Is it a modern phenomenon that history is being redefined, that it is being turned into its opposite? The Palestinians and the Arab states have perfected this insiduous narrative in recent decades to create their victim myth. What have they perfected? They have taken up the ancient anti-Judaism that arose in the early days of Christianity. I was asked stop quoting the Bible; but the New Testament justifies this anti-Judaism, the devaluation of the Jews, their old faith, compared to the new, the true, the Christian faith. This later gave rise to the defamation of the Jews, ignited pogroms since the dark Middle Ages: The Jew: child murderer (to get christian blood for rituals), well poisoner, the misfortune of all of us. Jews as usurers, exploiters, the rich. It's convenient because you have someone to blame for all the suffering of your own people. It's the Jew's fault. Robb him, chase him away. My people did this from 1933 to 1945 to the point of apocalyptic horror. Initially, the widespread, centuries-old prejudices that existed among all Christians were used, then exclusion, then violence, and finally secret extermination.

History should be looked at and learned from. But you have to look carefully and neutrally, looking at all sides. History in the Middle East never begins in 1945 or 1948. It is the biblical land. Today there is the infamous narrative that Jews were European invaders in a previously Arab Palestine. Jews have inhabited this country since ancient times. Christianity arose there among Jews, Arabs invaded later. The ruling dynasties changed but the inhabitants in the last centuries have always been Jews, Christians and Arabs.

The Germans were responsible for the murder of six million European Jews. But Israel does not exist as a reparation for German guilt. Zionism did not arise from the horrors of Holocaust, it's much older. The Holocaust increased the Jews' desire to re-establish their own Jewish state with a Jewish majority population (and convinced a majority of UN states to support them). But this state was already being built decades before.

Why are there neighborhoods in Tel Aviv built in 1920s Bauhaus architecture? Was the land underneath stolen or somehow occupied? Why is the majority of Jerusalem's population Jewish? Why was this already the case in the 19th century under Ottoman rule? How old is this city? Who built it? Are there foreign occupiers living in Jerusalem, the desired capital of Arab Palestinians? European Jews, emigrants?All fanatical settlers? Where do the Sephardim, the Mizrachim in Israel come from? Jews who were expelled from Spain, from Northern Africa, and more recently from ALL Arab states. That can't be! Refugees are always the Palestinians. Always! A status that is only inherited in this people, over generations. Nonsense. According to this, millions of East Prussians, Silesians and Pomeranians live in “refugee camps” in Germany today and eagerly are waiting to return home. We also have the Bohemian, Carpatian, and Volga Germans, the Banat Swabians, Transylvanian Saxons. All oppressed, driven from their homelands.

The history of the Jews in Israel is much older and more complex than the Arabs tell it today and how their left-wing friends in the western world spread it since decades and with loudspeakers, excommunicating anyone who expresses doubts or even criticism. Unfortunately, hardly anyone bothers to study history today. Screaming loudly: “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea” is much more convenient. That gives such a comforting feeling of doing the right thing. It's not!

A little heavy for me, so let me post my opinion for not guessing other's thoughts.

I did not want to post twice in a row, so waiting a little.

But if the Gaza strip is self-governing Palestinian territory next to Egypt and Israel, I do not want to involve the first one into the discussion.

Rather that the Gaza strip is the result of a negotiated solution between the Palestinians and Israel, and here inside national borders.

In my opinion Israel has the right to all land inside the territory it owns, except the Gaza strip, because that should be the border of the nation.

Everything not being a settled negotiation should be the land of Israel, because it was offered as such by the United Nations.

So if still an occupying power, also it should be the land it could represent for just given.

Therefore you should blame the United Nations for such a thing and only risk a larger conflict as the result.

Here the Intifadah is the Palestinians uprising, but also that some more hostile countries around could wish to attack.

Maybe it was the Palestinians that were evicted, but that was because they did not have their own state.

Anyway, so only land for not any region or border, that is not up to me, but only the difference of who should own or possess.

You are saying much, but not all, was owned by Jews, so that part shouldn't be disputed. So you are telling me that the UN, who did not own Israel, gave the rest to the Jews because they made a big protest and demand for it. Got it.
That still leaves my last question: If any was given away without permission would the real owners be justified in reclaiming it?

I find interesting that Hebrew and Arabic are both based off Aeamaic. Hard to tell who invaded who or who sprang from who. But it is Syrian. Syria still exists. Does this mean that Israel is really Syrian? One thing that is far better known is that the exodus did not happen as there are no Egyptian records of it. IIRC this fable states that there was no one in this land when they arrived. Somehow if they never came from Egypt ,,, , BTW where is the Arc of the Covenant?

Why these three people who pray to the identical deity can't follow what their deity wrote on a tablet not to murder each other ... Perhaps the proof that the deity does not exist.

Perhaps the answer lies in a different culture than European Western. I'm thinking perhaps the culture of the First People's of America. Their idea of land ownership is vastly different than the western one. It might work in such a disputed area provided the methods to enforce it were present.

I think I'll also try to give precise answers:

I have a question. Am I to understand that after WWII the Jewish were given land, Israel, as a war reparation?

No, nobody gave Jews land or any war reparations. But their suffering and horrors during the Holocaust helped with international support for UN's partition plan of 1947, which Britain had intended at least since 1917 (Balfour declaration). What would have happended without WW2 & Holocaust is alternate history, a subgenre of speculative fiction.

The Ottoman Empire, formerly ruling Palestine, was defeated in WW I, dissolved in peace treaties with UK & FR, which leads to British rule over Palestine. Britain tasked UN to partition the territory into a Jewish and an Arab state taking the existing population majorities there into account. The Jewish Agency accepted UN's resolution of Nov 1947. Arabs rejected. This leads to a civil war of Jewish and Arab militias. Britain withdrew their troops while Arab states increased their military interventions. Nonetheless, British authority ended on May 14, 1948. Jews declared founding of Israelon a territory that was no longer subject to any state sovereignty. You can now blame Britain or the UN for a plan without a schedule how to implement it. Israels declaration of independence was the last step of a long, prepared plan. The new state was attacked only hours later by all Arab neighbours, a reaction also evident long in advance. Whoever wage war better wins. The victor determines post-war rules. The occupied territory after the war formed the state of Israel until it faced another aggression which formed today's recognized state borders of 1967 (Guterres' "56 years"). Most of the 700,000 Palestinian refugees of 1948 fled their homes from battles. Many were also forced to leave by Arab armies from Jordan, Syria, Egypt. Israel expelled a minority. After the war Israel rejected the return of all refugees. The victor decides... The 150,000 Arabs and their decendants who didn't leave in 1948, today form the 20% of Israel's Arab population. From 1948 to 1967 Jordan occupied West Bank illegally, Israel since then. Peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt ended the need for settlements. At least since 1980 they represent illegally owned land, robbed from Palestinians. There still are no peace treaties with Iraq and Syria. Can this justify a prolonged occupation of West Bank? The settlements? Surely not. But terror threats can justify occupation.

Who made this decision to give them land?

Before WW2, Arab land owners. The first wave of Jewish emigration from Europe started in the 1880s when Jews fled from pogroms in Eastern Europe. Further immigration waves brought capital, knowledge, modern technology, but also a European understanding of a state and democratic ideals to Palestine. The immigrants bought large land areas. Arabs welcomed immigration in the beginning, which meant progress, economic development, a steady influx of capital into an impoverished, neglected territory. The British rule later slowed down and finally stopped Jewish immigration.

Why wasn't this land taken from the belligerent?

Jews surviving the Holocaust wanted to settle in Palestine or emigrate to UK, the US, elsewhere, but surely not in Germany or on former German territories, then assigned, later ceded to PR Poland or USSR. Nationalist Polish or Soviet policy wasn't friendly to Jews. Most of the remaining Soviet Jews emigrated to Israel as soon as the USSR colapsed in 1991.

Did the person/country/group giving the land own it to give away?

The lands sold to Jews before May 1948 were owned by Arab landlords. One can discuss how they acquired their property under the Sultan, through corruption and exploitation, or acquired honestly over generations. A few rich people owned large shares of usable agricultural land. Things were no different in Ireland back then. Each further wave of Jewish immigration led to massive land purchases. Who ruled back then? The British. In the 1920 Arab riots and later in 1936-39 in the Arab Revolt, Arabs attacked Jews, Brits, and other Arabs protesting these land purchases. British forces shot, detained or exiled up to 10% of Palestinian males to suppress the revolt. There was no industry, no factories, almost no alternative, better-paid jobs for Arabs than in agriculture. Brits slowed, then stopped Jewish immigration during WW2. They tried to get rid of responsibility for Palestine ASAP. After Israel was founded and the war ended in 1949, Israel confiscated the property of Arabs who had been expelled or fled. The same happened to millions of Germans as decided by Allied Powers in the Potsdam Treaty of 1945. Who wages war...

If they didn't own it did they obtain permission from the owner to give it away?

Property rights are based on civil law. Wars end the validity of such laws if they result in revolution or moved borders, such that the properties' location changes state affiliation (and jurisdiction). The victor confirms ancient rights, or he does not. In Eastern Germany after WW2 all landowners (except small family homes and its property) were expropriated without compensation; their property became "public property" managed by the non-democratic state. The former inhabitants of ceded Eastern territories (Pomerania, Silesia, etc.) lost everything. After end of socialist autocratic rule, only few property expropriated by Nazis (e.g. from Hitler opponents) was transferred back to former owner's families.

Was this yet another act of the infamous line in the sand gang?

No gang, Israel, the victor of the wars of 1948 and 1967 had to protect its people from further danger of extinction by Arab neighbors and moved lines in the sand, annexing territories. There's a difference in international law between aggressor and defender. The defeated either cedes territory in a peace treaty or has to tolerate eventual anexation. Then the defender is more likely to receive international recognition of moved borders than an aggressor.

But the biggest sand gang in history were the Allied Powers at the Potsdam Conference 1945, who believed the lies of the mass murderer Stalin, his population figures, figures on civilians who had not yet fled the East, which led to the forceful expulsion and total dispossession of millions of Germans (and Poles) after the war.

If it was given away without permission would the real owners be justified in reclaiming it?

That's up to the victor of the war of 1948 for all lands now within its internationally recognized state borders. Your question is imprecise. Returning property to pre-war owners? How do they prove ownership? Return rights for former landowners? Including Israeli citizenship? For whom? The previous owner has most likely already died. His descendants and theoretical heirs in Gaza, West Bank or abroad number in the dozens (extremely high fertility rates among "palestinian refugees"). Israel will never allow them to return if that means Israel's citizenship. It would mean the end of the Jewish majority, and realistically the end of the democratic state of Israel.

Different story for all settlements in West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem occupied in 1967. That's up to a final peace treaty. Someone has to kick Benji, Mahmoud Abbas, [long list of political leaders lazy or belligerent fools] first. (The Hamas people and like-minded terrorist have to be relocated to another planet first, or become peace-loving, whichever is more likely.)

You are saying much, but not all, was owned by Jews, so that part shouldn't be disputed.

The distinction between Jews, Christians and Arabs was irrelevant. Most was owned by local elites, regardless if Muslim, Christian or Jewish ones. Ottoman Empire was a multi-ethnic one. All citizens were obliged to pay tribute to the Sultan, regardless of religion. Local elites and sultan's administrative officials had power, owned money and property. The masses of Oriental Arabs, Jews and Christians were poor. British mandate didn't change ownership structure there. Brits aren't communists. So, immigrating European Jews were rich aliens from Mars compared to ancestral, oriental population. Today's conflict between Israelis and Arabs never was a religious one, but one of (modern, enlightened, industrialized) Occident against (declining, pre-modern, retrograde, ...) Orient. A true clash of civilizations.

So you are telling me that the UN, who did not own Israel, gave the rest to the Jews because they made a big protest and demand for it. Got it.

The creation of a Jewish state proposed by many in 19th century found powerful advocates in Britain. That led to the UN partition plan. Holocaust caused international support to grow. There was no realistic implementation schedule. British and UN left a vacuum in 1948, which Jewish elites (Zionist movement) in Europe recognized long beforehand and deliberately exploited the void to establish Israel. The UN gave no land to Jews. They proposed a vague plan, nothing else. Zionists seized the opportunity that UN and withdrawing British occupation forces made possible; intentionally, or unintentionally, or simply unnerved by two decades of guerrilla warfare of Arabs and Zionists there.

That still leaves my last question: If any was given away without permission would the real owners be justified in reclaiming it?

No. Newly founded states, revolutions, and wars moving borders erase old rights, old laws. Nothing new for Germans: four different states or regimes, Nazis, Communists, occupation within the 20th century. New rulers erase old rights at will.

I find interesting that Hebrew and Arabic are both based off Aeamaic. Hard to tell who invaded who or who sprang from who. But it is Syrian. Syria still exists. Does this mean that Israel is really Syrian? One thing that is far better known is that the exodus did not happen as there are no Egyptian records of it. IIRC this fable states that there was no one in this land when they arrived. Somehow if they never came from Egypt ,,, , BTW where is the Arc of the Covenant?

It's all Syria. The artificial state borders were drawn on the map by French and British. Ottomans called their entire province simply "Syria", inhabited by Jews, Arabs, Christians. More Christians in today's Lebanon and Bethlehem, more Jews in Jerusalem and Cisjordan (west of the river), more Arabs in Transjordan (east of the river). A melting pot of cultures which weren't so different between Oriental Jews, Arabs or Christians. The disruptive change came with the collapse of Ottoman rule and mass immigration of European Jews (Ashkenazim), tolerated by Britain. That changed the Orient more extensively and permanently than all Christian crusades before....Ashkenazim brought the modern European concept of powerful nation-states.

Jews exodus from Egypt: There are the Ethiopian Jews. If you look at a map, the exodus from Egypt may seems plausible. Difficult to evaluate ancient times. We know today the New Testament portrayed events back then misleadingly. The Arc of Covenant was said to be made from wood; Islam fanatics are known to destroy traces of earlier cultures and religions.

Why these three people who pray to the identical deity can't follow what their deity wrote on a tablet not to murder each other ... Perhaps the proof that the deity does not exist.

We should ban Christianity, Judaism, and Islam there and try to introduce Buddhism.

Perhaps the answer lies in a different culture than European Western. I'm thinking perhaps the culture of the First People's of America. Their idea of land ownership is vastly different than the western one. It might work in such a disputed area provided the methods to enforce it were present.

Native (Indian) Americans? In the Middle East large, powerful empires ruled for thousands of years: Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Persians, Mamluks, most recently Osmans. They knew land ownership rights since ancient times, laid down in writing. No nomadic or small tribal cultures which had no personal land ownership. But surely different to western 18th...19th century: geodetic survey and boundary stones.

This is a warning:
STOP posting long monologues on the very long history of the fighting between Arabs, Palestinians and Israel.
Instead post about what is happening TODAY in that part of the world. The suffering and crimes being imposed on the majority of the population of that area by a very vocal and violent minority.

If you want to continue the monologues then another thread covering them alone can be started, thus keeping this thread clear for current events.

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Thanks for some very good summaries on the background history, religion, politics, and the game of present day propaganda.

There was also the historic games of propaganda for what was written at the time... Or often, decades after the times...

All that is very good for a parallel background thread... In the honour of a Duck? Thanks :-)


Meanwhile for the here and now...

I've noticed a shift in the comments being made by the "Experts" on the news media explaining the ruthlessness of Hamas and for how Hamas uses the local population for exploitation. Also for how Hamas uses all people, deadly coldly callously, as "Expendables". There also appears to be more comment about how this is all being pushed and promoted, and provisioned with advanced weapons, by Iran and Russia.

This is no "David and Goliath" with sling shots as gets portrayed by propaganda.


With the breakdown of more diplomatic 'channels', are the TV media channels being used to message to those pushing their conquests?...

And note how the USA has already used a warship in the Red Sea to intercept Iranian long range missiles and drones...


Stay safe folks!
Martin

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