Reply #60: Rebuttal [View All]

Answer: The difference is these people, though horribly persecuted and murdered were not deliberately marked for extermination. American-Indians as well as Africans were thought to be on bottom end of the evolutionary ladder (look up the germ theory) i.e. they were dying off anyway, a murder here or there would help it along, but they would be extinct shortly so...why bother Indians are American citizens, African-Americans are US citizens. Africans have their various countries. Armenians are in an area called guess what Armenia. Gypsy's have no country they call home, and Kurds (if they had no oil) would once again have the republic of Kurdistan.

This is just wrong. American Indians were marked for extermination throughout American history. African Americans were at times. Sometimes, they were just enslaved, and died in the process; but they would not have been enslaved had they not been African Americans. Remember, not all of the concentration camps were technically death camps. A significant number of Jews were just worked to death.

The Roma situation ("gypsy" is like calling an Asian American "oriental") is actually very similar to that of the Jews. The Roma have been specifically marked for extermination throughout history. Thousands of them died in the Nazi holocaust. Even today, they're eyed with suspicion and hatred in every corner of the world.

The Roma originated in Hindustan. For reasons not quite clear, they migrated from that land thousands of years ago. Similarly, the Jews originated in Palestine. Some of them have always stayed there. Others were expelled.

Palestine was not widely considered a Jewish homeland in the sense that you mean until after World War II.

While there are many African states, there's no state specifically for diaspora Africans. And while both African Americans and American Indians are American citizens, they're unquestionably oppressed minorities within the country. And besides, Jews in 1948 were entitled to citizenship in almost every country (and still are).

You dodge the question of the Kurds completely. As for the Armenians: their state is not ethnically exclusive. There is no Law of Return. There are no villages that go unrecognized due to their inhabitants' ethnicity. And more importantly, their holocaust has been forgotten by history (thanks in no small part to supposedly pro-Israel groups who want a monopoly on the term).

Answer: Wow! 12th out of 300 million, (better keep quiet about that one).

When has the population of Palestine ever been 300 million?

Jews are a part of the Middle-East.

Certainly. And they deserve political, civil, and religious rights and liberties in every country of the Middle East and of the world.

Their presence has always been a factor in Israel and it is our ancestral homeland.

This is trickier.

If by Israel you mean the entirety of the area that currently makes up Israel and the Occupied Territories, then you're wrong. Before the Israelites, the land was inhabited by the Canaanites. The biblical myths have been largely shown to be false. The Israelites didn't invade Canaan from outside the land. Rather, they were one of many tribes that inhabited the area. They managed to conquer a large portion of it, but never the whole thing. The Western hills (at the very least) were always inhabited by non-Israelites, who interbred. These are the peoples from whom most modern-day Palestinians are descended.

Jews have always remained in Palestine, and they have a right to live there if they so desire. These Jews are also Palestinians, as defined in the PLO charter.

But there's a difference between living in harmony with the other peoples and oppressing them, which is what Israel has done.

Zionism was a colonial phenomenon. Most Jews were not Zionists until after World War II. It cannot be considered a legitimate exercise of the right of nations to self-determination.

Furthermore, many Jews at the time of the establishment of Israel had no real connection to the land. There are documented cases of Zionists getting Gentiles to convert to Judaism for the sole purpose of speeding up the colonization of Palestine. Many Russian Jews were converts to Judaism, but probably had no Israelite ancestors.

There are three reasons why Israel exists.
1. given to the people of Israel by G-d

Muslims can (and do) make the same argument. Some groups of Orthodox Jews argue against it, calling Zionism a heresy.

Personally, I'm an atheist, so I think this argument is bunk. And apparently, so do Israelis, most of whom consider themselves secularists.

2. the land was legally bought

Arguable. The Palestinians Arabs had communally tended the land for generations. The Ottoman Land Code was passed w/o any real knowledge or understanding on their part. But the Ottoman Land Code only said that the Arabs who communally tended the land had to register the land. Instead, rich Arabs who were adapt at manipulating the law registered the land (wrongly at best, illegally at worst) in their names. Then they sold what wasn't theirs to the Zionists.

Some of the land was simply stolen. And many of the settlers were illegal immigrants anyway.

Jews only owned 6 percent of the land in Palestine when Israel declared independence. So obviously, a lot of the land in the area that was to become Israel wasn't given up willingly.

In addition, even more land was taken by Israel in the 1948 war.

3. UN vote
Why don't the Arabs go to Jordon which was created as an Arab state?

3. UN vote

The UN never voted to establish Israel. The General Assembly recommended a provisional partition. The General Assembly doesn't have the power to make decisions that are legally binding. And besides, the partition was only supposed to be temporary, to test the feasibility of the plan.

Why don't the Arabs go to Jordon which was created as an Arab state?

The Arabs are a diverse group. The only thing they all have in common is language. Palestinians and Jordanians are as different as Americans and Canadians, or Mexicians and Chileans.

More to the point, the Palestinians' property, places of birth, etc. are not located in Jordan.

Why don't all the Jews move to NYC?

Answer: Israel is not an ethnically exclusive state. Nor is it a religiously exclusive state. It is an open and free democracy for its citizens

"Exclusive" means "tending to exclude". By that criterion, Israel is certainly an ethnically exclusive state.

The Law of Return is the most obvious example. Any Jew anywhere in the world can "return" to a place s/he's never seen; yet a Palestinian who was born there cannot.

There's also the matter of the Jewish National Fund, which manages over 90 percent of the land in Israel, and won't sell to Arabs.

There's the selective enforcement of housing regulations that's resulted in de facto segregation.

There's the inferior public services provided to the Palestinians.

There's the fact that only Jews are recruited into the military, and thus get the social services that come with it; and that rabbinical students are exempted from service, with no penalty.

There's a great deal of economic discrimination against Palestinians.

There's the persecution of Arab political leaders and the legal prohibition of any political party challenging the "character" of the Jewish state.

There are scores of unrecognized Arab villages, most of which existed long before the state of Israel.

And, of course, there's the reason discriminatory marriage law.