The US is heading toward a grave historical mistake.

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For what reason? The jews want a homeland to protect themselves. First I say, what right do they have to steal another's homeland? Second, why do the jews need a state to feel secure?


Yay, now we're somehow using pedigree to try and say that the Palestinians don't have a right to keep their land! I didn't say the Jews couldn't or shouldn't return to Canaan. I just said that they shouldn't force the palestinians out, or enforce their political control over Palestinian land or push Palestine aside. One could more credibly claim that Izmir should be returned to the Greeks because it was founded by Greeks. Saying that just because the Romans made the word Palestine doesn't have anything to do with whether Palestinians should be forced aside by Israel. Anyways you're wrong, Palestine actually came from Pelishtim, a Jewish word for the Indo-European Philistine people and is far older than the mythical founding of rome.


No. Palestinians are not Jordanians in the same way that Kurds are not Persians. Also the Hashemites are a lineage of kings and a clan, not an ethnicity. So much for learnedness. Even if the Palestinians were Jordanians does that Give Israel the right to nick their land? No.


But are UN Mandates nonetheless dependent on international law even if non-binding? If a UN mandate isn't an international law then the word law doesn't exist. Because a mandate often involves things that are often legislative. Saying that it is non-binding and therefore not a law is sloppy. I am going to ignore the second sentence because it ignores my first sentence.

Which sort of proves my point about the enforcing of Inernational law having overwhelming powers.


This isn't a good example, because being forced to do something doesn't mean that you are in full control of your actions or often really liable for them. Even first year law students would know that.

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I am glad that you had to rely on an Ad hominem argument in order to try and actually sound convincing. Not that Ad hominem arguments ever prove anything except how flagrantly arrogant the person who is saying them are. I also like the spite. Scintilla of intellectual effort. Your bitterness would shame a rattlesnake.

Can one actually quanitfy or establish Good sense or a scintillar of intellectual effort? Or are they just little baubles that any person would use when they use fancy rhetoric to challenge good sense or indeed intellectual effort. So much for intellectual effort, you couldn't even be bothered to find out that Hashemite is not an ethnicity.

Well, let's be perfectly clear, the Jews bought much of the land that makes up modern-day Israel from its pre-existing owners--most of whom were non-Palestinian.

As for the second question, that's merely fatuous. Why does anyone need a state? Why do Palestinians need a state for that matter?

After centuries of persecution, pogroms and a concerted attempt at genocide during which no nation on earth would give safe haven to the Jews, it became abundantly clear that Jewish survival would, at least to some degree, depend upon the ability of Jewish people to exercise sovereignty. It is the same right held by the Irish, by Americans, by Canadians and by Palestinians.

The Palestinians could have had their state in 1948--but it was refused on their behalf by Arab leaders who cared not one whit for the Palestinian people. Jordan sought all the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and was prepared to sacrifice Jew and Palestinian alike to realize that.



No, I am pointing out how futile it is to make historical claims of sovereignty.

Look through my posts--you'll find me full-throated supporter of a two-state solution, and an uncompromising opponent of the settlements. But that does not mean that I will accept nonsenical arguments about displacement of the Palestinian people when responsibility for that lies just as much--or more--in the hands of Arabs.

I never denied that the Romans picked up the name from the pre-existing Philistini--but the Philistini were found in the five cities around what is presently Gaza, and they are a very different people from the Trans-Jordanian people who now identify themselves as Palestinians.



At what point was a "clan" distinct from an "ethnicity?" If there is anything artificial, it is the adjective "Jordanian." Whether or not you believe that Palestinians are Hashemites, the attempt by Jordan to annex the West Bank was clearly intended to establish Jordan as the only Arab state, and continued as such until Black September.

So while you might well complain that Israel improperly acquired the West Bank as a result of armed aggression directed against her (in common with the Sinai), the fact of the matter is that she is no more blameworthy than any of her neighbors, and attempting to cast her as such does a disservice to the Palestinian people, because it acts as a deterrent to peace--not an inducement.



No, you're going to ignore it because you are incapable of citing such an example, and you know it.

"Law" is not merely the rights and duties imposed upon us--it is also the rights and duties that we voluntarily take up--in private law, it is the law of contract. When you buy a condominium, for example, part of the contract you make is to abide by certain rules set by the condo corporation. These are binding upon you not because the corporation has the authority to make law--but because you have voluntarily subjected yourself to those rules--and you are perfectly free to sell your condominium and free yourself from complying with those rules anytime you like.

International Law is very much the law of voluntarily assumed rights and responsibilities. We all agree to international standards in fields like banking, shipping, air transport and the like, because they make the world work more effectively. They are law, but they are not legislation. Learn the difference.



Nothing of the sort. It proves that sovereigns can exercise coercive force on subjects--but thus it has ever been.



But there is no other way to compel a state to act, other than coercive force, whether by arms or by economics. Show me one--just one--example where a state has been compelled to act by the collective will of agents outside of that state that has not involved coercion.



Fair call. Yes, I am arrogant. Because I have the education and the experience to stand behind what I say.

You, on the other hand, seem to have an incorrect understanding about the nature of international law, and an unflinching prejudice against Israel. Compromise would serve you, and the Palestinian people, better.

@ visagrunt

Nicely worded.

Thank you.

If nothing else, this thread has given us the opportunity to find common ground. Although my posting history would not back me up, it is something that I am glad for.

I agree also why do the Palestinas want to take the Jews Land?

Possibly cause they can't stand the fact there is a nonmuslim nation in the Middle East.

No they didn't. In fact the international community basically decided that the Jews should have a homeland, and it was the 1948 Arab-Israeli war which established the Jewish state. Another was extended it to the 67 lines. Israel won its land through war.


I could say the same about the Jews. But unlike the Palestinians the Jews don't have a claim to the land as theirs. THe Jews on the other hand immigrated.


So basically you are using the Holocaust and pogroms made by Europeans in order to justify the Jews having a right to pull the Palestanians' carpet from under their legs. This is basically saying that it's fine to steal someone else's territory as reparations for your crime.


So basically you are now using Jordanian irredentism to justify the taking of Palestinian land. Again you ignore the rights of Palestinians once again and refer to the actions of some high-handed interlocutor. First European guilt and now Jordanian Imperialism.


Which is very relevant as to why the Jews shouldn't take Palestinian land in the first place.


Arab leaders are not arab people. Have you kept up with the news lately or are you just going to keep referring to the Arab Peoples as the whipped dogs of their leaders as to why Palestinians shouldn't exercise full political rights across their homeland? Most of which the State of Israel claims as its own, and nearly the rest of which is being settled illegally by Israelis. A loaded gun at the head of the Palestinians.


These 'trans-jordanians' as you try to portray them as have as much right to live in west Jerusalem and walk along the whole length of their homeland as I have to walk across the sum of the British Isles without being forced aside by some random invader with a distant claim.



Do you understand how a clan works? Macdonald is a clan. However there are Scottish people called Macdonald, English people called Macdonald, Americans named Macdonald and Canadians named Macdonald. Hashemite is not an ethnicity like Macdonald is not a nationality. There is no Hashemite people. As for what I know about genetic ancestry, much of which is completely irrelevant, the Palestinians share a closer affinity with European Jews than they do with Jordanians. As for Jordanian, yes Jordanian does actually refer to a people. It's a demonym. How do you not know this basic stuff?


The only deterrants to true peace are first trying to say that the Palestinians somehow deserve to shoulder the blame of the Jordanian King's ambitions, and also trying to hide the fact that it was the Israelis who declared the existence of a foreign state on Palestinian land.


Do I need to give the example of mendates for the invasion of Afghanistan for example?


Which is good, because your problem with calling it a legal body was that any mandate was voluntary, not that it was a duty.


They are law but they are not legislation. I guess that is correct. But the point was that the International Criminal Court and the UN associate were involved in international law and such were international law bodies.


And so they call it law too. Amazing how it works, law. It is essentially a coercive system relying on precedent or a system of accepted rules and regulations, whether enacted by legislators or whatever autocrats intend to promulgate them. Don't try and avoid the truth. The Law is as amoral as its agents want to be, and as coercive too. The only counterbalance is the public, and people of bravery.


But that isn't the point here. My point was that you said that Germany agreed voluntarily. It didn't. Someone doesn't agree voluntarily with a gun pointed at their head, unless they are very brave and the only person the decision effects is themselves. And even then the coercion is massive. The fact is, International law is a powerful force, which does have bodies that work for it in a piecemeal fashion.


Your lack of understanding about the foundation of Israel, the Understanding of Arab culture and of the nature of the law as a coercive force leads me to believe that you are not as smart as you lead yourself to believe.




I don't have an unflinching prejudice against Israel. I just thorougly challenge any bad reasons for why it should exist. The sort of compromise that Israel and the USA has handed to the Palestinians has required them to allow illegal settlement before they even come to the discussion table, and furthermore there was even the defeating of a two-state solution not long ago in the UN. This would be like Kim Jong-Il requiring South Korea to give up land in order to come to a state of peace with Korea.

I don't agree with murder or terrorism. I just think that it's just that what's being doing to the Palestinians is unfair. Not long ago you were trying to say they were little more than Coastal 'Hashemites'. If you can't even bother to point to their genealogy correctly, how can you even begin to grasp the situation they are in with the gun of the world pointed at their heads?

Last edited by Gedrene on 12 Oct 2011, 5:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.

yes antisemitism because they could not possibly have any valid complaints.

Because it was Israel that took it from the Palestinians in the first place. It was the Palestinians that were pushed out, forced to deport. Just like the Romans did to the Jews. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Palestinians maintain they see the Israelis as just the latest incarnation of European colonialism. They maintain that the Palestinian people are the true descendants of the Judeans of Jesus' time, while the modern Israelis represent European populations.
Whether this is actually believed, or if this is just a pretext to justify violence and terrorism, I can't say.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I doubt all palestinians believe this, or indeed most of them. I think most of them just want the State of Israel to bugger off.

Before the Palestinians, the Turks had possession of "the Holy Land". In fact the Zionist Jews bought their little portion of what used to be their land back from the Ottoman Turks for gold. The Jewish rehabilitation of the land for agricultural use and economic development brought about a re-population of the land from the surrounding portions of the Turkish Empire. In the middle of the 19th century, what was Palestine was very lightly populated since the land had fallen into bad condition for agricultured. The Jewish influx brought agriculture and industry back to the land and a population surge from the surrounding Arab speaking areas followed. In a word, the Jewish settlers and investors made modern Palestine possible.

ruveyn

This is getting silly. Same argument works against it being the Israelis' homeland.

And getting Inuyasha to agree with you is political suicide.

Let's not forget that accepting that Palestine is a state won't make Israel stop being a state. That the fears about Palestinians taking the opportunity to attack Israel are stupid (It is not like Palestine becoming a state would make the US and UK among others stop being Israel's whores). And that there is actually a bit of a chance of peace if the old borders are restored. And if peace doesn't come, US can always help Israel kick Palestine in the ass. I mean, really,

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 12 Oct 2011, 8:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The original Israelite homeland after the exodus from Egypt was stolen from the Cana'anites and six other major tribal groups. Among them the Hitites and the Amorites. It was roughly the area between the Jordan river and the Euphrates.

The Israelite people did not get to keep it. They were in about 1100 b.c.e. and expelled about 700 b.c.e and those that stayed lived under Persian rule. There was a Jewish commonwealth which fell under Greek rule and then under Roman rule. Eventually the Romans dispersed the Jews who were a major pain in the a** to the Romans. So Jews came and went and came again.

The most religious of Jews persist in the insane belief that God gave the parcel of land to them and their descendants.

ruveyn

ruveyn

A lot of insane Christians believe that, too.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Yes, actually they did. The Jews had already bought the land from the Ottoman Turks, 100 years prior to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The modern state of Israel was actually already established by the Balfour Declaration of 1917 under the British Mandate for Palestine. The Arab-Israeli war started because surrounding Arab countries declared war on Israel one day after it declared it's independence in an attempt to wipe it off the map. Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_of_Palestine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1917

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_State_of_Israel#British_Mandate_of_Palestine_.281917.E2.80.9348.29

Apparently, you are the one who is ignorant of history.