Re: Palestine: from the fall of the Ottomans to Today
Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 6:42 am
His site appears to be down since today. Zionist hackers! ;)
Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment
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Haven't lost your mojo, have you?Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Lets not forget, for the sake of balance, that the thinking inside Hamas historically has been just as conspiracy minded as their opponent, seeing Zionist influence in every worldly institution that was somehow seen as disadvantaging them.
Any road towards peace starts with losing some of that paranoid delusional mindset. Just like real life!
At some point everything starts looking as a threat to ones existence, if that existence has become based in something too far from any reality principle.vicdan wrote:Isn't it cute? Israel bars from running two of the arab parties -- on the ostensible grounds that they oppose Israel's very existence.
Meaning what? Just that they see Israel as illegal in how they have set up their state and want many things changed or undone.vicdan wrote:Hamas is officially, constitutionally committed to the eradication of Israel.
yup, sounds moderate and slightly misunderstood. The Protocols reference was surely a subtle joke, too.
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).
"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "
"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."
"After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying."
Well sure, because that legislation assumes that every dog has an owner, and if a dog doesn't have an owner, or if it is currently beyond the control of its owner, then it is classed as a dog at large, which an authorised person may seize and detain, and try to return to its owner; yes, one option if the owner cannot be found is to destroy the dog, and clearly this is a horrible outcome for the dog - I wish that it didn't happen, and we would not do it to a homeless person - however: (a) homeless people are not as hopeless a case as stray dogs (here in Australia, at least, they have the option of getting on the welfare system), (b) it is a matter of practicality given the current structure of society (stray dogs don't have many survival options), and (c) the law stipulates that ownerless dogs must be killed without undue suffering; and anyway, I've already admitted that the law is to some extent prejudiced against animals.vicdan wrote:Section 19:Seems obvious, eh? Ah, but see that word, 'owner'? it applies only to owned dogs, i.e. it applies only to dogs as pertaining to humans.If a dog attacks an animal or chases a horse being ridden, the owner or person in charge of the dog is guilty of an offence.
You could have just said that it omits feral animals. Granted, this denies feral animals protection from suffering, and I don't agree with that at all - but I don't think that it's necessary to posit that this omission is solely based on "interest to [human] Australian society": feral animals wreak havoc on the native ecosystem, throwing it out of balance and killing off native species, so it's also out of consideration of the rights of the native animal inhabitants of Australia that feral animals are discriminated against.vicdan wrote:So this law doesn't show any care for harm to animals in general. it shows care for harm to owned animals, and to native animals (which pose a special interest to australian society).
OK, on this one you might have a point. I'm a bit bemused as to why this clause exists in the first place anyway, though. I don't think that the average dog has much chance against the average horse when it comes to a fight. Perhaps the reasoning is that on its own, a horse is free to defend itself as it sees fit.vicdan wrote:On the other hand, it posits simply chasing a ridden horse to be as great an offense as, say, killing another pet (and a greater harm than killing e.g. a rabbit), even though merely chasing a horse doesn't harm it. However, I imagine human riders don't like being chased by dogs.
As I pointed out above, humans are assumed to be in control of dogs due to the dependency that we have bred them into, so the title of this legislation isn't particularly surprising.vicdan wrote:Furthermore, did you notice the title of that law?
DOG CONTROL ACT
it's not a law about dog behavior, it's a law about human control of dog behavior. Again, it's not about dogs, it's about humans relating to dogs. It's not about protecting all animals, it's about protecting animals of interest to humans -- native animals and owned animals.
Not the pattern that you want me to recognise, but let me clarify a few things. I've already accepted that our legislation is to some extent prejudiced against animals; also, given that most people eat meat, it is untenable for me to argue that our society protects animals to the same extent that it protects humans. All that I am actually arguing, though, is that your position that we only care about animals to the extent that they have value to us, and that we only care about their suffering to the extent that it is proximal and makes us feel bad, is false: it is too black-and-white; the reality is more complex.vicdan wrote:Are you noticing the pattern yet?
Now all that you need to do is roll over. :-)vicdan wrote:or will you continue to delude yourself and call me a cynic? That was rather amusing, given the etymology of the word 'cynic'.
Well, I did mention they are equal masters of conspiracy and make-belief just a few posts back. It's easy to point out extreme positions in the other, especially when they express themselves in an alien context, while not seeing ones own.vicdan wrote: yup, sounds moderate and slightly misunderstood. The Protocols reference was surely a subtle joke, too.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said a telephone call he made to U.S. President George W. Bush last week forced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to abstain in a U.N. vote on the Gaza war, leaving her "shamed."
Olmert said he then told Bush: "...you can't vote in favour.'
"He gave an order to the secretary of state and she did not vote in favour of it -- a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organised and manoeuvred for. She was left pretty shamed and abstained on a resolution she arranged," Olmert said. -
As I pointed out earlier, it's ludicrous to ascribe equal degrees of paranoia, hatred, and conspiracy theorizing to zionism and Hamas.Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Well, I did mention they are equal masters of conspiracy and make-belief just a few posts back. It's easy to point out extreme positions in the other, especially when they express themselves in an alien context, while not seeing ones own.
There is nothing arbitrary about it. While I don't really support the idea of refusing to negotiate with Hamas, the notion that you can't reasonably negotiate peace with someone who is constitutionally committed to your death doesn't seem at all arbitrary to me.One of the main problems is this idea you cannot negotiate with a party that believes in the undoing of the things you have created. Or that they are not allowed to have wacko ideals in the back of their head. This is all very arbitrary after all, it implies some universal standard which just doesn't exist in real politics.
Right, because calling in a favor from your ally is exactly like believing a deranged conspiracy theory about a world-bestriding secret cabal of baby-blood-drinkers. Exactly like it!No wonder Palestinians so believe in the powers of a Zionist cabal
Sure, you tell me the difference:vicdan wrote:So it's not enough to draw moral equivalence between them -- you must now draw the epistemic equivalence as well...
That's what the whites in South-Africa must have said: do you want us to give up our privileged rule, they will kill us all! They also had this belief they brought so many good things to the country, they "embodied modernity" and that the blacks should 'self-determine' themselves, but please not here.the notion that you can't reasonably negotiate peace with someone who is constitutionally committed to your death doesn't seem at all arbitrary to me.
By the looks of it they are indeed at the same level, apart from the fact that the phone-call to Bush telling him what to do as well as the baby-killing are both done quite openly nowadays. We're living in the times of revelations!... calling in a favor from your ally is exactly like believing a deranged conspiracy theory about a world-bestriding secret cabal of baby-blood-drinkers. Exactly like it!
Certainly the idea of exclusive possession of The Land has always been important in Judaism but not as pure political, unconditional [in terms of Judaic Law] idea. That's something steadily grown way later.Alex Jacob wrote:Recovering or reasserting control over an land area traditionally a Jewish possession, by a people who held to the notion of their nationhood relentlessly without ever giving up on the idea of their possession of the land, is a very different way to state the problem.
Oh? I got news for you.Diebert van Rhijn wrote:If we keep with the harder facts: to be Palestinian plainly means to be an original inhabitant of the area
Unknown to most of the world population, the origin of the "Palestinian" Arabs' claim to the Holy Land spans a period of a meager 30 years - a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of years of the region's rich history.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were practically no Arabs in the Holy Land. By contrast, Hebrews, despite 2000 years of persecution and forced conversions by various conquerors, have always made up the majority of the population here. When General Allenby, the commander of the British military forces, conquered Palestine in 1917/18, only about 5000 Arabs resided here. Other Moslems in the area either came from Turkey under the Ottoman Empire, or were the descendants of Hebrews and christians who were forcefully converted to Islam by the Moslem conquerors. None of these other Moslems were of Arabic origin.
The local inhabitants did not call themselves "Palestinians". The concept of a "Palestinian" to describe the local residents has not yet been invented; neither was there ever in history a "Palestinian Arab" nation. None of today's Arabs have any ancestral relationship to the original Biblical P'lishtians who are now extinct. Even Arab historians have admitted that "Palestine" never existed:In a report to the Palestinian Royal Commission (created by the British), there is an account of the conditions on the coastal plain along the Mediterranean Sea in 1913:In 1937, the Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul Hadi told the Peel Commission: "There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented. Palestine is alien to us."
In 1946, Princeton's Arab professor of Middle East history, Philip Hitti, told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry: "It's common knowledge, there is no such thing as Palestine in history."
In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, an executive member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), said in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Dagblad de Verdieping Trouw: "The 'Palestinian people' does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."
Mark Twain - real name Samuel Clemens, the famous author of Tom Sawyer and its sequel Huckleberry Finn - took a tour of the Holy Land in 1867. This is how he described that land: "A desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse. We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."
In 1874, Reverend Samuel Manning wrote: "...But where were the inhabitants? This fertile plain, which might support an immense population, is almost a solitude... Day by day we were to learn afresh the lesson now forced upon us, that the denunciations of ancient prophecy have been fulfilled to the very letter - "the land is left void and desolate and without inhabitants."The Arabs who now claim to be natives of the Holy Land migrated to "Palestine" after 1918 from neighbouring Arab countries, predominantly from what are now Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. None of these countries existed as nations prior to 1913. They were nothing but a disorganised collection of tribes, constantly terrorising each other, trying to seize land from their neighbours. Unfortunately, those Arab immigrants, imported into the Holy Land their age-old culture of terrorising neighbours to seize land. Many of them were social outcasts and criminals who couldn't find jobs in their own countries so they searched for their luck elsewhere. Some of them were accepted by the British regime as a source of cheap labour and were allowed to settle on unoccupied Hebrew land in the Holy Land. Even Yassir Ara'fat, the leader of the PLO, is not a native of the Holy Land. He was born in 1929 in Cairo, Egypt. He served in the Egyptian army, studied in the University of Cairo, and lived in Cairo until 1956. He then moved to Saudi-Arabia and, in 1958, together with his Saudi-Arabian friends, founded the Al-Fatah terror organisation (precursor to the PLO) in Kuwait."The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track, suitable for transport by camels or carts. No orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached the [Jewish] Yabna [Yavneh] village. Houses were mud. Schools did not exist. The western part toward the sea was almost a desert. The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many villages were deserted by their inhabitants."
Lewis French, the British Director of Development wrote about the Arabs in the Holy Land:The governor of the Syrian district of Hauran [the Biblical Haran], Tewfik Bey El Hurani, admitted in 1934 that in a single period of only a few months over 30,000 Syrians from Hauran had moved to Palestine. Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill noted the Arab influx. Churchill, a veteran of the early years of the British mandate in the Holy Land, noted in 1939 that"We found it inhabited by fellahin [Arab farmers] who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria... Large areas were uncultivated... The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbour these and other criminals. The individual plots changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin's lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbours, the Bedouin [Arab nomads]."My own grandparents were born in the Holy Land in the 19th century. They saw with their own eyes how empty the land was at the time, and during my childhood they described this to me. They also lived through and experienced first-hand the British conquest and the Arab immigration that followed, as did I. The Arab immigration continued right up to the British evacuation and the creation of the State of Yisrael in 1948."....far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied."
The real problem facing those Arabs today is not the lack of a homeland. The historical root-cause of their problem and frustration is the fact that the countries they came from have not agreed to accept them back in. This is why so many of them live, right up until this very day, in refugee camps, in neighbouring Arab countries, lacking fundamental civil rights. In their frustration they feel that the only hope and choice they have is to try and steal a country. Many of the vehicles and the agricultural equipment in the PA were stolen from their Yisr'eli neighbours. For a while, Yisrael suffered the highest rate of automobile thefts in the world! Most of the stolen vehicles were later found in towns and villages of the PA. If stealing vehicles is so easy, why not try and steal the country too?
In their propaganda, the Arabs who now call themselves "Palestinians" consistently demand that Yisrael and the world recognize their pre-1948 rights. That's about 60 years ago. Mysteriously, they are never willing to add another 60 years to their "historical" claims on the Holy Land. They know very well that doing so will send them back to where they came from - Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Years ago, during negotiations with these so-called "Palestinians", someone in Yisrael proposed an amendment to their claim for "pre-1948 rights" replacing it with "pre-1917". The "Palestinians" vehemently opposed this proposal - now we can see why!
The Moslem religion was invented by Muhammad in the 7th century CE, in Saudi Arabia. He never visited Y'rushalayim and Eretz Yisrael, and did not consider them important enough to be mentioned in the Kur'an even once. By comparison, the land of the Hebrew Holy Temple in Y'rushalayim was purchased by King David, for the Hebrew nation, approximately 1000 years BCE, and the deed, the name of the previous owner, and the purchase price were recorded in the Bible (See Shmuel Beit, ch.24 and Divrei Hayamim Alef, ch.21).
The best reference for understanding the Moslem-Arab mentality and politically-motivated distortion of history is Muhammad's own words in the Kur'an:Some Arabs consider themselves the descendants of Avraham, the ancestor of the Hebrew nation. But ironically, were it not for Muhammad's thorough study of the Bible, the Arabs would never even have known of Avraham's existence. Muhammad studied the Bible in order to be the better equipped in his attempts to persuade Hebrews to follow his newly-invented religion. When they refused, he wrote the Kur'an (the Moslem bible), and filled it with his own imaginary accounts of Biblical events. He even took the liberty to change the Hebrews' God-given day of rest, Saturday (Shabbat). Since Sunday was already taken by the christians, he picked Friday as the next-best choice for a Moslem day of rest."War is deception".
Today the Moslem "Palestinians" claim to own our Temple Mount, the ancient site of our Holy Temple in Y'rushalayim. They claim it is "their" holy site. Does anyone in the rest of the world know which way Moslems in Y'rushalayim face when they pray? When Moslems in Y'rushalayim pray in their mosques, even in the Al Aktza mosque which is built on the very edge of our Temple Mount, they actually stand with their backs turned to our Temple Mount. And, when they bow down in their prayers, they are actually showing their backsides to it. How is that consistent with considering the Temple Mount a "holy site"? Visit any mosque in Y'rushalayim and see for yourself (if they will allow "infidels" - "unbelievers" - to enter during prayer-sessions). The fact is that Y'rushalayim is not mentioned even once in the Kur'an, while Mecca and Medina, the only two Moslem holy cities, are mentioned hundreds of times.
Our Holy Temple stood on the Temple Mount long before Islam, or any other current world religion, had been invented. Even when the founders of christianity walked the streets of ancient Y'rushalayim, not a single mosque or church stood here - only the Hebrew Holy Temple and nothing else.
Can any Moslem in the world produce any credible evidence for their connection to this holy site, other than in Muhammad's dream? Believe it or not, the one and only source for the Moslem's claim to Y'rushalayim and the site of our Holy Temple, is a mention in the Kur'an of a dream that Muhammad had about an unidentified "place far away", and an ancient document of questionable authenticity that was allegedly "discovered" by the nazi-sympathiser and friend of Adolf Hitler, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the former "Grand Mufti" of Y'rushalayim (and, incidentally, also an uncle of our very own Mr Ara'fat), which he would never show to anyone else or submit for academic examination and which couldn't be found among his papers and effects after his death in Beirut in 1974. Perhaps the "place far away" was the site of the White House in Washington DC?
There is only one possible solution to the "Palestinians'" desire for a homeland. If helping them go back to where they lived 60 years ago is their own definition of justice, then helping them go back to where they lived 120 years ago is, by the same definition, a better justice - double justice. Let's all help them get the better justice they deserve - let them go back to where they came from.
Left? Were expelled by force.One should at least explore the viewpoint that saw the immigrating Jews increasingly as distant cousins who once left
Ah yes... the locals... see above. :)The Jew coming back from exile is then seen increasingly as invading, violating, domineering - representing something entirely different than what was traditionally seen as Palestinian, as original inhabitant with claims [by locals
So they didn't actually want palestine, they just wanted the lands jews were on. They didn't give a flying fuck about palestinian nationalism or independent state, they just wanted to kill the jews.This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in the Gaza Strip or the Himmah area
Zahir Muhsein, PLO executive committee member, on March 31, 1977 wrote: The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
yes, a muslim holy city with a thriving muslim community... more like a tiny backwater town, until jews started returning en masse.The Population of Jerusalem by Communities (1800-1870) (approximate figures)
Year __ Jews __ Muslims ___ Christians __ All Non-Jews __ Total
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1800 __ 2,250 __ 4,000 ____ 2,750 ______ 6,750 _____ 9,000
1836 __ 3,250 __ 4,500 ____ 3,250 ______ 7,750 _____ 11,000
1840 __ 5,000 __ 4,650 ____ 3,350 ______ 8,000 _____ 13,000
1850 __ 6,000 __ 5,400 ____ 3,600 ______ 9,000 _____ 15,000
1860 __ 8,000 __ 6,000 ____ 4,000 ______ 10,000 _____ 18,000
1870 __ 11,000 __ 6,500 ____ 4,500 ______ 11,000 _____ 22,000
What concrete actions do you suggest are possible?Alex Jacob wrote: In what tangible way do you contribute to peace in the Near East? I don't mean with (irresponsible) words but with concrete actions?