Re: Are Moslems the Only Ones?

In article <rpadnSJOevfOmJzZRVn-pQ@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
S McFarlane <nothanks@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Ian Davis" <ijdavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dtqh6u$9gv$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <1201a0goj89h8a6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Engineer <invalid@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Ian Davis wrote:

I said that muslims had attacked Israel, but that that was
in a context from their perspective of retaking what was
their own land.

The same can be said about Hitler invading Poland.


Perhaps so. But for the Jewish nation Palestine had not been a homeland
for 2000 years, while it had been a homeland for arabs for the last 2000
years. I don't think German/Poland tensions are set in quite such an
extreme historical setting. German/Poland ownership isn't quite as
clear cut as this.

I don't believe this is accurate. For example, see:

http://www.mideastweb.org/zionism.htm

http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm


The site calls itself mideastweb.org but the domain name is owned by
someone who lives in Israel. Is there some reason why someone who
puts up a web site called www.mideast.org is to be presumed to be
citing fact. That said I conceed that its not easy to come up with
facts given the degree to which all sides have a point to prove.

http://reports.internic.net/cgi/whois?whois_nic=mideastweb.org&type=domain

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


I don't know anything about this organization. It at least appears to be
unbiased. In any case, the population data is interesting, to the extent
that it is accurate. According to the first article (and several others I
have read), a small Jewish population has remained in Palestine since the
time of the Roman exile. Notably, the % Jewish population of Jerusalem has
been very high for a very long time (45% in 1844; well before the beginnings
of the modern Zionist movement!)


I am sure that there were Jewish populations in Palestine. I've seen a fair
bit of the world and most of the world had Jewish populations.

I also found it interesting that the small Jewish population in Palestine
was decimated by the Crusaders!

Historically muslims and Jewish populations lived reasonably harmoniously
together. This has been true for the most part since the founding of the
islamic religion. Indeed I recently read of treaties of cooperation between
muslims and Jews in Medina being established as early as the founding
of the faith. The conflict between muslims and jews arises out of the
creation of the state of Israel. Christians bear jews considerable
more hostility than muslims.


Another point: Palestine has not been an Arab national homeland at any
point, as far as I know. Arabs have lived there as the ethnic majority for
a few thousand years, but that is not quite the same as a national homeland.
I think you make Arab exclusive claims to all of Palestine a lot more
clear-cut than they in fact are, unless you simply believe that a majority
ethnic population living somewhere for a long time grants the right to that
majority to rule absolutely regardless of political and historical events.

I rather agree that the arabs have no exclusive claim to Palestine. I don't
approve of the notion that ones ethnicity should determine ones right to be
or not be a national of a country. I don't approve of that concept in Croatia,
in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Israel, or here in Canada. I believe in
multiculturalism, and thus am naturally not a strong supporter of ethnic
cleansing. I don't approve of the notion that merely because 80% of the
population of Kosovo spoke Albanian that Kosovo should be declared no longer
part of Serbia, but now part of Albania. I'll happily agree that people have
the right to self determination, but balk at the notion that only those who
are on one side in such a contested issue have the right to be involved in
a process leading to such self determination. Quebec has the right to become
a separate nation, but only if that decision gives all currently living within
Quebec the same right and the same protections as part of that separate nation,
and only if the terms of such a separation are negotiated and resolved between
all the parties impacted by it in a lawful manner.

The problem with Israel was that it was founded on what to me seem completely
the wrong principles. I wasn't the one getting elected there so it is perhaps
not perhaps appropriate for me to say this since I do not believe in interfering
in the internal affairs of other nations, but Israel was set up as a nation
where people of one religion who didn't live there had automatic right to
become citizens, while people of another religion had not even the right to
return to their own homes there. It was set up very much as a theocracy
where religion dictated what one could and couldn't do and that religion
was judaism. I don't approve of theocracies either. I am not one of those
who wanted to see Iraq become a second Iran. As a young man I was in Israel..
and at that time my sympathy was very much with Israel. A friend of mine
at that time also went to Israel and unlike me lived with Palestinians.
Even back in 1973 he and I saw very different worlds. I saw an exciting
young country, and imagined the volunteer militia's that sat uzi's across
their knees defending the street (I was there Easter 1973) as protecting
me. I crossed the judean desert at night and woke the following morning
with a gun at my head, held in the hand of a security guard who presumed
that only a terrorist would cross a desert at night. My sympathy was
entirely with the security guard. He even back then saw a society in which
peoples rights were predicated on their ethnicity.

But there has been a lot of water under the bridge since then. Israel lost
the moral high ground in invading Lebanon. It has also lost the moral high
ground in its treatment of palestinians. Though palestinians are considered
the terrorists by the west, Israel has probably committed far more acts of
horrific terror against palestinians than vica versa. My sympathy lies
with the innocent and I have no doubt that I'd have little difficulty
finding cause on both sides why the innocent should have my sympathy.
Most recently israel is building a wall and building it not on its own
territory but building it so that separates occupied territory from
occupied territory.

I don't believe one arrives at the solution that was meant to be by other
than acting rightly. It is a tough job finding examples of people who have
acted rightly anywhere in the middle east, at least in recent times.

That may be your view, but it is certainly in contrast with the way
political matters have worked in this world since time began.


I don't think it was my view.


Consider the following question. 2000 years from now would it be
reasonable
for mormons world wide to decide that America was their historic homeland
and that they had the right of return to that ancestoral homeland. How as
an American living 2000 years hence would you feel about such an invasion
of Russians, Germans, Australians, Chinese, etc. How would you feel about
the notion that you and your ancestors who had lived in America for
generations were to be told by Mongolia (by this time a world power)
that it was right and proper that mormons should be given their own
state in what used to be part of America... perhaps New York State on
the grounds that this contains the sacred site of Hill Gomorrah, or
Utah on the grounds that this is where the mormon faith originated.
Supposing that they were given Utah, and then insisted that New York
state was also their anscestoral homeland and went on to occupy that
too.

This seems to be a false analogy. It completely ignores the facts of legal
Jewish immigration into Palestine and legal acquisition of land in Palestine
during the long period preceding the interjection of Western power in the
region. It further ignores the fact that Arabs had not been in political
control of Palestine for over 400 years in 1948, and that the partition of
the former British Mandate (where no sovereign state existed) was not the
same thing as a hypothetical Mongolia partioning a sovereign US, presumably
by force. Your analogy vastly oversimplifies the history and context
surrounding the creation of the Israeli state, IMO. It is designed to
clarify the moral dimensions of a situation (to the benefit of one side, I
have to note) that is by it's very nature morally unclear.

If you had been driven from your home by threat of being killed if you did
not leave, fled to Canada only to find that you were then not permitted to
re-enter the land where you lived, I think you would be less uncertain
about the moral appropriateness of such an act.


Is there not some validity to Iran's recent suggestion that if Europe
wanted to give the Jewish people a homeland, they should have been
making a homeland in Europe for these people, rather than giving them
a homeland in a place where the local people of the time objected to
this.

Correction: where ~55% of the population objected to this. Further
correction: the vote for Resolution 181 creating the partition of Palestine
was as follows:

In favour: 33

Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Byelorussian S.S.R., Canada, Costa
Rica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France,
Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, Liberia, Luxemburg, Netherlands, New Zealand,
Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden,
Ukrainian S.S.R., Union of South Africa, U.S.A., U.S.S.R., Uruguay,
Venezuela.

Against: 13

Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen.

Abstained: 10

Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico,
United Kingdom, Yugoslavia.


You have the facts.. can you cite the source.


This hardly seems to be a European decision. Furthermore, I don't see Iran
having a dog in this fight anymore than Europe. They're no more Arab than
Europe. Furthermore, the opinions of a Holocaust denier on the question of
Israel's right to exist should carry very little weight, IMO.

The weight of an opinion is in its legitimacy.. not to be measured according
to who it was who held that opinion. I am not a great fan of George Bush,
but I have zero problem with saying that I consider him to be right when he
is right. I believe that I am called to seek that of God in all people.




Would it be reasonable for George Bush who currently controls
Iraq to declare that Iraq was to be established as a homeland for the
poor oppressed Kurds, and that Kurds from Syria, Iran and Turkey had
automatic right of return to Kirkuk. Fundamentally there is a moral
issue here that muslims see very clearly, and the west rarely seriously
grapples with.


Another false analogy, for reasons that should be quite obvious. There are
moral issues that many Muslims see much less clearly, at least in this
issue. Are you saying that the Muslims have exclusive right to the moral
high ground with respect to the question of Israel's right to exist, or
simply that Muslims tend to see it that way?


I'm not a muslim so it is hardly muslims exclusive right to moral high ground
here. I say that forcing people to flee their homes at gun point and then
refusing them the right to return is ethnic cleansing. I consider such
conduct morally wrong. People think that such conduct will solve problems..
I say no -- such conduct only creates problems. I hold to the belief that
people treated decently tend to reciprocate.. those treated badly also tend
to reciprocate.




Perhaps so, but I am comparing apples to apples, and oranges to oranges.
I am comparing how Saddam sat v.v. the middle east, and how Bush sits
v.v. the west. Saddam was perceived as being secular.. George Bush
is perceived as being overtly religious.


This does not seem to be terribly relevant. The perception that Bush is
overtly religious does not lead to the conclusion that his government is
non-secular and therefore can be pointed at in critiquing Christianity.
That is just as inappropriate as pointing to Saddam as an example of Muslim
behavior simply because Saddam was a Muslim. I'm not terribly surprised
that you don't see it that way.


I'm not terribly surprised that you are not terribly suprised. You prejudge
me, announce sentence, and then declare the case closed. I did not intend
to suggest that the US government in totality is non-secular. The
thread as I recall it was regarding why a religious middle east was so
much worse than a non-religious west. I was trying to say that to a
foreigner such as I the US looks a damned sight too religious for me
to easily swallow this line that all the problems with the conflict
between Christianity and Islam was to be laid at Islam's door. Perhaps
if one lives within US culture one becomes someone familiar with the
degree to which religious nutcases get air time there, but I always
find it a bit jarring.

It may be that I just don't notice at home what I notice when abroad. I
confess to being a bit suprised that "Pray Stephen Harper" and "Pray
George Bush" produces near equal numbers of articles that match, given
the 10/1 factor between the size of the US population and the Canadian
one. It may also be personal bias. I am interested in the US and
read everything I am able to about it. I am just as not interested
in our own "party of the religious right", and really would rather
not be reminded that they exist if that can be avoided. But all
such caveats aside I do think that the US is viewed by the rest of
"western civilisation" as being anomalous in having a population
in which the far right christian voice both defines domestic policy,
and with regards to issue such as Israel, dictates international
policy. The perception rightly or wrongly is that Israel owns you,
which is decidely bizarre, given that it is you who pay their bills,
and not they who pay yours.

Ian
.

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