This one's especially for you, Mr Bourne! :hihi: By the way deffo more John Rambo than Chuck Norris! So why are our Israeli friends so bad? Should they have just been left without a home after the war or what?

I believe in a Jewish Homeland, but I don't believe in their occupation of other peoples' lands...erm...difficult.

Which is why I am not a Politician and don't earn Politician's wages

This one's especially for you, Mr Bourne! :hihi: By the way deffo more John Rambo than Chuck Norris! So why are our Israeli friends so bad?
Israel was created by ethnically cleansing an area of and of it's existing inhabitants (who have still not been allowed to return), subsequently that newly created racist state invaded and occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip instituting a brutal system of apartheid there with ethnic Jews given full rights and Palestinians none, a system which still remains in the West Bank.

Should they have just been left without a home after the war or what?
Why should the Palestinians have to suffer for the crimes of Europeans? What right did anyone have to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians to create a ethnically pure Jewish state?

Israel was created by ethnically cleansing an area of and of it's existing inhabitants (who have still not been allowed to return), subsequently that newly created racist state invaded and occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip instituting a brutal system of apartheid there with ethnic Jews given full rights and Palestinians none, a system which still remains in the West Bank.


Why should the Palestinians have to suffer for the crimes of Europeans? What right did anyone have to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians to create a ethnically pure Jewish state?

I agree with that and surely the trouble it has caused should have been foreseen

I agree with that and surely the trouble it has caused should have been foreseen
Well you would have to be spectacularly dumb to not see how promising the Arabs that we'd support the establishment of an Arab state in return for them helping us fight the Turks and then instead carving their land up between ourselves and France and then giving a chunk that land to European refugees might well lead to ongoing tensions between the Arabs and imported population and leave many Arabs feeling ill disposed towards Europeans.

I believe that the creation of the Jewish homeland state of Israel has been a disaster for the Jewish people. It's led to them being hated across the Middle East because of the way it was created, displacing the people who lived there.

Previously there were large Jewish populations in most Arab countries, but they have now been almost universally expelled to go and live in Israel in a tit-for-tat over the expulsion of Arabs from their land in Israel to give it to Jews. The creation of the Jewish state has led to intolerance and hatred where previously there was a mutual co-existence, so I conclude that Israel is a bad thing.

Just so that I've got this clear; so you're asking is it a good thing or bad thing to create a country in the middle of someone else's in the most volatile part of the world and then have the world's superpower support whatever they do, legal or not including annexing more bits of other countries....and then when those people displaced complain about it, claim they are terrorists and assume carte blanche to bomb and shoot their civilians then build more houses in other people's land and then build massive walls through their communities - oh and illegally build nuclear weapons and whinge when a nearby country tries to develop nuclear power, getting their powerful mates to threaten them with sanctions or worse.

Is that the question?

For all concerned that apparently know nothing about history, I suggest that you read up on the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and how Britain reneged on it to appease the arabs, who had just discovered they were sitting on oil, and Britain knew how oil would rule the world in the future. Britain and it's empire went down the toilet from that time onwards. While you're at it,take a look at this website:www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com There was no ethnic cleansing in 1948. Infact the arabs that lived in Israel at the time were asked by the Israeli's to stay and become one country, but the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (Islamic leader), told the arabs to leave so that they would not get caught up in the slaughter of the jews when the arab armies attacked. Unfortunately for the arabs, they lost, which seems to have upset a lot of people over the years. All what's taking place today was prophesied in the bible thousands of years ago. If you all read it you might have a clue. Remember this: Israel is the apple of God's eye. Zechariah 2:8

....Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (Islamic leader), told the arabs to leave so that they would not get caught up in the slaughter of the jews when the arab armies attacked....

Do you have a reference for this bit of fiction?

Do you have a reference for this bit of fiction?

Judging by the site he's linked to that'd be highly debatable - I looked at it briefly and the whole thing screamed 'wing-nut' at me.........

Just so that I've got this clear; so you're asking is it a good thing or bad thing to create a country in the middle of someone else's in the most volatile part of the world and then have the world's superpower support whatever they do, legal or not including annexing more bits of other countries....and then when those people displaced complain about it, claim they are terrorists and assume carte blanche to bomb and shoot their civilians then build more houses in other people's land and then build massive walls through their communities - oh and illegally build nuclear weapons and whinge when a nearby country tries to develop nuclear power, getting their powerful mates to threaten them with sanctions or worse.

Is that the question?

The question is - 'Israel - Is it a good thing or a bad thing?' I have not included your assumptions and OPINIONS in the question. I believe that in probing the question (which is an open one designed to yield peoples opinions and stimulate discussion) you have indeed given your answer, your opinion.....

For all concerned that apparently know nothing about history, I suggest that you read up on the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and how Britain reneged on it to appease the arabs, who had just discovered they were sitting on oil, and Britain knew how oil would rule the world in the future. Britain and it's empire went down the toilet from that time onwards. While you're at it,take a look at this
You're the one who needs to read up on your history, before Balfour made his declaration the British Empire promised to assist the Arabs in setting up an Arab state in return for their help in fighting the Turks in WWI, we stabbed the Arabs in the back when Balfour made his declaration.

Besides by what right did Balfour have to give the Palestinians land to a bunch of Europeans?

website:www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com There was no ethnic cleansing in 1948. Infact the arabs that lived in Israel at the time were asked by the Israeli's to stay and become one country, but the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (Islamic leader), told the arabs to leave so that they would not get caught up in the slaughter of the jews when the arab armies attacked. Unfortunately for the arabs, they lost, which seems to have upset a lot of people over the years.
Civilians often flee warzones, especially when being terrorised by militias as many Palestinians were in 1937/38 such as for example the people of Deir Yassin (http://www.deiryassin.org/). Thing is under international law they have the right to return to their homes once the fighting is over. A right that Israel has denied the Palestinians refugees since 1948 all the while under Israel's racist citizenship laws positively encouraging anyone who can claim Jewish ethnicity to move their.

All what's taking place today was prophesied in the bible thousands of years ago. If you all read it you might have a clue. Remember this: Israel is the apple of God's eye. Zechariah 2:8
:roll:

The question is - 'Israel - Is it a good thing or a bad thing?' I have not included your assumptions and OPINIONS in the question. I believe that in probing the question (which is an open one designed to yield peoples opinions and stimulate discussion) you have indeed given your answer, your opinion.....
Your question was every bit as loaded just a bit shorter: When your op consists of:

So why are our Israeli friends so bad? Should they have just been left without a home after the war or what?

It's a bit much to criticise other for using loaded language.

Your question was every bit as loaded just a bit shorter: When your op consists of:

So why are our Israeli friends so bad? Should they have just been left without a home after the war or what?

It's a bit much to criticise other for using loaded language.

Rubbish, those statements were hardly as loaded and the response to which I replied! I did not state an opinion. I asked a question without implicitly giving a view. You have made an assumption. Only when this assumption is proven can you insinuate my question was loaded! Was my question a literal one>?? was I being sarcastic? who knows? What I've seen is a good mix of answers from both sides if you like... mission accomplished. I may choose to get stuck in and build upon my views depending on where the thread goes. I might even change some of my views. There are people on here who know a lot more than myself. That tends to be why questions are asked....

Rubbish, those statements were hardly as loaded and the response to which I replied! I did not state an opinion. I asked a question without implicitly giving a view. You have made an assumption. Only when this assumption is proven can you insinuate my question was loaded! Was my question a literal one>?? was I being sarcastic? who knows? What I've seen is a good mix of answers from both sides if you like... mission accomplished. I may choose to get stuck in and build upon my views depending on where the thread goes. I might even change some of my views. There are people on here who know a lot more than myself. That tends to be why questions are asked....
It's not making an assumption to look at the language someone has used and to draw conclusions from it.

You described the Israeli's as our 'friends' and suggested that if we hadn't given them a chunk of someone else's land we'd have 'left them without a home'. You were clearly suggesting that we had a duty to provide a 'home' for our 'friends'.

Your op was loaded, to say so isn't to make an assumption about anything it is simply to describe it.

It's not making an assumption to look at the language someone has used and to draw conclusions from it.

You described the Israeli's as our 'friends' and suggested that if we hadn't given them a chunk of someone else's land we'd have 'left them without a home'. You were clearly suggesting that we had a duty to provide a 'home' for our 'friends'.

Your op was loaded, to say so isn't to make an assumption about anything it is simply to describe it.

I also said I was more like John Rambo than Chuck Norris. What conclusions do you draw from that?

I also said I was more like John Rambo than Chuck Norris. What conclusions do you draw from that?
That you were continuing a private discussion with Jason Bourne in a manner that might have been more appropriate in a pm.

Benny Morris> It turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages.

Ad Difaa, a Jordanian newspaper (September 6, 1954), related the words of a refugee:

|| The Arab government told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.

Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister at the time, wrote in his memoirs:

|| Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return.

In Haifa, the Arabs were ordered out (an attempt to paralyze the city) and most left despite the pleas of Jewish/Zionist leaders (including Golda Meir) that they stay, live in peace and together build a new state. This alone accounts for nearly 10% of all the Arab refugees at the time.

some Arabs were forcibly removed from the land. But more fled voluntarily, often because they instructed to by their leadership. But of course many Arabs did not flee and eventually became Israeli citizens with equal rights under the law. There are over one million of these Israeli Arabs living in Israel today, where they enjoy some of the highest living standards, not just financial, but especially when it comes to political freedoms like power to elect representatives and freedom of speech, of any Arabs anywhere in the Middle East.

the Israel=apartheid bashers point to Israel's immigration laws as if it's something unique. But in actual fact, immigration laws that favour a particular ethnic group, similar to Israel's, are practised in dozens of countries all over the world.

Jewish people, not just some, but ALL of them, living in the areas that were conquered by the Arabs in 1948 were ethnically cleansed to the point that not one remained. Not one. And the areas conquered by the Arabs in 48 included some parts of Yeretz Israel that had, until then, been continually inhabited by Jews for over 3,000 years - almost two millenia, before the Arabs, coming from Arabia, had conquered Judea/Israel in the first place.

before Balfour made his declaration the British Empire promised to assist the Arabs in setting up an Arab state in return for their help in fighting the Turks in WWI, we stabbed the Arabs in the back when Balfour made his declaration.

the Arab revolt had nothing to do with 'Palestine' - a word, incidentally, that no Arab anywhere in the Middle East would have used to describe any part of it, it being a Roman/European word that Arabs cannot even say, there being no P sound in the Arabic language.

The British poured (by today's standards) billions of pounds into the "revolt". They continued to wait (and wait and wait) for the Arabs to deliver armies capable of attacking the Turks in the open field. They never came, and Lawrence had to do what he could with Bedouin irregulars.

this is basically how the myth breaks down :

MYTH

"the UK made a 'deal' with the Hashemites to help in the creation of an Arab kingdom on all Arab lands (including 'Palestine') in return of the Arabs’ support for the UK in the WWI. However, after the war UK did not fulfill their commitments."

like all the two bit soundbites employed by the anti-Israel brigade, it's a lot more complicated than that.

Henry McMahon, author of the famous “McMahon Letters” exchanged with Sharif Hussein, the Hashemite leader, is on record saying in 1937:

|| "I feel it my duty to state, and I do so definitely and emphatically, that it was not intended by me in giving the pledge to King Hussein to include Palestine in the area in which Arab independence was promised."

Palestine and Lebanon were areas excluded from the area of Arab independence in the letter dated 24 October 1915.

One should further note that the Arabs did not live up to their obligation to revolt against the Turks. Yes, some of the Bedouins in the desert did do so, but even “Colonel” Lawrence, in his more sober moments, wrote that the endeavour was a wasted effort.

The Arabs primarily fought for the Turks and against the British, some voluntarily, some after being conscripted. Jewish inhabitants of what would later become British Mandate Palestine were also on occasions conscripted to fight for the Turks.

In his tome “A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East”, David Fromkin writes (pp. 182-186):

|| On 24 October 1915 McMahon replied in quite different spirit to Hussein. …he reluctantly agree to enter into a discussion of specific territories and frontiers; but as he evidently was unwilling to assume personal responsibility for making definite commitments, he used language evasively. On the one hand, he agreed that after the war the Arabs should have their independence; but, on the other, he indicated that European advisers and officials would be needed to establish the administration of Arab countries, and insisted that these advisers and officials should be exclusively British. In other words, any “independent” Arab kingdom in the postwar Middle East would have to be a British protectorate.

|| What territories should be included in the British-protected independent Arab kingdom? McMahon replied by dividing the lands claimed by Hussein into four areas and explaining that Britain could not bind herself to support Hussein’s claims in any one of them.

|| McMahon began by remarking that Hussein must give up claim to territory west of the districts of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Hama….

|| In the eastern portion … McMahon observed that the established position and interests of Britain were such that she would have to establish “special administrative arrangements” with respect to them; whether such arrangements would leave any room for an assertion of Arab sovereignty – and if so when and to what extent – was left unsaid.

|| In the western portion – Syria and Palestine – Britain could extend assurances to Hussein only in those territories “in which she can act without detriment to the interests of her ally France.” Since France at the time claimed those territories in their entirety… it followed that Britain could not pledge support for Arab claims with respect to them either – not even to Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Hama.

|| That left only Arabia, which at the time was divided among a number of leaders, of whom Hussein was one. Britain at that time enjoyed treaty relationships with other Arabian chiefs, including Hussein’s rival, Ibn Saud. In his letter, McMahon pointed out that he could not promise anything to Hussein that would prejudice Britain’s relationships with other Arab chiefs. By process of elimination, therefore, Britain did not bind herself to support Hussein’s claims anywhere at all….

|| McMahon, an experienced bureaucrat, had seen the need to be completely noncommittal….

|| Gilbert Clayton, who strongly opposed defining Britain’s relations with the Arabs until the war was over, believed that the McMahon letters had succeeded in putting the matter off and in avoiding the giving of any meaningful commitment. Months later Clayton summarized what McMahon had done by writing that “Luckily we have been very careful indeed to commit ourselves to nothing whatsoever.”

|| Hussein replied to McMahon that he could not accept the Aleppo-Homs-Hama-Damascus formula. …So he failed to reach agreement with McMahon, but felt compelled to support the Allies nonetheless: the Young Turks were going to depose him, so he had to rebel against them whether Britain met his terms or not.

|| In a conversation some years later…, Hussein indicated that with regard to Palestine and also with regard to Lebanon and the other lands in the Middle East, he did not regard matters as having been settled… [and] being subject to negotiation at the Peace Conference. According to Hogarth, “He compared ourselves and himself… to two persons about to inhabit one house, but not agreed which should take which floors or rooms.”

|| …In early 1916 Aziz al-Masri, the Arab secret society leader, wrote… that Britain could not achieve her objectives in the Arabic-speaking Middle East unless she were willing to leave its peoples free to exercise full and genuine independence. …they did not want British domination or a British protectorate….

|| Al-Masri had spotted the falseness in the British position. Kitchener and his followers badly wanted to win Arab support but were unwilling to pay the price the Emir Hussein demanded for it; so instead they were attempting to cheat, by pretending to meet Hussein’s demands when in fact they were giving him the counterfeit coin of meaningless language.

|| Though Clayton and his colleagues did not know it, Al Masri, Al-Faruqi, and the Emir Hussein were offering Britain coin that was equally counterfeit. Hussein had no army, and the secret societies had no visible following. Their talk of rallying tens or hundreds of thousands of Arab troops to their cause, whether or not they believed it themselves, was sheer fantasy.

[i]Thing is under international law they have the right to return to their homes once the fighting is over.

no they don't. The '48 UN resolution says that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property."

the Arabs initially rejected this resolution, and even when they did accept it, they refused to make peace with their neighbour - Israel.

Dear callippo, thank you for cauterizing the anti semetic claptrap that was leaking all over this thread....... sphinx,halibut and plekhanov take note!

Dear callippo, thank you for cauterizing the anti semetic claptrap that was leaking all over this thread....... sphinx,halibut and plekhanov take note!

And again.
Usually the claptrap is quoted as gospel against Israel, but then they're responsible for all the ills of the world including global warming. I would imagine. :gag:

don't forget 9/11, 7/7 and the Boxing Day tsnunami. Both were obviously Jewish conspiracies (not).

whenever anything really bad happens, anywhere in the world, we can expect Jews are going to be blamed for it. It's awful and it must stop.

"The deathly precision of the attacks and the magnitude of planning would have required years of planning. Such a sophisticated operation would require the fixed frame of a state intelligence organization; something not found in a loose group, like the one led by the student Mohammed Atta in Hamburg".

- Eckehardt Werthebach, former head of German intelligence, speaking about 9/11.