Comments on: Iran http://www.boris-johnson.com/2006/10/12/iran/ Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:22:12 +0100 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc hourly 1 By: David Kessler http://www.boris-johnson.com/2006/10/12/iran/comment-page-6/#comment-14341 David Kessler Wed, 01 Nov 2006 21:25:13 +0000 http://80.82.117.242/?p=300#comment-14341 >>Bye Dave, I didn't think you'd have any response to refutation of all of the points you have made in the lengthy post above. You misinterpreted the "Adios". I think you also missed the long response I wrote. I'm sorry that I forgot to leave spaces and bunched it all together. You haven't actually refuted anything UI've said except in your own mind. For example in response to my statement of fact about the Arabs flocking to Jewish areas, your purported "refutation" was a quotation from a Zionist (in 1940) that he didn't like having Arabs in the midst of Jews. You didn't even have the wit to realize that if this individual said this then it means that Arabs were indeed living in the midst of Jews. And the reason Arabs were living in the midst of Jews was because they did indeed flock to the Jewish areas in the from the decline and end of the Ottoman empire through the British Mandate. Thus to the extent that your quotation was relevant, it SUPPORTED my claim. But in your demented mind the quotation was a refutation. The lie wasn't in the quotation but in the pereverse construction you placed upon it. This was typical of your warped logic throughout the exchange. You have also evaded all those points that you are uncomfortable with: like Arab treachery in their dealings with the Zionists, like Arab violence towards the Jews as far back as 1921, like the human rights record of Arab (and Muslim) States and its implications for your alternative to Zionism. You also fail to acknowledge the great Zionist contribution to the economy of the land, to healthcare, education, science and technology and the excellent example the Zionists set in the treatment of women (which culminated in Jordanian women being given the vote.) >>The purpose of my debate with you and the witless Simone has not been to change your opinion as you are both lost causes. Rather it has been to effect a change in perception of Israel in those that view these posts, and to encourage them to take a closer look past the Zionist propaganda and see the cruelty that it masks.<< Your purpose was to stir up hatred of the Jewish State and draw people's attentions away from the appaling human rights record of Israel's neighbours. >>It has been important to further highlight that Judaism is not Zionism and that in fact the two are mutually exclusive; << Another lie - you offered no evidence to support this claim and I systematically refuted it. Needless to say you ignored my refutation of your spurious claim because you had no evidence. >>that Ashkenazis are not really Jews in any proper sense You never proved this. You simply cited the fact that some of Khazars (by your own admission it was only some) converted to Judaism and claimed falsely that this proved that the Ashekenazim and Khazars are synonymous. You evaded my arguments about the different streams of Judaism and spelling and pronunciation etc, because you lack the scholarship to argue these points. >>Any doubts at to the level to which this particular political elite will not stoop will be quickly dispelled by searching on sites set up by Torah Jews Explain. >>and looking into to the historical record of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis in the extermination of expendable Jews.<< Apart from the single incident involving Avraham Stern (mentioned in DPAK's post above) there was no such collaboration. >>Zionism today is singularly responsible for the supposed rise in anti-semitism around the world, as people wrongly equate the rancid and unjustifiable behaviour of the government of Israel with Jews in general, on account of the fact that there appears to be an almost universal support of Israel by those that call themselves Jews. Antisemites are responsible for antisemitism. And don't kid yourself that it's rising, because it isn't - notwithstanding the attempt of people to stir it up under the guise of "anti-Zionism". Those who seek to shift the blame for antisemitism from the purpetrators to the victims are morally corrupt and depraved. It's like shifting the blame from the rapist to the girl wearing a short skirt. >>Zionism needs anti-semitism and will stoke it up where it can. The evidence shows the opposite. >>more and more morally aware Jews, and some Ashkenazi, are seeing that Zionism has failed, Funny, earlier - when you were defending antisemitism - you claimed that Zionism had "universal support of Israel by those that call themselves Jews." Make up your mind Tarzai! Aside from that, Zionism has built a country with six universities, a science institute, a music academy, advanced hospitals with large research departments, many advanced technology corporations, many agronomical research projects that have greatly benefited Africa and other parts of the third world. That's some failure! >> that the terrorism daily visited on the Palestinians is wrong The terrorism commited BY the Palestnians is wrong. >> and has been wrong since Zionism became a policy of ethnic cleansing and murder. And of course, on the issue of the ethnic cleansing by Arabs against Jews you remain silent or blame Zionism without a shred of evidence or logic. >>Israel as it is constituted today can not survive another 10-years. I heard man say that at Speaker's Corner in 1980. >>Boycotting Israel will hurry up the process There's an awful lot to boycott: pharmaceuticals, medical implants, electronics, agricultural technnology... But boycotting Israel will only encourage Arab aggression and ultimately harm the Arabs themselves as it will prolong their delusion that they can destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state. Their efforts to destroy Israel have brought harm upon them. The one state that made peace with Israel has advanced since doing so. Egypt had 80% illiteracy in the days of Nasser. If the Arabs want to advance, let them follow Sadat's example, renounce their efforts to destroy Israel and make peace. Let them also democratize (including the right to campaign freely) and then they will live long and prosper. >>Bye Dave, I didn’t think you’d have any response to refutation of all of the points you have made in the lengthy post above.

You misinterpreted the “Adios”. I think you also missed the long response I wrote. I’m sorry that I forgot to leave spaces and bunched it all together.

You haven’t actually refuted anything UI’ve said except in your own mind. For example in response to my statement of fact about the Arabs flocking to Jewish areas, your purported “refutation” was a quotation from a Zionist (in 1940) that he didn’t like having Arabs in the midst of Jews. You didn’t even have the wit to realize that if this individual said this then it means that Arabs were indeed living in the midst of Jews. And the reason Arabs were living in the midst of Jews was because they did indeed flock to the Jewish areas in the from the decline and end of the Ottoman empire through the British Mandate.

Thus to the extent that your quotation was relevant, it SUPPORTED my claim. But in your demented mind the quotation was a refutation. The lie wasn’t in the quotation but in the pereverse construction you placed upon it.

This was typical of your warped logic throughout the exchange.

You have also evaded all those points that you are uncomfortable with: like Arab treachery in their dealings with the Zionists, like Arab violence towards the Jews as far back as 1921, like the human rights record of Arab (and Muslim) States and its implications for your alternative to Zionism.

You also fail to acknowledge the great Zionist contribution to the economy of the land, to healthcare, education, science and technology and the excellent example the Zionists set in the treatment of women (which culminated in Jordanian women being given the vote.)

>>The purpose of my debate with you and the witless Simone has not been to change your opinion as you are both lost causes. Rather it has been to effect a change in perception of Israel in those that view these posts, and to encourage them to take a closer look past the Zionist propaganda and see the cruelty that it masks.< <

Your purpose was to stir up hatred of the Jewish State and draw people's attentions away from the appaling human rights record of Israel's neighbours.

>>It has been important to further highlight that Judaism is not Zionism and that in fact the two are mutually exclusive; < <

Another lie - you offered no evidence to support this claim and I systematically refuted it. Needless to say you ignored my refutation of your spurious claim because you had no evidence.

>>that Ashkenazis are not really Jews in any proper sense

You never proved this. You simply cited the fact that some of Khazars (by your own admission it was only some) converted to Judaism and claimed falsely that this proved that the Ashekenazim and Khazars are synonymous. You evaded my arguments about the different streams of Judaism and spelling and pronunciation etc, because you lack the scholarship to argue these points.

>>Any doubts at to the level to which this particular political elite will not stoop will be quickly dispelled by searching on sites set up by Torah Jews

Explain.

>>and looking into to the historical record of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis in the extermination of expendable Jews.< <

Apart from the single incident involving Avraham Stern (mentioned in DPAK's post above) there was no such collaboration.

>>Zionism today is singularly responsible for the supposed rise in anti-semitism around the world, as people wrongly equate the rancid and unjustifiable behaviour of the government of Israel with Jews in general, on account of the fact that there appears to be an almost universal support of Israel by those that call themselves Jews.

Antisemites are responsible for antisemitism. And don’t kid yourself that it’s rising, because it isn’t – notwithstanding the attempt of people to stir it up under the guise of “anti-Zionism”. Those who seek to shift the blame for antisemitism from the purpetrators to the victims are morally corrupt and depraved. It’s like shifting the blame from the rapist to the girl wearing a short skirt.

>>Zionism needs anti-semitism and will stoke it up where it can.

The evidence shows the opposite.

>>more and more morally aware Jews, and some Ashkenazi, are seeing that Zionism has failed,

Funny, earlier – when you were defending antisemitism – you claimed that Zionism had “universal support of Israel by those that call themselves Jews.” Make up your mind Tarzai!

Aside from that, Zionism has built a country with six universities, a science institute, a music academy, advanced hospitals with large research departments, many advanced technology corporations, many agronomical research projects that have greatly benefited Africa and other parts of the third world. That’s some failure!

>> that the terrorism daily visited on the Palestinians is wrong

The terrorism commited BY the Palestnians is wrong.

>> and has been wrong since Zionism became a policy of ethnic cleansing and murder.

And of course, on the issue of the ethnic cleansing by Arabs against Jews you remain silent or blame Zionism without a shred of evidence or logic.

>>Israel as it is constituted today can not survive another 10-years.

I heard man say that at Speaker’s Corner in 1980.

>>Boycotting Israel will hurry up the process

There’s an awful lot to boycott: pharmaceuticals, medical implants, electronics, agricultural technnology…

But boycotting Israel will only encourage Arab aggression and ultimately harm the Arabs themselves as it will prolong their delusion that they can destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state. Their efforts to destroy Israel have brought harm upon them. The one state that made peace with Israel has advanced since doing so. Egypt had 80% illiteracy in the days of Nasser.

If the Arabs want to advance, let them follow Sadat’s example, renounce their efforts to destroy Israel and make peace. Let them also democratize (including the right to campaign freely) and then they will live long and prosper.

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]]> By: Michael Tarzai http://www.boris-johnson.com/2006/10/12/iran/comment-page-6/#comment-14340 Michael Tarzai Wed, 01 Nov 2006 14:38:00 +0000 http://80.82.117.242/?p=300#comment-14340 MT Says: Bye Dave,[Ed: unacceptable remarks deleted] MT Says: Bye Dave,[Ed: unacceptable remarks deleted]

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]]> By: DPAK http://www.boris-johnson.com/2006/10/12/iran/comment-page-6/#comment-14339 DPAK Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:42:14 +0000 http://80.82.117.242/?p=300#comment-14339 Beware the Zionists said:>>In 1940, Avraham Stern, inspired by Jabotinsky, formed Irgun Zvai Leumi be-Yisrael, or simply Lehi, a terrorist group dedicated to killing not only officials and soldiers of British colonialism in Palestine, but anybody, regardless of race or religion (including Jews), who stood in the way of realizing a "homeland in the Land of Israel within the borders delineated in the Bible," as Stern declared in his 18 Principles of Rebirth (see David Ohana's Zarathustra in Jerusalem: Nietzsche and the "New Hebrews"). You're confusing Lehi (Lohamei Herut Yisrael - Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) with Etzel (Irgun Zvai Le'umi or National Military Organization). Stern started out as a member of Etzel. But when Etzel suspended hostilities with the British in order to unite in the fight against the Nazis (in 1939), Stern disagreed. So he broke away from Etzel and formed Lehi. Stern and Lehi, also called the Stern Gang, attempted to team up with the Nazis during the Second World War, declaring a "common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO (Lehi)." This is true. And Stern had the audacity to claim that he was the true leader of Etzel. But the fact is Etzel rejected his position and supported the position of David Raziel and Menahem Begin, that Etzel should work with the British against the Nazis. When it became clear that he was in a tiny minority, Stern gave his rump organization a new name. Beware the Zionists said:>>In 1940, Avraham Stern, inspired by Jabotinsky, formed Irgun Zvai Leumi be-Yisrael, or simply Lehi, a terrorist group dedicated to killing not only officials and soldiers of British colonialism in Palestine, but anybody, regardless of race or religion (including Jews), who stood in the way of realizing a “homeland in the Land of Israel within the borders delineated in the Bible,” as Stern declared in his 18 Principles of Rebirth (see David Ohana’s Zarathustra in Jerusalem: Nietzsche and the “New Hebrews”).

You’re confusing Lehi (Lohamei Herut Yisrael – Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) with Etzel (Irgun Zvai Le’umi or National Military Organization).

Stern started out as a member of Etzel. But when Etzel suspended hostilities with the British in order to unite in the fight against the Nazis (in 1939), Stern disagreed. So he broke away from Etzel and formed Lehi.

Stern and Lehi, also called the Stern Gang, attempted to team up with the Nazis during the Second World War, declaring a “common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO (Lehi).”

This is true. And Stern had the audacity to claim that he was the true leader of Etzel. But the fact is Etzel rejected his position and supported the position of David Raziel and Menahem Begin, that Etzel should work with the British against the Nazis. When it became clear that he was in a tiny minority, Stern gave his rump organization a new name.

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]]> By: David Kessler http://www.boris-johnson.com/2006/10/12/iran/comment-page-6/#comment-14338 David Kessler Wed, 01 Nov 2006 09:31:32 +0000 http://80.82.117.242/?p=300#comment-14338 MT Says: Your indignation is laughable.You state "long-standing Jewish majority in Jerusalem" - Long standing indeed! The census proves otherwise, but what you meant was that non-Jews could be split into smaller groupings thereby making Jews the largest group. Once again you're confusing the census of 1844 with the figures for 1872, the year that I stated. The 1844 showed that Jews were already a simple majority and very close to an absolute majority. The figures for 1872 (THE YEAR THAT I STATED) were: 10,600 Jews 5,300 Christians 5,000 Muslims That's 10,600 Jews to 10,300 non-Jews - in other words an ABSOLUTE MAJORITY! And that was in 1872 - that's 132 YEARS AGO. That's what I call that "long-standing" buddy! Adios Amigo! MT Says: Your indignation is laughable.You state “long-standing Jewish majority in Jerusalem” – Long standing indeed! The census proves otherwise, but what you meant was that non-Jews could be split into smaller groupings thereby making Jews the largest group.

Once again you’re confusing the census of 1844 with the figures for 1872, the year that I stated.

The 1844 showed that Jews were already a simple majority and very close to an absolute majority. The figures for 1872 (THE YEAR THAT I STATED) were:

10,600 Jews
5,300 Christians
5,000 Muslims

That’s 10,600 Jews to 10,300 non-Jews – in other words an ABSOLUTE MAJORITY!

And that was in 1872 – that’s 132 YEARS AGO. That’s what I call that “long-standing” buddy!

Adios Amigo!

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]]> By: David Kessler http://www.boris-johnson.com/2006/10/12/iran/comment-page-6/#comment-14337 David Kessler Wed, 01 Nov 2006 09:24:31 +0000 http://80.82.117.242/?p=300#comment-14337 MT Says: You forgot to address my question relating to Palestinian rights at the dawn of the Zionist programme and to their property that has been stolen and for which they have received no compensation. And I am not referring to any property purchased legally. You have systematically ignored my questions regarding wrongs committed by the Arabs (including those now calling themselves Palestinian). The Arabs who fled in 1948 were offered compensation provided the applied for it. What of the Jews who were expelled from the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem in 1948? Do you acknowledge that they are entitled to compensation? What about the Jews who were driven out of Hebron in 1929? Were they entitled to compensation? MT Says: I acknowledge your stance on the illegal settlements in the West Bank, and would ask if you are prepared to add your voice to the growing number of people calling for sanctions on the State of Israel, unless a positive programme of complete withdrawal has been undertaken in the West Bank? I doubt if sanctions would work. They would be more likely to increase the siege mentality of the Israeli Right. Aside from that are sanctions reserved for occupation of land - or do they apply to human rights violations in general? If the latter then I can think of a whole load of countries who should be boycotted before we get to Israel. If you link sanctions to land occupation rather than human rights violations, then you effectively saying that you are more concerned with property rights than human rights. Sorry about the incomplete sentence. I think I typed it and then inadvertently deleted it. MT Says: What is clear from the ever-changing way in one qualifies as a Jew, first it's only through your mother, now it's your Grandad, and more recently if you just manage to say shalom, if you happen to be a Russian thug whose talents for violence will be invaluable in propping up the occupation of the Palestinian Territories. I don't know what you mean by this "Russian thug" reference. MT Says: Incidentally you forgot to mention that Zionist also sets out to be an exclusively Jewish State, It didn't. Zionism never ruled out the possibility of non-Jewish citizens. MT Says: whose problem is the Arabs who didn't run away and what to do about the millions of Arabs in the West Bank that they so desperately want to annex. They don't. Ben Gurion could have captured the West Bank in 1948 but chose not to do so - preferring instead to secure the Negev against the Arab aggression. In the first few years after the Israeli acquisition of the West Bank (in self defence against the Jordanian aggression of 1967), the Israelis tried desperately to persuade King Hussein to negotiate for its return. They were ready to return it to him in return for a peace agreement. MT Says: I could direct you to a website recently set up that looks at the growing scourge of anti-semitism in Israel. One of these Russian boys serving in the army got lifted by the Police who discovered a Swastika on his arm. Apparently him and his buddies (all of whom got the Kosher stamp) had started a Hilter Youth movement of their own, in Israel. Please do. I would like to check out this website and see whether your claim about "most of" these Russian immigrants is true. MT Says: I concede that the Jewishness of the State has been a subterfuge all along, because as you and I both know, Zionism and Judasim are really mutually exclusive, the Torah refutes the right of Israel to exist as a man-made political entity, so "Jew" was a badge of convenience for those Ashkenazi revolutionaries. That is a matter of divided opinion within Judaism. The Torah (which stops when Moses handed on the baton) certainly does not forbid Jews to live in a Jewish State. There are some who say that after the dispersion, any return to Zion must be divinely ordained. There are others who say that "God helps those who help themselves." (Precedent: Ezra and Nehemia didn't have a divine commandment to build the second temple.) Mt Says: I do not accept your spurious argument about Arabs being blood-thirsty savages which you bring up repeatedly later in this post. I pointed out that they too have committed wrongs, which you have chosen to gloss over because you prefer to keep Israel alone in the dock. I gave specific examples. You may be uncomfortable with these examples, but you can't sweep them under the carpet. MT Says: Let me remind you that you raised the matter of the communication between Zionists and King Faisal in which the King said, "We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our delegation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday to the Zionist organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper." And let me remind you that ten years later a representative of King Faisal (of Iraq) sent a letter saying (I am quoting from memory) "His majesty has no recollection of sending such a letter." MT Says: I concede that you "Jews" (let's call them what they are and drop the Jewish pretence right now, they're Israelis) need to do a lot of apologising now, but your assessment of Arabs and Arabs countries is unfair. How do you respond to the specific examples I gave? Are you denying the crimes of the Arabs against their own brethren (and others)? Or do you blame it all on the Zionists? MT Says: Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire the Arab peoples and their lands have been carved up by Colonialists and neo-colonialists; maps and territories decided by others rather than Arabs, communities have been thrown together or split against their logical ethnic, social or religious lines, i.e. Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon. These colonialists have looked upon the Arabs as backward and treated them with contempt. US, British and Zionist interests (amongst others) have overthrown governments, crushed popular movements, assassinated those they didn't feel were sufficiently "sympathetic to their respective causes", propped up oppressive and brutal dictatorships as their needs dictated. And now these colonizers have created the monster of militant and fanatical Islam. I'm afraid David that labelling Arab morality in this environment is like judging Irish morality in the context of "The Troubles". A pathetic excuse! It's the old "blame it all on the colonialists," cop-out. Arabs are as much responsible for their actions as Jews (Zionist or otherwise), Americans, French, Italians and Fijians are for theirs. As far as assassinations go, the Arabs are perfectly capable of doing that for themselves. And the extent that Israel has had to contend with that problem (Rabin) they have shown that a solid democracy can withstand such vicious acts by the wicked and the misguided. Furthermore, Arab and Muslim injustices against others (and their own) are not limited to the areas that were once part of the Ottoman empire. The treatment of Christian blacks in Sudan, women in Afghanistan and moderate Muslims in the Philippines has nothing to do with the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. Also the Arabs were not excluded from participation in the decision-making processes. Faisal of Iraq and his brother Abdullah (sons of Hussein ibn Ali, Sharif of Mecca) were respected Arab leaders whose voices were listened to and who became leaders of Iraq and Transjordan respectively. David Kessler said: You seem to have conveniently forgotten that most of those who now call themselves Palestinian were NOT born there. They were born in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan! MT Says: Really? What about those born in Gaza and the West Bank? I said "most". MT Says: Is that the plan then Dave, when the last Palestinian chased off their land dies, then that will be Zionism perfected, their children don't count? Anyway aren't there UN resolutions regarding the rights of the refugees and their offspring? - David, I'm afraid you've been reduced to mere Zionist apologist rubbish, at least in the beginning some of it required a bit of thought to see through, not any more. Once you get into the rights of children - or in this case grandchildren and great-grandchildren - we come down to the question of how far down the line rights can be carried. If you rule out the right of return even of those whose Jewishness you don't appear to dispute (the Sephardim) then your premise is presumably that there is a cut off point for the right of return. So what is your ancestral cut-off point for the right of return? David Kessler said: MT Says: Now you're being disingenuous again. You are using the argument that the Palestinians didn't have a government at the time of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to suggest that there was no Palestine, David Kessler said: To suggest that there was no COUNTRY of Palestine. Palestine was part of the Turkish provence of Syria it was then governed by Britain under a League of Nations Mandate. At no stage was it a country. That may be an unpalatable fact to you, but it IS a fact. MT Says: Poland has been wiped off the map, conquered, forgotten and absorbed, by Russia, Germany, Austria and Genghis Khan more times than the average Polish high school child cares to remember for history tests. That does not change the fact that there always was a Polish "nation" and those that identified with their Polishness. Same with Palestine, The difference is that notwithstanding occupations and colonizations, Poland DID exist. Palestine did NOT. And the Palestinian national identity is such a recent innovation that even in the period of the British mandate it was vying for the hearts and minds of the Arabs in mandatory Palestine with the alternative (however unrealistic) or Pan-Arab nationalism. Moreover if the test of a Nationality is psychological identification, then Zionism too can derive its legitimacy from the state of mind of the Zionists, regardless of their ethnicity or religious practice. Personally I believe that this is indeed the case and that both Palestinian Nationalism and Jewish Nationalism (Zionism) are legitimate for this reason. That is why I favour a two-state solution (the Jordanian option may have looked tempting between 1949 and 1973, but after that it ceased to be credible). MT says: the temporary oddity of the Zionist experiment has undoubtedly changed that face and population of the future Palestine, but it will still come to exist. In your deluded Zionist mind the Palestinian people should under no circumstances be granted the right of self-government then, because they've never had it, is that what you're saying? I you question my humanitarian credentials. Although there is no historical basis for a State of Palestine, given that the people are there and cry out for some kind of a just solution, I concede that there should be a State of Palestine as well as - not instead of - the State of Israel. MT Says: You are arrogant and transparent in the extreme. Not really, although when pushed I do push back. But I am not indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinian Arabs. MT Says: Do you believe that the Kurds deserve autonomy David, or just the Jewish ones? I don't honestly know how to solve the Kurdish problem. There are large Kurdish populations in five countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Armenia. Should they have autonomy or independence? Autonomy in all those countries? Or only in some. I honestly don't know. It's a case of "damned if I do and damned if I don't." The Kurdish problem is potentially more explosive than Israel-Palestine. I certainly feel that in the context of Iraq, an autonomous Kurdish region is the best way to get the balance between their legitimate desire for self-determination and concerns that others have about the break-up of the country. But I don't pretend to have all the answers: it is a complex problem. David Kessler said: MT writes:>> or are you doing a "Golda Meir" and saying there is no such thing as the Palestinian people; that was rich coming from a US citizen born in Russia, when writing off the inhabitants of a land not her own as being non-existent. David Kessler said: Drawing analogues between me and Golda Meir and then atacking her, is an excusion into irrelevancy. MT Says: Why Dave, we haven't got to the bottom of your attitude toward the Palestinian nation yet and what you feel should be done with, or to them. What is you final solution? Golda alluded to hers quite clearly, you just hint at yours. Do you admire her for such a ridiculous claim David? My words were different from hers. I spoke of the fact that there had never been a Palestinian country. Palestinian nationalism is legitimate in the same way that other MODERN national movements are legitimate. But it IS a modern nationalist movement and you cannot trump Zionism by claiming that Palestinianism is an ancient venerable movement. That is why my position is that Zionism and Palestinianism have to find a way to co-exist. MT Says: So it was ok to try and turn the clock back 200-years only 60-years ago, but it's not ok to turn back the clock 60-years today? I assume you mean 2000 years. But MY position is that if Zionism depended on the 2000 year argument then it wouldn't be a strong enough case. I have already explained my position on this point about normal human migrations to an area whose sovereignty was in a state of flux. I will not repeat the argument. David Kessler said: MT says:>>I would stick to Zionist sources in support of this..- "We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village." --Moshe Dyan, March 19, 1969, speech at the Technion in Haifa, "Israel" quoted in Haaretz, April 4, 1969. (385 villages have been destroyed within pre-1967 Israel...)" David Kessler said: Tel Aviv? Haifa? Eilat? Jerusalem? MT Says: Oh I see, so now Moshe Dayan is one of your Zionist aberrations as well, the list gets longer. I didn't say it was an aberration on this occasion. But you seem to assuming that any declaration contra to interest made by a Zionist is automatically true and proof of your point. That is an absurd assumption. Where is your PROOF that all Jewish settlements were built on Arab land? Where is your research and scholarship on the subject? Quoting an over-the-top statement by Moshe Dayan is cunning but it isn't proof? I would like to see some scholarship on your part on the subject, not picking out quotes. David Kessler said: MT Says: I'm not sure what point you think you've scored with this, but I fail to see what it matters if the Palestinians called themselves Arabs. What a great pity it is that Zionists didn't take such great delight in "showing off" Palestinian passports to their friends, as the Palestinian Jews did, David Kessler said: The Palestinian Jews WERE Zionists. MT Says: Prove it Dave, because the historical record says otherwise! The ones who showed their Palestinian passports proudly were not only natives but also immigrants who arrived in the Mandate. Your very distinction between Palestinian Jews and Zionists is arbitrary. MT Says: The pretext was RETURNING. If you are correct, which you obviously are not, surely the State of Israel wouldn't have on its statute books "A LAW OF RETURN" it would have a "Law permitting anyone we think is on our side to immigrate to a country founded in a state of flux" The Law has a clear definition of who may return, it is based on Jewish ancestry and the non-practice of other religions. It is a complex solution to a complex issue. A Jew could be persecuted even if he wasn't a practicing Jew. It would have been wrong to exclude such Jews from the protection that the Law of Return offered. As for the presence of non-Jewish Russians, I do not know if they masqueraded as Jews or took advantage of bureaucratic chaos to get into a prosperous country, but such a recent event hardly invalidates the legitimacy of the approach that the Zionists took to a complex issue. MT Says: If there is inter-marriage and an introduction of a large number of male and female converts, where does the "right to the land, by birth" come into it, or have you totally dropped the pretense that being Jewish gave Zionism its moral imperative? Judaism does allow conversion. And if intermarriage vitiates a claim, then does that mean that Palestinians who marry non-Palestinians weaken their claim - or that of their children or grandchildren? MT Says: How much land, David, please be precise as I really would like to expose you for the mendacious fool you are? I will check it out. But how about YOU tell us how much Arab-OWNED land the Zionists "stole"! When I say owned, I mean land that was registered with the Land registry office, not government land that they were using without permission. And please be precise! David Kessler said: Thirdly, Arabs tended to flock to the area where Jews were gathering (and investing) because of the increased work opportunities in those areas. David Kessler said: MT Says: I find this piece of deception beneath contempt and not worthy of a response, however this will leave an opening for more deception so I quote "With the Arabs we shall not achieve our aim of being an independent people in this country. The only solution is Eretz-Israel, at least the west part of Eretz-Israel, without Arabs... And there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries. Transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should remain..." --Joseph Weitz, entry in his diary for 1940 (Quoted in his article: "A solution to the Refugee Problem: An Israeli State with a small Arab Minority", published in Davar, 29 September, 1967. David Kessler said: So? One man expresses an obnoxious opinion (in 1940 long after the Arabs have flocked to those areas) and on the strength of this you pretend that Arabs did not flock to Jewish areas in search of work? That's quite a leap of imagination on your part. MT Says: Oh dear, not another Zionist aberration. Will the list never end? Give me a clue David, how many Jewish sources must I introduce to refute every point you make, until you realise that maybe it is you, Mr Kessler who is the aberration, a man so bent on Zionist apology that you have forsaken all decency. You seem to be under the misapprehension that you have refuted the point. In fact, your response is a complete non sequitur to my point. Please tell me how Weitz's opinion refutes the fact that Arabs took up residence in Jewish areas and sought (and obtained) employment there. There is nothing in the Weitz quote (from 1940) that in any way contradicts my point. All the quote shows is that that particular man didn't like the situation. Moreover, the Arabs had been flocking to Jewish areas long before 1940 when the Weitz quote appeared in his diary. By all means quote Jewish sources - but try to make the quotes relevant to the point that you are trying to refute. David Kessler said: MT Says: You are right; there is such a thing as natural movement of populations. Zionism however is not an example of it. What happened in Palestine was colonization and then conquest. David Kessler said: Arriving, buying land, draining swamps, building universities, building cities - all this is colonization and conquest? MT Says: Personally I think there were a lot of well intentioned parts of early Zionism. But Jabotinsky, Begin and Stern, Ben Gurion quickly altered all of the to be followed by Dayan, Sharon and Netanyahu. Throwing in Ben Gurion with Jabotinsky, Begin and Stern is like throwing in Bill Clinton with George Bush (snr) George W Bush and Ronald Reagan. Even comparing Dayan with Sharon and Netanyahu is misleading. David Kessler said: May I remind you that colonization means ruling one land from a power base located in another. For example, India was a British colony run from a colonial country called Britain, located in Europe. Algeria was a French colony ruled from a colonial country called France, located in Europe. Now according to you Palestine was or became a Zionist colony, so presumably it was run by a colonial country called... called... called (please fill in the blank Mr Tarzai) and that colonial country was located in... (please fill in the blank Mr Tarzai). If you cannot fill in the blanks then please drop this spurious allegation of Zionist colonialism! MT Says: Oh that's right Dave, it was just a natural result of movement of people. Jonathan Friedland from the Guardian was being interviewed on the BBC a few months ago and said that the colonization of Israel should be seen in the same context as the colonization of Australia or Argentina. Perhaps you can add him to your list of Zionist aberrations. As mentioned above when you give me the number of Jewish sources needed to expose the mendacity of each of your points I will happily oblige. Again I don't see that quoting a Jew to bolster your opinion automatically makes you right. You seem to assume that all you have to do to "prove" your point is quote a Jew when he says something you happen to agree with and then crow that you have "refuted" my point when in fact you have done no such thing. But in this case, there is no argument from me. I agree with you and Friedland: I think it is a fair and reasonable analogy. If you use the word colonial not in the British/India or French/Algeria sense but rather to mean people cutting their ties with the country of their birth and creating a new country somewhere else, then I accept the analogy. So tell me Michael, do you now wish to abolish Australia? MT Says: Normally, when immigration happens in a country that is being established people are invited by the government, as in the case of the USA. What we have here as disgruntled Europeans who see an opportunity to flee the lands of their birth and move to another country, but not with the intention of mingling with the local population, but with the specific intention of dispossessing that people of their land using some absurd religious pretext. Jabotininsky's book "Iron Wall" puts it clearly in perspective, brutal colonization. You can call it what you want Dave The "disgruntled Europeans" didn't flee to a "country", they fled to a Turkish colony. If the Palestinians had a government then your analogy might have applied. But they didn't. When Zionism started it was a Turkish colony. Then it was under British administration. When a government WAS formed it was the Israeli government (with the other areas being conquered by Jordan and Egypt). Also in the American example, who invited the people to FORM the government? The original immigrants weren't invited! Jabotinsky may have had brutal aspirations - he wanted the West Bank and Transjordan - but the mainstream Zionist movement had much more modest aims. The Jewish Agency agreed to the UN partition plan of the part of Mandatory Palestine that remained after the cession of Transjordan. MT Says: Really, a native born in Palestine wasn't a Palestinian? What was he then? A Palestinian was a person permanently resident in Palestine, native or otherwise. Like being British doesn't necessarily mean native. David Kessler said: If the Arabs had accepted the UN partition plan and not invaded the newly born state of Israel (before the British had even withdrawn) then they could have had an Arab state alongside a predominantly Jewish state. MT Says: The UN Security Council didn't even accept it, why should the Palestinians? Why should the Security Council have a veto over the decision of the full membership in the General Assembly? That's like saying that the cabinet should have a veto over parliament? MT Says:Do we need to expose the unfair nature of the partition plan? Let's assume the Arabs had accepted it, what would have become of the Arabs within Israel, (assuming the terrorist attacks hadn't caused 750 000 to leave), The Arab refugees (those who fled both from the designated areas of Israel and the areas that Israel captured by way of defensive response to the Arab aggression) were some 550,000 in number. Had it not been for the Arab aggression, the Palestinian Arabs might have become a gradual majority in Israel or they might have been outnumbered by Sephardi Jewish immigrants from Arab countries. But what about the tiny Jewish minority in the areas that were designated to be part of the Arab state, and especially those in the areas that fell to Jordan and Egypt. Not one of these was permitted to remain alive in those areas. If the Arabs were not ready to tolerate even a tiny minority that was no threat to them, then how would they have behaved towards a Jewish minority? I notice your reluctance to confront questions such as this and I can well understand why. In contrast some 200,000 Arabs remained in Israel where they were given voting rights (including the women!) and citizenship. They were able to form political parties and sit in the Israeli parliament. Did they have similar rights in the Arab world? Oh yes, I know, they were denied these rights for decades by their own brethren because of the legacy of colonialism! MT Says: Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism is Zionism today which in turn is Israeli State policy. Since 1977 yes, but that was because Arab intransigence and aggression let the genie out of the bottle. To use your interesting phrase it is the Arabs who have "created the monster" and now they are complaining about the consequences. MT says: You trying to tell me that Zionist thinking toady and right the way through your short history from Moshe Sharrett to Olmert hasn't been shaped by "Iron Wall" mentality? Please, you've even got a concrete one as well now. That ghetto mentality is so hard to shift isn't it? The concrete wall is to keep out terrorists. I make no apology for it. I know the terrorists don't like it, but making them happy was never its purpose, or mine. David Kessler said: We see the persecution of the 130,000 Jews of Iraq and a similar number in the Yemen. We see the pesecution of 150,000 Algerian Jews, 48,000 Syrian Jews. All of these fled from aoppression and found refuge in Israel. Let us talk about the oppression that drove them to flight. And let's not pretend that its the fault of Zionism. Oppression is oppression. MT Says: The plight of the Iraqi Jews certainly was the fault of Zionism. I'll check up on the rest. Once again you use the old excuse. The oppression of the Jews of Iraq was the fault of the people who oppressed them. You hold Israel responsible for its actions, please be consistent. Otherwise I might get the impression that you hold one set of standards for Jews and another for their oppressors. MT Says: UN Security Council states Partition Plan is unenforceable aside from it being immoral. The UN General thought otherwise. And when did the Security Council say it was unenforceable and immoral? Did the USA and USSR agree? They both recognized Israel as soon as the state was established. MT Says: God you're arrogant, why can't you just envisage living peacefully amongst the other inhabitants of the land. Like the Jews of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Libya? Like the Black Christians of Sudan? Like the Kurds of Iraq and Iran? MT Says: We've already established that the early Zionist Ashkenazi's aren't really Jews anyway, I think we've agreed to differ on this point. MT says: so dropping the pretence of the religion would have been logical. Does that mean that religious Ashkenazim should practice the religion? MT Says: You mention that Zionist settlement was just natural immigration, where else did a situation arise where an immigrant population usurped the land, resources and infrastructure of the indigenous people? Think carefully about your answer, because otherwise you could be staring at colonialism in the face. As I've conceded, if you use "colonialism" in the Australian sense, then I accept it as an approximate analogy. Of course, it is not exact because initially Australia was a British colony. But it is a reasonably close analogy and we may use it as a convenient shorthand for defining one of the few areas where our views seem to be converging. But the Zionists came as builders. They built much of the infrastructure that you claim they usurped. Only when it came to a struggle for survival against Arab invaders, did the Zionists go on the offensive - to meet an enemy that was coming towards them with murderous intentions. David Kessler said: Your quotes of Jabotinsky are meaningless, because his view was the minority view. That's why the political parties based on his views were always minority parties and in opposition until 1977 (even then they had to form a coalition to hold power). MT Says: Yes Dave I know, "the lone nut theory". Interestingly, your friend Simone calls Vlad Jabotinsky "a man of vision". You apologists should get your story straight. What a shame for the Arabs that his "vision" was so menacing. The fact is you are trying to elevate Jabotinsky to something he wasn't. He was the voice of the opposition not the establishment. His view was not that of Haim Weizman or Ben Gurion. The political parties that were influenced by his legacy remained in opposition until 1977. You can quote him till the cows come home. It would be like me quoting Haj Amin al Husseini to prove that all Palestinians were Nazis. David Kessler said: The reality is we can't go back at all. We have to go forward. And destroying an established state is not an option. MT Says: I agree, so stop killing Arabs, stealing more land, water and resources and settle with the Palestinians. Don't forget the refugees! Fair enough, I'm in favour of giving back all the 67 acquisitions (except Jerusalem) and even some of the pre-67 territory. Barak actually offered to give Arafat a couple of Arab villages in the pre-67 boundaries but the Arabs themselves objected (quite rightly!) because they preferred to be part of the horrible oppressive Zionist state than the nice compassionate Palestinian one. In other words they preferred living under the Zionists to living under the tender mercies of their own brethren. But then again perhaps I'm not allowed to mention that because it might imply that politically the Arabs are savages. MT Says: You forgot to address my question relating to Palestinian rights at the dawn of the Zionist programme and to their property that has been stolen and for which they have received no compensation. And I am not referring to any property purchased legally.
You have systematically ignored my questions regarding wrongs committed by the Arabs (including those now calling themselves Palestinian). The Arabs who fled in 1948 were offered compensation provided the applied for it. What of the Jews who were expelled from the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem in 1948? Do you acknowledge that they are entitled to compensation? What about the Jews who were driven out of Hebron in 1929? Were they entitled to compensation?
MT Says: I acknowledge your stance on the illegal settlements in the West Bank, and would ask if you are prepared to add your voice to the growing number of people calling for sanctions on the State of Israel, unless a positive programme of complete withdrawal has been undertaken in the West Bank?
I doubt if sanctions would work. They would be more likely to increase the siege mentality of the Israeli Right. Aside from that are sanctions reserved for occupation of land – or do they apply to human rights violations in general? If the latter then I can think of a whole load of countries who should be boycotted before we get to Israel. If you link sanctions to land occupation rather than human rights violations, then you effectively saying that you are more concerned with property rights than human rights.
Sorry about the incomplete sentence. I think I typed it and then inadvertently deleted it.
MT Says: What is clear from the ever-changing way in one qualifies as a Jew, first it’s only through your mother, now it’s your Grandad, and more recently if you just manage to say shalom, if you happen to be a Russian thug whose talents for violence will be invaluable in propping up the occupation of the Palestinian Territories.
I don’t know what you mean by this “Russian thug” reference.
MT Says: Incidentally you forgot to mention that Zionist also sets out to be an exclusively Jewish State,
It didn’t. Zionism never ruled out the possibility of non-Jewish citizens.
MT Says: whose problem is the Arabs who didn’t run away and what to do about the millions of Arabs in the West Bank that they so desperately want to annex.
They don’t. Ben Gurion could have captured the West Bank in 1948 but chose not to do so – preferring instead to secure the Negev against the Arab aggression. In the first few years after the Israeli acquisition of the West Bank (in self defence against the Jordanian aggression of 1967), the Israelis tried desperately to persuade King Hussein to negotiate for its return. They were ready to return it to him in return for a peace agreement.
MT Says: I could direct you to a website recently set up that looks at the growing scourge of anti-semitism in Israel. One of these Russian boys serving in the army got lifted by the Police who discovered a Swastika on his arm. Apparently him and his buddies (all of whom got the Kosher stamp) had started a Hilter Youth movement of their own, in Israel.
Please do. I would like to check out this website and see whether your claim about “most of” these Russian immigrants is true.
MT Says: I concede that the Jewishness of the State has been a subterfuge all along, because as you and I both know, Zionism and Judasim are really mutually exclusive, the Torah refutes the right of Israel to exist as a man-made political entity, so “Jew” was a badge of convenience for those Ashkenazi revolutionaries.
That is a matter of divided opinion within Judaism. The Torah (which stops when Moses handed on the baton) certainly does not forbid Jews to live in a Jewish State. There are some who say that after the dispersion, any return to Zion must be divinely ordained. There are others who say that “God helps those who help themselves.” (Precedent: Ezra and Nehemia didn’t have a divine commandment to build the second temple.)
Mt Says: I do not accept your spurious argument about Arabs being blood-thirsty savages which you bring up repeatedly later in this post.
I pointed out that they too have committed wrongs, which you have chosen to gloss over because you prefer to keep Israel alone in the dock. I gave specific examples. You may be uncomfortable with these examples, but you can’t sweep them under the carpet.
MT Says: Let me remind you that you raised the matter of the communication between Zionists and King Faisal in which the King said, “We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our delegation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday to the Zionist organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper.”
And let me remind you that ten years later a representative of King Faisal (of Iraq) sent a letter saying (I am quoting from memory) “His majesty has no recollection of sending such a letter.”
MT Says: I concede that you “Jews” (let’s call them what they are and drop the Jewish pretence right now, they’re Israelis) need to do a lot of apologising now, but your assessment of Arabs and Arabs countries is unfair.
How do you respond to the specific examples I gave? Are you denying the crimes of the Arabs against their own brethren (and others)? Or do you blame it all on the Zionists?
MT Says: Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire the Arab peoples and their lands have been carved up by Colonialists and neo-colonialists; maps and territories decided by others rather than Arabs, communities have been thrown together or split against their logical ethnic, social or religious lines, i.e. Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon. These colonialists have looked upon the Arabs as backward and treated them with contempt. US, British and Zionist interests (amongst others) have overthrown governments, crushed popular movements, assassinated those they didn’t feel were sufficiently “sympathetic to their respective causes”, propped up oppressive and brutal dictatorships as their needs dictated. And now these colonizers have created the monster of militant and fanatical Islam. I’m afraid David that labelling Arab morality in this environment is like judging Irish morality in the context of “The Troubles”.
A pathetic excuse! It’s the old “blame it all on the colonialists,” cop-out. Arabs are as much responsible for their actions as Jews (Zionist or otherwise), Americans, French, Italians and Fijians are for theirs. As far as assassinations go, the Arabs are perfectly capable of doing that for themselves. And the extent that Israel has had to contend with that problem (Rabin) they have shown that a solid democracy can withstand such vicious acts by the wicked and the misguided.
Furthermore, Arab and Muslim injustices against others (and their own) are not limited to the areas that were once part of the Ottoman empire. The treatment of Christian blacks in Sudan, women in Afghanistan and moderate Muslims in the Philippines has nothing to do with the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire.
Also the Arabs were not excluded from participation in the decision-making processes. Faisal of Iraq and his brother Abdullah (sons of Hussein ibn Ali, Sharif of Mecca) were respected Arab leaders whose voices were listened to and who became leaders of Iraq and Transjordan respectively.
David Kessler said: You seem to have conveniently forgotten that most of those who now call themselves Palestinian were NOT born there. They were born in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan!
MT Says: Really? What about those born in Gaza and the West Bank?
I said “most”.
MT Says: Is that the plan then Dave, when the last Palestinian chased off their land dies, then that will be Zionism perfected, their children don’t count? Anyway aren’t there UN resolutions regarding the rights of the refugees and their offspring? – David, I’m afraid you’ve been reduced to mere Zionist apologist rubbish, at least in the beginning some of it required a bit of thought to see through, not any more.
Once you get into the rights of children – or in this case grandchildren and great-grandchildren – we come down to the question of how far down the line rights can be carried. If you rule out the right of return even of those whose Jewishness you don’t appear to dispute (the Sephardim) then your premise is presumably that there is a cut off point for the right of return. So what is your ancestral cut-off point for the right of return?

David Kessler said: MT Says: Now you’re being disingenuous again. You are using the argument that the Palestinians didn’t have a government at the time of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to suggest that there was no Palestine,
David Kessler said: To suggest that there was no COUNTRY of Palestine. Palestine was part of the Turkish provence of Syria it was then governed by Britain under a League of Nations Mandate. At no stage was it a country. That may be an unpalatable fact to you, but it IS a fact.
MT Says: Poland has been wiped off the map, conquered, forgotten and absorbed, by Russia, Germany, Austria and Genghis Khan more times than the average Polish high school child cares to remember for history tests. That does not change the fact that there always was a Polish “nation” and those that identified with their Polishness. Same with Palestine,
The difference is that notwithstanding occupations and colonizations, Poland DID exist. Palestine did NOT. And the Palestinian national identity is such a recent innovation that even in the period of the British mandate it was vying for the hearts and minds of the Arabs in mandatory Palestine with the alternative (however unrealistic) or Pan-Arab nationalism.
Moreover if the test of a Nationality is psychological identification, then Zionism too can derive its legitimacy from the state of mind of the Zionists, regardless of their ethnicity or religious practice. Personally I believe that this is indeed the case and that both Palestinian Nationalism and Jewish Nationalism (Zionism) are legitimate for this reason. That is why I favour a two-state solution (the Jordanian option may have looked tempting between 1949 and 1973, but after that it ceased to be credible).
MT says: the temporary oddity of the Zionist experiment has undoubtedly changed that face and population of the future Palestine, but it will still come to exist. In your deluded Zionist mind the Palestinian people should under no circumstances be granted the right of self-government then, because they’ve never had it, is that what you’re saying? I you question my humanitarian credentials.
Although there is no historical basis for a State of Palestine, given that the people are there and cry out for some kind of a just solution, I concede that there should be a State of Palestine as well as – not instead of – the State of Israel.
MT Says: You are arrogant and transparent in the extreme.
Not really, although when pushed I do push back. But I am not indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinian Arabs.
MT Says: Do you believe that the Kurds deserve autonomy David, or just the Jewish ones?
I don’t honestly know how to solve the Kurdish problem. There are large Kurdish populations in five countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Armenia. Should they have autonomy or independence? Autonomy in all those countries? Or only in some. I honestly don’t know. It’s a case of “damned if I do and damned if I don’t.” The Kurdish problem is potentially more explosive than Israel-Palestine. I certainly feel that in the context of Iraq, an autonomous Kurdish region is the best way to get the balance between their legitimate desire for self-determination and concerns that others have about the break-up of the country. But I don’t pretend to have all the answers: it is a complex problem.
David Kessler said: MT writes:>> or are you doing a “Golda Meir” and saying there is no such thing as the Palestinian people; that was rich coming from a US citizen born in Russia, when writing off the inhabitants of a land not her own as being non-existent.
David Kessler said: Drawing analogues between me and Golda Meir and then atacking her, is an excusion into irrelevancy.
MT Says: Why Dave, we haven’t got to the bottom of your attitude toward the Palestinian nation yet and what you feel should be done with, or to them. What is you final solution? Golda alluded to hers quite clearly, you just hint at yours. Do you admire her for such a ridiculous claim David?
My words were different from hers. I spoke of the fact that there had never been a Palestinian country. Palestinian nationalism is legitimate in the same way that other MODERN national movements are legitimate. But it IS a modern nationalist movement and you cannot trump Zionism by claiming that Palestinianism is an ancient venerable movement. That is why my position is that Zionism and Palestinianism have to find a way to co-exist.
MT Says: So it was ok to try and turn the clock back 200-years only 60-years ago, but it’s not ok to turn back the clock 60-years today?
I assume you mean 2000 years. But MY position is that if Zionism depended on the 2000 year argument then it wouldn’t be a strong enough case. I have already explained my position on this point about normal human migrations to an area whose sovereignty was in a state of flux. I will not repeat the argument.
David Kessler said: MT says:>>I would stick to Zionist sources in support of this..-
“We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village.” –Moshe Dyan, March 19, 1969, speech at the Technion in Haifa, “Israel” quoted in Haaretz, April 4, 1969. (385 villages have been destroyed within pre-1967 Israel…)”
David Kessler said: Tel Aviv? Haifa? Eilat? Jerusalem?
MT Says: Oh I see, so now Moshe Dayan is one of your Zionist aberrations as well, the list gets longer.
I didn’t say it was an aberration on this occasion. But you seem to assuming that any declaration contra to interest made by a Zionist is automatically true and proof of your point. That is an absurd assumption. Where is your PROOF that all Jewish settlements were built on Arab land? Where is your research and scholarship on the subject? Quoting an over-the-top statement by Moshe Dayan is cunning but it isn’t proof? I would like to see some scholarship on your part on the subject, not picking out quotes.
David Kessler said: MT Says: I’m not sure what point you think you’ve scored with this, but I fail to see what it matters if the Palestinians called themselves Arabs. What a great pity it is that Zionists didn’t take such great delight in “showing off” Palestinian passports to their friends, as the Palestinian Jews did,
David Kessler said: The Palestinian Jews WERE Zionists.
MT Says: Prove it Dave, because the historical record says otherwise!
The ones who showed their Palestinian passports proudly were not only natives but also immigrants who arrived in the Mandate. Your very distinction between Palestinian Jews and Zionists is arbitrary.
MT Says: The pretext was RETURNING. If you are correct, which you obviously are not, surely the State of Israel wouldn’t have on its statute books “A LAW OF RETURN” it would have a “Law permitting anyone we think is on our side to immigrate to a country founded in a state of flux”
The Law has a clear definition of who may return, it is based on Jewish ancestry and the non-practice of other religions. It is a complex solution to a complex issue. A Jew could be persecuted even if he wasn’t a practicing Jew. It would have been wrong to exclude such Jews from the protection that the Law of Return offered. As for the presence of non-Jewish Russians, I do not know if they masqueraded as Jews or took advantage of bureaucratic chaos to get into a prosperous country, but such a recent event hardly invalidates the legitimacy of the approach that the Zionists took to a complex issue.
MT Says: If there is inter-marriage and an introduction of a large number of male and female converts, where does the “right to the land, by birth” come into it, or have you totally dropped the pretense that being Jewish gave Zionism its moral imperative?
Judaism does allow conversion. And if intermarriage vitiates a claim, then does that mean that Palestinians who marry non-Palestinians weaken their claim – or that of their children or grandchildren?
MT Says: How much land, David, please be precise as I really would like to expose you for the mendacious fool you are?
I will check it out. But how about YOU tell us how much Arab-OWNED land the Zionists “stole”! When I say owned, I mean land that was registered with the Land registry office, not government land that they were using without permission. And please be precise!
David Kessler said: Thirdly, Arabs tended to flock to the area where Jews were gathering (and investing) because of the increased work opportunities in those areas.
David Kessler said: MT Says: I find this piece of deception beneath contempt and not worthy of a response, however this will leave an opening for more deception so I quote “With the Arabs we shall not achieve our aim of being an independent people in this country. The only solution is Eretz-Israel, at least the west part of Eretz-Israel, without Arabs… And there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries. Transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should remain…” –Joseph Weitz, entry in his diary for 1940 (Quoted in his article: “A solution to the Refugee Problem: An Israeli State with a small Arab Minority”, published in Davar, 29 September, 1967.
David Kessler said: So? One man expresses an obnoxious opinion (in 1940 long after the Arabs have flocked to those areas) and on the strength of this you pretend that Arabs did not flock to Jewish areas in search of work? That’s quite a leap of imagination on your part.
MT Says: Oh dear, not another Zionist aberration. Will the list never end? Give me a clue David, how many Jewish sources must I introduce to refute every point you make, until you realise that maybe it is you, Mr Kessler who is the aberration, a man so bent on Zionist apology that you have forsaken all decency.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that you have refuted the point. In fact, your response is a complete non sequitur to my point. Please tell me how Weitz’s opinion refutes the fact that Arabs took up residence in Jewish areas and sought (and obtained) employment there. There is nothing in the Weitz quote (from 1940) that in any way contradicts my point. All the quote shows is that that particular man didn’t like the situation. Moreover, the Arabs had been flocking to Jewish areas long before 1940 when the Weitz quote appeared in his diary. By all means quote Jewish sources – but try to make the quotes relevant to the point that you are trying to refute.

David Kessler said: MT Says: You are right; there is such a thing as natural movement of populations. Zionism however is not an example of it. What happened in Palestine was colonization and then conquest.
David Kessler said: Arriving, buying land, draining swamps, building universities, building cities – all this is colonization and conquest?
MT Says: Personally I think there were a lot of well intentioned parts of early Zionism. But Jabotinsky, Begin and Stern, Ben Gurion quickly altered all of the to be followed by Dayan, Sharon and Netanyahu.
Throwing in Ben Gurion with Jabotinsky, Begin and Stern is like throwing in Bill Clinton with George Bush (snr) George W Bush and Ronald Reagan. Even comparing Dayan with Sharon and Netanyahu is misleading.
David Kessler said: May I remind you that colonization means ruling one land from a power base located in another. For example, India was a British colony run from a colonial country called Britain, located in Europe. Algeria was a French colony ruled from a colonial country called France, located in Europe. Now according to you Palestine was or became a Zionist colony, so presumably it was run by a colonial country called… called… called (please fill in the blank Mr Tarzai) and that colonial country was located in… (please fill in the blank Mr Tarzai). If you cannot fill in the blanks then please drop this spurious allegation of Zionist colonialism!
MT Says: Oh that’s right Dave, it was just a natural result of movement of people. Jonathan Friedland from the Guardian was being interviewed on the BBC a few months ago and said that the colonization of Israel should be seen in the same context as the colonization of Australia or Argentina. Perhaps you can add him to your list of Zionist aberrations. As mentioned above when you give me the number of Jewish sources needed to expose the mendacity of each of your points I will happily oblige.
Again I don’t see that quoting a Jew to bolster your opinion automatically makes you right. You seem to assume that all you have to do to “prove” your point is quote a Jew when he says something you happen to agree with and then crow that you have “refuted” my point when in fact you have done no such thing. But in this case, there is no argument from me. I agree with you and Friedland: I think it is a fair and reasonable analogy. If you use the word colonial not in the British/India or French/Algeria sense but rather to mean people cutting their ties with the country of their birth and creating a new country somewhere else, then I accept the analogy. So tell me Michael, do you now wish to abolish Australia?
MT Says: Normally, when immigration happens in a country that is being established people are invited by the government, as in the case of the USA. What we have here as disgruntled Europeans who see an opportunity to flee the lands of their birth and move to another country, but not with the intention of mingling with the local population, but with the specific intention of dispossessing that people of their land using some absurd religious pretext. Jabotininsky’s book “Iron Wall” puts it clearly in perspective, brutal colonization. You can call it what you want Dave
The “disgruntled Europeans” didn’t flee to a “country”, they fled to a Turkish colony. If the Palestinians had a government then your analogy might have applied. But they didn’t. When Zionism started it was a Turkish colony. Then it was under British administration. When a government WAS formed it was the Israeli government (with the other areas being conquered by Jordan and Egypt).
Also in the American example, who invited the people to FORM the government? The original immigrants weren’t invited!
Jabotinsky may have had brutal aspirations – he wanted the West Bank and Transjordan – but the mainstream Zionist movement had much more modest aims. The Jewish Agency agreed to the UN partition plan of the part of Mandatory Palestine that remained after the cession of Transjordan.
MT Says: Really, a native born in Palestine wasn’t a Palestinian? What was he then?
A Palestinian was a person permanently resident in Palestine, native or otherwise. Like being British doesn’t necessarily mean native.
David Kessler said: If the Arabs had accepted the UN partition plan and not invaded the newly born state of Israel (before the British had even withdrawn) then they could have had an Arab state alongside a predominantly Jewish state.
MT Says: The UN Security Council didn’t even accept it, why should the Palestinians?
Why should the Security Council have a veto over the decision of the full membership in the General Assembly? That’s like saying that the cabinet should have a veto over parliament?
MT Says:Do we need to expose the unfair nature of the partition plan? Let’s assume the Arabs had accepted it, what would have become of the Arabs within Israel, (assuming the terrorist attacks hadn’t caused 750 000 to leave),
The Arab refugees (those who fled both from the designated areas of Israel and the areas that Israel captured by way of defensive response to the Arab aggression) were some 550,000 in number. Had it not been for the Arab aggression, the Palestinian Arabs might have become a gradual majority in Israel or they might have been outnumbered by Sephardi Jewish immigrants from Arab countries.
But what about the tiny Jewish minority in the areas that were designated to be part of the Arab state, and especially those in the areas that fell to Jordan and Egypt. Not one of these was permitted to remain alive in those areas. If the Arabs were not ready to tolerate even a tiny minority that was no threat to them, then how would they have behaved towards a Jewish minority? I notice your reluctance to confront questions such as this and I can well understand why.
In contrast some 200,000 Arabs remained in Israel where they were given voting rights (including the women!) and citizenship. They were able to form political parties and sit in the Israeli parliament. Did they have similar rights in the Arab world? Oh yes, I know, they were denied these rights for decades by their own brethren because of the legacy of colonialism!
MT Says: Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionism is Zionism today which in turn is Israeli State policy.
Since 1977 yes, but that was because Arab intransigence and aggression let the genie out of the bottle. To use your interesting phrase it is the Arabs who have “created the monster” and now they are complaining about the consequences.
MT says: You trying to tell me that Zionist thinking toady and right the way through your short history from Moshe Sharrett to Olmert hasn’t been shaped by “Iron Wall” mentality? Please, you’ve even got a concrete one as well now. That ghetto mentality is so hard to shift isn’t it?
The concrete wall is to keep out terrorists. I make no apology for it. I know the terrorists don’t like it, but making them happy was never its purpose, or mine.
David Kessler said: We see the persecution of the 130,000 Jews of Iraq and a similar number in the Yemen. We see the pesecution of 150,000 Algerian Jews, 48,000 Syrian Jews. All of these fled from aoppression and found refuge in Israel. Let us talk about the oppression that drove them to flight. And let’s not pretend that its the fault of Zionism. Oppression is oppression.
MT Says: The plight of the Iraqi Jews certainly was the fault of Zionism. I’ll check up on the rest.
Once again you use the old excuse. The oppression of the Jews of Iraq was the fault of the people who oppressed them. You hold Israel responsible for its actions, please be consistent. Otherwise I might get the impression that you hold one set of standards for Jews and another for their oppressors.
MT Says: UN Security Council states Partition Plan is unenforceable aside from it being immoral.
The UN General thought otherwise. And when did the Security Council say it was unenforceable and immoral? Did the USA and USSR agree? They both recognized Israel as soon as the state was established.
MT Says: God you’re arrogant, why can’t you just envisage living peacefully amongst the other inhabitants of the land.
Like the Jews of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Libya? Like the Black Christians of Sudan? Like the Kurds of Iraq and Iran?
MT Says: We’ve already established that the early Zionist Ashkenazi’s aren’t really Jews anyway,
I think we’ve agreed to differ on this point.
MT says: so dropping the pretence of the religion would have been logical.
Does that mean that religious Ashkenazim should practice the religion?
MT Says: You mention that Zionist settlement was just natural immigration, where else did a situation arise where an immigrant population usurped the land, resources and infrastructure of the indigenous people? Think carefully about your answer, because otherwise you could be staring at colonialism in the face.
As I’ve conceded, if you use “colonialism” in the Australian sense, then I accept it as an approximate analogy. Of course, it is not exact because initially Australia was a British colony. But it is a reasonably close analogy and we may use it as a convenient shorthand for defining one of the few areas where our views seem to be converging. But the Zionists came as builders. They built much of the infrastructure that you claim they usurped. Only when it came to a struggle for survival against Arab invaders, did the Zionists go on the offensive – to meet an enemy that was coming towards them with murderous intentions.
David Kessler said: Your quotes of Jabotinsky are meaningless, because his view was the minority view. That’s why the political parties based on his views were always minority parties and in opposition until 1977 (even then they had to form a coalition to hold power).
MT Says: Yes Dave I know, “the lone nut theory”. Interestingly, your friend Simone calls Vlad Jabotinsky “a man of vision”. You apologists should get your story straight. What a shame for the Arabs that his “vision” was so menacing.
The fact is you are trying to elevate Jabotinsky to something he wasn’t. He was the voice of the opposition not the establishment. His view was not that of Haim Weizman or Ben Gurion. The political parties that were influenced by his legacy remained in opposition until 1977. You can quote him till the cows come home. It would be like me quoting Haj Amin al Husseini to prove that all Palestinians were Nazis.
David Kessler said: The reality is we can’t go back at all. We have to go forward. And destroying an established state is not an option.
MT Says: I agree, so stop killing Arabs, stealing more land, water and resources and settle with the Palestinians. Don’t forget the refugees!
Fair enough, I’m in favour of giving back all the 67 acquisitions (except Jerusalem) and even some of the pre-67 territory. Barak actually offered to give Arafat a couple of Arab villages in the pre-67 boundaries but the Arabs themselves objected (quite rightly!) because they preferred to be part of the horrible oppressive Zionist state than the nice compassionate Palestinian one. In other words they preferred living under the Zionists to living under the tender mercies of their own brethren. But then again perhaps I’m not allowed to mention that because it might imply that politically the Arabs are savages.

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]]> By: Beware the Zionists http://www.boris-johnson.com/2006/10/12/iran/comment-page-6/#comment-14336 Beware the Zionists Wed, 01 Nov 2006 06:59:14 +0000 http://80.82.117.242/?p=300#comment-14336 Ehud Olmert's political party, Kadima, currently leading the murderous charge in Lebanon, was forged out of Likud, and Likud out of Herut, the political party of Zeev Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism, a movement at odds with socialist Zionism and taking its cues from Benito Mussolini and fascism. In 1940, Avraham Stern, inspired by Jabotinsky, formed Irgun Zvai Leumi be-Yisrael, or simply Lehi, a terrorist group dedicated to killing not only officials and soldiers of British colonialism in Palestine, but anybody, regardless of race or religion (including Jews), who stood in the way of realizing a "homeland in the Land of Israel within the borders delineated in the Bible," as Stern declared in his 18 Principles of Rebirth (see David Ohana's Zarathustra in Jerusalem: Nietzsche and the "New Hebrews"). Stern and Lehi, also called the Stern Gang, attempted to team up with the Nazis during the Second World War, declaring a "common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO (Lehi)." .....continued at //vancouverdotindymediaDOTorg/?q=node/2029) Ehud Olmert’s political party, Kadima, currently leading the murderous charge in Lebanon, was forged out of Likud, and Likud out of Herut, the political party of Zeev Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionism, a movement at odds with socialist Zionism and taking its cues from Benito Mussolini and fascism.

In 1940, Avraham Stern, inspired by Jabotinsky, formed Irgun Zvai Leumi be-Yisrael, or simply Lehi, a terrorist group dedicated to killing not only officials and soldiers of British colonialism in Palestine, but anybody, regardless of race or religion (including Jews), who stood in the way of realizing a “homeland in the Land of Israel within the borders delineated in the Bible,” as Stern declared in his 18 Principles of Rebirth (see David Ohana’s Zarathustra in Jerusalem: Nietzsche and the “New Hebrews”). Stern and Lehi, also called the Stern Gang, attempted to team up with the Nazis during the Second World War, declaring a “common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO (Lehi).”

…..continued at //vancouverdotindymediaDOTorg/?q=node/2029)

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]]> By: Michael Tarzai http://www.boris-johnson.com/2006/10/12/iran/comment-page-6/#comment-14335 Michael Tarzai Tue, 31 Oct 2006 17:11:58 +0000 http://80.82.117.242/?p=300#comment-14335 Simone said: October 28, 2006 4:13 PM | permalink Michael Tarzai said: "Only a fool (an immoral political Zionist as maybe a lapsed Catholic) would believe that to be fair, just or right." I replied:Are you now trying to imply that Catholics are immoral? Or only lapsed Catholics? Michale replies: This is typical of the obfuscation that Zionist apologists indulge in. He further says: To answer your question: -I consider all immoral Catholics to be immoral, be they lapsed or not, there is no degree of lapsation in my book, so no matter how little or how far the lapsee, or not, as may be the case, has lapsed, or not, does not in my view, excuse immoral behaviour from either. I hope this clears the matter up for you. Michael Tarzai Says: You don't do irony very well do you Simone? I see you claim to be a barrister; I am relieved that my liberty will never be determined by your expertise, skill and sharp-mindedness. Simone said: In his next post, Michael said, (in reply to David Kessler's question as to the significance of the year 1900): MT Said: Apologies, I thought that was obvious, i was choosing a point in time that just pre-dated the beginning of Zionist colonization of Palestine, or there abouts. Sorry i thought it was obvious my mistake. Sime-baby said: I presume you are talking about modern Zionist colonization, or rather, "The Return to Zion." Well, Moroccan Jews starting resettling in Jaffa as early as 1838, although a census carried out by Montefiore in 1939 showed that there were also Jews there from Turkey, Egypt, Smyrna, Bulgaria, and the Yemen. But of course, you mean the Ashkenazim, don't you? Well, by 1843, there were 50 Ashkenazi families in Tiberias, so we could say that what you would no doubt term "the colonization" was well underway quite a while before the year 1900. Incidentally, a leading figure in the renewal of Jewish life in the Land of Israel was Joel Moses Salomon, born in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1838. Michael Tarzai says: I acknowledge fully that throughout the last few hundred years, prior to the Zionist colonization and destruction of the Palestine people's birthright, religious Jews had been coming to the land of Palestine, which they saw as a spiritual home, and I acknowledge that they came in peace. Michael Tarzai says: However, this is a far cry from the virulent, racist policy of Zionism that had absolutely nothing to do with spiritual Judaism whatsoever but merely sought to colonize Palestine whilst hiding behind the moral cloak of Judaism, with disenfranchised Eastern European agitators and revolutionaries who have failed to usurp power in their own homelands and now found themselves targets for recrimination in those homelands. It is acknowledged that Zionism was the brainchild of Theodor Hertzl and whatever Zionism was supposed to be, it took no account of the indigenous population and their rights. The hideous form of Zionism we have seen visited on the Land of Palestine needs to be brought to a swift end. Michael Tarzai Says: Why do you people try to make it appear that Zionism is some glorious enterprise that could bring a new dawn of civilization if it wasn't for the intransigence of Arabs. Zionism is an exclusive, evil and mean-spirited doctrine that brings shame on Israel and all Jews that blindly support it "right or wrong". Fortunately not all Jews are Zionists. Real Jews reject it out of hand. Simone Said: Towards the end of the 10th century CE, Michael, from 962 CE onwards. As I think I have mentioned in an earlier post, this was a gradual process, but you did ask for an approximate date only. Michael Tarzai Says: I'm getting a different picture - ""One of the Jews undertook the conversion of the Khazars, who are composed of many peoples, and they were converted by him and joined his religion. This happened recently in the days of the Abbasids.... For this was a man who came single-handedly to a king of great rank and to a very spirited people, and they were converted by him without any recourse to violence and the sword. And they took upon themselves the difficult obligations enjoined by the law of the Torah, such as circumcision, the ritual ablutions, washing after a discharge of the semen, the prohibition of work on the Sabbath and during the feasts, the prohibition of eating the flesh of forbidden animals according to this religion, and so on." - Abd al-Jabbar ibn Muhammad al-Hamdani, in his early 11th century work The Establishment of Proofs for the Prophethood of Our Master Muhammad" "The king and his vizier travelled to the deserted mountains on the seashore, and arrived one night at the cave in which some Jews used to celebrate the Sabbath. They disclosed their identity to them, embraced their religion, were circumcized in the cave, and then returned to their country, eager to learn the Jewish law. They kept their conversion secret, however, until they found an opportunity of disclosing the fact gradually to a few of their special friends. When the number had increased, they made the affair public, and induced the rest of the Khazars to embrace the Jewish faith. They sent to various countries for scholars and books, and studied the Torah. Their chronicles also tell of their prosperity, how they beat their foes, conquered their lands, secured great treasures, how their army swelled to hundreds of thousands, how they loved their faith, and fostered such love for the Holy House that they erected a tabernacle in the shape of that built by Moses. They also honored and cherished the Israelites who lived among them." - The Kuzari: The Book of Proof and Argument in Defense of the Despised Faith, a philosophical work composed in the 12th century by the Sephardic writer Yehuda HaLevi Sime-baby said: Now, I could continue debating this with you ad nauseam, but as I am going on holiday, I must pack. Goodbye - or should I say au revoir? Michael Tarzai Says: Shalom sweetheart Simone said:
October 28, 2006 4:13 PM | permalink
Michael Tarzai said:
“Only a fool (an immoral political Zionist as maybe a lapsed Catholic) would believe that to be fair, just or right.”

I replied:Are you now trying to imply that Catholics are immoral? Or only lapsed Catholics?

Michale replies: This is typical of the obfuscation that Zionist apologists indulge in.

He further says:

To answer your question: -I consider all immoral Catholics to be immoral, be they lapsed or not, there is no degree of lapsation in my book, so no matter how little or how far the lapsee, or not, as may be the case, has lapsed, or not, does not in my view, excuse immoral behaviour from either. I hope this clears the matter up for you.

Michael Tarzai Says: You don’t do irony very well do you Simone? I see you claim to be a barrister; I am relieved that my liberty will never be determined by your expertise, skill and sharp-mindedness.

Simone said: In his next post, Michael said, (in reply to David Kessler’s question as to the significance of the year 1900):

MT Said: Apologies, I thought that was obvious, i was choosing a point in time that just pre-dated the beginning of Zionist colonization of Palestine, or there abouts. Sorry i thought it was obvious my mistake.

Sime-baby said: I presume you are talking about modern Zionist colonization, or rather, “The Return to Zion.” Well, Moroccan Jews starting resettling in Jaffa as early as 1838, although a census carried out by Montefiore in 1939 showed that there were also Jews there from Turkey, Egypt, Smyrna, Bulgaria, and the Yemen. But of course, you mean the Ashkenazim, don’t you? Well, by 1843, there were 50 Ashkenazi families in Tiberias, so we could say that what you would no doubt term “the colonization” was well underway quite a while before the year 1900. Incidentally, a leading figure in the renewal of Jewish life in the Land of Israel was Joel Moses Salomon, born in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1838.

Michael Tarzai says: I acknowledge fully that throughout the last few hundred years, prior to the Zionist colonization and destruction of the Palestine people’s birthright, religious Jews had been coming to the land of Palestine, which they saw as a spiritual home, and I acknowledge that they came in peace.

Michael Tarzai says: However, this is a far cry from the virulent, racist policy of Zionism that had absolutely nothing to do with spiritual Judaism whatsoever but merely sought to colonize Palestine whilst hiding behind the moral cloak of Judaism, with disenfranchised Eastern European agitators and revolutionaries who have failed to usurp power in their own homelands and now found themselves targets for recrimination in those homelands. It is acknowledged that Zionism was the brainchild of Theodor Hertzl and whatever Zionism was supposed to be, it took no account of the indigenous population and their rights. The hideous form of Zionism we have seen visited on the Land of Palestine needs to be brought to a swift end.

Michael Tarzai Says: Why do you people try to make it appear that Zionism is some glorious enterprise that could bring a new dawn of civilization if it wasn’t for the intransigence of Arabs. Zionism is an exclusive, evil and mean-spirited doctrine that brings shame on Israel and all Jews that blindly support it “right or wrong”. Fortunately not all Jews are Zionists. Real Jews reject it out of hand.

Simone Said: Towards the end of the 10th century CE, Michael, from 962 CE onwards.

As I think I have mentioned in an earlier post, this was a gradual process, but you did ask for an approximate date only.

Michael Tarzai Says: I’m getting a different picture – “”One of the Jews undertook the conversion of the Khazars, who are composed of many peoples, and they were converted by him and joined his religion. This happened recently in the days of the Abbasids…. For this was a man who came single-handedly to a king of great rank and to a very spirited people, and they were converted by him without any recourse to violence and the sword. And they took upon themselves the difficult obligations enjoined by the law of the Torah, such as circumcision, the ritual ablutions, washing after a discharge of the semen, the prohibition of work on the Sabbath and during the feasts, the prohibition of eating the flesh of forbidden animals according to this religion, and so on.” – Abd al-Jabbar ibn Muhammad al-Hamdani, in his early 11th century work The Establishment of Proofs for the Prophethood of Our Master Muhammad”

“The king and his vizier travelled to the deserted mountains on the seashore, and arrived one night at the cave in which some Jews used to celebrate the Sabbath. They disclosed their identity to them, embraced their religion, were circumcized in the cave, and then returned to their country, eager to learn the Jewish law. They kept their conversion secret, however, until they found an opportunity of disclosing the fact gradually to a few of their special friends. When the number had increased, they made the affair public, and induced the rest of the Khazars to embrace the Jewish faith. They sent to various countries for scholars and books, and studied the Torah. Their chronicles also tell of their prosperity, how they beat their foes, conquered their lands, secured great treasures, how their army swelled to hundreds of thousands, how they loved their faith, and fostered such love for the Holy House that they erected a tabernacle in the shape of that built by Moses. They also honored and cherished the Israelites who lived among them.” – The Kuzari: The Book of Proof and Argument in Defense of the Despised Faith, a philosophical work composed in the 12th century by the Sephardic writer Yehuda HaLevi

Sime-baby said: Now, I could continue debating this with you ad nauseam, but as I am going on holiday, I must pack.
Goodbye – or should I say au revoir?

Michael Tarzai Says: Shalom sweetheart

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]]> By: Gregory Maxwell http://www.boris-johnson.com/2006/10/12/iran/comment-page-6/#comment-14334 Gregory Maxwell Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:10:48 +0000 http://80.82.117.242/?p=300#comment-14334 I've read this debate with interest and, from what I can gather, anyone who disagrees with Israeli government policy is either: If Jewish, 'a self hating Jew' or an isolated aberration; If not Jewish, an anti-Semite. Thank gentlemen for your generous insight into the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. I shall be reading about these matters with interest in the future. I’ve read this debate with interest and, from what I can gather, anyone who disagrees with Israeli government policy is either:

If Jewish, ‘a self hating Jew’ or an isolated aberration;
If not Jewish, an anti-Semite.

Thank gentlemen for your generous insight into the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. I shall be reading about these matters with interest in the future.

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]]> By: Michael Tarzai http://www.boris-johnson.com/2006/10/12/iran/comment-page-6/#comment-14333 Michael Tarzai Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:48:09 +0000 http://80.82.117.242/?p=300#comment-14333 David Kessler: I never advocated ethnic cleansing. I simply pointed out that because of the long-standing Jewish majority in Jerusalem, the case for Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem is similarly strong. Of course the non-Jewish minority are welcome to stay there. Once again you are dishonestly putting words into my mouth. MT Says: Your indignation is laughable.You state "long-standing Jewish majority in Jerusalem" - Long standing indeed! The census proves otherwise, but what you meant was that non-Jews could be split into smaller groupings thereby making Jews the largest group. Bye Bye Dave! David Kessler: I never advocated ethnic cleansing. I simply pointed out that because of the long-standing Jewish majority in Jerusalem, the case for Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem is similarly strong. Of course the non-Jewish minority are welcome to stay there. Once again you are dishonestly putting words into my mouth.

MT Says: Your indignation is laughable.You state “long-standing Jewish majority in Jerusalem” – Long standing indeed! The census proves otherwise, but what you meant was that non-Jews could be split into smaller groupings thereby making Jews the largest group.

Bye Bye Dave!

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]]> By: Michael Tarzai http://www.boris-johnson.com/2006/10/12/iran/comment-page-6/#comment-14332 Michael Tarzai Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:34:08 +0000 http://80.82.117.242/?p=300#comment-14332 David Kessler said: MT Says: Now your turn, tell me what rights you feel the Palestinians had in 1900, what should be the rights of the dislaced Palestinian refugees in their historical land (indeed to houses, settlements, villages and towns that still exist, but which have had Israeli squatters in them since 1948. A previous poster mentioned the illegality of building settlements in occupied territory and whilst you tap dance around the matter of who the West Bank belongs to, it is clear that it does not belong to Israel. David Kessler said: Personally I agree. I never supported settlement in the West Bank, which started in earnest in 1974 when the Jordanians accepted the Rabat Summit Conference decision that the PLO are the "sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian People." MT Says: You forgot to address my question relating to Palestinian rights at the dawn of the Zionist programme and to their property that has been stolen and for which they have received no compensation. And I am not referring to any property purchased legally. I acknowledge your stance on the illegal settlements in the West Bank, and would ask if you are prepared to add your voice to the growing number of people calling for sanctions on the State of Israel, unless a positive programme of complete withdrawal has been undertaken in the West Bank? David Kessler said: OTOH I believe that the Jews have a right to the whole of Jerusalem, as they have been an absolute majority there since 1872. MT Says: Isn't this the same logic that Hitler used with annexing the Sudetenland, in Czechoslovakia, I believe the logic was something along the lines of an ethnic minority of German speakers were the majority in certain parts of the country. Next point deleted as neither party appears to be getting anywhere. David Kessler said: MT Says: I assume that the last comment about faster birth rates of Israeli Arabs (Palestinians) and falling immigration being a concern, doesn't do a lot to counter the progressively compelling argument I have seen on this board in support of the claim that Israel is a racist state or an Apartheid(like) state. David Kessler said: First of all Israeli Arabs are not to be confused with Palestinians. You don't have to take my word for it, just ask them! Secondly, concern about the changing (argument incomplete I presume) MT Said: >>If, as you have stated David, one doesn't need to be a religious Jew to have an affinity with Israel, indeed as with the case of the Ethiopians, one needn't be the same race as the majority Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jews and we've established that there is little from a tribal perspective that links the 2 groups of European Jews, then what exactly is Zionism now? David Kessler said: Zionism holds that there should be a national homeland for those who identify themselves as Jews whether religiously or culturally. The legal test for qualifying under the law of return is having one Jewish grandparent or being a convert to Judaism. (There is some internal dispute as to what constitutes conversion. I believe that they currently recognize Orthodox and Conservative Synagogue conversions but not reform. I may be wrong on this point. I haven't kept up to date with it.) But now that Israel is an established state, it is entitled like any other sovereign state to set its own immigration policy, just as Britain sets its immigration policy (subject to the busybody intereference of the EU). MT Says: What is clear from the ever-changing way in one qualifies as a Jew, first it's only through your mother, now it's your Grandad, and more recently if you just manage to say shalom, if you happen to be a Russian thug whose talents for violence will be invaluable in propping up the occupation of the Palestinian Territories. - I am paraphrasing Richard Ben Cramer in his book "How Israel Lost". Incidentally you forgot to mention that Zionist also sets out to be an exclusively Jewish State, whose problem is the Arabs who didn't run away and what to do about the millions of Arabs in the West Bank that they so desperately want to annex. They should go ahead and do it, it should be fun seeing the Jews in Etertz Yisrael being the minority. What will they do then, drop the façade and become a fully-fledged Apartheid State? David Kessler said: MT Writes:>>As the Jewish Agency have confirmed the majority of recent Russian émigré Jews are not Jews, David Kessler said: Ethnically? Religiously? Culturally? MT Says: All of the above it would appear David. So how do you account for this and do you believe they should be deported or forced to convert? I could direct you to a website recently set up that looks at the growing scourge of anti-semitism in Israel. One of these Russian boys serving in the army got lifted by the Police who discovered a Swastika on his arm. Apparently him and his buddies (all of whom got the Kosher stamp) had started a Hilter Youth movement of their own, in Israel. David Kessler said: >> then it appears that anyone can come as long as they are not Arabs! A bit of an exaggeration. Did these immigrants present themselves as non-Jews when they applied to immigrate to Israel? At any rate, Israel is a sovereign state and may allow in who it pleases. It is not for you or I to tell them who they may and may not allow in to their own country. MT Says: It would appear non-Jews and even Russian-Nazis are ok, just not the Arabs that were chased off their own land. May I ask why it is you think the government of the State of Israel is so bent on denying the Palestinians anything, they'll even go so far as to prostitute the very Jewishness of the State as long as they don't have to give anything viable to the Palestinians. MT Says: I concede that the Jewishness of the State has been a subterfuge all along, because as you and I both know, Zionism and Judasim are really mutually exclusive, the Torah refutes the right of Israel to exist as a man-made political entity, so "Jew" was a badge of convenience for those Ashkenazi revolutionaries. I acknowledge attitudes amongst Jewry softened towards Zionism after the holocaust. But now, when the whole world is in need of peace in the Middle East, why don't you stop the deception? Mt Says: I do not accept your spurious argument about Arabs being blood-thirsty savages which you bring up repeatedly later in this post. Let me remind you that you raised the matter of the communication between Zionists and King Faisal in which the King said, "We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our delegation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday to the Zionist organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper." MT Says: I concede that you "Jews" (let's call them what they are and drop the Jewish pretence right now, they're Israelis) need to do a lot of apologising now, but your assessment of Arabs and Arabs countries is unfair. MT Says: Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire the Arab peoples and their lands have been carved up by Colonialists and neo-colonialists; maps and territories decided by others rather than Arabs, communities have been thrown together or split against their logical ethnic, social or religious lines, i.e. Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon. These colonialists have looked upon the Arabs as backward and treated them with contempt. US, British and Zionist interests (amongst others) have overthrown governments, crushed popular movements, assassinated those they didn't feel were sufficiently "sympathetic to their respective causes", propped up oppressive and brutal dictatorships as their needs dictated. And now these colonizers have created the monster of militant and fanatical Islam. I'm afraid David that labelling Arab morality in this environment is like judging Irish morality in the context of "The Troubles". David Kessler said: MT Says: >>please tell me how an Ethiopian tribesman (let's use the eyeball test and not go the DNA route) a white Russian, a Khazari descendent (with possibly a little semitic ancestry) or a Sephardim (with a lot more semitic blood) can all have a better claim to live in Palestine than a Palestinian born there, who is probably 100% semitic? David Kessler said: You seem to have conveniently forgotten that most of those who now call themselves Palestinian were NOT born there. They were born in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan! MT Says: Really? What about those born in Gaza and the West Bank? Is that the plan then Dave, when the last Palestinian chased off their land dies, then that will be Zionism perfected, their children don't count? Anyway aren't there UN resolutions regarding the rights of the refugees and their offspring? - David, I'm afraid you've been reduced to mere Zionist apologist rubbish, at least in the beginning some of it required a bit of thought to see through, not any more. David Kessler said: MT Says: Now you're being disingenuous again. You are using the argument that the Palestinians didn't have a government at the time of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to suggest that there was no Palestine, David Kessler said: To suggest that there was no COUNTRY of Palestine. Palestine was part of the Turkish provence of Syria it was then governed by Britain under a League of Nations Mandate. At no stage was it a country. That may be an unpalatable fact to you, but it IS a fact. MT Says: Poland has been wiped off the map, conquered, forgotten and absorbed, by Russia, Germany, Austria and Genghis Khan more times than the average Polish high school child cares to remember for history tests. That does not change the fact that there always was a Polish "nation" and those that identified with their Polishness. Same with Palestine, the temporary oddity of the Zionist experiment has undoubtedly changed that face and population of the future Palestine, but it will still come to exist. In your deluded Zionist mind the Palestinian people should under no circumstances be granted the right of self-government then, because they've never had it, is that what you're saying? I you question my humanitarian credentials. You are arrogant and transparent in the extreme. Do you believe that the Kurds deserve autonomy David, or just the Jewish ones? David Kessler said: MT writes:>> or are you doing a "Golda Meir" and saying there is no such thing as the Palestinian people; that was rich coming from a US citizen born in Russia, when writing off the inhabitants of a land not her own as being non-existent. David Kessler said: Drawing analogues between me and Golda Meir and then atacking her, is an excusion into irrelevancy. MT Says: Why Dave, we haven't got to the bottom of your attitude toward the Palestinian nation yet and what you feel should be done with, or to them. What is you final solution? Golda alluded to hers quite clearly, you just hint at yours. Do you admire her for such a ridiculous claim David? David Kessler said: MT Says: If the Palestinian nation wish to call themselves Arabs, Palestinians or whatever isn't relevant; what is relevant is that they were already on the land. David Kessler said: And before they were, others were. And now others are. You can't turn back the clock 60 years any more than you can turn it back 2000. More has changed in the world in the preceding 60 years than in the previous 2000. As Alvin Toffler has pointed out, even the rate of change is increasing. Israel is a sovereign state now. Palestine isn't and never was. It wasn't even an aspiration until AFTER Israel was established. MT Says: So it was ok to try and turn the clock back 200-years only 60-years ago, but it's not ok to turn back the clock 60-years today? More Zionist rubbish. In 1922, the League of Nations entrusted the Mandate for Palestine (CONSIDERED TO BE "CLASS A" OR CLOSEST TO INDEPENDENCE) to Britain. See, you're being mendacious again. Zionism was a racist misconception. We today, live in the post-Zionist era now David, so apologising and making amends is ok. The problem is we are daily confronted by people like you; people who appear on the surface to make sense, but after careful scrutiny are found to be incapable of lying straight in bed. David Kessler said: MT says:>>I would stick to Zionist sources in support of this..- "We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village." --Moshe Dyan, March 19, 1969, speech at the Technion in Haifa, "Israel" quoted in Haaretz, April 4, 1969. (385 villages have been destroyed within pre-1967 Israel...)" David Kessler said: Tel Aviv? Haifa? Eilat? Jerusalem? MT Says: Oh I see, so now Moshe Dayan is one of your Zionist aberrations as well, the list gets longer. I'm not going to waste time on a Sunday looking into the history of the four you mention (but I'm sure that as with everything else you say there will at best only be the allusion of truth), but does their introduction reduce the enormity of the admission Dayan was making? David Kessler said: MT Says: I'm not sure what point you think you've scored with this, but I fail to see what it matters if the Palestinians called themselves Arabs. What a great pity it is that Zionists didn't take such great delight in "showing off" Palestinian passports to their friends, as the Palestinian Jews did, David Kessler said: The Palestinian Jews WERE Zionists. MT Says: Prove it Dave, because the historical record says otherwise! David Kessler said: MT Says: David Kessler then goes on to make SEVEN points that propose to show the analogy is not precise, without EVER showing their relevance to the analogy, but I'll deal with them all the same. David Kessler said: The relevance is that the Jews did not return to a country, they came to a piece of land whose political status was in a state of flux and where there was room for many more people. MT Says: The pretext was RETURNING. If you are correct, which you obviously are not, surely the State of Israel wouldn't have on its statute books "A LAW OF RETURN" it would have a "Law permitting anyone we think is on our side to immigrate to a country founded in a state of flux" Maybe they called of the "Law of Return" because it was easier to remember! The interesting point is that the likes of Arik Sharon's mum was astounded to find the land of Israel was inhabited when these early Zionists arrived in Palestine. >>David Kessler said: Firstly the most that has been proven is a Khazar contribution to the Jewish gene pool - not a complete supplanting of it. David Kessler said: >>MT Says "my analogy CLEARLY says "(forsaking the possibility of inter-marriage changing my descendents racial profile). This was to dissuade you from introducing this fallacious argument. Sadly it failed. David Kessler said: Your argument failed because it was false. There has been a great deal of intermarriage in the history of the Jews and the presence of Khazar or any other genes in their gene pool doesn't mean that the Jews and the Khazars are one and the same. Nothing you have said has proven that the Ashkenazi Jews are the Khazars. Bearing in mind that those Khazars who converted to Judaism did so upon being persuaded to do so, it is quite likely that they WOULD have intermarried with those Jews who persuaded them! MT Says: If there is inter-marriage and an introduction of a large number of male and female converts, where does the "right to the land, by birth" come into it, or have you totally dropped the pretense that being Jewish gave Zionism its moral imperative? David Kessler said: Secondly, it is important to bear in mind that when the Zionists arrived in that sparesely populated corner of the decaying Ottoman empire, they tended to congregate in the more sparsely populated areas. (Tel Aviv, for example, was in 1903 a vacant hill outside the town of Jaffa.) They bought land at grossly inflated prices. Thus it was not a case of expropriation but one of purchasing and contributing to the land. David Kessler said: MT Says: Can I refer you back to the above quote from Moshe Dayan, who although I have absolutely no respect for, I will at least concede that on this point he is being honest. David Kessler said: The fact that Jews bought land is a matter of record. The Turks introduced a land reguistry law in 1858 and these purchases were recorded. Your selective quote of Moshe Dayan hardly refutes the records of the land registry! MT Says: How much land, David, please be precise as I really would like to expose you for the mendacious fool you are? David Kessler said: Thirdly, Arabs tended to flock to the area where Jews were gathering (and investing) because of the increased work opportunities in those areas. David Kessler said: MT Says: I find this piece of deception beneath contempt and not worthy of a response, however this will leave an opening for more deception so I quote "With the Arabs we shall not achieve our aim of being an independent people in this country. The only solution is Eretz-Israel, at least the west part of Eretz-Israel, without Arabs... And there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries. Transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should remain..." --Joseph Weitz, entry in his diary for 1940 (Quoted in his article: "A solution to the Refugee Problem: An Israeli State with a small Arab Minority", published in Davar, 29 September, 1967. David Kessler said: So? One man expresses an obnoxious opinion (in 1940 long after the Arabs have flocked to those areas) and on the strength of this you pretend that Arabs did not flock to Jewish areas in search of work? That's quite a leap of imagination on your part. MT Says: Oh dear, not another Zionist aberration. Will the list never end? Give me a clue David, how many Jewish sources must I introduce to refute every point you make, until you realise that maybe it is you, Mr Kessler who is the aberration, a man so bent on Zionist apology that you have forsaken all decency. David Kessler said: MT Says: You are right; there is such a thing as natural movement of populations. Zionism however is not an example of it. What happened in Palestine was colonization and then conquest. David Kessler said: Arriving, buying land, draining swamps, building universities, building cities - all this is colonization and conquest? MT Says: Personally I think there were a lot of well intentioned parts of early Zionism. But Jabotinsky, Begin and Stern, Ben Gurion quickly altered all of the to be followed by Dayan, Sharon and Netanyahu. David Kessler said: May I remind you that colonization means ruling one land from a power base located in another. For example, India was a British colony run from a colonial country called Britain, located in Europe. Algeria was a French colony ruled from a colonial country called France, located in Europe. Now according to you Palestine was or became a Zionist colony, so presumably it was run by a colonial country called... called... called (please fill in the blank Mr Tarzai) and that colonial country was located in... (please fill in the blank Mr Tarzai). If you cannot fill in the blanks then please drop this spurious allegation of Zionist colonialism! MT Says: Oh that's right Dave, it was just a natural result of movement of people. Jonathan Friedland from the Guardian was being interviewed on the BBC a few months ago and said that the colonization of Israel should be seen in the same context as the colonization of Australia or Argentina. Perhaps you can add him to your list of Zionist aberrations. As mentioned above when you give me the number of Jewish sources needed to expose the mendacity of each of your points I will happily oblige. David Kessler said: MT Says: The first part of David's Fifth Point seems reasonable until one considers that there were about 1 000 000 Palestinian Arabs and about 50 000 Palestinian Jews, who he claims wished to fulfill their "respective" (my emphasis) national ambitions". David Kessler said: But the number of Jews soon grew through a perfectly legitimate process known as immigration. MT Says: Normally, when immigration happens in a country that is being established people are invited by the government, as in the case of the USA. What we have here as disgruntled Europeans who see an opportunity to flee the lands of their birth and move to another country, but not with the intention of mingling with the local population, but with the specific intention of dispossessing that people of their land using some absurd religious pretext. Jabotininsky's book "Iron Wall" puts it clearly in perspective, brutal colonization. You can call it what you want Dave! David Kessler said: >> How misleading, there is no record of a Nationalist Jewish Palestinian movement at all. David himself mentioned how proud the Jews of Palestine were to show off their Palestinian passports. David Kessler said: Because in those days the word Palestinian did not mean Palestinian Arab or even native born to Palestine. Jewish immigrants to mandatory Palestine were also classed as Palestinians. MT Says: Really, a native born in Palestine wasn't a Palestinian? What was he then? David Kessler said: MT Says: regarding the balance of the Fifth Point: In 1919, King Faisal, then the only recognized Arab leader in the world, executed a treaty with Chaim Weizmann adopting the understanding of the Balfour Declaration. It outlined relations between Palestine and the Arab state, recognizing the former as a National Home for the Jews, in which they should quickly settle. He wrote, "We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our delegation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday to the Zionist organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper." - MT Says: The key elements here are "A National Home for the Jews" quite different to an exclusively Jewish State from which Arabs would be expelled. David Kessler said: If the Arabs had accepted the UN partition plan and not invaded the newly born state of Israel (before the British had even withdrawn) then they could have had an Arab state alongside a predominantly Jewish state. MT Says: The UN Security Council didn't even accept it, why should the Palestinians? Do we need to expose the unfair nature of the partition plan? Let's assume the Arabs had accepted it, what would have become of the Arabs within Israel, (assuming the terrorist attacks hadn't caused 750 000 to leave), you know those happy group of serfs that swarmed around the benign settlements and the ones that stayed in their hundreds of towns and villages in the borders of Israel? Would they have been "transferred" (Zionist code for ethnic cleansing) anyway, forced to convert, or killed? Clearly for a Jewish State to remain Jewish in nature you couldn't allow such a large percentage of the population to be non-Jews that would defeat the point. Much the same conundrum as in the West Bank eh, David? David Kessler said: >> The other key point is the term "moderate and proper", clearly the proposals submitted as mentioned, bore no resemblance to the acts carried out in the name of Revisionist Zionism of the kind Jabotinsky was about to unleash and to which I am sure Weizmann concurred. David Kessler said: Jabotinsky's movement was in a minority, as well you know. In subsequent Israel elections, the Jabotinsky influenced parties and coalitions (Herut, Gahal and Likud) were in a minority until 1977. In fact only by merging with other parties that were not Jabotinsky influenced, did Beigin eventually come to power. But this was long after the events that we are talking about. MT Says: Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism is Zionism today which in turn is Israeli State policy. Give the Arabs nothing, and kill them when necessary if they don't leave voluntarily. You trying to tell me that Zionist thinking toady and right the way through your short history from Moshe Sharrett to Olmert hasn't been shaped by "Iron Wall" mentality? Please, you've even got a concrete one as well now. That ghetto mentality is so hard to shift isn't it? David Kessler said: (NB I am aware that David Ben-Gurion served in the Turkish army, but this was an abberation and an exception.) MT Says: I see when looking through your posts that there are a number of these Zionist aberrations and exceptions coming to the surface. David Kessler said: IT is only because we are talking about Israel and not the behaviour of the Arabs that you are spared the need to confront their wrongs and evils. As long as Israel is the accused and the haters of Israel, the accuser that you have this advantage. The reality is that there is right and wrong on both sides. But by focussing on Israel and ignoring the wrongs on the Arab side, you project the false impression that Israel is the villain. Let's talk about the actions of the Arabs (something you have clevery glossed over) and a different picture emerges. David Kessler said: We see the persecution of the 130,000 Jews of Iraq and a similar number in the Yemen. We see the pesecution of 150,000 Algerian Jews, 48,000 Syrian Jews. All of these fled from aoppression and found refuge in Israel. Let us talk about the oppression that drove them to flight. And let's not pretend that its the fault of Zionism. Oppression is oppression. MT Says: The plight of the Iraqi Jews certainly was the fault of Zionism. I'll check up on the rest. David Kessler said: MT Says: I'm sure many Arabs would have agreed, and had it not been for Revisionist Zionist exclusionist greed, we probably wouldn't have the mess we have right now. David Kessler said: Then all the more reason why the Arabs should have accepted the UN Partition Plan. MT Says: UN Security Council states Partition Plan is unenforceable aside from it being immoral. God you're arrogant, why can't you just envisage living peacefully amongst the other inhabitants of the land. We've already established that the early Zionist Ashkenazi's aren't really Jews anyway, so dropping the pretence of the religion would have been logical. You mention that Zionist settlement was just natural immigration, where else did a situation arise where an immigrant population usurped the land, resources and infrastructure of the indigenous people? Think carefully about your answer, because otherwise you could be staring at colonialism in the face. David Kessler said: The displacement of Palestinians - although certainly real - was not the inevitable consequence of Zionism. It was the consequence of Arab intransigence in the face of a Jewish minority in the Middle East who were not prepared to accept the status of "protected minority" in a Pan-Arab state. David Kessler said: MT Says : Really? I don't agree, I quote ""Do we sin only against the refugees? Do we not treat the Arabs who remain as second-class citizens? -- Did a single Jewish farmer raise his hand in the Parliament in opposition to a law that deprived Arab peasants of their land?...How lonely, in the city of Jerusalem, sits the Jewish conscience." --Moshe Smilansky, 1958, in an essay entitled "Zion and the Jewish National Idea" in the Menorah Journal, Volume XVI, 1958, reprinted in Zionism Reconsidered, Macmillan, N.Y., 1970. Again, you're quoting one man's opinion about events that happened after the attempted Arab invasion of Israel. David Kessler said: Your quotes of Jabotinsky are meaningless, because his view was the minority view. That's why the political parties based on his views were always minority parties and in opposition until 1977 (even then they had to form a coalition to hold power). MT Says: Yes Dave I know, "the lone nut theory". Interestingly, your friend Simone calls Vlad Jabotinsky "a man of vision". You apologists should get your story straight. What a shame for the Arabs that his "vision" was so menacing. David Kessler said: Seventh, within five years of statehood, Israel began absorbing large number of Sephardi Jews. By the late sixties they were a majority of the Jewish inhabitants. Whatever Israel started as, it soon became the Homeland both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. The two may be different ethnically, and even in some of their religious practices, but taken together they are a Nation. David Kessler said: MT Says: Yes they are, they are now Israelis, but what of the Palestinians and their nation, who have had their birthright taken from them, communities smashed, populations chased from their homes, towns and villages, who today are suffering the iniquities of the 1940's again in the West Bank, as once again Zionism seeks to relieve them (of the remainder) of their land, towns and possessions? Do you think it's fair David? David Kessler said: I think much of it is unfair, but I think it is a consequence of three things: the misconduct of some Israeli governments, the misconduct of Palestinian leaders and the misconduct of Arab leaders. I do not share your lopsided view of history in which you ignore the wrongs of the Arabs and focus only only on the wrongs of the Jews. "If it is proper to 'reconstitute' a Jewish State which has not existed for two thousand years, why not go back another thousand years and reconstitute the Canaanite state? The Canaanites, unlike the Jews, are still there." --H.G. Wells, quoted by Frank C. Sakran in Palestine Dilemma, p. 204. David Kessler said: The reality is we can't go back at all. We have to go forward. And destroying an established state is not an option. MT Says: I agree, so stop killing Arabs, stealing more land, water and resources and settle with the Palestinians. Don't forget the refugees! David Kessler said: MT Says: Now your turn, tell me what rights you feel the Palestinians had in 1900, what should be the rights of the dislaced Palestinian refugees in their historical land (indeed to houses, settlements, villages and towns that still exist, but which have had Israeli squatters in them since 1948. A previous poster mentioned the illegality of building settlements in occupied territory and whilst you tap dance around the matter of who the West Bank belongs to, it is clear that it does not belong to Israel.

David Kessler said: Personally I agree. I never supported settlement in the West Bank, which started in earnest in 1974 when the Jordanians accepted the Rabat Summit Conference decision that the PLO are the “sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian People.”

MT Says: You forgot to address my question relating to Palestinian rights at the dawn of the Zionist programme and to their property that has been stolen and for which they have received no compensation. And I am not referring to any property purchased legally. I acknowledge your stance on the illegal settlements in the West Bank, and would ask if you are prepared to add your voice to the growing number of people calling for sanctions on the State of Israel, unless a positive programme of complete withdrawal has been undertaken in the West Bank?

David Kessler said: OTOH I believe that the Jews have a right to the whole of Jerusalem, as they have been an absolute majority there since 1872.

MT Says: Isn’t this the same logic that Hitler used with annexing the Sudetenland, in Czechoslovakia, I believe the logic was something along the lines of an ethnic minority of German speakers were the majority in certain parts of the country.

Next point deleted as neither party appears to be getting anywhere.

David Kessler said: MT Says: I assume that the last comment about faster birth rates of Israeli Arabs (Palestinians) and falling immigration being a concern, doesn’t do a lot to counter the progressively compelling argument I have seen on this board in support of the claim that Israel is a racist state or an Apartheid(like) state.

David Kessler said: First of all Israeli Arabs are not to be confused with Palestinians. You don’t have to take my word for it, just ask them! Secondly, concern about the changing (argument incomplete I presume)

MT Said: >>If, as you have stated David, one doesn’t need to be a religious Jew to have an affinity with Israel, indeed as with the case of the Ethiopians, one needn’t be the same race as the majority Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jews and we’ve established that there is little from a tribal perspective that links the 2 groups of European Jews, then what exactly is Zionism now?

David Kessler said: Zionism holds that there should be a national homeland for those who identify themselves as Jews whether religiously or culturally. The legal test for qualifying under the law of return is having one Jewish grandparent or being a convert to Judaism. (There is some internal dispute as to what constitutes conversion. I believe that they currently recognize Orthodox and Conservative Synagogue conversions but not reform. I may be wrong on this point. I haven’t kept up to date with it.)
But now that Israel is an established state, it is entitled like any other sovereign state to set its own immigration policy, just as Britain sets its immigration policy (subject to the busybody intereference of the EU).

MT Says: What is clear from the ever-changing way in one qualifies as a Jew, first it’s only through your mother, now it’s your Grandad, and more recently if you just manage to say shalom, if you happen to be a Russian thug whose talents for violence will be invaluable in propping up the occupation of the Palestinian Territories. – I am paraphrasing Richard Ben Cramer in his book “How Israel Lost”. Incidentally you forgot to mention that Zionist also sets out to be an exclusively Jewish State, whose problem is the Arabs who didn’t run away and what to do about the millions of Arabs in the West Bank that they so desperately want to annex. They should go ahead and do it, it should be fun seeing the Jews in Etertz Yisrael being the minority. What will they do then, drop the façade and become a fully-fledged Apartheid State?

David Kessler said: MT Writes:>>As the Jewish Agency have confirmed the majority of recent Russian émigré Jews are not Jews,

David Kessler said: Ethnically? Religiously? Culturally?

MT Says: All of the above it would appear David. So how do you account for this and do you believe they should be deported or forced to convert? I could direct you to a website recently set up that looks at the growing scourge of anti-semitism in Israel. One of these Russian boys serving in the army got lifted by the Police who discovered a Swastika on his arm. Apparently him and his buddies (all of whom got the Kosher stamp) had started a Hilter Youth movement of their own, in Israel.

David Kessler said: >> then it appears that anyone can come as long as they are not Arabs!
A bit of an exaggeration. Did these immigrants present themselves as non-Jews when they applied to immigrate to Israel? At any rate, Israel is a sovereign state and may allow in who it pleases. It is not for you or I to tell them who they may and may not allow in to their own country.

MT Says: It would appear non-Jews and even Russian-Nazis are ok, just not the Arabs that were chased off their own land. May I ask why it is you think the government of the State of Israel is so bent on denying the Palestinians anything, they’ll even go so far as to prostitute the very Jewishness of the State as long as they don’t have to give anything viable to the Palestinians.

MT Says: I concede that the Jewishness of the State has been a subterfuge all along, because as you and I both know, Zionism and Judasim are really mutually exclusive, the Torah refutes the right of Israel to exist as a man-made political entity, so “Jew” was a badge of convenience for those Ashkenazi revolutionaries. I acknowledge attitudes amongst Jewry softened towards Zionism after the holocaust. But now, when the whole world is in need of peace in the Middle East, why don’t you stop the deception?

Mt Says: I do not accept your spurious argument about Arabs being blood-thirsty savages which you bring up repeatedly later in this post. Let me remind you that you raised the matter of the communication between Zionists and King Faisal in which the King said, “We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our delegation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday to the Zionist organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper.”

MT Says: I concede that you “Jews” (let’s call them what they are and drop the Jewish pretence right now, they’re Israelis) need to do a lot of apologising now, but your assessment of Arabs and Arabs countries is unfair.

MT Says: Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire the Arab peoples and their lands have been carved up by Colonialists and neo-colonialists; maps and territories decided by others rather than Arabs, communities have been thrown together or split against their logical ethnic, social or religious lines, i.e. Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon. These colonialists have looked upon the Arabs as backward and treated them with contempt. US, British and Zionist interests (amongst others) have overthrown governments, crushed popular movements, assassinated those they didn’t feel were sufficiently “sympathetic to their respective causes”, propped up oppressive and brutal dictatorships as their needs dictated. And now these colonizers have created the monster of militant and fanatical Islam. I’m afraid David that labelling Arab morality in this environment is like judging Irish morality in the context of “The Troubles”.

David Kessler said: MT Says: >>please tell me how an Ethiopian tribesman (let’s use the eyeball test and not go the DNA route) a white Russian, a Khazari descendent (with possibly a little semitic ancestry) or a Sephardim (with a lot more semitic blood) can all have a better claim to live in Palestine than a Palestinian born there, who is probably 100% semitic?

David Kessler said: You seem to have conveniently forgotten that most of those who now call themselves Palestinian were NOT born there. They were born in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan!

MT Says: Really? What about those born in Gaza and the West Bank? Is that the plan then Dave, when the last Palestinian chased off their land dies, then that will be Zionism perfected, their children don’t count? Anyway aren’t there UN resolutions regarding the rights of the refugees and their offspring? – David, I’m afraid you’ve been reduced to mere Zionist apologist rubbish, at least in the beginning some of it required a bit of thought to see through, not any more.

David Kessler said: MT Says: Now you’re being disingenuous again. You are using the argument that the Palestinians didn’t have a government at the time of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to suggest that there was no Palestine,

David Kessler said: To suggest that there was no COUNTRY of Palestine. Palestine was part of the Turkish provence of Syria it was then governed by Britain under a League of Nations Mandate. At no stage was it a country. That may be an unpalatable fact to you, but it IS a fact.

MT Says: Poland has been wiped off the map, conquered, forgotten and absorbed, by Russia, Germany, Austria and Genghis Khan more times than the average Polish high school child cares to remember for history tests. That does not change the fact that there always was a Polish “nation” and those that identified with their Polishness. Same with Palestine, the temporary oddity of the Zionist experiment has undoubtedly changed that face and population of the future Palestine, but it will still come to exist. In your deluded Zionist mind the Palestinian people should under no circumstances be granted the right of self-government then, because they’ve never had it, is that what you’re saying? I you question my humanitarian credentials. You are arrogant and transparent in the extreme. Do you believe that the Kurds deserve autonomy David, or just the Jewish ones?

David Kessler said: MT writes:>> or are you doing a “Golda Meir” and saying there is no such thing as the Palestinian people; that was rich coming from a US citizen born in Russia, when writing off the inhabitants of a land not her own as being non-existent.

David Kessler said: Drawing analogues between me and Golda Meir and then atacking her, is an excusion into irrelevancy.

MT Says: Why Dave, we haven’t got to the bottom of your attitude toward the Palestinian nation yet and what you feel should be done with, or to them. What is you final solution? Golda alluded to hers quite clearly, you just hint at yours. Do you admire her for such a ridiculous claim David?

David Kessler said: MT Says: If the Palestinian nation wish to call themselves Arabs, Palestinians or whatever isn’t relevant; what is relevant is that they were already on the land.

David Kessler said: And before they were, others were. And now others are. You can’t turn back the clock 60 years any more than you can turn it back 2000. More has changed in the world in the preceding 60 years than in the previous 2000. As Alvin Toffler has pointed out, even the rate of change is increasing. Israel is a sovereign state now. Palestine isn’t and never was. It wasn’t even an aspiration until AFTER Israel was established.

MT Says: So it was ok to try and turn the clock back 200-years only 60-years ago, but it’s not ok to turn back the clock 60-years today? More Zionist rubbish. In 1922, the League of Nations entrusted the Mandate for Palestine (CONSIDERED TO BE “CLASS A” OR CLOSEST TO INDEPENDENCE) to Britain. See, you’re being mendacious again. Zionism was a racist misconception. We today, live in the post-Zionist era now David, so apologising and making amends is ok. The problem is we are daily confronted by people like you; people who appear on the surface to make sense, but after careful scrutiny are found to be incapable of lying straight in bed.

David Kessler said: MT says:>>I would stick to Zionist sources in support of this..-
“We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village.” –Moshe Dyan, March 19, 1969, speech at the Technion in Haifa, “Israel” quoted in Haaretz, April 4, 1969. (385 villages have been destroyed within pre-1967 Israel…)”

David Kessler said: Tel Aviv? Haifa? Eilat? Jerusalem?

MT Says: Oh I see, so now Moshe Dayan is one of your Zionist aberrations as well, the list gets longer. I’m not going to waste time on a Sunday looking into the history of the four you mention (but I’m sure that as with everything else you say there will at best only be the allusion of truth), but does their introduction reduce the enormity of the admission Dayan was making?

David Kessler said: MT Says: I’m not sure what point you think you’ve scored with this, but I fail to see what it matters if the Palestinians called themselves Arabs. What a great pity it is that Zionists didn’t take such great delight in “showing off” Palestinian passports to their friends, as the Palestinian Jews did,

David Kessler said: The Palestinian Jews WERE Zionists.

MT Says: Prove it Dave, because the historical record says otherwise!

David Kessler said: MT Says: David Kessler then goes on to make SEVEN points that propose to show the analogy is not precise, without EVER showing their relevance to the analogy, but I’ll deal with them all the same.

David Kessler said: The relevance is that the Jews did not return to a country, they came to a piece of land whose political status was in a state of flux and where there was room for many more people.

MT Says: The pretext was RETURNING. If you are correct, which you obviously are not, surely the State of Israel wouldn’t have on its statute books “A LAW OF RETURN” it would have a “Law permitting anyone we think is on our side to immigrate to a country founded in a state of flux” Maybe they called of the “Law of Return” because it was easier to remember! The interesting point is that the likes of Arik Sharon’s mum was astounded to find the land of Israel was inhabited when these early Zionists arrived in Palestine.

>>David Kessler said: Firstly the most that has been proven is a Khazar contribution to the Jewish gene pool – not a complete supplanting of it.

David Kessler said: >>MT Says “my analogy CLEARLY says “(forsaking the possibility of inter-marriage changing my descendents racial profile). This was to dissuade you from introducing this fallacious argument. Sadly it failed.

David Kessler said: Your argument failed because it was false. There has been a great deal of intermarriage in the history of the Jews and the presence of Khazar or any other genes in their gene pool doesn’t mean that the Jews and the Khazars are one and the same. Nothing you have said has proven that the Ashkenazi Jews are the Khazars. Bearing in mind that those Khazars who converted to Judaism did so upon being persuaded to do so, it is quite likely that they WOULD have intermarried with those Jews who persuaded them!

MT Says: If there is inter-marriage and an introduction of a large number of male and female converts, where does the “right to the land, by birth” come into it, or have you totally dropped the pretense that being Jewish gave Zionism its moral imperative?

David Kessler said: Secondly, it is important to bear in mind that when the Zionists arrived in that sparesely populated corner of the decaying Ottoman empire, they tended to congregate in the more sparsely populated areas. (Tel Aviv, for example, was in 1903 a vacant hill outside the town of Jaffa.) They bought land at grossly inflated prices. Thus it was not a case of expropriation but one of purchasing and contributing to the land.

David Kessler said: MT Says: Can I refer you back to the above quote from Moshe Dayan, who although I have absolutely no respect for, I will at least concede that on this point he is being honest.

David Kessler said: The fact that Jews bought land is a matter of record. The Turks introduced a land reguistry law in 1858 and these purchases were recorded. Your selective quote of Moshe Dayan hardly refutes the records of the land registry!

MT Says: How much land, David, please be precise as I really would like to expose you for the mendacious fool you are?

David Kessler said: Thirdly, Arabs tended to flock to the area where Jews were gathering (and investing) because of the increased work opportunities in those areas.

David Kessler said: MT Says: I find this piece of deception beneath contempt and not worthy of a response, however this will leave an opening for more deception so I quote “With the Arabs we shall not achieve our aim of being an independent people in this country. The only solution is Eretz-Israel, at least the west part of Eretz-Israel, without Arabs… And there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries. Transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should remain…” –Joseph Weitz, entry in his diary for 1940 (Quoted in his article: “A solution to the Refugee Problem: An Israeli State with a small Arab Minority”, published in Davar, 29 September, 1967.

David Kessler said: So? One man expresses an obnoxious opinion (in 1940 long after the Arabs have flocked to those areas) and on the strength of this you pretend that Arabs did not flock to Jewish areas in search of work? That’s quite a leap of imagination on your part.

MT Says: Oh dear, not another Zionist aberration. Will the list never end? Give me a clue David, how many Jewish sources must I introduce to refute every point you make, until you realise that maybe it is you, Mr Kessler who is the aberration, a man so bent on Zionist apology that you have forsaken all decency.

David Kessler said: MT Says: You are right; there is such a thing as natural movement of populations. Zionism however is not an example of it. What happened in Palestine was colonization and then conquest.

David Kessler said: Arriving, buying land, draining swamps, building universities, building cities – all this is colonization and conquest?

MT Says: Personally I think there were a lot of well intentioned parts of early Zionism. But Jabotinsky, Begin and Stern, Ben Gurion quickly altered all of the to be followed by Dayan, Sharon and Netanyahu.

David Kessler said: May I remind you that colonization means ruling one land from a power base located in another. For example, India was a British colony run from a colonial country called Britain, located in Europe. Algeria was a French colony ruled from a colonial country called France, located in Europe. Now according to you Palestine was or became a Zionist colony, so presumably it was run by a colonial country called… called… called (please fill in the blank Mr Tarzai) and that colonial country was located in… (please fill in the blank Mr Tarzai). If you cannot fill in the blanks then please drop this spurious allegation of Zionist colonialism!

MT Says: Oh that’s right Dave, it was just a natural result of movement of people. Jonathan Friedland from the Guardian was being interviewed on the BBC a few months ago and said that the colonization of Israel should be seen in the same context as the colonization of Australia or Argentina. Perhaps you can add him to your list of Zionist aberrations. As mentioned above when you give me the number of Jewish sources needed to expose the mendacity of each of your points I will happily oblige.

David Kessler said: MT Says: The first part of David’s Fifth Point seems reasonable until one considers that there were about 1 000 000 Palestinian Arabs and about 50 000 Palestinian Jews, who he claims wished to fulfill their “respective” (my emphasis) national ambitions”.
David Kessler said: But the number of Jews soon grew through a perfectly legitimate process known as immigration.

MT Says: Normally, when immigration happens in a country that is being established people are invited by the government, as in the case of the USA. What we have here as disgruntled Europeans who see an opportunity to flee the lands of their birth and move to another country, but not with the intention of mingling with the local population, but with the specific intention of dispossessing that people of their land using some absurd religious pretext. Jabotininsky’s book “Iron Wall” puts it clearly in perspective, brutal colonization. You can call it what you want Dave!

David Kessler said: >> How misleading, there is no record of a Nationalist Jewish Palestinian movement at all. David himself mentioned how proud the Jews of Palestine were to show off their Palestinian passports.

David Kessler said: Because in those days the word Palestinian did not mean Palestinian Arab or even native born to Palestine. Jewish immigrants to mandatory Palestine were also classed as Palestinians.

MT Says: Really, a native born in Palestine wasn’t a Palestinian? What was he then?

David Kessler said: MT Says: regarding the balance of the Fifth Point: In 1919, King Faisal, then the only recognized Arab leader in the world, executed a treaty with Chaim Weizmann adopting the understanding of the Balfour Declaration. It outlined relations between Palestine and the Arab state, recognizing the former as a National Home for the Jews, in which they should quickly settle. He wrote, “We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our delegation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday to the Zionist organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper.” -
MT Says: The key elements here are “A National Home for the Jews” quite different to an exclusively Jewish State from which Arabs would be expelled.

David Kessler said: If the Arabs had accepted the UN partition plan and not invaded the newly born state of Israel (before the British had even withdrawn) then they could have had an Arab state alongside a predominantly Jewish state.

MT Says: The UN Security Council didn’t even accept it, why should the Palestinians? Do we need to expose the unfair nature of the partition plan? Let’s assume the Arabs had accepted it, what would have become of the Arabs within Israel, (assuming the terrorist attacks hadn’t caused 750 000 to leave), you know those happy group of serfs that swarmed around the benign settlements and the ones that stayed in their hundreds of towns and villages in the borders of Israel? Would they have been “transferred” (Zionist code for ethnic cleansing) anyway, forced to convert, or killed? Clearly for a Jewish State to remain Jewish in nature you couldn’t allow such a large percentage of the population to be non-Jews that would defeat the point. Much the same conundrum as in the West Bank eh, David?

David Kessler said: >> The other key point is the term “moderate and proper”, clearly the proposals submitted as mentioned, bore no resemblance to the acts carried out in the name of Revisionist Zionism of the kind Jabotinsky was about to unleash and to which I am sure Weizmann concurred.

David Kessler said: Jabotinsky’s movement was in a minority, as well you know. In subsequent Israel elections, the Jabotinsky influenced parties and coalitions (Herut, Gahal and Likud) were in a minority until 1977. In fact only by merging with other parties that were not Jabotinsky influenced, did Beigin eventually come to power. But this was long after the events that we are talking about.

MT Says: Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionism is Zionism today which in turn is Israeli State policy. Give the Arabs nothing, and kill them when necessary if they don’t leave voluntarily. You trying to tell me that Zionist thinking toady and right the way through your short history from Moshe Sharrett to Olmert hasn’t been shaped by “Iron Wall” mentality? Please, you’ve even got a concrete one as well now. That ghetto mentality is so hard to shift isn’t it?

David Kessler said: (NB I am aware that David Ben-Gurion served in the Turkish army, but this was an abberation and an exception.)

MT Says: I see when looking through your posts that there are a number of these Zionist aberrations and exceptions coming to the surface.

David Kessler said: IT is only because we are talking about Israel and not the behaviour of the Arabs that you are spared the need to confront their wrongs and evils. As long as Israel is the accused and the haters of Israel, the accuser that you have this advantage. The reality is that there is right and wrong on both sides. But by focussing on Israel and ignoring the wrongs on the Arab side, you project the false impression that Israel is the villain. Let’s talk about the actions of the Arabs (something you have clevery glossed over) and a different picture emerges.
David Kessler said: We see the persecution of the 130,000 Jews of Iraq and a similar number in the Yemen. We see the pesecution of 150,000 Algerian Jews, 48,000 Syrian Jews. All of these fled from aoppression and found refuge in Israel. Let us talk about the oppression that drove them to flight. And let’s not pretend that its the fault of Zionism. Oppression is oppression.

MT Says: The plight of the Iraqi Jews certainly was the fault of Zionism. I’ll check up on the rest.

David Kessler said: MT Says: I’m sure many Arabs would have agreed, and had it not been for Revisionist Zionist exclusionist greed, we probably wouldn’t have the mess we have right now.

David Kessler said: Then all the more reason why the Arabs should have accepted the UN Partition Plan.

MT Says: UN Security Council states Partition Plan is unenforceable aside from it being immoral. God you’re arrogant, why can’t you just envisage living peacefully amongst the other inhabitants of the land. We’ve already established that the early Zionist Ashkenazi’s aren’t really Jews anyway, so dropping the pretence of the religion would have been logical. You mention that Zionist settlement was just natural immigration, where else did a situation arise where an immigrant population usurped the land, resources and infrastructure of the indigenous people? Think carefully about your answer, because otherwise you could be staring at colonialism in the face.

David Kessler said: The displacement of Palestinians – although certainly real – was not the inevitable consequence of Zionism. It was the consequence of Arab intransigence in the face of a Jewish minority in the Middle East who were not prepared to accept the status of “protected minority” in a Pan-Arab state.

David Kessler said: MT Says : Really? I don’t agree, I quote
“”Do we sin only against the refugees? Do we not treat the Arabs who remain as second-class citizens? — Did a single Jewish farmer raise his hand in the Parliament in opposition to a law that deprived Arab peasants of their land?…How lonely, in the city of Jerusalem, sits the Jewish conscience.”
–Moshe Smilansky, 1958, in an essay entitled “Zion and the Jewish National Idea” in the Menorah Journal, Volume XVI, 1958, reprinted in Zionism Reconsidered, Macmillan, N.Y., 1970.
Again, you’re quoting one man’s opinion about events that happened after the attempted Arab invasion of Israel.

David Kessler said: Your quotes of Jabotinsky are meaningless, because his view was the minority view. That’s why the political parties based on his views were always minority parties and in opposition until 1977 (even then they had to form a coalition to hold power).

MT Says: Yes Dave I know, “the lone nut theory”. Interestingly, your friend Simone calls Vlad Jabotinsky “a man of vision”. You apologists should get your story straight. What a shame for the Arabs that his “vision” was so menacing.

David Kessler said: Seventh, within five years of statehood, Israel began absorbing large number of Sephardi Jews. By the late sixties they were a majority of the Jewish inhabitants. Whatever Israel started as, it soon became the Homeland both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. The two may be different ethnically, and even in some of their religious practices, but taken together they are a Nation.

David Kessler said: MT Says: Yes they are, they are now Israelis, but what of the Palestinians and their nation, who have had their birthright taken from them, communities smashed, populations chased from their homes, towns and villages, who today are suffering the iniquities of the 1940’s again in the West Bank, as once again Zionism seeks to relieve them (of the remainder) of their land, towns and possessions? Do you think it’s fair David?

David Kessler said: I think much of it is unfair, but I think it is a consequence of three things: the misconduct of some Israeli governments, the misconduct of Palestinian leaders and the misconduct of Arab leaders. I do not share your lopsided view of history in which you ignore the wrongs of the Arabs and focus only only on the wrongs of the Jews.
“If it is proper to ‘reconstitute’ a Jewish State which has not existed for two thousand years, why not go back another thousand years and reconstitute the Canaanite state? The Canaanites, unlike the Jews, are still there.” –H.G. Wells, quoted by Frank C. Sakran in Palestine Dilemma, p. 204.

David Kessler said: The reality is we can’t go back at all. We have to go forward. And destroying an established state is not an option.

MT Says: I agree, so stop killing Arabs, stealing more land, water and resources and settle with the Palestinians. Don’t forget the refugees!

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