Just the FACTS - Arab- Israeli conflict

[Mishenka]

Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview and was asked about
Israel's occupation of Arab lands. His response was 'It's our land.'
The reporter at CNN was stunned. Read below "It's our land"
It's important information since we don't get fair and accurate reporting from the media and facts tend to get lost in the jumble of daily events.'Crash Course on the Arab Israeli Conflict.' Here are overlooked facts in the current Middle East situation.
These were compiled by a Christian university professor.
BRIEF FACTS ON THE ISRAELI CONFLICT TODAY....It takes just 1.5 minutes to read!
It makes sense and it's not slanted. Jew or not, it doesn't matter.

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem. Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E. Two
thousand years before the rise of Islam. In other words, Islam did not exist until more than 2176 years later.

2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a
Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E., the Jews have had dominion
over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the
land for the past 3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E lasted no more
than 22 years.

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem
has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the
Jordanians occupied Jerusalem , they never sought to make it their
capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy
Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammad never came to
Jerusalem.

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward
Jerusalem .

9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to
leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews.
Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

10 The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab
brutality, persecution and pogroms.

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to
be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is
estimated to be the same.

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the
Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of
the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee
group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own
peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel ,
a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.

13. The Arab - Israeli Conflict: The Arabs are represented by eight
separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one
Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost all five wars!
Israel defended itself each time and won all five wars!

14. The P.L.O.'s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of
Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land,
autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.

15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews
were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

16. The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council
resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.

17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429
were directed against Israel.

18. The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.

19. The U.N. Was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated
the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

20. The U.N. Was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like
policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

[groovlstk]

Maybe you can add your thoughts on pro life vs. pro choice, throw in something about gun control, and make a case for MaryAnn over Ginger just in case you wanted to start another pointless argument.

[ECOCKS]

Good historical commentary M.

[Makkin]

  Very true indeed.

  Too bad Europe seems to be going for the oil rather than the facts.

Makkin

[Faux Pas]

I have noticed in this most recent conflict, that for the national media the conflict started when Israel started with the air attacks. None mention the previous two weeks before that, the lobbing of rockets into Tel Aviv. That little tidbit hasn't seemed important to anyone but the Israelis.

[Mir]

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E., the Jews have had dominion
over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the
land for the past 3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E lasted no more
than 22 years.

Although these so called facts have little to justify the current conflict and nothing to do with RWD I would like to point out that they are not facts at all. As it is said that it takes two to tango both Arabs and Israelis are to blame for the conflict and the so called Palestinians are the real losers. Still apart from political arguments it is not acceptable to alter history to suit an argument. For example just to correct the above two facts.

There is no historical confirmation that there was a Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C. This is a claim made by a religious book while most historical evidence suggests that the Jewish state was established by local people. Let us accept that his was indeed 1272 B.C. then this Jewish state was partially destroyed in 722 BC by the Assyrians and conquered by Babylonians in 568 BC. The land was part of successively the Persian and Greek empires. There was another Jewish state in 140 BC to 37BC and then it was conquered by the Romans. So a 1000 year continuous rule is BS.

The Arabs conquered Palestine in 630 AD and it remained under Arab rule till 1099 which is 469(and not 22 years) years till the Crusader conquest, it came back under Arab rule in 1187 and remained so till 1516 when it was taken over by the Ottoman Turks.It remained under Turks till 1918.
3300 years of Jewish presence? must be about the same time that so called Red Indians have been present in America or the Aborigines in Australia.

[Shadow]

Someone thinks that they can find the cause of a conflict that has already lasted 3000 years.
Good luck.

[ECOCKS]

Finding the cause isn't nearly as important as finding a solution.  That said, obviously agreeing on the cause would be a positive step but it seems to be a long time finding it.

[kievstar]

Middle East always has wars people should just accept it.  Is it so bad the Middle East fights with each other?  Kind of like Iraq and Afghan.  Once the USA leaves they will fight among themselves like they did before. 

[docetae]

So, next time native americans will ask to get their country back, you will give it to them ?

[BC]

Israel has nukes.

[GoodOlBoy]

.....and make a case for MaryAnn over Ginger....

I always liked GINGER (Tina Louise).

I thought her "mole" was hot!  :evil:


GOB

[OlgaH]

The  term The Land of Israel should not be confused officially with the State of Israel, which is a smaller modern political state within its Biblical and historical limits. Since the Six Day War in 1967, the term and concept have been politicized and used to justify the policies of right wing Israeli political parties like the Likud.[3] [4] These groups have had more influence in Israeli governments since the 1977 elections. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Israel

Iron Age (1200–330 BCE)
Pottery remains found in Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gat, Ekron and Gaza decorated with stylized birds provided the first archaeological evidence for Philistine settlement in the region. The Philistines are credited with introducing iron weapons and chariots to the local population.[47]

Developments in Palestine between 1250 and 900 BCE have been the focus of debate between those who accept the Old Testament version on the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes, and those who reject it.[48]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine

Though the Biblical tradition holds that the Israelites arrived in Canaan from Egypt, archaeology provides strong evidence that they emerged from among the local population existent there at the time; these events are generally dated to between the 13th and 12th centuries BCE.[48] Archaeological evidence indicates that the late 13th, the 12th and the early 11th centuries BCE witnessed the foundation of perhaps hundreds of insignificant, unprotected village settlements, many in the mountains of Palestine.[49] From around the 11th century BCE, there was a reduction in the number of villages, though this was counterbalanced by the rise of certain settlements to the status of fortified townships.[49]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine

Historiographic Views on the Settlement of the Jewish Tribes in Canaan
How these tribes succeeded in conquering this country has been and still is the object of dispute in historical writing...
Both the aforementioned schools started from the basic idea that the Jewish tribes came from without Canaan and settled there either following a military conquest, or gradually and peacefully penetrating the territory in a longer span of time. After 1962, another perspective emerged, according to which the birth of the Jewish people was an internal process of the local Canaanite society, with or without the contribution of outside groups, who did or did not bring with them the monotheistic belief antagonistic to the polytheism of the city-states of Canaan. The first to sketch such a viewpoint was G. E. Mendenhall, who believed that the nomad pastoral tribes that made up the Israilou were in fact just transhumant, opposed to the urbanized Canaanite society, and that they rebelled against the centralized authoritarian system at a certain moment.
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/issuedetails.aspx?issueid=ed58f96d-8032-41bb-8d65-f34a8b8f2a36&articleId=835a199a-72a0-4b2d-ba9c-32b1347129f5

Niels Peter Lemche,
Department of Biblical Studies,
The University of Copenhagen

The biblical picture of ancient Israel does not fit in but is contrary to any image of ancient Palestinian society that can be established on the basis of ancient sources from Palestine or referring to Palestine. There is no way this image in the Bible can be reconciled with the historical past of the region. And if this is the case, we should give up the hope that we can reconstruct pre-Hellenistic history on the basis of the Old Testament. It is simply an invented history with only a few referents to things that really happened or existed. From an historian’s point of view, ancient Israel is a monstrous creature. It is something sprung out of the fantasy of biblical historiographers and their modern paraphrasers, i.e., the historical-critical scholars of the last two hundred years.
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/Articles/article_13.htm

[wxman]

All the debate here and no one can really determine when Israel was Israel or when Palestine was Palestine, and we're sitting on the sidelines being cordial. Imagine just how much more complicated it is there, especially when rockets are flying and bombs are dropping. There is no solution. Never has been, never will be.

[ECOCKS]

I always liked GINGER (Tina Louise).

I thought her "mole" was hot!  :evil:


GOB

But Mary Ann was so, so perky!   

[Misha]

All the debate here and no one can really determine when Israel was Israel or when Palestine was Palestine, and we're sitting on the sidelines being cordial. Imagine just how much more complicated it is there, especially when rockets are flying and bombs are dropping. There is no solution. Never has been, never will be.

Imagine this scenario. After World War II, Germany (the two Germanies) had established refugee camps for the millions of German "refugees" from Poland, Czech Republic, Baltic states, and so forth and had left them in these refugee camps teaching them to hate their neighbors teaching them that they will stay in these refugee camps until their "historical" lands are reclaimed from the unlawful intruders, those Poles and Czechs who are now living in their homes. Would there be peace in Europe today? I doubt it. Yes, it is sad that people were displaced, but if the other Arab states had simply integrated people sharing their language, culture and religion in their states, peace could have been achieved a long time ago.

[Mir]

Middle East always has wars people should just accept it.  Is it so bad the Middle East fights with each other?  Kind of like Iraq and Afghan.  Once the USA leaves they will fight among themselves like they did before. 

And which part of the world did not always have wars? With or without uncle Sam

[Mir]

The funny thing is that Arabs and Jews were on friendly terms till the 20th century.
When the Crusader forces took Jerusalem they massacred 40,000 people which was the entire Arab and Jewish population of the city.
For hundreds of years the Jews were persecuted in the Western world. In the 15th and 16 century when the Cristian forces reconquered Spain they expelled the Jews before the Muslims.
In the 19th century pogroms against the Jews were a regular occurrence in the Russian empire. Such pogroms never took place against the Jewish population living in the Arab lands.
In fact the Zionest movement was the direct result of antisemitism prevalent in Eastern Europe that was dominated by the Russian empire.
Finlay the Holocaust was not purely done by Nazis (and there is some evidence that they did this with the approval of the Catholic church), many people in France etc enthusiastically participated in sending Jews to the gas chambers.
For some strange reason the Palestinian population is being made to pay for the crimes of the Europeans against the Jews committed over a period of 1000 years!!!

[Mir]

Imagine this scenario. After World War II, Germany (the two Germanies) had established refugee camps for the millions of German "refugees" from Poland, Czech Republic, Baltic states, and so forth and had left them in these refugee camps teaching them to hate their neighbors teaching them that they will stay in these refugee camps until their "historical" lands are reclaimed from the unlawful intruders, those Poles and Czechs who are now living in their homes. Would there be peace in Europe today? I doubt it. Yes, it is sad that people were displaced, but if the other Arab states had simply integrated people sharing their language, culture and religion in their states, peace could have been achieved a long time ago.

Please don't masacre history with such cruelty.

And who told you there were millions of German refugees from these lands?

After the first world war millions of Germans become subjects of Poland, Czech republic etc. That was part of the reason Germany used to justify its occupation of these lands.
After WW2 Germany was occupied by the Allies and the Russians and there was no chance for it to establish any camps of any sort for anyone. As I quoted somewhere else the reason for NATO was to keep the Germans down. So peace on Europe was the result of total military exhaustion and total deafeat and occupation of Germany.

Why should the people who left the land that became Israel should assimilate elsewhere? The Jews were out of the same land for 1000 years and never assimilated, were kept in ghettos by the Europeans like the Palestinians.

[Shadow]

Imagine this scenario. After World War II, Germany (the two Germanies) had established refugee camps for the millions of German "refugees" from Poland, Czech Republic, Baltic states, and so forth and had left them in these refugee camps teaching them to hate their neighbors teaching them that they will stay in these refugee camps until their "historical" lands are reclaimed from the unlawful intruders, those Poles and Czechs who are now living in their homes. Would there be peace in Europe today? I doubt it. Yes, it is sad that people were displaced, but if the other Arab states had simply integrated people sharing their language, culture and religion in their states, peace could have been achieved a long time ago.

Such displacement took place in 1948 when the Dutch colonies became independent as Indonesia.
A small group from the Molukken islands wished to be independent from the new state and went in exile to the Netherlands. In spite of them being welcomed as other groups and given all chances for integration, they still hope to establish their independent state, with as low point so far the events in 1975 when militant groups held a train and a school hostage in the Netherlands in hope of forcing the Dutch government to support their cause.
The wish to return to their land and reclaim it as state remains, even after 50 years and while given full integration.

[Sculpto]

First of all, if both sides keep pointing fingers and trying to prove they are more right than the other it will be immpossible to alter the status quo.

Regardless of history, which varies greatly depending on who you ask, the current reality is all that should be on the table.

Israel has to stop building settlements.
hamas and other radicals have to stop using terror to attack civilians.
Israel must allow Jerusalem to be the Palestinian capitol.  Why can't one city be the capitol of two nations?
The Palestinians and other Arab countries must eliminate all anti-semetic propoganda.  (google it.. it makes the nazis look like nice guys)
The Israeli educational system must stop portraying Palestinians as second class citizens.
Hamas and Hezbollah must recognize Israel's right to exist.
Arab nations must stop using the Palestinians as an excuse to be hostile to Israel.  For almost three generations the Arab nations have ignored the real plight of the Palestinians to use them to politicize anti semitism.

Jewish settlers must be disarmed.
Palestinain radicals must be disarmed.

Both sides must allow the UN in to seperate hostile forces.
Both sides need a cooling off period without bombs, rockets and suicide attacks.

The world must recognize that Palestinians are not a race.  Those that fall under the banner of Palestinian are multi ethnic and follow a variety of religions including Islam, Orthodox and non Orthodox Christianity and there are even Jews. 

The world must recognize that Jews are not a race.  There are caucasian, latin, arab and african Jews.  Some jews are religious and others are highly secular.

But first.. EVERYONE must stop shooting and blaming.

[BC]

After thousands of years of conflict, I say just let them go at it until it's over.

[OlgaH]

For hundreds of years the Jews were persecuted in the Western world. In the 15th and 16 century when the Cristian forces reconquered Spain they expelled the Jews before the Muslims.
In the 19th century pogroms against the Jews were a regular occurrence in the Russian empire. Such pogroms never took place against the Jewish population living in the Arab lands.

Jewish Electronic Encyclopedia (in Russian but more information)
http://www.eleven.co.il/article/13251
1790–92, 1853 and 1859, 1907, 1912, 1942, 1948 and 1967 in Morocco
1840 in Syria
1805 and the first half of 19th century in Algeria
1945, 1952 in Egypt
1941, 1945, 1948, 1967 in Libya
1917, 1932, 1967 in Tunisia


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Anti-Jewish_pogroms


 

 
 

[Sculpto]

Jewish Electronic Encyclopedia (in Russian but more information)
http://www.eleven.co.il/article/13251
1790–92, 1853 and 1859, 1907, 1912, 1942, 1948 and 1967 in Morocco
1840 in Syria
1805 and the first half of 19th century in Algeria
1945, 1952 in Egypt
1941, 1945, 1948, 1967 in Libya
1917, 1932, 1967 in Tunisia


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Anti-Jewish_pogroms

Olga thanks for clarifying that.

It is really difficult for non Jews to understand Jewish paranoia.  In the USA I am never shy about revealing that part of my background, but, I am VERY careful about it when I travel.  But, there are occasions when such revelations lead to some great experiences.

On one occasion when in Mexico I met a German.  This guy was the prototype of the SS officer.. that is how I reacted to his appearance.  He was tall, blond and blue, and a handsome guy.  He made me uncomfortable with his flat top hairstyle.  One evening I ran into him sitting in a cafe and decided to go in and chat with him.  I mentioned if it was 1933 we would not have been able to do so.  He went on to tell me about his family.. one side.. SS officers, some convicted of war crimes... the other side.. hid and protected their Jewish neighbors.  To this day the two sides of the family do not communicate.  He apologized.

Almost every week at my work I come into contact with Russians or Ukrainians who are also Jewish.  The level of paranoia they have dwarfs what I feel.  If thier psyche is so messed up with all of it I can understand how the State of Israel has become so security crazy.

On the other hand.. the mere idea of Jews keeping some other population behind barbed wire fences just makes me sick.  As much as there is a gigantic magnet in my soul that draws me to Israel.. I have never visited because I am in protest of the situation and I will never visit until they can set things straight with the Palestinians.  I know tons of other Jews that feel the same way.

[Misha]

Please don't masacre history with such cruelty.

And who told you there were millions of German refugees from these lands?

Read your history books Mir. Millions of Germans were evacuated from territory that is now Poland, Czech Republic. Look at the map Mir, try to find Prussia and Koenigsburg. You won't find it as Koenigsburg is now Kalingrad. Where do you think all those Germans went that were in Prussia? That is right, Germany. 

After the first world war millions of Germans become subjects of Poland, Czech republic etc. That was part of the reason Germany used to justify its occupation of these lands.
After WW2 Germany was occupied by the Allies and the Russians and there was no chance for it to establish any camps of any sort for anyone. As I quoted somewhere else the reason for NATO was to keep the Germans down. So peace on Europe was the result of total military exhaustion and total deafeat and occupation of Germany.

Yes, and Germans accepted the loss of territory and integrated Germans who fled their former homes. Peace was possible because Germans (for the most part) accepted the loss of these territories and did not maintain as a collective goal the "resettling" of Germans in their former homes, villages and cities.

Why should the people who left the land that became Israel should assimilate elsewhere? The Jews were out of the same land for 1000 years and never assimilated, were kept in ghettos by the Europeans like the Palestinians.

Because, history happens and there comes a time when you have to deal with the facts on the ground and come up with the best solution possible for the present.