tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13169838.post4385614551363625384..comments2023-07-31T15:17:30.792+01:00Comments on Christian Hate?: A letter to a fellow ChristianCyrushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00512481025183200804noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13169838.post-29730613949477228832007-06-22T21:17:00.000+01:002007-06-22T21:17:00.000+01:00'Cyrus, perhaps you need to understand that this i...<I>'Cyrus, perhaps you need to understand that this is the second time in history that the Jews displaced the Palestinians from their land, the first being several thousand years ago.'</I><BR/><BR/>Er, no, I need to understand what your evidence is for this bizarre statement. <BR/><BR/><I>'However, to address ourselves only to relatively recent history, attacks by Palestinians on Jews in the two decades(and more, I might add) before Israel's existence did happen. But you might acknowledge the fact, for the sake of honesty, that the Jews who were attacked were immigrants from Europe who migrated expressly to displace the Palestinians from their land.'</I><BR/><BR/>I might, but I won't because it's rubbish.<BR/><BR/>There were, in fact, attacks which made no distinction between immigrants and the indigenous Jewish population. And the Mufti of Jerusalem certainly wasn't interested in drawing the distinction. A Jew was a Jew.<BR/><BR/>And even if the attacks did target immigrants, is that supposed to be OK? Jews came to escape countries where they were helpless in the face of racist violence. They acquired land by buying it from its owners. They brought skills and capital which might have helped transform Palestine and the whole region, if the response to their presence had been different.<BR/><BR/>In the city where I live there is a substantial Palestinian community. If the natives started massacring them, that would be OK, would it, because nobody likes being 'displaced'?Cyrushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00512481025183200804noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13169838.post-22193512790051399852007-06-21T22:57:00.000+01:002007-06-21T22:57:00.000+01:00Cyrus, perhaps you need to understand that this is...Cyrus, perhaps you need to understand that this is the second time in history that the Jews displaced the Palestinians from their land, the first being several thousand years ago. <BR/><BR/>However, to address ourselves only to relatively recent history, attacks by Palestinians on Jews in the two decades(and more, I might add) before Israel's existence did happen. But you might acknowledge the fact, for the sake of honesty, that the Jews who were attacked were immigrants from Europe who migrated expressly to displace the Palestinians from their land. <BR/><BR/>All said and done, despite the violence accompanying the birth of Israel, the entire issue could have been resolved well before now were it not for the apathy of the western powers toward the Palestinians and the unwillingness of Israel itself to resolve the issue. Israel was unwilling to resolve the issue for two major reasons: it needed more land for more immigrants, and it needed water over which it would have no control if the land above that water was in Palestinian hands.<BR/><BR/>Islamic terrorism today has grown into a monster precisely because of the misreading of issues and the apathy displayed by the west, in the Near East and in Afghanistan. The US, in particular, has made egregious errors in places like Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Pakistan, through a mix of greed, arrogance and misplaced allegiances.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13169838.post-41569915177606335632007-06-08T16:41:00.000+01:002007-06-08T16:41:00.000+01:00Ratbert, thanks for the comment. You may be remind...Ratbert, thanks for the comment. You may be reminded of the 'simplicity of the American media'; that's certainly not where I get my views from, since I rarely read the media in question. Rather they have been formed in reaction against the pro-Palestinian bias of the British liberal media.<BR/><BR/>Your attempt to reassert a one-sided view of the conflict ignores:<BR/><BR/>1. the history of violence against Jews in Palestine over the two decades before Israel existed (cf also the 1941 Baghdad pogrom).<BR/><BR/>2. the open and extreme anti-Semitism of the Mufti of Jerusalem and other Arab nationalists.<BR/><BR/>3. the attack by Arab armies on the tiny piece of land allocated to the Jewish state.<BR/><BR/>4. the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Arab countries, which in its final outcome has been FAR more thorough than the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Israel.<BR/><BR/>So if we talk 'collective crimes and victimizations' we're still not in a one-way street, by any means.<BR/><BR/>Pretty much all of this is in the article you commented on. I particularly welcome comments from people who've read my stuff first. Is this one of the skills they teach graduate students in Madison, Connecticut?Cyrushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00512481025183200804noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13169838.post-10188351790833238282007-06-07T22:58:00.000+01:002007-06-07T22:58:00.000+01:00this kind of discourse is typical of pro-israel lo...this kind of discourse is typical of pro-israel logic: paint criticism of israel as engaged in moral absolutism, israelis = bad, palestinians = good. that is not it at all. this kind of misrepresentation sounds too much like the simplicity of the american media. it is not about individual goodness or badness, but collective crimes and victimizations. one nation vanquished another and engaged in ethnic cleansing over a period of decades. several decades after this began, there were violent reactions, some terroristic. a reasonable person can say: the original sin in this situation is the process of ethnic cleansing that began in the early 20th century. this fact does not justify or whitewash atrocities committed by individual palestinians. but the collective guilt hangs on zionism, much as the collective guilt of white america in the jim crow era is undeniable, even if one's parents had no direct hand in maintaining the system of indirect and direct violence.ratberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18031292156567998136noreply@blogger.com