Apartheid in Israel

[laurentius]

Originally posted by Caligastia


If youre so intelligent...then why do you sound like an imbecile?

I propably learned it from you

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by MOBIUS


We're talking about Apartheid in Israel, and then you wonder why I think a Jewish state, and not a secular state is wrong...

The jews bought a lot of the land for israel legally from arabs, if you buy a house, do you have to give it back if your neigbours hate you?

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Caligastia
Mobius-
Why do you think its ok for arabs to steal the land of Israel, yet you condemn Jews for taking it back? Sounds like you have something against jews to me...

Umm, that was 2,000 years ago!

You of all people are on very thin ground, seeing as from where I'm sitting a comment like that means that you're preparing to give New Zealand back to the Maoris!

Hey for a Pakeha, you one good Bro'!

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
To me, the emotive issue of Israel is how the nation came into existence.

Feeling guilty?

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by laurentius


I propably learned it from you

You must really look up to me. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

[laurentius]

Whatever suits you ,sir

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by MOBIUS


Umm, that was 2,000 years ago!

Same thing though.

You of all people are on very thin ground, seeing as from where I'm sitting a comment like that means that you're preparing to give New Zealand back to the Maoris!

Slightly irrelevant dont you think? Please try to stay on the topic.

[Caligastia]

The title of this thread is disgusting and an insult to blacks in south africa.

Umm, that was 2,000 years ago!

Arabs stole the Jew's land 1300 years ago, to be precise, but they never eradicated them completely. Is there a statute of limitations on wrongdoing?

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Ned
I'm sorry, Mobius, but this is beyond the pale. You either do not know the history of the region or you are a racist, slandering ****.

Sorry, which part don't you like Ned?

Did the Zionists not lobby the UK, US and UN to allow them to settle Israel and give them part of it as an independent Jewish state?

Did the locals who were already there want them!??

Are there not millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants who are barred from returning home? Has their land not been, er, 'appropriated?

Is Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza not illegal in the eyes of the UN?

Are the settlements not being built and expanded in occupied East Jerusalem?

Would you care to enlighten me as to why all that is outlined above is 'beyond the pale'.

Perhaps a brief history of the region from my learned friend is in order?

Just because you don't like the truth, you have to resort to branding me a racist, slandering ****. How very eloquent! Bravo! A rapier-like wit this World has not yet seen until this very day has been unveiled on this very board!

Whereas you are waaaay off the mark with your own slanderous comments unless you can pull apart each and every one of my statements listed above - I can be accurate in the certain knowledge that you, sir, a complete moron...

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Caligastia
Slightly irrelevant dont you think? Please try to stay on the topic.

Same thing though!

Whassamatter, don't want to talk about NZ's dubious past...

Don't want to sound a tad hypocritical do we?

Slightly relevant dont you think? Please try not to dodge the question.

The title of this thread is disgusting and an insult to blacks in south africa.

Why?

Surely they would be only to happy help others break free from a similar misery they themselves once tasted?

Arabs stole the Jew's land 1300 years ago, to be precise, but they never eradicated them completely. Is there a statute of limitations on wrongdoing?

Oooh, my bad - what's 1,300 years between friends...

Wasn't it 1840 when you guys screwed the Maoris over with the Treaty of Waitangi? That was only 162 years ago...

Is there a statute of limitations on wrongdoing?

Bet your parents are going to be happy when you tell them you've signed their house and land over to the local Maori tribe...

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by MOBIUS

Did the Zionists not lobby the UK, US and UN to allow them to settle Israel and give them part of it as an independent Jewish state?

Yes

Did the locals who were already there want them!??

Yes again, there were 400, 000 Jews in palestine in 1945 (I can provide net census data to prove this)THEY sure wanted them.

Are there not millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants who are barred from returning home? Has their land not been, er, 'appropriated?

No. They renounced their claim to the UN resolution of november 1947, and ceded their claims to Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and in so doing, lost all LEGAL right of return. Therefore the land was NOT appropriated, it was lost by those countries when the aggressive war they launched failed.

Is Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza not illegal in the eyes of the UN?

The UN sees with Jew hating eyes, so it's pointless to even mention them. The arab states outnumber the Jews by something like 60-1 in the UN, who do you think would be favored?

Are the settlements not being built and expanded in occupied East Jerusalem?

It's pretty hard to "occupy" a place your people built and had stolen, don't you think?

Would you care to enlighten me as to why all that is outlined above is 'beyond the pale'.

Because you never admit the jews have rights and only condemn them.

[Caligastia]

Mobius-
I dont like the arrogant tone of your posts, if youre going to discuss this with me then treat me with the respect you gave me in person.

New Zealand was not "stolen" from the maoris, they sold it for a few guns and blankets.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by MOBIUS


Oooh, my bad - what's 1,300 years between friends...

67 was half a lifetime ago, what's 35 years between friends?

Is there a statute of limitations on wrongdoing?

The Jews were there first.

Bet your parents are going to be happy when you tell them you've signed their house and land over to the local Maori tribe...

How humorous of you...

[BlackStone]

Can I ask Do the pro Israeli poster feel that because the Jewish nation lived in the region 1300 years ago They now have the right to take whatever actions to make it soley Jewish again.

I know that Jews have always lived in the region (since that time).


Also have you taken into account that many of the Jewish families in that region may have become Christians, Muslims or whatever. Do they now loose their rights because they are not Jewish i.e they have lived in the region over this time period but now have to leave.

We cannot forget that the first Christians were actually Jewish this argument cannot be ignored.

How does the we were there first argument hold up to these kind of factors?

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Caligastia
Yes

So you agree

Yes again, there were 400, 000 Jews in palestine in 1945 (I can provide net census data to prove this)THEY sure wanted them.

Er, and I'm sure you know this full well, you should be considering how many Jews were in Israel before the Balfour Treaty... A huge number illegally entered the country during the 30's and 40's. I'm talking about before the wheels were set in motion to begin creating a Jewish State... Either way, they would still have been the minority.

No. They renounced their claim to the UN resolution of november 1947, and ceded their claims to Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and in so doing, lost all LEGAL right of return. Therefore the land was NOT appropriated, it was lost by those countries when the aggressive war they launched failed.

F*ck me, you have a strange sense of fair play... Their leaders renounced the resolution, because they rightly felt they were being shafted! So all the hundreds of thousands of civilians lost their land over the decisions of a few hotheads? How very convenient... It WAS appropriated - BY CONQUEST!

The UN sees with Jew hating eyes, so it's pointless to even mention them. The arab states outnumber the Jews by something like 60-1 in the UN, who do you think would be favored?

Oh right, yeah I forgot that there's only 61 countries in the UN...

Silly me!

The UN sees with 'Israel is in the wrong' eyes - naturally all the moderate and level headed governments of the World such as Europe, NZ etc vote against the Israeli occupation...

It's pretty hard to "occupy" a place your people built and had stolen, don't you think?

Yeah, 1,300 years ago - ancient history!!! Say didn't the Israelites conquer it from someone else. Shouldn't we give it back to them?

Remember, your family lives on former Maori land - do you not find your argument for Israel strangely at odds with the NZ treatment of the Maoris...?

Some might say that that might be a hypocritical stance?

Because you never admit the jews have rights and only condemn them.

Jews have rights! As a religion Jews have as many rights in the US for example as Christians!

What is plain WRONG, is that Jews have more and better rights in Israel and do Palestinians!!!

The point of it being a Jewish State, is that it will never be a secular state - by definition, it HAS to descriminate against non Jewish otherwise it would be a Jewish state!!!

That! In case you hadn't noticed, is the whole point of this thread being called APARTHEID IN ISRAEL...

Oy Vey!

Anywho - much as it is fun running rings around you, I must go to bed!

[BlackStone]

Also why does there have to be this hysteria whenever someone questions Israeli actions or its right to exist.
Because the state of Israel has not been in existence for long it is bound to cause some questions (existence wise).

I am not a fan of labelling posters to try and shut them up. Such derogatory remarks usually follow when someone is angry but has nothing tangible to add in terms of a retort to what has been said.

If I might suggest that instead some research takes place and the arguments are countered in a constructive critique. It will help your cause a hell of allot more..


*slight embarrassment remembering some of my recent posts*

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Feeling guilty?

Damned straight!

"We done them Rag 'eads up like a Kipper..."

As in, we didn't care particularly who we shafted during WWI as long as it advanced our cause...

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Caligastia
Mobius-
I dont like the arrogant tone of your posts, if youre going to discuss this with me then treat me with the respect you gave me in person.

I'm sorry Cal, you are absolutely right. I apologise for having reacted to being told that I sounded like a socialist nutcase. Or that the heat might be getting to me...

The last post was before I saw your post - are we friends again?

New Zealand was not "stolen" from the maoris, they sold it for a few guns and blankets.

Wasn't that the Native Americans? I think you will find that the Treaty of Waitangi was a collosal shafting of the Maoris...

If you looked at the evidence subjectively, you would have to admit that NZ was basically stolen from the Maoris.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by MOBIUS


I'm sorry Cal, you are absolutely right. I apologise for having reacted to being told that I sounded like a socialist nutcase. Or that the heat might be getting to me...

The last post was before I saw your post - are we friends again?

Sure

Wasn't that the Native Americans? I think you will find that the Treaty of Waitangi was a collosal shafting of the Maoris...

If you looked at the evidence subjectively, you would have to admit that NZ was basically stolen from the Maoris.

Come on Mobius, you just admitted that you know little about the issues surrounding the treaty of Waitangi, so Ill let you drop this subject gracefully if you wish.

[MOBIUS]

I admitted not such thing!

People sure are putting a lot of words into my mouth today.

The Treaty of Waitangi WAS NOT about some guns and a few blankets...!

You're talking to someone who has actually visited Waitangi and just been to Te Papa not that long ago...

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
Er, and I'm sure you know this full well, you should be considering how many Jews were in Israel before the Balfour Treaty... A huge number illegally entered the country during the 30's and 40's. I'm talking about before the wheels were set in motion to begin creating a Jewish State... Either way, they would still have been the minority.

Not true, a huge number is fictitous. The british kept tight control over immigration, very little illegal immigration was possible.
They would make up one third the population of Palestine in 48, why do you try to deny them there say?
Are you saying they must live without voice in a muslim state, even though they don't wish it?

F*ck me, you have a strange sense of fair play... Their leaders renounced the resolution, because they rightly felt they were being shafted! So all the hundreds of thousands of civilians lost their land over the decisions of a few hotheads? How very convenient... It WAS appropriated - BY CONQUEST!

Nonsense. The partition plan was based on population totals. The Muslims you favor tried to bully the minority Jews into having no state on their own land!
They lost, so it's just to bad...for them.

Oh right, yeah I forgot that there's only 61 countries in the UN...

Silly me!

The UN sees with 'Israel is in the wrong' eyes - naturally all the moderate and level headed governments of the World such as Europe, NZ etc vote against the Israeli occupation...

You can't "occupy" what's yours.
Those same nations once sanctioned Hitler and Mussolinni, except they called themselves the league of nations then, funny how their attitudes haven't changed.
It's also interesting how you stress that the more numerous should always get their way

Yeah, 1,300 years ago - ancient history!!! Say didn't the Israelites conquer it from someone else. Shouldn't we give it back to them?

Remember, your family lives on former Maori land - do you not find your argument for Israel strangely at odds with the NZ treatment of the Maoris...?

Some might say that that might be a hypocritical stance?

Some might say that someone with no argument seeks to divert attention with minutia, as youre attempting to do, further proof your talking through your arse(with all due respect).

Jews have rights! As a religion Jews have as many rights in the US for example as Christians!

What is plain WRONG, is that Jews have more and better rights in Israel and do Palestinians!!!

The point of it being a Jewish State, is that it will never be a secular state - by definition, it HAS to descriminate against non Jewish otherwise it would be a Jewish state!!!

That! In case you hadn't noticed, is the whole point of this thread being called APARTHEID IN ISRAEL...

More nonsense. The Pals want the "right" to force the Israelis into the islamic religion, force them to live as strangers in their own homeland, and strip their woman of many rights, and that is pure garbage. No thinking operson would want to be committed to such a fate.

Anywho - much as it is fun running rings around you, I must go to bed!

Running rings around me?

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
I admitted not such thing!

People sure are putting a lot of words into my mouth today.

The Treaty of Waitangi WAS NOT about some guns and a few blankets...!

You're talking to someone who has actually visited Waitangi and just been to Te Papa not that long ago...

Lets tackle one thing at a time shall we? If you want to discuss the treaty of waitangi then make a thread. Otherwise it seems that your only motivation for bringing it up is to accuse me of hypocrisy.

[Ned]

Originally posted by MOBIUS


To me, the emotive issue of Israel is how the nation came into existence. Zionists were able to lobby the World into enabling them to dislodge people from and steal the land of Palestine. IMO Israel had no right to come about as a nation - certainly not at the expense of millions of native Palestinians and their descendants!

The fact that it has means that we have to accept that this 'nation' is here to stay - we can however try to address Israel's illegal occupation of the '67 conquests... We can address the fact that even today *%&$ing Israeli settlements are being built and expanded in occupied East Jerusalem!!!

Mobius, I again quote the section of your post to which I objected. The passage clearly states that Zionists and their collaborators "dislodged [the] people from and [stole] the land of Palestine." From a later post you seem to justify this statement by referring results of the' 48 war, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled the war and even today are refugees. However the passage quoted clearly was intended to refer not to that time, but to the time prior '48, the time between the end of World War I and the declaration of the state of Israel by United Nations. During this time, the League of Nation's mandate permitted large Jewish immigration into Palestine as a so-called national homeland. The Jews who emigrated to Palestine did not steal the land. Rather they purchased it.

They did not steal the land of Palestine. Your statement is so prejudiced and false as to be outrageous.

As to the occupation being the illegal, I would like you to point to one U.N. resolution that states this. Security Council resolution 242, in contrast, merely calls for negotiations between the warring parties on the basis of Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories in exchange for peace. The drafters of the resolution itself indicated that the languages was carefully chosen so as to not require Israeli withdrawal from "all" of the occupied territories. The word "all" was demanded by both the Arabs and the USSR. That it did not appear in the final draft of the Security Council resolution was intentional. This omission was intended to indicate that total withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories was not required. But note also that no withdrawal was required of Israel without overall peace agreement with the Arabs, not just what the Palestinians. That Arab peace offering has only just been made for the very first time by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

Let me remind you also that the six-day war was as a result of Arab aggression. Their openly stated purpose was to put an end to Israel for once and for all.

From an historical context, you also know that the Jews were persecuted, massacred and generally exiled from portions of Europe under the "control" of Christianity beginning with the crusades and ending with the Holocaust. The hatred of the Jews was fanned openly by the Church. Massacres, including burnings-at-the-stake, were common during the time of the crusades. There was a large massacre in England in 1264. The English exiled the Jews in 1290 under pain of execution. For a time, the persecution of the Jews relaxed and they returned in some numbers to the West. But the Dreyfuss affair in France convinced many Jews that a downward spiral to persecution had again begun. This Zionists prophecy proved entirely accurate. Europe was not a place the Jews could call home.

References to Arab conquest of the Holy Land in 634 are out of place. They did not conquer it from Jews, but from the Romans. The reason Israel exists is as a direct result of overwhelming and virulent European anti-Semitism.

What we need in the Middle East is overall peace agreement that results in safe and secure borders for Israel and a free and democratic Palestinian state. What we do not need is more virulent anti-Semitism.

[Sirotnikov]

, and I'm sure you know this full well, you should be considering how many Jews were in Israel before the Balfour Treaty... A huge number illegally entered the country during the 30's and 40's. I'm talking about before the wheels were set in motion to begin creating a Jewish State... Either way, they would still have been the minority.

You should be considering how many Arabs entered Palestine illegally during the 20s, 30s and 40s.

Oh wait, there were no restrictions on Arab immigration to Palestine!!

naturally all the moderate and level headed governments of the World

Such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Quwait, Arab Emirates... etc etc.

Say didn't the Israelites conquer it from someone else. Shouldn't we give it back to them?

"they" were successfully integrated into the Jewish people.

The point of it being a Jewish State, is that it will never be a secular state - by definition, it HAS to descriminate against non Jewish otherwise it would be a Jewish state!!!

Not at all.

Israel is a secular state, with law based on Jewish tradition.

What you see as religion, is merely a part of the tradition of the Jewish nation.

Most of the laws in the bible and later books are social and so on and have no relation to religion or god what so ever.

The point of it being a Jewish State, is that it will never be a secular state - by definition, it HAS to descriminate against non Jewish otherwise it would be a Jewish state!!!

Not at all.

Germany is a german state. It's a state of the german people. Does it mean it descrimates against immigrants?

USA is an american state. An immigrant can't be elected president. Is that not descrimination?

You're nitpicking, trying to blame Israel of every possible evil in the world, not noticing you're guilty of the same.

[S. Kroeze]

Originally posted by Caligastia
The jews bought a lot of the land for israel legally from arabs, if you buy a house, do you have to give it back if your neigbours hate you?

Dear Caligastia,

Thank you for joining the discussion!
Though careful reading is probably not your forte, I guess you are willing to admit that your sketch of events is in broad outlines incompatible with my verbatim citation of B.Thomas, as presented by me in the first post of this thread:

Expropriation of Arab-owned land in Israel by all levels of government
"Zionists wanted a Jewish-run state for the Jewish people on Jewish-owned land. But less than 10 percent of the land of Israel was owned by Jews or Jewish organizations at the end of the 1948 war.(34) Consequently, Israel sought to make the Jewish state the owner of the land. This effort proved very successful. Virtually all Arab-owned land in Israel (about 91 percent of the country in 1948) was eventually and seemingly legally transfered to the Jewish state or to the Jewish National Fund by 1966. Nearly all new Jewish settlements between 1948 and early 1953 were built on Arab land dubbed "abandoned" despite that fact that most Arab refugees were kept at gunpoint(!) from returning.(35) This seizure was in violation of the UN Partition Resolution stipulation that "no expropriation of land owned by an Arab in the Jewish state shall be allowed except for public purposes... ..In all cases of expropriation, full compensation as fixed by the Supreme Court shall be paid prior to dispossession."(36)"

"(4) Nationalization of land. The land of Arab refugees and Arab-Israeli citizens was converted into Israeli state-owned "public" land through the Jewish National Fund. Superficially, the conversion had the appearance of satisfying a UN proscription against expropriation of Arab lands "except for public purposes." JNF administration made the land "public" by definition. Because JNF land was reserved for Jewish use only, the Arab citizen lost his land.

There was a hitch in this last nationalization scheme. Nationalization by the state required proof of state ownership -ordinarily proved by payment of compensation. After a five-year delay, the government passed a law to compensate Arabs for expropriated land (Validation of Acts and Compensation Law, 1953) -perhaps out of fear that the whole question of expropriation would someday flare up.(41) At first the government offered 1947 land prices, then 1950 prices. Prime Minister Moshe Sharett considered the latter compensation to be a "scandalous robbery" since the Israeli pound was worth one-fifth its former value due to hyperinflation.(42) A large number of Arab-Israeli citizens refused to sign away their land for unfair compensation. To Palestinian-Arab refugees outside Israel, compensation for land and property was never offered."

(source: B.Thomas, "How Israel Was Won",1999)

(34) In 1949, the Jews had possession of about 77 percent of Palestine (20.5 out of 26.4 million dunams) but owned only 8.4 percent in Palestine. In May 1948, Jews owned about 6.6 percent of Palestine (1.74 million dumans). Walter Lehn, "The Jewish National Fund", Journal of Palestine Studies 3, No. 4 (Summer 1974), 74 n 2. UN estimates of Jewish ownership in May 1948 range from 6 to 15 percent. Stephen Green, Taking Sides (Brattleboro Vt.: Amana Press, 1988), 100n
(35) Don Peretz, Israel and the Palestine Arabs (Washington: Middle East Institute, 1958), 143. Thirty-five thousand were eventually allowed to return.
(36) Cited in Sachar, History, Vol. I, 386.
(41) Jiryis, Arabs in Israel, 126.
(42) Jiryis, Arabs in Israel, 127.

Of course you are free to dismiss this study as anti-Semitic propaganda. Yet it would improve our discussion when you would try to support your view on arguments, preferably founded on sources. When you are indeed living in New York, you could easily study the field reports in the United Nations Archives, the most objective source material, made by American, French, Belgian and Swedish staff members, who generally supported the creation of a Zionist state.

Dalgetti -though not denying there were large-scale expropriations- posted this reply:
"This guys takes a near truth and twists it into a lie. The percentage of the land owned by jews by 1948 on the land that will afterwards called the state of Israel was higher than that . we didn't owned the majority of the land , but it was higher than 9 percent. considering the fact that around 66 percent of the land owned by Israel before '67 is actually DESERT that cannot be owned by neither one, the claim that arabs owned the rest is hoping for a human error on the side of the innocent reader."

I hope you will notice that B.Thomas gives two sources for his estimate: the article by Walter Lehn and the UN estimate. Unfortunately Dalgetti does not give any source, so it is difficult to judge his version.

The idea that you cannot own DESERT is not shared by the Israeli government:
"Israel's mineral resources are the property of the state and the most important known ones are exploited by companies owned wholly or partly by the state. This is fairly common practice in many parts of the world. But what is unusual is that the land itself, especially agricultural land, is overwhelmingly the property of the state -not merely in the nominal sense in which land in many Latin American countries, for instance, is said to belong to the state, but in a very real sense that effectively determines its use.

Of the total area of Israel, 92 percent belongs to the National Land Authority, which was set up in 1959 to administer all the lands formerly under the authority of the Jewish National Fund and the state; only the remaining 8 percent is privately owned, half by Jews and half by Arabs. If account is taken only of the farmed and built-up area, then the proportion of privately owned land increases to 20 percent; but this means that virtually all the land reserves of the country are in the hands of the National Land Authority."
(source: N.Safran: 'Israel, the Embattled Ally',1978)

It also seems to me Dalgetti's estimate of the desert is rather high:
"Potentially usable agricultural land is plentiful in Israel, but water resources are relatively scarce. Surveys of land-use potential carried out by the Israeli government estimate that of the state's total area of 20.7 million dunams (a dunam equals approximately one-quarter acre), more than 4 million dunams are potentially available for dry farming, and more than 5.5 million dunams are potentially available for farming under irrigation. Of the potential dry farming area, nearly two-thirds is actually cultivated; while of the area available for farming under irrigation, less than one-third is actually worked. To realize even that degree of irrigated agriculture in addition to meeting industrial and personal needs, Israel has had to tap nearly the totality of its water resources at the cost of enormous investments."
(source: N.Safran: 'Israel, the Embattled Ally',1978)

It is indeed highly probable that right of ownership in the desert parts of Palestine was not entered in the land register. Neither were the hunting-grounds of the Indians ever registered.
Yet this does not justify the conclusion that the nomads of the desert were not the legitimate owners. The expropriation of their environment resembles the trickery treatment of the Indians.

Here is another description of this illegal behaviour:
"During the war and immediately afterwards, the wild scramble by the Jews to seize Arab property continued. A study issued in April 1949 by the Knesset's Finance Committee admits that the presence of so much Arab proprety put 'the fighting and victorious community before serious material temptation.' According to the Israeli report:, 'affairs in many areas degenerated without restraint.'(2) Not only were thousands of landholdings seized and occupied but thousands more orchards and vineyards were either uprooted or neglected irreparably by Israelis who wished to use land for Jewish settlement.

The land of all Palestinian refugees was subject to confiscation, as well as the property of 30,000 Israeli Arabs who were classified as 'internal absentees'. Many of these people had fled only a short distance from their homes or had been absent for only a few days. Even though they had never left Israeli territory and were considered citizens of Israel, their land was subject to confiscation. Many other Israeli Arabs lost their land because they could not prove their ownership. Numerous records had been destroyed in the chaos of war and the transition from British to Israeli administration. There were many cases where Arab residents of Israel lost property which had been in their family for generations.

Some Jews disapproved of their government's policy of seizing the property of Israeli Arabs. Moshe Smilansky, a member of the ruling Mapai party wrote, 'someday we will have to account for this theft and spoilation not only to our conscience but also to law.'(3) But the government had no intention of relenting in its policy. Speaking in the Knesset, Finance Minister Eliezer Kaplan asserted that the question of the seized property was 'a delicate matter' which involved 'national security'.

Arab members of the Knesset protested that the government had even classified as absentee landlords people who the Israeli army admitted had been forcibly transferred after(!) the armistice to other areas for 'security reasons'. The Arab Knesset members asserted that the government had no right to seize the property of legal residents of the country who carried Israeli identity cards. Even the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled in several cases that the government lacked the slightest pretext to seize property of many Arabs. Eventually the government offered monetary compensation for the land of Israeli Arabs but it amounted to a tiny fraction of its real value. Most Israeli Arabs refused to accept the insulting pittance."

(souce: M.Palumbo: 'The Palestinian Catastrophe',1987)

(2) R.Gabbay, A Political Study of the Arab-Jewish Conflict, p. 349.
(3) H.M.Sachar, A History of Israel, p. 387.

The similarity of the studies by B.Thomas and M.Palumbo on this issue is striking!

Sincerely,

S.Kroeze

[Ned]

S. Kroeze, Do you intend to answer the question I asked earlir concerning your basic premise: definition of Apartheid in the ICC is the oppression of one people over another because of race. How do you square this definition with the fact that both Arab and Jew are semites?

[Panag]

Originally posted by S. Kroeze


Dear Caligastia,

Thank you for joining the discussion!
Though careful reading is probably not your forte, I guess you are willing to admit that your sketch of events is in broad outlines incompatible with my verbatim citation of B.Thomas, as presented by me in the first post of this thread:

Expropriation of Arab-owned land in Israel by all levels of government
"Zionists wanted a Jewish-run state for the Jewish people on Jewish-owned land. But less than 10 percent of the land of Israel was owned by Jews or Jewish organizations at the end of the 1948 war.(34) Consequently, Israel sought to make the Jewish state the owner of the land. This effort proved very successful. Virtually all Arab-owned land in Israel (about 91 percent of the country in 1948) was eventually and seemingly legally transfered to the Jewish state or to the Jewish National Fund by 1966. Nearly all new Jewish settlements between 1948 and early 1953 were built on Arab land dubbed "abandoned" despite that fact that most Arab refugees were kept at gunpoint(!) from returning.(35) This seizure was in violation of the UN Partition Resolution stipulation that "no expropriation of land owned by an Arab in the Jewish state shall be allowed except for public purposes... ..In all cases of expropriation, full compensation as fixed by the Supreme Court shall be paid prior to dispossession."(36)"

"(4) Nationalization of land. The land of Arab refugees and Arab-Israeli citizens was converted into Israeli state-owned "public" land through the Jewish National Fund. Superficially, the conversion had the appearance of satisfying a UN proscription against expropriation of Arab lands "except for public purposes." JNF administration made the land "public" by definition. Because JNF land was reserved for Jewish use only, the Arab citizen lost his land.

There was a hitch in this last nationalization scheme. Nationalization by the state required proof of state ownership -ordinarily proved by payment of compensation. After a five-year delay, the government passed a law to compensate Arabs for expropriated land (Validation of Acts and Compensation Law, 1953) -perhaps out of fear that the whole question of expropriation would someday flare up.(41) At first the government offered 1947 land prices, then 1950 prices. Prime Minister Moshe Sharett considered the latter compensation to be a "scandalous robbery" since the Israeli pound was worth one-fifth its former value due to hyperinflation.(42) A large number of Arab-Israeli citizens refused to sign away their land for unfair compensation. To Palestinian-Arab refugees outside Israel, compensation for land and property was never offered."

(source: B.Thomas, "How Israel Was Won",1999)

(34) In 1949, the Jews had possession of about 77 percent of Palestine (20.5 out of 26.4 million dunams) but owned only 8.4 percent in Palestine. In May 1948, Jews owned about 6.6 percent of Palestine (1.74 million dumans). Walter Lehn, "The Jewish National Fund", Journal of Palestine Studies 3, No. 4 (Summer 1974), 74 n 2. UN estimates of Jewish ownership in May 1948 range from 6 to 15 percent. Stephen Green, Taking Sides (Brattleboro Vt.: Amana Press, 1988), 100n
(35) Don Peretz, Israel and the Palestine Arabs (Washington: Middle East Institute, 1958), 143. Thirty-five thousand were eventually allowed to return.
(36) Cited in Sachar, History, Vol. I, 386.
(41) Jiryis, Arabs in Israel, 126.
(42) Jiryis, Arabs in Israel, 127.

Of course you are free to dismiss this study as anti-Semitic propaganda. Yet it would improve our discussion when you would try to support your view on arguments, preferably founded on sources. When you are indeed living in New York, you could easily study the field reports in the United Nations Archives, the most objective source material, made by American, French, Belgian and Swedish staff members, who generally supported the creation of a Zionist state.

Dalgetti -though not denying there were large-scale expropriations- posted this reply:
"This guys takes a near truth and twists it into a lie. The percentage of the land owned by jews by 1948 on the land that will afterwards called the state of Israel was higher than that . we didn't owned the majority of the land , but it was higher than 9 percent. considering the fact that around 66 percent of the land owned by Israel before '67 is actually DESERT that cannot be owned by neither one, the claim that arabs owned the rest is hoping for a human error on the side of the innocent reader."

I hope you will notice that B.Thomas gives two sources for his estimate: the article by Walter Lehn and the UN estimate. Unfortunately Dalgetti does not give any source, so it is difficult to judge his version.

The idea that you cannot own DESERT is not shared by the Israeli government:
"Israel's mineral resources are the property of the state and the most important known ones are exploited by companies owned wholly or partly by the state. This is fairly common practice in many parts of the world. But what is unusual is that the land itself, especially agricultural land, is overwhelmingly the property of the state -not merely in the nominal sense in which land in many Latin American countries, for instance, is siad to belong to the state, but in a very real sense that effectively determines its use.

Of the total area of Israel, 92 percent belongs to the National Land Authority, which was set up in 1959 to administer all the lands formerly under the authority of the Jewish National Fund and the state; only the remaining 8 percent is privately owned, half by Jews and half by Arabs. If account is taken only of the farmed and built-up area, then the proportion of privately owned land increases to 20 percent; but this means that virtually all the land reserves of the country are in the hands of te National Land Authority."
(source: N.Safran: 'Israel, the Embattled Ally',1978)

It also seems to me Dalgetti's estimate of the desert is rather high:
"Potentially usable agricultural land is plentiful in Israel, but water resources are relatively scarce. Surveys of land-use potential carried out by the Israeli government estimate that of the state's total area of 20.7 million dunams (a dunam equals approximately one-quarter acre), more than 4 million dunams are potentially available for dry farming, and more than 5.5 million dunams are potentially available for farming under irrigation. Of the potential dry farming area, nearly two-thirds is actually cultivated; while of the area available for farming under irrigation, less than one-third is actually worked. To realize even that degree of irrigated agriculture in addition to meeting industrial and personal needs, Israel has had to tap nearly the totality of its water resources at the cost of enormous investments."
(source: N.Safran: 'Israel, the Embattled Ally',1978)

It is indeed highly probable that right of ownership in the desert parts of Palestine was not entered in the land register. Neither were the hunting-grounds of the Indians ever registered.
Yet this does not justify the conclusion that the nomads of the desert were not the legitimate owners. The expropriation of their environment resembles the trickery treatment of the Indians.

Here is another description of this illegal behaviour:
"During the war and immediately afterwards, the wild scramble by the Jews to seize Arab property continued. A study issued in April 1949 by the Knesset's Finance Committee admits that the presence of so much arab proprety put 'the fighting and victorious community before serious material temptation.' According to the Israeli report:, 'affairs in many areas degenerated without restraint.'(2) Not only were thousands of landholdings seized and occupied but thousands more orchards and vineyards were either uprooted or neglected irraparably by Israelis who wished to use land for Jewish settlement.

The land of all Palestinian refugees was subject to confiscation, as well as the property of 30,000 Israeli Arabs who were classified as 'internal absentees'. many of these people had fled only a short distance from thier homes or had been absent for only a few days. Even though they had never left Israeli territory and were considered citizens of Israel, their land was subject to confiscation. many other Israeli Arabs lost their land because they could not prove their ownership. Numerouw records had been destroyed in the chaos of war and the transition from British to Israeli administration. There were many cases where Arab residents of Israel lost property which had been in their family for generations.

Some Jews disapproved of their government's policy of seizing the property of Israeli Arabs. Moshe Smilansky, a member of the ruling Mapai party wrote, 'someday we will have to account for this theft and spoilation not only to our conscience but also to law.'(3) But the government had no intention of relenting in its policy. Speaking in the Knesset, Finance Minister Eliezer Kaplan asserted that the question of the seized property was 'a delicate matter' which involved 'national security'.

Arab members of the Knesset protested that the government had even classified as absentee landlords people who the Israeli army admitted had been forcibly transferred after(!) the armistice to other areas for 'security reasons'. The Arab Knesset members asserted that the government had no right to seize the property of legal residents of the country who carried Israeli identity cards. Even the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled in several cases that the government lacked the slightest pretext to seize property of many Arabs. Eventually the government offered monetary compensation for the land of Israeli Arabs but it amounted to a tiny fraction of its real value. Most Israeli Arabs refused to accept the insulting pittance."

(souce: M.Palumbo: 'The Palestinian Catastrophe',1987)

(2) R.Gabbay, A Political Study of the Arab-Jewish Conflict, p. 349.
(3) H.M.Sachar, A History of Israel, p. 387.

The similarity of the studies by B.Thomas and M.Palumbo on this issue is striking!

Sincerely,

S.Kroeze

hi ,

please check again on your dates and numbers , ........
they are completely wrong , ..........

and maybe , just maybe , you should come to see for yourself , ......this way you can learn a lot , and learn about the correct situation , ...............

have a nice day

[BlackStone]

Originally posted by panag


hi ,

please check again on your dates and numbers , ........
they are completely wrong , ..........

and maybe , just maybe , you should come to see for yourself , ......this way you can learn a lot , and learn about the correct situation , ...............

have a nice day

You have a very wooden way of talking. You have said that what he is claiming is wrong. Do you have any substitute fugures. And when you say he should come over and check it out for himself would it also include some research diving in the redsea and surveying some of the beach life?

[S. Kroeze]

Originally posted by Ned
S. Kroeze, Do you intend to answer the question I asked earlir concerning your basic premise: definition of Apartheid in the ICC is the oppression of one people over another because of race. How do you square this definition with the fact that both Arab and Jew are semites?

I noticed your question but I have so many posts to react to and my time is limited. Yesterday I made an extensive reply to a post of Sirotnikov, but by some most unhappy accident it was lost.

I would not base the definition of 'apartheid' exclusively on race. English colonial rule in Ireland was also typically 'apartheid'-like in my view; the differences between English and Irish were linguistic, religious and cultural.

Race is a most elusive hair-brained scheme anyway. There are -apart from some very isolated people like the Australian Aborigenes and the Bushmen- only four clearly distinct races: Mongoloids, Amerinds, Negroids and Europeids.
So BOTH Hitler's 'Aryans' and the Semites are part of the same Europeid race!

'Semitic' is essentially a linguistic term, including Akkadian, Canaanite, Ugaritic, Amorite, Aramaic, South Arabic and Ethiopic.

As you probably will have noticed, I have consistently defended the position that a Jew is defined by his religion.
Yet strikingly enough I have encountered several posts of the 'Israel' lobby where they claim that Jews are a 'separate' race. So at least some Israelis think they are a 'separate' race, which is most disturbing anyway.

Time and againg 'racial purity' (I truly hate the very notion) has been proved to be nothing but a chimera.
Some simple number work will show you:
Imagine a 100% 'racially pure population. Assume they intermarry for 99% exclusively with their 'own race'. (Such exclusive marriage customs you will only encounter on Easter Island)
After 2000 years, 80 generations, this population is only 44.75 'racially pure', thank goodness!

And since the Jews were routinely persecuted and often forced to migrate, after 2000 years there was a tremendous difference -ethnically, culturally, linguistically- between various groups of Jews.

Again something remarkable: anti-Semitism is by most Jews exclusively used to describe discrimination of 'Jews'. Discrimination of speakers of other Semitic language has not even a name! I am not surprised, because though Jews have been consistently persecuted by Christians, hatred and contempt for the Arab 'infidel' was even more virulent.
Also European Jews were considered 'superior' to Arab Jews!
Many European Jews shared this outlook! That's why they colonised Palestine AGAINST the wish of the Sephardim....

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Hi. I just moved in next door. Say- it's really hot. Is it OK if I take a shower here?