Was it right to repopulate Israel with Jews?

[Dukasaur]

Do you mean semi free as the old meaning, ie without restriction? Then yes, you are right, they are with little restriction. If you mean free as the modern meaning, ie your free if America says you are, then yes. If you mean free as in free to make decisions for yourself, then no Israel is about the least free place on earth.

I mean the basic generally-accepted definition, without nitpicking about minor variations in definition.

Pick whichever one you like of the generally accepted indices: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indices_of_Freedom

Freedom House, Cato Institute, the Economist, Transparency International, take your pick. All of them rank Israel well above the median, and some of them in the top quintile.

[_sabotage_]

Come on. Lets be serious. You are trying to say that Israel is free?

The jews are conscripted and the Palestinians are in prison.

[_sabotage_]

Saddam Hussein 2000 starts selling oil in euros. America buys up as much as they can, taking a huge loss. We take over and immediately revert to selling the oil in dollars.

Libya proposes selling oil in gold. Qaddafi gets brutally and publicly murdered and tortured by Al Qaeda supported by NATO.

The truth is any time the Fed is threatened and their monopoly money opposed, someone dies.

JFK executive order 1110 allowing the president to print dollars. He is killed and Johnson cancels the executive order in less than a month.

[saxitoxin]

Good to know. By this Law of Gladiator Conquest, it just means the Arab world needs to fight a war with Israel and win and then they will have a right to the territory.

With the Israelis outnumbered 100-1 and dependent on welfare handouts from their dog, the U.S., which is about to go bankrupt, it means the Day of Reckoning is coming, soon, soon, soon ... tick-tock, tick-tock ...

Indeed.

Why you take such delight in the idea that the one tiny semi-free nation in the entire region may soon be lost, and the darkness of Sharia dictatorship descend upon the region, I can't understand. Unless your Jew-hating really is powerful enough to overwhelm your otherwise libertarian instincts....

Baby wants a stick of dynamite. I refuse to give it to baby, you light it and hand it off. And I'm anti-baby? LMAO

I am acknowledging the absolute and undisputable truth of what is about to happen to Israel if they maintain their intransigence. Not only does that not make me an anti-Semite, it makes you an anti-Semite for supporting the Israelis to pursue a course that will result in a war from which they have no hope of emerging.

Jews are precious to Muslims as dhimni (divine people) under the Treaty of Umar of 637, the protection guarantees of which are included in the constitution of the Palestinian National Authority.

ON A separate note ... Yasser Arafat's remains will be exhumed next week to determine if the Israelis assassinated him. For the sake of the thousands of Israelis who will probably pay the price If it's announced Abu Ammar was killed by the ever-bumbling Mossad, let's hope it's not true. Once again, their shenanigans may be their own undoing.

[Maugena]

I don't understand this at all? This is just pure 100% spam. There isn't even a message with this advertisement. At least write something about the topic or make a joke or something at least.

You're thick-headed, apparently.
How unfortunate.

[Maugena]

"Centre" is the right word. "Center" is a crass Americanism.

Made me giggle.

[Dukasaur]

Come on. Lets be serious. You are trying to say that Israel is free?

The jews are conscripted and the Palestinians are in prison.

Yeah, there are restrictions, which is why they're not at the top of any freedom index. They are still above the median.

All things are relative. Nobody is perfectly free, and nobody is totally unfree. The only question is, in your class, do you score higher or lower than your neighbours?

On the basic things that measure freedom (the right to criticize our leaders, the right to organise politically, the right to cast a secret ballot in elections, the right to a fair trial when accused of a crime, the right to follow one's own religion even if its opposed to the official religion, the right to choose your own course of education and to steer your own career, the right to read the books you want and watch the movies you want, the right to pack up and leave if you get sick of the place, etc., etc., etc., they score well. Not perfectly, but above average. That's all I'm saying. Look up any of the indexes I mentioned, or any others for that matter.

[Gillipig]

@Gillipig, who repopulated Israel with Jews and when?

This is a straightforward question, not sarcasm or biased.

Fixed.

The answer is Great Britain. It started with the Balfour Declaration in 1917, where Great Britain stated it's support of Sionism. Between 1922-1948, Great Britain, (which Israel was a colony of) aided the Jews in "coming back" to Israel. Israel became a nation of it's own in 1948 and after that it has continued to pursue Sionism.
Without Great Britains support and approval, there would be no Israel like we know it today.

[chang50]

@Gillipig, who repopulated Israel with Jews and when?

This is a straightforward question, not sarcasm or biased.

Fixed.

The answer is Great Britain. It started with the Balfour Declaration in 1917, where Great Britain stated it's support of Sionism. Between 1922-1948, Great Britain, (which Israel was a colony of) aided the Jews in "coming back" to Israel. Israel became a nation of it's own in 1948 and after that it has continued to pursue Sionism.
Without Great Britains support and approval, there would be no Israel like we know it today.

My homeland has a lot to answer for..

[DoomYoshi]

All things are relative. Nobody is perfectly free, and nobody is totally unfree. The only question is, in your class, do you score higher or lower than your neighbours?

Take your bullshit communist mantra elsewhere.

EDIT: I mean, are you really going to try to define wealth by how poor my neighbours are?

[Dukasaur]

@Gillipig, who repopulated Israel with Jews and when?

This is a straightforward question, not sarcasm or biased.

Fixed.

The answer is Great Britain. It started with the Balfour Declaration in 1917, where Great Britain stated it's support of Sionism. Between 1922-1948, Great Britain, (which Israel was a colony of) aided the Jews in "coming back" to Israel. Israel became a nation of it's own in 1948 and after that it has continued to pursue Sionism.
Without Great Britains support and approval, there would be no Israel like we know it today.

My homeland has a lot to answer for..

It was the right thing to do. The dominant trend of thought at the time was that every nationality needs a homeland. A lot of nations that had lost their land to invaders and completely ceased to exist were re-created -- Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were all ripped out of the German and Russian empires, while Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordania and Cyrenaica were taken from the Ottoman empire.

The theory was that every nationality needs a homeland. Nobody should have to wander the earth as a beggar, wondering when the next local ordinance will throw him out and force him back on the road. I don't see how anyone can argue with that.

Of course there were some injustices created. There were quite a few unhappy Germans in the new Poland, for instance, and they were used with great effect as pawns in WW II. Still, overall the effect was to give 100 million conquered people a nation of their own for the the first time in centuries. On balance, there were fewer oppressed people than before, by a long shot.

In the division of the former Ottoman lands, the vast majority of the land was to be given to the Arabs -- Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Cyrenaica -- while the traditional Christian enclave of Lebanon was to be preserved as such, and Palestine was to be restored to the Jews. You can see that the Arabs got by far the best part of the deal. The fertile fields of Egypt's delta are easily worth a hundred times as much as Isreal or Lebanon, while the vast oil wealth of Iraq is even greater.

The mistake made was in not performing the division immediately. If the Jews had been given Palestine right away in 1919, the chance is that everyone would have accepted it, but because another 30 years went by before the transfer was made, there was time for hearts to harden. In Europe, Finland, Czechoslovakia, etc., already had prototype Parliaments-in-waiting, and so the new European nations were created effective immediately. In the Middle East, however, there was no recent role-model of self-government nor any proto-governments (except in Egypt) so with unfortunate paternalistic hubris the European powers decided to administer these territories under League of Nations mandate until they could teach democracy to the Arabs. With the passing of 30 years, the Arabs forgot that they had been serfs of the Ottoman Empire, whose freedom was bought for them by the largesse of the British taxpayer and the blood of the British soldier. Unsatisfied with getting 99% of the value of the region (in the form of Iraq and Egypt and many other lands) they began to believe they could get all of it.

[Dukasaur]

All things are relative. Nobody is perfectly free, and nobody is totally unfree. The only question is, in your class, do you score higher or lower than your neighbours?

Take your bullshit communist mantra elsewhere.

EDIT: I mean, are you really going to try to define wealth by how poor my neighbours are?

Such eloquence. You're almost ready for Parliament.

Anyway, wealth can be measured in absolute terms such as money. Civil liberties cannot. Or, if you think you can devise a meaningful Unit of Freedom which is flexible enough to take in all the different things people mean when they say "freedom" by all means go ahead. Until then, the relative indices are all we have.

[silversun6]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63hTOaRu7h4

[puppydog85]

Durk,

You are seriously suggesting that the re-division of nations turns out well?
How many times has it been done by outside forces and then the region blows up years later?

But on the main note: Israel had ceased to be a nationality for about 2000 years prior to the Balfour. And the large majority of "Jews" were not of Israelite descent. So I fail to see how it was the right thing to do.

[Gillipig]

@Gillipig, who repopulated Israel with Jews and when?

This is a straightforward question, not sarcasm or biased.

Fixed.

The answer is Great Britain. It started with the Balfour Declaration in 1917, where Great Britain stated it's support of Sionism. Between 1922-1948, Great Britain, (which Israel was a colony of) aided the Jews in "coming back" to Israel. Israel became a nation of it's own in 1948 and after that it has continued to pursue Sionism.
Without Great Britains support and approval, there would be no Israel like we know it today.

My homeland has a lot to answer for..

It was the right thing to do. The dominant trend of thought at the time was that every nationality needs a homeland. A lot of nations that had lost their land to invaders and completely ceased to exist were re-created -- Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were all ripped out of the German and Russian empires, while Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordania and Cyrenaica were taken from the Ottoman empire.

The theory was that every nationality needs a homeland. Nobody should have to wander the earth as a beggar, wondering when the next local ordinance will throw him out and force him back on the road. I don't see how anyone can argue with that.

Of course there were some injustices created. There were quite a few unhappy Germans in the new Poland, for instance, and they were used with great effect as pawns in WW II. Still, overall the effect was to give 100 million conquered people a nation of their own for the the first time in centuries. On balance, there were fewer oppressed people than before, by a long shot.

In the division of the former Ottoman lands, the vast majority of the land was to be given to the Arabs -- Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Cyrenaica -- while the traditional Christian enclave of Lebanon was to be preserved as such, and Palestine was to be restored to the Jews. You can see that the Arabs got by far the best part of the deal. The fertile fields of Egypt's delta are easily worth a hundred times as much as Isreal or Lebanon, while the vast oil wealth of Iraq is even greater.

The mistake made was in not performing the division immediately. If the Jews had been given Palestine right away in 1919, the chance is that everyone would have accepted it, but because another 30 years went by before the transfer was made, there was time for hearts to harden. In Europe, Finland, Czechoslovakia, etc., already had prototype Parliaments-in-waiting, and so the new European nations were created effective immediately. In the Middle East, however, there was no recent role-model of self-government nor any proto-governments (except in Egypt) so with unfortunate paternalistic hubris the European powers decided to administer these territories under League of Nations mandate until they could teach democracy to the Arabs. With the passing of 30 years, the Arabs forgot that they had been serfs of the Ottoman Empire, whose freedom was bought for them by the largesse of the British taxpayer and the blood of the British soldier. Unsatisfied with getting 99% of the value of the region (in the form of Iraq and Egypt and many other lands) they began to believe they could get all of it.

Hah, logic fail! The "re creation" of nations like Finland and Poland only required redrawing of lines on a map, not relocation of population, which is why it's completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The reason Israel is a mess is because millions of Jews were imported into an already inhabited country.

[GreecePwns]

Again, Dukasaur, I accept that the Jews deserved a homeland. But why there? Why not in an uninhabited area like Kenya, like the plan that was presented to them in 1903?

The only answers to this question presented are religious ones. After seven pages.

[_sabotage_]

From my understanding, most Jews did not want to uproot themselves to repatriate a long forgone stretch of sand. The holocaust catalyzed the exodus out of Europe. And actually if you research as far as wikipedia, you will note that this was the first time that one nation secured another nation for a third and external party, ie England secured Palestine for the Jews who were not living there already.

[GreecePwns]

From my understanding, most Jews did not want to uproot themselves to repatriate a long forgone stretch of sand. The holocaust catalyzed the exodus out of Europe. And actually if you research as far as wikipedia, you will note that this was the first time that one nation secured another nation for a third and external party, ie England secured Palestine for the Jews who were not living there already.

They were willing to do so (at least half of them were; the other half, like some in this thread who are willing to justify imprisonment and seizing of property from non-Jews, would only accept the religious fanatic reasons for creating a Jewish state in already-inhabited Palestine).

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=181542#p3964219

[_sabotage_]

Actually, I did mention that the Balfour declaration was directed to Rothschild and not the Zionest leader Herzl. I don't believe the Baron really cared about the religious aspect of Israel, I think he wanted a military arm to further his business goals. I mean there are only so many times that you can get a country to go to war, and therefore enrich the Rothschilds without a bit of encouragement. Israel provided a front and an agent for the worlds richest family and allowed them to shrink further into the shadows.

[_sabotage_]

Sorry, the pogroms were the first catalyst and the holocaust the final one.

[JCR]

@Gillipig, who repopulated Israel with Jews and when?

This is a straightforward question, not sarcasm or biased.

Fixed.

The answer is Great Britain. It started with the Balfour Declaration in 1917, where Great Britain stated it's support of Sionism. Between 1922-1948, Great Britain, (which Israel was a colony of) aided the Jews in "coming back" to Israel. Israel became a nation of it's own in 1948 and after that it has continued to pursue Sionism.
Without Great Britains support and approval, there would be no Israel like we know it today.

I apologize for misspelling your username. unintentional typo.
I admittedly know nothing about you, but from reading some of your posts it would seem you are intelligent, but you also seem (just my impression) to be a little biased on this issue. It is human nature to take sides but I try, and regularly fail, to look at things as objectively as possible.

I would ask you, and anyone else to look at this webpagehttp://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm#Modern%20History
It appears to be a very objective unbiased view on the subject with sources to back up their statements. I learned a lot from the website since I found it and, as knowledge usually does, it has changed my understanding of the situation.

@Sax,
you were right about the date, a mere typo on my part.
Also, you are making some assumptions about why I was asking the questions. I have no agenda other than finding the truth. My only point in asking is simple. A persons response to a very simple unloaded question can sometimes reveal a lot about them.
I want to challenge you to put aside your hate, even temporarily, and just attempt to look at this website and others like it that try to approach this issue from an unbiased point of view. I am speaking from personal experience when I say that all the hate that is in you will destroy you, if you do not learn to let it go.

[DoomYoshi]

All things are relative. Nobody is perfectly free, and nobody is totally unfree. The only question is, in your class, do you score higher or lower than your neighbours?

Take your bullshit communist mantra elsewhere.

EDIT: I mean, are you really going to try to define wealth by how poor my neighbours are?

Such eloquence. You're almost ready for Parliament.

Anyway, wealth can be measured in absolute terms such as money. Civil liberties cannot. Or, if you think you can devise a meaningful Unit of Freedom which is flexible enough to take in all the different things people mean when they say "freedom" by all means go ahead. Until then, the relative indices are all we have.

Why can't Freedom be measured in Dollars?

[2dimes]

All things are relative. Nobody is perfectly free, and nobody is totally unfree. The only question is, in your class, do you score higher or lower than your neighbours?

Take your bullshit communist mantra elsewhere.

EDIT: I mean, are you really going to try to define wealth by how poor my neighbours are?

Such eloquence. You're almost ready for Parliament.

Anyway, wealth can be measured in absolute terms such as money. Civil liberties cannot. Or, if you think you can devise a meaningful Unit of Freedom which is flexible enough to take in all the different things people mean when they say "freedom" by all means go ahead. Until then, the relative indices are all we have.

Why can't Freedom be measured in Dollars?

What if you're in jail but someone is holding millions of dollars that belong to you? How much freedom is that?

[DoomYoshi]

All things are relative. Nobody is perfectly free, and nobody is totally unfree. The only question is, in your class, do you score higher or lower than your neighbours?

Take your bullshit communist mantra elsewhere.

EDIT: I mean, are you really going to try to define wealth by how poor my neighbours are?

Such eloquence. You're almost ready for Parliament.

Anyway, wealth can be measured in absolute terms such as money. Civil liberties cannot. Or, if you think you can devise a meaningful Unit of Freedom which is flexible enough to take in all the different things people mean when they say "freedom" by all means go ahead. Until then, the relative indices are all we have.

Why can't Freedom be measured in Dollars?

What if you're in jail but someone is holding millions of dollars that belong to you? How much freedom is that?

Ask Conrad Black.

[saxitoxin]

@Gillipig, who repopulated Israel with Jews and when?

This is a straightforward question, not sarcasm or biased.

Fixed.

The answer is Great Britain. It started with the Balfour Declaration in 1917, where Great Britain stated it's support of Sionism. Between 1922-1948, Great Britain, (which Israel was a colony of) aided the Jews in "coming back" to Israel. Israel became a nation of it's own in 1948 and after that it has continued to pursue Sionism.
Without Great Britains support and approval, there would be no Israel like we know it today.

My homeland has a lot to answer for..

It was the right thing to do. The dominant trend of thought at the time was that every nationality needs a homeland. A lot of nations that had lost their land to invaders and completely ceased to exist were re-created -- Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were all ripped out of the German and Russian empires, while Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordania and Cyrenaica were taken from the Ottoman empire.

The theory was that every nationality needs a homeland. Nobody should have to wander the earth as a beggar, wondering when the next local ordinance will throw him out and force him back on the road. I don't see how anyone can argue with that.

Of course there were some injustices created. There were quite a few unhappy Germans in the new Poland, for instance, and they were used with great effect as pawns in WW II. Still, overall the effect was to give 100 million conquered people a nation of their own for the the first time in centuries. On balance, there were fewer oppressed people than before, by a long shot.

In the division of the former Ottoman lands, the vast majority of the land was to be given to the Arabs -- Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Cyrenaica -- while the traditional Christian enclave of Lebanon was to be preserved as such, and Palestine was to be restored to the Jews. You can see that the Arabs got by far the best part of the deal. The fertile fields of Egypt's delta are easily worth a hundred times as much as Isreal or Lebanon, while the vast oil wealth of Iraq is even greater.

The mistake made was in not performing the division immediately. If the Jews had been given Palestine right away in 1919, the chance is that everyone would have accepted it, but because another 30 years went by before the transfer was made, there was time for hearts to harden. In Europe, Finland, Czechoslovakia, etc., already had prototype Parliaments-in-waiting, and so the new European nations were created effective immediately. In the Middle East, however, there was no recent role-model of self-government nor any proto-governments (except in Egypt) so with unfortunate paternalistic hubris the European powers decided to administer these territories under League of Nations mandate until they could teach democracy to the Arabs. With the passing of 30 years, the Arabs forgot that they had been serfs of the Ottoman Empire, whose freedom was bought for them by the largesse of the British taxpayer and the blood of the British soldier. Unsatisfied with getting 99% of the value of the region (in the form of Iraq and Egypt and many other lands) they began to believe they could get all of it.

Like the idea this is a religious conflict and Arabs can't live with Jews (it's not - it's a property rights dispute ... Arabs lived peacefully with Jews for 1,000 years), this is a deceptive characterization of the issue. The issue is not collective access to land, the issue is the seizure of individual properties - the application of eminent domain without compensation. Every word that doesn't address that reality is a smoke screen to confuse and muddy the issue and excuse non-payment of the financial obligations of the world's single largest deadbeat debtor.

80% of the conflict can be resolved tomorrow if the deadbeat pays the money it owes. Until then, legal eviction efforts by the representatives of the deed-holders will continue, as permitted by the English Common Law -