Karen Kraft
29
- Joined
- May 18, 2002
- Posts
- 36,253
[reprint]
People have no taste for history around here. They throw terms around about people and places but never care to check out the facts or the history.
People seem to suggest that there once was an Arab place called Palestine and then the United Nations kicked out all the Arabs and gave their land to the Jews because everybody felt sorry for the Jews because of the Holocaust of WWII.
No. Incorrect. I'm sure that's what they teach at public schools in the USA but it simply is not accurate.
Fast forwarding from Genesis 1:1 to 1920, we save some mostly irrelevant bandying back and forth of many populations. Limiting our inquiry to those things that led up to Israeli statehood (meaning, when the United Nations recognized a particular part of the planet as the nation of Israel), we start with THE BRITISH MANDATE FOR PALESTINE. See the picture below:
http://content.imagesocket.com/images/Palestine_19206cb.jpg
Notice that it is much bigger than what we now call "Israel" with or without the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. There are two major parts of the British Mandate for Palestine: the left one is called "Palestine" and the right part is called Transjordan. Lots of room for everybody, right? Well, rather than give all that land to one group of people, they divided it up. This is what we call the Partition. The area rich in Jewish population was on the left side and that part ended up being carved here and there and took on the name "Israel." some of the neighboring countries took a piece here or there and the remaining part was called Jordan. The city of Jerusalem, important to both Jews and Muslims, was right in the middle of the Partition so everybody (Jews, Muslims, Christians, CupCake eaters, etc.), got to go there and do their thing. The Jews were supposed to stay in the left part and the Arabs were supposed to stay in the Jewish part or move into the right part, now called Jordan. Although Arabs outnumbered Jews 2:1, and although they got more than double the land mass, it's obvious that the Jews got a nicer piece of property. But that wasn't the only rub. The Arabs believed that 100% of the Jews (even the ones who had been there since 1880 and before) should not be allowed to stay in any part of the former British Mandate for Palestine but instead should go someplace else. They invaded the newly formed country of Israel in an effort to force all the Jews off what they considered to be "Palestine" -- meaning every inch of the original British Mandate for Palestine (see map again if you've forgotten). But they lost the war. Then they tried again in 1967 and again in 1972. Now, the trouble with losing wars is it usually costs the loser in terms of land or politics or both. In exchange for peace, Israel made a few deals and gave up some small chunks of land here and there to their former enemies and one very large chunk of land to Egypt, one of the former enemies. But a lot of Arabs had left Israel at the start of the war in 1948, vowing not to live subjected to Jewish nationhood. A lot deiced to stay or have since returned. That's how we basically got to the pre-terrorist state of affairs.
Then came the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and other groups, who pleaded with the rest of the world that they were displaced by the Jews -- they were thrown out of their homeland by the Jews. While this had developed some sympathy with some reasonable folks and a lot of Jew-haters, it never really got off the ground, so to speak, until the so-called "Palestinians" started hijacking airplanes, killing Olympic athletes, and so on. Then the world decided that, rather than risk getting blown up on an airplane, why not side with the Palestinians and agree that the Jews stole their land. But still, nothing much was getting accomplished.
But then came OPEC -- the oil cartel. Amazing sums of money were now in the hands of Arabs (not Palestinians, mind you -- just other Arabs). This money was not used to develop Jordan (the Arab side of the Partition of the British Mandate for Palestine), but to fund additional terrorist activities in a struggle between disputing Arab factions as to which was to control Islamic nations in the region. The Arab countries fell on one side or the other of the who's-in-charge dispute, but they all agreed that the one way to keep their individual populations loyal to their respective leaderships was to create endless Jihad against the Jews.
Israel offered land for peace here and there, but whenever they did that, the pieces of land set aside for Palestinians who did not wish to remain in Israel proper, used their newly established pieces of land not to develop and prosper, but to fight with each other and promote even greater jihad against the Jews. This was a sure way to get funding for the other, richer, Arab countries. The West Bank (the piece of land that was carved out to make it so the Jordan side of the Jordan River had access to said river) has more or less settled down, with there now being "sectors" of Jerusalem, for example, wherein varying forms of self-rule and joint purchasing security agreements have sort of been successful. The government of Jordan eventually decided to go with agricultural and tourist development rather than participate in the fruitless Jihad festivities. From time to time, mostly due to developments being created in these areas by Jews, both with and without Israeli approval (Israel has extreme right wing religious nuts who stone people drive on Saturday, etc. and who go crazy every time some graveyard is to be excavated by archeologists). But the bottom line is that the fictionalization of the Gaza Strip leadership has created a hell hole amidst endless piles of rubble, with folks lobbing rockets over the wall to kill Jews on the Israel proper side.
After a while, and from time to time, the Israelis get pissed off about all the people getting killed by the rockets and so they bomb, invade, retaliate, or blockade the Gaza Strip in order to stop the rockets, etc. The blockade is supported by Egypt, since Egypt doesn't like the Hamas guys who were elected to run the Gaza Strip. That part doesn't really involve the Jews or Israelis as much as it has to do with the who's-in-charge-of-the-Arab-Countries dispute.
People have no taste for history around here. They throw terms around about people and places but never care to check out the facts or the history.
People seem to suggest that there once was an Arab place called Palestine and then the United Nations kicked out all the Arabs and gave their land to the Jews because everybody felt sorry for the Jews because of the Holocaust of WWII.
No. Incorrect. I'm sure that's what they teach at public schools in the USA but it simply is not accurate.
Fast forwarding from Genesis 1:1 to 1920, we save some mostly irrelevant bandying back and forth of many populations. Limiting our inquiry to those things that led up to Israeli statehood (meaning, when the United Nations recognized a particular part of the planet as the nation of Israel), we start with THE BRITISH MANDATE FOR PALESTINE. See the picture below:
http://content.imagesocket.com/images/Palestine_19206cb.jpg
Notice that it is much bigger than what we now call "Israel" with or without the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. There are two major parts of the British Mandate for Palestine: the left one is called "Palestine" and the right part is called Transjordan. Lots of room for everybody, right? Well, rather than give all that land to one group of people, they divided it up. This is what we call the Partition. The area rich in Jewish population was on the left side and that part ended up being carved here and there and took on the name "Israel." some of the neighboring countries took a piece here or there and the remaining part was called Jordan. The city of Jerusalem, important to both Jews and Muslims, was right in the middle of the Partition so everybody (Jews, Muslims, Christians, CupCake eaters, etc.), got to go there and do their thing. The Jews were supposed to stay in the left part and the Arabs were supposed to stay in the Jewish part or move into the right part, now called Jordan. Although Arabs outnumbered Jews 2:1, and although they got more than double the land mass, it's obvious that the Jews got a nicer piece of property. But that wasn't the only rub. The Arabs believed that 100% of the Jews (even the ones who had been there since 1880 and before) should not be allowed to stay in any part of the former British Mandate for Palestine but instead should go someplace else. They invaded the newly formed country of Israel in an effort to force all the Jews off what they considered to be "Palestine" -- meaning every inch of the original British Mandate for Palestine (see map again if you've forgotten). But they lost the war. Then they tried again in 1967 and again in 1972. Now, the trouble with losing wars is it usually costs the loser in terms of land or politics or both. In exchange for peace, Israel made a few deals and gave up some small chunks of land here and there to their former enemies and one very large chunk of land to Egypt, one of the former enemies. But a lot of Arabs had left Israel at the start of the war in 1948, vowing not to live subjected to Jewish nationhood. A lot deiced to stay or have since returned. That's how we basically got to the pre-terrorist state of affairs.
Then came the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and other groups, who pleaded with the rest of the world that they were displaced by the Jews -- they were thrown out of their homeland by the Jews. While this had developed some sympathy with some reasonable folks and a lot of Jew-haters, it never really got off the ground, so to speak, until the so-called "Palestinians" started hijacking airplanes, killing Olympic athletes, and so on. Then the world decided that, rather than risk getting blown up on an airplane, why not side with the Palestinians and agree that the Jews stole their land. But still, nothing much was getting accomplished.
But then came OPEC -- the oil cartel. Amazing sums of money were now in the hands of Arabs (not Palestinians, mind you -- just other Arabs). This money was not used to develop Jordan (the Arab side of the Partition of the British Mandate for Palestine), but to fund additional terrorist activities in a struggle between disputing Arab factions as to which was to control Islamic nations in the region. The Arab countries fell on one side or the other of the who's-in-charge dispute, but they all agreed that the one way to keep their individual populations loyal to their respective leaderships was to create endless Jihad against the Jews.
Israel offered land for peace here and there, but whenever they did that, the pieces of land set aside for Palestinians who did not wish to remain in Israel proper, used their newly established pieces of land not to develop and prosper, but to fight with each other and promote even greater jihad against the Jews. This was a sure way to get funding for the other, richer, Arab countries. The West Bank (the piece of land that was carved out to make it so the Jordan side of the Jordan River had access to said river) has more or less settled down, with there now being "sectors" of Jerusalem, for example, wherein varying forms of self-rule and joint purchasing security agreements have sort of been successful. The government of Jordan eventually decided to go with agricultural and tourist development rather than participate in the fruitless Jihad festivities. From time to time, mostly due to developments being created in these areas by Jews, both with and without Israeli approval (Israel has extreme right wing religious nuts who stone people drive on Saturday, etc. and who go crazy every time some graveyard is to be excavated by archeologists). But the bottom line is that the fictionalization of the Gaza Strip leadership has created a hell hole amidst endless piles of rubble, with folks lobbing rockets over the wall to kill Jews on the Israel proper side.
After a while, and from time to time, the Israelis get pissed off about all the people getting killed by the rockets and so they bomb, invade, retaliate, or blockade the Gaza Strip in order to stop the rockets, etc. The blockade is supported by Egypt, since Egypt doesn't like the Hamas guys who were elected to run the Gaza Strip. That part doesn't really involve the Jews or Israelis as much as it has to do with the who's-in-charge-of-the-Arab-Countries dispute.