In 1948, Israel was put back on the map, democratically.

I was told that Rounds 2 and 3 would be for arguments relating to the resolution. Pro has elected instead to extend introductions, and I'll graciously oblige. Given Pro's previously revealed obsession with win %, he's clearly making a shameful play at a win. His resolution of course has nothing to do with the impetus for statements like these: "Your words scream, 'I have no idea what I'm talking about!'" (if I'd known I was debating a lawyer, I'd never have tried to save time by equating that with calling me an idiot; it wouldn't be out of character for him, though, as he once called me an anti-Semite just for disagreeing with someone I didn't know was a Jew on an issue unrelated to Jews); "Where has Tomblikebomb gone? I am ready for my lesson on Israel! Oh wait, he is nowhere to be found, surprise!" (just in case I didn't mind being called an ignoramus, I might mind being called a coward), which came a few minutes after his vague challenge. In Round 1, I offered definitions of "legal" and "democratic" by which I'd be willing to argue the negative side. But that would mean he'd have a chance of losing, so he instead urges a Pro vote on an assertion even Israel's staunchest critics don't dispute. Finding nothing in my Politics Forum posts even remotely resembling his straw man (the negative side of this debate, I find out in Round 2), he instead focuses on what he perceives as the weakest two of the many statements I actually made: 1)(a) Modern Israel was founded recently (relative to Germany). (b) The Jewish immigration to Palestine that resulted in the establishment of Israel was an organized, Zionist socialist project. (c) That project entailed buying land and expelling the Arab serfs from it. (d) The socialist aspect of the project was subsequently aborted. 2) Israel expanded by conquest. 1a/b) Instead of disputing my actual assertions, Pro argues with an imaginary opponent, one that believes Jews never inhabited what's now Greater Israel prior to the modern Zionist movement. But that they did only makes them as indigenous to the region as I, having Anglo blood, am indigenous to Germany. Should I be able to go to Germany and expel the non-Anglos who now reside on the relevant land? Of course not, and nor should the long history of conquest by and against Jews have been reignited in the form of the modern Zionist movement. 1c/d) Pro doesn't dispute either of these facts, so one can only conclude that he either agrees with them or is waiting until the final round to quote another Zionist source. 2) Pro concedes that Israel expanded by conquest when he says "the Israeli army withdrew from most of the areas it captured". If it withdrew from 99% of the areas it captured, Israel expanded by conquest. But I question Pro's arithmetic. The partition was roughly 50/50. In addition to the Arab half, Greater Israel expanded to include Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. Only the latter was liberated, but it wasn't done so out of the inherent kindness of Jewish hearts as Pro would have you believe. Israel of course withdrew as a result of the Yom Kippur War and the resulting compromise: that Egypt would re-open the Suez Canal in exchange for Israeli withdrawal. According to US President Jimmy Carter, who mediated the final agreement, he had to tearfully beg the Israeli side to agree. Israel proper, too, has expanded and continues to expand. It's now contiguous, whereas Palestine is even more sliced and diced. The West Bank is essentially three Bantustans, separated from Israel by an Israeli wall deep within Palestinian territory and from each other by guarded, exclusively "Jewish" highways. Within the individual Bantustans, there are further incursions by Jewish settlements, which continue to expand to this day. If one looks at a map of it, one notices something rather odd. The Jewish settlements have expanded not radially, as is natural, but linearly. It's as if the settlers are unconcerned with safety and convenience and are rather intentionally destroying Palestine as a potential state. Indeed, the peripheral Jewish settlements are where one finds the most right-wing elements of Israeli society: those who cite a biblical right to "The Promised Land" (all of Greater Israel and Lebanon and parts of Syria, Jordan and Egypt and often Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Turkey), a preposterous defensive purpose behind putting Jewish civilians near Jordan, or both. There are some other errors in Pro's Round 2: 1) His history begins with the Jews simply "inhabiting" Canaan, as if they'd sprung from the empty Earth, after which the cycle of conquest befalls them. If ancient conquest is so important, why not mention the conquest responsible for their inhabiting Canaan? According to Pro's sacred text, the Jews freely emigrated from Canaan and didn't return until they'd grown enough to bloodily capture it from the nations who'd occupied it in their absence. 2) Pro's racist distinction between the monolith "Jews", who graciously supported the partition, and the monolith "Arabs", who intransigently opposed it, is unrealistic. In fact, opinion was divided within each group. Opponents on the Jewish side included terrorist organizations like future Prime Minister Menachem Begin's. Pro is conflating non-Palestinian Arabs with Palestinian Arabs, when their interests couldn't have been more different. An independent Arab Palestine was of no more use to the Arab states than an independent Jewish Palestine. Within the Arab Palestinian community, opposition was much scarcer and was a reaction rather to the unfairness of the partition: the Jews, legally owning 7% of the land and comprising 33% of the population, would be given 56% percent of the land, stranding over a third of the Arab population (including Arab majority areas) in a Zionist state. An earlier, more proportional plan had been rejected by even the more moderate elements of Zionism. The UN opposed the final plan until Haiti, Liberia and the Philippines, after threats of aid cuts, changed their votes. The Israeli patriarch, Ben-Gurion, had previously (when Jews accounted for an even smaller proportion of the population!) been a strong critic of partition; Arab and Jewish anti-Zionists weren't necessarily paranoid, then, when they suggested the plan's being too unfair to be acceptable to the Arab side was the very reason he (dishonestly) supported it. 3) Pro's concern for international law is highly selective. UNGAR181, passed by only 33 nations, he regards as sacred. As for UNGAR194, clarifying that displaced Palestinians are no exception to the right of return; UNGAR3236, clarifying that Palestinians are no exception to the right of self-determination; the annual determination by all but a handful of UN nations that Israel is violating those and innumerable other General Assembly and Security Council resolutions...where's his righteous outrage? I'm confident that all of the facts above are verified by Pro's only non-Zionist source, Wikipedia; however, should he dispute any of said facts specifically, I'll be happy to be the first to cite a reliable source.