Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: He Who Saves a Single Soul...
From: rivk@quads.uchicago.edu (nora gayle rivkis)
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 22:03:28 GMT
Reply-To: rivk@midway.uchicago.edu
 <1992Aug20.210750.7454@midway.uchicago.edu> <1992Aug22.201404.24590@ncrcae.ColumbiaSC.NCR.COM>
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <1992Aug22.201404.24590@ncrcae.ColumbiaSC.NCR.COM> nabil@ncrcol.ColumbiaSC.NCR.COM (Nabil Idriss) writes:
>>>Well, I realize that, but what about the Arabs inside Israel, they don't
>>>have the right to adopt or bring-in orphans? Don't they hold Israeli
>>>passports. What about the non-Israeli's in Gazz and the WB? They don't
>>>have the right too? 
>>
>>No, they don't have the right to bring in immigrants without the
>>government's okay, either by adopting them or by any other means. Nor
>>do the Jewish citizens. Nobody has a right to immigrate to any country,
>>with or without the sponsorship of residents of that country, without
>>government approval; regulating immigration is a standard government
>>function. In this case, the government has said okay, which makes it
>>fine. In some cases, the Law of Return being the most obvious, the
>>government issues a blanket okay to a fairly wide range of people. The
>>right to decide, however, belongs to the state as it does to every other
>>state in the world, and not to any individual, whether Arab or Jew.
>>
>
>I wish you apply what yor are saying above to the immigration of Jews 
>in 1948 from Europe. They not only immigrated, they also took our land.

Prior to 1948, some of them were allowed in by the reigning government
of the time, which was the British; others got in illegally. I think
the British government had every right to stop them from getting in
had they chosen and been capable of it; doesn't mean I wouldn't have
tried to see to it that they were not capable of it had I been there 
at the time. What I wouldn't have done was to sit around and squall
over the theory that the British had no right to keep me out.

The Arab population, not being sovereign in the area, had nothing to
do with it one way or the other.

If you're talking about just after Independence, the reigning govern-
ment, that if Israel, allowed them in, which was its privilege as
sovereign power in the country.

>>I wasn't claiming democracy... although you're wrong; anyone who
>>thinks democracy means fairness hasn't studied history. Democracy
>>is majority rule; it is as good and fair as the majority is, or as
>>bad. What the majority decides to do has no effect whatsoever on
>>whether a country is dempcratic, although it does on whether the
>>country is good -- the two have littlw to do with each other. But
>>my point was not that Israel was democratic in the first place; it
>>was that the Arab countries are being consistently less decent to
>>other Arabs and Muslims than Israel is to a variety of Arabs and
>>Muslims.
>
>Why then in 1948 when the Arab majority opposed the establishment
>of the Jewish state did not rule?

The Arab "majority" tried to oppose the establishment of the Jewish
state in the UN's General Assembly, which is the majority-rule body
among nations, and got voted down by majority rule. I believe they
got one vote from a non-Muslim country, that being Cuba; and that's
even with having tried to buy Costa Rica's vote and G-d alone knows
how many others. They were voted down anyway. 

>Nabil Idriss     

	-Nora

-- 
"Light one candle for those who are suffering pain we learned so long ago..."

Xref: sparky talk.politics.mideast:18662 soc.culture.europe:7344 soc.history:7381