From: hm@cs.brown.edu (Harry Mamaysky)
Subject: Re: Israel's peace talks with Syria
Organization: Brown Computer Science Dept.
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 19:25:21 GMT

In article <1992Sep15.173303.28116@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, wmuhanna@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Waleed A Muhanna) writes:
|> In article <1992Sep13.182203.17358@discus.technion.ac.il> davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il (David Ben_Ami) writes:
|> >In article <1992Sep11.215207.18191@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> wmuhanna@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Waleed A Muhanna) writes:
|> >Well, The Jewish people is claiming the whole of Palestine from the
|> >early days of Zionism We claim it not only for the current inhabitants
|> >but for the whole 13 millions Jews of the world. This is the foundation
|> >of Zionism. 
|> 
|> Thanks for supporting what I said.  Not surprisingly, however, you failed 
|> to mention one crucial detail: Palestine is already inhabited.  
|> ``There is one fact which zionists dare not avert their eyes, though they 
|> seldom like to face.  Palestine proper has already its inhabitants,'' wrote 
|> Israel Zangwill in 1920.   Zionists wish this fact would just go away, which
|> partly explains their pathelogical denials of the Palestinians as the 
|> native people.  
   ^^^^^^

Why must we keep on repeating the same point over and over again. Today's
Palestinians are *NOT* the native inhabitants of Palestine. Long before
today's muslim Palestinians ever existed, Palestine (biblical Israel) was
inhabited by the Jews.

The Jews are the ORIGINAL natives in the land of biblical Israel. If the Jews
had not fought amongst themselves, the Romans would not have been able to
conquer and disperse the Jews, and the Jews would have lived uninterruptibly
in b.Israel until today (barring some other internal struggle and subsequent
conquest of course). Fact is though, that b.Israel has gone from the hands of
one illegal occupier to those of another for the last two thousand years.
Finally, in this century, the Jews decided to reclaim their homeland, the same
place in which their families lived some 70 generations before.

Of course, the Jews settled, despite their Zionist beliefs, for a partition of
b.Israel which gave much more of the land to the Arabs, then it did to
the Jews. And the Jews WERE HAPPY. However, Egypt and Syria and others
(spurred on, no doubt, by the not-so-long-ago-departed Brittish) decided to
drive all the 600,000 Jews in the tiny piece of land which the UN decided to
give them into the Mediteranian Sea.

In fact, with the very notable exception of Egypt, Syria and others have been
insisting on the Mediterranian thing ever since - certainly an attitude not
all too conducive to peace negotiations, by the way.

So let us not argue any more about who b.Israel belongs to. It was originally
the land of the Jews, and so it has remained for the last two thousand years,
depiste the fact that it was always illegally inhabited by people who did not
belong there.

As an example, if A stole my bike, which was then sold to B, which was then
stolen by C, and again given to D, who kept it for the next sixty years, the
bike would still be MY BIKE. Even had D developed a certain afinity for it,
that would not change the fact that the bike was still my bike.

The is no such thing as a statute of limitations on a homeland. A homeland
remains a homeland so long as the people whose homeland it originally was
still exist. The Jews, thank God, still exist. That makes b.Israel our
homeland. No amount of history warping can change this simple truth.

And yet, depiste the Jews' rightful ownership of much more land than they
currently have, Israel has, rightly or wrongly, *ABSOLUTELY NO* territorial
ambitions. There are those who claim otherwise, but they are a very small
minority. What Israel does want is peace - peace without unreasonable demands,
and overly extreme sacrifice on the part of the Jews.

|> To say that Israelis today, both Jews and non-Jews, have a right to a 
|> non-exclusivist state in which *all* have equal rights is a defensible 
|> position, one which I wholeheartedly support.  To say that Jews from all 
|> over the world have the right to emigrate to an exclusivist state in 
|> Palestine, to settle on land acquired via conquest and "ethnic cleansing"
|> or confiscated from subjugated natives, is not defensible from any position 
|> of justice, morality, or even political pragmatism.   To say that colonizers 
|> deserve special exclusive privilages (such as the right to "return", land 
|> tenure advantages, job advantages, much better state funding, etc) over 
|> the indigenous inhabitants is racist and colonial.  As you readily admit,
|> this is a central tenent of zionism, and this is what makes it a settler 
|> colonialist movement (just like the Apartheid movement in South Africa).

Do you concede the right of Jews from anywhere to immigrate to Israel if they
so choose? Or do you propose to re-institute the same disgusting quotas issued
by the Brittish when they still were the illegal occupiers of b.Israel?

|>>"Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a
|>> means of combat."

|> Shamir wrote this in his essay "Terror" which appeared in "He'Khazit" 
|> [the Front], LEHI's underground newspaper, in August 1943, and reported
|> in Al Ha'mishmar, December 24, 1987.  

Terrorism which was directed only at Brittish and Arab military installations.
While millions of Jews were being ruthlessly slaughtered in Europe, and while
the world sat on its big disgusting and abhorrent ass and did nothing, the
Jews in Palestine decided that while Jewish ethics were exemplary, Jewish
pride and practicality were not. They decided that the only way to guarantee
the survival of the Jews as a people would be to return to the Jewish
homeland, which was then under illegal Brittish occupation.

Since the Brittish were unwilling to leave quietly, the Jews (actually the
Stern group and Irgun Zvai Leumi) decided to wage an active war of liberation.
The tactics which they employed (to call these terrorism that would be 
inaccurate) were certainly very savage. Yet, such were the times. While a
third of one's people are being wiped out, one can not sit idly by and do
nothing.

Of course, Jewish tactics were not at all analagous to the Arab terrorism of
today. Never, did the Jewish freedom fighters target anything but military
establishments. Of course, at times, civilians were unfortunately hurt, but
this through no intention of the Jews. The Stern group and the IZL tried to be
as humane as was humanly possible in those tough times.

Certainly the Jews never *NEVER* targetted civilians for their operations.
Never were busloads of innocent Arab children blown up. Never were civilian
transport devices hijacked and their occupants brutally murdered. There were
civilian casualtied of revolutionary operations. Yet these were only the
tragic bystanders in a war in which they were NOT targeted. In fact, more
often than not, it was the Brittish and the Arabs who did not heed Jewish
warnings before and attack (warnings which were religiously issued whenever at
all possible), and therefore gambled with the lives of their own people.

So please, let us consider Shamir's quote only in the context in which it was
made - if this quote is historically accurate at all. Certainly, though, the
Jews of the early 1940's in Palestine could not sit idly by while their
brethren were being slaughtered like the lowest animals by Nazi filth in
Europe.

|> Are these the same terrorists whose favorate tactic was to throw bombs
|> into Arab shops and street crowds and to roll dynamite-filled barrels
|> into Arab marketplaces?  The atrocities of groups led by Begin and Shamir,
|> terrorists who later became prime minisers, included acts against Jews.

Untrue and undocumented. Perhaps incidents like this did happen - but only in
retaliation for similar attacks on the jewish populace. Never, and this is a
documented fact, NEVER did Jews target civilians on purely offensive (as
opposed to retaliatory) operations.

|> My G-d!!! "thank themselves for absorbing the wrath of Israel?"  
|> Your utter disregard for the lives of people who happen to be Arab 
|> is disgustingly racist.  I wonder how you would feel if someone said,
|> at any time and under any circumstances, "Jews can thank themselves for 
|> absorbing the wrath of X and not of Hitler. ... If X was adopting Nazi 
|> standards ...."  
|> 
|> Alas, this sort of contempt and anti-Arab racism is something we have 
|> come to expect in this newsgroup from zionists for whom an exclusivist 
|> state has become a religion.  Perhaps this should not be surprising,
|> given equally racist utterances by Israeli leaders themselves.  Eitan
|> once likened the Palestinians to ``drugged cockroaches.''  In 1982, Begin
|> described the Palestinians, in a speacd in the kenesset, as ``two-legged
|> beasts.''  Last week, Rabin was quoted in the Ha'aretz newspaper as
|> saying he dreams ``Gaza would sink into the water.''  Think about what 
|> zionism and the occupation is doing to your soul.

Human life is most precious, Arab and Jewish alike. Let us not make the grave
mistake of trivializing even a single human life. There is nothing more
sacred in this world. And I think Muslems and Jews alike would have to agree
on this one.

One innocent death is one innocent death too many. And 20,000 innocent deaths
are 20,000 innocent deaths too many. There can be no point of debate here.

I would hope that all those who post to this newsgroup would feel the same way.

|> >David.
|> 
|> Waleed Muhanna
|> -=-
|>  "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people
|>   to do nothing."  -- Edmund Burke

As regarding your quote, I can only say "how true". Were it only that more
good people would do good things.

Harry.
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast