From: gwydion@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Basalat Ali Raja)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: Deportation vs. Murder
Date: 8 Jan 93 23:00:09 GMT
Organization: Free Software Foundation
NNTP-Posting-Host: spiff.gnu.ai.mit.edu

In article <1993Jan6.210020.8969@rdg.dec.com> kremer@taveng.enet.dec.com (Itzha Kremer) writes:

>	What I meant was that when G-d promises the Land to the 
>	"children of Abraham", He explicitely mentions Isaac and then
>	Jacob (Isaac's son). In other words, Ishamael and Esau (Isaac's
>	other son) are blessed with all sorts of things, but 'the Land'
>	is promised only to the descendants of Jacob.  Of course Ishmael
>	is the son of Abraham.  (You and I are cousins :-) )

Actually, I am not Arab.  I have absolutely no Arab blood in me; at
least not that I know of.  The anthropologists tell me that I am
descended from Jews on my mother's side; this is not hard to believe.
I look much more Jewish than most Jews I have met.

But I digress; from what you tell me above, it seems to me that the
Bible does not promise the land to the children of Abraham.  It
promises it to children of Jacob.  At this point, it is possible that
we might go around in circles.  Could you post the appropriate verses
from the Bible, so that we can have something concrete to talk about?

>	BTW, I'm happy to hear from an Arab who refers to Ishmael as the
>	"father of all Arabs". Some propagandists in this newsgroup
>	claimed that Palestinians are the descendants from the pagan
>	Caananites and Philistines.  Personally, I thought that was an
>	insult to the Arab nation. 

At this point in time, I would say that it is almost impossible for
most mid-easterners to be able to claim that they are not descended
from any one particular group of people.  Consider this: at the time
of the Prophet of Islam there were several Jewish nations that lived
in Southern Arabia and in what is now Saudi Arabia, for example.
These were all absorbed into the Muslim empire.  Most Arabs could
probably find descent from these Jewish tribes.  Consider this: in the
last thousand years, there have been say, about thirty generations.
That means that in the last thousand years, you have had about
2,000,000,000 ancestors [two billions (not English billions)].  It is
impossible for these people to all be distinct from each other.  There
were not anywhere close to two billion people a thousand years ago.

This is, of course, an extremely naive analysis, but I am pointing out
that most Arabs have a fair degree of Jewishness in their ancestry.  It
might not be enough to satisfy the Jewish rabbis, but it seems that it
would be enough to satisfy the prophecies in the Bible.

#Then the Jewish settlers should not live in the occupied territories.

>	The Jewish settlers are willing to suffer the daily acts of
>	terror and violence from the Palestinians in order to live in
>	the Land of Israel. However, they expect the police and army to
>	protect them. In the diaspora, the Jews had to flee from places
>	where they were not wanted. In Israel, we stopped running away.

Unfortunately, this "Land of Israel" is already occupied by a few
million people who have lived there for generations and also refuse
to run away.

>	All this is really not so relevent because if Arafat can refer to
>	Judea and Samaria as part of the "Arab State of Palestine" then
>	certainly I can refer to them as part of Israel. What we call the
>	Land is not the problem. The problem is that 2 nations firmly
>	believe that the same Land belongs to them and only to them.

I am afraid it doesn't quite work that way.  If you can refer to the
"Arab State of Palestine" as containing "Judea and Samaria" then Arafat
can refer to "Tel Aviv" and "Haifa" as also parts of the "Arab State 
of Palestine".  If you refer to "Judea and Samaria" as Palestine then
Arafat has no right to refer to "Tel Aviv" and "Haifa" as anything but
parts of Israel.  It is as simple as that.

Basalat Ali Raja.