From: nabil@ncrcol.ColumbiaSC.NCR.COM (Nabil Idriss)
Subject: Re: He Who Saves a Single Soul...
Organization: NCR E&M Columbia SC.
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 92 20:24:53 GMT

>>>>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.
>
>Well, in all fairness one must remember that from 1939 until the end of
>WWII, the British (who at that time controlled Palestine, and *not* the
>Arabs) wouldn't let the Jewish refugees in. You might take a look at the
>book "Ship of Fools", by Katherine Anne Porter -- it tells the story of
>a ship full of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who were denied entry
>into Israel (Palestine) by the British, and which, returning to Europe,
>was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boats.
>

I think you are correct on this one. I heared it.

>What's more, the Jewish immigrants from Europe were not the only
>refugees to return to our ancestral homeland. During the 1950s there
>was the return of the Jews from their centuries-old humiliation and
>degradation in Yemen, Morocco, and the rest of North Africa. There was
>the return of the Jews from their imprisonment in Iran and Iraq. Since
>the 1970s there has been the return of the Jews from the Soviet Union,
>and also the return of the Jews from Ethiopia.
>

O.K, so they came from Europe, Middle East, and North Africa. What difference
does it make.

>We are a nation, a people (neither word does us justice) that has been
>fleeing for our lives throughout our history.
>
>Show us Arab refugees from "Palestine" who were forced to leave or to
>lose their lives, who had nowhere to go except among strangers, and who 
>were repeatedly subjected to the debasement and genocidal actions of
>murderous nations.
>

The Palestinians in the Refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan and Syria they 
all flee for the fear of their lives. I feel with your people and I have 
no problem of Jews coming to the Middle East in 1948 if it was done peacefully.
But again who knows? When you possess a land, it is hard to share it with someone
else. Look at Yugoslavia, it is a typical situation of two people fighting for the
same land.
>I'm truly sorry that your parents left Haifa, Nabil -- they made
>(perhaps) the wrong decision. But they left of their own choosing,
>not at gunpoint. My ancestors left Israel as part of the Babylonian
>experiment in "population resettlement", and nobody asked them if
>they might not rather spend their vacation at home...
>
>>>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 Jewish state, "Palestine" to the British, has *always* existed
>during the last 3O00+ years -- the "Modern" State of Israel is just
>that -- modern -- but it is not "new". Because of this, we had no
>reason to listen to the wishes of the Arab nations who opposed us 
>(and because their opposition to us and to things Jewish was already 
>well-known), only to their threats (which, as we all know, were/are
>very real).
>
>j.horen@rs.com
>
>


-- 
Nabil Idriss                           |       FOR EVERY ACTION AN OPPOSITE  
NCR - Midrange Products Division       |       AND EQUAL REACTION.
      Columbia, South Carolina         |      
email: nabil@ncrcol.ColumbiaSC.NCR.COM |
Xref: sparky talk.politics.mideast:19357 soc.culture.jewish:15073