Iran holds conference on the Holocaust

sgs89

sgs89

CAGiversary!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061212/wl_nm/iran_holocaust_dc

Wow. Iran is holding an international conference to "investigate" the Holocaust -- whether it happened, to what extent it happened, etc. David Duke was a featured speaker!

It is hard to believe that (a) there are still people claiming the Holocaust was a "myth" and (b) they think we are so stupid as to believe that the proceedings are somehow legitimate and not biased.

We best keep an eye on old Ahmadinejad.
 
Only a fringe group believes that the Holocaust did not happen. Although not as well publicized, the purpose of thie meeting is to determine why Arabs are paying the price for German crimes against the Jews.
 
[quote name='munch']Only a fringe group believes that the Holocaust did not happen. Although not as well publicized, the purpose of thie meeting is to determine why Arabs are paying the price for German crimes against the Jews.[/QUOTE]

Yes, and Iran is a "fringe group." Or at least the government is.

Arabs need to grin and bear it.
 
[quote name='munch']Only a fringe group believes that the Holocaust did not happen. Although not as well publicized, the purpose of thie meeting is to determine why Arabs are paying the price for German crimes against the Jews.[/quote]

What are you suggesting? Are you suggesting that Israel should not be recognized?
 
[quote name='camoor']What are you suggesting? Are you suggesting that Israel should not be recognized?[/QUOTE]

I was suggesting exactly what I said. Does it seem that I am suggesting that Israel should not be recognized, or are you just looking for an argument? It seems like the latter, but you might be twisting it to get to the former.
 
[quote name='munch']I was suggesting exactly what I said. Does it seem that I am suggesting that Israel should not be recognized, or are you just looking for an argument? It seems like the latter, but you might be twisting it to get to the former.[/quote]

I don't see how Arabs are paying the price for German crimes against Jews - I was attempting to decipher your cryptic comment.

The conflicts between western countries and the Arab world goes back much further then WW2, and I would say that the present day wars in the middle east have much more to do with oil, terrorism, and the American military-industrial complex rather then some connection to WW2.
 
[quote name='munch']Only a fringe group believes that the Holocaust did not happen. Although not as well publicized, the purpose of thie meeting is to determine why Arabs are paying the price for German crimes against the Jews.[/QUOTE]



Well being that is a Conference about the Holocaust, I would assume it would be about getting as many people who dont believe the Holocaust happened in one room and agreeing with themselves.

Ohh and your subtle attack against Israel is pretty obvious
 
It's not a subtle attack against Israel. I'm just using the discourse espoused by those asking the question. You all are making something out of nothing.

And it's not anti-semitic or anti-Israel or anti-Zionist or anti-anything to ask that question. Don't get me wrong, nothing good is going to come out of this conference except to rally hard-liners around each other.

The result of this conference is not going to be the Holocaust never happened. What's going to occur, i assume, is that they will say it did happen and they may even conclude that it wasn't 'as bad' as people make it out to be. Again, I think that is bogus.

But then they will say, so it did happen, it was bad, so why are Palestinians without a homeland? They will be asking how did a +b = c. It's a fair question to ask, but they're going through the wrong means to get to that larger point.
 
[quote name='Ikohn4ever']Well being that is a Conference about the Holocaust, I would assume it would be about getting as many people who dont believe the Holocaust happened in one room and agreeing with themselves.[/QUOTE]

Actually, that's not entirely accurate. There's a little more back and forth than most people assume. For example:

"But a number of Jewish rabbis are also there. One, British Rabbi Ahron Cohen, said he had come to the conference to put the 'Orthodox Jewish viewpoint' across."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6167695.stm
 
David Duke was a speaker at this conference. If you want some laughs, or perhaps some fear put in you, try to hunt down his interview with Wolf Blitzer from today's "Situation Room."

:shock:
 
[quote name='mykevermin']David Duke was a speaker at this conference. If you want some laughs, or perhaps some fear put in you, try to hunt down his interview with Wolf Blitzer from today's "Situation Room."

:shock:[/QUOTE]

Yes, ladies and gentlemen ... we actually elected David Duke to the Louisiana State House of Representatives at one point.

Amazing.
 
[quote name='trq']"But a number of Jewish rabbis are also there. One, British Rabbi Ahron Cohen, said he had come to the conference to put the 'Orthodox Jewish viewpoint' across."[/quote]
I was glad to hear that there are Jewish people who consider the "political use" of the Holocaust as a justification for the forced establishment of Israel (that is, the Allies displacing Palestinians at the end of WWII) to have been a wrongful act.

People who think they can willfully fulfill Biblical prophesies themselves embody a horrible blend of egomania and misguided piety. They'd probably oppose limitations on greenhouse gas emissions, in the hopes that rising temperatures would lead to the seas boiling. One step closer to Bliss.
:roll:
 
[quote name='RBM']I was glad to hear that there are Jewish people who consider the "political use" of the Holocaust as a justification for the forced establishment of Israel (that is, the Allies displacing Palestinians at the end of WWII) to have been a wrongful act.

People who think they can willfully fulfill Biblical prophesies themselves embody a horrible blend of egomania and misguided piety. They'd probably oppose limitations on greenhouse gas emissions, in the hopes that rising temperatures would lead to the seas boiling. One step closer to Bliss.
:roll:[/QUOTE]

You recognize, of course, that these "Jewish people" you are talking about are the extreme fringe of Jews, right? I mean, they are as twisted and out-of-the-mainstream of Judaism as much as David Duke is out-of-the-mainstream of Christianity.
 
[quote name='sgs89']You recognize, of course, that these "Jewish people" you are talking about are the extreme fringe of Jews, right? I mean, they are as twisted and out-of-the-mainstream of Judaism as much as David Duke is out-of-the-mainstream of Christianity.[/QUOTE]

Wait, you just said that jews who DISAGREE with using Holocaust guilt to justify Israel's position are an extreme fringe, and on par with David Duke. Before I mudhole stomp that, I just want to make sure you didn't read his post backwards.

EDIT: No, I guess you meant that. So the orthodox sect that thinks instead of Israel, there should be "a regime fully in accordance with the aspirations of the Palestinians when Arab and Jew will be able to live peacefully together as they did for centuries" is comparable with David Duke. Awesome. Did you mean to totally backhand mainstream jews, or did it just work out like that?
 
[quote name='munch']Only a fringe group believes that the Holocaust did not happen. Although not as well publicized, the purpose of thie meeting is to determine why Arabs are paying the price for German crimes against the Jews.[/QUOTE]

Virtually alone among peoples of the world, Arabs appear to have won a free pass when it comes to denying or minimizing the Holocaust

Yet when Arab leaders and their people deny the Holocaust, they deny their own history as well -- the lost history of the Holocaust in Arab lands.

Recall Maj. Strasser's warning to Ilsa, the wife of the Czech underground leader, in the 1942 film "Casablanca": "It is possible the French authorities will find a reason to put him in the concentration camp here." Indeed, the Arab lands of Algeria and Morocco were the site of the first concentration camps ever liberated by Allied troops.

if U.S. and British troops had not pushed Axis forces from the African continent by May 1943, the Jews of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and perhaps even Egypt and Palestine almost certainly would have met the same fate as those in Europe.

The Arabs in these lands were not too different from Europeans: With war waging around them, most stood by and did nothing; many participated fully and willingly in the persecution of Jews;

Arab collaborators were everywhere. These included Arab officials conniving against Jews at royal courts, Arab overseers of Jewish work gangs, sadistic Arab guards at Jewish labor camps and Arab interpreters who went house to house with SS officers pointing out where Jews lived. Without the help of local Arabs, the persecution of Jews would have been virtually impossible.

Were Arabs, then under the domination of European colonialists, merely following orders? An interviewer once posed that question to Harry Alexander, a Jew from Leipzig, Germany, who survived a notoriously harsh French labor camp at Djelfa, in the Algerian desert. "No, no, no!" he exploded in reply. "Nobody told them to beat us all the time. Nobody told them to chain us together. Nobody told them to tie us naked to a post and beat us and to hang us by our arms and hose us down, to bury us in the sand so our heads should look up and bash our brains in and urinate on our heads. . . . No, they took this into their own hands and they enjoyed what they did."

_________________________________________________________

don't get it twisted
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601417.html
 
[quote name='sgs89']You recognize, of course, that these "Jewish people" you are talking about are the extreme fringe of Jews, right? I mean, they are as twisted and out-of-the-mainstream of Judaism as much as David Duke is out-of-the-mainstream of Christianity.[/quote]
Yes, I do acknowledge that most of the Jewish people in attendance belonged to a small sect and thus in no way represent a significant portion of the general Jewish population.

However, I still appreciate that SOME Jewish people consider the armed establishment of Israel--and the use of the Holocaust as a moral justification for such--to have been a wrongful act.

[quote name='BBC article']The book of Jewish law or Talmud, they say, teaches that believers may not use human force to create a Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah.[/quote]
Whether that is true or not (and I have no idea which might be the case,) it strikes me as odd that people would gladly accept military intervention as a substitute for divine intervention.
 
A couple of points.

[quote name='PKRipp3r']Virtually alone among peoples of the world, Arabs appear to have won a free pass when it comes to denying or minimizing the Holocaust[/QUOTE]

Education has much to do with it. You won't find many educated arabs towing that line, unless it's for political purposes. Is there a little more tolerance of it then there should be? Probably. But it's not too much to differentiate between neo-nazi revisionist historians in Germany (or elected heads of state in Iran), and sand farmers who haven't made it past second grade parroting what they've been told.

And not that two wrongs make a right, but many outspoken jewish humanitarians themselves are disappointingly quiet about the fate of non-jews in the Holocaust. If jews who barely survived the gas chamber kinda "forget" to mention the Roma and homosexuals who died, aren't they minimizing the Holocaust too?

[quote name='PKRipp3r']Recall Maj. Strasser's warning to Ilsa, the wife of the Czech underground leader, in the 1942 film "Casablanca": "It is possible the French authorities will find a reason to put him in the concentration camp here." Indeed, the Arab lands of Algeria and Morocco were the site of the first concentration camps ever liberated by Allied troops.

if U.S. and British troops had not pushed Axis forces from the African continent by May 1943, the Jews of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and perhaps even Egypt and Palestine almost certainly would have met the same fate as those in Europe.

The Arabs in these lands were not too different from Europeans: With war waging around them, most stood by and did nothing; many participated fully and willingly in the persecution of Jews;

Arab collaborators were everywhere. These included Arab officials conniving against Jews at royal courts, Arab overseers of Jewish work gangs, sadistic Arab guards at Jewish labor camps and Arab interpreters who went house to house with SS officers pointing out where Jews lived. Without the help of local Arabs, the persecution of Jews would have been virtually impossible.

Were Arabs, then under the domination of European colonialists, merely following orders? An interviewer once posed that question to Harry Alexander, a Jew from Leipzig, Germany, who survived a notoriously harsh French labor camp at Djelfa, in the Algerian desert. "No, no, no!" he exploded in reply. "Nobody told them to beat us all the time. Nobody told them to chain us together. Nobody told them to tie us naked to a post and beat us and to hang us by our arms and hose us down, to bury us in the sand so our heads should look up and bash our brains in and urinate on our heads. . . . No, they took this into their own hands and they enjoyed what they did."[/QUOTE]

That's kind of disingenuous. It's akin to saying we fought the French in World War II. Yes, they were controlled by the Germans. Sure, sure, there was a Resistance (as there was in most arab countries). But when occupied, the Germans found plenty of French collaborators, didn't they? So we fought them, right?

I mean, you sort of make this point yourself when you say that the Allies sweeping the Axis from North Africa is what possibly saved the local jews from the fate of their european counterparts. What did the Allies remove? The Axis. Not the arabs. They're still there.

I'm all for the "everyone is responsible" take on one of mankind's greatest tragedies, but let's not bend over backwards to prove a point. The Nazis were responsible. There but for the grace of "I was just following orders" goes the rest of us, but ultimately, it's the Nazis. Not the French. Not the US of A. And not the arabs. No Nazis controlling the French, who controlled Algeria and Morocco, no camps. Let's also be clear that they weren't "concentration" camps as we've come to use the term. Harsh (and sometimes lethal) labor camps, yes. Institutionalized processing of mass murder like in Aushwitz? No.

I also thought making huge historical generalizations about groups of people based on some sadistic prison guards went out of vogue right around the time Abu Ghraib hit.

EDIT: Also, the conspicuous dropping of all the "positives" from the WaPo article is particularly telling.

"Arabs welcomed Jews into their homes, guarded Jews' valuables so Germans could not confiscate them, shared with Jews their meager rations and warned Jewish leaders of coming SS raids. The sultan of Morocco and the bey of Tunis provided moral support and, at times, practical help to Jewish subjects. In Vichy-controlled Algiers, mosque preachers gave Friday sermons forbidding believers from serving as conservators of confiscated Jewish property. In the words of Yaacov Zrivy, from a small town near Sfax, Tunisia, 'The Arabs watched over the Jews.'"

That's weak sauce, dude.
 
[quote name='trq']A couple of points.



Education has much to do with it. You won't find many educated arabs towing that line, unless it's for political purposes. Is there a little more tolerance of it then there should be? Probably. But it's not too much to differentiate between neo-nazi revisionist historians in Germany (or elected heads of state in Iran), and sand farmers who haven't made it past second grade parroting what they've been told.

And not that two wrongs make a right, but many outspoken jewish humanitarians themselves are disappointingly quiet about the fate of non-jews in the Holocaust. If jews who barely survived the gas chamber kinda "forget" to mention the Roma and homosexuals who died, aren't they minimizing the Holocaust too?



That's kind of disingenuous. It's akin to saying we fought the French in World War II. Yes, they were controlled by the Germans. Sure, sure, there was a Resistance (as there was in most arab countries). But when occupied, the Germans found plenty of French collaborators, didn't they? So we fought them, right?

I mean, you sort of make this point yourself when you say that the Allies sweeping the Axis from North Africa is what possibly saved the local jews from the fate of their european counterparts. What did the Allies remove? The Axis. Not the arabs. They're still there.

I'm all for the "everyone is responsible" take on one of mankind's greatest tragedies, but let's not bend over backwards to prove a point. The Nazis were responsible. There but for the grace of "I was just following orders" goes the rest of us, but ultimately, it's the Nazis. Not the French. Not the US of A. And not the arabs. No Nazis controlling the French, who controlled Algeria and Morocco, no camps. Let's also be clear that they weren't "concentration" camps as we've come to use the term. Harsh (and sometimes lethal) labor camps, yes. Institutionalized processing of mass murder like in Aushwitz? No.

I also thought making huge historical generalizations about groups of people based on some sadistic prison guards went out of vogue right around the time Abu Ghraib hit.

EDIT: Also, the conspicuous dropping of all the "positives" from the WaPo article is particularly telling.

"Arabs welcomed Jews into their homes, guarded Jews' valuables so Germans could not confiscate them, shared with Jews their meager rations and warned Jewish leaders of coming SS raids. The sultan of Morocco and the bey of Tunis provided moral support and, at times, practical help to Jewish subjects. In Vichy-controlled Algiers, mosque preachers gave Friday sermons forbidding believers from serving as conservators of confiscated Jewish property. In the words of Yaacov Zrivy, from a small town near Sfax, Tunisia, 'The Arabs watched over the Jews.'"

That's weak sauce, dude.[/QUOTE]
It's not disingenuous.... at all.

It's a statement of fact.

period.

Not even arguing what you are saying.

Maybe you are continuing an argument you started in another thread or are confusing me with someone else, because it doesn't seem we are disagreeing about the basic facts of what happened.

You just made about a billion assumptions based on something i ctrl-v'd as a passing response to a broad, generalized statement that was largely untrue.

Sorry if you got confused.

You can go wag your finger somewhere else now.

k, thx
 
[quote name='PKRipp3r']Virtually alone among peoples of the world, Arabs appear to have won a free pass when it comes to denying or minimizing the Holocaust

Yet when Arab leaders and their people deny the Holocaust, they deny their own history as well -- the lost history of the Holocaust in Arab lands.

Recall Maj. Strasser's warning to Ilsa, the wife of the Czech underground leader, in the 1942 film "Casablanca": "It is possible the French authorities will find a reason to put him in the concentration camp here." Indeed, the Arab lands of Algeria and Morocco were the site of the first concentration camps ever liberated by Allied troops.

if U.S. and British troops had not pushed Axis forces from the African continent by May 1943, the Jews of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and perhaps even Egypt and Palestine almost certainly would have met the same fate as those in Europe.

The Arabs in these lands were not too different from Europeans: With war waging around them, most stood by and did nothing; many participated fully and willingly in the persecution of Jews;

Arab collaborators were everywhere. These included Arab officials conniving against Jews at royal courts, Arab overseers of Jewish work gangs, sadistic Arab guards at Jewish labor camps and Arab interpreters who went house to house with SS officers pointing out where Jews lived. Without the help of local Arabs, the persecution of Jews would have been virtually impossible.

Were Arabs, then under the domination of European colonialists, merely following orders? An interviewer once posed that question to Harry Alexander, a Jew from Leipzig, Germany, who survived a notoriously harsh French labor camp at Djelfa, in the Algerian desert. "No, no, no!" he exploded in reply. "Nobody told them to beat us all the time. Nobody told them to chain us together. Nobody told them to tie us naked to a post and beat us and to hang us by our arms and hose us down, to bury us in the sand so our heads should look up and bash our brains in and urinate on our heads. . . . No, they took this into their own hands and they enjoyed what they did."

_________________________________________________________

don't get it twisted
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601417.html[/QUOTE]

There were also Arabs who helped out Jews like there were Germans, French, Dutch, etc. who hid Jews from the Nazis. It's call Lost Stories, and you can listen to an NPR discussion on it here. I'm not sure how I twisted anything, so take it for what it's worth.
 
[quote name='trq']Wait, you just said that jews who DISAGREE with using Holocaust guilt to justify Israel's position are an extreme fringe, and on par with David Duke. Before I mudhole stomp that, I just want to make sure you didn't read his post backwards.

EDIT: No, I guess you meant that. So the orthodox sect that thinks instead of Israel, there should be "a regime fully in accordance with the aspirations of the Palestinians when Arab and Jew will be able to live peacefully together as they did for centuries" is comparable with David Duke. Awesome. Did you mean to totally backhand mainstream jews, or did it just work out like that?[/QUOTE]

You are totally confused, I'm afraid. My point was that the Jews who attended Ahmadinejad's conference (and implicitly or even explicitly agreed with his assumptions about the Holocaust) are a tiny fringe group in Judaism. They have been widely condemned by mainstream Jews (even religious Jews). So, in that sense, they are as out-of-the-mainstream of Judaism as David Duke is of Christianity. No surprise, since they both are endorsing a conference put on by a kook bent on eradicating Jews. I did not say that they held the same positions as David Duke. Please learn to read.

Sorry that you can't "mudhole stomp" my position -- before doing that, you need to understand it, something you utterly failed to do.
 
Ok. Having read most of the posts in this thread, I felt like I had to state a couple of issues because, well, I'm an Israeli :p So... Having said that, lets continue the discussion about the issue.

First, those f*cking assholes that went to Iran are called Neturei Karta. Here's some information about them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neturei_Karta Anyways... They've been criticized by many religious Jews in Israel for what they did. The former head Rabbi of Israel called for their "exile" from shuls (An orthodox synagogue) in Israel. He told many not to let them hold services with them. Another anti-zionist group, Satmar, a more "sane" one, holds the same ideology as them, but Satmar thought that the Neturei Karta crossed the line here and called for an excommunication of them (NK). So yeah, they're pretty much extremists who are no better than other types of extremists. I really have no clue what they believe in... They think that the Messiah is supposed to come one day and hand Israel over to them. Also, I think they believe in "Greater Israel." Here's some more info on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Israel Anyways, in order for a democratic Israel to exist, nothing like that will ever happen and I'm one of the people who oppose to such views.

Now, about using the Holocaust as the justification to create Israel..... No one told the Arabs who lived at Israel at around that time to move their asses to another place. The surrounding Arab countries insisted that the Palestinians should and some of them did. Later, you saw how many wars took place in the region because of, well.... Stupid, stupid hatred and shit like that. Today's situation isn't the best, but it's probably better than before. Except for the anarchy in Gaza :whistle2:\ That's no good at all and hopefully the chaos will disappear soon......

And Ahmedinejad... I got nothing to say about him. You saw what he said about Israel and that's that.
 
It sounds like the arguments over the Neturei Karta (NK from now on) center around who they associate with as well as their ideology. While they certainly did not pick very good company to align themselves with at the most recent conference, we can't claim that they are "holocaust deniers," or even in that same category. While someone like David Duke dances around the question "do you believe there was a holocaust?", the NK would rather argue about the political use of the holocaust since its occurance.

They don't seem to have a controversial stance (save for the "annulment" of Israel, which is like having secessionists in the US, or, rather, those would would prefer to return the land of the US to native americans and the mexicans. Such groups are fringe, to be sure, but they may be ostracized for the degree of their disagreement with the state in which they live, not (and here's the kicker) the truth or fiction/conspiracy of whether or not the holocaust existed. From the sound of things, the NK were a small sect of Israelis who were tolerated but not taken seriously until this conference. By aligning with the Iranians and anti-Zionists, they have made a move to gain power, they have distanced themselves from Israelis, and have gone from persona non grata to enemy in a very short time.

The difference between NK and more orthodox (for lack of a better term) Jews in Israel seems to be the difference between pre-and-postmillenialist evangelical Christians, except that the political ramifications of the NK's recent actions have created a far greater schism than evangelicals could dream of.

Now, as for boozi's third statement, you can't ignore the role of the United Nations in the creation of Israel, and treat its installation as the consequence of some naturally-occurring circumstances. If the creating of the Israeli state was as clean as your sentences suggest, we would have had no conflict there for the past half-century.

While I would respect the views of the NK (not agree, but respect their right to question Israeli hegemony in the region), they mad as poor a poltical tactic as they could have recently by attending this conference. It's one thing to try to show solidarity with Arabs, but foolish when those Arabs happen to be Anti-semitic as can be.

BTW, found that David Duke interview. I've rarely seen Wolf Blitzer stammer before, but he's not at his best here.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2QMQi-m63E[/media]
 
Gahh.... NKs don't consider themselves as Israelis. They're not a part of Israel. They don't pay taxes, and they don't do shit for Israel. Ok, do whatever you want, but as far as I'm concerned, what they did is the biggest backstab ever. I don't know, I just find it very, very odd that someone Jewish hugs someone who wants to destroy your people.

Pshh.... No conflict in the Middle East. There will always be conflict there, and it'll probably never end. Well, not in the next 100 years or so. You know why there's still a conflict? Because the Hamas wants the destruction of Israel and because it wants the whole country. They'll probably never recognize Israel's right to exist and that's what prevents any peace agreements to be signed. Also, because Iran is supplying Hezbollah and Hamas with millions upon millions of dollars just to try and get rid of the so-called "zionist" nation. Israeli hegemony in the region? Look how many Muslim countries surround Israel -_- All of them wanted Israel's destruction since 1948. Even Egypt, who Israel has a peace agreement with, isn't thrilled with Israel..... Anyways, I really hope the future will be more calm :X

Sorry for the "heated" post :X I just had to write something :whistle2:\
 
There are really two issues here:

(1) Is it defensible for the NKs to attend Ahmadinejad's conference? I think the answer to that has to be "no."

(2) Is it defensible for someone (even a Jew) to question whether the Holocaust is sometimes used for political advantage in a way that is unfair to others, including Arabs? The answer to this question is more ambiguous, but is probably "yes."
 
[quote name='boozi']Now, about using the Holocaust as the justification to create Israel..... No one told the Arabs who lived at Israel at around that time to move their asses to another place. The surrounding Arab countries insisted that the Palestinians should and some of them did.[/quote]
I am troubled by your account of the history behind the establishment of Israel. As a contentious part of history, this can be a touchy subject to gather information on, without being misled by bias. While the British were certainly not impartial in the matter, I am fond of the BBC as a news source, so here's a fairly brief synopsis, which appears to contradict your version of events.
 
[quote name='RBM']I am troubled by your account of the history behind the establishment of Israel. As a contentious part of history, this can be a touchy subject to gather information on, without being misled by bias. While the British were certainly not impartial in the matter, I am fond of the BBC as a news source, so here's a fairly brief synopsis, which appears to contradict your version of events.[/QUOTE]
Yes, I am aware of the fact that I'm pretty much 100% biased in my views and I really can't help it. I never, almost never, watch/read BBC because they're almost all the time anti-Israeli. In this regard, they do state the facts, so it's different.

Anyways, take a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel#1948_War_of_Independence_and_migration
Immediately following the adoption of the Partition Plan by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947, David Ben-Gurion tentatively accepted the partition, while the Arab League rejected it. The Arab Higher Committee immediately ordered a violent three-day strike on Jewish civilians, attacking buildings, shops, and neighborhoods, and prompting counter-attacks organized by underground Jewish militias like the Lehi and Irgun. These attacks soon turned into widespread fighting between Arabs and Jews, this civil war being the first "phase" of the 1948 War of Independence.
Click to expand...
See? :X
 
The passage you have quoted from Wikipedia does not address the direct cause for the displacement of the Palestinians from the (then) newly declared Jewish state of Israel. The link you indicated does, however (albeit in a somewhat superficial manner):

[quote name='Wikipedia entry']Large numbers of the Arab population fled the newly-created Jewish State during the Palestinian exodus, which is referred to by many Palestinian groups and individuals as the Nakba (Arabic: النكبة), meaning "disaster" or "cataclysm". Some Israeli historians suggest that the Palestinians fled because of orders from Arab generals. Many Palestinians left under the belief that the Arab armies would prevail and they would return.[14] Moreover, "Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel" were offered "full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions" in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel; many, however, refused.

Estimates of the final refugee count range from 400,000 to 900,000 with the official United Nations count at 711,000.[15][/quote]

If I have the story straight, a rough sequence of events would sound like:
1. (Nov 1947) the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into Jewish & Arab sectors. Violence erupted all over the area.
2. (May 1948) the British Mandate over Palestine ended and the state of Israel was declared. Violence continued to erupt (to this day, no less)
3. (June 1949) Over half a million Palestinians had fled the region

Now, THAT's brevity, for you. And, this highlights the (relatively small) point in question: the half million to a million Palestinians who fled their homes did so, in my opinion, because any sane person flees from a warzone.

At one point, there was Palestine, full of Palestinians. Over time, there was a large influx of Jewish people. One day, the state of Israel was declared, sitting on top of (but not exactly covering 100% of) what had been Palestine, up till that moment. War erupts (well, actually, it hadn't waited for the formal declaration to erupt.) Civilians flee. Stating that the civilians fled because neighboring countries ordered them to..??

Well...Lord knows I'm no student of history (I'm looking up this crap on the Internet, for crying out loud,) but as an outside observer, I find your account of these historical events to be unplausible. (I had wondered how Israelis taught their children of this history. Interesting.)
 
(I had wondered how Israelis taught their children of this history. Interesting.)
Click to expand...
Look, I came to the U.S. five years ago, so you shouldn't use me as an example to what you wrote, ok? They teach that stuff in high school and I never went to high school there. Also, please give me less than 24 hours to write a better post. I got a history exam (surprisingly, Jewish history) from 8AM to 10AM and I haven't been doing as much studying as I hoped to. And yeah, I'm no history major myself. I pretty much use google/wiki for all that crap. Just so you know ^^ Anyways...... I'll get back to you tomorrow as soon as I can ok? :p
 
Oh. I only tacked on that last bit because you had introduced yourself as an Israeli. Well, your exam is more important than nattering on an internet forum. Good luck with the test, man.
 
[quote name='RBM']Oh. I only tacked on that last bit because you had introduced yourself as an Israeli. Well, your exam is more important than nattering on an internet forum. Good luck with the test, man.[/QUOTE]
Well, I am :) I was born and lived most of my life there (13.5 years). And thx for the good luck wishes ^^
 
Alright! Done with exams for the semester... Let the winter break begin! Anyways... back to the subject...

Ok. I understand everything you wrote. Now, the thing is... The region became a warzone because the surrounding arab nations wanted to make it a warzone. They utterly disapproved of the new nation of Israel, told the Palestinians to get the hell out of there, and they started a war. Now..... The Palestinians were very hopeful that those countries would have kicked Israel's ass, but lo-and-behold, Israel kicked their asses. So what now? Let wait a couple of more years and start another war. Again, Israel won. This war thing repeated itself in the region a couple times, agreed? No one told the other nations to start a war. They wanted to 'cause they wanted the destruction of Israel.

[quote name='Wikipedia Entry']Moreover, "Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel" were offered "full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions" in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel; many, however, refused.[/quote]
In regard to the refugee issue... You actually quoted something integral to my point. The arabs that lived in Israel were offered all those things, yet they refused. Why? Because they wanted the new nation for themselves? Anyways, it's a really touchy/sensitive subject to talk about. I kind of put in parallel with the Native American being kicked out of their lands. You know exactly what happened there. The problem is that those Native Americans, in comparison with the Palestinians, weren't offered the same thing and those events occured in different time periods, so we can't really set them equal, but we can compare the two, right?

Probably the thing the pisses off many people is the fact that native Jews of Palestine and Palestinians used to live peacefully before the creation of Israel. So why did things change for the worse.... Because of the creation of Israel? Anyways, it's a really shitty matter, to say the least.
 
[quote name='boozi']The region became a warzone because the surrounding arab nations wanted to make it a warzone. They utterly disapproved of the new nation of Israel, told the Palestinians to get the hell out of there, and they started a war... No one told the other nations to start a war. They wanted to 'cause they wanted the destruction of Israel.[/quote]
Yes, nearby countries declared war on the fledgling state of Israel, because they sought its destruction. How do you gloss over the "creation" of a country right on top of a pre-existing country, however? Judging from what you have posted, it sounds like you do not consider this act to be an act of outrageous aggression.

And of course, it is this (perhaps academic) fine point which I had previously alluded to: invading a country and seizing its lands is a recognizable scenario. Instead, it appears that in this case, passive immigration over time was substituted for armed invasion. Formal declaration of Israel was met with military hostility, and it is this response which you cite as the cause of warfare (and not annexing another nation's lands, by simply saying that it is now yours.) This, I take exception to.

Your reference to the genocide and displacement of the Native American Indians by the creation and extention of the United States is an apt one, in many ways. A key difference, I believe, lies in disclosure: we say exactly what we did. We (well, I'm Chinese, so none of my forefathers were involved, but I'm American so I'm saying "we") took their lands for our own, on the basis of might. We dehumanized them as savages and claimed that they had no rights. Period. We took what was theirs and made it our own.

The difference here is that you have denied full responsibility for directly taking the homes and lands of the people who lived in modern day Israel, solely by virtue of superior might. Instead, you have claimed a position of defense.

America was established by the bayonet, the carbine, and of course, dreaded European diseases. We lay claim to unprecedented rights of personal freedoms, but not any divine preordination...unless you equate killing someone a quarter of your size in cold blood with a beam of sunlight and a Seraphic chorus.
 
[quote name='RBM']Yes, nearby countries declared war on the fledgling state of Israel, because they sought its destruction. How do you gloss over the "creation" of a country right on top of a pre-existing country, however? Judging from what you have posted, it sounds like you do not consider this act to be an act of outrageous aggression.[/QUOTE]
Listen, there was no official country named Palestine. Please bear with the fact I said official ok? It was a land full of different kinds of people, but it wasn't a "country." If you want to back date it to earlier times, there was a Roman ruler who tried and changed the name of the land of Israel to Palestine just 'cause he wanted to try and "break" the tie the Jews had to their lands. It was about 2000 years ago. Now, the thing is that we can't really rely on such a thing, saying that the land is owned by the Jews and it's their promised land, right? Believe me, I get your point and as far as I'm concerned, all of Israel can't be owned by the Jews. Well, not all of it, right?

That's one of the reasons I hate/don't get into political arguments. It's such a fucking big headache -_-
 
[quote name='sgs89']You are totally confused, I'm afraid. My point was that the Jews who attended Ahmadinejad's conference (and implicitly or even explicitly agreed with his assumptions about the Holocaust) are a tiny fringe group in Judaism. They have been widely condemned by mainstream Jews (even religious Jews). So, in that sense, they are as out-of-the-mainstream of Judaism as David Duke is of Christianity. No surprise, since they both are endorsing a conference put on by a kook bent on eradicating Jews. I did not say that they held the same positions as David Duke. Please learn to read.

Sorry that you can't "mudhole stomp" my position -- before doing that, you need to understand it, something you utterly failed to do.[/QUOTE]

Yup, you're right. I'll repeat: I thought you were comparing their position to that of David Duke, not the degree to which they're outside the mainstream. I misunderstood. That said, there are still, I suspect, more jews who disagree with Israel politically than there are christians who agree with Duke, but your point remains.
 
[quote name='PKRipp3r']It's not disingenuous.... at all.

It's a statement of fact.

period.

Not even arguing what you are saying.

Maybe you are continuing an argument you started in another thread or are confusing me with someone else, because it doesn't seem we are disagreeing about the basic facts of what happened.

You just made about a billion assumptions based on something i ctrl-v'd as a passing response to a broad, generalized statement that was largely untrue.

Sorry if you got confused.

You can go wag your finger somewhere else now.

k, thx[/QUOTE]

Well, I've noticed I tend to pretty much agree with you when we post on the same topic, so I shouldn't rule out that I am indeed missing your point (see above post), but even as a rebuttal, your cut & paste job selectively omits the parts that contradict (or complicate) the points being discussed. I get that you want to come up with contrary points to what Munch was saying, but rattling off a list of the negative highlights from the article doesn't really do the topic justice either.
 
[quote name='trq']Yup, you're right. I'll repeat: I thought you were comparing their position to that of David Duke, not the degree to which they're outside the mainstream. I misunderstood. That said, there are still, I suspect, more jews who disagree with Israel politically than there are christians who agree with Duke, but your point remains.[/QUOTE]

I commend you for recognizing your mistake. That is not done very frequently in these forums. Thanks for engaging in an interesting debate.
 
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