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Comment by shaya | Hacker News Reader

Well, you actually don't know the facts. Palestine is a land, it was called that way even when the time of the British mandate, before WWII. Are the arabs that lived there are Palestinians? Yes. But what you don't mention is that also the jews that lived there were called Palestinians. The land of Israel and Palestine are exactly the same thing. There are arab Palestinians and jew Palestinians. They were not so smart to not take the UN partition plan for Palestine, which the jews accepted. So, right now the entire land is part of Israel :) Here's an explanation of past Israel prime minister Golda Meir, which has a statue in Manhattan. https://youtu.be/lhjB9W8UEgk

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Well, you actually don’t know the facts. Did Jews live there before the British? Yes. But what you don’t mention is that they were under 8% of the total population. Of course, given what you already omit, you also omit that those 8% owned only 2% of the land. So tell me, why would the 92% accept that so much of what is rightfully theirs would be forcefully taken from them and given to a minority population? Especially when, at this point in 1947, so many of them were settlers who emigrated from Europe to colonize Palestinian land.

But you know, for someone who claims to know the facts, it sure seems like you are purposefully spreading disinformation.

I don't know where your numbers are coming from, but they are at the very least misleading because the population was not exclusively made up of Jews and the group we now call Palestinians and not all land was privately owned.

EDIT: I rephrased this to more clearly explain my point.

I don't understand your argument. Jewish Palestinians plus non-Jewish Palestinians do make up 100% of Palestinians.

Oops, I made that more confusing by trying to note everyone was a Palestinian when the place was called Palestine. By "non-Jewish Palestinians" I was trying to refer to the predominately Muslim and predominately Arab group that we now just call Palestinians. There was and still is a population of Christians in the area and there presumably was some larger population of foreigners in the area when it was under foreign rule. I edited that comment to clear things up.

Everyone is still a Palestinian nowadays though.

The reason why there are less Christian Palestinians is because a lot of them were deported or fled shortly after the Nakba.

A lot of them would come back if Palestine was restored, but most of them are legally prevented by Israel from coming back.

Not even Hamas or Hezbollah wants Palestine to be a single religion or single ethnicity state, so I don't really understand what you were trying to convey.

I'm not going to get that deep into politics here. You are basically arguing for a one state solution except it is Palestinian run instead of Israeli run. HN probably isn't the place to have that debate.

I wouldn't care if it was Palestinian run or Israeli run, if it was one or two states, as long as its peaceful and democratic.

What I care about are factually wrong and misleading statements.

The Christian population in the Christian towns of the Westbank (Bethlehem) and in Gaza have been decreasing steadily for the past 70 years - this has nothing to do with the occupation of the Westbank and Gaza and everything to do with persecution by the local population. This trend is not confined to just the Westbank and Gaza and is in fact a trend that is occurring across the entire Middle East where in the past 100 years the Christian population has decreased from 20% of the population to approximately 5% of the population.

Have you ever been in Gaza or the Westbank?

How these places work is that if you leave, you can never come back.

These places are awful to live in. The only people that stay there stay because they don't have a choice or for ideological reasons. That's why Christians leave moreso, they often have family that left and can get refugee status more easily.

The trend of Christians leaving is a highly localized trend. The greatest number of Christians left not everywhere in the Middle East, but in Iraq, Syria, and, a while ago, Turkey.

The events in the last sixty years that contributed the most to Christian emigration were the Lebanese civil war, the Iraq war, the Syrian Civil War, and the Nakba of 1948.

If by persecution by the locals you mean the Jewish Israelis — sure. But if you are trying to imply that the Muslim Arabs persecuted the Christians get out of here.

By wide margins the European Christian crusaders killed more Arab Christians then any other ethnic group. Palestinian Christians and Muslims have coexisted for a long, long time. To the point that the holiest of Christian churches are often entrusted to Muslim custodianship. How else would you explain that?

Indeed. The majority of Palestinian Christians left due to their ethnic cleansing by Israel in 1948.

It's not Hamas that destroyed a Christian church and orphanage a week ago. It was an Israeli bomb.

There were two or three attacks of Christians in Palestine by Muslims, however them being religiously motivated is doubtful and the perpetrators were condemned and prosecuted by everyone, even Hamas.

The vast majority of persecution of Christians in Palestine for their religion was by Jewish extremists, overwhelmingly. Let alone ethnic persecution of Christians.

The fact is Christians have been persecuted in the Middle East for 100s of years. Under the Ottoman Empire Christians (and any non Muslims) had to pay a Jizya tax - which is persecution (unless you believe it is okay to tax people for being another religion), moreover you had numerous massacres of Christian populations by the Ottoman Empire (one example of this is the Armenian genocide, but you also had cases of Greek, Maronites and other Christian group being murdered at a large scale). Now with that said, Europe was no better, and often worse when it came to its treatment of minorities at that time.

Regardless, the fact that historically Christians (and other minorities) were treated relatively well in the Middle East does not change the reality that for the past 100 years Christians and other minorities are facing massive persecution in the Middle East and in some cases genocide or ethnic cleansing.

Some examples of persecution Christians currently face (by no means complete)

- In Egypt, Copts can not perform any repairs on their churches without government approval, moreover in the past 10 years alone 100s have been killed by mobs attacking them.

- In Saudi Arabia, Christians can not practice their religion in public.

- In Iran Christians that converted from Islam face the death penalty

- Turkey two Byzantine Era churches, Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Saviour, were just converted to mosques.

- In Gaza Christian business and places of worship are regularly attacked by Islamic extremists, often with tacit approval of the ruling Hamas.

And this is just the tip of the ice burg when it comes to the type of persecution Christians face in the Middle East today.

Now let’s for a second talk about Jews of the Middle East. A 100 years ago the Jewish population in the Middle East (outside of Israel/Palestine) was nearly 1 million and yet today it numbers maybe a few 100.

Ask yourself where are the Jews of Syria, Algeria, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq etc? All had relatively large Jewish communities until recently. Persecution, violence and yes, ethnic cleansing is what decimated the Jewish population of the Middle East (outside of Israel).

The reality is, one of the few countries in the Middle East where religious minorities do not face any major persecution is Israel. Yes, you have had individual cases of extremists attacking minorities - but this is true for every country in the world, and when it does happen they are usually caught and brought to justice. This is why the fastest growing religious community in Israel is Islam and this is also why the Christian population in Israel is continuing to grow (unlike in the areas in the Westbank under the Palestinian Authority rule and Gaza under Hamas rule, where the Christian population is decreasing at an alarming rate). Does it mean Israel is perfect when it comes to how it treats minorities? Nope. But, when it comes to its treatment of minorities it is no where near as bad as the rest of the Middle East and is not much worse (and in some cases better) than the EU and the US.

> Ask yourself where are the Jews of Syria, Algeria, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq etc? All had relatively large Jewish communities until recently. Persecution, violence and yes, ethnic cleansing is what decimated the Jewish population of the Middle East (outside of Israel).

Yeah, please stop with your disinformation. Zionists try to present the migration to Israel from Arab lands as if it was somehow equivalent to the Palestinian Nakba. Lets see what some of those migrants say about this. Yisrael Yeshayahu, a former Knesset speaker who migrated from Yemen said "We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations." -- basically he came because he was a zionist. Another former speaker Shlomo Hillel said "I do not regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists" [1]. Iraqi-born Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, speaking of the wave of Iraqi Jewish migration to Israel, concludes that, even though Iraqi Jews were "victims of the Israeli-Arab conflict", Iraqi Jews aren't refugees, saying "nobody expelled us from Iraq, nobody told us that we were unwanted" [2]. It is truly despicable to paint those who came to Israel from other parts of the Middle East as colonizers looking to steal the property of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs as victims.

> And this is just the tip of the ice burg when it comes to the type of persecution Christians face in the Middle East today.

Again, I know it would be seemingly convenient for you -- a defender of Apartheid Israel -- to find another nation which behaves like Israel (in its persecution of other races/religions). Nonetheless, even if what you are saying is true -- and I believe many of the Muslims of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria would reject this -- what you are proving is nothing. This is just a whataboutism/red herring/tu quoque. How about Israel starts treating the Arab Muslims and Christians with dignity, stops abusing their rights, stealing their property and land.

Just remember -- you are here defending a country which has institutionalized racism and apartheid.

[1] http://www.haaretz.com/hitching-a-ride-on-the-magic-carpet-1... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20050814015754/http://www.haaret...

Ah yes - All 1 million Jews in Arab lands were so happy they just packed up and ran to Israel once they got the chance.

Look, I have relatives and many friends that escaped those countries because they were being persecuted and in some cases we’re under the threat of death. You trying to change history because it doesn't fit your narrative doesn't change what actually happened.

The reality is Yemenite Jews have faced legal persecution and violence for many years. Read up about the pogroms like the Adyen Riots of 1947 where nearly 100 Yemenite Jews were murdered.

Did some Yemenites came before Israel existed? Absolutely, as did Jews from all over the world. After all it is the most religiously significant place in Jewish religion - it is only natural that some would come and choose to make a life here. That does not change the fact that Jewish communities across the middle east faced (and still face) significant persecution.

I can give you countless examples of pogroms the Jews in the middle east faced before the state of Israel even existed, the Farhud pogrom in Iraq in 1941, the massacre of Jews in Constantine in 1934, the Hebron and Safed Massacres of 1929 in which 2000 year old Jewish communities were wiped out and there are many many many more. There were also and in some cases still are unjust laws, real apartheid laws, that exist persecuting against Jews and Christians. In Iraq you had laws that denied Jews the right to a bank account, or to work in many professions, including government positions, you had laws in Algeria that denied the Jews citizenship and laws in Libya that effectively denied Jews citizenship. And again - this is only the tip of the ice burg when it comes to the type of persecution Jews faced and still face today across the Middle East.

As far as you calling Israel an Apartheid state, plenty of Israeli Arabs would disagree with you. I have provided some links to a few of them[1][2][3]. The majority of Israeli Arabs are proud to be Israeli [4] and of Israel’s achievements. Does Israel have some racism? For sure - so does the US, the UK, France etc.. - that does not make it an apartheid state. Arab Israelis make up 20% of the states population and they have the same right as anyone else in the country and that is best demonstrated by the fact that the third largest political party is in fact an Israeli Arab party.

As for the Palestinians in the Westbank and Gaza - I truly hope to see them form a successful state beside Israel where they can enjoy those same democratic rights (the rights Mahmoud Abbas has denied them since 2006 when he last allowed an election). We were extremely close to achieving this in the past and I hope we achieve it in the future.

Now you never actually even tried to counter my argument about the persecution and real apartheid like laws christians face in the rest of the Middle East. Are you denying that 100s of Copts christians have been murdered in Egypt in the past 10 years? or the laws in Saudi Arabia that deny Christians the right to practice in public? Or that you can be put to death in Iran for converting from Islam to Christianity or the fact that Turkey just turned two historic Byzetine churches into mosques?

Now regardless of the above argument - and since you raised the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (I did not - I spoke about the persecution of minorities in the Middle East and how it has effected the demographic balance). The only way we will get to a solution to this conflict is when we all start acknowledging each others suffering and start talking about the other sides suffering as well. I as an Israeli am willing to do that and I also will continue to fight any racism I see here in Israel (both by how I vote and by how I act). But this conversation has to be based on facts, those facts do not ignore the other sides suffering. It's a complicated conflict and there is no easy solution, but hopefully, through dialogue we can celebrate small baby steps in the right direction. However, I will not stand by when you or any other try to deny the suffering of any side and the persecution of minorities (doesn't matter if they are Jewish, Muslim, Christian[5], Bahai, Druze etc..) in the Middle East.

[1] - Yoseph Haddad - https://www.facebook.com/YosHaddad

[2] - Israeli Ambassador George Deek - https://twitter.com/GeorgeDeek

[3] - Mohammad Kabiya - https://twitter.com/mohammadkabiya as just some of the examples.

[4] - https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/both-jews-and-arabs-say-...

[5] UN watch on the decline of Christians in Iraq and Syria - https://youtu.be/kbJ2su1rwAs

You would have land owned by Jewish Palestinians, land owned by non-Jewish Palestinians, and land cooperatively owned by both Jewish and non-Jewish Palestinians. Jewish Palestinians plus non-Jewish Palestinians do not make up 100% of Palestinians, but rather the result of 100% minus land cooperatively owned by both Jewish and non-Jewish Palestinians.

You're confusing land and people here.

DSingularity above is talking about 2% owning 8% of the land, with "92% accept that so much of what is rightfully theirs would be forcefully taken from them".

If you are saying I am confusing land and people, what is the 2% and 8% number referring to in the above comment? People and land? If so, what people, and what land?

At the time of the British mandate the Jewish minority — 2% of the population — owned a total of 8% of the land. So, my point was, why do you blame the Arabs for not accepting the partition plan which came to impose a forceful transfer of land from the majority to the minority. When you consider the facts you can clearly see why the Palestinians opposed the initial partition plan of Palestine.

Yes, but then my initial comment above about the Jewish population and the arab population is not confusing land and people. The Jewish population owned 2%, and the arab population owned X amount of land, while Y amount of land was owned cooperatively by individuals of both. It would be interesting to know what X and Y is.

The partitioning of land was obviously unfair after world war 2. I doubt anyone actually disagree with it. Land getting repossessed and captured during wars is never fair, and it was not the only border change that occurred when the world war ended. The allies did not just keep the borders at they were at the beginning of ww2, through much of the land grabs has been mostly forgotten outside of people studying history. The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is one of the few remaining land conflicts from the war.

Its not just a land conflict from the war though. This is different than the way you are painting it -- that some British officer threw up his hands and said "I don't know whose land this is, here you have it".

If you look at the history of this area, what happened was Jewish terrorist groups (haganah[2], lehi[3], Irgun[4]) started going around murdering Palestinian villagers[1]. When the Palestinian villagers ran the Zionists settled their lands.The land and property was stolen from the Palestinians. They were terrorized into fleeing their lands and were never allowed to return!

So somehow, in the modern day when we all know this as fact, we are supposed to just accept that these people and all their dependents are condemned to eternal refugee status? Thats not the worse part. While the Palestinians are condemned as refugees any random Jewish people born in Europe or America are allowed to emigrate to Israel to settle those lands. This is why Israel is an Apartheid state.

How is this not absurd and how is it moral?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(militant_group) [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun

I never said "that some British officer threw up his hands and said "I don't know whose land this is, here you have it"."

Land and property was stolen after world war 2 by the allied. History has painted most of that as being acceptable because the Nazis was bad and the allied good and so anything that occurred after victory was good. Land and property was stolen and the people who lived there were forced to fleeing their lands and to never be allowed to return.

For most of those, yes, we are supposed to just accept that those people and all their dependents are condemned to eternal refugee status. It seems that most conceded land has simply been accepted as belonging to the victors as any person who actually lived there is now dead given that it been almost 100 years. What makes the Palestinians situation a bit more unique among conceded land is that the people actually did not get removed a 100 years ago and so the conflict is still alive today. People are trying to remove them today.

As a concrete example of conceded land, Finland conceded much more land to Russia than the area size of Gaza, and the Finnish population (Karelians) had to flee while people from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia settled the captured land. Today the conceded Finnish land is still owned by Russia. The conflict is however pretty dead because Finland do not want to own a bunch of land where everyone is Russian-speaking, and the cost of bringing the standard of living to the same level as in Finland would be pretty expensive. Any descendant that used to live there will just have to accept it, and the idea of forcing out the Ukraine/Belarus/Russia descendants that live there today is so far away from reality that it thankfully does not exist.

In my own opinion, trying to find a solution based on who owned what a 100 years ago is unlikely to be productive. There was a world war, a lot of people died, and most everything about it was tragic except that the Nazis lost. The conflict today is not going to be solved by trying to fix history, but rather by finding a solution for those living there today.

Palestine was a Nation. Not merely a land. It had autonomy and governance all through history

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