BTW, Did the Jews have "authorization" to barge into someone else's country, commit genocide, ethnic cleansing and a 50 year war against the original inhabitants? (aside from that old rag called "The Old TEstament") ... Jus sayin'
Already in 1929 in Hebron "Palestinian" Arabs were massacring jews in Hebron. Jews who had live in Hebron for some thousands of years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre The way the media presents this story, the jews arrived in Palestine after WW2. There's never any mention of the Muslim Brotherhood joining forces with the principle muslim leader of the area and with the Nazis in the 1930s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haj_Amin_al-Husseini#In_Nazi-oc...
The media bear a terrible responsibility for their failure to provide any kind of historical context to the problems in Israel/Palestine.
Anyway, bringing up the 1929 massacre in this context seems like a non sequitur. You might as well justify the second Arab-Israeli war in terms of the massacre innocent Palestinians by Israeli militants at Deir Yassin[2], a considerably more cold-blooded, treacherous, strategically terrifying, blatant war crime that played a critical role in driving Palestinians off their own lands. (But I'm not making this justification.)
[1] http://books.google.com/books?id=M7tr9_rCwD0C&lpg=PP1...
[2] http://books.google.com/books?id=M7tr9_rCwD0C&lpg=PP1...
There has been violence from both sides of the conflict. On the Zionist side, there's another incident I've never heard mentioned in the media: the 1946 David Hotel bombing in which a Zionist terorist organization bombed a hotel in a strike at the British, killing 91 in one of the first historic examples of terrorism targeting civilians. This bombing was commemorated in 2006 by Benjamin Netanyahu and former members of the terrorist organization and a plaque was put up that effectively blamed the British, rather than the terrorist operation, for the deaths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing#60th_a...
Not only was the KD hotel a military headquarters, it was supposed to be empty at the time of the bombing.
You're either ignorant or lying for some reason.
Partially true... part of the hotel was used by the British for their offices:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel#History
Not quite. According to Wikipedia "Warnings were sent by telephone, including one to the hotel's own switchboard, which the hotel staff decided to ignore, but none directly to the British authorities." There's a difference between phoning in a bomb threat in an occupied building and bombing an unoccupied building.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
>You're either ignorant or lying for some reason.
I suppose it's impossible to discuss anything related to Zionism without one party denouncing the other's character. ;)
Do not put words in my mouth.
Perhaps the problem is that the Palestinians are slacking? They should blow up more things, not less...
Edit: Your subsequent edits are quite sick and disturbing. You should consider reverting your text to the original comment.
And I edited about 30 seconds to a minute after my initial post, to make my points clearer. I don't think that's unreasonable, much less "sick or disturbing".
Simple answer, they didn't have that right. And the ONLY reason they were able to actually exercise it, was because the Arabs (whom they had double-crossed) were instrumental in defeating the Ottomans.
The Balfour Declaration was one of the most blatent acts of perfidy and outright dishonest double-crossing in modern history. At the SAME TIME that the British promised that they would uphold the rights of Arabs to self-determination - in return for the Arabs fighting (and defeating) the Ottomans - they also effectively bartered away land that WASN'T THEIRS to a 3rd party - the Zionists.
This was all in response to someone trying to pass off the above act of basic dishonesty as legitimate authorisation for Israel, and every bit of nonsense that has followed.
The only authorisation that "Occupied Palestine" (aka Israel) ever had, from a moral perspective, was the old story of white European has guns, white European wants your land, white European will come and take it.
Whatever the reason for why the Europeans wanted it (resources, more space, or "our holy book says it belongs to US") really doesn't matter. The whole thing is a sham, which is why 60 years after the fact and after countless beatings, you still haven't "convinced" the natives that you're right.
And while we're all lecturing each other about the finer points of history, might I point out that this isn't the first time that Europeans came and took that strip of territory from the locals. And eventually, the locals took it back, lock stock and barrel ....
You try to use the narrative of colonialism, imperialism and racism, to obscure the fact that the islamic empire used weaponry and war to take control of almost every part of the world that is islamic (certainly all areas of africa, the middle east, europe and the indian subcontinent). And then it imposed its own forms of racism and colonialism on the subjugated people. Let's not even talk about the jews. Here's two books documenting the history of islamic slave-trading in Africa: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Legacy-Arab-Islam-Africa-Inter-relig... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Islams-Black-Slaves-History-Diaspora...
It seems it was every bit as bad as the racism and colonialism of the atlantic slave-trade. Even the UN expert panel on slavery in 1951 said that 1:20 people in Arabia was a slave. That was 1951. Three years after the establishment of the state of Israel.
Let's have some consistency here. At least the jews did not go into Palestine with weaponry and enslave the Arabs living there.
For the benefit of others who might have had the misfortune of reading the above (you're too far gone to matter):
The Middle East has had civilisation for millenia (spelling?) before Europe had. Consequently, there have been a multitude of different ethnic groups/tribes/peoples who have held sway over one part or another. Hundreds upon hundreds of states & kingdoms, which were themselves swallowed up by one empire after another.
Today, you look upon the Middle East and see just one thing, Arabic speaking Muslims - and you blithely assume that they all came from Arabia.
Completely ignorant and false.
The final "civilisation" or movement (not sure what the right term would be here) which held dominated the Middle East was Islam. And it stayed, unlike all the others.
Most Middle Easterner's today are Muslim, and speak Arabic. But they are still descended from Phoenicians, Libyans, Egyptians, countless migrant tribes (many of whom are collectively labeled under "Bedouin"), Hebrews (yes - the Romans didn't ethnically cleanse the entire population!), Nestorian Christians, etc, etc.
The people never disappeared. They just now speak one tongue, and practice (mostly) one faith. Thats why we know mostly refer to them as "the Arabs".
Trying to pretend that they don't exist, or somehow became extinct, is ridiculous.
Where did the "Palestinian Arabs" come from? PALESTINE. Thats where.
What you'r saying is akin to fast-forwarding past centuries of continued European integration, and then saying that the people living in what used to be called France no longer have any right to that land, because they are part of a wider European state and they all speak Esperanto.
Anyone who would like to read a somewhat more balanced account of the origins of the "Arabs" would be well advised to read "History of the Arabs" by Philip Hitti.
And as for this gem:
"At least the Jews did not go into Palestine with weaponry and enslave ..."
(shaking my head) Is it possible for anyone who has not lived under a rock for half a century to write that claptrap?