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18 December 03.
Those of you interested in the issues regarding Israel and Lebanon's current war are referred to this July 2006 entry.
Israel is the only country on Earth about which this question is seriously asked; fortunately, it's also one of the few countries which exists for a real purpose, so it works out. Before continuing, let me tell you more about my biases:
Immediately after the foundation of Israel in May, 1948, thousands of youths left their families and homelands, coming from Northern Africa and Europe to help make the desert grow. Huge amounts of hooking up and fornication ensued, and the desert did indeed grow. My mother's grandmother and grandfather were married within months of moving to Israel, two weeks after meeting. (*) They conceived my mother (their second daughter) in July 1949. Since Israel conscripts both men and women, everybody around 18 to 19 is hanging out in the army, working out and wasting time. Much hooking up and fornication ensues, and so my mother met my father. It was more or less a fluke that I wasn't born in Israel myself.
[* 21 December update: I just met with my mother, who tells me this version of the story, which I coulda swore my grandmother had told me, was completely wrong, and that my grandfather was either born in Israel in 1910, or born in Cypress and moved to Israel within the year. My grandmother came to Israel in the 30s with a youth group, and that's how she avoided persecution in Romania. My mother did indeed meet my father while they were both in the military, which she describes as a "meat market".]
But I'm digressing from Israel, a country which is, at its heart, the attempted solution to a migration problem. Back up to the 10 December essay: there are 18 million Jews today, and the Nazis killed 6 million Jews in the 1940s. Since it was so completely obvious that the Nazi party had a platform based heavily on eugenics and explicit, open persecution of Jews, why didn't more Jews just up and leave in the late 30s? The answer, of course, is that they had nowhere to go. It was so obvious to the world that Jews were being persecuted and wanted to leave that a conference was called exclusively to discuss the emigration question, at Evian, France. It was completely obvious to all involved that life sucked for lots of people in Germany and the newly-annexed Austria, and yet only one country out of the 31 attendees agreed to expand its immigration policy in light of the emergency (you'll never guess which). Yeah, it spells `Naive' backwards. It's also a ubiquitous symbol of a willingly missed opportunity to prevent one of the great humanitarian disasters of the modern era. And don't forget the story of the St Louis, which needs no further commentary. After the war, when the horrors of the Germans were blatantly and graphically laid out for all the world to see, the migration problem only got worse: now there were all these Jews who had been taken from their homes and shunted into ghettos and then to concentration camps, and now had no home to go back to. Sentiment in Eastern Europe was still anti-Jew, as evidenced by a July, 1946 pogrom in the Polish town of Kielce. Migration restrictions throughout the world failed to lighten. And so, based upon a still-ubiquitous desire to keep immigrants away, Israel was founded. Modern Israel The main lesson I get from our history is this: people are assholes. Our institutions should not be designed around ideals about egalitarianism and fluffy bunnies; they should be designed to minimize the damage assholes can do. This was one of Madison's primary explanations for the USA's current form of government: preventing the tyranny of the majority. Whether the government as it exists succeeds in this goal is up for debate, but the sentiment is there. Applying this to Israel is a no-brainer: the world has collectively been an asshole to Jews, and there isn't particularly evidence that the people of today are suddenly enlightened relative to the people of fifty years ago. Historically, other minorities would be persecuted with a chant of `Go back to (distant geographic location)', but before there was a location for Jews, the only choice was to kill them. Whether antisemitism in the world is in decline since fifty years ago is a question of measurement; but like the persecution of other groups, it has not---and never will be---eliminated. The second lesson I get from history is that people don't learn from history. Asylum laws are not informed by Evian. Migration laws the world over still place undue restrictions on movement even in emergencies (see below). A country which unconditionally accepts Jews is, in this context, an eminently sensible damage-minimizing move. The USA is not that country, for reasons I've harped on enough. In summary, Israel should exist because it is the only reasonable solution to the pervasive, unending, universal fact that people hate Jews, because they're Jewish. It's not the perfect solution, however, because that country has to be somewhere, and wherever it is, its neighbors will hate Jews. One more migration problem I resolved not to get into the Arab-Jew conflict today, but since this is a migration essay, let me point to one oft-overlooked migration issue: people in the Palestinian Authority face many restrictions when entering Israel, which we read about all day long, but they are also completely and totally barred from Egypt, Syria, or Lebanon. To impute an intent on the law: these migration restrictions are in place because as long as there is a mass of poor and miserable people right on the border of Israel, there is pressure for Israel's dissolution and a mass of people who have nothing better to do than to try to kill Israelis. Jordan is an exception, by the way, because they don't recognize Israel as a state, and therefore consider migrants from the PA to be internal travellers. [A reader points out that Jordan is in some ways friendly to Israel: they have free trade (consistent with not acknowledging the border) and they each have an embassy in the other country (decidedly inconsistent with the denial of Israel's existence).] Harping on migration problems is literally my full-time occupation, but the border restrictions of Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon are the number one most asshole immigration restrictions I have ever seen. If you squint a bit, you can see why Israel has its checkpoints---people keep walking over the border and killing Israelis. But the restrictions keeping Arabs out of the surrounding, more stable Arab countries have no merits beyond run-of-the-mill xenophobia, and blatantly support direct, tangible suffering among the people that these countries claim to stand behind. [some notes. (A-bias)] Asst footnotes Yes, I'd also support carving out some protected territory for the Roma. The Parsi also aren't doing so hot, but at least that's not due to external persecution. The United Kingdom, a country of 60 million people, is obsessively working to reduce the 10,000 asylum applications it gets every quarter, fearing the horrendous impact these asylum seekeres will have on the population. Tony Blair got heaps of press the other day because the application rate recently halved, from 0.033% of the British population to 0.016%. They've come up with some novel methods, such as sending 14,000 Iraqi refugees back to Iraq to, um, help rebuild the country. No need to wait until Britain stops bombing it, I guess. [Here is a nice collection of articles on the British obsession with refugees.] Oh, and if you want to read more about my rantings about things we should have learned from the holocaust but didn't, check out this essay. It's the first of 188,000 you'd get when you ask Google about IBM and Evil. [Also notice the category they put that query under. Tee hee.]
This is part one of three. Click "Next entry" below to read on.
[link] [28 comments]
[Previous entry: "Assorted updates"]
[Next entry: "How Israel exists"]
Replies: 28 comments
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on Tuesday, July 18th, javacat said
Obviously an old essay but WOW!
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on Saturday, July 22nd, European said
"live by the sword, die by the sword".A state that was founded by terrorism and continues to take part in terrorism will ultimately be destroyed. Israel can never be a legitimate country.
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on Wednesday, August 2nd, Eoghan Kavanagh said
Hi,
I agree Israel should exist, but it is in the wrong place. Considering practically every Israeli that is interviewed on TV and Radio has an American accent and the country is armed and bank rolled by the USA, why not move Israel to the USA. They have lots of land and I am sure they could allocate a large parcel of land (bigger than current Israel) to Israel. Israel in the middle east is a failed entity and is as irrelevent as the Native Americans getting the USA back. Lets face it the world and the UN made a big mistake in 1949, let correct it.
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on Sunday, December 24th, Sam said
You are talking about Palestinian migrating to their own country, what you call Isreal, was Palestine before Israel started its terrirosim project and evacuated palestinian from their own country
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on Friday, March 9th, Buddy Israel said
Israel shouldn't ecist in Palestine. The land belongs to the palestinine people.
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on Sunday, May 13th, Jacob said
We all know Jews suffered a-lot. But why do the Palestine people have to pay for that shouldn't Israel excist in Europe where the people there should pay. The Palestine people didn't have anything to do with the killing of 6 million Jews. By the way Israel tortures my mother, imprisioned my inocent father, and shot and killed my baby brother. And when I say Israel is wrong, I am listed as a terrorist.
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on Monday, January 14th, dustin said
I agree with most of the people above. The land Israel exists on does not belong to Israel, it belongs to the Palestinian people. The U.S. should not support a government that exists on stolen land. Israel should move, but we know that will never happen. More bloodshed will happen because of them.
We all know the Isrealis beleive they have devine right to be where they are, and they will not leave. So, because of religious beleifs people will hurt. Just like the past 3,000 years of history...Will we ever figure out our supersititions are not real and not worth killing over?
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on Monday, January 21st, poop said
it was not stolen, fools. Jews legally migrated to land that has and always will be theirs.
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on Thursday, February 7th, AMANDA said
You all are full of crap. Read the bible, read the torah, and figure out that ISRAEL existed LONG BEFORE the name "Palestine" was ever mentioned. YES, G-d GAVE ISRAEL TO THE JEWS. Now get over it and leave them the hell alone.
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on Tuesday, March 25th, Uncle Jew said
I agree with you guys. However,if Europeans were responsible for the Holocaust, then they should have given a piece of shit(land) to poor jews. Why did we make Muslims pay price for that?
If G-D had given the land to Fu--ing jewish that in the same way G-D gave America to Native Americans. If we follow this rule of God gave what to whom, then the whole map of the the world would get change. (((((Boycott Israel)))). Death to Israe!!!!!! Humanity should get rid of this country and also with bloody people living in there.
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on Tuesday, March 25th, Uncle Jew said
I agree with you guys. However,if Europeans were responsible for the Holocaust, then they should have given a piece of shit(land) to poor jews. Why did we make Muslims pay price for that?
If G-D had given the land to Fu--ing jewish that in the same way G-D gave America to Native Americans. If we follow this rule of God gave what to whom, then the whole map of the the world would get change. (((((Boycott Israel)))). Death to Israe!!!!!! Humanity should get rid of this country and also with bloody people living in there.
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on Tuesday, March 25th, Uncle Jew said
I agree with you guys. However,if Europeans were responsible for the Holocaust, then they should have given a piece of shit(land) to poor jews. Why did we make Muslims pay price for that?
If G-D had given the land to Fu--ing jewish that in the same way G-D gave America to Native Americans. If we follow this rule of God gave what to whom, then the whole map of the the world would get change. (((((Boycott Israel)))). Death to Israe!!!!!! Humanity should get rid of this country and also with bloody people living in there.
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on Tuesday, May 20th, majd said
i thik israel should not exist cuz palestinians were jews people before islam and when islam came there, they convert their religion to islam , so they are the native people
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on Monday, October 20th, Mick said
Israel exists because a lot of people of Jewish faith basically squatted on the land. After World War 2 and the terrible events of the Holocaust, the whole world felt sorry for people of Jewish faith. As there were already so many "settlers" (squatters) and because of a story in the Bible (fictitious claim) the UN chose Palestine.
In todays world that would not have happened.
Palestinians have every right to be mad at the situation. After the 60's, the Lebaneze have every right to be mad at the situation.
If every nation claimed some right based upon something that occurred 2,000 years ago, the world map would change significantly. England would revert to Italian.
North America to the American Indian Tribes. Australia to the aborigines etc etc etc.
We know this cannot be undone, but the very least Israel should do is revert back to the 1948 borders and make peace with it's neighbours. Jewish people (of ALL people) should know better than to persecute others!
It's time for the USA and the UN to force Israel back to it's 1948 borders. Israel should face sanctions if they do not comply.
At the moment, it is obvious to everyone not just Arabs that Israel is treated differently to any other nation. This does not help peace in the Middle East.
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on Thursday, November 6th, Sarah said
Holy crap, B, skimming these comments is quite depressing.
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on Thursday, November 20th, Ahmed said
I understand what happened in germany was very bad, but what about rewanda and other genoside, that people just like to forget, the fact is, no other western country wanted the jewish people to move into thier back yard, they choose to dump them into a country [yes it didn't have a government but it was populated with millions of Palestinian] where people were already living and given half the chance and 1 tenth the funding the jews recieved from the US, it would have.
I am a muslim but i have to say that i respect the jews, they stick together and fight for each other. Thats more than i can say for the bastards running the so called islamic state now. But eventually the the muslim nations will get there act together and Israel will no longer exist when that happen, the jewis waited for thousand of years to get a land but i would bet they won't keep it long.
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on Monday, March 23rd, Allah Ecba said
I think that israel should exist because that land originally belonged to the Jews and the palestinians left that land and they needed somewhere so its kind of a move it you loose it situation. The Jews offered to live in peace but the Palestinian refused agressivly and with the advanced technology that the jewish people have we had to defend ourselves
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on Wednesday, May 6th, marilyn said
they should ALL beCannanites..original inhabitants of this piece of land. Recently historically most of the people who immigrate to Israel don't seem to be Hebrews (or Cannanites) anyway, mostly Russians, Germans and various African and other assorted peoples whom seem to be "Jews". One thing for sure, Palestinian peoples are NATIVES of that land, not the Israelis for the most part. Strangely it seems that the Palestinians and Israelis who have traditionally lived there seemed to get along for hundreds of years till this influx began. Why do you suppose that was?
By the way, the Romans did not move populations, and those who left, left because they did not like living under Roman occupation. However, many went to Rome and Spain and other Roman Dominated lands...so it seems they had another reason for dispersing. Likely possibility of living profitably as with most emmigrants who leave their homes.
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on Thursday, May 14th, Amar said
Did you people not even read the above essay? Everyone that thinks Israel does not have the right to exist is either ignorant, biased, or anti-semetic.
As stated above, after WWII the Jews did not have anywhere to go, due to immigration restrictions and continuing rampant anti-semitism in Eastern and Western Europe, as well as North America. Palestine was not actually a state, and was simply run by British colonizers, with no real defined borders or centralized government.
What better a place to put the homeland of the Israeli descendants then in Israel, before the Roman Empire persecuted them and kicked them out. Let us not forget either that before Israel was re-created, Jews and Arabs lived together in this region, making the land belonging to both of these groups.
Not only this, but when Israel was divided originally when you look at the 1948 maps, the Palestinians were given far more land, more arable, fertile land, and better resources. It was only after the cowardly attacks by the combined Arab's might during 1967 war that caused these regions to lose land, which Israel did in fact return, which they did not need to.
Many forget that it was the Arabs that stated that if a Jewish state was made, they would make a concerted effort to kill all of them, and that there would never be peace. There have been many peace attempts by Israel, as well as cease fires, all of which have been ended by militant rocket fire from the Palestinian side. A large part of the current problems revolve around Arab refugees, 80% of whom left Israeli land by their own choice, not by force. How the mainstream media and population ignores these facts is beyond me, but like I said before, it's simple ignorance, bias, or anti-semitism.
All I know is that if any single person who reads this believes they would simply sit there while any type of militants blast continuous unprovoked rocket fire into civilian areas (or from the Arab perspective, provoked simply by existing) and take no action at all is simply being an idealist.
Palestine is like a little kid with a stick, poking at a big peaceful dog (Israel). Then when the dog has had enough poking, and bites, they cry and bitch and whine about how unfair it is that the dog bit them, when they are constantly the ones doing the provoking in the first place.
Take a page from Jordan and Egypt, admit Israel has a right to exist, and become allies. Peace only doesn't exist because the general population of the Arabs do not want peace. The level of ignorance from the Palestinians, Palestinian sympathizers, and the mainstream media is depressing. Israel is not in a good place, but there was no other option, and people just need to get over it and accept a peace loving, economy regulating, legitimate state into the region.
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on Sunday, September 27th, raj said
I get that the jewish people have a right to their own state. but i don't get how founding a state through violence. I mean don't the people who had made a life there get a say??? Also why encroach on what little land they do have left. Isralis didn't like that there was no place to go with Nazi Germany, i am suprized they would make anyone else go through that. Also i think that the last couple generations of leaders were a bunch of morons and have left a really big mess for the coming generations to clean up.
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on Wednesday, November 4th, Someone Unknown said
This is all a joke. Israel flat out illegally exists. It may be there to stay but not before a whole LOT of blood is shed. The Jews had nowhere to go after WWII and nobody in Europe wanted to deal with them anymore(which is why the current Jewish population in Europe is less than 8 percent) so they said Heyy lets just adopt a land for them in a region that is easy to take advantage of. I am not against the Jewish religion but this is just wrong. Why should Palestinians have to pack their bags and move out of their homeland and not be allowed back in it? OH I know why... because a religious cult called the Jews have nowhere else to go. These Jews occupied that land THousands of years ago, and they only occupied it for a few hundred years compared to the many thousands of years Palestine owned that land. Everyone wants to say leave the poor jews alone.. well now we see what happens when the jews get a little bit of power; war erupts and shows no sign of ending. Damn Jews are responsible for SOO many wars. Arabs are so peaceful, loving, caring and compassionate. Just because they want to defend THEIR homes that makes them angry psychotic terrorists? Jews are GREEDY, do we know what greedy people have wanted to do since day 1? Run the world!
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on Friday, November 6th, Anthony Maione said
Unfortunately the predicament the middle east is in now is quite confusing.
Being a teenage jew i've found that we are taught to yearn for a messiah to come and redeem Israel. The issue here is the only thing holding us together throughout the exile and the holocaust was our religion and a belief that one day we will return home...to eret israel.In todays society their are certain ways in which to act and walking into palestine and forcing the natives to leave was wrong and england had no right to give us a land that was not theirs to give. Just as their are many arabs that dispise the jews so are their many europeans.In a way Israel was our final hope to have a place to live.If several million jews were to leave europe and immagrate to palastine(just as a people) would the palastinians allow us to live together in palastine? Jews were already hated enough in every country they lived in. What better place to go then home. Not through war but through tolerance and understanding.Like "I understand that jews have no where else to live, and they believe palastine is their homeland" or "I understand that throughout the time us jews were in exile(about 2000 years) people have been living in palastine peacefully" We need to be more tolerant about the situations were in and think about our action and how they effect innocent people.
Shalom Salaam!
One day!
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on Sunday, January 3rd, HEZBOLLAH said
VERY SOON,
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on Sunday, February 14th, American said
I am an American studying Arabic, and in the process of doing so, I lived in Egypt for six months and traveled throughout Egypt and to Jordan. From this experience I can say that one of the most inflammatory topics I could possibly discuss with Egyptians is the existence of Israel.
The fundamental problem here is one of colonialism. If most of Western Europe and the United States could colonize huge sections of Africa and Asia, why can't the Jews occupy Palestine?
The answer? Like many things, among them slavery and denying women the right to vote, the majority of the world is no longer supportive of colonization and displacement of peoples (and in reference to Israel-Palestine, I am referring to the Palestinian Arabs, and not the Jews). In the same way, the majority of countries that we view as "modernized" or "enlightened" are not based on religious principles. The first thing many people probably think of in connection with Saudi Arabia, for example, would be women being forced to cover themselves, which most people also equate with Islamic extremism, making Saudi a religious state. Well, what of a country that claimed land already occupied and owned by a group of people, based on their particular religious text? In most contexts, this sort of reasoning wouldn't fly, but for some reason, a religious state is all right if it's Israel.
My real problem with Israel is not its existence, per se, but the fact that Israel has continually and aggressively tried to expand its borders.
Additionally, as to the argument made in this article, if we created homelands for every persecuted group of people on this earth, we would not only have to relocate nearly every person, we would have a world based on dividing people who are different. Historically, what has pushed people to work through issues of discrimination and persecution is exposure to people unlike them. However, I don't think that avoiding persecution is the real reason behind the establishment of the Israeli state, and if it were, I say it's high time for a Gay State.
Salaam.
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on Sunday, February 21st, dabest122333 said
The whole land of Israel should be a joint existence between the jews who live their and the palestinians that lived there prior to 1948. Israel should still remain a state for jewish assylum, as that is the real reason for its existence. At the same time, israel needs to build up palestine (gaza) and spend its resources on the palestinians instead of trying to build up a worthless desert in the negev. I am a jewish teenager living in america, so maybe i have a bias.
Seriously, my school consists of blacks, hispanics, whites, chinese, indians, jews, and haitians. why can't israel be the same?
The truth is that if israel let up its "borders" on the gaza strip it would get blown up. Therefore, the most sensible thing to do is to spend MONEY on rebuilding gaza, so that it will eventually warm up to being part of an israeli state.
This new israeli state would be both an assylum to jews, but also a homeland to those of the islamic faith. Maybe one day israel will have both the crescent and the jewish start right on its flag.
pshhh what do i know? I am just a jewish boy hoping for some kind of peace. nobody else needs to dies.
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on Monday, February 22nd, Daniel Judd said
I can't believe the crap some people say about giving up Israel. First of all, America should not seize its support of Israel. We need an ally in the middle east as much as they need our monetary support. Furthermore, Israel's army is called the IDF Israeli DEFENCE force. Israel only defends itself from the many hostile countries surrounding it. I don't understand why so many are so hostile to Israel's attempts to defend itself from the millions around it when certain factions are firing missiles into the State and sending in Terrorists. Second, if Israel reverts to its 1948 border, it will lose the Golan Heights. You can't defend Israel without the Golan Heights; the Palestinians will come and take over more land as they have. We gave them the Gaza Strip. Now that's not enough, they want the Golan Heights. Once that happens, Israel won't be able to defend itself. How come there are so many Islamic states but people wine about a tiny Jewish state. Also, putting it in Europe would defeat the whole purpose of everything we have fought for for thousands of years. Israel is the promise land and the Jews have occupied it though they have always been persecuted by the many palestinian nations (for instance the philistines). what I don't understand is why so many are after a nation that of so few when they have a huge portion of the world all to themselves. I'm just frustrated by those who refuse to acknowledge Israel's right to exist.
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