hi sally and good to have you back.
Muslimwoman said:
The analogy put to me is that if someone steals my apartment and gives it to his brother does it belong to his brother? I argued for ages about the Ottoman Empire, England and France, etc but they always come back to the moral standpoint above.
that is because it is based on questionable assumptions, namely:
1. the "apartment" was "stolen". in the vast majority of cases, the land was bought, in most cases from absentee ottoman landlords, who had legal title to the land. where land was conquered in the wake of the declaration of war after israeli independence (remember, the arabs voted against the 1948 partition plan and then invaded when the israelis declared independence) and there was no obvious claimant, it presumably became the state's to make use of as it saw fit. if you are talking, however, about private palestinian land *under israeli law* being sequestered or otherwise used against the will of the rightful owners, then that is a matter for the civil court system, whereby the owner can sue the government. i bet it's not as straightforward as that, incidentally, seeing as how the government in question seems to have a problem enforcing this particular bit of law. this is wrong. but, of course, this analogy isn't about that. it's about "moral" rights, which have very little to do with the practicalities of either wartime population exchanges or private land transactions.
2. it wasn't "my" apartment, it was an apartment that belonged to someone else and they sold it to a new owner, who used to own it many years ago until someone else stole it from him.
3. the "apartment" was "given" to the "thief's brother". of course, in this analysis, it ignores the fact that the "thief's brother" in at least 50% of the cases lived in "my brother's" street, and when "my brother" heard about "me" losing "my apartment", he kicked the "thief's brother out" and they had nowhere else to live. your analogy doesn't take account of that, of course.
4. that possession of "the apartment" conveys moral rights. and, of course, in some cases it does, but that isn't a categorical view.
in short, the assumptions are couched in such a way as to make it impossible for anyone to hold a contrary view, which is, of course, why people feel so self-righteous about this particular issue. for this reason, the analogy is faulty on at least four levels, but it's designed in such a tendentious way that it's effectively not open for discussion. if you want an analogy, try this one:
the chinese invaded tibet, a free, sovereign state, in 1948 and a significant amount of tibetans left to build a diaspora culture. imagine now, two thousand years later in 3948, the dominance of the chinese state is ancient history and the people living in tibet since 2948 (for the sake of argument) are north indians. suppose the tibetans decide, en masse, after two thousand years, to move back to their ancient homeland? suppose the indians don't like that? do the tibetans have a right to return? surely, here, the answer is yes. are the indians there entitled to call it their home? surely, the answer is yes. does the indian state have a right to try and prevent tibetans from returning? surely not. do the tibetans have a right to treat the local indians like crap? surely not.
Why they ask does someone living in US, UK, Russia or wherever think they have a right to up sticks and move to land that was taken from the people that lived there (in fairness they talked about everyone that lived there not just the Muslims).
the question here is whether the jews have a genuine, respectable connection to the land of israel or not. we believe that we do. personally, i pray for the "ingathering of the exiles to zion" three times a day and so has every jew for the last 2895 years since our first exile to babylon. we know its history and its geography, its flora and its fauna. anyone who knows anything about jews knows how attached we are to this place half the size of wales and how we've missed it over the millennia - how we've never given up on it. BUT that does not give us the right to treat anyone else there like crap. of course, it's not as simple as that, is it? but what your friends seem to crave is this simplicity, this idea of "goodies" and "baddies". there's also that rather unpleasant idea that once land has been conquered by muslims that it is "awqaf", by which logic spain is also occupied territory, but i don't often see people protesting the "catholic occupation" - the fact that palestinian christians are an oppressed minority under the rule of the palestinian authority seems to pass most people by. of course, the agenda here is to paint israel as just one more imperialism, no different from the british in india or the germans in tanzania and the difference, to us, is so obvious it's not even worth debating. 2,000 years ago, there was not a 1,000 year-old british state in india. 2,000 years ago, there was not a 1000-year-old german state in tanzania. with israel, there was.
Also why do people who know an area of land not designated as Israel that has recently been taken and the people moved off and then used as a settlement think it's ok to move there? What moral right do they feel they have, as ordinary human beings, to do that.
in some cases, they think that the land has been acquired legally (and like i said earlier, in many cases it has) but in cases where it hasn't, some of them think it's because jews have a G!D-Given right to the land, others think it's "winner takes all", others are simply there because the government gives them tax breaks. it's quite complicated and there are many different types of settlements. as we saw from the gaza disengagement, the government can change its mind. it is the religious attachments that are not so easily dealt with. but then again, are we suggesting that a future state of palestine should not have jewish citizens, or that they should not be allowed to live in hebron? surely that's not a state worth fighting for. in the same way, i would resist any attempt to suggest that non-jews could not be full and equal citizens of israel with a right to live wherever they liked. i'm not a believer in apartheid.
farhan said:
It will be wrong to compare Israel with Ottoman empire. They had the millet system, which was in no way comparable to the Israeli walls. And there was no ethnic cleansing. Anatolian gene pool is still less than 10% turkic.
under the millet system, farhan, each community was governed by its religious leadership which was responsible for paying the community's taxes and also institutionalised the second-class "dhimmi" status of jews, greeks and armenians. israel has nothing comparable in its civil code. it was the C19th challenge to this system known as the "tanzimat reforms", in the name of enlightenment and equality that led to popular discontent with the rule of the sultanate and ultimately the replacement of the empire with the modern turkish republic.
as for "ethnic cleansing", why not look up the turkish word "sürgün", farhan? this was an ottoman policy whereby when politically expedient, large sectors of the population were simply deported by the government to wherever it was convenient for them to be. there are extant documents from, for example, the ottoman governor of rhodes, for an "order" of 200 jewish families, to be useful in the textile trades. this policy was a much used political tool wherever there was unrest or ethnic-turkish dominance was ever in question. and as for the armenian genocide - read some turkish history, mate.
bishadi: as usual, you're not contributing anything useful to this discussion.
b'shalom
bananabrain
