Myth #1... Israel is "Stolen Land"

[mbig]

And I explained why I felt your response was irrelevant.

How? By simply posting an excerpt from a Wikipedia article (as if that site was an absolute authority) and then highlighting a part? Where he seems to be suggesting that Brownfeld has distorted Ha'am's writings or quoted him out of context. I'm sorry but that is not a debunking.

Besides, when Wikipedia quotes Ha'am as saying "We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha’aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated...", that would appear to support Brownfeld's argument, wouldn't you say?

Part of your problem stems from the fact that you just did a 'link dump' and didn't adress the topic directly. (tho I will address yours so)

Just some vaguely related 'stuff'. No ones knows that the specific land in your piece wasn't subsequently bought, OR, ie, that the land Ha'am was talking about didn't, in fact, later become what was designated 'Palestine' in 1948!

If you read the OP, you'll note 2/3 of what became Israel was State Land under the Ottomans and was owned by NO Arab. (that would include the HALF of Israel that is the Negev desert). Some of the rest was bought. And again, the land mentioned in your article may indeed have been designated later AS 'Palestine' not 'Israel' as it may have been unobtainable.

On the issue of what Ha'am and Brownfield's other Cherry-picked cast says (as opposed to my OP)....
Be glad to engage since most travelers of the time, non or pre-Zionists in fact, report a sparse, desolate 'palestine'.
This posts them in summary, but I can give a more detailed recitation of their reports.

Zionist Impact on Palestine
What was the impact of the Zionists on Palestine?

In the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a litany of Christian travelers – Siebald Rieter and Johann Tucker, Arnold Van Harff and Father Michael Nuad, Martin Kabatnik and Felix Fabri, Count Constantine Francois Volney, and Alphonse de Lamartine, Mark Twain and Sir George Gawler, Sir George Adam Smith and Edward Robinson – found Palestine virtually empty, except for Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Safed, Shechem, Hebron, Gaza, Ramleh, Acre, Sidon, Tyre, Haifa, Irsuf, Caesarea, and El Arish, and throughout Galilee towns – Kfar Alma, Ein Zeitim, Biria, Pekiin, Kfar Hanania, Kfar Kana and Kfar Yassif. To stay, these Jews had submitted to innumerable conquerors, taxes, pogroms and degradation. But they stayed. In 1799, Palestine was still so much in need of people that Napoleon Bonaparte championed a full-scale return of Jews.

In the early 19th century, Palestine was a backward, neglected province of the Ottoman Empire. Travelers to Palestine from the Western world left records of what they saw there. The theme throughout their reports is dismal: The land was empty, neglected, abandoned, desolate, fallen into ruins.

In Jerusalem, all reports and journals of travelers, pilgrims and government representatives during these years, repeatedly record the poverty, filth and neglect and the desolate nature of the countryside. Early photographs show lepers in rags and dilapidated buildings. Jerusalem was surrounded by marauding bands of Bedouin Arabs and had to close her gates at nightfall and reopen them at first light, a practice that was similar in Biblical times.

Some quotes from the writings of these visitors before modern times:

Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds. [English pilgrim in 1590]

The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population. [British consul in 1857]
(mbig note: I believe his name was James Finn)

"There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] — not for 30 miles in either direction…
One may ride ten miles hereabouts and Not see 10 human beings. …
For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee … Nazareth is forlorn … Jericho lies a moldering ruin … Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation… untenanted by any living creature…
A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds … a silent, mournful expanse … a desolation …
We never saw a human being on the whole route … Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country …
Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery Palestine must be the prince.
The hills barren and dull, the valleys unsightly deserts [inhabited by] swarms of beggars with ghastly sores and malformations. Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes … desolate and unlovely …
[Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1867]​

Much of the land ergo, had to be reclaimed or irrigated. (check your own source)
It continues:

Remarkably, there are photographs dating to the 19th century and early 20th century that document the development of Palestine from the desolate, pre-Zionist landscape reported by travelers to the green and productive land that Jewish immigrants created there. This web site has 460 photographs and lithographs of the period, some never before available to the public. They show how the industrious Zionists made the lightly-populated land productive and able to support the great increases in Jewish and Arab numbers that came to Palestine in the following decades.

Winston Churchill was British Colonial Secretary when he visited the Middle East in the winter of 1920-1921. Anti-Semitic elements in the British government tried to assert that the Jews were not needed to develop Palestine. Churchill replied:

Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine would not in a thousand years have taken effective steps towards the irrigation and electrification of Palestine. They would have been quite content to dwell—a handful of philosophic people—in wasted sun-drenched plains, letting the waters of the Jordan flow unbridled and unharnessed into the Dead Sea.”​

In 1924, a few months after becoming Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Elwood Mead (namesake of Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam) published a highly favorable review of Jewish settlements in Palestine based on his visits there in 1923. His article, “New Palestine,” praised the Zionists accomplishments and plans, a publicity coup. Mead blamed Islam, Ottoman governance, and Arab culture for the demise of Roman irrigation systems that, according to Mead, once supported “lands flowing with milk and honey.” Mead was a consultant to Chiam Weizman offering his expertise to maximize the return on investment of the extensive investments in irrigation, land reclamation, and water supplies in the Zionist areas based on Mead’s extensive experience in the American West.

After the Arab riots in 1929, Mead wrote to the British High Commissioner that Jewish colonists had produced “a marvelous transformation” in the Palestinian landscape. Mead noted that in his visits to Palestine he had seen nothing “to indicate that the Arab was injured.” Moreover, the Jewish example of “what modern finance and equipment can do, coupled with the sympathetic interest of the government is bringing him out of the hopeless inertia that misgovernment and oppression of centuries past have created …. ” Jewish settlers in Palestine were not only reclaiming the land, they were elevating living standards for the Arab population and assisting the British government.

In his report to the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Transjordan for the year 1925, the British High Commissioner wrote:

Fuel-power stations for the generation of electrical light and energy have been established at Haifa and Tiberias by the [Jewish] Palestine Electric Corporation, Limited. This increase in commercial activity, in building enterprise and new industrial developments is due almost entirely to Jewish capital and the entry during the year of an immigrant class with money to invest.​

During this period a significant shift of population took place as Arabs and others from all over the Middle East moved to the areas of Zionist cultivation and development. The organizational and technical skills of the Jewish settlers, their access to outside capital, and their sheer hard work created an economic boom that created opportunity for Arab workers, particularly in contrast to the stagnant conditions elsewhere in the region. This has been documented by many, following the much-criticized but basically sound work of Joan Peters in her book From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab–Jewish Conflict Over Palestine. The central findings are that:

1. As far back as 1893, the Jews not only were already far from being a small minority in the areas where they had settled, but were the largest single group there (if one divides the non-Jewish population into Muslim and Christian), and

2. Substantial immigration of Arabs to Palestine took place during the first half of the twentieth century; from 1893 to 1947 while the Palestinian Arab population slightly more than doubled in areas where no Jews were settled, it quintupled in the main areas of Jewish settlement. These findings are supported with an array of demographic statistics and contemporary accounts, the bulk of which have not been questioned by any reviewer.​

And in re "1." the '1893' claim at the end..
The author underestimates Jewish population considerably, at least time-wise.
Jews were the largest constituent of the population in places like Jerusalem since about 1840.
Well before they were many anglos West of the Mississippi.

 

[shanners]

Just some vaguely related 'stuff'. No ones knows that the specific land in your piece wasn't subsequently bought, OR, ie, that the land Ha'am was talking about didn't, in fact, later become what was designated 'Palestine' in 1948!

What land do you think he's talking about in your piece when he says Eretz Yisrael?

Zionist Impact on Palestine
What was the impact of the Zionists on Palestine?

Hmmm...that site gives me the feeling that it's far from being unbiased...

As for Twain et al it appears they've been quoted out context as their reports do not support what the Ottomans have recorded:

"When the first Zionist settlers arrived in Palestine, they claimed they were settling “a land without a people for a people without a land”. But that wasn’t true. And we know it wasn’t true (quite apart from the testimony of the people who lived there) because starting in 1876, the Ottoman Empire compiled annual counts of the population in its subject provinces, including Palestine.

"The Ottomans counted their subjects in order to tax them, and in order to conscript them. The really interesting thing is that under the Ottoman Turks your tax rate and your liability for military service were linked to your religion. Jewish and Christian subjects paid extra taxes, but their sons were exempt from military service. Muslim subjects didn’t pay the extra taxes, but their sons were liable for mandatory service in the army. So population counts in Palestine during the late Ottoman Empire didn’t record just the number of people there, they also recorded their religion. Which, for the purpose of countering Zionist mythology, is remarkably helpful.

"So, let’s have a look at the official statistics of the Ottoman government, to see what the "empty land" of Palestine really looked like when the first Zionist settlers arrived there to pioneer their Jewish state. The information I’m posting is from The Population of Palestine: Population Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and The Mandate (Ch 1, Table 1.4D) by Prof Justin McCarthy (Columbia University Press, 1990):

"The year of the first aliya was 1299 (Muslim calendar), or 1881/2 of the Common Era. And you can see at a glance that despite what you’ve been told, Palestine at that time was very far from being a land without a people. In fact, there were 462,465 people living in Palestine: 403,795 Muslims; 43,659 Christians; 15,011 Jews. In other words, Zionists were settling in a land where the pre-existing population was just 3.3 per cent Jewish, where a “Jewish state” could not possibly be established and maintained without the dispossession and disenfranchisement of those 96.7 per cent of the population that happen to have the “wrong” ethnic-religious origin, and where that dispossession would have to continue generation upon generation"...

The Arab-Israeli Conflict

 

[mbig]

What land do you think he's talking about in your piece when he says Eretz Yisrael?

Clearly the Biblical or General 'Eretz Yisrael' since he couldn't possibly know the future borders of the partition or even the Jordan truncation.
His statements were made during the Larger 'British Mandate 'Palestine' (see the OP), pre-1922-Jordan, and pre-1948-rejected-palestine.
The sliver that became 'Israel' in 1948 had a Jewish Majority.

It would be understandable since the Jews were at one time promised everything West of the Jordan river.. leaving the Arabs 'just' the big hunk of the Mandate, Jordan/77%.

Hmmm...that site gives me the feeling that it's far from being unbiased...

So you feel Palestinefacts is biased but quote me 'Lawrence of Cyberia' blog?
Well known Virulently anti-Israel website.
Does that fly in Asia?

As for Twain et al it appears they've been quoted out context as their reports do not support what the Ottomans have recorded..

It wasn't just Twain/1867, I mention more than a Dozen [non/pre-zionist] travelers who said so. Including the Napoleon/1799 and the British Consul/1857 to the area.

And we know it wasn’t true (quite apart from the testimony of the people who lived there) because starting in 1876, the Ottoman Empire compiled annual counts of the population in its subject provinces, including Palestine.

Actually the Ottoman Census started in 1844, Not 1876.
We have it for the more populated areas like Jerusalem.
LawrenceofCyberia/Arabia cherry-picked time period from 1850-1885 by which time arabs were starting to repopulate Desolate palestine.

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Jerusalem (After 1291)

Present condition of the City (1906)

""5. Jerusalem (El Quds) is the capital of a sanjak and the seat of a mutasarrif directly dependent on the Sublime Porte. In the administration of the sanjak the mutasarrif is assisted by a council called majlis ida ra; the city has a municipal government (majlis baladiye) presided over by a mayor. The total population is estimated at 66,000. The Turkish census of 1905, which counts only Ottoman subjects, gives these figures:
Jews, 45,000; Moslems, 8,000; Orthodox Christians, 6000; Latins, 2500; Armenians, 950; Protestants, 800; Melkites, 250; Copts, 150; Abyssinians, 100; Jacobites, 100; Catholic Syrians, 50.
During the Nineteenth century large suburbs to the north and east have grown up, chiefly for the use of the Jewish colony. These suburbs contain nearly half the present population..""

-----------------------------------

Growth of Jerusalem 1838-Present

....... Jews Muslims Christians Total
1838 6,000 5,000 3,000 14,000
1844 7,120 5,760 3,390 16,270 ..... ...The First Official Ottoman Census (mbig)
1876 12,000 7,560 5,470 25,030 .... ..Second """"""""""
1905 40,000 8,000 10,900 58,900 .....& third/last, detailed in NewAdvent Catholic Encyclopedia link above)
1948 99,320 36,680 31,300 167,300
1990 353,200 124,200 14,000 491,400
1992 385,000 150,000 15,000 550,000

http://www.testimony-magazine.org/jerusalem/bring.htm

Not that there was/were any Homogenous 'palestine'/'palestinians' in any case, as much as constant turnover.
At one point in the late 17th, Greeks made up 20% of 'Palestine.'
If you'll not my post on the last page:

...
Early modern period

In 1516 the Ottoman Turks occupied Palestine.[61] The country became part of the Ottoman Empire. Constantinople appointed local governors. Public works, including the city walls, were rebuilt in Jerusalem by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1537. An area around Tiberias was given to Don Joseph Nasi for a Jewish enclave. Following the expulsions from Spain, the Jewish population of Palestine rose to around 25% (includes non-Ottoman citizens, excludes Bedouin) and regained its former stronghold of Eastern Galilee. That ended in 1660 when they were massacred at Safed and Jerusalem. During the reign of Dahar al Omar, Pasha of the Galilee, Jews from Ukraine began to resettle Tiberias.
[.....]

Which is why Lawrence is in Cyberia.

 

[shanners]

So you feel Palestinefacts is biased but quote me 'Lawrence of Cyberia' blog?
Well known Virulently anti-Israel website.

Supporting Palestinian rights and freedom automatically becomes anti-Israel, eh? I get ya.

It wasn't just Twain

Do you know what et al means?

I mention more than a Dozen [non/pre-zionist] travelers who said so.

Which I repeat are likely to have been quoted out of context. But let's look at Twain's work as this
paper argues that is what indeed has happened (which means it's probably so for the others as well):

"Mark Twain is a renowned American author whose contribution to American literature is immense. On the other hand, what he wrote (on Palestine) is filled with dangerous stereotypes, racism emotions, and in many cases contradictions. It's misleading to quote him, and to make him an authority about the region based on his brief trip."

Also, many other sources support the view that Palestine was not an empty land. A detailed study is here. See in particular the section on David Ben-Gurion who stated, "Palestine is not an empty country . . . on no account must we injure the rights of the inhabitants."

And the section on Prof McCarthy, Lawrence of Cyberia's source:

"McCarthy was quoted by many Israeli Jewish scholars like Benny Morris and Tom Segev. In that regard, it's worth quoting one of the most ardent Zionists, Israel Zangwill, who stated as early as 1905, that Palestine was twice as thickly populated as the United States. He stated:

"Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to the square mile, and not 25% of them Jews ..... [We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us."

Also see the Debate between Norman Finkelstein & the former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami (scroll down for the transcript) where Ben-Ami admits that it "is a concocted myth that Palestine was empty until Jewish development of the country".

From the transcript (in the mp3 this starts around the 12th minute):

AMY GOODMAN: And Shlomo Ben-Ami, your response to those who continue to say that at that time, at the time of the establishment of the state of Israel and before, that it really was empty, that Jews came to a place that was not populated.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Of course, it is nonsense. I mean, it was populated. Obviously, it was populated. I mean, the notion that existed, I think it was Israel Zangwill, the first to say that we are — we came a nation without a land to a land without a people. Obviously, it was not true, but again, part of the tragedy was that the Palestinians, as such, did not have — the Palestinian peasants did not have the full control of their own destiny. Part of that land was bought by the Zionist organizations from Affendis, landowners living in Turkey or anywhere else throughout the Ottoman Empire, and these people were inevitably evicted by these kind of transactions. But as a whole, I think that not more than 6 or 7% of the entire surface of the state of Israel was bought. The rest of it was either taken over or won during the war.

Additionally, here is what Lord Curzon said on the matter:

“What is to become of the people of this country [Palestine] assuming the Turk to be expelled, and the inhabitants not to have been exterminated by the War? There are over half a million of these, Syrian Arabs – a mixed community with Arab, Hebrew, Canaanite, Greek, Egyptian and possibly Crusader blood. They and their forefathers have occupied the country for the best part of 1,500 years. They own the soil, which belongs either to individual landowners or to village communities. They profess the Mohammedan faith. They will not be content either to be expropriated for Jewish immigrants, or to act merely as hewers of wood and drawers of water to the latter.”

And, as you're so fond of quoting Wikipedia, Arthur James Balfour:

"The Four Great Powers [Britain, France, Italy and the United States] are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, and future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right."

Actually the Ottoman Census started in 1844, Not 1876.

Read it again. He said annual counts began in 1876.

LawrenceofCyberia/Arabia cherry-picked time period from 1850-1885 by which time arabs were starting to repopulate Desolate palestine.

He showed that period as that's when the Ottomans began keeping records and that's when the Zionist movement started to take off.

Not that there was/were any Homogenous 'palestine'/'palestinians' in any case, as much as constant turnover.

Irrelevant to the fact that there were around half a million Arabs living on that land in the late 19th century.

 

[mbig]

Lord Curzon: "a MIXED community with Arab, Hebrew, Canaanite, Greek, Egyptian and possibly Crusader blood."

That agrees more with me.

In fact:

[.......]
Greeks fled the Muslim rule in Greece, and landed in Palestine. By the mid-17th century, the Greeks lived everywhere in the Holy Land--constituting about 20% of the population-and their authority dominated the villages.3

Between 1750 and 1766 Jaffa had been rebuilt, and had some five hundred houses. Turks, Arabs, Greeks and Armenians and a solitary Latin monk lived there, to attend to the wants of the thousands of pilgrims who had to be temporarily housed in the port before proceeding to Jerusalem.4
"In some cases villages [in Palestine] are populated wholly by settlers from other portions of the Turkish Empire within the 19th century. There are villages of Bosnians, Druzes, Circassians and Egyptians," one historian has reported. 5

Another source, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911 edition (before the "more chauvinist Arab history" began to prevail with the encouragement of the British), finds the "population" of Palestine composed of so "widely differing" a group of "inhabitants" -- whose "ethnological affinities" create "early in the 20th century a list of no less than 50 languages" (see below) -- that "it is therefore no easy task to write concisely ... on the ethnology of Palestine." In addition to the "Assyrian, Persian and Roman" elements of ancient times, "the short-lived Egyptian government introduced into the population an element from that country which still persists in the villages."

. . . There are very large contingents from the Mediterranean countries, especially Armenia, Greece and Italy . . . Turkoman settlements ... a number of Persians and a fairly large Afghan colony . . . Motawila ... long settled immigrants from Persia ... tribes of Kurds ... German "Templar" colonies ... a Bosnian colony ... and the Circassian settlements placed in certain centres ... by the Turkish government in order to keep a restraint on the Bedouin ... a large Algerian element in the population ... still maintain(s) [while] the Sudanese have been reduced in numbers since the beginning of the 20th century.
In the late eighteenth century, 3,000 Albanians recruited by Russians were settled in Acre. The Encyclopaedia Britannica finds "most interesting all the non-Arab communities in the country . . . the Samaritan sect in Nablus (Shechem); a gradually disappearing body" once "settled by the Assyrians to occupy the land left waste by the captivity of the Kingdom of Israel."6

The Disparate peoples recently assumed and purported to be "settled Arab indigenes, for a thousand years" were in fact a "heterogeneous" community 7 With no "Palestinian" identity, and according to an Offiial British historical analysis in 1920, no Arab identity either:
"The people west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but only Arabic-speaking. The bulk of the population are fellahin.... In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; elsewhere they are of the most Mixed race." 8

http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/mixed.html

"'And the section on Prof McCarthy, Lawrence of Cyberia's source.

"McCarthy was quoted by many Israeli Jewish scholars like Benny Morris and Tom Segev..."

You post this AS IF it's an 'admission against interest' because 'Israeli Jews' quoted him.
But Those two Jews were REVISIONIST historians making the case for palestinians!
So your claim has NO meaning. On the contary.
BTW, Morris has since changed his tune, having been straightened out be the release of more isreali archives and by Efraim Karsh.

And Always funny to see number-massager Justin McCarthy, the anti-Israel paid-by-Turkey mouthpiece quoted in any case.

Criticism
McCarthy's work has been the subject of criticism from book reviewers and genocide scholars.[8][21][22][23] According to Israeli historian Yair Auron, McCarthy, "with Heath Lowry, Lewis' successor in Princeton, leads the list of deniers of the Armenian Genocide."[5]
Among other criticisms, he has been accused by Colin Imber of following a Turkish nationalistic agenda.[24]
McCarthy is a member of, and has received grants from, the Institute of Turkish Studies.[25] According to Richard G. Hovannisian, Stanford Shaw, Heath Lowry and Justin McCarthy all use arguments similar to those found in Holocaust denial.[26]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_McCarthy_(American_historian)

Debate between Norman Finkelstein & the former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami

And moderated by Amy Goodman on her 'DemocracyNow'. LOL
That's not a debate-- it's a Left Wing anti-Israel circle jerk
A "debate" is between significantly OPPOSING Viewpoints with a neutral moderator. NONE of which is present in your link
I've always found that one amusing.
How about another Israel "debate" on al-jazeera "between" Yasser Arafat and Ilan Pappe.
That's a discussion between 'bad and 'worse', moderated by 'terrible'.

Read it again. He said annual counts began in 1876.

So Sorry to have brought up Earleir census of 1844... not to mention 1660!

 

[Demon of Light]

Jews also have a large number of ancestral lines from various peoples who never lived in the territory, at least not in the past five thousand years. The fact is both peoples have a prominent native lineage, with it being more prominent in Palestinians than it is in most Jews. I have ancestors who came from Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, France, and some who were born in America before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. What makes me native is that I was born and raised here as well as ancestors from half a dozen generations before me. For the Palestinians they live in a territory that has never been "empty" of people and while not all of them could trace much of their lineage back through thousands of years of natives there are unquestionably a large number who can. Saying that this group or that group immigrated to Palestine and therefore the entire population cannot claim their people have been here thousands of year is just absurd.

 

[mbig]

Almost correct if badly spun. (and as I said the day, you post Just opinion No links, as links agreeing with you would oft be embarrassing or worse, have both sides)
And of course, then, also not contradicting the OP.

 

[shanners]

That agrees more with me.

In fact:



You post this AS IF it's an 'admission against interest' because 'Israeli Jews' quoted him.
But Those two Jews were REVISIONIST historians making the case for palestinians!
So your claim has NO meaning. On the contary.
BTW, Morris has since changed his tune, having been straightened out be the release of more isreali archives and by Efraim Karsh.

And Always funny to see number-massager Justin McCarthy, the anti-Israel paid-by-Turkey mouthpiece quoted in any case.



And moderated by Amy Goodman on her 'DemocracyNow'. LOL
That's not a debate-- it's a Left Wing anti-Israel circle jerk
A "debate" is between significantly OPPOSING Viewpoints with a neutral moderator. NONE of which is present in your link
I've always found that one amusing.
How about another Israel "debate" on al-jazeera "between" Yasser Arafat and Ilan Pappe.
That's a discussion between 'bad and 'worse', moderated by 'terrible'.


So Sorry to have brought up Earleir census of 1844... not to mention 1660!

Now look who's cherry picking. You have still failed to show it was "A Land Without People".

 

[mbig]

Now look who's cherry picking. You have still failed to show it was "A Land Without People".

Actually, with your help (and unwitting agreement) I have shown I have shown it Was "a Land without a People".
It's a land that had some people, but Not "a" people.. as my last Link showed, confirming and elaborating yours ("mixed").
I have also shown that there weren't alot of people either.
Of course you didn't even read the rest of the string such as my post #62 on pg 7.
Information already in evidence.

[.......]
When one searches for proof that a "Palestinian people" lived in a separate state called Palestine in 1881, one finds that in 1881 Palestine was only part of Turkey and had no separate existence at all.

The Encyclopedia Britannica (1972) notes that Palestine was under Turkish domination for 400 years between August 24, 1516 and its capture by British forces between December 1917 and October 1918. It never existed as a separate state ruled by its own people, except when the people were Jewish.
[.......]
Palestine was described by travelers as a desolate empty, ruined land.
Thomas Shaw (1738),
Volney (1783, 1784, 1785),
James Finn (1878),
Alphonse de Lamartine (1835) and
Mark Twain (1867) all wrote about it with Horror.

Volney described the "ruined" and desolate" country and estimated the total population of the much larger area he saw as no more than 50,000 to 100,000.

Lamartine wrote:
"Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw Indeed No living object, heard No living object, heard No living sound, we found the same void the same silence…as we should have expected before the entombed gates of Pompeli or Herculaneam…a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, on the highways in the country…the tomb of a whole people."(Recollections of the East, vol. 1, pp. 268, 308, London, 1815).

Mark Twain, in his book "The Innocents Abroad," after a trip in 1867, described
Palestine as:

"Desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds—a silent mournful expanse…A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely…We never saw a human being on the whole route…

"There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country…

"Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Palestine is desolate and unlovely."

George Adam Smith, a geographer who visited Palestine in 1830 before the changes made by European Immigrants, described the country as a mixture of barren, treeless land, and malarial weed-grown swamps.

Jews who bought this worthless land were called "children of death" because many of them did not survive. Now, almost a hundred years later, Arafat labels these immigrants "invaders" and demands the right to take over their land.

Did these immigrants destroy the "indigenous culture" Arafat described as existing until European Jews came as immigrants? Or did they improve matters?

The old travelers and geographers found no indigenous culture. They told of isolated villages, each an enemy of the next, of Arab marauders, of incredible poverty, disease and beggars.

Mark Twain described mudhouses five to seven feet high, covered with discs of camel dung for fuel because there was no timber of any consequence in Palestine. Tiberias was described in appalling terms by Twain.

Smith called it a "poor fevered place of less than 5,000 inhabitants." Cunningham Geikie wrote of Galilee that "Tiberias and the wretched Magdala are the only inhabited places on the whole lake, although in the day of our Lord nine towns and many villages, all populous were found on its shores or on the hillsides behind."

Jerusalem was described by Mark Twain as having "rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt…. Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they know but one word of but one language apparently—the eternal "bucksheesh."

All travelers described Arabs and Jews living in these dreadful conditions. None saw a people called "Palestinians" who are said by Arafat to have lived in a verdant Palestine with an ancient culture.

Records such as the 1920 British Foreign Office Peace Handbooks (Mohammedan History) show that Arabs as well as Jews benefited from immigration of these European Jews to that desolate land.

All travelers made clear that Jews continued to live in the land.
There is no suggestion that Jews ever abandoned their claim to it. It was this continuity of Jewish presence in their land that Reverend James Parkes, writing in "Whose Land?" considered to be the real title deeds of Jews to their land....."

http://www.HumanRightsInstitute.com/History_Versus_Arab_Claims.asp

In fact, despite the fact was able to refute your premise, it's you who popped into this albeit, related string and were unable to dent it.

 

[Mika-El]

Jews also have a large number of ancestral lines from various peoples who never lived in the territory, at least not in the past five thousand years. The fact is both peoples have a prominent native lineage, with it being more prominent in Palestinians than it is in most Jews. I have ancestors who came from Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, France, and some who were born in America before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. What makes me native is that I was born and raised here as well as ancestors from half a dozen generations before me. For the Palestinians they live in a territory that has never been "empty" of people and while not all of them could trace much of their lineage back through thousands of years of natives there are unquestionably a large number who can. Saying that this group or that group immigrated to Palestine and therefore the entire population cannot claim their people have been here thousands of year is just absurd.

Well stated. Both sides can make similiar if not identical arguements as to lineage. There is also a practical reality. Anyone today born in Israel or born in the West Bank or Gaza has no choice. They are what they are. They cna't go anywhere. They can't go poof. This continuing to fight over who they are based on past competing historic claims doesn't change that fact.

You can't suddenly displace all the Israelis and place Palestinians who wish the same land there. Can't happen the same reason the Arab League refuses and would never compensate all the jews they expelled. The past can not be undone.

We have to focus on creating what I call a second Muslim Palestinian state. The practical reality is Jordan will not and can not be a Palestinian state for all Palestinians. That is as unrealistic as saying any Palestinian who wants should be able to return to Israel.

I have always argued the Arab League of nations owes Palestinians big time for placing them in refugee camps and must compensate them and finance their state. They have a moral responsibility I would argue. The rights of the expelled Jews and expelled Palestinian Muslims/Christians must be traded off and we need to start fresh today now at this moment to recognize the reality of two peoples who can't go anywhere.

 

[mbig]

Well stated. Both sides can make similiar if not identical arguements as to lineage. There is also a practical reality. Anyone today born in Israel or born in the West Bank or Gaza has no choice. They are what they are. They cna't go anywhere. They can't go poof. This continuing to fight over who they are based on past competing historic claims doesn't change that fact.

You can't suddenly displace all the Israelis and place Palestinians who wish the same land there. Can't happen the same reason the Arab League refuses and would never compensate all the jews they expelled. The past can not be undone.

We have to focus on creating what I call a second Muslim Palestinian state. The practical reality is Jordan will not and can not be a Palestinian state for all Palestinians. That is as unrealistic as saying any Palestinian who wants should be able to return to Israel.

I have always argued the Arab League of nations owes Palestinians big time for placing them in refugee camps and must compensate them and finance their state. They have a moral responsibility I would argue. The rights of the expelled Jews and expelled Palestinian Muslims/Christians must be traded off and we need to start fresh today now at this moment to recognize the reality of two peoples who can't go anywhere.

That's great.
The vast majority of us agree that a Palestinian state must now be created.
But that is NOT the string topic here.
[Peace sign flash/Tikkun Olam/Happy Hanukah]

 

[Andalublue]

You mentioned a respected Israeli historian, but I see you inadvertantly referred us to Ilan Pappe.

Would you kindly reference the respected historian, instead. Thanks.

FYI

Ilan Pappé - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Mika-El]

That's great.
The vast majority of us agree that a Palestinian state must now be created.
But that is NOT the string topic here.
[Peace sign flash/Tikkun Olam/Happy Hanukah]

True but to me it was a direct response to Demon acknowledging Palestinian identity is a fact as much as Israeli identity is. I acknowledge his comments because if I am going to argue Israel did not steal land and want him to understand that, I also should demonstrate I believe Palestinians are equally as legitimate in rights as Israelis. Its called quid pro quo. How do I ask him to not see Israel as an enemy if I engage in stereotypes of Palestinians as not having a legitimate right to statehood? That to me is at the pith and substance of our exchanges. The myths are in fact two way and tit for tat they don't happen in isolation. For every Israeli myth is a corresponding Palestinian one and vice versa.

Demon has been trying to meet me half way. I can at least do the same in reverse with his comments. Its fair play. Its the notion that a solution can not be achieved by catering to only one side's version of history. I have no problem with that. As a Zionist I was taught of Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims and Christians of the Middle East as equals not inferiors or enemies simply because they are not Jewish. Demon will always see me working hard to hear his points when he argues in balanced themes of reciprocal existential rights.

By the way I have an easier time with debating him then you because his perspective is as a Middle Easterner not an American or Canadian. It has a different feel to it. His existential references are more poignant to me just as I would sense a little extra in your words if you were talking about your own lineage. He is owed the same respect I give to Israelis or any natives of that region.

I wouldn't walk in his house with my shoes on so to speak because I doubt he would do the same in my home from what I have read.

 

[mbig]

True but to me it was a direct response to Demon acknowledging Palestinian identity is a fact as much as Israeli identity is. I acknowledge his comments because if I am going to argue Israel did not steal land and want him to understand that, I also should demonstrate I believe Palestinians are equally as legitimate in rights as Israelis. Its called quid pro quo. How do I ask him to not see Israel as an enemy if I engage in stereotypes of Palestinians as not having a legitimate right to statehood? That to me is at the pith and substance of our exchanges. The myths are in fact two way and tit for tat they don't happen in isolation. For every Israeli myth is a corresponding Palestinian one and vice versa.

Demon has been trying to meet me half way. I can at least do the same in reverse with his comments. Its fair play. Its the notion that a solution can not be achieved by catering to only one side's version of history. I have no problem with that. As a Zionist I was taught of Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims and Christians of the Middle East as equals not inferiors or enemies simply because they are not Jewish. Demon will always see me working hard to hear his points when he argues in balanced themes of reciprocal existential rights.

By the way I have an easier time with debating him then you because his perspective is as a Middle Easterner not an American or Canadian. It has a different feel to it. His existential references are more poignant to me just as I would sense a little extra in your words if you were talking about your own lineage. He is owed the same respect I give to Israelis or any natives of that region.

I wouldn't walk in his house with my shoes on so to speak because I doubt he would do the same in my home from what I have read.

You post 'Rabbi Moonbeam' nonsense.
Your 'new friend' HATES Israel (at least) and always will.
As I pointed out Twice already in this string:

http://www.debatepolitics.com/consp...israeli-economy-beginners.html#post1059393332

Israel - "nothing more than a humongous money laundering haven for Jewish oligarchs, swindlers, weapons dealers, organ traffickers, organised crime and blood diamond traders."

Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli journalist/musician living in the UK.

[Demon of Light likes this.]

And has foisted EVERY Other classic here from the Int'l Bankers, the USS Liberty (3 days ago) http://www.debatepolitics.com/conspiracy-theories/98052-attack-u-s-s-liberty-4.html#post1059481614, Holocaust minimalization, etc, etc, etc.

also see:
http://www.debatepolitics.com/middl...two-palestinian-states-13.html#post1059311551

and for the record on a specific issue.. you keep making the statement "as a zionist I was taught xxyyzzx" which usually has NOTHING to do with zionism per se, but rather your Liberal take.

nighty night.

 

[xpiher]

Good job OP, although it can be argued that Palestinians have since became a distinct ethnic group solidified by the wars.

 

[mbig]

Good job OP, although it can be argued that Palestinians have since became a distinct ethnic group solidified by the wars.

Thank you

And I agree with you too.
The fairly recent evolution of a "distinct people solidified by wars."
Kind of an anti-history rather than a nationalist movement as zionism.

Spot on and very well written:
Where Hatred Trumps Bread By Cynthia Ozick
Very arguably too Pessimistic.
Tho probably still my favorite on the overall topic.

 

[xpiher]

It should also be noted that

Although Israel acknowledged that obligation (fair treatment of all people regardless of creed), legal scholars, including Prof. James Crawford and Prof. William Thomas Mallison, have noted that Israel did not comply with the prescribed conditions for protection of minorities

In addition, it should be noted that the Arab League dismissed the partition purposed of both British Mandate and the UN Resolution due to the fears that Arabs wouldn't be treated fairly, but that could have been politicking and they simply wanted the entire land.

 

[mbig]

It should also be noted that

In addition, it should be noted that the Arab League dismissed the partition purposed of both British Mandate and the UN Resolution due to the fears that Arabs wouldn't be treated fairly, but that could have been politicking and they simply wanted the entire land.

The Arabs did very well in the Ottoman Break up. Like 99% of it, and probably 110% of their original 'range'.

Entitled or not (not making a case now), the situation, as promises by the League of Nations and British to the Jews... changed in favor of the Arabs between the Wars.
The 'Lawrence Of Arabia' legacy
(please use for general drift only, not any WND idiosyncracies)

Spoils were given to the Saudis who helped- unfairly screwing many people, especially the Kurds; A real and large people; A Distinct ethnic, lingual, and cultural group.
They became part of 'Iraq', under one Saudi prince (Faisal), another (Abdullah, great Grandfather of the present) getting 77% of the Mandate, 'Jordan'.
These were not 'peoples' and now they were going to get ruled by foreign princes.
No one has much trouble with those bogus 'whim states' now. Just Israel. (the Jews)

Yet in the matter of Israel, (and rejected Palestine) all the 'injustice' involved was a change in Sovereignty for 390,000 Arabs.
That after getting all-arab Jordan, rejected Palestine, and 99% of Ottomania.
It's so obsessive with such a relatively small outcome-- it leads one to unfortunate conclusions about 'antizionism'.

 

[xpiher]

Not debating all that. Part of the reason why some Israeli governments object to a two state solution is because the Arabs already got Jordan. Doesn't excuse anything though, for either side (the wars of aggression by Arabs, or the after math).

 

[mbig]

Not debating all that. Part of the reason why some Israeli governments object to a two state solution is because the Arabs already got Jordan. Doesn't excuse anything though, for either side (the wars of aggression by Arabs, or the after math).

I think you're talking about a small fringe here.
Like those evicted from Gaza 5 years ago, and some of the current WB settlers.

I don't think there are Any regular posters in this section who are not for a 2 state solution (Gardener is for 3) (DoL 1).
There are a few extreme conservatives who want the whole enchilada, but none of the Israelis/pro-Israelis who regularly post here.

Most of us want a negotiated settlement.
This would probably involve Israel keeping the near in Settlements and trading an equal amount of land to the Palestinians.
The Exact 1967 borders are almost certainly not going to happen... except the remote possibility the Jews are allowed to stay (with equal rights) and become Palestinians.

I did a string to check:
http://www.debatepolitics.com/middle-east/72245-israel-palestine-solutions-poll.html
wanting to see what everyone's position was.
Feel free to chime in.

IMO the deal is already obvious and HAD been floated by Ohlmert:
"Israel returns 99%!" - Political Forum
Al-arabiya Link expired so I'm linking to my post of it on another bd.

Now we have Netanyahu on one side, who probably won't offer anything as good.. and will have Hamas pressuring Abbas not to take it. Insisting on the 'exact' 67 borders.
Things have changed for the Worse on Both sides.

Netanyahu speaks to a joint sesssion of Congress May 24 on his vision for peace.
(string just below)
But I'm not optimistic.

 

[shanners]

It's a land that had some people

Some? About half a million of them.

but Not "a" people

Claiming that they may have had some Greek, Cypriot or whatever blood in them doesn't make it permissible to drive them off their land, committing murder, pillage etc in the process; and then decades later claim they didn't even exist to begin with.

Of course you didn't even read the rest of the string such as my post #62 on pg 7

Look, I know I came into this thread late but I just haven't got the time to go through all the preceding 50 pages of it. But as you've posted it:

Palestine was described by travelers as a desolate empty, ruined land.

I've already shown how Twain was taken out of context so the others probably were too.

And this is why I said you're cherry picking. You ignored what Ben-Gurion said; you probably didn't even look at it. So here, I'm gonna stick it right under your nose:

"a page that was scanned from a book which was conceived and edited by Ben-Gurion himself, stating that Jews made up 12% of the total Palestinian population as of 1914"

And you ignored Arthur James Balfour's statement and likewise with former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami.

But IMO the most important evidence is the Ottoman census records, and your poor attempt to discredit Prof. McCarthy won't stand the light of day. So what if he received a grant from the Turkish government, he's a scholar in Turkish studies. To insinuate he concocted those figures because of such a grant is despicable and an act of desperation.

 

[mbig]

Some? About half a million of them.

Again, only according according to the infamous paid-by-Turkey Justin McCarthy's "corrected" census numbers-- 'corrected Up' that is.
No matter in any case.

Claiming that they may have had some Greek, Cypriot or whatever blood in them doesn't make it permissible to drive them off their land, committing murder, pillage etc in the process; and then decades later claim they didn't even exist to begin with.

And They weren't "Murdered" or "Driven off their land" , that's your Slander. The populations of BOTH Peoples increased from 1850 Onwards.
The Arab population, in FACT increasing more than Twice as fast where the zionists came to settle.
(Already posted and linked be me). Just as they flocked to Israel before the Intifada by the Thousands for jobs..,.and do even now.

Look, I know I came into this thread late but I just haven't got the time to go through all the preceding 50 pages of it. But as you've posted it:
I've already shown how Twain was taken out of context so the others probably were too.p

Right! Dozens of people reporting "empty" "tomb-like" "Desolate", were all misquoted.
Twain, (1867) British Consul, (1857), Historians, Geographers.

"a page that was scanned from a book which was conceived and edited by Ben-Gurion himself, stating that Jews made up 12% of the total Palestinian population as of 1914"

[IM]http://www.palestineremembered.com/images/TheJewsInTheirLandBenGurion-Page-292.jpg[/IMG]

You link Oxymoron cite palestineremembered posting Maybe HALF a Page of a book and then complain about being quoted out of context?

And even if true (12% in cherry-picked-just-pre-WW1-1914) wouldn't preclude an 'Israel', who without the Empty Negev (which doubled) it's 27% to 54%... in 1948 (or even in 1920 after WWI) when there was an even higher Jewish population.
They may have even gotten too little of the Arable land.

And Again, 2/3 of what became Israel was State Land passing from the Ottomans to the British to the Jews, and owned by NO Arab. One notes you rely on population more than ownership-- as if tenant farmers/Migrant workers of wealthy arab owners have property rights. (Maybe immigrant fruit pickers are entitled to alot of the USA.)

And you ignored Arthur James Balfour's statement and likewise with former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami.

who cares about Shlomo ben Ami (or Finkelfuhrer, or Amy Goodman)

And next time try and address what's posted instead of Just Link Dumps in the general direction.
I haven't seen a single instance- overall or singly- of "stolen Land".. or even unfairly designated land.

 

[Mika-El]

In response to your comments in italics Big Boy:

"You post 'Rabbi Moonbeam' nonsense."

Lol.

"Your 'new friend' HATES Israel (at least) and always will."

If that is the case so? I was responding to the specific comments he made not previous comments. If in fact Demon "hates" Israel I can choose to address that in another thread now can't I or in a pm. I will limit my comments to the specific thread thanks.

If Demon is as you say a hater and agent provocateur, etc., all the more reason to talk directly to him in conciliatory tones. You stick to the Big Bad Boy shtick I will stick to the Moonbeam shtik. Trust me though trying to sound macho with me is kind of pointless. Yer assumption I am some naive Liberal Hari Krishna is funny though coming from someone I suppose who wants to make out he is what John Wayne? Lol.

Now in regards to this comment:

"and for the record on a specific issue.. you keep making the statement "as a zionist I was taught xxyyzzx" which usually has NOTHING to do with zionism per se, but rather your Liberal take."

You want to label me with personal names and descriptions and not address the issues I say, knock yourself out Big Boy. The fact I do not buy much of your comments does not make me a Liberal or Conservative or anything else. In fact I am proud of the kind of Zionism I was taught by Israelis I worked and lived with including many soldiers and holocaust survivors so back off Big Boy, I am proud to be a Zionist and proud I was taught as a Zionist not to hate Palestinians or label Arabs or Palestinians or anyone else as you do.

Lol. Liberal. If you mean I want to have sex with Caroline Kennedy and Maria Shriver or Tzipi Levni, sure why not. I like women with big teeth.

nighty night.

 

[Mika-El]

I believe this thread shows vividly the absurdity of trying to go back in time and slant history to justify current day political positions of intolerance.

How does arguing someone is not legitimate make either Israelis or Palestinians go poof and vanish?

 

[mbig]

If Demon is as you say a hater and agent provocateur, etc., all the more reason to talk directly to him in conciliatory tones. You stick to the Big Bad Boy shtick I will stick to the Moonbeam shtik.
[.........]

Incorrect.
1. I already presented facts documenting my take
2. You can't change bias.

Now in regards to this comment:

"and for the record on a specific issue.. you keep making the statement "as a zionist I was taught xxyyzzx" which usually has NOTHING to do with zionism per se, but rather your Liberal take."

You want to label me with personal names and descriptions and not address the issues I say, knock yourself out Big Boy. The fact I do not buy much of your comments does not make me a Liberal or Conservative or anything else. In fact I am proud of the kind of Zionism I was taught by Israelis I worked and lived with including many soldiers and holocaust survivors so back off Big Boy, I am proud to be a Zionist and proud I was taught as a Zionist not to hate Palestinians or label Arabs or Palestinians or anyone else as you do.

Lol. Liberal. If you mean I want to have sex with Caroline Kennedy and Maria Shriver or Tzipi Levni, sure why not. I like women with big teeth.

nighty night.

This board Has a definition of Zionist/ism IN THE RULES.
http://www.debatepolitics.com/middle-east/78853-middle-east-forum-rules.html

Zionism: According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Zionism is:
an international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel.

Zionist: A person who supported the establishment of Israel and supports the survival of modern Israel.

Which does NOT include any of your goofy extranea on whether they like arabs/Palestinians or don't.

And have you noticed, say, your 'friends list.' (6)
Conspicuously, there's NOT another 'zionist' or Israeli on it!!
In fact, just two notable/Thousand-post+ ANTI-Zionists/Israel-Bashers and a banned poster whose second-to-last post called Israel 'apartheid.'