Zionism and Libertarians

Miscellaneous General
181

The question is not to paint the Israelis as pure evil and the Palestinians as blameless victims. Let’s take the case of Native Americans for exemple. Some Native Americans were very vicious, they killed unarmed white men, women and children, they practiced horrible torture on their victims. No one is denying that but also no one is denying the fact that generally speaking Native Americans were the victims and the white settlers the aggressors.

The same thing applies to Palestine. Did Palestinians kill innocent Israelis? yes! But the Palestinians were the victims of Zionist aggression, they were dispossessed, killed and expelled. The Palestinians were right to resist being dispossessed. Now we may disagree about some of the methods they used to resist aggression but saying that they were not the victims but the aggressors is total nonesense.

182

I didn’t say there was not one radio among them. Don’t play foul with my answers.

So then what was the point of your question? You are wondering why Egypt held Gaza? There was a war involving Egypt and that is where the line of control was when the armistice hit, so they continued to hold it. What, they should have stood by and let Israel take over that too? I think it should be obvious why they didn’t.

You were asking why Jordan annexed the West Bank. The hell if I know why they did it. Ask the Hashemites. It certainly was not in the interest of the Arab Cause on the behalf of which the war was ostensibly fought, which was well understood at the time. It was annexed because the Hashemites figured it was in their personal interest to do so and were enough of sell outs to go ahead with it even as they understood it would undermine the position of Arabs in Palestine.

183

The world doesn’t revolve around you. I’d be good if you had the capacity to think about others. You may start by not contributing to misery by spreading lies. Hamas has in fact been in control, in Gaza, for years now. So I’m sure you are able to produce countless stories of their goons running around perfoming female circumcision and hanging homosexuals from lamp posts. Or can you?

184

Of course it does.

Well obviously if I did show you proof, it would probably be false propaganda, in your opinion. But here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3211772.stm

Isreal is the only “free” nation in the middle east. It’s not free, but it’s more free then the rest. Yet you guys condemn them and want Isreal to dissolve and Palestinians to take over. But it won’t be the Palestinians, it will be Hamas. They’re the thugs of their people and they will take over.So it won’t be a utopia, as some like to imply. If the Palestinians want freedom and a chance at a good life then they need to set up a secular, coercion free society. But that’s never going to be the case because they follow religion.

185

Murder is murder. I just don’t like it when one murderer is condmened while the other one is given a pass because someone sides with their cause.

186

Did you read that article? Am I correct in understanding that Israeli secret service forces those gay men to work as prostitutes?

Gaza’s state of high crime didn’t happen by accident, being choked off economically and having your people killed everyday isn’t going to create tolerance and harmony. No one’s been defending Hamas, but there’s a reason they came to exist and its not because Palestinians woke up one day and decided that they hate all jews and must push them into the sea- its because of decades of occupation and murder. How do you know what would happen if the Palestinians were allowed to live their lives? Its never been tried- obviously what’s been going on currently is of no help to anyone

And again you blame palestinians for not having freedom when its the IDF that sets up barriers for goods to come in and destroys actual human capital making it impossible to even think about the philosophy of a coercion free society when the only thing to think about is what to eat and who are your friends and enemies. They are destitute and live no lives, air strikes and tank shells create a blood for blood mentality- that has to stop.

Murder is murder, but I am sick of hearing how palestinians deserve everything they get. No one said that any israeli citizens deserve to be hit by rockets. Why do everyday palestinians deserve to be choked off from the world and killed like dogs.

187

The Palestinians are not the helpless victims here. It’s quite clear that they were offered a rather large portion of the Mandate as their homeland (88% of the Mandate of Palestine ended up as part of two states - the Arab state and Jordan - which had Palestinian majorities). They chose to reject it and instead launched a war against the existence of the Jewish state. Those dispossessed were those who engaged in the fighting and lived in communities which sheltered those who fired on Jewish convoys and settlements. Trying to paint the Palestinians as the victims is a brutal misunderstanding of history.

Second, JB Say, quoting Begin is rather useless since he didn’t take office until 1977. H is correct in saying that the Israelis had a choice - they could either invade Egypt and counter the Egyptian army’s massive violation of the ceasefire of 1948, or they could have sat back and been attacked. I’d urge you to pay more attention to what I quoted by Dinstein above, namely that the Six Day War was not a separate war, but, since the 1947/48 War of Independence only ended in ceasefire, the Six Day ‘War’ was actually a continuation of the original War of Independence.

188

Tartan says: "Second, JB Say, quoting Begin is rather useless since he didn’t take office until 1977"

So you are saying that if someone wasn’t a prime minister during an event he can’t possibly know anything about it. Ok then, let’s use you own logic against you. I am pretty confident Tartan that you were never a Prime Minister of Israel therefore you can’t talk about Israel anymore!

BTW Tartan, Begin was a cabinet member during the 1967 war, which means he was a member of the Israeli government that went to war against Egypt. You either did not know this (in this case you are not as knowledgeable as you are trying to appear) or you hid this information (in this case you deliberately misrepresented facts to advance your point of view, because you were trying to say that Begin was in no position to know anything about the war).

Tartan says: “Trying to paint the Palestinians as the victims is a brutal misunderstanding of history.”

Well trying to portray the Zionists as blameless victims and Palestinians as the oppressors is vulgar propaganda. As Mises says facts are stubborn!

189

The tactics of pro-Israel propagandists is to portray anyone who does not agree with the official Israeli narrative as either a self-hating-Jew, an anti-semite, an ignorant or a liar.

But Tartan goes even further he even dismisses seasoned Zionists as irrelevant when they say something that can cast a negative light on his Perfect Perfect Israel. His attack on former Prime Minister Begin is risible. Tartan appears more knowledgeable about Zionist history than one of the giants of Zionism.

Let’s see who is this man Tartan so easily dismissed as irrelevant:

Menachem Begin was born in Brest­Litovsk in 1913

A passionate Zionist from an early age, he joined Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s Betar youth movement in his teens, rising quickly to important administrative and leadership positions.

He made his way British­ controlled Palestine in1943. He joint the jewish terrorist group/liberation movement the Irgun. He was involved in blowing up the central British administrative offices in the King David Hotel.

He fought in the 1948 war

Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Begin disbanded the Irgun.

From 1948 to 1977, Menachem Begin was the leader of Israel’s opposition.

He founded the Likud Party.

Joined a unity government during the 1967 war.

Was elected Prime Minister in 1977

Signed peace treaty with Egypt in 1979.

In 1981, Begin ordered the Israeli Air Force to bomb the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq, where the Iraqi regime was developing nuclear weapons.

In 1982 he invaded Lebanon.after repeated acts of PLO terror, Israel launched Operation Peace for Galilee to remove the terrorist threat from Israel’s northern border.

He died in 1992.

See article on Begin on the Jewish Virtual Library here: [ View : http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/begin.html]

190

It’s funny to see JB Say completely make up things that I have supposedly said (such as that Begin wasn’t a Zionist). I never said that. Anyone with half a brain can read what I said and know that I, on the whole, agreed with Begin’s remarks and thought that it highlighted the accuracies of my argument more than it did JB’s. Begin was, as I’ve said, right in saying that Israel had a choice in 1967 - that choice just happened to be respond to Egypt’s actions (see the Dinstein quote I provided above for what those actions were) or be invaded and crushed. I’m quite confident Israel did the right thing, and so was Begin.

191

I know full well he was a cabinet member, however his idea of what the casus belli was may differ from more important members of the cabinet - i.e. the Prime Minister. Again, see the Dinstein quotes.

192

Which mandate is this? If its the one Arafat rejected the agreement wasn’t as cut as dry as you’re painting it- I’m sure you already know this.

The brutal misunderstanding of history is to paint one of the most powerful militaries in the world as a victim from people who are mostly armed with rocks. Why not just look at the plain and simple number of bodies that have been piled up by the IDF. Its a number that far exceeds israeli deaths by multitudes- and its not limited to just Gaza or the West Bank either. Lebanon lost over a thousand civilians not even a decade ago from IDF mass murder.

Hamas and IDF are murderous organizations- the IDF just kills a hell of a lot more and is the one in charge of the occupation and total control of all palestinian lives. They are in complete control of their fate. Of course I am getting the implication that people see palestinians as barbarians that want to drink the blood of jewish babies if the IDF were to dare give them freedom.

193

Tartan said: “It’s funny to see JB Say completely make up things that I have supposedly said (such as that Begin wasn’t a Zionist). I never said that.”

You’re the one making things up. I challenge you to quote me saying that you said Begin was not a Zionist.

Also I would like you to provide references for the following claims:

1- That the UN partition plan was about Palestine and Jordan and that the Palestinians were to get 88% of the land

2-That all the Palestinians that were expelled in 1948 were combattants.

194

**Tartan said: “**The Palestinians (…) were offered a rather large portion of the Mandate as their homeland (88% of the Mandate of Palestine ended up as part of two states - the Arab state and Jordan - which had Palestinian majorities)”.

As usual you manipulated facts to come to your conclusion, here’s what the 1947 UN partition Plan really says:

Summary of UN General Assembly Resolution 181

November 29, 1947

The territory of Palestine should be divided as follows:

  • A Jewish State covering 56.47% of Mandatory Palestine(excluding Jerusalem) with a population of 498,000 Jews and 325,000 Arabs;
  • An Arab State covering 43.53% of Mandatory Palestine(excluding Jerusalem), with 807,000 Arab inhabitants and 10,000 Jewish inhabitants;
  • An international trusteeship regime in Jerusalem, where the population was 100,000 Jews and 105,000 Arabs.

See: [ View : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/middle_east/israel_and_the_palestinians/key_documents/1681322.stm]

Concerning Jordan, here are the facts:

Modern Jordan was founded in 1921, and it was recognized by the League of Nations as a state under the British mandate in 1922 known as The Emirate of Transjordan. The Transjordan memorandum excluded the territories east of the River Jordan from all of the provisions of the mandate dealing with Jewish settlement.The country remained under British supervision until 1946.In 1946, Jordan joined the United Nations as an independent sovereign state officially known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. See: [ View : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan#British_protectorate_of_Transjordan]

So trying to bring Jordan into the mix is intellectually dishonest.

It’s clear that the Zionist narrative is not supported by facts. So They have to manipulate facts, manufacture facts, misquote etc. in order to present their fictitious version of history.

195

I can not understand how you can not see the jews as the aggressor. Trying to create a jewish state (aka isreal) is the aggression.

Jewish people were living in that region throughout history, along side other non jews, much like they have throughout the world. When they decided that they wanted to create a state that they classified as their state, that was the aggression. I am not particularly fond of islamic culture or even indian culture, but that does not mean that i understand the isreali situation as a matter of self defense.

It is clear that the jews wanted to create isreal and as we see today it exist, with a massive wall on its border. Isreal society is toxic, they have forced military participation, they have a strict government and heavy propaganda. The youth of isreal are brainwashed with militarism and I have heard many dissident isrealis speak about this. They have state media there, just like in the UK. But this only goes to show my point that any society based on such a type of conflict, regardless of its origins will be a toxic society.

196

Well I am from Israel, and I can tell you that’s more or less the truth. Palestinians are filled with hatred and if given half a chance would banish all Jews from here and kill those who remain.

197

You mean do to the Israelis what they did to them…

How about this video where Israelis say with their own words what they think of Palestinians:

[ View : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t_ZjetcSMQ&feature=player_embedded]

198

It is easy to see even this first proposal was heavily slanted against the Palestinian Arabs. 40% of the Jewish state would be Arab. But on the other hand only 1% of the Arab state would be Jewish.

It was gerrymandering. Giving the Jews as large a state by area as possible while still keeping them a comfortable mayority so they would be able to impose themselves on the Arabs without too much hassle.

And that is by demographics. If we looked into land ownership which is what we as libertarians (not democrats) are really interested in, the figures would look even more scandalous.

199

I don’t agree. The Jews had every right to establish a Jewish state. That was not agression (except against unwilling Jews). The agression part is where they refused to recognize the right of the Arabs to likewise establish the kind of state they wanted by awarding their Jewish state large swaths of land that were property of Palestinians.

Israel is more regimented than your everyday society, but not by much. Conscription and propaganda doesn’t make Israel toxic, unless you are willing to proclaim most of the world toxic. For one thing free Palestine would not be much different.

The only way in which Israel is unlike most other states is its colonialism. That is the agression part and the only thing that needs concern us. Israeli-on-Israeli agression isn’t really exceptional and would not be any of our business even if it were.

200

It’s become quite clear to me that a lot of the debate on here has turned into the traditional mud-flinging and semantics. Certain users, namely JB Say, have turned to this - we get told of ‘racist’ Israel etc.

What I say goes unnoticed. For instance, JB chose to completely ignore that I wrote 88% of Mandate Palestine (INCLUDING JORDAN, AS I SAID) went to the Arabs. Instead, he chose to forget I said “including Jordan” and went on to say “oh look how these evil Zionists twist facts because nothing they say is true blah blah.”

I’m rather convinced what I’ve said is in fact the truth and if anyone else wants to debate points with me then I’m more than happy to do so - just keep it reasonable.