This is very interesting I don’t believe that this issue has been properly debated or researched in English.There a few things I want to respond to, number one being why I posted that video in the first place.
I think that Norman Finkelstein has mentioned that a paper should be available on this topic soon.
I am for the right of return for Palestinians on principle, however, Norman Finkelstein said that Noam Chomsky believes that it is unrealistic to campaign for the right of return.
Forgive me, but I have not properly read the bill but I will be looking for responses from our respective positions and will try to promote this issue as much as I can.
I am for non-violent resistance against the current Israeli actions and politics.
When I was in Yeshiva we had a speaker, supposedly an Muslim Arab professor from the University of Haifa. He was going to have a debate with one of our Religious Zionist rabbi's, on the topic of who has the rights to the Land of Israel.
To make a longs story short, the guy made a claim that Israel was not a legitimate state and that the Jews should leave immediately because they were occupying and stealing Palestinian land. He talked about the Palestinian Right of Return...the usual stuff.
My rabbi responded to this claim, and then both sides took questions from the audience and we had a break.
After the break the "Muslim" was given the chance to open up, and he stood up and put on a kippah.
It turned out that he was not a Muslim, but a Jew who had been thrown out of an Arab county (I don't remember off hand which one) right after the creation of the State of Israel.
He had been acting as a Muslim in order to give us an idea of what we would be presented with in the coming years in our experience on campus and in the workforce.
One thing I also wanted to add, was I checked out this guys blog, just to know who I was dealing with. I found a link to an article from the Electronic Intifada entitled "How Barack Obama Learned to love Israel."
(Note: I want to make it very clear that I do not know this person, therefore I do not want to pass judgement on him, nor do I want anyone else to pass judgment on him, particularly because of the article. I am posting this so we have an idea of what kind of "group" he fits into, not judging the actual person)
Was a very interesting quote in the article that attempted to put Obama in a negative light due to his supposed support of Israel.
He [Obama[ recalled a January 2006 visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona that resembled an ordinary American suburb where he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at "joyful play just like my own daughters." He saw a home the Israelis told him was damaged by a Hizbullah rocket (no one had been hurt in the incident).
Six months later, Obama said, "Hizbullah launched four thousand rocket attacks just like the one that destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona, and kidnapped Israeli service members."
Obama's phrasing suggests that Hizbullah launched thousands of rockets in an unprovoked attack, but it's a complete distortion. Throughout his speech he showed a worrying propensity to present discredited propaganda as fact. As anyone who checks the chronology of last summer's Lebanon war will easily discover, Hizbullah only launched lethal barrages of rockets against Israeli towns and cities after Israel had heavily bombed civilian neighborhoods in Lebanon killing hundreds of civilians, many fleeing the Israeli onslaught.
First of all that last paragraph is misleading. True Israel did start the bombing before the Hizbullah started firing rockets, but they're forgetting that Hizbullah had kidnapped 3 Israeli soldiers. And the fact that Israel was targeting Hizbullah militia and weapons that were being stored in civilian buildings, leads more the illusion that Israel was the one who fired the first shot.
Now I want to get back to the original topic of the Arab refugees. The Arabs would like to claim that what the Jews say is a myth, that the Arabs were kicked out of Israel and that the Jews in Arab countries left them willingly to Israel.
Mitchel Bard explains that the cast majority of Arabs did leave Israel voluntarily, some were forced out by the Jews, but the root of this goes back even farther then 1948, farther than the current Zionist movement, it really goes back to when the Jews were expelled from the land of Israel by the Romans.
In response to the idea that the Jews should have exclusive rights to the Land of Israel because we had a kingdom here 2000 years ago, the respondee said that it was similar to the Roman or Greek Empire returning, simply because, at one time, they ruled certain areas of land.
60 years ago I might have agreed with that, but now, 60 years after the creation of the modern day state of Israel, I wouldn't. Simply because of the amount that the state has produced in the last 6 decades.
The media would like to portray us as an occupying entity that has the sole goal of displacing the Palestinian Arabs, and forcing them off their land.
The truth is, and this may be hard for people to imagine, we as Jews want to be productive in the world. We want to contribute.
And we have
Israel has, according to Dr. Yossi Olmert (yes you can figure out who that is) Israel has the the 18th highest GDP of any country in the world, which is astounding given it's relatively small population compared to the first 17 of only 7 million.
Add on top of the the obvious goal of the Jewish people (maybe not of the government, but of the Jewish people) of returning home to the land the G-d gave to us in the Torah.
This leads to another interesting point, and this relates to the modern, secular state of Israel.
The Arab Muslims say that they believe in the Torah. They believe that the Torah says that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews.
What they believe is that the Torah is a book of laws, given to a group of people (the Jewish people) to obey. Given to obey in the Land of Israel.
Now given that, this conflict can make some more sense. Maybe if the current state became a Torah government this problem would disappear.
The Leftists on the other hand, G-d bless them want to stop an injustice when the see one. And when they look at Israel they see an occupying force that is destroying the lives of Arabs who they believe are indigenous to the region.
But what they don't realize is the the computer that they're watching the Youtube video on is powered by an Intel that was made in Israel.
They don't realize that when their grandmother goes into surgery, they're using a camera so small, it can fit on the end of a needle to find exactly where to make their incision.
They don't realize that the technology on the cell phone that they use to call their friends to plan an anti-Israel with was invented in Israel.
Personally I think that if anyone cares about the "Plight of the Palestinians" they would not be advocating for a Palestinian state. The Palestinian Arabs live under absolute worse conditions, not because Israel wants to make suffer, but because the youth have been brainwashed that the fastest way to Heaven is to blow yourself up and take a Jew with you, and because all of the money that has been given by the International Community as aid to the Arabs is not even getting past the hands of the person receiving the check. The money is heading to their own personal bank accounts.
I feel bad for them, I really do. I just don't think that carving almost 1/2 of Israel's land away will solve anything except more deaths on both sides. Especially considering the relatively tiny space Israel has compared to its neighbors.
Now I just want to put Chomsky and Finklestein in their place. Just because a Jews says that Israel should give away land does not mean that it's the right thing. Especially a secular Jews has nothing to loss by the land giveaway. They're selling out their brothers because they do have a spark of Jewishness in them, they just have their compassion misplaced because they don't have the Torah guiding them, they only have the word of Man.
Let me know if you have anymore question.
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