>>Yet,in those or other cases, I do not know of a whole country being given to the people who were killed and facing extermination. I am not saying giving the Jews Israel was wrong but you make it sound like it was some kind of divine right, or a forgone conclusion since so many died during the Holocaust. I do think you are right that guilt was the motivator but that doesn't make the Jews more deserving than others who have or are going through similar circumstances.
Ted, said land was a territory that belonged to England, not the Arabs. It actually was desolate and not many people lived there until after World War I. Mark Twain toured it in the 1800s, and he was shocked at the fact that no one lived in the "Holy Land".
In England's vision, the Jews were to get not only what is Israel proper now, all of Palestine, which includes the currently disputed territories and what is now Jordan, but when it came down to it in '47, Jordan had already been given away (in the '20s, to the original King Abdullah in return for quelling an uprising against the British) by the British to the Arabs, and the Jews got about half of what was left over, and the rest was divided up between Syrian and Jordan. Jordan is a Hashemite kingdom- Abdullah and his men were brought in from the outside to rule over a Palestinian majority, and remains the same today.
Why would Israel deserve the land any less than the Hashemites do?
By the way, you might ask why the Palestinians haven't revolted against the Hashemites the way they have against the Israelis. They actually have. Arafat tried to overthrow King Hussein in the late '60s, and King Hussein killed over 5,000 Palestinians. The Palestinians haven't tried that again. Israel would never do anything like that to the Palestinians, and the Palestinians know it. That's why the Palestinians aren't afraid of Israel and feel free to keep attacking.
-Z |
