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Politics : The Arab-Israeli Solution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (536)	5/21/2001 5:08:31 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2279

Re: But, in fact (and no matter how much I like King Abdullah of Jordan), there is a justifiable claim by Arafat upon Jordan. Jordan, like many other Arab nations liberated from Turkish rule after WWI (circa Lawrence of Arabia), is an artificial country. And perhaps it is EVEN MORE ARTIFICIAL than Israel, because you have a region of Palestine being ruled by a Saudi Hashemite Arab that doesn't even originate from that area.... Quite a captious screed of yours... yet, it perfectly illustrates my point about Israel's flawed inception: Excerpt from my post #399: Hence, when it came to carving out a Jewish homeland, it never crossed the Western lords' minds that tiny Luxembourg or New York's Manhattan island might fit the bill.... Better to accomodate the Jews at the expense of some subservient people. And that's how the state of Israel rests upon two outdated props: colonialism (ie full-fledged citizens vs. second-class scroungers) and 19th-century nation-state. What you adroitly miss to point out, Ron, is that Colonialism is not about "arbitrary borders" or "colonial gerrymandering", actually it's not even about ruling elites imposed by the former colonial power. Otherwise, at that rate, each and every country on earth is artificial indeed. Take Belgium for instance: when the country was granted independence in 1831, it encompassed the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg which became sovereign only in 1839. Moreover, part of the Limburg was retroceded to the Netherlands as agreed upon in the Calais Treaty --preventing yet another Belgo-Dutch war.... Besides, when the Belgian Congress convened in 1830 to work out the political regime/institutions of their brand new state, the Francophile bourgeoisie set its heart on the Duke of Nemours as Belgium's first king. However, Britain vetoed him and sweated Belgian representatives into picking an Austrian prince, Leopold de Saxe-Cobourg Gotha.... So, does the above mean that the Belgian state is an illegitimate regime forced on a dispossessed people? Of course not: whatever the artificiality of the Belgian fabric, its main constituents --the Flemings and the Walloons-- are not displaced communities! However constrained the Belgians' leeway to achieve sovereignty, the new regime didn't rest upon bringing in thousands or millions of foreigners to push natives aside.... Belgians belonged. Likewise, whatever the geographic arbitrariness of Iraq, Kuwait, the Arabic Peninsula, etc., the Arab populace and the Bedouin tribes who've roamed the era for centuries are not artificial settlers barging into the country and pushing locals around as mere scroungers.... Such a colonial attitude always ends up in liberation warfare: it befell the French in Algeria and Indochina, the Belgians in Congo, the Russians in Central Asia (despite Stalin's strategy of moving minorities around to defuse breakaway bids), the Serbs in Yugoslavia, and so on. Re: Only if Jews equated to some 80% of the population of the US, as they do in Israel... I don't think 80% is the correct ratio --I believe 70% is. BTW, according to recent studies, without a better policy to kickstart Jewish emigration, Israel will face the same demographic challenge as most Western countries already do and see its Jewish citizenry fall to 55% by 2050. Anyway, my last point was to expose the irony of your reasoning: henceforth, the United States of America's grandiose mission is to prop up 100%-ethnically pure countries.... A country whose very history is all about melting pot and blending together immigrants from all over the world, is dedicated to make sure that tiny Israel will remain 100% kosher for ever --that's the 19th-century fool's nation-state I was referring in my post #399. Whatever next! Gus.