Just Angry

I noticed this on the news. It seems Israel was supposed to take the missile hits and sit back. While Hamas was running amuck.

Another example of how language dictates how we think: Calling them "Palestinians" argues immediately that they are indeed a nation, or a people dispossessed of a nation.

If my reading of the situation is correct, they were sold out of their land by the Turks, and the rest of the Arab world refused to take them in, in large part because to have them in permanent "displaced" status allowed the rest of the Middle Eastern nations to use as an anvil on which to hammer Israel into, they hoped, non-existence.

The rest of the Arab world cares little or nothing about the Palestinians as people; They only care so dar as they can use them as a wedge against the Jews. Much like the democRtas with the blacks, the hispanincs, the this, the that...

That seems to be the rule. If Israel defends itself it is "perpetuating the cycle of violence". Which seems to suggest we should get rid of all police departments for fear of creating a cycle of violence in our cities.

If you follow the links, I think I did discuss the term "Palestinian" in one of my older essays.

Your history is mostly correct. Some Jewish communities, such as Safed, actually date back to Byzantine times, though they were never very numerous. There were similarly many Jewish communities under the various Moslem states, up through the Ottoman turks. Settlement by Jewish colonists really only took off in the very late Ottoman era, and more so under British rule.

For the most part, colonists bought land either from the crown or from Arab land owners. IN some cases land may have been granted by rules (either Ottoman or British) of land which had been unused, but that was exceptionally rare. Land was almost always purchased (admittedly usually at a low price, as the area was not wealthy and was mostly wasteland).

So I simply have no idea where this myth came that somehow the Jews forced out the Arabs. Many did leave when Israel was formed, as they hoped the Arab League would kill the Jews, but those who stayed and their descendants ares till Israelis today. Only those who hoped for the destruction of the state are not citizens.

Well, perhaps this deserves another post in the future.