Muslims Self-Criticism

[demon]

Mycroft;
"By contrast, the immigrating Jews had to purchase their land, and work within the legal systems already in place."

And you believe this is what happened? All above board and legal like?

 

[a_unique_person]

It was. It was really no different than the american and austrailian frontiers.

The concept of 'terra nullus', or an empty land for the taking, has been overturned by the Australian Court system. (how did they get those pinko judges on it anyway?). If someone is living somewhere, even if there is no formal legal system, they still have rights.

The Arabs had aspirations to something after the centuries of rule by other powers, the Zionists were just better organised at grabbing it.

Note that the UN, even though it did vote in favour of the concept of Israel, never actually formally turned it over to the Zionists. This was probably due to the fact that what the UN had proposed was unworkable and not acceptable to the Zionists anyway.

WTF is "natural justice"?

A natural sense of fair play.

And you are misunderstanding (what else is new). No the area was not open for anyone to just come along. The British owned it, and it was their's to do with as they pleased.

Not at all. Australia had a mandate to run New Guinea for many years. It was never for Australia to do as it pleased with that country, any more than the US could do as it pleased with the countries under occupation after WWII.

So? And that's not the case today. Most of the middle east is (still) regarded as an area for muslims, NO ONE besides them figures in there. I notice you don't have a problem with that.

I don't have a problem with people who live where they do praticising the religion they follow, with tolerance for others.

I think that you vastly underestimate the bad will that the creation of Israel created. There was, prior to the Zionist movement, anti-semitism from Muslims, Catholics, etc. Muslims, as far as I can see, were no worse than any other group, and a lot less extreme than Nazi Germany, for example. The creation of Israel was the spur for a rapid rise in many areas that had previously tolerated Jews. Jews had lived in many areas in the Middle East prior to that event.

And that's all your bullsh!t comes down to; muslim supremacism and Jewish extermination. It’s nice to see the Nazi and Arab dream of a jewless world lives on in your deranged cranium.

I'm not the one popping out the babies, I am not saying it is a good thing. I am just saying it is happening, and everyone there knows it is happening. The minds of Israel are concentratede on this very issue right now. It is a part of the reason why Palestine cannot achieve independence, or be incorporated in Israel. These are stateless people who have no future, currently.

 

[a_unique_person]

I disagree. In Australia and America, Europeans were dealing with indigenous people who simply didn't have the same concepts of land ownership or government. The Europeans felt free to take whatever land they wanted, and imported their systems of law from the nations they came from. By contrast, the immigrating Jews had to purchase their land, and work within the legal systems already in place.

Once again, what sort of system will buy land off Arabs, but never sell it back again? Only one that is racist and discriminatory.

 

[Mycroft]

Once again, what sort of system will buy land off Arabs, but never sell it back again? Only one that is racist and discriminatory.

We've been over this issue before. You're confusing the actions of individual people with the actions of an agency that was specifically set up to aid Jewish immigrants. Calling it racist is like calling the United Negro College Fund racist for not granting scholarships to white people.

Edited to add: Organizing riots and pogroms against immigrants certainly is racist and discriminatory. You dodged my previous hypothetical question on if/when you would kill Muslim immigrants to your country, so I'm not sure that you agree on this.

 

[Mycroft]

And you believe this is what happened? All above board and legal like?

If you want to claim there is something illegal about buying land and building communities, feel free to make your case. I look forward to it.

 

[demon]

Mycroft:
"If you want to claim there is something illegal about buying land and building communities, feel free to make your case. I look forward to it."

No, that wasn`t my point and I think you know that.
I was asking you if you believed that this is the way it all actually happened.
Are you denying the Nakba?

 

[a_unique_person]

If you want to claim there is something illegal about buying land and building communities, feel free to make your case. I look forward to it.

Taking land and destroying communities is a slam dunk, I take it..

 

[a_unique_person]

We've been over this issue before. You're confusing the actions of individual people with the actions of an agency that was specifically set up to aid Jewish immigrants. Calling it racist is like calling the United Negro College Fund racist for not granting scholarships to white people.

Edited to add: Organizing riots and pogroms against immigrants certainly is racist and discriminatory. You dodged my previous hypothetical question on if/when you would kill Muslim immigrants to your country, so I'm not sure that you agree on this.

No, you are acting like someone who cannot face up to facts.

The aim of the Zionists was to always create a Jewish state, true or false?

 

[Mycroft]

Mycroft:
"If you want to claim there is something illegal about buying land and building communities, feel free to make your case. I look forward to it."

No, that wasn`t my point and I think you know that.
I was asking you if you believed that this is the way it all actually happened.
Are you denying the Nakba?

In the context of my statement to Tony, you could mean nothing else. If you were trying to make another point, it's up to you to make your meaning clear.

(For those unfamiliar with the term nakba, it's Arabic for catastrophe and is often used to describe the Israeli war of independence.)

 

[demon]

Mycroft:
"For those unfamiliar with the term nakba, it's Arabic for catastrophe and is often used to describe the Israeli war of independence."

I beg to differ.
It describes the deportation of the native Palestinians from their land, the massacres they endured and the destruction of numerous Palestinian villages and livlihoods.

I notice you didn`t answer my question.
I`ll ask you it again. Do you deny this happened?

 

[The Fool]

Look out ZN there is another reposting bot in town

http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Famous-Zionist-Quotes/Story697.html

Soon after the 1948 war, according to Tom Segev (the Israeli renowned journalist-historian):

[The looting] included a total of 45,000 homes and apartments, about 7,000 shops and other places of business, some 500 workshops and industrial plants, and more than 1,000 warehouses. At the same time, it was necessary to continue harvesting the crops and picking the olives, gathering the tobacco and the fruit in the orchards-a total of over 800,000 acres. (1949, The First Israelis, p. 69)

A secret report, written by the Custodian of Abandoned Property tried to explain how people "succumb to the grave temptation of looting," and why. First there was the massive flight of panic-stricken Arabs who abandoned thousands of apartments, stores and workshops as well as crops and orchards. Second, the property concerned was in the midst of the front-line combat area during the transition from mandatory to Israeli rule. This meant there was no stable authority with which to be reckoned. " ...The moral sense of the few who were attacked by the many and managed to survive, justified the looting of the enemy's property," reported the Custodian. "passions of revenge and temptation overcame great numbers of people. Under those conditions only an extremely firm action by the military I administrative civil and judiciary authorities might have saved, not only the property I but also many people, from moral bankruptcy. Such firm action did not take place, and perhaps could not, given the circumstances, and so things continued to go downhill without restraint." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 70-71)

Years later the Custodian removed the veil of secrecy: "The inspectors found most of the houses broken into, and rarely was there any furniture left," he wrote in his memoirs. "Clothes, household effects, jewelry I bedding-other than mattresses-never reached the warehouses of the Custodial authority. ..." More than 50,000 Arab homes had been abandoned, but only 509 carpets reached the Custodian's warehouses. The Custodian attributed it all to the "weak ness and greed of many Israelis, who in normal circumstances would never have permitted themselves to act thus with regard, to other people's property." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 70-71)

Yosef Yaakobson-an orange grower, and later an advisor to the Ministry of Defense-suggested to Ben-Gurion that he expropriate a shoe-making plant from its Jaffa owner and turn it over to the shoe-making enterprise Min'al of kibbutz Givat Hashloshah. Ben-Gurion consulted the Minister of Finance and Kaplan expressed the opinion that the private property of Arabs who remained in Jaffa should not be expropriated. Ben-Gurion disagreed; in his opinion only the property found inside private residences should not be expropriated. Yaakobson told him that the army was removing goods from Jaffa property estimated at 30,000 pounds daily. Attorney Naftaly Lifs**tz of Haifa informed him that in the banks of that city there were 1,500,000 [Palestinian] pounds in deposits belonging to Arabs. "The banks are willing to turn this property over," noted Ben-Gurion, and so the government, too, took a hand in the division of the spoils. (1949, The First Israelis, p. 73) It should be NOTED that the cost of building Haifa's port in the mid-1930s was 1,250,000 Palestinian pounds. It should be noted that Haifa's port was the second largest in the Mediterranean after the French port of Marseilles.

Altogether, between 140,000 and 160,000 immigrants were settled in abandoned homes: in Jaffa some 45,000, in downtown Haifa about 40,000, and in Acre about 5,000. The man who was put in charge of resettling Acre was Mordehai Sarid. "We consulted a map," he later recalled. "I knew which houses I was getting and I worked with engineers to determine what we would do with each apartment. One place needed sinks installed, another required a coat of paint, while other places needed flooring and sewage." The expenses were covered by the Jewish Agency . One day Sarid asked about some immigrants and was told that they were "getting organized." "Splendid," he said, "let them get organized." One of his aides explained what the phrase meant. "They are stealing tables and wardrobes from abandoned houses." As Sarid put it, he was "terribly disturbed"; he summoned the most influential persons among the immigrants and demanded that they all return the stolen property. According to him, "almost everything" was restored. (1949, The First Israelis, p. 73)

What Ben-Gurion had to say...

"The ONLY thing that surprised me, and surprised me bitterly, was the discovery of such moral failings among us [Jews], which I had never suspected. I mean the mass robbery in which all parts of [the Jewish] population participated." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 69)

"The looting is spreading once again. ...I cannot verify all the reports which reach me, but I get the distinct impression that the commanders are not over-eager to catch and punish the thieves. ...I receive complaints every day. By way of example, I enclose a copy of a letter I received from the manager of the Notre Dame de France (a monastery). Behavior like this in a monastery can cause quite serious harm to us. I've done my best to put a stop to the thefts there, which are all done by soldiers, since civilians are not permitted to enter the place. But as you can see from this letter, these acts are continuing. I am powerless." Ben-Gurion promised he would discuss with Moshe Dayan the possible measures to be adopted in order to put an end to the robbery. The subject troubled him greatly. Prior to the occupation of Nazareth he ordered Yadin to "use submachine guns on the soldiers if he saw any attempt at robbery." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 70)

 

[Mycroft]

Taking land and destroying communities is a slam dunk, I take it..

In other words, war is a bitch.

The aim of the Zionists was to always create a Jewish state, true or false?

In recent threads I have mentioned the following:

In 1902 Herzl wrote a book describing his hypothetical Zionist utopia. This region was not a nationalist state, but merely a region where people formed socialist collectives, enjoying the benefits of a modern society with full participation of people of all nations, races and religions.

In this very thread I quoted from the proposal to the 1919 Paris Peace conference, which said; ”There shall be for ever the fullest freedom of religious worship for all creeds in Palestine. There shall be no discrimination among the inhabitants with regard to citizenship and civil rights, on the grounds of religion, or of race. ”

I also brought up that the Zionist Congress in 1931 refused to declare that the purpose of Zionism was to create a Jewish State, and that this refusal led to a schism within the movement.

And of course, there was a time when Zionist simply meant an individual desire to return to Zion, and had no political connotation at all.

So the answer to your question is clearly false.

 

[a_unique_person]

In other words, war is a bitch.



In recent threads I have mentioned the following:

In 1902 Herzl wrote a book describing his hypothetical Zionist utopia. This region was not a nationalist state, but merely a region where people formed socialist collectives, enjoying the benefits of a modern society with full participation of people of all nations, races and religions.

In this very thread I quoted from the proposal to the 1919 Paris Peace conference, which said; ”There shall be for ever the fullest freedom of religious worship for all creeds in Palestine. There shall be no discrimination among the inhabitants with regard to citizenship and civil rights, on the grounds of religion, or of race. ”

I also brought up that the Zionist Congress in 1931 refused to declare that the purpose of Zionism was to create a Jewish State, and that this refusal led to a schism within the movement.

And of course, there was a time when Zionist simply meant an individual desire to return to Zion, and had no political connotation at all.

So the answer to your question is clearly false.

You are correct that the meaning of Zionism has changed a lot over time and the aims of individual Zionists can differ. Perhaps a more correct question would be, what was the aim of Zionism as it was practised when Israel was created?

 

[Mycroft]

You are correct that the meaning of Zionism has changed a lot over time and the aims of individual Zionists can differ. Perhaps a more correct question would be, what was the aim of Zionism as it was practised when Israel was created?

Okay, let's move the goalposts a little bit...

The Israeli Declaration of Idependence containst the following words;

WE APPEAL — in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months — to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

 

[E.J.Armstrong]

(For those unfamiliar with the term nakba, it's Arabic for catastrophe and is often used to describe the Israeli war of independence.)

From http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/Abt/abt_.html
'# This period is known as the Nakba, or great catastrophe in Arabic
# More than 500 villages were evacuated, destroying communities that had been on the land for centuries
# Israeli children are taught that the Palestinians left their homes voluntarily, or because they were told to by their leaders
# They are not told of the wealth of evidence of specific expulsion orders and around 20 massacres by Jewish forces'

From http://www.wrmea.com/jews_for_justice/statehood.html
'"During May [1948] ideas about how to consolidate and give permanence to the Palestinian exile began to crystallize, and the destruction of villages was immediately perceived as a primary means of achieving this aim...[Even earlier,] On 10 April, Haganah units took Abu Shusha... The village was destroyed that night... Khulda was leveled by Jewish bulldozers on 20 April... Abu Zureiq was completely demolished... Al Mansi and An Naghnaghiya, to the southeast, were also leveled. . .By mid-1949, the majority of [the 350 depopulated Arab villages] were either completely or partly in ruins and uninhabitable." Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.'

It seems the work of bulldozers is never done.

 

[zenith-nadir]

Notice something folks? This thread is about Muslim's self-criticism. Yet not even a_u_p, not Demon, not davefoc, not the fool, not E.J. or any other muslim apologist has admitted that the Arabs made terrible mistakes, lost a war really badly and lost a ton of land over their obstinacy and refusal to accept U.N. Resolution 181.

Instead, any admission of error and responsibility of the Arabs actions is summed up in statements like these;

Originally posted by a_unique_person
I think that you vastly underestimate the bad will that the creation of Israel created.

So much for muslim self criticism... Personally I am done with this thread because there is no such thing as Muslim self-criticism...it seems that it is always the jews fault.

 

[a_unique_person]

Okay, let's move the goalposts a little bit...

The Israeli Declaration of Idependence containst the following words;

A military occupation is an act of war. Then they just want everyone to accept a state of peace. The sentiment is not matched by the action.

 

[a_unique_person]

Notice something folks? This thread is about Muslim's self-criticism. Yet not even a_u_p, not Demon, not davefoc, not the fool, not E.J. or any other muslim apologist has admitted that the Arabs made terrible mistakes, lost a war really badly and lost a ton of land over their obstinacy and refusal to accept U.N. Resolution 181.

Instead, any admission of error and responsibility of the Arabs actions is summed up in statements like these; So much for muslim self criticism... Personally I am done with this thread because there is no such thing as Muslim self-criticism...it seems that it is always the jews fault.

By no means is it always the fault of Jews. Nor anyone else.

 

[a_unique_person]

In other words, war is a bitch.

So why all the whining from Israel? A unilateral declaration of a state backed by force of arms is an act of war on those who inhabit that land who do not agree with that declaration. And so it has been, for roughly 60 years. A terrible tragedy for those who have suffered and died. But did it have to be so?

 

[davefoc]

ZN,
I suspect that each person that read the article that you linked to was heartened by the fact that there was internal discussion and criticism of the violence that has been done by Islamic extremists.

For me, I felt the same way about it as when I read articles from within Israel criticizing the settlement policies. These kind of articles demonstrate freedom of press and a willingness to move towards peace even when that movement involves painful acceptance of self-critical facts by people in their respective countries.

The reason that this thread digressed, IMHO, is because while you as the initiator of this thread were perfectly willing to celebrate the self-critical writings of some Arabs you have been unwilling to acknowledge any facts that demonstrate the huge injustice done by the Israeli Jewish immigrants to the indigenous population of Palestine or the contiuning injustice of the Israeli expansion policies. Those that have responded to this thread see this as hipocrisy on your part and we have responded by writing about some of those Israeli actions which you choose to ignore or at best rationalize away with one excuse or another.