On Sun, Jan 27, 2002 at 11:57:36AM -0600, Marvin Long, Jr. wrote: > Moreover, since the British were never able to come up with a > partitioning plan that Jews and Palestinian Arabs could agree upon > while Britain still controlled the area, it's fairly obvious that the > West knew when Israel was founded that that act would very probably > spark Arab-Israeli warfare. Anyone who knows anything about the > Middle East should have been able to deduce that such warfare would > likely be nasty and multigenerational. The West did the Jews a small > favor by declaring the state of Israel, but not much of one. "Here, > fellows, here's a state of your own. That is, if you can keep it > against all the people we're going to endlessly piss off by flexing > our colonial muscles this one last time."
I need to read up on the formation of Israel after World War II, but in the meantime, feel free to "educate" me. Given the assumption that it was necessary to create a land and a state as a Jewish refuge after World War II, was there another alternative then the Jerusalem area? I suppose a chunk of (present-day) Germany, or Italy, could have been offered. Perhaps Okinawa or something like that. But would that have been successful, i.e., would lots have Jews made that their home? There seem to be a lot of parallels between the formation of Israel, taking land from Palestinians, and the formation of the USA, taking land from Native Americans. Both were unfair things to do, handled poorly, and depending on your viewpoint, just wrong. Both involved religious refugees attempting to escape persecution and find a place where they could practice their religion freely. This could be used as an argument to justify the deed, the lesser of two evils argument. In contrast, by my reckoning the European immigrants to America had much less claim to the land they took than the Jews had to Israel. And the new Americans and their descendants got away with it, by being more powerful and more determined. Maybe the same thing will happen with Israel? Except that the Israelis treat the Palestinians less severely than the new Americans treated the Native Americans, and so the Palestinians are still able to offer resistance of a sort. Does might make right? North American history seems to point that way. I wonder how much of this accounts for the strong support that the US has for Israel. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.com/
