--- Jon Gabriel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Yeah, but there have been Jews in that area since > > before recorded history and they made up a very > large > > proportion of the population before the Israeli > War of > > Independence. > > You know, I do sympathize with this point of view, > but by those > standards, the United States belongs to Native > Americans, doesn't it?
Well, which native Americans are you talking about? The ones who were there when the first colonists came? The ones who were wiped out by the ones who were there when the first colonists came? The ones who were wiped out by the ones who were wiped out by the ones who were there when the first colonists came? > > (....or do you feel perhaps that because they lost > the war(s), they lost > their rights for the land? I'm curious about your > opinion.) What happened to the Native Americans was one of the great tragedies of human history. Anyone who denies that is a fool. But it's also no different than any number of Native American tribes did to other Native American tribes either - and anyone who denies that is so lost to political correctness that they're a lost cause. Take a look at how the Aztecs used to behave some time. The question of who has a "right" to the land is so confused that at this point it's an argument that's pretty much solely brought up by people who want to excuse someone who is, _right now_, as opposed to 300 years ago, doing or planning on doing something barbarous to somebody. Moral standards have changed. What happened _then_ was not thought to be wrong by many people at all. We know better now. > > > > > And it is simply inconceivable that Americans, at > > least, would decide that the solution to the > problem > > was genocide - while it is quite clear that the > > Palestinian groups - the PLO very much included - > wish > > to finish what Hitler started. > > > > I'm too lazy to make a case out of it, but there's > definitely an > argument to be made that this is precisely what was > done to the Sioux, > the Apaches, the Navaho.... Oh, the methods may be > different, but the > goal and end result will be the same. > > Jon I don't think there is much of one, because you can still find Sioux, Apaches, and Navajo all over the place. The colonists did a lot of very bad things. They did _not_ set out to kill every Native American in the Western Hemisphere - because if they had set out to do so, they would have succeeded. So even if you pretend that moral standards in the seventeenth century and those in the twenty first are somehow equivalent, it's _still_ not the same thing. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
