Ted Rall for December 11, 2023

A rose by any other name would still be thorny.

Are people actually talking like that?

Dunno, all the neighbors are the type who love tiki torches and the the phrase “Jews will not replace us”. You know, the group Orangey the Horror Clown called “Very Fine People.”.

VERY difficult.

Go read a history book

Seriously

There was and is no ethnic cleansing. You want to condemn what’s going on, fine. But, stop with that nonsense.

Who are these Americans there never was a nation of America?

“A land without a people for a people without a land”

According to The Pffft of All Knowledge, it was first used by Christian Zionists, in the 1840s. So, the erasure has been going on for a long time.

fusilier

James 2:24

In 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of prewar Mandatory Palestine’s Arab population – fled from their homes or were expelled by Zionist militias during the 1948 Palestine war following the Partition Plan for Palestine. The expulsion and flight was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession, and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba. Between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning."

Israel received statehood in 1948, it’s past due time for a Palestinian nation to be formed. In the meantime, the U.N. is reporting that up to 1/2 of the Palestinians are facing starvation and this needs immediate action to allow sufficient food (and medical supplies) into Gaza.

Yes, local Arabs did live in Israel before 1948. So did Jews – who have lived there practically continuously for over 3,000 years. In 1948 the Jews happily agreed to a 2-state solution with the Arabs, but the Arabs immediately attacked the Jews and denied that they had any right to the land. Ever since then the Palestinians have never managed to get a government together that recognizes Israel’s right to exist and is seriously interested in peaceful coexistence, rejecting time and again offers for a 2 state solution and celebrating and rewarding terrorist operations against Jews and Israeli-Arabs. Israel wants peace, and while many Arabs do too, their governments don’t. As it is, though, 20% of Israel’s citizens are non-Jews, including millions of Palestinian Israelis.

Ted loves and defends Hamas.

Ethnically cleansing was Jordan.

The people in the Semitic language speaking region in the Middle East have been ruled by several conquering nations since the bronze age. Anti-semitic which referred to both Arab and Hebrew languages/people in now used — without the hyphen (antisemitic) — to refer to only the Jewish. Both Arabian and Jewish cultures have enriched our current civilization* . Brazil has the largest Arab diaspora, while THe USA/Israel share the largest Jewish diaspora.

* The ten Arabic numerals 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are the most commonly used symbols for writing numbers and modulo 60 time-keeping (minutes/seconds). The Jews gave us a strong commitment to learning as is demonstrated by relatively large number of doctors/scientists.

This cartoon shows the sad state of education.. or, how effective Israeli propaganda has been.

Palestine just means “Holy Land”.

Here is the root of the perpetual problem: “There is an ancient scroll. I believe it. If you do not, you are wrong! If I don’t believe in your ancient scroll, I am right! Will it help you to see that I’m right and you’re wrong if I use weapons of mass destruction?”

That’s odd. The people call themselves ‘Palestinians’. I’d think they know how they identify. It’s not surprising how Americans do not know the history of the Middle East when they don’t know the history of our own Nation. Or refuse it.

I have met quite a few people making basically the same claim. You could say the same thing, of course, about Germany. Putin says it frequently about Ukraine; it’s part of his moral justification for his “special military operation”. Hell, you could say it about Canada, the United States of America, Brazil, modern China, North Korea, South Korea, Pakistan, India, Poland, France, Czechia, Liechtenstein, Vatican City, South Africa, Chile, or pretty much any country on Earth you care to name if you take the argument far enough. Borders and ethnicity are all things we all pretty much just arbitrary distinctions we decide to agree about. Or, sometimes, to disagree violently about. They’re not absolute forces of nature like the law of gravitation or the strong nuclear force, yet people seem to act like they are.

In the end, we’re all people, and borders are mostly just useful for organizational purposes; fighting over them is just a ghastly waste of everybody’s time, treasure, and lives. When will we start realizing that?

Trying to argue with a Republican voter . . . About just about anything

Making ANY place where people live UNINHABITABLE should be called ethnic cleansing.

The Romans called it Palestine on their maps and in their records and they did not come up with the name themselves. Ancient Greeks called it that as well. Ancient Israelis called it Canaan. Basically Palestinians are the Canaanites in the Bible.

Before that it was the land of the Jews and the Romans renamed it Palestine so completely erase them after the Jewish rebellion of 70 AD.

Yes, the news media talks like the 18,000+ Palestinians, who are disproportionately women and children aka civilians, are stateless.