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It appears to me that the Almighty’s Moral Law (evolutionary-informed moral values) inscribed onto the hearts of men from birth (moral intuition) is that if a person takes something by unusual terror and theft, then it doesn’t belong to them, except within a prevailing social climate of everyone taking things by terror and theft, in which case it is usual and merely playing by the rules. People much smarter than myself have expressed these universal moral rules through the bodies of international law. By the end of 1945, the civilized world was firmly against acquisition through terror and theft, and according to experts, the formulations of the 1907 Hague Conventions had become customary international law bound to all states by the 1930s. So when you write,
This is insufficiently specific for me to understand what you mean. If you mean that the land the Jews stole by terror has become their land, then I disagree. If you mean the land they legally bought, then I agree. Each specific case has to be understood specifically. What were the agreements to the land purchases, and so forth? What was the law in place regarding Palestinians on the land? Did they use terror or threat to force purchases? And so forth. All land legally purchased by Jews has become their land, if there was no legal authority presiding over the land apart from the British / Ottoman authorities.
Unfortunately, this view is not in line with genetics and archaeology which show the continuation of Palestinians from the earliest records. When the British Mandate ceased, Palestine doesn’t become some blank slate no man’s land, but the same political apparati that operated under the Mandate and before the Mandate is in effect.
I think I’ve answered ~10 of your questions by now. Which one is the most important that you want me to answer? I pretty much already supplied answers to these, so how do you want me to answer this?
I disagree. There wasn't even a group of Arabs called "Palestinians" until very recently, historically speaking.
I'm simply applying YOUR principles as you've expressed them. Unfortunately, your principles seem to keep changing. You have introduced what could be called a "reasonable retaliation exception" And what could be called a "voluntary abandonment rule."
And now this:
So you've introduced a new rule where the consequences of conduct depend on the year the conduct took place. Apparently in the 1920s, it was "anything goes." But apparently the magic year is 1945.
But it's hard to say -- I am pretty sure that if I ask you to define this new goalpost, you will dodge and weave.
You've dodged and weaved. For example, I've asked you a few times now if Gaza City has any "Jewish Land" in it and you've simply ignored the question.
And to me, the reason for your evasion is pretty obvious. The only real principle behind the concept of "Palestinian Land" is "what's favorable for the group I prefer and unfavorable for the group I am against"
I realize that from a rhetorical standpoint, you have no choice but to hide your position behind a cloak of strategic ambiguity, however I am not interested in those games. I will repeat my previous questions though, and if you ignore, evade, dodge, weave, or deflect, then I will answer them for you and (from my perspective) our exchange will be concluded.
If Group X is ethnically cleansed from Land Y in response to bad conduct by a few members of Group X, then Land Y no longer belongs to Group X. Is that your position?
Are you conceding that Gaza City and the eastern part of Jerusalem are [according to your principles] "Jewish Land" (at least the pre-ethnic cleansing Jewish neighborhoods?) Or do you maintain that your exception for justifiable retaliation applies to those places as well?
Are you saying that modern Israel is "Christian Palestinian Land" but not "Palestinian Land"? Or do Palestinian Arabs as a group get credit for the genetic continuity of the Christians?
It sounds like you are saying that if a group of people has "genetic continuity" with some land, then it belongs to that group, but there is an exception if the group voluntarily leaves. Does that sum up your position?
You are not arguing in good faith. If they own the land and have lived in it for generations, it doesn’t matter what they call themselves. There was a group, based on genetic and archaeological evidence, and they used either more specific city identities (Al-Khalili from Hebron), or greater identities which included parts of Syria, or a clan name. It is fallacious to say something doesn’t exist because it doesn’t have a name you find neatly-specified.
You asked me to specify something, which naturally entails introducing new elements; that is literally how every application or discussion on rules works. I have no idea how this is surprising to you. I already detailed the specific legal articulations of 1907, if that’s how you prefer to think. You don’t need a midrash for this. You asked me an underlying principle to the underlying principle; the underlying principle of underlying principles is evolutionary intuition, and under that is God. What do you want me to say, “it’s turtles all the way down”? I can literally point to an international body that has legislated on these issues with neat rules. You are pointing to… I don’t even know. Yet even neat rules require implementation specification.
Yes, the civilized world was in agreement on this prior to the Nakba, according to experts of international law. You can call this magic and I would agree that human cooperation is magic. If you don’t believe in any international law, then we still have moral intuition.
This is not an honest way to engage in discourse. You asked me to legislate on a list of areas, and I did you the honor of going through academic resources to find details of the first event you listed, which included finding the second volume of an expansive history of Palestine in French. “If you don’t spend 100 hours finding the exact details of implementation involving every city I list, you have dodged my question”. Surely you can tell this is silly. I have already said that the rule applies based on material conditions, so I fail to see your point. You’re looking for some way to score a deceitful victory in your own mind, I suppose, by asking questions on details which involve innumerable specific details, and would never be settled in the real world except through months-long deliberation. That’s more hutzpah than gotcha.
You are the one who used a name -- not me. But more importantly, if takes the relaxed standard you used for Palestinian Arabs -- having ancestry in the area -- and applies it to other groups, e.g. the Jews, it follows that Israel is -- by your reasoning -- Jewish land.
So again my question: What should be done about the attempts of Palestinian Arabs to steal what is -- by your own principles -- Jewish land?
Not necessarily. You could have laid out your principles from the very beginning of this exchange when I asked you to explain how "Palestinian Land" got to be "Palestinian Land." But you didn't do that. Rather, you kept adding epicycles as the exchange continued, in effect shifting the goalposts.
I want you to either specify the principles behind your argument or admit that there are no principles. I want the goalposts to be firmly in place.
I am extremely skeptical of this claim. I would ask for cites, but the post I am responding to is the last post of yours that I will ever read or respond to in this week's thread and probably forever, so I am not going to ask.
You could easily have said something this:
But anyway, I know perfectly well what you mean when you claim you did not want to devote the time to extensive research. What you meant was that you didn't want to go searching for some rationalization for why your own rules don't apply in that situation. That's what you did for Hebron. The Jews were undeniably ethnically cleansed but you went searching and found some allegations of bad conduct against some Jews which could then be used to argue that Jewish interest in Hebron was forever waived.
In any event, since you didn't answer my questions, I will answer them for you:
Answer: This is your position, but only if it's bad conduct by a few people who are Jews. The innumerable incidents of bad conduct on the part of Palestinian Arabs in no way undermine or waive their rights to "Palestinian Land."
Answer: You are not so conceding, because we are talking about Jewish Land and not Palestinian Land, and therefore there is either (1) some alleged bad behavior by some Jew somewhere which can be used to invoke the "justifiable retaliation rule,"; or (2) some other rule can be invented.
Answer: You are saying that modern Israel is "Palestinian Land." With Palestinian Arabs, the entire group gets credit for the genetic ancestry of any subset. But with Jews, it's only the specific subset of Jews who gets the credit. Moreover, with Jews, there is no partial credit available. If a group of Jews has partially European ancestry, that invalidates any connection. With Palestinian Arabs, it's the opposite.
Answer: Again, it depends on whether we are dealing with Jews or Arabs. If there is any historical evidence that any subgroup of Jews voluntarily left an area (or was kicked out but there are allegations of bad behavior against at least a few Jews) then that invalidates the entire claim of all Jews.
It looks to me like you didn't answer my questions because it kinda gives the game away to admit you have double standards. That it's a who/whom kind of situation.
Anyway, as I alluded to earlier, I do not engage with people who hide their positions behind a cloak of ambiguity. I asked you a number of simple, reasonable questions and you evaded, dodged, and deflected.
Feel free to have the last word. From my perspective, this exchange is over and I will not be reading your posts or responding to you any further.
The reason to bring up ancestry is to debunk your claim that “the entire area has been invaded by so many different groups over the years there's no way to say one group has exclusive ownership.” When the Mandate ended, ownership belongs to who owns the land, just as it did before; the Palestinian land was possessed for many dozens of generations locally. The population of the owners of property did not change. We know from DNA they were there forever. There was no population transfusion as you appear to suggest. They are the indigenous owners of land. The British Mandate did not ban private property.
I already answered that land questions should be determined by an independent body of experts.
I did. The land was owned by Palestinians since the Iron Age. It became private property under the empires. Why would the land suddenly go to someone from Poland or New York? Once the war ended, you had the declaration of an Israeli state, and you had “Arab” associations declare their state.
I did in a bunch of comments. “(1) state sponsored (2) terrorism (3) which expelled the native inhabitants or owners of the land (4) evidenced by solid historiography”. And in a separate comment: “If there is some ancestral quarter for Jews in Baghdad and the government made them flee through terrorism, they should have that back or be offered compensation.” And other things in other comments. I do not believe that land acquired through the violation of customary international law should go to the terroristic violators. My principles are that —
land acquired through terrorism after 193x should not go to terrorists,
based on the 1907 codification of international law, which was
recognized as applicable globally by the end of the 1930s at Nuremberg,
and further articulated in one of my first comments to you: “a solid rule: if Israelis used terrorism to cleanse the land, that land should be returned to Palestinians”
Meanwhile, you are just continuing to ask pointed and perhaps insincere questions…
What you have presented is something called an unevidenced opinion. For me, literally pointing at rules and events is not enough evidence; for you, merely saying “it is undeniable” is enough. I even asked if you wanted to discuss only Hebron, but you declined. But hey, if an international body says that Jews in Hebron were indeed cleansed, either through the local government’s will or willful disregard, then they should get the land back! Why should it be up to me, mere commentator? Perhaps what you were trying to do is create some false equivalence between the Jews ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of people through terrorism, and what Palestinians were doing?
What’s great about the OP documents is that there are signatures and confessions about their intention and will and success and approval in using terrorism to take land that didn’t belong to them. You have the government actually admitting to doing this, and then crowning the terrorist who killed 40 people with the state’s highest honor. It’s not an allegation, it’s not a confusing story, it’s very strong evidence from what I can tell. So you when said “what about Hebron” (not even specifying the date, mind you, leaving me to guess), you are forcing me to wade through a swamp of historical minutiae to figure out whether the event qualifies in the same way. Maybe it does? Maybe it doesn’t? It seems like it kind of doesn’t, although it was still very bad?
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