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You are the one who used a name -- not me. But more importantly, if one 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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