BIBLE & HISTORY SOURCES: Holy Temple, Jerusalem,Land of Israel, Arab Palestinians

[Gilgamesh]

Originally posted by Kapiti
Then again after the return from Exodus in 1271 through to the time the Romans took control of Jerusalem (by Pompei) in 61 BCE.

Israel, and Egypt have become part of the Roman empire. However we became an autonomy, with slef governance. Jerusalem was not over run and demolished before 70 AD.

The last major rebelion against the Romans (the second in Israel, the theird over all) was in the year 132-135 AD. Hence, we had the capecity to run a rebelion for a relative long period.

The Arabs occupayed Israel only in the 7th century. Mohammad was long dead by then. The arabs found here, in Israel a large Jewish population. There were no Arabs in Israel, before then.

At best they were the majority and political rulers for another 1210 years.

worng. over 15-20 centuries, Israel saw Jewish demographic and economical and political dominance.

Since we talk politics, Arabs have never realy ruled the land of Israel at any time. 10th century-11th centuries, Israel was ruled by the crusaders, then Mameluks, then Turks for four centuries. Then we came back.

Arabs came over to Israel in vast numbers from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon only in the 1920's. Israel was mostly unpopulated by Arabs till then.

Assuming that the "Jews" did not drive out or kill all the non-Jews during the period that they dominated and that the non-Jews likewise did not kill all the Jews during their period of domination then both can lay lay to a continuous presence within the land.

The is no relation between modern Arabs and the non-Jews who lived in Israel in the Roman eara. Before the Helenic period and before, Jews made up the absolutel and totall majority of Israel's population. There were no non-Jews in significant numbers, untill the greek and Roman occupation. Even then, the non Jews were a minority. The same way, there is no relation between the anciant Greeks, and modern greeks, no relation between anciant Egyptions who built the pyramids and the modern Egyptions who are Arabs, and modern Italians have nothing in commons with the mighty Romans (other then cities names and couple of sites).

Counting up the years from 1812 BCE up until 1948 when either was in power and majority in the land then the Jews were dominant for roughly 1500 years and the non jews were dominant for 2260 years.

Your numbers are skewed.
15-20 centuries were Jewish political rule of Israel. up to the 2nd or 3rd century AD. Arabs ruled for far shorter periods of time, and been in Israel (quite hardly) since the late 7th and 8th centuries AD. That means about 12 centuries.

While Jews lived in Israel by the millions in anciant times, arabs did not. Jews had political power and self governance. Arabs did not. Israel has never been an independent Arab state. In some cities in Israel, Jews have lived a continualy uninteruptedly for 30 centuries. In cities like Hebron, Tzfat, Gaza, Peki'in and Jerusalm, Jews have never went to exile, and lived there. Arabs did not. Jews produced buildings, advanced agriculture, industry, even in anciant times. Arabs did not. Arabs contributed very little to Israel in terms of culture, buildings, economy... even the castels in Israel were built by Jews, Turks and crusaders. Not Arabs.

Prior to 1948 it appears to me that the non-jews were dominant for more than 60 percent of the time.

I guss you have to learn math as well as history.

Can someone explain to me using reasons other than relgious ones why the people dominant for a minority of the time have a greater historical claim to the land than the people who were dominant for a majority of the time.

Arabs live in Israel as invaders since the 7th and 8th century. 12-13 centuries. Never as a political entity, but as slaves working the land for other Arabs and Crusaders, tied by poverty to their lands. Only we Jews freed them in late 19th and 20th centuries. Bought lands, modern industry, moder agriculture, modern commarce and trade. There was NOTHING left in Israel while we were gone, not even trees and wild life. (Arabs and Turks choped them all, hunted all the animals they found, killed all lions and leopards).

Jews live in Israel for 30 centuries, ruled Israel for as a political enetity of some kind for 15-20 centuries.

[Mediocrates]

A common thread of the so called argument from the other side contains an internal contradiction.

They claim that

a) No Jews lived in Judea before Zionism
b) All the Arabs got along with the Jews


And then they proceed the justify the expulsion of all Jews from Iraq for example by arguing that they were leaving anyway to go to the hated Israel.

It's crazy really.

[JustPat]

Based on Kapiti's rational, who gets to stay in their current country of residence? The airlines are going to love this!

[Kapiti]

Good title to the land does not only depend on history going back thousands of years.

The point is this :

The right wing religous extremists all argue that the land of Israel is their "promised" land which they have "always" been living in for thousands of years.

They say that over the last two thousand years (and before 1948)because of circumstances (having been thrown out) they have lived as the small minority but before that they lived till the "beginning of time" as the dominant and majority player of the region. They say to look to the history of this period to see who has proper title to the land.

They say that they have continous presence which for some unexplained reason is supposed to count for something.

As I have shown, the reality based on Jewish history is that even when looking over the last five thousand years or so, they are still the minor players.

Since Jericho is arguably the oldest continously lived in town in the world if you go back 10,000 years you would have to say that the Jewish custodianship of the region is even more minor.

The continous presence argument is a joke which the non-jewish inhabitants could just as easily argue.

[Mediocrates]

It really doesn't matter. We live in a post Bronze Age world now. Countries are not created according the movements of flocks of sheep, the courses of rivers or the fertilization patterns of triticale which is where all of that old history comes from. Israel is a country now and just like Jordans borders follow razor sharp lines independant of history, geology, meteorology or anything else 'organic' so too does the existance of Israel stand alone. Who lived there even 60 years ago is not all that important.

A deeper and more critical question though is, who, after 4 or more generations who has never set foot in their so called homeland, is a refugee? I guess I am a refugee of several countries by that thinking, and so are you. But I'm not really - Jews who flocked to Israel in the 1940's were not returning home nor where they refugees from Israel. They were DP's for the most part from Europe who make strong efforts to kick out the ones who hadn't been killed. If those poor miserable people happened to be muslims then they would have been packed into ships and sent to Palestine anyway - or someplace like it and still the people who were already there would have claimed some magical exclusion, some sudden history that made it their's and no one else's. This is at the heart of Jabotinsky's "The Iron Wall". The basic premise is that "we're coming - it happens to be us but it could be anyone, the choice about how to live together is up to you." Anyone who doubts this need only peer into Jordan where 2/3rds of all Palestinians live, maqny of whom are also in 'camps' for generation after generation.

Which if I had time I'd explain in terms of cultural norms. For example here in the US the mean household income of immigrant black families from poor countries is something like 20% higher than the corrsponding household income of native black familes. Immigrant blacks exceed native blacks in many parameters:

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/...ide/index.html

As the child of immigrants I understand this almost unconciously. What makes America great is not the richness of immigrant cultures, it's the sum total of all of them. America makes more people American than their own cultures make people something else here. We exist largely as brand identified hyphenated Americans; Italian-American, Jewish-American, etc. but the differences are rather slight. Whatever it is we see here regardless of the first part of that hyphenation, leads us, collectively to make good decisions about how we thrive as a society. It's the groups that deny that that don't succeed.

At any rate this is not a discussion of race. I only point this out to note that some cultures fail by design or at least exhibit behaviors that tend to hobble their own competitive advantage. The native Americans failed not because of smallpox or tools or guns. They failed because their basic nomadic community structure requires too much land per calorie of food to maintain their own population. They were too land inefficient to ever accomodate pioneers and their farming and industrialization. I think we see an aspect of this with the Palestinians. Refugee status has become the norm and therefore disrupting that designation is destructive to that society. Through whatever process they arrived at a cultural identity that requires permanent refugees. There is a entire ethos in Jewish identity that maintains that antisemitism is what maintains us. Without tsuris we have nothing to fight back and achieve against. Personally I don't ascribe to that but I understand it within the context of the immigrant experience (because after all, Jews have been fantastically successful in America as a group but not in Europe).

All the same, there is an aspect of this in the mythology of Palestinian self determination (mythology as in cultural symbols). A built in decision tree that leads to poor decisions. A cultural inability to grasp the true nature of their Diaspora, a basic blindness to the fact that they have to grab hold of their culture and destiny and shape it to their own ends.

There was no American culture in 1787, there was no Boer culture in 1850, there was no Israeli culture in 1940. There were Jews and they toiled and sweated and made it up as they went along. They didn't ask permission and they didn't wait to be told. This is the opportunity that the Palestinians are missing. As long as they focus on violence as the method to avoid making those hard choices they will stay where they are. I can see a day where the Palestinians are independent and Diaspora Palestinians return to run things and excel and jump past their native Palestinians like African and Caribbean immigrant blacks in the US.

Shmos gets it right. Perhaps a whole generation must wander in the wilderness and die there before entering the Promised Land because once a slave always a slave.

[JustPat]

Originally posted by Kapiti
Good title to the land does not only depend on history going back thousands of years.

The point is this :

The right wing religous extremists all argue that the land of Israel is their "promised" land which they have "always" been living in for thousands of years.

They say that over the last two thousand years (and before 1948)because of circumstances (having been thrown out) they have lived as the small minority but before that they lived till the "beginning of time" as the dominant and majority player of the region. They say to look to the history of this period to see who has proper title to the land.

They say that they have continous presence which for some unexplained reason is supposed to count for something.

As I have shown, the reality based on Jewish history is that even when looking over the last five thousand years or so, they are still the minor players.

Since Jericho is arguably the oldest continously lived in town in the world if you go back 10,000 years you would have to say that the Jewish custodianship of the region is even more minor.

The continous presence argument is a joke which the non-jewish inhabitants could just as easily argue.

Your argument is moot. As much as either of us would like to justify our position based on history, the world is iperating on the premise that the UN and UK had the authority to designate the land as a Jewish homeland. In 1948 they did, the Jews possessed it, and they have held it to this day.

They have added to those lands through military victory. We can argue whether it was offensive or defensive, but they did add land through victory.

Because of being able to trace heritage on this land back through millenia, because of a biblical, "divine titledeed," and because of a prophetic call to aliyah the people are willing to do what it takes to secure the land for the future. Arab opposition of not, terrorist bombings or not, UN or not, these folks are staying.

The Palestinian threat to drive them into the sea may have been verbally recinded, but the actions speak otherwise. That make the Palestinian issue one that cannot be peacefully resolved. Unlike the rest of the civilized world, the Palestinians have not recognized Israel's status, its right to exist, or its willingness to sustain its future. Offered a chance to bargain for peace they threw a tantrum and left the table. How anyone can lay this in Israel's lap is beyond me.

[Gilgamesh]

Originally posted by Kapiti
The right wing religous extremists all argue that the land of Israel is their "promised" land which they have "always" been living in for thousands of years.

these "extremists" are called Zionists and I'm one of them.

They say that they have continous presence which for some unexplained reason is supposed to count for something.

It proves we Jews are the indigenious people, and the Arabs are foreign occupayers.

As I have shown, the reality based on Jewish history is that even when looking over the last five thousand years or so, they are still the minor players.

In a historical wide view, in which Jews are minor players, Europeans are virtualy non existant, and Arabs are less then that.

Since Jericho is arguably the oldest continously lived in town in the world if you go back 10,000 years you would have to say that the Jewish custodianship of the region is even more minor.

The origional builders of Jericho were not Arabs. They have been long vanished, probably assimulated into Jewish and other civilizations.

The continous presence argument is a joke which the non-jewish inhabitants could just as easily argue.

Yet only Jews can argue that, not Arabs.

Again, Arabs are not the only non Jews who USED to live in Israel during the last hunder thousand years. Jews are the older nation in the western world STILL EXISTING. Arab become a nation only 14 centuries ago.

For whatever your arguments against the existance of a Jewish people in their homeland will be, the Arab "rights" are weaker.

Arabs were NOT the in habitant of the anciant middle east. They seldom traveled out side their own desert of Arabia.

Todays, Arabs are the only non Jews hold (illegal) claims for the land of Israel. All other non-Jews are NOT existing today, in any form. No romans, no greeks, no babylonians...

Arab history in Israel begins in the 7th century AD! Jewish history in Israel begins at 19th-16th century BC!!!

[MGB8]

Pre-Roman Israel was almost ENTRILY Jewish....before then it was only citystates, and as Israel expanded these cities where either conquered (like Jericho) or absorbed, with Conversions.

There were no other "native inhabitants" who stayed there all the time...that's a big myth. There were some nomadic peoples who moved around...but the while Bedoins and Druze may have some ties to them -> arabs are simply Arabs, who conquered the land in the late 7th century, and then were on and off it for a long time.

[Adversary2Arabs]

Why don't so many people understand this as a fact?

[JustPat]

Because most people rely on what others tell them is truth rather than search it out for themselves. Makes you wonder what kind of future their is for those who follow us.

[MGB8]

One more thing...even according to the Turks...JERUSALEM...the clear Capitol of Israel (and "Palestine") has ALWAYS been MAJORITY JEWISH.

Never majority Arab.