Something that sickens my stomach...

[Heyyoudvd]

MYTH:
"The land of Israel is really the land of Palestine."

FACT:
The term "Palestine" is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century B.C., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what is now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century A.D., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word "Filastin" is derived from this Latin name.3 There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.

MYTH:
"The Jews have no historic claim to Israel."

FACT:
There is only one people who have continuously lived in Israel for the past 3,700 years - the Jews. Jerusalem, in particular, has had a Jewish majority since the 1840s, 40 years prior to the beginnings of Zionism. Seventy-five percent of the land in east Jerusalem, which the press calls "historically Arab east Jerusalem," has been owned by Jews since 1947. The nations that inhabited the land prior to the Jews are no longer in existence, for they have been absorbed into various other peoples throughout the millennia. The Arabs of Israel only came to the land in 632 with the Muslim invasion

MYTH:
"The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 changed political and border arrangements between independent states that had existed for centuries."

FACT:
The boundaries of most Middle East countries were arbitrarily fixed by the Western powers after Turkey was defeated in World War I and the French and British mandates were set up. The areas allotted to Israel under the UN partition plan had all been under the control of the Ottomans, who had ruled Palestine from 1517 until 1917. When Turkey was defeated in World War I, the French took over the area now known as Lebanon and Syria. The British assumed control of Palestine and Iraq. In 1926, the borders were redrawn and Lebanon was separated from Syria. Britain installed the Emir Faisal, who had been deposed by the French in Syria, as ruler of the new kingdom of Iraq. In 1922, the British created the emirate of Transjordan, which incorporated all of Palestine east of the Jordan River. This was done so that the Emir Abdullah, whose family had been defeated in tribal warfare in the Arabian peninsula, would have a Kingdom to rule. None of the countries that border Israel became independent until this century. Many other Arab nations became independent after Israel.

MYTH:
"Israel violates the human rights of the Palestinian Arabs."

FACT:
The FACTs are different. Israel granted full citizenship to all of the Palestinian Arabs who fell within its borders after the War of Independence. Arabic is an official language in Israel. Israel remains to this day one of the few countries in the Middle East where Arabs can legitimately vote and the only one where women can vote.

MYTH:
"The West Bank is part of Jordan."

FACT:
The West Bank was never legally part of Jordan. Under the UN's 1947 partition plan - which the Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected - it was to have been part of an independent Arab state in western Palestine. But the Jordanian army invaded and occupied it during the 1948 war. In 1950, Jordan annexed the West Bank. Only two governments - Great Britain and Pakistan - formally recognized the Jordanian takeover. The rest of the world, including the United States, never did. During the 1950-1967 period of its occupation, Jordan permitted terrorists to launch raids into Israel. Amman lost the West Bank after the Jordanian army entered the 1967 war.

MYTH:
"Jerusalem is Islam's third most holy city."

FACT:
Muslims try to connect Jerusalem to Islam by using a vague passage in the Koran, the seventeenth Sura, entitled "The Night Journey." It relates that in a dream or a vision Mohammed was carried by night "from the sacred temple to the temple that is most remote, whose precinct we have blessed, that we might show him our signs. ..." In the seventh century, some Muslims identified the two temples mentioned in this verse as being in Mecca and Jerusalem. And that's as close as Islam's connection with Jerusalem gets -- myth, fantasy, wishful thinking. Meanwhile, Jews can trace their roots in Jerusalem back to the days of Abraham.

MYTH:
"The Temple Mount has always been a Muslim holy place and Judaism has no connection to the site."

FACT:
The area of Solomon's Stables is believed to date as far back as the construction of Solomon's Temple. According to Josephus, it was in existence and was used as a place of refuge by the Jews at the time of the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70 A.D. More authoritatively, the Koran - the holy book of Islam - describes Solomon's construction of the First Temple (34:13) and recounts the destruction of the First and Second Temples (17:7). The Jewish connection to the Temple Mount dates back more than 3,000 years and is rooted in tradition and history. When Abraham bound his son Isaac upon an altar as a sacrifice to God, he did so atop Mount Moriah, today's Temple Mount.

MYTH:
"Under Israeli rule, religious freedom has been curbed in Jerusalem."

FACT:
After the 1967 war, Israel abolished all the discriminatory laws promulgated by Jordan and adopted its own tough standard for safeguarding access to religious shrines. "Whoever does anything that is likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the various religions to the places sacred to them," Israeli law stipulates, is "liable to imprisonment for a term of five years." Israel also entrusted administration of the holy places to their respective religious authorities. Thus, for example, the Muslim Waqf has responsibility for the mosques on the Temple Mount.

MYTH:
"The Arab states have had to keep pace with an Israeli-led arms race."

FACT:
In most cases, the reverse was true. Egypt received the Soviet IL-28 bomber in 1955. It was not until 1958 that France provided Israel with a squadron of comparable Sud Vautour twin-jet tactical bombers. In 1957, Egypt obtained MiG-17 fighter planes. Israel received the comparable Super Mystere in 1959. Egypt had submarines in 1957, Israel in 1959. After the Egyptians obtained the MiG-21, the Israelis ordered the Dassault Mirage III supersonic interceptor and fighter-bomber. Egypt received ground-to-air missiles - the SA-2 - two years before Israel obtained HAWK missiles from the United States. Later, Washington reluctantly agreed to sell Israel Patton tanks.

[Heyyoudvd]

MYTH:
"Israel's destruction of Iraqi nuclear facilities was an unjust act."

FACT:
Back in June 1981 after the Israelis bombed the plant at Osirak the U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned Isreal. Washington ostentatiously held up its delivery of armaments to Israel. A decade later, however, the strike looks awfully good. Had Saddam Hussein been armed with nuclear weapons during the war with Iran, much of Tehran would by now be obliterated and large sections of Iran annexed to Iraq. More: Iraqi forces might have rolled straight from Kuwait into Saudi Arabia-long before American forces could have arrived. Today, Saddam could already control five of the oil-rich countries and thereby over half the world's oil reserves. Economic disaster would be one result; and American troops would have no good place to land.

MYTH:
"Israel has been an expansionist state since its creation."

FACT:
Israel's boundaries were determined by the United Nations when it adopted the partition resolution in 1947. In a series of defensive wars, Israel captured additional territory. On numerous occasions, Israel has withdrawn from these areas. As part of the 1974 disengagement agreement, Israel returned territories captured in the 1967 and 1973 wars to Syria. Under the terms of the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, Israel withdrew from the Sinai peninsula for the third time. It had already withdrawn from large parts of the desert area it captured in its War of Independence. After capturing the entire Sinai in the 1956 Suez conflict, Israel relinquished the peninsula to Egypt a year later. In September 1983, Israel withdrew from large areas of Lebanon to positions south of the Awali River. In 1985, it completed its withdrawal from Lebanon, except for a narrow security zone just north of the Israeli border. That too was abandoned, unilaterally, in 2000. After signing peace agreements with the Palestinians, and a treaty with Jordan, Israel agreed to withdraw from most of the territory in the West Bank captured from Jordan in 1967. A small area was returned to Jordan, the rest was ceded to the Palestinian Authority. The agreement with the Palestinians also involved Israel's withdrawal in 1994 from most of the Gaza Strip, which had been captured from Egypt in 1973.

MYTH:
"Israel is the aggressor in the current conflict."

FACTS:
One: The Palestinians are the aggressor; they started the conflict, and they purposely drive it forward with fresh killing on almost a daily basis.

Two: The Palestinians regard this second intifada not as a sporadically violent protest movement but as a war, with the clear strategic aim of forcing a scared and emotionally exhausted Israel to surrender on terms that would threaten Israel's viability.

Three: As a tactic in this strategy, the Palestinians will not fight Israeli forces directly but instead have concentrated their efforts on murdering Israeli civilians. The greater the number, the more pathetically vulnerable the victims -- disco-goers, women and children in a pizza restaurant -- the better.

Four: Israel has acted defensively in this conflict; and while Israeli forces accidentally killed Palestinian civilians, their planned lethal attacks have all been aimed only at Palestinian military and terror-group leaders

[Heyyoudvd]

That's only half of what I have. Those are Myths vs. facts, but I also have a lot about the history.

I hope this doesn't upset the mods or anything.

(Please tell me if it does)




Anyways, here's the rest:





There was never a country called Palenstine to begin with. The Palestinians never had a nation-state. Here is the History of the Palestinians and Israel

__________________________

There is no such thing as a Palestinian Arab nation . . . Palestine is a name the Romans gave to Eretz Yisrael with the express purpose of infuriating the Jews . . . . Why should we use the spiteful name meant to humiliate us?
The British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation's supposed ancient name, though they couldn't even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastin a fictional entity." — Golda Meir quoted by Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post, 25 November 1995


Palestine has never existed . . . as an autonomous entity. There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.
Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the landmass. But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today . . . No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough. — from "Myths of the Middle East", Joseph Farah, Arab-American editor and journalist, WorldNetDaily, 11 October 2000


From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries . . . . — Professor Bernard Lewis, Commentary Magazine, January 1975
Talk and writing about Israel and the Middle East feature the nouns "Palestine" and Palestinian", and the phrases "Palestinian territory" and even "Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory". All too often, these terms are used with regard to their historical or geographical meaning, so that the usage creates illusions rather than clarifies reality.

What Does "Palestine" Mean?

It has never been the name of a nation or state. It is a geographical term, used to designate the region at those times in history when there is no nation or state there.

The word itself derives from "Peleshet", a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English as "Philistine". The name began to be used in the Thirteenth Century BCE, for a wave of migrant "Sea Peoples" who came from the area of the Aegean Sea and the Greek Islands and settled on the southern coast of the land of Canaan. There they established five independent city-states (including Gaza) on a narrow strip of land known as Philistia. The Greeks and Romans called it "Palastina".

The Philistines were not Arabs, they were not Semites. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with Arabia or Arabs. The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Greco-Roman "Palastina" derived from the Peleshet.

How Did the Land of Israel Become "Palestine"?

In the First Century CE, the Romans crushed the independent kingdom of Judea. After the failed rebellion of Bar Kokhba in the Second Century CE, the Roman Emperor Hadrian determined to wipe out the identity of Israel-Judah-Judea. Therefore, he took the name Palastina and imposed it on all the Land of Israel. At the same time, he changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina.

The Romans killed many Jews and sold many more in slavery. Some of those who survived still alive and free left the devastated country, but there was never a complete abandonment of the Land. There was never a time when there were not Jews and Jewish communities, though the size and conditions of those communities fluctuated greatly.

The History of Palestine

Thousands of years before the Romans invented "Palastina" the land had been known as "Canaan". The Canaanites had many tiny city-states, each one at times independent and at times a vassal of an Egyptian or Hittite king. The Canaanites never united into a state.

After the Exodus from Egypt — probably in the Thirteenth Century BCE but perhaps earlier — the Children of Israel settled in the land of Canaan. There they formed first a tribal confederation, and then the Biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the post-Biblical kingdom of Judea.

From the beginning of history to this day, Israel-Judah-Judea has the only united, independent, sovereign nation-state that ever existed in "Palestine" west of the Jordan River. (In Biblical times, Ammon, Moab and Edom as well as Israel had land east of the Jordan, but they disappeared in antiquity and no other nation took their place until the British invented Trans-Jordan in the 1920s.)

After the Roman conquest of Judea, "Palastina" became a province of the pagan Roman Empire and then of the Christian Byzantine Empire, and very briefly of the Zoroastrian Persian Empire. In 638 CE, an Arab-Muslim Caliph took Palastina away from the Byzantine Empire and made it part of an Arab-Muslim Empire. The Arabs, who had no name of their own for this region, adopted the Greco-Roman name Palastina, that they pronounced "Falastin".

In that period, much of the mixed population of Palastina converted to Islam and adopted the Arabic language. They were subjects of a distant Caliph who ruled them from his capital, that was first in Damascus and later in Baghdad. They did not become a nation or an independent state, or develop a distinct society or culture.

In 1099, Christian Crusaders from Europe conquered Palestina-Falastin. After 1099, it was never again under Arab rule. The Christian Crusader kingdom was politically independent, but never developed a national identity. It remained a military outpost of Christian Europe, and lasted less than 100 years. Thereafter, Palestine was joined to Syria as a subject province first of the Mameluks, ethnically mixed slave-warriors whose center was in Egypt, and then of the Ottoman Turks, whose capital was in Istanbul.

During the First World War, the British took Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. At the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and among its subject provinces "Palestine" was assigned to the British, to govern temporarily as a mandate from the League of Nations.

[Heyyoudvd]

The Jewish National Home

Travellers to Palestine from the Western world left records of what they saw there. The theme throughout their reports is dismal: The land was empty, neglected, abandoned, desolate, fallen into ruins

Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds. — English pilgrim in 1590

The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population — British consul in 1857

There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] — not for 30 miles in either direction. . . . One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings.
For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee . . . Nazareth is forlorn . . . Jericho lies a moldering ruin . . . Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation . . . untenanted by any living creature . . . .

A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds . . a silent, mournful expanse . . . a desolation . . . . We never saw a human being on the whole route . . . . Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country . . . .

Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes . . . desolate and unlovely . . . . — Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1867

The restoration of the "desolate and unlovely" land began in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century with the first Jewish pioneers. Their labors created newer and better conditions and opportunities, which in turn attracted migrants from many parts of the Middle East, both Arabs and others.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, confirmed by the League of Nations Mandate, commited the British Government to the principle that "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish National Home, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. . . . " It was specified both that this area be open to "close Jewish settlement" and that the rights of all inhabitants already in the country be preserved and protected.

Mandate Palestine originally included all of what is now Jordan, as well as all of what is now Israel, and the territories between them. However, when Great Britain's protégé Emir Abdullah was forced to leave the ancestral Hashemite domain in Arabia, the British created a realm for him that included all of Manfate Palestine east of the Jordan River. There was no traditional or historic Arab name for this land, so it was called after the river: first Trans-Jordan and later Jordan.

By this political act, that violated the conditions of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, the British cut more than 75 percent out of the Jewish National Home. No Jew has ever been permitted to reside in Trans-Jordan/Jordan.

Less than 25 percent then remained of Mandate Palestine, and even in this remnant, the British violated the Balfour and Mandate requirements for a "Jewish National Home" and for "close Jewish settlement". They progressively restricted where Jews could buy land, where they could live, build, farm or work.

After the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel was finally able to settle some small part of those lands from which the Jews had been debarred by the British. Successive British governments regularly condemn their settlement as "illegal". In truth, it was the British who had acted illegally in banning Jews from these parts of the Jewish National Home.

[Heyyoudvd]

And don't think I was crazy enough to type all that out, since it would take me like a week.

I found it some website, and saved it to my PC because I thought it was very interesting and cleared up a lot of things.
I can't remember the sites I found it at, or else I'd post the URL's.

[nWoCHRISnWo]

If only I had control of huge bombs, I could eliminate a lot of these problems between all these poor countries...

[GameMaster]

Don't take it personally Stu. An uncontrollable instinct takes over man's mind when exposed to primitive competition.

[Ginkasa]

Originally posted by nWoCHRISnWo
If only I had control of huge bombs, I could eliminate a lot of these problems between all these poor countries...

And the you'd start a whole lot more problems with a lot more more powerful countries.


Once anybody besides the Palestinians and Israelis gets directly into this war it'll escalate to gigantic proportions.







Heyyoudvd, that was very interesting... Thanks

[ghettodude]

I think booing a national anthem is wrong.. it is degrading and wrong... i heard don cherry talking about it.. but i didnt actually see the raptors game on sunday (one of the rare games i missed..) and now that i heard about that.. it makes me kinda mad.... but it doesnt make me as mad as the whole canada vs the US thing in general... i dont mind jokes and stuff like that... but sometimes its like we dont realize we live on the same continent...

(i wont comment about the whole palestinian thing cuz i dont want to talk about something i dont know about as well as i should if i wanted to make a case...)

[Jin]

First I'm going to examine just a few quotes from your first post. I won't bother making responses to all of your posts, because that would take way too long.

"The palestinians are the weaker people, and people have the tendency to think that the stronger nation is always at fault, but in this case, it's the complete opposite."

Although Isreal is a nuclear power, they are the minority in the middle east. Not only Arafat, and the Palestinian people are involved, but nearly all the countries of that area with the exception of Turkey and Jordan are supporting Palestine and are willing to back them up to the fullest.

Since these people are called Palestinians, and the land used to be called Palestine under the British Mandate, people believe that it's there land, but it in fact isn't. They only started calling themselves Palestinians after Israel had already become a country (1948), so people would believe it's their land, when it's not.

That was a misconception that aided in the United States taking hundreds of miles of land from the Native Americans. Just because a certain group of people don't have an official country or government to follow under, doesn't mean that they don't have any rights what so ever to the land. That's what this is saying. It's totally one sided.

"The reason the Palestinians live in poverty has ABSOLUTLY nothing to do with Israel"

I can't really say much here, because it's very close to the truth.

It's 100% Yasser Arafat's fault.

Wow, that goes way beyond politically incorrect. To blame a whole conflict which has been going on for decades only on one man is ludicrous. I must admit that Arafat has made many, many mistakes, and may have bad intentions, but this quote shows how biased this article is, and how it should be disregarded. Heh... like Isreal's leader is a perfect saint, who never did anything wrong in his entire life and only cares about what's right for the Palestinians.

No offense Heyyoudvd, but those facts that you have may be true, but those aren't all the facts. Whoever wrote that article was biased towards Isreal, no doubt. I'm sure there would be just as many reasons for the Palestinians to keep the land. Sure you could say that the Jewish people had the land first, but if a person leaves their seat on a bench and returns to find it occupied do they automatically have the right to push the person out who took it?

Anyway, as much as I supported Palestine in this thread, I personally think Isreal has the right to the land, but you have to look at both sides before you make your decision off of some biased article.

[Revival]

Well, I don't know about other people, but I show the same respect to the Canadian anthem as I do American..

That is just plain f**ked up Stu.. they shouldn't be booing Canada..

[Xantar]

Originally posted by Perfect Stu
And to hear about the Detroit fans BOOing the Canadian NATIONAL ANTHEM (I don't care if they're drunk, or in the midst of a game), it really makes me wonder about the kind of people that live in this world. The same goes for those people in Vancouver.

Well, now you understand why one of my central dogmas is to never underestimate the stupidity of people in large numbers. My guess is that if there had only been two people watching the game, there would have been a lot less booing. In fact, there would have been no booing at all.

But hey, what can you do except sit back, laugh at the stupidity of it all and resolve not to become one of them?

[Professor S]

Well, lets not paint a biased picture here. So far we have had examples of mainly the big bad Americans picking on those poor little Canadians. Lets not be so silly. It is a 2 way street and as a wrestling fan I have seen probably 1,000 times more mob nationalism on WWF Canadian broadcasts. This ranges from booing, to flag waving, to spitting, etc.

This is also done completely out of the context of the current storylines. The Canadian fans simply cheer for whoever is Canadian and boo anyone who wrestles them. I also remember this happening not too long after 9/11.

Now I'm not saying that Canadians are bad people, but just that mob psychology goes both ways and is not a trademark of only America.

I also didn't hear about the Canadians being killed by friendly fire until I read this thread, so odds are that many of them didn't either. They would have booed anything that was not oriented with the Detroit Pistons.

Geez, I mean thank God it wasn't at a pro lacrosse game. They REALLY lay into the other teams at those games.

I support booing. Take a chill pill. This is a GAME, NOT real life. If this was in Canada and they booed OUR national anthem, I would have laughed. Americans are VERY competetive, and this competetiveness is what has built America into the world leading nation that it is.

While this may come out in ugly ways at times, but I would rather tolerate the ugliness and keep our competetive nature.

[BlueFire]

On the subject of Palestine and Israel...

I think it's stupid that keep fighting for a lost cause. I don't think it's the "holy land" they're after anymore... It's just pure human ignorance, in my opinion. Nothing we can do about it. We just sit and watch as they destroy themselves....Sad..yes...True? Maybe. Maybe they will realize the situation they're in. They're people and homes have been ravaged by war. Or maybe we could do something, but that seems impossible.


Now on the Candian thing..
Who cares if those assholes were booing? Seriously...You are giving them the attention they want. That's ignorance also. I don't care if We BOOed Canada. I don't care if they BOOed us. It's just stupid, so I never pay attention to it.

[Bond]

I think the problem between Israel and Palestine is too complex for people to understand who aren't directly involved in the conflict, including myself.

But if you look in history most major conflicts aren't settled with peace, they are settled with wars and one side winning. Which I think is the only way to solve anything.