Frank wrote on Jan 3^rd, 2023 at 1:21pm:


Yes it is: after the 6 day war (1967) ,  the UN res 242 said "the acquisition of territory by force is impermissible".

Quote:


"The Arab state whose creation was envisioned by the 1947 UN partition plan never came into being, and the West Bank was formally annexed by Jordan on April 24, 1950, although this annexation was recognized only by Great Britain and Pakistan".

So you might claim this annexation was also illegal, except  the annexed land largely consisted of an area which was supposed to be the new state of Palestine, under international law. 

Quote:


...and the conquest of the Canaanite Jebusites by David....

Unfortunately for your argument, acquisition of territory by force has only been illegal - under international law - since 1946.   

thegreatdivide wrote on Jan 3^rd, 2023 at 1:19pm:

Do you think Bashar Al Assad and Xi Jinping just need a little more education on human rights?

thegreatdivide wrote on Jan 3^rd, 2023 at 1:41pm:


The Israelis supported the resolution because it called on the Arab states to accept Israel’s right “to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”

The day after Resolution 242 was adopted, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) rejected it as "fundamentally and gravely inconsistent with the Arab character of Palestine, the essence of the Palestine cause and the right of the Palestinian people to their homeland." and "disappoints the hopes of the Arab nation and ignores its national aspirations [... and] ignores the existence of the Palestinian people and their right of self-determination."

Why??


Er...... because you parroted only half of the resolution, leaving out the above part about peace and security from Arab threats.  Naught, naughty parrot.

thegreatdivide wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2023 at 7:40am:


Why didn't you bother with the Old Testament book of Numbers? Was the information there too inconvenient for your BS driven narrative?

Boundaries of the 'Promised Land' given in the Book of Numbers (chapter 34)

The South border

(v. 3) "Then your south quarter shall be from the wilderness of Zin along by the coast of Edom, and your south border shall be the outmost coast of the salt sea eastward : (v. 4) And your border shall turn from the south to the ascent of Akrabbim, and pass on to Zin : and the going forth thereof shall be from the south to Kadesh-barnea, and shall go on to Hazar-addar, and pass on to Azmon : (v. 5) And the border shall fetch a compass from Azmon unto the river of Egypt, and the goings out of it shall be at the sea."

The Western border

(v. 6) "And as for the western border, ye shall even have the great sea for a border : this shall be your west border."

The North border

(v. 7) "And this shall be your north border : from the great sea ye shall point out for you mount Hor : (v. 8) From mount Hor ye shall point out your border unto the entrance of Hamath ; and the goings forth of the border shall be to Zedad : (v 9) And the border shall go on to Ziphron, and the goings out of it shall be at Hazar-enan : this shall be your north border."

The East border

(v. 10) "And ye shall point out your east border from Hazar-enan to Shepham : (v. 11) And the coast shall go down from Shepham to Riblah, on the east side of Ain ; and the border shall descend, and shall reach unto the side of the sea of Chinnereth eastward : (v. 12) And the border shall go down to Jordan, and the goings out of it shall be at the salt sea : this shall be your land with the coasts thereof round about."

thegreatdivide wrote on Dec 30^th, 2022 at 11:05am:


Israel swears in most right-wing government in its history

Barak Ravid, author of Axios from Tel Aviv
Dec 29, 2022

Israel's new government was sworn in Thursday, with Benjamin Netanyahu returning to the prime minister’s post 18 months after he was ousted.

Why it matters: It's the most right-wing and religious government Israel has had since its establishment, and its expected policies could significantly change the country.

Driving the news: The new government is mostly defined by the rise of the Israeli extreme right. Two of its leaders known for expressing racist and Jewish supremacist views — Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir — have become senior ministers.

    Smotrich was sworn in as the finance minister and will also serve as a minister in the Defense Ministry with authority over the military units in charge of civilian policy in the occupied West Bank. This will give him unprecedented influence on the policy related to Israeli settlements.
    Ben Gvir was sworn in as the new national security minister with unprecedented authority over the police. Per a coalition agreement, he will also be in charge of a new independent security force of border guard paramilitary units that operate in the West Bank and Israel.

State of play: Netanyahu for more than a month has been negotiating with his coalition partners to hammer out the details of agreements that would allow him to form a government.

    Although the coalition agreements are not legally binding, they signal the potential hardline and conservative policies the new government may take, especially on issues related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
    The coalition agreements state that “the Jewish people have an exclusive right on all the land” between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. It doesn’t mention the Palestinians.

The new government is expected to take steps toward annexing the West Bank. Annexation is unlikely while the U.S. is led by the Biden administration, but Netanyahu's coalition has signaled it will implement it if a Republican wins the presidential election in 2024.

    “The Prime Minister will promote a policy of applying sovereignty over Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) taking into consideration the timing and Israel’s international interests," the coalition agreements read.
    The coalition agreements lay out detailed plans for taking over more parts of the West Bank, including prioritizing settlement building — moves that would make it impossible to establish a Palestinian state.


Quote:


And that's gained the upper hand:

'Jewish fundamentalism remains ideologically the single most coherent and vigorous political force in Israel. Its influence is reflected both in the obstacles to peace negotiations stemming from Israel's entrenched position in the occupied territories and in Israeli opinion polls. '

Israel's Dangerous Fundamentalists by Ian S. Lustick

MeisterEckhart wrote on Dec 29^th, 2022 at 12:56pm:


What about Jaffa, Palestine's hub of commerce?

freediver wrote on Jan 4^th, 2023 at 8:19am:



Time to learn some history. Below are a few key passages from Muhammed’s Sword by Uri Avnery:


THERE IS no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?

What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.

freediver wrote on Jan 4^th, 2023 at 8:56am:


So prove him wrong. Prove this former Israeli MP,  author and peace activist, wrong.

Show that evidence - from before Zionism arrived on the scene.