Moving Israel to Europe

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


The large majority of people who make up the Polish State today have ancestors who continuously lived through any interregnums in Poland's existence as an independent entity.

So Poland is a simple case of self-determination.

Israel is not.

I daresay all Israel Jews have ancestors who lived though all the interregnums in Israels existence as an entity. Indeed your ancestors lived through all the interegnums in Israels AND Polands history.

Pardon the pedantry, but i dont want to assume what I think youre trying to say.

[KrazyHorse]

That they lived in Poland

They didn't all move out and then move back again millennia later.

[Last Conformist]

I happen to be of the opinion that creating Israel was a bad idea, but whether or not it was has very little importance today.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
I happen to be of the opinion that creating Israel was a bad idea, but whether or not it was has very little importance today.

Yup.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
That they lived in Poland

They didn't all move out and then move back again millennia later.

So it was ok to revive Poland, a dead country, on land that belonged to Russia and Germany, because the Poles had not been exiled from their land. Thats the standard line. It has nothing to do with dead countries, or dead nations. Poland, like similar revivals was of a dead country. The Jewish people were clearly never a dead nation. However they didnt live on their land.

Given that there are no other examples of a nation in exile, maintaining its national existence in this way, I dont think its possible to assert a general rule seperate from this particular case.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
That they lived in Poland

They didn't all move out and then move back again millennia later.

"A common misperception is that all the Jews were forced into the Diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years.

The Jewish people base their claim to the Land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 2) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people; 3) the territory was captured in defensive wars and 4) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham.

Even after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile, Jewish life in the Land of Israel continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the ninth century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea.

The Crusaders massacred many Jews during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee. Prominent rabbis established communities in Safed, Jerusalem and elsewhere during the next 300 years. By the early 19th century — years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement — more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel.1 The 78 years of nation-building, beginning in 1870, culminated in the reestablishment of the Jewish State."

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by lord of the mark



So it was ok to revive Poland, a dead country, on land that belonged to Russia and Germany, because the Poles had not been exiled from their land. Thats the standard line. It has nothing to do with dead countries, or dead nations. Poland, like similar revivals was of a dead country. The Jewish people were clearly never a dead nation. However they didnt live on their land.

a) Israel was a dead country for far, far longer than Poland ever was

b) The right to self-determination is a well-established, if not always respected, principle

c) You cannot say the same thing about the right to migrate wherever one pleases, nor the right to move simply to establish a State

Given that there are no other examples of a nation in exile, maintaining its national existence in this way, I dont think its possible to assert a general rule seperate from this particular case.

You are wrong in two respects: first, in the uniqueness of Israel, second in my ability, through use of hypotheticals, to assert a general principle which is not solely targetted at a unique example.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by lord of the mark



So it was ok to revive Poland, a dead country, on land that belonged to Russia and Germany, because the Poles had not been exiled from their land.

Well, the land didn't "belong" to Russia and Germany (why are you ignoring Austria-Hungary?) - the Russian Empire was dissolved, and Germany signed their bits away.


I suppose what the Brits should have done is beat up both sides till they accepted partition, but they rather understandably didn't want to get their hands all bloody.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by lord of the mark



"A common misperception is that all the Jews were forced into the Diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years.

Good thing I'm not of this misconception. The question is what happened to the bulk of those with an "Israeli" national identity.

They moved out, they lost their place in line.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


a) Israel was a dead country for far, far longer than Poland ever was

b) The right to self-determination is a well-established, if not always respected, principle

c) You cannot say the same thing about the right to migrate wherever one pleases, nor the right to move simply to establish a State



You are wrong in two respects: first, in the uniqueness of Israel, second in my ability, through use of hypotheticals, to assert a general principle which is not solely targetted at a unique example.

1.So whats the statute of limitations on dead countries?

2. The right to self determination arose as a way of implementing democratic in the cases of disputed boundaries, etc. It was not the beall and endall of every international dispute - as witness the fact that sovereingty trumps it.

3. The Zionists did not claim the right to migrate wherever they pleased, but to the one country with which the Jewish people were historically associated, and which remained at the center of their national existence.

4. Of course logically you can use hypotheticals to establish a general principal. In reality theres no veil of ignorance to go behind - everyone knows that this principle applies to one case, and one case only. I seriously question the human ability to reach an objective principle in such a situation.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Well, the land didn't "belong" to Russia and Germany (why are you ignoring Austria-Hungary?) - the Russian Empire was dissolved, and Germany signed their bits away.


I suppose what the Brits should have done is beat up both sides till they accepted partition, but they rather understandably didn't want to get their hands all bloody.

The Ottoman empire similarly dissolved.


I ignore AH as their political relationship to the Poles was rather different.

The mainstream Zionist organizations DID accept partition. The Brits could have walked away and let partition happen. They stayed, either cause 1. they thought partition unjust 2. They wanted to keep up their relations with the rest of the Arab world, which rejected partition or 3. They wanted to stay in a strategic place

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


The Ottoman empire similarly dissolved.

Which is fairly irrelevant - the OE dissolved a quarter century before Israel was established.

The mainstream Zionist organizations DID accept partition. The Brits could have walked away and let partition happen.

Well, it didn't happen when they did walk away ...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Good thing I'm not of this misconception. The question is what happened to the bulk of those with an "Israeli" national identity.

They moved out, they lost their place in line.

"moving out"

RABBI AKIVA

The Roman plan sought not only to separate Jews from the land of Israel, it also sought to separate them from Judaism.

Writes historian Rabbi Berel Wein in his Echoes of Glory (p. 217):

"Their [Roman] plan was to eliminate the scholars and sages of Israel, who were, after all, the true leaders of the Jews, and to forbid the practice of Judaism, the lifeblood of Israel, thus guaranteeing the Jews' demise as a counter-force to Roman culture and hegemony. The Sabbath, circumcision, public study and teaching of Torah, as well as observances of all Jewish ritual and customs, were forbidden."

One of the great rabbis of the time who simply refused to abide by these decrees was Rabbi Akiva. Although many rabbis did likewise and were killed by the Romans for their acts of disobedience, Rabbi Akiva deserves special mention because of his stature in the Jewish world and the particular way he met his death.

It is fascinating to note that Rabbi Akiva did not even begin to study Torah until age 40. Until that time he had been an uneducated shepherd. But then he fell in love, and his beloved Rachel said she would marry him only if he studied Torah. At first he thought the task impossible, but then he saw a stone that had been hollowed out by dripping water. He said: "If water, which is soft, can hollow out a stone, which is hard, how much more would the words of the Torah, which are hard, be able to cut through and make an impression on my heart, which is soft."


Rabbi Akiva began Torah studies at age 40 and in a short period of time became one of the wisest men of Israel.

Thus he began his studies and in a short period of time was considered one of the wisest men of Israel. Students from all over flocked to learn from him, and at one point, he was reported to head a chain of schools totaling 24,000 students.

The Talmud abounds with stories about Rabbi Akiva. One of the most famous is the story of four great sages who entered pardes, the "orchard" -- that is they engaged in mystical meditative techniques and ascended into realms of Divine consciousness. Of the four, three met terrible fates as a result of their mystical foray -- one died, another went insane, and the third became a heretic. Only Rabbi Akiva "entered in peace and emerged in peace."

A person like Rabbi Akiva, who lived on such a high spiritual level and who possessed an uncompromising dedication to Torah, could not be silenced by Roman decrees.

When the Romans learned that Rabbi Akiva was openly teaching Torah they decided to make a public example of his punishment.

They arrested him and took him to the hippodrome in Caesarea where on (or around) Yom Kippur in 136 CE, they staged a prolonged torture of the great sage. This horrible spectacle included having Rabbi Akiva's skin flayed with iron combs.

Rabbi Akiva went to his death, sanctifying God's name, with the words of the Shema on his lips: "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One." Rabbi Akiva's spirit exemplified the spirit of the sages who against the greatest odds sought to keep Judaism alive. '

[Arrian]

Setting aside whether or not setting up Israel in Palestine was just or not, what do you think about the results, LotM?

Would you call Israel, overall, a success? Do you think Isreal as presently constituted is more benificial to the Jewish people than an Israel set up elsewhere (be it in Uganda or even somewhere within the USofA) would've been?

-Arrian

[Barnabas]

I say we move the shoos to Konigsberg/Kalinisomething

it is more or less the same size of israel right?