The Palestinian Authority declares war on Israel?

[notyoueither]

Obviously.

[notyoueither]

How about people whose families have been in the Americas for 4 or 500 years?

Do they qualify as native?

How many years does it take?

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by notyoueither
How about people whose families have been in the Americas for 4 or 500 years?

Do they qualify as native?

How many years does it take?

In the americas "native" is used to distinguish between the indigenious and european cultures. It has nothing to do with how long you've lived there.

[notyoueither]

Che is holding forth that some number of years in a place makes one native.

[Geronimo]

As a practical matter, 'native' ends up being used as a relative term. The native or indigenous culture is simply the one that has longest history of living on the land in question. Another consideration might be if the culture in question is unique to that location rather than having cultural cousins elsewhere who were essentially one single culture before separation by immigration some time in the doccumented past.


Of course the concept should probably be abandoned as having any political meaning. once someone is born and raised in a location that location is their home and ancestral considerations won't effect that one whit.

The time to act against displacement of natives is while the immigration is occuring. After those immigrants have descendants the genie is out of the bottle, the milk is spilt, etc.

[notyoueither]

Yep.

[Last Conformist]

If Iran or someone else managed to launch a decapitation strike on Israel, wouldn't the US beat up the perpetrator just to make an example? The ill-will due to wrecking Iran would seem rather minor compared to the prospect of having around a Tehran that thinks it can nuke rivals with impunity ...

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Geronimo


I strongly suspect the next nuke to be detonated in anger will explode in israel despite the considerably difficulty in smuggling such a massive device into the country.

Delivering a nuke (or two) in a way calculated to decapitate the entire israeli government would prevent a nuclear response and could be followed up with nuclear warhead missle attacks with impunity.

It's no wonder Israel wants their capitol in Jerusalem. I would think their enemies would be less inclined to nuke that location than say, tel aviv.

Are you insane?

If you detonate a nuke in Israel, Egypt and Jordan will go ape****.

You know, Jordan, Egypt, those two countries neighboring Israel filled with Muslims who have managed to make peace with Israel, and are now actually prospering economically? If the nuker is discovered, Egypt and Jordan will be their eternal enemy-possibly only one depending on the way to wind blows and the target. Ever heard of a little thing called fallout?

If there is a chance that the evildoer is discovered, they'll be destroyed. If we can't discover who did it, we'll just blame Iran or the Saudis-which gives them both a vested interest in stopping it and they know it. In the case of Saudi Arabia and a number of Arab states, the palestinian conflict is HELPFULL TO THEM. The existance of Israel is a continual scapegoat for them to say to their people "Everything would be so wonderful.... if only there was no Israel." They know it is a lie of course, if Israel was gone it would no longer be the perfect scape goat.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Originally posted by Straybow

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
As you point out, the Christian Sudanese, i.e., the Nubians, were there first. That is their homeland. It's not really comparable to Arab natives fighting against a European colony.

Except the "natives" weren't Arabs.

If you live somewhere for a thousand years, that's sufficient to make you native when someone else invades.

Ah, so the Normans aren't native to Great Britain yet. They should give the land back to the Anglo-Saxons. And France should give Normandy and other continental possessions back to the Normans, since they were taken by war only five hundred years ago.

And, of course, all the post WWII borders are void as well. Man, this is going to be such a pain restructuring the world to please che.

[Vesayen]

Someone remind me again when there was a country called Palestine, ruled by the Palestinians?

[Straybow]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Originally posted by notyoueither
How long does it take for people whose families have been in the Americas for generations to be 'natives'?

I dunno. There's no fast-and-hard, apply-to-all-situations rule. The difference here is we are rather aware that we invaded and took the land from someone else, rather recently, and who is still here. Our national identies are built around our immigrant heritage.

The Israelis were exiled for two thousand years, intermarrying with the families of their European and Arabic hosts. They aren't the same people as were exiled. They every bit as much of immigrants to Israel as we are to the Americas. Their national myth, however, claims that the land of Israel was empty until they decided to emigrate and improve the land. Only after did Arabs move in. It's false, but the myth sells well in Israel and here.

Maybe in another few hundred years our decendants can call themselves natives. But the invasion and genocide ended just a little over one hundred years ago.

But this is just an opinion, and not one I've thought hard about.

The Arabs are certainly "rather aware that [they] invaded and took the land from someone else." It's part of their "national myth." Their genocidal practices (well documented in every Muslim-controlled country in the Mediterranean) are still ongoing in the form of the current conflict over the Holy Land.

Why validate the Arab Epic and not the Jewish Epic, especially when their Epic is based in part on the Jewish Epic (which they conveniently reinterpret in a way inconsistent with historical facts)?

Once again, the Jews never completely left but always maintained a sizable population in Jerusalem.

[Sandman]

Why not consign such Epics to the dustbin of history where they belong?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


I dunno. There's no fast-and-hard, apply-to-all-situations rule. The difference here is we are rather aware that we invaded and took the land from someone else, rather recently, and who is still here. Our national identies are built around our immigrant heritage.

The Israelis were exiled for two thousand years, intermarrying with the families of their European and Arabic hosts. They aren't the same people as were exiled.

If you define people as race. No ones racially pure. But when a Jew married a converted gentile, that gentile accepted belonging to the Jewish people.

Do you suppose the Palestinians suggest their right of return is only for pureblooded descendants of Palestinian exiles?

Peoples dont work like that. The claims they have are COLLECTIVE, and their willingness to accept new members, their LACK of racial exclusiveness, does not negate their claims, as long as they maintain a national continuity, and a culture that evolves organically through time.

The PEOPLE remain a people, even as individuals intermarried into it in each generation.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
There are western news sources that dispute what you say, Geronimo.


As far as this goes - we still need to find out what exactly caused the Palestinian family to explode. It could be an old shell that didn't explode. It could be from Israel's bombing. It could also be a palestinian rocket gone astray. It happenned several times.

A palestinian minister had his daughter's house hit by a Hamas rocket, a few months ago.

Israeli Def Minister Amir Peretz has just announced that the family was definitely killed by a Hamas planted mine. The shrapnel (removed from one of the wounded, treated at an Israeli hospital) is inconsistent with Israeli shells. All Israel shells fired are accounted for, except the first, which was fired 10 minutes before the incident took place, according to the IDF. Hamas activists were on the scene collecting fragments, apparently in an attempt to cover up what happened.

[Straybow]

The Falashas are accepted as Jews and granted right of return even though few think there is a single drop of Jewish blood in them.