After WW2, millions of jews wanted a shelter from persecution and anti-semitism. They set their eyes on Canaan, thanks to it's biblical significance to them. The president of Saudi Arabia had convinced FDR that the creation of a jewish state in the Middle East would prompt a massive war, and would therefore not be a good idea. Had FDR not died before the end of WW2, modern day Israel might never have been created, but he did die. His successor Truman gave the go ahead to the creation of the Israeli state in Canaan despite the Saudi presidents son being sent to the US to try to convince him not to, and vwalah, thus came Israel.

Now the state of Israel is a strong nation both militarily and economically. But life in it has been far from perfect in its 50 years existence. It has been constantly throught with Arab invasions and attacks, and it has not seemed to have escaped anti-semitism at all; though at least it can now protect itself from it.

Would the Jews be better off if they had made a nation in Europe or Northern America?

If not, is the benefit to the jews in having Israel more substantial then the detriments and deaths derived from the tensions it creates via its existence in the Middle East?

Would the Jews be better off if they had made a nation in Europe or Northern America?
Maybe, but its a moot point now, and I seriously doubt anyone would have wanted to give up land in these places either. As it was, there was a large number of Jews at that time in what is now known as Israel, and it wasn't like Israel had never come to pass had the Americans/FDR rejected the idea - unless the US had intervened physically, I doubt the Israelies would have cared much.

If not, is the benefit to the jews in having Israel more substantial then the detriments and deaths derived from the tensions it creates via its existence in the Middle East?
Well, its not Israel itself that causes the tension. Its the irrational hate there exists against jews. Ones actions shouldn't be shaped by the irrational behavior of others. It wasn't like the muslims living there wouldn't be citizens of Israel, they just chose to leave and hoped the jews would be annihilated. Luckily that didn't come to pass. Jews were displaced to following the creation of Israel - almost a million jews were expelled from other Arab countries, and Israel took them in. No muslim countries wanted to take in the voluntary "refugees" from Palestine. Its pretty clear where the tensions originate, and Israel cannot be blamed, and thus its wrong to say Israel creates tension.

The background information you provide is very misleading, ALHP.

The United States did not create the state of Israel. Technically, the United Nations did. Britain announced it was ending its Mandate for Palestine in February 1947 and was turning the situation over to the UN. The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine concluded in August 1947 that the best solution was a two state solution. The US announced it was reluctant to endorse the two state partition of Palestine. The chief concern was that the Soviet Union could use the situation to cause upheaval in the Middle East, limiting the US's access to oil. The US feared that the Jews moving into Palestine were Communists. (In fact, they were communists with a small "c").

When the 1947 UN Partition Plan was announced, however, it seems that a drunk person drew it up. The sides (Arabs and Jews) could not agree. Truman (and by extension the United States) was in favor of partition. There was a running battle between the White House and the State Department over whether or not to recognize the state of Israel. Truman writes in a letter to his brother: "I think the proper thing to do, and the thing I have been doing, is to do what I think is right and let them all go to hell." He has decided to recognize the new state of Israel.

Would the Jews be better off if they had made a nation in Europe or Northern America?

What would have become of the British Mandate? Would it have become an Arab nation just like the rest of the former Ottoman empire? Weren't there Jews living in Palestine?

Keep in mind that the Jews were fleeing persecution in Europe. Anti-Semitism is not a Nazi trait, it seems to be a European trait. The Nazis used existing anti-Semitic feelings to turn populations in conquered countries against themselves (instead of against the occupiers). Jews endured the pogroms in Europe for decades, not just in Nazi Germany. They were stripped of their citizenship. They could not hold certain jobs. Had there been a Jewish state in Europe, I think it would have quickly been invaded.

Why not North America? For one thing, the Jews have never had a significant presence in North America. Only a few percent of US citizens are Jewish. I don't think there was enough of a connection between the Jews and the Western Hemisphere to warrant such a suggestion.

If not, is the benefit to the jews in having Israel more substantial then the detriments and deaths derived from the tensions it creates via its existence in the Middle East?

The British have fought the French for centuries. Should they have given up because the struggle wasn't worth it? Should the French have capitulated? Existence justifies many hardships. The violence in the Middle East is not the first time that Jews have been attacked simply for being. It has happened for millennia. In fact, the Jews seem to have been created so that others (Persians, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Catholics, Protestants, English, French, Spanish, Russians, Germans and Arabs just to name a few) could persecute them. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella issued the General Edict on the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Interestingly, many Jews fled to the Ottoman empire and to present day Israel.

The tensions caused by the creation of Israel probably would have happened if there was a Jewish state on the moon. It seems unavoidable that the Jews are persecuted no matter where they are.

Would the Jews be better off if they had made a nation in Europe or Northern America?

IIRC the actual alternative locations were south america and north africa- though, I think the germans should have been forced to create a homeland for the jews right smack dab in the middle of their country, as both a reminder to thier crimes and justice for thier actions. The whole world would be a better place if we had never created a homeland for the Jews. I am also against creating a new homeland for the American Indians, and the Kurds, the Kurds probably having the best case of ANY non-landed ethnic group having a country of thier own created.


If not, is the benefit to the jews in having Israel more substantial then the detriments and deaths derived from the tensions it creates via its existence in the Middle East?

No, absolutely not. Jews were the minority by far in Canaan at the time, and we have created damn near a world war by creating that country. It is always a horrible, horrible idea to displace a population to put a minority population right down in the middle of it, and based on religious dogma at that!

How would the Texans feel on this board if we decided tomorow to make Texas the new homeland for the American Indian, texans who are Indians, get out- I don't care what you Texans think, you are a bunch of filthy terrorists anyway, and the Indians have more claim to the land than the Jews had to Canaan at the time.

The creation of the Jewish state of Isreal will probably be looked at as one of the greatest historical blunders of all time.

We didn't create a state for the Gypsies now did we? How about a homosexual state? Both those groups of poeple were rounded up and killed right along with the Jews- but both those groups STILL face persecution in the world.

Now, pandora has opened the box though, and now we have to deal with a near constant state of war. Eventually some religious nutjob is going to get ahold of a nuke at some point and set it off in Tel Aviv or somewhere, and then Isreal will start hurling nukes too.

We, the US and Britain, pretty much created all the things that led up to 9/11 by the creation of that state.

What we should have done is what we have done with Ireland and Serbia- and force those folks to get along right where they are.

Israel exists so it is moot to speculate on whether it should or should not have been established. It is important to understand the real history of the conflict, however, in order to be constructive in supporting a just resolution to the on going mayhem. Too many just swallow the propaganda put out by the Israeli government and its supporters without consideration of alternative views. For instance, Israeli historians have clearly established that many if not most of the Palestinians refugees were either forced out of Israel or fled it in terror because of massacres in contrast to the usual line that the fled to facilitate Arab attacks upon the Zionists. For a brief alternative view of the history of modern Israel I recommend this pamphlet put together by Jews for Justice in the Middle East. (See this Link).

I dunno if anyone else got the irony of this statement, especially in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert just recently used that very same example to highlight what he feels to be European biases towards civilian casualties in Lebanon.

"Where do they get the right to preach to Israel?" Olmert said when asked about criticism from European capitals of Israeli military operations that have led to a heavy civilian toll. "European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket. "I'm not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: Don't preach to us about the treatment of civilians."
link

I don't think Serbia is exactly something Europeans should boast of or use as an example of our ability to "force people to get along".


Would the Jews be better off if they had made a nation in Europe or Northern America?
Well they did try to establish a home in Europe, it did not go so well. I don't blame them for wanting to leave. And not every Jew lives in Israel, there are plenty who have made their home in America and some outlived WWII in Europe.

I don't get the objective of the second question. It is like asking is it a benefit to support people's rights to existence even if others think they have none. Um yeah I get that not everyone thinks or agrees with democracy, universal human rights, free trade and political and religious freedoms. I understand that our support for such things, such systems, is confrontational to their denial of and refusal to these ideals. I just don't find this struggle or tension substantial in and of itself. The substance lies within the context of the conflict, not the conflict alone. Do I feel human rights and all the goodies that go with it are worthy of defense, yes of course I argue they are always in a constant state of struggle or conflict.

Who is this "we" that created Israel? IIRC the jews themselves fought several Arab countries in a war for survival - I don't remember the US or the UK or the UN intervening to help the Israelies, so it was all their own doing as far as I am concerned.

And nobody was displaced by force, except for jews. A lot of arabs rejected citizenship in Israel, because they hoped to return later after the other arab countries had beaten Israel into oblivion - but that didn't happen as we all know.


Except the Muslims weren't forced out of Israel, so bad analogy there.


There are worse territorial/ethnic disputes in Africa right now, that costs millions of lives, so if what you say come to pass, historians in the future will certainly need to go back to school.


Maybe they don't want a state? Maybe if they had fought for it like the jews did, they could have? Who knows.


And people willingly setting off nukes can be blamed on something that happend 60 years ago why?
There is no excuse for massmurder, and people that commit massmurder shouldn't be afforded the effort it takes to dream of a rational reason for their actions for there simply is none. Sure, years of strife can cause hate, hate causes violence and so on, but only irrational extremism can be blamed, not borders drawn up 60 years ago.


Even if were true that the US and the UK were behind the creation of Israel (which it is not), it is no excuse for terrorism and murder, and in principle we shouldn't consider the possible actions irrational extremists might take, when we are trying to do what we think is right.


I am all for that, even Israel is all for that. But guess who isn't?

You know anti-semitism still exists. Just look at Mel Gibson, or the Arab world, or Eastern Europe, it's still there. And let's be honest, the holocaust wasn't equally about killing Gypsies, homosexuals and Jews. It was mostly about killing Jews and secondly about getting rid of other undesirable people Germany didn't want.

They weren't the minority in the small country they were given in 1948. They were a majority in that country but they became a minority once every Arab country attacked Israel and Egypt and Jordan got rid of the Palestinian state.

Would the Jews be better off if they had made a nation in Europe or Northern America?
Maybe, but if wishes and buts were clusters of nuts we'd all eat a bowl of Granola. I don't remember anyone offering the Jews a state in Europe or America. All I seem to remember was that Jews have been hated for their entire history by basically everyone. Since no state anywhere else was offered, what's the point of speculating. Perhaps the Jews would be better off if instead of getting their own state they all moved to the United States. Certainly the United States would be much better off having millions more Jewish people. Even as it is now, Jews representing 2% of the population, 40% of American Nobel Prize winners are Jewish. It could have been 80%.

If not, is the benefit to the jews in having Israel more substantial then the detriments and deaths derived from the tensions it creates via its existence in the Middle East?
Should we blame it on Israel's existence or on Arab's unyielding hatred? I see both side of the issue but to me those who say Israel doesn't have a right to exist just happen to be wrong. That should matter. What are the knocks against Israel.
1. It was created on the basis of religion: Most of the Arab countries have state religions, Israel doesn't.
2. It was created artificially: So were the rest of the Middle Eastern Countries
3. It's creation displaced people: What happened in 1948 is no one country's fault, Jordan and Egypt deserve a lot of blame too for annexing most of the Palestinian state after the war.

But let's be honest, there's enough blame to go around in the Arab-Israeli conflict. We're not going to get anywhere by saying Jews shouldn't have picked a place in the world where everyone is crazy and anti-semitic, or that Arabs should just get over it. All or nothing solutions don't work. I bet everyone would be better off if Israel left all the settlements and declared that Palestine was a country, next to Israel, whether they liked it or not.

Depends where they would have put it.

I have an interesting little family story about this. My maternal great grandfather was one of those who fled mainland Europe prior to the slaughter. I'm a bit hazy on the dates, but I think it was in the 1920's. That whole side of my family were German and French Jews and I'm told a good many of them disappeared during the Holocaust. Due to the nature of the times, a lot of information is now lost to my family and even names are not known any more. Those who had fled changed their names once they arrived in the UK and I have no idea what happened to them all nor how many there were.

What I do know is that my maternal grand mother was an English citizen as a result, and her eldest brother who was a fighter pilot in the RAF, died fighting the nazi's. After the war, her father, my maternal great grandfather was a part of a movement to set up a new Jewish homeland on the island of Malta. The details are hardly more than sketchy and I have never been able to track down any information about this notion. The story as I've been told it describes several prominent Jews who all lived in the UK after the war, emigrated to Malta with the notion of setting up a Jewish homeland there, but were unable to maintain support after the creation of Israel. Whether or not this story is accurate, or even true, I can't say. My maternal great grandfather died on Malta in the 1970's and my Grand mother died shortly after in '84. My mother has a photograph of me, two years old, sitting on the old man's knee and that was the only time I met him so I wasn't really able to get much out of him at the time

I wonder though if a Jewish homeland on Malta would have worked. Sure the inhabitants of the island might not be too happy about it, but it strikes me that the islands would have been perfect for a smaller Jewish nation. They are considered a part of Europe, have no borders with any one, ar centrally placed in the mediterranean. The agriculture is dodgy I suspect and less than half a million people live there now, but its a warm and pleasant place I believe.

Its all water under the bridge now though. Israel exists and thats the end of that. I wonder though, if Iran nukes Israel as their leader likes to imply they will, maybe the survivors could settle on Malta?

It is hard to discuss these issues when debaters merely cite the Zionist party line without regard to historical evidence. In my previous post I cited evidence that Palestinians were indeed driven out of what became Israel. Here is more evidence from The Jews for Justice in the Middle East that the Jewish population was a distinct minority in Palestine when Zionist settlements began.



The claim that Arab nations sought to destroy the new Israeli state is also questionable. From the same source:

It's hard to say what the exact intentions of the many groups were. Perhaps some groups only wanted to destroy the Jewish state, while other wanted to kill all the Jewish people in Israel. The Arabs weren't one consolidated country so one can't say exactly. However the first attack in the war was against a Jewish settlement. But I found a quote that might make their intentions a little bit more clear. The Secretary General of the Arab League said That's pretty clear to me, but maybe the Secretary General of the Arab League was just towing the Zionist line.

From the first instance of this thread the premise is to question the existence of Israel, as though something could be done about its existence. Furthermore, the premise draws the debate completely away from questioning the existence of Arabs. I could ask if the existence of Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Palestine have been mostly good or mostly bad. Then the silly notion of placing Israel somewhere else arises from the president of Iran, and is treated as something that should even be entertained.



Well, first let me ask since none of these countries existed at some time in the past, who really has a right to this land called the Middle East? According to God (the one worshipped by Jews, Christians and Muslims), it belongs to the Jews. So maybe the Arabs should obey God and get out. Many would consider this proposition as preposterous, just as many consider the proposition that Israel shouldn't be where it is preposterous. So basically it is what it is, isn't it? Let's deal with the issue from that point. No one in the middle east is innocent of wrong doing in this matter of the two state solution Palestine-Israel. The parties have seldom liked each other, but there is evidence that they sometimes got along in the past, isn't there? Even the Quran speaks of King Solomon as a great leader and prophet. So what is the real underlying reason that some don't Israel to exist or at least not in its current location? Is it religious or for secular reasons? Apparently there are a few Muslims who wish to deny the connection between the Temple Mount and Solomon's Temple. However, it appears that most Muslims do not dispute the fact that the first and second Temples were upon the mount. Therefore I think that Israel has at least as much of a claim to its land as anyone else involved.



Who thinks that a few trouble-makers are causing most of the problems? Personally I lost most of my sympathy for the Palestinian side of the argument after Sharon agreed to all of the Phase I requirements, but Arafat did not move very quickly to end the terrorist violence. If I remember correctly he never denounced his charter which called for the destruction of Israel.



I'd love to hear someone clarify any point they know are in error.