User talk:Nableezy/Archive 39

Nice title, right? I get your point about Jerusalem. The template is called "cities in the palestinian territories" which is entirely justifiable, BUT the template happens to say "cities administered by the State of Palestine" and to that end it doesn't include jerusalem. Note I didn't remove the category "cities in the palestinian territories". I'm sure that's why you self-reverted, you realized my intentions? Also I find your infobox disturbing. I don't suspect you're referring to the Jewish Resistance Movement against the colonial Brits?--Monochrome_Monitor 02:22, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

That is indeed why I self-reverted. In the diff on my watchlist I just saw the name of the template, when I saved the page I saw the title on it. Im not sure why that infobox would be disturbing, the UNGA, by a vote of 71-12, affirm[ed] the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples under colonial and alien domination recognized as being entitled to the right of self-determination to restore to themselves that right by any means at their disposal (emphasis added), and has repeatedly reaffirmed the right of an occupied people to achieve their liberation by all available means, including armed struggle (emphasis added). As far as I am aware, Britain did not hold Palestine under occupation by the time the Jewish Resistance Movement came into existence, but as a mandate from the League of Nations. Worked out pretty well for the Jewish Resistance Movement if you ask me. nableezy - 04:15, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

By that logic the occupation is not an occupation because the same mandate from the League of Nations made the land a national home for Jewish people. The "united nations" have never been fond of the Jews anyway. For that matter appealing to a not necessarily moral majority defined with the nebulous term "international community", akin to "Free World", makes those with opposing views into pariahs. Are you just talking about killing soldiers outside the green line? Or do you think killing civilians within Israel is "resistance"? When you define things in black and white oppressors vs oppressed you are ipso facto engaging in dehumanization. Most importantly Jews are not an alien nor a colonial presence, they are, along with the Samaritans, the aboriginal people of Palestine.Even if you don't admit that, Jewish rights in Palestine arise as a natural logical consequence of the existence of the Jewish people, which I'm sure you don't deny. To quote Fatah: "Recognizing the Jewish state implies recognition of a Jewish people and recognition of its right to self-determination. Those who assert this right also assert that the territory historically associated with this right of self-determination (i.e., the self-determination unit) is all of Historic Palestine. Therefore, recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people’s claim to all of Historic Palestine." [1] Or to take things even further, "If Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, then the lands that it occupies today (and perhaps more, for there are as yet no borders to this “homeland”) belong to this people by way of right. And if these lands rightfully comprise the Jewish homeland, then the Arab presence there becomes historically aberrant and contingent; the Palestinians effectively become historic interlopers and trespassers—a transient presence on someone else’s national soil... Indeed, it is the heart of the Zionist claim to Palestine: Palestine belongs to the Jews and their right to the land is antecedent and superior to that of the Arabs. This is what Zionism is all about, and what justifies both the Jewish return to the land and the dispossession of its Arab inhabitants. Clearly, this is not the Palestinian Arab narrative, nor can it be. Palestinians do not believe that the historical Jewish presence in and connection to the land entail a superior claim to it. Palestine as our homeland was established in the course of over fifteen hundred years of continuous Arab-Muslim presence; it was only by superior force and colonial machination that we were eventually dispossessed of it. For us to adopt the Zionist narrative would mean that the homes that our forefathers built, the land that they tilled for centuries, and the sanctuaries they built and prayed at were not really ours at all, and that our defense of them was morally flawed and wrongful: we had no right to any of these to begin with... The demand for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people has yet another dimension. It places the moral burden of the conflict on the Palestinians, and consequently, not only exonerates Israel from the dubious moral circumstances of its birth but makes the Palestinians the historical transgressors. Indeed, by refusing to accept the Jewish claim to the land, we are to blame for what has befallen us...from this perspective, it is Arab rejection that caused the conflict and not the Zionist transgression against Arab land and rights." [2] (note he says "Arab land", "Arab presence", with no nonsense about Canaanites.) Personally I disagree with the notion that Arab presence is an "aberration", and I think that no one should be dispossessed. If you think this is all about the occupation (of which I am personally opposed to with the obvious exception of "East Jerusalem") and not about Jewish sovereignty in "Arab lands", I advise you to read the first Palestinian National Charter.[3] "Palestine is an Arab homeland bound by strong Arab national ties to the rest of the Arab Countries and which together form the great Arab homeland... This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area." I'm not trying to make you into a Zionist, I'm trying to make you see the inconsistencies in the "Arab Palestinian" narrative. You can have sympathy for their plight and still recognize the existence of the Jewish people and their indigenousness to Palestine.--Monochrome_Monitor 13:52, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

wtf does any of that have to do with a statement that I supports the right of all individuals and groups to violently resist military aggression and occupation by other parties? nableezy - 15:38, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

It's probably pointless exchanging views on this. The above is unhistorical, and just comes out of standard popular ideological tracts. The PLO declarations you cite, like Zionist declarations, have no relevance to the history of the region. They have relevance only to the history of those movements, rthe PLO declarations being declarations of pan-Arabism because that was the only way to secure funding and geostrategic backing. We deal with facts here,MM. The Zionists called it 'colonization' for 20 years, as any student of the literature from Balfour onwards for some decades knows. And if 90% of the population in 1900 was Arab, they, like the small community of Jews who were there, and Samaritans, were indigenous to the area, etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc. Editors are not denied the right to their own belief systems and fideistic attachments to whatever. They are obliged to let them yield ground before the historically determined facts, which are established by scholarly works.Nishidani (talk) 14:19, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

It is indeed pointless. nableezy - 15:37, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

How did I know Nish would get involved? "Colonization", just like "Palestine", had a wholly different connotation back then- no Zionist pioneer denied that the Jews originate in Israel. I do not agree with the "native vs foreigners" "occupier vs occupied" line of thinking- my point is they have framed the debate as one of natives and foreigners, which is not a paradime working in their favor. I showed that Palestinian nationalist sources acknowledge that if Jews exist as a people then they have the right to self-determination in "historic palestine". "And if 90% of the population in 1900 was Arab, they, like the small community of Jews who were there, and Samaritans, were indigenous to the area" that's complete nonsense. Being indigenous does not mean being in a place prior to a certain time, it means having ancestral roots there- the "small community of Jews who were there" are indistinguishable from later arrivals. Samaritans recognize Jews, not Palestinians, as part of the indigenous Israelite community. It's not simply a matter of DNA testing which shows Palestinians have closer ties to Arabia than to the Jews/Samaritans/Druze but it's a matter of culture- the Palestinian culture has ancestral roots in Arabia, not Palestine, while the very ground attests to the antiquity of Jewish culture in the land. Even the great Aristotle mentions the Jews, "[who are called by] the Syrians Judaei, and took their name from the country they inhabit, which is called Judea; but for the name of their city, it is a very awkward one, for they call it Jerusalem." All of this is quite relevant to what you said about resisting alien occupation- the Jews are the furthest thing from alien, and violence against them is not "resistance to colonialism" but terrorism. I embrace historic scholarship, which just so happens to affirm the antiquity of the Jewish people in their homeland. Obviously you have chosen to ignore the history of the Jewish people or else you wouldn't be so vociferously opposed to their right to self-determination.--Monochrome_Monitor 04:47, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

On second thought you didn't say "alien" occupation, but you're referring to occupation itself. While not all occupations are alike (and not all terrorism is alike) I can understand this reasoning. It's not the characterization of "occupation", but the "alien" that I object to. Personally I'm opposed to violence where it can be avoided- including Israeli violence. You really should quit smoking, if not for you for than for loved ones. It's not as hard as it used to be with gum and such.--Monochrome_Monitor 04:54, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

That is called textbook ideological reproduction. It is indeed pointless.

Palestinians have closer ties to Arabia than to the Jews/Samaritans/Druze but it's a matter of culture- the Palestinian culture has ancestral roots in Arabia, not Palestine, while the very ground attests to the antiquity of Jewish culture in the land

The closest genetic neighbors to most Jewish groups were the Palestinians, Israeli Bedouins, and Druze in addition to the Southern Europeans, including Cypriots. The genetic clusters formed by each of these non-Jewish Middle Eastern groups reflect their own histories of endogamy. Their proximity to one another and to European and Syrian Jews suggested a shared genetic history of related Semitic and non-Semitic Mediterranean ancestors who followed different religious and tribal affiliations. Earlier studies of Israeli Jewish, Palestinian and Druze populations made a similar observation by demonstrating the proximity of these two non-Jewish populations to Ashkenazi and Iraqi Jews (Rosenberg et al. 2001; Kopelman et al. 2009).

The majority of fellahin in Western Palestine are unified in their external appearance and in their origin, and in their veins, without a doubt, flows much Jewish blood . .from the Jewish peasants who in the days of the persecutions and terrible oppression had renounced their tradition and their people in order to maintain their attachment and loyalty to the land of the Jews.' David Ben-Gurion 1918

Pointless, quite pointless.Nishidani (talk) 13:47, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

First off, I've told you at least twice how it makes me feel when you say my words are "pointless". Next I'm not familiar with the textbook you speak of. If you're speaking of the standard zionist rendition of history, I myself criticize "the narrative". (ie, claiming the land was practically deserted before jews came in significant numbers, overlooking that accounts from travelers saying this were touring in a time of severe poverty in the ottoman empire. claiming that palestinians are essentially foreign arabian hordes. claiming that most palestinian refugees fled because their leaders told them to so, when in fact they were fleeing out of fear esp due to rumors of massacres, real and sensational) Thirdly I'm well aware of the jewish genetic relationship to other levantines. Using that argument Druze (from syria) have more of a right to palestine than palestinians, as they are more closely related to jews. No doubt many are descended from jews (and christians)- to a greater extent than the "lost tribes" we champion. (ie beta israel) I was specifically talking about culture- not genetics. I'm merely saying that in the end they assimilated fully into arab/islamic culture, which originates in arabia. I personally cannot find significant contemporary justification in ancient jewish descent as long as they are hostile to jews, deny jewish history in palestine, and claim the land is fundamentally arab- basically taking up the mantle of foreign conquerers. But that's just my view. Anyway my point was primarily that Jews are not aliens in palestine.--Monochrome_Monitor 14:50, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

I've been reading this stuff for a half a century. It is absolutely unbelievably how trite, repetitive, commonplace and dull all these themes are: they resist time, thought, research, reality. Take anyone you mention and do a google search of it for theme, and it will go back a century. When I read these things at your age it was new to me, and book after book filled in angles. After a few years of desultory reading, there was nothing new any more: over four decades, I just kept and keep seeing memes mouthed. They've basically disappeared from serious scholarship, but newspapers, agitprop and popular opinion still thrive on them. Nothing peculiar to Zionism. Whwen I did a Russian course, my teachers taught us all the preliminary roundabout formulaic phrases that cluttered the introduction and last pages of anything, newspapers, articles etc. It's just to con the censor. In the Orient, idem: meme reproduction; in the 'Zionist' question, another ideology, meme replication. It's the same closed mental universe. The word 'alien' cogs the dice. Jewish culture privileged 'Jerusalem': rabbis 'eretz israel': Idem Christian bible bashers down to the 20th century. Yawn. Most Christians, and most Jews didn't go round for 2,000 years thinking from Afghanistan to Lemba territory to Iceland, or beyond:'Rats, when can I go home?'. National identitarian obsessionjs like this are silly, as the joke runs:

There are six authors: French, English, American, German, Russian and Polish. The Frenchman writes on the love life of the elephant, the Englishman on how to conquer the elephant and the American on how to make bigger and better elephants. The German produces a 10-volume preliminary outline for an introductory essay on the elephant, the Russian writes a metaphysical essay entitled, Does the elephant really exist? and the Pole (the punch line is almost the same) writes on the elephant and the Polish question.In this one, there are six authors: French, English, American, German, Russian and Polish. The Frenchman writes on the love life of the elephant, the Englishman on how to conquer the elephant and the American on how to make bigger and better elephants. The German produces a 10-volume preliminary outline for an introductory essay on the elephant, the Russian writes a metaphysical essay entitled, Does the elephant really exist? and the Pole (the punch line is almost the same) writes on the elephant and the Polish question.(If there was a Jewish seventh, by analogy, he would write an encyclopedia on the elephant and the Jewish/Palestine question.)

None of those Poles, French, Germans, Yanks, Jews, Poms, are anything other than a mad caricature of some little cliché about cultural obsessions occasionally met. If I were a German, I'd write haiku, if a Frenchman a lyric on the joys of impotence, if an American, I'd expatiate on the genius of miniaturization. Why? To avoid being self-spitted on a stupid stereotype associated with one of the group labels attached to me, not by my choice.Nishidani (talk) 15:39, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Just to show you how the word "occupying power" is used derogatorily, take a look at this article: Israel slams UNESCO vote that calls it 'occupying power', published on 5 July 2017 by Fox News.---Davidbena (talk) 18:59, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Israel does not determine what is fact and what is not on Wikipedia. You seem to be under the impression that because you dislike something that it cannot be used. Again, there are plenty of Palestinians that say all of Israeli is stolen land. Does that mean that the article Tel Aviv can not say that it is a city in Israel? It should say it is a city in "disputed territory"? Answer those questions for me and Ill be happy to continue the discussion. Otherwise I dont really see the point. nableezy - 19:09, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Nableezy, here we're dealing with many issues. Yes, some of the land was expropriated for military needs (security), some of the land was legally purchased, and some of the land was abandoned by its tenants after war and conflict; land acquisitions being a very complex subject. We might even go back to the time before Israeli rule, during the British Mandate and Ottoman Turk period, and you may find that not all land tenants were legal land tenants. Take, for example, Silwan (Shiloah), where Yemenite Jews actually bought houses there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, yet fled their homes during the Arab-Israeli War. Will you call their usurping occupants legal tenants? Of course not! They're thieves! You see, the matter is very complex. Nevertheless, what we're talking about here is current political rule over the country and its inhabitants. We say it is legal, but you say it is not. That makes it a dispute, and that makes Wikipedia treading between a hard and soft place. Be well.Davidbena (talk) 21:59, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Would you call the inhabitants of the Israeli settlement on these villages for thieves? Huldra (talk) 22:13, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Hahaha! That was a funny link, but considering that Jews were evicted from their land by the Romans (during incessant wars) and the land was exposed to sale by Vespasian (just as we learn in The Jewish War, VII.6.6 [VII, 216]), it is no wonder then that so many vagrant farmers, or people looking for work, came and settled the country. There's a place for them too. I'm not arguing against that. Still, the history of the people of Israel in its own land cannot be denied.Davidbena (talk) 01:34, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I really dont see what is funny about an ethnic cleansing of a native population, but thats just me. nableezy - 04:00, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

No, may God forbid, I was not laughing at that. I see these villagers as being very unfortunate, but let's remember what caused their situation. I was laughing, rather, at the way she is trying so hard to dispute the claim of Israel's sovereignty over the land. As for the displacement of these people, anyone familiar with the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict can tell you that had these Arab villagers been at peace with Israel, had they not resisted Jewish immigration, had they welcomed Jews in their midst who had possessed Palestinian citizenship and not fought against them, often under the incitement and war-like rhetoric of Sheikh Amin al-Husseini, then all of these villagers would have remained in their place. These are the unfortunate circumstances of hostility between the two ethnic-groups living in Palestine.Davidbena (talk) 10:03, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

David, you have a serious misunderstanding, at best, of what is at issue here. But you again seem to avoid my point. That saying a village in the West Bank is "in occupied territory" has the same fact basis as saying Tel Aviv is "in Israel", and you only wish to change one of these things. Palestinians dispute Tel Aviv as being "Israel", but that dispute does not render moot the international consensus that Tel Aviv is in fact in Israel. Just as Israel disputing the status of the West Bank does not render moot the international consensus that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is occupied Palestinian territory. You only seem to be concerned with advancing the Israeli position with seemingly no interest in the converse dispute. If Israel disputing something means we cannot say it is true then the Palestinians disputing something should likewise mean we cannot say it is true. If the West Bank is not "occupied Palestinian territory" because Israel disputes that then Tel Aviv is not "Israeli territory" because Hamas disputes that. Again, try to see this from outside of an Israel-centric perspective. Wikipedia does not bow to the views of Israel or the Palestinians, we base our articles on reliable sources. The end. nableezy - 03:59, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

That is incorrect, Nableezy. I have no dispute with you, nor with Wikipedia, on naming conventions, such as "West Bank" and "Israel" as used in their respective places. However, "occupied territory" is NOT a naming convention, but a derogatory adjective that carries a one-sided political message. The matter of whether or not the country currently claimed and held by Israel is "occupied territory" is a matter that is disputed. During the British Mandate and Ottoman Turk rule over Palestine, Jews were also Palestinian citizens. Golda Meir was a Palestinian citizen! If you have any complaint, you can say that it is because of what Jewish-Palestinian citizens did to the country after Jordanian occupation of the "West Bank," and what has now come to be known as "occupation in the view of the United Nations." While Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention[vi] explicitly prohibits an “Occupying Power” (Israel) from transferring any part of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, former Israeli Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Meir Shamgar wrote in the 1970s that there is no de jure applicability of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention regarding occupied territories to the case of the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the Convention "is based on the assumption that there had been a sovereign who was ousted and that he had been a legitimate sovereign." See article: From `Occupied Territories` to `Disputed Territories`, by Dore Gold, of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (Israeli Security, Regional Diplomacy, and International Law). Israeli diplomat, Dore Gold, has stated that the language of "occupation" has allowed Palestinian spokesmen to obfuscate this history. By repeatedly pointing to "occupation," they manage to reverse the causality of the conflict, especially in front of Western audiences. Thus, the current territorial dispute is allegedly the result of an Israeli decision "to occupy," rather than a result of a war imposed on Israel by a coalition of Arab states in 1967 (ibid.). You see, the issue of "occupation," as it relates to Israel and its claim over the country, is a matter of dispute. Accordingly, WP:IMPARTIAL would apply in our edits here, on Wikipedia, when referring to the term "occupied territory," so as not to take sides in this dispute.Davidbena (talk) 10:30, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

@Davidbena: "Occupied Palestinian Territories" is a well-known and accepted name for the West Bank and Gaza. See this UN OHCHR page, for instance. Here are the latest UN General Assembly resolutions on Palestine from last November (the votes were 150 to 6 or something like that -- so it's not just "western audiences"); just search for "occupied" or "occupation" or "occupying" and you'll see plenty of hits. You are free to think whatever you want about the history, but when we write on WP, we go by the internationally accepted convention, which considers the West Bank and Gaza as Israeli-occupied territory. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 14:57, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Kingsindian. I wasn't denying that "occupied territory" is often used for territories held by Israel in the "West Bank." What I was saying, however, is that the wording takes on a certain political tone, almost critical of Israel, when the matter is actually disputed, especially by the government here in Israel. Rewording a text to read, "such-and-such a place has been under Israeli occupation, according to the international community," would mitigate the tone, and still be faithful to its widespread connotation. The difference is, by rewording the text as I suggested, we steer clear from infringement on WP:IMPARTIAL.Davidbena (talk) 15:12, 6 July 2017 (UTC)