Israel v Hamas

[indeedproceed]

To me, that is pretty hard to defend with "well the Jewish people occupied the land 2300 years ago so it really was their land". If that is the case you should just leave your house and country right now and turn it over to a Native American because they owned this land first and their gods said it was their land.

Ironic, because God's mandate was a foundation of manifest destiny.

[Redz]

To me, that is pretty hard to defend with "well the Jewish people occupied the land 2300 years ago so it really was their land". If that is the case you should just leave your house and country right now and turn it over to a Native American because they owned this land first and their gods said it was their land.

Ironic, because God's mandate was a foundation of manifest destiny.

God knows some prime real estate when he sees it.

[Brendan]

But in the early 20th century Jews made up about 10% of the people living in the area that is currently Israel. Arabs and Muslims made up the rest. That number was fairly consistent until the beginning of WWII when, during the war, Jews migrated to the area of Israel by the hundreds of thousands to escape the Holocaust and the war(Nazi Germany was not the only area Jews migrated from during WWII. They came from Russia, the Slovaks and all across German occupied Europe).

So I got really different numbers for demographics pre-statehood. I don't agree with "Balkanizing" every piece of land in the world. But in this case in all of old Palestine (i.e. Israel, Jordan, and current Palestine) there was a sizable Jewish minority. Looking at how Jewish minorities across the rest of the territories went, not creating a Jewish state would have resulted in a second Holocaust. As soon as the local Arab Muslims Shia or Sunni got control in every other middle east state they started persecuted the local Jewish communities. Not really that surprising that the British would carve out a Jewish state across all of their territories in the mideast under those circumstances. Of course once that's decided there is only one place in the ME where you'd put the state.

The whole area was part of Ottoman until WW1 and then a British colony. In the 1800s the place was considered a dump by Mark Twain when touring it, but he put the majority of Jerusalem's population as Jewish by a large number. My understanding is that it was pretty desolate, but once the Brits took control immigration by Jews and Arabs both happened. After the separation of "Transjordan" from Palestine, Jews were no longer able to immigrate to the East side of Jordan. They agitated for their own state (and used some tactics that were definitely terrorism) they were supposed to get all of modern day Israel and Palestine, but that was further cut to create Palestine by partitioning Gaza and the East Bank.

That get's us to the first post WW2 Israeli state - they took territory, but it was during defensive wars - this is a completely legitimate act of war. If you attack someone and lose, you may lose territory. The Israeli Arabs who left during the wars aren't welcome back and with good reason - there leaving was an act of treason against the state of Israel. The Arabs who stayed in Israel are still there.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

Just because the Jewish people have an old claim to the land area of Israel doesn't mean it is their right to settle there.

Are you saying that the Jews have no right to be there? And are you saying that Palestinian Arabs have more of a right to be there despite the fact that their land claim is much more recent?

There were people there before the Jews and I can claim that those people have the right to the land.

I addressed this in an earlier post. Yes, there were people groups there before the Jews, collectively known as the Canaanites, but those groups no longer exist, leaving the Jews as the existing people group with the oldest claim.

But in the early 20th century Jews made up about 10% of the people living in the area that is currently Israel. Arabs and Muslims made up the rest.

Yes, there were indeed times when the Jewish population in that area was relatively small, but that was largely due to Muslim Arab persecution of the Jews. As a people, the Jews never had a desire to leave their homeland, which is why so many Jews went back there when the opportunity arose.

That number was fairly consistent until the beginning of WWII when, during the war, Jews migrated to the area of Israel by the hundreds of thousands to escape the Holocaust and the war (Nazi Germany was not the only area Jews migrated from during WWII. They came from Russia, the Slovaks and all across German occupied Europe).

I would hope that no one would have a problem with the Jews fleeing the Holocaust, and in particular fleeing to their homeland. It's the logical thing to do.

When Britain decided to pull out of the area, urged on by their allies in WWII and the United Nations and sympathetically allowed Israel a sovereign state, Jews still made up only 30% or so of the people of the area.

Is it wrong to have sympathy for a people who lost 6 million members? Besides, where else could anyone reasonably expect the Jews to go besides their homeland? Besides, all this conflict could be avoided if the Palestinian Arabs went back to their homeland in what is now Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is HUGE, and wealthy; it could easily give the Palestinians a large plot of land, set them up real nice, even help finance the move so that Palestinians would have a good start in their new (old) homeland. Of course, even then the terrorists would still want Israel "wiped off the map," but one thing at a time, I guess.

Over a million Palestinians would be displaced from the area of Israel over the next 5 years.

You seem to have no problem, though, with the fact that Palestinians first displaced the Jews.

To me, that is pretty hard to defend with "well the Jewish people occupied the land 2300 years ago so it really was their land".

It's not as though the Jews voluntarily left their homeland, then later changed their minds and decided to go back after someone else had moved in there. As I described in detail in a previous post, violent Muslims pushed into the area with their "convert or die" program, which didn't go over so well with the Jews. Given those circumstances, I find it perfectly acceptable that the Jews began moving back, and pushing back, when they became capable of doing so.

If that is the case you should just leave your house and country right now and turn it over to a Native American because they owned this land first and their gods said it was their land.

This is a good point, and one I hear a lot whenever the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is discussed, but this Native American example is usually used as a pro-Palestinian argument, when really it should be used as a pro-Israel argument, since, as I've made clear, the Israelis were there first.

To address your point about me leaving my house and country:

1) You're right; the Native Americans were here first.

2) I wish that Native Americans had never been mistreated.

3) There was nothing wrong with peaceful foreigners exploring and settling in the New World. The origin of Thanksgiving features a peaceful, mutually beneficial coexistence of Native Americans and Pilgrim settlers, and I think that had there never been any violent newcomers, Native Americans and European colonists could've flourished together, whether they were one country or two. Likewise, before radical Muslims exerted themselves in Middle-Ages Israel, there were peaceful Palestinians there, and they and the Israelis got along well, the Palestinians particularly benefitting from the Israelis' advanced agricultural practices. It's also worth noting that today's Israel generally has no problem with peaceful Palestinians living within its borders, and even during Biblical times there were people of other "races" and ethnicities living with the Israelites, and God commanded the Israelites to treat them well. The problems today, as I see things, are these:

a) People viewing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict only through the narrow lens of the last 100 years, which makes it look as though more blame lies with the Jews, and conveniently ignores the fact that violent Muslim Arabs were the initial "displacers."

b) Violent Muslims, who will never accept even a peaceful two-state solution, because they want all Jews dead, period, and will not cease until that happens or they themselves are dead.

c) Perhaps the most disturbing to me: a seeming indifference by Americans and other Westerners toward radical Islam, and an accompanying tendency to be more condemning of Israelis who are trying to defend themselves. It seems to me that many people don't comprehend how awful and evil radical Muslims are, and I don't see the condemnation of them that I think is appropriate, particularly from so-called "moderate" Muslims in this country.

[nickagneta]

Just because the Jewish people have an old claim to the land area of Israel doesn't mean it is their right to settle there.

Are you saying that the Jews have no right to be there? And are you saying that Palestinian Arabs have more of a right to be there despite the fact that their land claim is much more recent?

There were people there before the Jews and I can claim that those people have the right to the land.

I addressed this in an earlier post. Yes, there were people groups there before the Jews, collectively known as the Canaanites, but those groups no longer exist, leaving the Jews as the existing people group with the oldest claim.

But in the early 20th century Jews made up about 10% of the people living in the area that is currently Israel. Arabs and Muslims made up the rest.

Yes, there were indeed times when the Jewish population in that area was relatively small, but that was largely due to Muslim Arab persecution of the Jews. As a people, the Jews never had a desire to leave their homeland, which is why so many Jews went back there when the opportunity arose.

That number was fairly consistent until the beginning of WWII when, during the war, Jews migrated to the area of Israel by the hundreds of thousands to escape the Holocaust and the war (Nazi Germany was not the only area Jews migrated from during WWII. They came from Russia, the Slovaks and all across German occupied Europe).

I would hope that no one would have a problem with the Jews fleeing the Holocaust, and in particular fleeing to their homeland. It's the logical thing to do.

When Britain decided to pull out of the area, urged on by their allies in WWII and the United Nations and sympathetically allowed Israel a sovereign state, Jews still made up only 30% or so of the people of the area.

Is it wrong to have sympathy for a people who lost 6 million members? Besides, where else could anyone reasonably expect the Jews to go besides their homeland? Besides, all this conflict could be avoided if the Palestinian Arabs went back to their homeland in what is now Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is HUGE, and wealthy; it could easily give the Palestinians a large plot of land, set them up real nice, even help finance the move so that Palestinians would have a good start in their new (old) homeland. Of course, even then the terrorists would still want Israel "wiped off the map," but one thing at a time, I guess.

Over a million Palestinians would be displaced from the area of Israel over the next 5 years.

You seem to have no problem, though, with the fact that Palestinians first displaced the Jews.

To me, that is pretty hard to defend with "well the Jewish people occupied the land 2300 years ago so it really was their land".

It's not as though the Jews voluntarily left their homeland, then later changed their minds and decided to go back after someone else had moved in there. As I described in detail in a previous post, violent Muslims pushed into the area with their "convert or die" program, which didn't go over so well with the Jews. Given those circumstances, I find it perfectly acceptable that the Jews began moving back, and pushing back, when they became capable of doing so.

If that is the case you should just leave your house and country right now and turn it over to a Native American because they owned this land first and their gods said it was their land.

This is a good point, and one I hear a lot whenever the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is discussed, but this Native American example is usually used as a pro-Palestinian argument, when really it should be used as a pro-Israel argument, since, as I've made clear, the Israelis were there first.

To address your point about me leaving my house and country:

1) You're right; the Native Americans were here first.

2) I wish that Native Americans had never been mistreated.

3) There was nothing wrong with peaceful foreigners exploring and settling in the New World. The origin of Thanksgiving features a peaceful, mutually beneficial coexistence of Native Americans and Pilgrim settlers, and I think that had there never been any violent newcomers, Native Americans and European colonists could've flourished together, whether they were one country or two. Likewise, before radical Muslims exerted themselves in Middle-Ages Israel, there were peaceful Palestinians there, and they and the Israelis got along well, the Palestinians particularly benefitting from the Israelis' advanced agricultural practices. It's also worth noting that today's Israel generally has no problem with peaceful Palestinians living within its borders, and even during Biblical times there were people of other "races" and ethnicities living with the Israelites, and God commanded the Israelites to treat them well. The problems today, as I see things, are these:

a) People viewing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict only through the narrow lens of the last 100 years, which makes it look as though more blame lies with the Jews, and conveniently ignores the fact that violent Muslim Arabs were the initial "displacers."

b) Violent Muslims, who will never accept even a peaceful two-state solution, because they want all Jews dead, period, and will not cease until that happens or they themselves are dead.

c) Perhaps the most disturbing to me: a seeming indifference by Americans and other Westerners toward radical Islam, and an accompanying tendency to be more condemning of Israelis who are trying to defend themselves. It seems to me that many people don't comprehend how awful and evil radical Muslims are, and I don't see the condemnation of them that I think is appropriate, particularly from so-called "moderate" Muslims in this country.

This convo for me is over. Your view on the settlers of the New World being peaceful just completely lost you any and all credibility with me for your understanding of history as a whole.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

Just because the Jewish people have an old claim to the land area of Israel doesn't mean it is their right to settle there.

Are you saying that the Jews have no right to be there? And are you saying that Palestinian Arabs have more of a right to be there despite the fact that their land claim is much more recent?

There were people there before the Jews and I can claim that those people have the right to the land.

I addressed this in an earlier post. Yes, there were people groups there before the Jews, collectively known as the Canaanites, but those groups no longer exist, leaving the Jews as the existing people group with the oldest claim.

But in the early 20th century Jews made up about 10% of the people living in the area that is currently Israel. Arabs and Muslims made up the rest.

Yes, there were indeed times when the Jewish population in that area was relatively small, but that was largely due to Muslim Arab persecution of the Jews. As a people, the Jews never had a desire to leave their homeland, which is why so many Jews went back there when the opportunity arose.

That number was fairly consistent until the beginning of WWII when, during the war, Jews migrated to the area of Israel by the hundreds of thousands to escape the Holocaust and the war (Nazi Germany was not the only area Jews migrated from during WWII. They came from Russia, the Slovaks and all across German occupied Europe).

I would hope that no one would have a problem with the Jews fleeing the Holocaust, and in particular fleeing to their homeland. It's the logical thing to do.

When Britain decided to pull out of the area, urged on by their allies in WWII and the United Nations and sympathetically allowed Israel a sovereign state, Jews still made up only 30% or so of the people of the area.

Is it wrong to have sympathy for a people who lost 6 million members? Besides, where else could anyone reasonably expect the Jews to go besides their homeland? Besides, all this conflict could be avoided if the Palestinian Arabs went back to their homeland in what is now Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is HUGE, and wealthy; it could easily give the Palestinians a large plot of land, set them up real nice, even help finance the move so that Palestinians would have a good start in their new (old) homeland. Of course, even then the terrorists would still want Israel "wiped off the map," but one thing at a time, I guess.

Over a million Palestinians would be displaced from the area of Israel over the next 5 years.

You seem to have no problem, though, with the fact that Palestinians first displaced the Jews.

To me, that is pretty hard to defend with "well the Jewish people occupied the land 2300 years ago so it really was their land".

It's not as though the Jews voluntarily left their homeland, then later changed their minds and decided to go back after someone else had moved in there. As I described in detail in a previous post, violent Muslims pushed into the area with their "convert or die" program, which didn't go over so well with the Jews. Given those circumstances, I find it perfectly acceptable that the Jews began moving back, and pushing back, when they became capable of doing so.

If that is the case you should just leave your house and country right now and turn it over to a Native American because they owned this land first and their gods said it was their land.

This is a good point, and one I hear a lot whenever the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is discussed, but this Native American example is usually used as a pro-Palestinian argument, when really it should be used as a pro-Israel argument, since, as I've made clear, the Israelis were there first.

To address your point about me leaving my house and country:

1) You're right; the Native Americans were here first.

2) I wish that Native Americans had never been mistreated.

3) There was nothing wrong with peaceful foreigners exploring and settling in the New World. The origin of Thanksgiving features a peaceful, mutually beneficial coexistence of Native Americans and Pilgrim settlers, and I think that had there never been any violent newcomers, Native Americans and European colonists could've flourished together, whether they were one country or two. Likewise, before radical Muslims exerted themselves in Middle-Ages Israel, there were peaceful Palestinians there, and they and the Israelis got along well, the Palestinians particularly benefitting from the Israelis' advanced agricultural practices. It's also worth noting that today's Israel generally has no problem with peaceful Palestinians living within its borders, and even during Biblical times there were people of other "races" and ethnicities living with the Israelites, and God commanded the Israelites to treat them well. The problems today, as I see things, are these:

a) People viewing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict only through the narrow lens of the last 100 years, which makes it look as though more blame lies with the Jews, and conveniently ignores the fact that violent Muslim Arabs were the initial "displacers."

b) Violent Muslims, who will never accept even a peaceful two-state solution, because they want all Jews dead, period, and will not cease until that happens or they themselves are dead.

c) Perhaps the most disturbing to me: a seeming indifference by Americans and other Westerners toward radical Islam, and an accompanying tendency to be more condemning of Israelis who are trying to defend themselves. It seems to me that many people don't comprehend how awful and evil radical Muslims are, and I don't see the condemnation of them that I think is appropriate, particularly from so-called "moderate" Muslims in this country.

This convo for me is over. Your view on the settlers of the New World being peaceful just completely lost you any and all credibility with me for your understanding of history as a whole.

So all the settlers were hostile? That's what you're saying, and that would be revisionist history. And let's not forget that not all Native American groups were nonviolent. Heck, a lot of the various tribes fought with each other. Sometimes people speak as though Native Americans were this one giant, unified bunch of people who got along with each other, but they often viewed each other as interlopers. And there was even land here on which no one lived, which would make it fair game for settlers.

If you want to disengage from this conversation, that's fine, but I would just like it to be noted that you seem to be using the Native American issue as a distraction from the main argument here, which is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, a topic about which I've made many detailed comments that you've refused to respond to.

[indeedproceed]

So all the settlers were hostile? That's what you're saying, and that would be revisionist history. And let's not forget that not all Native American groups were nonviolent. Heck, a lot of the various tribes fought with each other. Sometimes people speak as though Native Americans were this one giant, unified bunch of people who got along with each other, but they often viewed each other as interlopers. And there was even land here on which no one lived, which would make it fair game for settlers.

We're in a new age of enlightenment with what we're learning about native american culture in per-colonial America. A lot of the preconceptions I (and I would presume, you) were taught in grade school (like open swaths of land) have been convincingly debunked.

Nick probably took it a little more hostile than he needed to, but the America you're painting there doesn't really do justice to what amounts to one of the greatest genocides in human history.

If you want to disengage from this conversation, that's fine, but I would just like it to be noted that you seem to be using the Native American issue as a distraction from the main argument here, which is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, a topic about which I've made many detailed comments that you've refused to respond to.

I think the disconnect here is that you seem to believe that the Israelis have some sort of heavenly mandate or at least meaningful historical claim to the land, and the Palestinians should either shut up or just go away back to their own people.

I understand that's a very crass representation of many of the points you've made, and if its inaccurate, I apologize. Not my intention.

Nick seems to believe (as I do) that settling the dispute should be a secular matter, and the Israelis have been quite harsh and unforgiving with the Palestinians, and (like Americans are sometimes wanton to do) are consistently using the more radical elements of the Palestinians political spectrum as a scare tactic against any peaceful solution.

I'm not saying the Palestinians are some virtuous and blameless people, or that there aren't parts of their population that fire rockets indiscriminately into populated areas.

I'm not even sure a 2-state solution would actually work. I'm just sick of Israel pretending like everyone else is pushing them around and they're just pushing back. In recent history, Israel has been a bully as often as they're the victim.

[Brendan]

Let's not discuss NA / European colonization here on this thread. Start a different one for that.

I don't buy biblical or ancient land grievances as a reason for Israeli homeland. There were a lot of Jews in the ME at the end of British rule. I've seen different numbers for demographics, but let's say Jews represented a sizable minority in Israel/Palestine and small minority across the region. Maybe it was unfair to create Israel for the Jews, but just pulling out and turning the keys over to populist democracy would have resulted in Holocaust Part 2. I agree with the decision to give the Israeli state land.

In terms of the current day - I believe if the terrorists would stop attacking Israel, Israel would leave them alone and allow them to prosper. It's not the Israelis fault that terrorists run the Palestinian state, but given the choice to protect Israeli citizens or Palestinian citizens, they are making the right call. (And btw despite propaganda here, they actually go out of there way to protect Palestinian citizens too.)

[indeedproceed]

In terms of the current day - I believe if the terrorists would stop attacking Israel, Israel would leave them alone and allow them to prosper. It's not the Israelis fault that terrorists run the Palestinian state, but given the choice to protect Israeli citizens or Palestinian citizens, they are making the right call. (And btw despite propaganda here, they actually go out of there way to protect Palestinian citizens too.)

Sure, Israel has gone out of their way to protect Palestinian citizens, they've also gone out of their way to harass innocent Palestinians. Good with the bad isn't propaganda. Well technically it might be depending on context, but you know what I mean.

I think rather than Palestine needing to 'back off' they both need to trust each other. There is no trust in the relationship, so they can't build anything between them. Every step they make is contentious because they don't trust the other guys to negotiate or even talk in good faith.

How the heck do you moderate that?

[Brendan]

The Israelis have made tons of good faith effort to establish trust, Palestinians respond with terrorism. Just how it goes.

Example of harassment?

[indeedproceed]

The Israelis have made tons of good faith effort to establish trust, Palestinians respond with terrorism. Just how it goes.

Example of harassment?

You're asking me for something up front, but I get nothing but unverified words? I feel like Palestine!

EDIT: I really don't know enough about their peace talks to actually make that joke, it just sounded funny in my head and after the Newtown shooting, jokes feel needed.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/idf-in-gaza-killing-civilians-vandalism-and-lax-rules-of-engagement-1.272379

[Celtics4ever]

Terrorists use terror because they would get owned in open warfare.   They use what they have.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

We're in a new age of enlightenment with what we're learning about native american culture in per-colonial America. A lot of the preconceptions I (and I would presume, you) were taught in grade school (like open swaths of land) have been convincingly debunked.

Nick probably took it a little more hostile than he needed to, but the America you're painting there doesn't really do justice to what amounts to one of the greatest genocides in human history.

I think that discussing Native Americans is getting off topic for this thread, but suffice it to say that the thing I wanted to make most clear about the Native American example is that Nick was misapplying it, saying that the Palestinians are like our Native Americans. The Palestinians, though, didn't arrive in Canaan first before the Jews. The Jews were there long before, never entirely left, and to the extent that they did leave, it was mostly due to persecution by Palestinian Arabs who'd converted to violent Islam. The Jews never wanted to leave, and wouldn't have but for the threat to their lives.

Maybe I did paint a too-rosy picture about pre-colonial North America, but that wasn't my intent. I was just trying to say that I'm pretty sure not all European settlers were violent towards Native Americans, and that there may have been enough room in this vast land for the two groups to coexist, similar to how Israelis and peaceful Palestinians coexisted before the arrival of radical Muslims.

I think the disconnect here is that you seem to believe that the Israelis have some sort of heavenly mandate or at least meaningful historical claim to the land, and the Palestinians should either shut up or just go away back to their own people.

I understand that's a very crass representation of many of the points you've made, and if its inaccurate, I apologize. Not my intention.

Nick seems to believe (as I do) that settling the dispute should be a secular matter, and the Israelis have been quite harsh and unforgiving with the Palestinians, and (like Americans are sometimes wanton to do) are consistently using the more radical elements of the Palestinians political spectrum as a scare tactic against any peaceful solution.

I'm not saying the Palestinians are some virtuous and blameless people, or that there aren't parts of their population that fire rockets indiscriminately into populated areas.

I'm not even sure a 2-state solution would actually work. I'm just sick of Israel pretending like everyone else is pushing them around and they're just pushing back. In recent history, Israel has been a bully as often as they're the victim.

I do believe that Israel has a heavenly mandate, but I'm also willing and able to dissect this situation in a more secular fashion. But even viewed through a secular lens, I find that as far as the basic question of land rights, the Jews were there first. And Arabs had the entire Arabian Peninsula, an area far larger than Canaan/Israel. Yet under the influence of radical Islam, they wanted to take over Canaan/Israel, along with every other place on earth. I've admitted that modern Israel is guilty of some atrocities, but in terms of who belongs where, history is clear that each of the two groups was given a piece of land, and I just can't comprehend why Palestinians deserve some of the Jews' land, despite the fact that Palestinians have their own (much larger) ancestral land, and the Jews have no place else to go.

[D.o.s.]

The last comment I left in this thread got deleted (and quite rightly), so I'm going to try and be polite.


Ethnically, Native Israelis and Palestinians are so similar you'd never be able to tell them apart. They'd both appear "Arab" to your eyes.

The phrase "violent Islam," and the portrait of an unhinged culture is a ridiculous oversimplification of the issue, and I suspect you'd have a similar reaction if I referred to all Christians as "those crazy Christian wack jobs" based solely on the the actions of violent Fundamentalist Christians.

"Radical Muslims" make up an outrageously small portion of the Middle East, and they are heavily outnumbered by peaceful people in every nation, including Palestine, and this applies to the Palestinians in Gaza and living in Israel proper.

Finally, lumping in all the different people of that region into the nebulous phrase "Arabs," who had "the whole penninsula, comes across in print as so painfully bigoted that it makes the rest of your statements very hard to read with any kind of an open mind. They're different groups of people, not one homogenous mass.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

The last comment I left in this thread got deleted (and quite rightly), so I'm going to try and be polite.


Ethnically, Native Israelis and Palestinians are so similar you'd never be able to tell them apart. They'd both appear "Arab" to your eyes.

The phrase "violent Islam," and the portrait of an unhinged culture is a ridiculous oversimplification of the issue, and I suspect you'd have a similar reaction if I referred to all Christians as "those crazy Christian wack jobs" based solely on the the actions of violent Fundamentalist Christians.

"Radical Muslims" make up an outrageously small portion of the Middle East, and they are heavily outnumbered by peaceful people in every nation, including Palestine, and this applies to the Palestinians in Gaza and living in Israel proper.

Finally, lumping in all the different people of that region into the nebulous phrase "Arabs," who had "the whole penninsula, comes across in print as so painfully bigoted that it makes the rest of your statements very hard to read with any kind of an open mind. They're different groups of people, not one homogenous mass.

I don't think the physical appearance of these people groups has anything to do with the issue. This is about who is the rightful landowner.

I also think it's a stretch to compare radical Muslims with radical Christians (who, for what it's worth, aren't really Christian), in the sense that there are so few of these radical Christians, whereas there are thousands of radical Muslims wreaking havoc around the world. Your comment reminds me of Rosie O'Donnell's comment, after 9/11, that Christianity was just as much a danger to the world as Islam (or something to that effect), which was a ridiculous statement. And your putting the term "radical Muslims" in quotes makes it seem as though these people barely exist, or aren't radical, which is also ridiculous.

Besides, a close look at the origin of Islam does reveal an unhinged founder (Mohammed), one who was warlike and spread his religion via the sword, using a "convert or die" approach to proselytizing. This produced a following of people who were just as violent, evidenced by the Islamic conquests of the Middle Ages. Radical Muslims wanted to rule the world, and they still do. I'm not so sure they make up "an outrageously small portion of the Middle East," and would like to see some verification of that claim, but regardless of what percentage they comprise, they are a huge problem, and they want Israel destroyed, and they have no legitimate claim on the land currently known as Israel.

This is not bigotry. It's history, as I outlined in previous posts—the land belonged to the ancient Israelites, and then radical, violent Muslims tried to take it over (along with the rest of the known world of the time). According to the Encyclopedia Britannica's online Academic Edition:

The vast majority of Arabians are ethnic Arabs, and a large number are able to trace their ancestry back through many generations living in the same area. Nearly all speak Arabic, and differences in dialects, though substantial, do not bar mutual intelligibility. Since the Islāmic expansion of the mid-7th century, most Arabians have been Muslim. Differences in sects are important locally, as in Bahrain and Yemen, but the historic commitment of the peninsula to the faith of its son, the Prophet Muḥammad, has done more to unite than divide it.

So while there are, I'm sure, some cultural differences among local people groups, what I said in previous posts holds true: God gave Arabs (the descendants of Ishmael) the entire Arabian Peninsula, and they pretty much stayed there until Mohammed's violent doctrine took hold of the vast majority of the population in the Middle Ages, at which time they tried to impose their will on the entire known world, including Israel, which at that time was getting along just fine with the local, peaceful population of Palestinian Arabs. If it wasn't for persecution by Muslims, Babylonians, etc., Jews never would have left that region in droves. And they never left the region entirely, and they came back as soon as they could. Modern Israel is fine with peaceful Palestinians staying, but the terrorists have got to go, and there's no question that the land belongs to Israel, and also that if this issue was entirely about land (and not also about the destruction of Israel), Palestinians should be looking to their longtime ancestral homeland, the Arabian Peninsula.