Film explores Israeli-Palestine conflict
In light of recent events regarding the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict—including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s statement on Monday that it’s in the U.S.’s interest to see the creation of a Palestinian state—the issue has again become a hotbed for discussion. (back to story...)
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"For example, it neglects to point out that up to 900,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed from neighbouring Arab countries. These Jews were assimilated into Israel."
This does not make the occupation of a land and the treatment of a people as second class more acceptable. You are justifying a wrongdoing with another wrongdoing. Giving what Jews (and other ethnicities) had to suffer during the gruesome German Reich, it is very puzzling why similar methods are employed by Israel, like creating Israeli-only streets (compare to "Street only for Germans" [Strasse nur fuer Deutsche]) or eviction from homes (compare deportations to Jewish ghettos by Germans).
"Nor does it give proportionate coverage of the anti-Jewish killings that were happening in the 20s-40s well before the UN establishment of an Israeli state."
Again, you cannot justify one wrongdoing with another wrongdoing. Does killing of Jews make killing of Palestinians by Jews any more understandable or "better" to you???
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Christchurch, New Zealand
May 6, 2009 at 11:01 p.m.
The film does a tremendously good job of presenting the pro-Palestinian side of the debate. The fact that those presenting their views crosses the ethnic divide between Semitic Jews and Semitic Palestinians improves credibility but doesn't detract from the one-sideness of the presentation.
For example, it neglects to point out that up to 900,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed from neighbouring Arab countries. These Jews were assimilated into Israel. The neighbouring Arab countries chose to restrict Palestinians from becoming citizens so that the grievance can be perpetuated.
Nor does it give proportionate coverage of the anti-Jewish killings that were happening in the 20s-40s well before the UN establishment of an Israeli state.
The idea of preventing bloodshed between two ethnic groups obdurately opposed to one another by separating them through population transfer between two geographic regions has been carried out twice in the 20th Century with considerable success. The first is the Greco-Turkish population transfer of the 20s and the Indian-Pakistani transfer of the 40s. Sure it didn't end their antagonism toward one another but it heavily reduced the bloodshed that might have occurred with both sides living in the same neighbourhood as one another without international border controls to keep the hot heads apart.
The suffering of the Palestinians in refugee camps is awful but until an attitude of modus vivendi is applied to the situation, peace will never be possible. Every civilisation has past wrongs it perceives as going unanswered. At what point does one lay it down, and move on, and build a new life?