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Palestine Quiz
Yaakov Kirschen, The Jerusalem Post, Dry Bones
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13 Responses to “Palestine Quiz”
That's very rich, considering that the argument seems to be that you can't found a country that wasn't already there. Considering that Israel was created pretty much out of nothing, based solely on the “historical” (milenia ago) homeland of the Jews, to see someone argue that Palestinians shouldn't have their own country because they didn't have an official one before is deeply ironic.
But then that's Dry Bones for you. I've yet to see a single strip where he expresses even a modicum of human compassion or recognition that Palestinians are capable of suffering and that Israel is EVER at fault.
What Lynx' first paragraph said.
This cartoon is really offensive, and I can't believe you're just putting it up there without editorial. Is it supposed to entertain Moderate Voice readers or is this like quoting the words of some extremist to keep us informed on what the crazies think?
Besides which:
Palestine, Palaistina = Land of the Philistines.
I don't think the point is that a country can't be created, it's just that there's a need to rebut the Palestinian claim that the Jews who settled the territory during the British mandate had no claim to form their own homeland there because it was somehow a “Palestinian” homeland that they were settling.
And remember too that the greater territory under the British mandate following WWI had already been divided to give a large area to a new Arab state that is now known as Jordan. The argument of the Arab settlers in the remaining territory is that the rest of the land should be another Arab state, “Palestine”, even though they have no greater historic claim to the territory than the Jewish settlers do.
It was the Arab Palestinians who rejected the two state solution from the outset and immediately went to war against Israel, and its their claims to complete control over the region that are being rebutted here.
I think the purpose of this cartoon is to deny that Palestinians have any right to live in these territories except under the political control of the Israeli nation. Since they had no official Palestinian nation when Israel was founded, they therefore can be summarily kicked off the land.
The problem is that, while the Palestinian people indeed had no single state, the people have lived there for hundreds and hundreds of years. The government that they were a part of shifted every so often, but the people have always been there. These same arguments — that they had no official state — have been used repeatedly to justify taking land from its inhabitants for at least 200 years now. In Australia, they just recognized in the last few years that there were people who lived there for, I believe, thousands of years before Europeans showed up and those people, therefore, might therefore have some ownership of that land.
I think, CStanley, the problem I have in your argument, and that seems latent in the cartoon, is that the Palestinian/Arab people had no political state and therefore “they have no greater historic claim to the territory than the Jewish settlers do.” That has to be false. If you live somewhere, you have some claim to it. If not, it basically asserts that all the Arabs/Palestinians were squatters — for hundreds of years.
I'm not arguing against the existence of Israel. I'm arguing against the idea that only statehood grants rights of ownership to land.
Pacatrue, there's a difference between the rights of individuals to own land and the rights of a group to claim sovereignty over a land. You're not suggesting that Australia is granting rights for the aboriginals to cede and form their own country, are you?
And you're ignoring the fact that it is the Palestinians who claim a greater right to sovereign rule over the entire territory, refusing to acknowledge that the UN charter permitted the Jewish settlers to create a nation on a partitioned section of the territory. It was the Arab residents who completely rejected any Jewish claims, not the other way around (though of course it isn't that black and white, and certainly some of the early Jewish leaders like Ben Gurion appeared to be duplicitous in accepting the partition plan while privately claiming that Isreal truly had the right to the entire territory.)
What I'm saying is that we can't pretend people who used to live in an area have no legal rights because they weren't a nation. There must be a middle ground.
Of course, paca- which is why the Palestinians do have a right to create a government. However, they don't have the right to insist that the Isrealis don't also have that right- and that's been their unyielding position since prior to the 1947 UN resolution.
I don't usually comment in comments due to my zany schedule which barely allows me time to blog but: to those upset that we ran this cartoon, in case you haven't noticed, we run Cagle Cartoons that are the work of many cartoonists who have different viewpoints. There are some that are over the line. This one is decidedly not. In fact, if readers use it as a take off point to intelligently discuss the issues raised it serves a useful point. And the discussion above seems substantive and admirable. There are cartoons that are over the line. This one is not. Cartoonists do and can take strong stands. Later today a cartoon will go up on TMV from a decidedly non-pro Israel country and I'll probably get complaints about that. But we do and will continue to run cartoons that we think will raise issues people can think about and discuss and this includes many cartoons that yours truly does not agree with. Now I'm bowing out and getting offline but the discussion here is a good one (even if it is a can of worms!)
Just to be clear Joe, I don't think this cartoon is “over the line” in the slightest, and I understand that the cartoons featured do not neccesarily reflect the views of TMV. Besides, it would probably be physically impossible to reflect the views of TMV bloggers on the subject of Israel in a single cartoon.
CStanley, I agree that it is valid to dispute the pre-existence of a Palestinian state or pseudostate before the existence of Israel. I do believe that the grandfather of almost any Palestinian today was probably born pretty close to where they currently live, a claim that cannot be made by all but a minority of Israelis (though not ALL Israelis descend from European stock, which is important to note). I happen to believe that the cartoonists intention is to invalidate the concept of a Palestinian state and not merely dispute unreasonable claims of the official existence of Palestine before Israel. My reasons are that I follow this particular cartoonist and he is a radical Zionist (to the ignorant: Zionist is not merely an anti-semitic slur, look it up). Most of his cartoons involve undermining any and all Palestinian claims to autonomy, up to and including accusing them of “faking” atrocities.
Lynx, personally I don't think the 'grandfather' argument holds water, because the fact still remains that the Jews who immigrated to the region during the decades prior to the creation of the state of Israel had a legal right to do so under the British Mandate. People obviously can debate whether or not they feel that was ethically or morally correct, but since the Palestinians did not control the land as a whole, they can't claim that their longer family roots give them a greater moral authority to rule the entire region IMO.
As to your opinion of the cartoonist's larger body of work, I have no opinion because I don't follow him or know of these other cartoons that you speak of. Certainly there are people who are much more zealous Zionists than myself, and he may be one of them. I just find nothing wrong with the gist of this particular cartoon, and I don't interpret it the way that you and pacatrue did. If that's because of lack of context of the rest of his work, so be it- I can only comment on what I see before me.
peten 5 hours ago
…………. Is it supposed to entertain Moderate Voice readers or is this like quoting the words of some extremist to keep us informed on what the crazies think?
I ask myself the same thing when I see posts from Mullen and Kattenburg.
As a Jew who just spent the last 6 months, mostly in Israel, considering Aliyah, this cartoon captures the current mood of the Israel. Most Israelis believe that since the Palestinians never had a state before they don't need one now. When polls ask Israeli Jews (arabs are not part of Israel's polling on 99% of the polls) about a two state solution, the majority still is positive. However, when you drill down to find out what kind of state they mean for the Palestinians, it's clear they are only talking about autonomous “reservations”. No military, no control over any border, no control of water or mineral rights, no right to commercial aviation or sea traffic, no ability to enter treaties of any kind even on trade. Everyone and everything entering or exiting this Palestinian “state” would be subject to Israel's approval. In short, the Palestinian government would police and govern cities and villages on behalf of Israel. ____This has been the plan of the settlers for decades (I know – 35 of them are my relatives). The settlers and their supporters in the government have set about carving up the west bank with 100+ ever expanding settlements and 120+ outposts. Do not be fooled by Bibi's offer to disband some outposts – it's just a shell game. For example, Moaz Esther has been taken down and rebuilt at least 4 times. By next week all the structures will be rebuilt and hooked up to the electrical and water grids again. ____I find it hard to believe that Israel thinks it can get away with keeping people stateless on reservations but you keep hearing that if it was good enough for the American Indians, it's good enough for the Palestinians.(Israelis seem to forget native Americans are citizens and get to vote – an anathema to Israel). We shall see where this ends up, but I rejected Aliyah because I don't think the future of Israel is very positive. Unless they very quickly offer a viable and Just Palestinian state, they will either end up with a one state solution and the loss of the Jewish homeland or they will end up being an outcast in the world at large.