re legality of the jewish purchase in article apr bnr ca zbib bnr ca writes adam shostack writes sam zbib writes i m surprised that you don t consider the acquisition of land by the jews from arabs for the purpose of establishing an exclusive state as a hostile action leading to war it was for the purpose of establishing a state not an exclusive state if the state was to be exclusive it would not have arab citizens could you please tell me what was the ethnic composition of israel right after it was formed israeli citizens the ethnic composition depends on what you mean by formed what the un deeded to israel what it won in war and no i do not consider the purchase of land a hostile action when someone wants to buy land and someone else is willing to sell it at a mutually agreeable price then that is commerce it is not a hostile action leading to war no one in his right mind would sell his freedom and dignity palestinians are no exception perhaps you heard about anti trust in the business world were there anti trust laws in place in mandatory palestine since the answer is no you re argument while interestingly constructed is irrelevant i will however respond to a few points you assert in the course of talking about anti trust laws they were establishing a bridgehead for the european jews and those fleeing arab lands where jews were second class citizens plus they paid fair market value etc jews often paid far more than fair market value for the land they bought they did not know they were victims of an international conspiracy you know sam when people start talking about an international jewish conspiracy its really begins to sound like anti semitic bull the reason there is no conspiracy here is quite simple zionists made no bones about what was going on there were conferences publications etc all talking about creating a national home for the jews israel gave citizenship to the remaining arabs because it had to maintain a democratic facade to keep the western aid flowing israel got no western aid in nor in or it still granted citizenship to those arabs who remained and how is granting citizenship a facade don t get me wrong i beleive that israel is democratic within the constraints of one dominant ethnic group jews bad arabs personaly i ve never heard anything about the arab community in isreal except that they re there so yes they re there but as a community with history and roots its dead because you ve never heard of it its dead the fact is you claimed israel had to give arabs rights because of non existant international aid then you see that that argument has a hole you could drive a truck through and again assert that israel is only democratic within the unexplained constraints of one ethnic group the problem with that argument is that arabs are allowed to vote for whoever they please so please tell me sam what constraints are there on israeli democracy that don t exist in other democratic states i ve never heard anything about the khazakistani arab population does that mean that they have no history or roots when i was at ben gurion university in israel one of my neighbors was an israeli arab he wasn t really all that different from my other neighbors does that make him dead or oppressed i stand corrected i meant that the jewish culture was not predominant in palestine in recent history i have no problem with jerusalem having a jewish character if it were predominantly jewish so there what to make of the rest palestine how recent is recent i can probably build a case for a jewish gaza city it would be pretty silly but i could do it i m arguing not that jerusalem is jewish but that land has no ethnicity adam adam shostack adam das harvard edu if we had a budget big enough for drugs and sexual favors we sure wouldn t waste them on members of congress john perry barlow
