Cochise said:
The Falklanders are certainly British. Whether the islands ought to be is more debatable - the sequence of events as it is understood here is that there was no indigenous population, but that might just be our version of events. I've only looked into it briefly, but the history seems to be similar to that of a lot of inhospitable oceanic islands , in that a ship would arrive, claim it for its own, then leave again. And the next ship would do the same.
However, the islands are British by current UN rules. The UN may not be a very effective organisation for refereeing international questions, but like democracy its better than anything else we've tried.
That's not where I would draw a comparison with Zionism. The current Falklanders are British, none would dispute that. However, the Argentinians consider that it doesn't matter, as they're not indigenous, are a transplated population and have expelled the previous inhabitants, so are entitled to no rights. You may argue over that, answer that with the passing of time the dispute should be burried, for example. But in any case, if you compare to the Zionist arguments, Ms Fernandez de Kirchner has a far much better case than them. The Falklands were Argentinian only 181 years ago, not two millenia ; and the small Argentinian population was really expelled. If one admits the legitimacy of the Zionists' claims, then he should admit the legitimacy of the Argentinians' claims too. I am troubled by the strange double standard used by some here.
Quake42 said:
(1) There was a long history of Jewish and Arab settlement in the Middle East. The Jewish presence in the Holy Land, obviously, predates that of the Arabs by some way but regardless both peoples have a long and continuous presence in the area. Both had valid claims to a homeland.
This is the typical kind of Zionist propaganda, that mixes completely different notions. There were not two people, only one indigenous population of various obediences, and it was not even a foreign people ; by 'Arabs' we mean here in fact the direct descendants of ancient Cananeans, Hebrews, Judeans and Galileans, who just became Christians and Muslims, or sometimes remained Jews. In any case, all of this is so old that no community could claim any special right.
The presence there of Jews, a religious community, is of no relevance, as it gave them no right over other communities, and moreover no right to foreign Jews over non-Jewish locals (not more than the presence of Christians or Muslims in Palestine gave any Christian or Muslim from all over the world the right to come to and rule over Palestine). The land has not even been under Jewish rule, except for the relatively short time of the reign of the Hasmoneans. In fact, if we use this bogus logic, the Christians have more rights to rule the 'Holy Land' than the Jews – after all, that's what they did during the Crusades, using the same kind of arguments. As have the Greeks, the Romans or the Egyptians.
Still, as a non-territorial entity, Jews had no right to a homeland.
Quake42 said:
(2) Israel is most certainly not "exclusively Jewish". 20% of the population is Arab, mostly Muslim but with significant Christian and Druze minorities. Israeli Arabs are full citizens. Contrast with the treatment of Jews in Arab countries who were largely expelled after the formation of Israel.
That's easy to say, as Israel had already expelled most of the natives. And Israelian Arabs were not full citizens, they have ben subjects to various kinds of discriminations and many have been deported, even in recent decades.
Where Jews remain in Arab countries, they are citizens. Arab governments did not try to deport them, except to some extant in Iraq, and it is possible that the Mossad had a hand in the climate of terror that led them to emigrate. If so many fled, it was because of an atmosphere of fear around them, but of this, Zionism was also responsible.
Quake42 said:
(3) When the area was carved up post-WWII the reality was that the Arabs got 99% of the land and the Jews 1%.
There I just don't understand. More than 50 % of the area was given to people who were mostly not natives, but immigrants, foreigners, and so had no right of any kind to the land of Palestine.
To come back to the topic, now that Israel is preparing to destabilize the region a little more by recognizing the independance of Iraqi Kurdistan, I wonder what is its position on the return of Kurdish displacees ?
