[IronJack]

the land Israel took over was just a barren wasteland, for the most part and it has been since the Jews have developed it that Arabs suddenly want to live there. Is that true?

Pretty much. However, it is still true that the Jews did appropriate that land. It belonged to them only in a spiritual sense.

That was then. This is now. Israel is. And they're not going away. Get over it.

[SJackson]

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High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]

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[ruthles]

There's the rub???? They appropriated the land. One can see from this comes the hatred...and it dovetails with the world's hatred of America. The fact that they've made it a productive, modern civilization in the middle of the pathetic, impoverished Middle East leads to JEALOUSY. OUr enemies want to supplant us so they can have what we've been blessed with.

[happygrl]

They did not appropriate the land.

The truth is, they bought it parcel by parcel, plot by plot from absentee Arab and Turkish landowners, who sold it to them at premium prices when the first European Jews arrived in the 19th Century. On these parcels had been generations of renters, Arab sharecroppers, if you will.

It was only after the 1948 War that land was appropriated, after the land and houses were abandoned by Arabs who fled, despite the Israelis telling them they were safe to stay.

It is my understanding that there was also an indigenous population of Jews already present who had lived there since time immemorial.