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To: Paradox
"Any rebuttals to the rebuttals?"

You want the best, you've got the best.

"Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East that elects its lead­ers in free elections and guarantees rights to its citizens, and honors those rights. Yet Israel is the target of those who claim to be fighting for “human rights.” There are about a million and a half Arabs living as citizens in Israel who elect representatives to Israel’s parliament and who have more rights than the Arab citizens of any Arab state."

Lebanon and Turkey aren't in the Middle East and aren't democracies? Israel denies human rights to the Arabs in the WBGS+Golan, so it's not above the same criticism its neighbors get. As for that last sentence, I can't imagine a middle-class citizen of Syria or Kuwait moving to an unrecognized village.

"Israel was the victim – at its very birth -- of an unprovoked aggression by five Arab mon­archies and dictatorships."

Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq committed no aggression against Israeli territory in the '48 war. Only Egypt and Syria encroached on what was assigned to Israel in the partition. What's more, Syria and Lebanon had elected parliaments and presidents at the time the war began.

"Had there been no Arab aggression, no war, and no invasion by Arab armies whose intent was overtly genocidal"

And that's why hundreds of Israeli POWs were freed - breakdown here. Not to mention Syria pulled out from Mishmar Hayarden, the one part of Israel it conquered, without a fight after the armistice.

"Between 1949 and 1954, about 800,000 Jews were forced to flee from the Arab and Muslim lands where they had lived for hun­dreds and even thousands of years – from Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan and Iran, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and other Muslim countries."

There might have been 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, but in no way did they all flee in that 5-year period. Lebanon was the one and only Arab state whose Jewish community increased after the war, as it accepted refugees from Syria and Iraq. There were no Jews to flee Jordan to begin with. Iran? In the 50s? Iranian Jews didn't leave in large numbers until after the '79 revolution!

"Egypt maintained illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip, and Jordan illegally annexed the West Bank. Both actions were in high-handed defiance of international law and UN resolutions 181 and 194. There was no Arab or Palestinian protest over this. Why? The only conclu­sion that can be drawn is that in 1949, the Palestinians didn’t consider themselves “Palestinians” but Arabs, and in fact the term “Palestine” was universally used to refer to the Jewish state."

Or they were destitute refugees who didn't have much choice in the matter. Noticed any Palestinian protest when Israel illegally annexed its '48 conquests (from Palestinians still in Israel)? That's because they were under military rule like those in the WB and GS.

"Had the Arab nations been willing to accept the UN partition plan, or had they been willing to accept the Israeli peace offer, not only would a State of Palestine have existed since 1949, but there would never have been an Arab refugee problem."

No doubt this dude can look into alternate realities, because he certainly didn't get the idea from the partition of India and Pakistan.

"The refugees would return to their homes only when they could fly the flag of Palestine over the corpses of the Jews."

Whom they were trying to murder in the process of fleeing, yeah.

19 posted on 10/14/2005 9:05:57 PM PDT by stoppage
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