Israel's actions in Gaza is an act of self-defense == Morally and legally

Israel's actions in Gaza is an act of self-defense both morally and legally.

The clip below is from from aljazeera, and also:appears elsewhere on this site.

Tags: Gaza, Israel's, actions, hamas, legally, morally, responsible, self-defense

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dan Smith on January 16, 2011 at 9:03am

They are simply two different nations... There are a number of DNA studies done that show that Jews from all over the world Russia - Morocco. That their DNA is more similar to those of the Jews to the local population.. There is a reason that Jews have existed as Jews in most countries of the world as a seperate people whether it be in France or Yemen... Jews are not Arabs, or moslems or Europeans or Christrians... They are Jews for better or worse.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by mika laiho on January 19, 2011 at 8:05pm

And those jews share common genes with palestinian arabs. Those DNA studies you see. Or do you try to say that jews are race of their own. Cant be because there are no races.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Dan Smith on January 19, 2011 at 9:05pm

I think that is exactly what I mean... not sure why there are no races.......why ?

Definitions for race :

1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.

2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race.

3. A genealogical line; a lineage.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by mika laiho on January 20, 2011 at 8:27pm

I have gone through a hefty amount of geneticist studies about issue. Only a handful of cuckoos claim different. Also :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Race_Question

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Basil Keilani on January 20, 2011 at 5:15am

I find it hard to believe that Yemenite Jews, for example, are more closely related to Ashkenazi Jews than they are to the people of Yemen. One cannot say that appearance has no relevance. It does. They don't look anything alike, and your genetics does affect your appearance though some people want to act as if it does not. Sephardic Jews from Syria I doubt are more related to Ashkenazis then they are to Syrians and Palestinians. It seems highly unlikely regardless of intermarriage that 2,000 years of the Jews who moved to the Roman areas of Europe and Germany and Poland did not mix significantly with non-Jewish populations whether it be Turkic Khazars, Eastern Europeans, Western Europeans etc..... How is that Yemenite Jews are more similar to Ashkhenazis than Arabs when they look so different from each other? It makes no sense.

Many ancient Jews also became Jews via conversion.

As far as Jews from Sephardic extraction and Mizrahi background, they were definitely influenced when it comes to their cuisine, music, cultural views, and even their poetry and Hebrew was influenced in some measure by Arabic. A very vibrant Jewish Sepharidic culture

flourished for centuries in the Middle East. There is no doubt about it.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Chris on January 20, 2011 at 11:06am

Basil Keilani you are quite correct that it is not possible for Syrian Jews to be closer related genetically to Ashkenazis then to Palestinians. You are also correct that for a large period of history Sephardim and Mizrahim flourished with great Hebrew literature and poetry as part of the Arab world; however, it can also be said that what we call " Arab culture " today in such places as Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, etc... has also been influenced by Jews, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Arameans, etc....The only thing is that with time most of the descendants of these people started to view their food, culture, music,etc...as being "Arabic". It is true that their have been middle eastern peoples who lived near Jews who converted and became part of the Jewish population but at the same time there have been larger numbers of Mizrahic and Sephardic Jews who lived in places like Damascus, Esfahan(in Iran), Palestine, who in the past converted to Islam, stopped learning Hebrew or Aramaic because they didn't go to Hebrew school, and they used Arabic everyday and became muslim so they started identifying themselves as 'Arabs'. Same goes for many Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq who became muslim. They stopped studying Aramaic at their Church schools. They would only speak Arabic, and in time they viewed themselves as Arab.

When Damascus was invaded by Arabic speaking Muslims in 636C.E. under Khaled Ibn Al Waleed, the native population of Damascus spoke Syriac(an Aramaic dialect) and did not call themselves Arabs. At that time in history their were Aramaic and Greek writings from Damascus that spoke of food and music from the area. In Iraq there was even more Assyrian literature of that period mentioning that Assyrians already having the Oud, most of the oriental instruments that are called "Arab" today. Hummous and Muttabel were already being eaten in the region as well as olive oil, flat bread,etc... That was already there before Muslim Arabs came up from the Gulf and named everything in Damascus, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Cairo as "Arab".
There was already an Aramaic speaking Jewish population(Mizrahim--not Sephardim) in Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, Cairo, before those regions even identified as being Arabs. Those Jews already had oriental music and food because they were oriental.

It would be wrong to say that Mizrahim "took" food, music, etc..from the Arabs. They never took those things. Those things were already there and part of Middle Eastern Jewish culture because they had never left. Most Mizrahim have ancestors( called Musta'arabim) who never left the Middle East prior to the Sephardi influx.
The Jews from Kurdistan still speak Aramaic and never switched to Arabic. We can't say that their art, cuisine and music is Arab when Jews in Kurdistan have pre existed the Arabic Muslim populations in that region. They already were eastern and who knows if Arabs who came to that region did not actually start eating their food and imitating their music.
They have always had these middle Eastern cultural traits. It is incorrect for us to call the art and culture of nations such as Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Palestine and Lebanon as being Arab. It is just Middle Eastern.
And it would be wrong to say that Jews who never left the middle east took all their culture from "Arabs" when they were part of that culture before most of those people spoke Arabic.

Go to Syria, Iraq, and all the non Gulf region Arabic speaking countries and any historian will tell you that for the most part the populations of those regions were already rich in culture and then they were invaded by Arab Muslims who gave them the Arabic language(which was modified since the local populations originally spoke Aramaic mostly).

In Old Damascus I had Muslim friends who told me that they had great grandparents who were Aramaic speaking Christians who never called themselves Arabs. They called themselves Syriani. Their great grand children call themselves Arabs because they speak Arabic but in the old quarter of Damascus you will find that other then the exquisite Islamic Arabic calligraphy in laid in Bronze, most of the wood work( dominated by Syrian Christians), stone work(pre-Christian era), silk work( was dominated by Jews) and silver engraving(was dominated by Jews) were all there prior to Islam and Arabic.

Mizrahi Jews and Palestinians are from the same family but both groups(especially Palestinians) must realize that their shared music, food, art and ways of life can not be considered something that was passed on from "Arabs" to Mizrahim, when in truth the Palestinians' Aramaic-speaking ancestors and the Mizrahis' Aramaic-speaking ancestors both had the same culture for the most part prior to the Arabic language taking precedence.
Because many Ashkenazis in Israel have adopted Middle Eastern food and Hebrew music from the Mizrahim, that can not denote that the Mizrahim adoptednthose things...Those things were theirs from thew cradle of their existence.
The only thing that Sephardim and Mizrahim adopted from Arabs was their style of poetry. Prior to the Muslim invasion of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia,etc.., Hebrew literature did not possess alot of poetry as during the later Islamic period when Mizrahi writers created a vast Hebrew poetry based on the style of the Bedawi. But let us not take the music, food and artistic influences of earlier civilizations and say it was Arab.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Basil Keilani on January 21, 2011 at 1:16am

Chris, I partially agree with you. I would say that Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians were mostly Arabacized and came from Aramaic, Greek, Jewish, Canaanite type stock. They also mixed with ancient Arabians who were Christian and pagans like Bani Ghassan and Bani Taghlib and the Nabateans for the latter. The people of Mecca have some relation to the Nabataens who lived in parts of Jordan, Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Definitely, most people spoke a form of Aramaic in the Fertile Crescent, but to say people of the Syrian are not Arab is not quite accurate. They are partially Arab because they feel they are Arab and mixed with Arabs, though they are mostly not Arab in ancestry.

For me, hummus and muttabel are other issues. For me, it's a dish of the Syrian region, it's not an Israeli national dish, certainly not for European Jews. The Mizrahi Jews just as the Jews and Christians of Syria who became Muslim (some did not convert) did take from Arabic culture, and Jews also

were influenced by Arabic lingusitics without a doubt. One cannot deny the place of Arabs just as one should not deny the Aramaic heritage of people.

As far as Jews speaking Aramaic in Kurdish areas, I can understand that. I also know that many Kurds converted to Judaism centuries ago. There was a Jewish Kurdish kingdom. It is speculated that the ancient Hebrew may have been an Indo-European Semitic group that took on the Canaanite language. Hebrew is a form of Canaanite, not Aramaic. Thus, a large part of the Canaanite culture had to have been absorbed. I do not deny that the Mizrahim and Sephardim are truly Middle Eastern. They are truly Middle Eastern and the Muslim Arabic speakers of the region mostly got along with them until the 20th century and many Jews assimilated into the larger culture and became Arab-Muslims, I would imagine as did the Christians.

There were times of discrimination, however during a certain Caliph Omar, not to be confused with the first Omar.

I am not a food expert. However, a lot of the dishes we have today are from the ancient past, but also from the time when the Ottoman Empire flourished. There is some speculation that many dishes we eat also connect to the Christian heritage where people used to adhere strictly to a fast.

I am more familiar with other aspects of history. I know that Kibbeh though thought of as a Lebanese dish and promoted as such by the Lebanese is really an Iraqi dish, an ancient one in fact that was eaten by Assyrians.

What interests you in the region? I applaud you for your historical knowledge..

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Chris on January 21, 2011 at 7:42am

Basil you are right on!
Mizrahi and Sephardim have been influenced by Arabs. And people in the region called Arabs have been influenced by local Mizrahi and other influences(Assyrians, Greeks, etc..)

I am interested in this part of the world because I lived in about 21 countries up till now. I am 29 years old and was always fascinated by different languages, music, etc..

The Middle East holds a special place in my heart because it is the cradle of civilization. I spent 4 years in Damascus from June 2005 till September 2009. I tried to find out as much as I could about the beginnings of the culture, cuisine, music, language, etc..of the region. It was so fascinating. Especially the old quarter of Damascus where all the renovations are taking place with the restoration of old Damascus homes(Most of the stone masons who do proper stone sculptures for these houses were Aramaic speaking people from Ma'aloula) You can see in old Damascus the various districts(Muslim, Christian/Armenian, and Jewish)that once held these populations in the same city living together in peace and harmony. It's too bad that Zionism destroyed all that. I do feel bad for Mizrahi too even though not as much as for the Palestinians. What I feel about most of the Mizrahim who came to Israel is that they can't go back to their former nations just like Palestinians can't do the same except for maybe Moroccan Jews in Israel. I heard it is easy for Israelis to visit Morocco. Of course now most Moroccan Jews in Israel have more kids and grand kids who were born in Palestine so there is no going back anyway. I do know for a fact though that it is impossible for Syrian Jews in Israel to return to Syria. My Syrian friends in Damascus told me that many of their Jewish friends would like to return to their villas in old Damascus but can't. The children of these Syrian Jews have a respect for Palestinians but they say that if they can't go to Syria then why should Palestinians in Syria be allowed to come back to Palestine. It sounds harsh considering that Palestinians were driven from their homes in such a short time; however a lot of governments in neighbouring countries from 1949 till the mid sixties collaborated with the Israeli government to bring Mizrahi Jews to Israel.
Was it not the Iraqi government in 1951 that told the Israeli government that they would take 100,000 Palestinian refugees if Israel took 100,000 Jews? How can we then say that Iraqi Jews in Israel have no right to be there?
Didn't the government of Iraq also made those Jews boarding the El Al planes sign forms relinquishing their Iraqi citizenship? And if the Palestinian refugees were so loved by their host Arab notions then why is it that none of them(except for those who came to Jordan prior to 1967) become full citizens of their new countries?
During the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 there were Iraqi refugees coming to Syria. Along with them there were refugees who had documents from the Iraqi government stating that they were Palestinians yet most of those Palestinians are grand children of people who fled Palestine in 1948.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Sussan on January 21, 2011 at 12:18pm

First priority is to refugees who lived in the Holy land and were forcibly exiled by Israel Defence Forces. Everyone else had some choice and already had a country to live in.

If Israel and Israelis are excused for what they have done, the door is open for anyone anywhere to do whatever they like - if they have the military power.