Thank you, Carol, for your honesty that Israel exists because it stole the land, just the way a lot of others did, and because they stole the land, it's theirs and because others did it, it's okay. It's easy for Europeans to give away land that doesn't belong to them. Notably, the Europeans didn't give away their own land. I seem to remember that when Hitler invaded Poland in order to usurp and annex Poland, we had a world war over it. Did it make no sense to fight WWII? Should we just have let Hitler do what he pleased and take what he wanted? It's okay to just take land, right? ----- Original Message ----- From: Carol Kirschenbaum To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: 7/27/2006 8:08:45 AM Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: U.N. Special Committee on Palestine Andyrene wrote in response to Stan: >Can it be that maybe you don't think someone has the right to throw >someone >out of their house and move in and leave the homeowner >homeless? ck: You don't read very widely, apparently. This kind of thing happens quite often. Exorbitant taxes have forced Native Hawaiians off their beachfront property--owned by their ohanas for centuries--on Oahu, and currently on Maui. That's one way of displacing a people. Loads of examples. Just in North America, the US appropriate chunks of Mexico, along with Native American lands, after winning battles. (And losing some, too.) In Europe, countries invaded each other for two millenia. Took the land, threw the former inhabitants off, or enslaved them. Et cetera. Everywhere on earth, it's been the same story: fight, conquer, settle the land for yourself, and the losers are lucky if they're not killed off. Why, then, is it so unbearable that Israel keep the land it was awarded (a la European tradition) and fought for? It makes no sense that there's an exception for Israel. It conquered the land. That should be enough. But Israelis are Jews, and the world has separate rules for Jews. It's called anti-Semitism. Carol