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Originally Posted by _Q_
Black September was terrible. I agree. But more Palestinians died during the Israeli War of Independence than Black September.
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Not true.
The Israeli War of Independence was a fairly two-sided war. As far as Palestinian casualties the estimates range anywhere from 3000 to 13000. In Black September the high mark is about 20,000.
The 1948 war was by far the bloodiest war in the entire conflict.
My previous statement about totals might be slightly inaccurate, but that only depends on how you count.
Quote:
Originally Posted by _Q_
Sure, I'll concede that Arab Israelis live a pretty decent quality of life. Even they don't want any part of a Palestinian State if it would ever come to fruition. But also, living conditions in the Arab world are not nearly as poor as Nage makes them out to be. I've been to the Middle East many times. While I wouldn't necessarily want to move there, being an average Joe with a half decent education in Amman, Beirut, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, Manama or many other cities is not a bad life at all. It's no Calgary or Vancouver, but it's certainly vastly better than most places in the world.
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Your discounting the massive wealth inequality. You're talking about the nice places. Also, why is a place like Dubai or Abu Dhabi in the picture? Unless I missed that gigantic oil field underneath Jerusalem that's not happening in any state in that region.
I don't dispute that Palestinians have a pretty crappy life. The constant comparisons to Apartheid and the Holocaust are way off base though. The Palestinians also have to take some responsibility for their situation. They are actively choosing a traditional religious way of life. That kind of extreme conservatism and prosperity are incompatible...unless you sit on the world's biggest oil field and hire an army of Indian slaves to do all of your work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by _Q_
What I'm talking about, however, are the 4 million Arabs living in the West Bank or Gaza that can't escape to the "bastian of right in the region" because they're of the wrong ethnic background. Hell, they can't even move to a neighbourhood within their land that's deemed "Jewish only". Call it what you will, but if that's not racism, I don't know what is.
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Jews are allowed to live anywhere inside the West Bank or the Gaza Strip? No wait, they're called settlers if they do. The punishment for selling Palestinian land to a Jew...death.
The fact of the matter is that you have two entirely separate cultures who want entirely different things. The state of Israel is no more racist than a proposed Palestinian state or a the state of Ireland.
You're also way off base calling an issue of race. The majority of Jewish Israelis are Safardic or Asiatic, which means they have brown skin just like the Arabs. The intermarriage rate between Ashkenazi Jews and non-Ashekenazi Jews within Israel is over 50%. In fact, the rate of intermarriage between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi is so high the defintions really don't apply anymore in Israel. Instead, term Sabra is used to describe the new mix.