"Vandergraaf, Chuck" wrote:
.....................................
> I'm only trying to see matters from a Palestinian
> perspective, the perspective of people who have been driven out of their
> homeland, mainly as the result of some foreign countries "giving" Palestine
> to the Israelis.
..................................
This is a considerable distortion of history. There were always Jews
living in Palestine, & the Zionist movement focussed on trying to purchase
land. The primary foreign country involved (cf. the Balfour Declaration),
without whom the Arabs would have had a much more difficult time freeing
themselves from Turkish control. Assassinations & other terrorist acts were
carried out by both Arabs & Jews prior to & through 1948.
What Arab apologists never want to recognize, however, is the
responsibility of the Arab states for the plight of Palestian refugees. They
refused to support any type of partition & encouraged Arabs to flee Jewish
occupied territory for a supposedly brief time while they wiped out the Jews.
They maintained their refusal to recognize any state of Israel, with any
borders, for another 30 years, & some still do, while the number of refugees
multiplied and their condition worsened. Certainly many Israeli actions have
been wrong, but the situation of the Palestinians is largely the fault of the
Arabs themselves & their leaders like Nasser, who was going to make Israel "go
up in flames" in 1967.
This whole complex of topics is important but only marginally connected
with science-religion concerns. I suggest that we return to those concerns,
though you may of course have the last word here if you wish.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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