Why there is no Palestinian state today

Amen.

Excellent catch, IAMHIPHOP. My circle calls all dark skinned Jews as Sefardim. After the fall of Rome, Spain was part of the Moorish Empire, and then was part of the Ottoman Empire after Suladin defeated Europe in 1187 in Jerusalem. Jews and Muslims freely lived together in Palestine, and probably intermarried, during both periods, with a common enemy of the Europeans during the Christian Crusades. But checking Wikipedia, you are very correct and I have learned something new which is always a good thing.

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

I thought I would take this opportunity to add, for those who don't know, that Abraham is thought to have been born in Mesopotamia in an area near what is now Baghdad, thus sealing the signifance of the area now known as Iraq, in the history of mankind. He migrated to the land of Canaan with his family, into what is now Israel and became the father of all modern Western religion by claiming the existence of only one God, Yahweh.

What is interesting about this history is that it is shared by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. All three mono-theisitic great Western religions have literally, the same Genesis. All three great religions share the same ancestry / blood lines and basic theology. Let's all live in peace!

Part 2 -
We know the rest of the story: WW2 and the Holocaust began and surviving European Jews needed a place to settle after they were dispossessed of land, business and belongings in Europe. The U.N. with support from America and the British who were protecting Palestine, made the decision to allow European Jews to settle in Palestine and created Israel in the process. But note that the land which comprised Israel was paid for at market prices. It was not stolen from the Palestinians as is often asserted.

Until the recent past, Palestinians widely participated in the Israel Parliament, owned businesses, were welcomed as neighbors and generally prospered under the so-called "occupation" of Palestine.

Let these people, brothers by race and history, co-exist in peace. Stop making a war where for hundreds of years peace reigned.

Part 1 - A little historical accuracy is required here. First, the area known as Palestine 100 years ago was not the racial and ethnic tinder box it is now. It is outside forces (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and Iraq until recently) that have created this instability and violence. Historically there are no "Palestinians". It is not a race, ethnicity or a religion, but just a decription of a geographic region, though Arabs living in the area are free to use that term to describe themselves politically today, I suppose, just as Americans use a geography to politically describe themselves regardless of ethnic or racial background.

What is sad, is that before Palestine was stirred up by world events in the 1900s (WW1 and WW2) and the Middle East became strategically important for its oil resources, Arabs and Jews lived peacefully side by side for a Millenium. There was almost no conflict between the two groups, and it is likely that with tension low, there was frequent inter-marriage so that the original "Safardic" Jews were / are racially the same as the local Arabs (my opinion shared by others; gene tests would be needed to prove this).

Safardics are the people from whom all the Jews racially are derived. They are the original inhabitants of Israel since the time of Moses and probably before. Before recorded time, people now known as Safardic Jews were probably a mix of the many tribes nomadically roaming Mesopotamia (Iraq), Egypt, the Saudi and Sinai peninsulas and Jordan Valley. Some of the regional population became Jews by religion and politics, others would eventually become predominantly Muslim (with a few Christians included). It was only after the "diaspora" at the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD that the Jewish people dispersed to Europe, Persia and also Africa.

Most people think of Jews today as northern Europeans hailing from places like Germany, Poland, and western Russia, the so-called Ashkenazi Jews. These are the people that looked foreign when relocated to Israel by the pogroms of the Czars and Lenin and the Holocaust of Hitler. But Jews are historically close cousins of the Arabs with which they rightfully share (and legally own) the area known as Palestine.

Throughout the period of Ottoman rule in the Mideast (post-Crusades to 1920), the Jews and Arabs lived in relative peace and equinimity with each other.

But with the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WW1 (the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed VI signed the Treaty of Sèvres), and the rise of a more militant and religously activist Muslim region, the Mustafa Kemal, agitated the Arabs against the Jews for political gain and to deflect criticism for the post-war economic crisis that engulfed the world (the Great Depression).

Later, in 1938, Hasan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt added more tension to the Arabs in the area of Palestine by seeking to unify the entire Middle East under one Muslim political organization and expunge non-Muslims, which put the Jews in Palestine in the crosshairs. With this orientation, the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood caused religious extremists to align with Hitler during WW2, though they should have hated each other more than the Jews in Israel.

hahahaha, so your argument is that, because the palestinians attempted to defend their lands from foreign invasion by europe, america and the zionists they are to blame? in effect, because they weren't willing to sacrifice their land they are in the wrong.

are you fucking stupid???

HUH??

and oddly enough, while you put up this trash israel is continuing to encroach on what little territory palestinians have in the west bank in direct violation of (the most recent) peace accords and we don't need to go into how many palestinians in gaza are being killed including non-combatants, children, AND JOURNALISTS.

you're trash

Good post. Hopefully this will educate some people on the historical context of the situation....