£100 million of British taxpayers’ money supports organisations that fund Hate Education in the Middle East20

The TPA has a right to speak ony ALL tax policies and this is a not only a waste of our taxes, but ahorrent to all decent citizens. Not a single penny should go to fund the superstitious dogma, which fuels hate and murder – not here and not anywhere else in the world.
This government also nurtures and forces the taxpayer to fund the British Taliban, within our own borders. The lunatics are running the asylum, but don’t speak out. In the utter madness that is England today, it’s now illegal to condemn those who would behead us.

I love the people who complain that Israel limits travel into and out of Gaza and demand that it must “make allowances”.
If the UK had a neighboring land area that was run by people committed to vaporizing the country, and they relentlessly fired mortars and artillery at the UK’s civilian population, do you think the UK would limit access into and out of that land area?
If your answer is “no”, please signify by stating “I am a brainless imbecile”.
As far as making allowances, that is – and always has been – a code phrase for “Israel has to give up something else”. Why? Because that is all that ever happens.
When has Arab-controlled Gaza, or Judea and Samaria (the west bank) ever “made allowances” of any kind?
Simply stated, you cannot make peace with, or seriously negotiate with, people who want your country obliterated and its citizens either removed or dead – preferably dead.
If that changes, peace may be possible. Until that changes, peace is not possible. End of story.

Any country that has nuclear weapons of mass destruction can only be attacked successfuly by a pre-emptive strike
The terrorist organisations such as the Haganah , Stern Gang etc started the present conflict when they hanged British Peace keeping troops in the streets of Palastine,
90 % of the ancestors of Jews orginated in Georgia, Russia who were converts. This is their real ‘homeland’ which they left after pogroms, (or holocausts)
If you really want to understand the present conflict , get the facts and read the history of the occupiers. You will note that on the TV programme “Who do you think you are’ even the well educated British Jews were surprised at their ancestry!

Ken Berwitz unfortunately does not know what he is talking about. “There has never been a country of Palestine”??? Take a look at an atlas from the early 20th century please and you will see “PALESTINE” written in capital letters where Israel currently is. It will probably be coloured red to signify that it was ruled by Great Britain. “Who should Israel give up land to?” Obviously to the millions of Palestinians who are the descendants of those who were illegally driven from their homes and land when it was annexed by Jews and who are still either imprisoned in the occupied “reservations” of the West Bank and Gaza or (for the most part) are living in exile in various surrounding countries. They are the rightful inhabitants of that land, not people who are mostly the descendants of people who illegally immigrated in the middle of the twentieth century. The fact that the UN recognised the annexation of other people’s land after the fact does not legitimate the state of Israel. At that time the UN was entirely dominated by the US and the old colonial powers and the views of the indigenous population and the neighbouring countries in the Middle East counted for nothing. There is no way the UN would make such a decision nowadays. The fact that the US and Europe felt guilty about the holocaust meant that we forgot the rights of the existing population of Palestine. This was an appalling injustice and we cannot reasonably complain that the Palestinians continue to demand their land back and take whatever limited action they can to achieve this against a vastly more powerful power. Why on earth shouldn’t they? To make a more accurate analogy with the United Kingdon than Ken does, what would we all do if the population of the UK was all either murdered or driven to live in refugee camps in Wales in fear of our lives? Would we say “Oh that’s fine! We’ll peacefully negotiate a two state solution where we all continue to live in Wales and the usurpers keep the rest of the country?” Of course we wouldn’t. We would continue to fight our invaders using whatever means were available to us even if all we had were sticks and stones while those who had stolen our homes had nuclear weapons and sophisticated attack helicopters. It is quite ridiculous to expect any people to do anything else.

I’m not surprised you say I’m ignorant Ken though perhaps I deserve that for saying you don’t know what you’re talking about – I apologise. However I think some of the points you make are very one sided and you really need to make some effort to imagine what it might be like to have lost your ancestral home and lands and be effectively incarerated in a crowded reservation like Gaza.
I don’t really see how the Balfour declaration is in any sense “original” or has any legitimate power to define what “Palestine” is. But in any case I would suggest YOU read it: It very clearly stated that nothing should be done which would compromise the religious, civil or other rights of the indigenous population so I never understand why supporters of Israel always cite it as somehow legitimising the annexation of palestinian homes and lands by the state of Israel.
You’re right that Palestine was not a country in the sense of a modern nation state (nor was Italy until about 1850) but that does not mean it can be likened to Europe which is a group of nation states. It would be more appropriate to liken the Palestine of 100 years ago to somewhere like Britain before various local tribes were brought together under one sovereign. Of course part of the reason Palestine or its parts did not have the trappings of a nation state is because its population had lived under the rule of the Ottomans, the British, etc. But lets consider how things play out in your analogy with Europe: If we in Britain were thrown out of our homes by some foreign power and had to settle in refugee camps in Wales and Brittany do you think we would be happy to be told “What are you complaining about? It’s only England and Scotland that have been annexed. You’re a European so go and live in another part of Europe!” Of course not. We would say “We may well be European but we are also specifically from England and Scotland and we want our own homes and lands, not to live in refugee camps in other parts of Europe.”
You’re right of course that many Jews were thrown out of various surrounding Arab states without any compensation for their property in reaction to the annexation of arab lands. I think I remember reading that about 40% of Israelis are the descendants of these disposessed middle eastern Jews. I’m not saying for a moment that that is OK. The truth is that arabs who lost homes and lands in Israel were shafted not only by the Jews and Western powers but also by the various neighbouring arab states who took the assets of Jews who they expelled but to a great extent did not use these to provide for the Palestinian arabs exiled from what is now Israel. You are right also that the Israelis have moved on and rebuilt their lives, BUT they have had a viable state within which to do that with the support of the west and particularly with huge financial support from the US. I think it is unfair to say that Palestinian arabs should have done the same. Of course where they have been able to many Palestinian arabs HAVE done the same – I’ve met some who have built new lives in this country. But those who are incarcerated in reservations and refugee camps cannot reasonably be criticised for “not moving on and rebuilding their lives”. While Gaza may not have been occupied for 2 or 3 years I hardly think that living under a blockade, economic sanctions, and fear of death by bombing is very conducive to “moving on”. If I were a Palestinian businessman who has just had his business bulldozed or bombed to bits I don’t really see how I would be able to “move on”.
Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not suggesting that somehow the whole land of Israel should be given back to descendants of arabs who lived there 60 years ago. Apart from being simply impractical there has to be a homeland for the Jews who you rightly say were exiled from their homes. But while those Jews have a viable state we cannot be surprised that palestinians continue to complain that they want their homes and land back when they have not similarly been provided for. And while we may deplore violence we also cannot be surprised that some continue to use what means they have to fight for what they see as justice.

“-Finally, at the end you acknowledge Jews should have a homeland. Well, why not Israel? It comprises about 1/640th of the land area of Arab countries – that’s about 2/10ths of 1% – and Jews have a thousands-of-years history there. If that’s too much of a homeland for you, I’d love to know how much would be ok? Could they have a few blocks in downtown Tel Aviv?”
I, like many others have no problem with the existence of Israel, but I do have a problem with the attempt to create a “Greater Israel”, including parts of Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and all of what was Palestine.

Ken,
Thanks for your constructive answer. You make many good points and you’ve clearly done a lot of research and thinking about this incredibly contentious issue. You are of course right to assume I do not think Jews in Arab countries have been afforded their proper rights throughout the last century. I think only a complete antisemite could deny that to a great extent Jews in both the Middle East and in Europe have had their rights to life, property and pretty much everything else threatened, attacked and infringed over the last century and I do see that they must be concerned to establish a safe and secure future whatever form that may take.
I think the fundamental root of our disagreement may be that you consider that, as you say, “there are almost two dozen OTHER Arab states that share palestinian Arabs’ ethnicity and culture” and you suppose that palestinians whose ancestral lands are now part of Israel could easily go and live in those countries, or at least should be able to do so. This supposes that “the Arabs” and the Arab nations are a far more coherent entity than they are. As I said, this is a bit like saying “There are plenty of other European countries that share European ethnicity and culture”. Firstly, this is broadly true but this does not mean that the British want to settle in, say, Greece or (until very recently) have any right to do so. Also, if Arabs who stayed in what is now Israel have such a great time there why are Palestinians whose ancestral homes are in Israel not allowed to live in them? I wonder if the problem with your view that Palestinians have a choice of many “homelands” is that in fact the various Arab nations are if anything probably very much less unified than the European nations. In fact I understand part of the reason that Israel was able to come to exist in the first place was because the Arabs’ tribalism meant they were very ineffective in representing themselves to the UN while the Jews were much more organised and unified. Of course you can hardly blame the Israelis for the fact that talk of “Arab unity” is really a bit of a joke. But it means that just because there are other Arab nations that doesn’t necessarily mean there is anywhere for Arab exiles from Israel to go. In fact later in your post you recognise this when you say their Arab brethren “would not give them the time of day”. But if you recognise that the palestinians who are exiled from Israel cannot rely on other Arab nations for support then you must surely accept that they have a right to return to their own ancestral homes and lands. You can’t have it both ways, saying they have lots of choices of homeland to go to and at the same time accepting that they cannot do any such thing. Of course you can argue that other Arab nations should help the exiled Palestinians more (and I would agree that it would be a jolly good thing if they did – particularly where their own coffers benefited from the confiscated assets of Jews who they expelled without compensation) but unfortunately that doesn’t help the palestinians much. By the way when I said there needed to be a homeland for Jews who were dispossessed by Arab states I did not necessarily mean that had to be a constitutionally Jewish homeland in the middle east, though I do accept there are good historical and also simply pragmatic arguments that there should be. Of course Jews who were pretty much forced to leave Europe due to pogroms and the Holocaust also should not be stateless, but after the war the British and Americans considered whether a Jewish land should be established in Poland which had been denuded of population by the Nazis and therefore had land available. While I’m not trying to argue that there should be no such state as Israel, when I said the disposessed Jews needed a homeland I meant simply that they should not be stateless. There are plenty of religious or ethnic groups in the world which are not refugees but which do not have a nation which is exclusively theirs. For that matter there are plenty of Jews who have a perfectly adequate non-exclusive homeland such as the United States or Great Britain.
Apart from that clarification of my position, your points of your final paragraph are well made. You are right that Israel is a tiny country and such a small tract of land should not be too much to ask the world to provide a safe and secure home for the Jewish people. The problem is that it is not the world that has to provide it but rather the previous inhabitants of that land. It does seem to me that they are getting rather a raw deal and that the world (especially the US and UK as the former colonial power) should be doing more rather than less to help them. That is why I find it surprising that the TPA is spending its energies using “Hate Education” as an argument for reducing our support for the palestinian territories. I think £100m is really a pretty trifling amount given the harm Great Britain caused in the region over the last century and I think it is entirely unsurprising given the way the palestinians have been treated by the world (by the West and other Arab states, not just by Israel) that some aid finds its way to organisations whose views we find hateful.

Ken. I agree with most of what you say. I hadn’t realised that what are currently called “Palestinians” are not really the descendants of the Philistines who I remember reading were actually probably Mycenean Greeks or “Sea people” who came to that region around 3000 years ago after losing a war in Egypt. Either way the ancestors of the people we now call Jews were there long before that. Really though that probably doesn’t really matter: I was using “palestinians” in the quite loose sense (and as you say probably not very correct sense) that the term is used today to mean “disposessed arabs whose ancestral lands are now part of Israel”.
I’m thinking now that our disagreement arises from the fact that we are looking at the issue from two different perspectives or levels of analysis both of which are perfectly valid. Specifically, you’re looking at it from the point of view of the rights to land of peoples or ethnic or cultural groups or nations as established over a long period of history while I am looking at it more from the point of view of the rights to property of individuals or families or perhaps villages as established over much shorter periods.
If one looks at the issue as you do at the higher level of analysis which we might call the ethnic level then very very roughly we’re talking “Arabs versus Jews”. At that level of analysis it is hard to argue that the Israelis are really asking for more than their fair share. Yes arabs have been displaced by the incoming Jewish population but equally middle eastern Jews were expelled from their homes too. Certainly atrocities have been committed to Arabs over the last century. But then the European nations committed appalling atrocities on one another also (and on the European Jews) but now we have all moved on and built the EC, etc. As you say, you can’t keep whingeing about past injustices forever. Israel is a very small country and the Arab nations still hold the vast majority of land in the region. As a “nation” or cultural or ethnic group do the Arabs or more specificaly palestinians have a legitimate claim to what is now Israel which should take precedence over the rights of the Jews? Probably not.
On the other hand if one looks at the issue at a lower level of analysis on the kinship model as I have been tending to do – what you might call the familial level – then you tend to follow a different train of thought. The reason I think the points you make regarding the history of palestinians and philistines don’t really undermine the position I have been taking is because I am not arguing that “palestinians” have a right to land in Israel by virtue of the fact that they are palestinians and have an established right to “palestinian land” as a kind of “palestinian nation”. You say that that would be a nonsense which misunderstands the history. I am simply arguing that individuals and families who have been dispossessed have a right to their own specific homes and lands by virtue of their previous ownership or by virtue of rights established through tenure of the land over time. Or more realistically if the view of the international community is that they should forfeit those homes and lands for the good of the world and a fair resolution in the middle east then they need to be compensated and provided for. A solution which is fair at the ethnic or national level can still be very unjust from the point of view of such individuals and families who may be no great supporters of Hamas but simply want to live in peace, grow olives, build businesses, etc. This is the sense in which I feel we the international community have a considerable responsibility to the disposessed arabs and I think the TPA should have much more important things to complain about than the 100m aid. Yes the antisemitic statements of some Palestinian Authority members are unacceptable and unhelpful to the peace process, but I suspect one could find similarly unhelpful quotations from more extremist members of the Knesset and from that point of view the TPA report is entirely one-sided.
Not that I claim to be able to propose a solution which is fully fair to all. But Ken I guess greater diplomatic brains than ours have failed to achieve that for some decades!

Charles
Short of one side completely vanquishing the other (which I and, I assume, you do not want) there cannot be any solution unless both parties are willing to participate in one.
Israel was willing to share this land at its inception in 1947 (when the partition was first offered) and 1948 (when Israel was voted a sovereign state by the UN).
The one and only reason for an Arab state of “Palestine” not being created at the same time as Israel, was that Palestinian Arabs refused it. And why did they refuse it? Because the agreement would have legitimized Israel as well as “Palestine”.
Israel has ongoingly been supportive of a two-state solution ever since. If you read the most current polling data you will find that Israeli willingness to peacefully coexist with an Arab state of “Palestine” exists even to this day.
The problem is that Israel has no partner for such an endeavor.
Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and Judea/Samaria (the west bank) make it clear by their actions and deeds that they do not accept the existence of Israel at all. Not in any size or configuration. Their children’s textbooks teach that no part of Israel is sovereign – not one square inch of it – and that Jews are subhuman beings; the spawn of monkeys and pigs.
Gaza is run by hamas, which is specifically committed to the destruction of Israel and the death of its Jews. The west bank is run by fatah, which is only marginally less strident in that same commitment.
Is peaceful coexistence the answer? Yes, of course it is. But who does Israel partner with to achieve it?
FInally, regarding your assumption that my argument rests on long-term history, I assure you that is not the case.
I referenced who the real Palestinians were for the purpose of establishing that today’s “Palestinians” are a concoction; a marketing ploy that was dreamed up by arafat & Co. in the mid 1960′s.
My entire argument regarding Israel is based on its creation as a secular state in 1948 and the events that have occurred thereafter.

george kronfli
WHAT Palestinians? I’ve already posted, and documented, that “The Palestinians” are a concoction of yasir arafat and his pals from the mid 1960′s, and that they never existed as an Arab entity before then.
The original land area of Israel was stolen from no one. The British won the land area of Palestine from the Ottomans (who, I assure you, were not Palestinians or Arabs). The Ottoman Empire ceased to exist.
In 1921, for political and strategic reasons, Britain handed almost 4/5ths of Palestine to Faisal’s brother, Abdullah. It was then called Transjordan, and became the country of Jordan in 1946.
In 1947 the UN split what was left of the land area of Palestine among Jews and Arabs. Jews would get a country called Israel, Arabs would get a country called Palestine.
Jews accepted, and Israel was born. Arabs said “no” so there was no country Palestine. Jews didn’t prevent the country of Palestine from existing, Arabs refused it.
Your obvious hatred of Israel and disdain for the its being a secular democracy is laughable. So is your claim that Israel is “artificial”. What country isn’t?
Regarding “Khazars”, it is true that a good many Khazars converted to Judaism in the 8th and 9th century. So what? How does that make them or less Jewish than any other Jew? You spew that out as if it means something in the hope, I suppose, that someone might be gullible enough to think that saying it with a sneer gives it some kind of significance. It doesn’t.