Israel and Palestine on trial for war crimes

[Yoadm]

Hundreds of thousands of people were prevented from returning to their homes to adjust the ethnic balance of a region, what else would you call it?

Ethnic cleansing is described as the act of actually displacing said people, not preventing their return, and regarding the displacement, there is no solid answer to it.

You're actually defending ethnic cleansing as an acceptable practice? That's certainly an interesting position to take.

No, Im putting it into the context of the time. This isnt the liberal peacefull era many European nations live in right now, and Israel wasnt privelaged with having Sweden or Denmark as its neighbors. It was fighting a war for survival, things happened, move on.

No, palestinian anger is derived from being prevented to return to their homes and having their lands exproporiated.

You don't get it.Reasd what you previousely wrote: Just as palestinian anger over the issue and wanting to drive "the jews back into the sea" is also perfectly understandable.

The Palestinian attempt to 'drive the Jews back into the sea' came prior to Israel preventing their return, or the Palestinian flight itself.

There is also no real indication that the arabs planned anything worse than what the israelis actually practiced: IE: Expulsion.

Ofcourse there was. The Secretary General of the Arab league was blunt in stating that the 'Jews would be thrown into the sea', and the area will witness a killing 'such as has not been seen since mongol times'. Kawkigi stated that he didn't expect 'many or any Jews to survive'.

[ljkeane]

Ethnic cleansing is described as the act of actually displacing said people, not preventing their return, and regarding the displacement, there is no solid answer to it.

The UN definition of ethnic cleansing is "the planned deliberate removal from a specific territory, persons of a particular ethnic group, by force or intimidation, in order to render that area ethnically homogenous". Whether that is done by actually displacing them (which is Jewish groups/Israel certainly did to an extent how much is debateable) or preventing their return is largely irrelevant semantics, it was still an unjustifiable act

things happened, move on.

Again to be honest if that's your position towards ethnic cleansing then I'll just say it's a position I don't find acceptable.

[Yoadm]

The UN definition of ethnic cleansing is "the planned deliberate removal from a specific territory, persons of a particular ethnic group, by force or intimidation, in order to render that area ethnically homogenous". Whether that is done by actually displacing them (which is Jewish groups/Israel certainly did to an extent how much is debateable) or preventing their return is largely irrelevant semantics, it was still an unjustifiable act

The term 'removal' describes displacement, not prevention of return afterwords. And we are not arguing about wether it was justified or not, our argument revolves around the question of 'was it ethnic cleansing'.

Again to be honest if that's your position towards ethnic cleansing then I'll just say it's a position I don't find acceptable.

I didn't justify it. But after the attempted genocide of Palestine's Jews, they did prevent the return of the population that previousely threatened its survival. Is it tragic? Yes. Is it wrong by today's standards? Yes. Did every other country, in far less extreme circumstances do the same at the time? True aswell. You are making the mistake of judging past events by modern standards, and not the standards of the time, because according to today's modern standards, every single RAF officer in WWII was a war criminal.

[ljkeane]

The term 'removal' describes displacement, not prevention of return afterwords. And we are not arguing about wether it was justified or not, our argument revolves around the question of 'was it ethnic cleansing'.

The term "removal" implies removing an ethnic group from a region which can achieved by forced displacement or preventing the return to their homes of people who fled the conflict. Morris (I presume you meant Benny Morris?) who you referred to earlier has pretty clearly said it was ethnic cleansing, although he apparently now supports ethnic cleansing which rather lowered my opinion of him.

Did every other country, in far less extreme circumstances do the same at the time? True aswell. You are making the mistake of judging past events by modern standards, and not the standards of the time, because according to today's modern standards, every single RAF officer in WWII was a war criminal.

Every other country?, you've provided two examples of ethnic cleansing which I said were also unacceptable.

I can give you a rather long list of acts committed by the British throughout history which were considered acceptable at the time which were unjustifiable, again just because those at the time had their reasons doesn't mean they weren't despicable acts.

[Yoadm]

The term "removal" implies removing an ethnic group from a region which can achieved by forced displacement or preventing the return to their homes of people who fled the conflict.

Nope. Ethnic cleansing is pretty direct in its terminology for 'removal'. If one side removes certain civilians, and the other side prevents their return, then it is the first who conducted the 'ethnic cleansing'. In this case, if Israel is only to blame for preventing their return, then it did not conduct ethnic cleansing.

Every other country?, you've provided two examples of ethnic cleansing which I said were also unacceptable.

I can give you a rather long list of acts committed by the British throughout history which were considered acceptable at the time which were unjustifiable, again just because those at the time had their reasons doesn't mean they weren't despicable acts.

Despicable by today's standards. And Ill add another thing: It may have been an injustice to prevent most of the Palestinian refugees from returning, but it would have been an even bigger injustice, in the long run, to do so. Re-mixing up hostile populations would have simply lead to far more bloodshed and civil war in the future. If you look at Lebanon, Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Austria-Hungary or India/Pakistan, you would see my point. Sometimes, the choices are between bad and worse, not good or bad.

[Galactus]

I maintain:

The palestinian population that remained has largely not been a threat to Israel.

Is there any indiciation that those who left would have been?

I mean, certainly there were rabind anti-israelites who left. But the assumption that the vast majority could not have been integrated (to the extent that those who stayed were) seems fishy to me. If the palestinians really were 100% evil then obviously by that logic the israeli-arabs should have been expelled as well, and if they were not, there should at least have been some kind of check on *which* palestinians had been actively supporting resistance. No such checks were made. The population was displaced and then prevented to return *by fear and intimidation and on the basiuc of ethnicity alone*.

[Yoadm]

I maintain:

The palestinian population that remained has largely not been a threat to Israel.

Based on what? Civil wars erupt in mixed populations with different national aspirations. It happened in India and Pakistan, Greece and Turkey, Yugoslavia, etc.. civil wars were later prevented from continuing once the populations were separated. Its hardly an idealistic result, true, but the alternative is much worse.

[Galactus]

Based on what? Civil wars erupt in mixed populations with different national aspirations. It happened in India and Pakistan, Greece and Turkey, Yugoslavia, etc.. civil wars were later prevented from continuing once the populations were separated. Its hardly an idealistic result, true, but the alternative is much worse.

Baed on the fact that there was no real trouble wiht the actual israeli-arabs?

And the US, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland seems to do OK:

And of course, for the third, national aspirations don't just exist but are created in time: Just look at the map 500 years ago.

I also find it somewhat ironic that you use Sweden and Denmark of all people as an example of peaceful neighbours :P You don't know much about the history of the region do you? If anything they are a perfect example of the fact that yes, neighbours can learn how to get along, despite hundreds of years of animosity.

[ljkeane]

Nope. Ethnic cleansing is pretty direct in its terminology for 'removal'. If one side removes certain civilians, and the other side prevents their return, then it is the first who conducted the 'ethnic cleansing'. In this case, if Israel is only to blame for preventing their return, then it did not conduct ethnic cleansing.

The civilian population fled a region out of fear of violence from Jewish groups whether real or exaggerated and in some cases were probably deliberately expelled by Israeli forces and then were prevented from returning by "force and intimidation". That seems to match the requirements for ethnic cleansing to me and a lot of historians, even Benny Morris who supports the act seem to agree. Regardless it is essentially the same principle of adjusting the ethnic balance of a region by force whether you want to dispute the term ethnic cleansing or not.

It may have been an injustice to prevent most of the Palestinian refugees from returning, but it would have been an even bigger injustice, in the long run, to do so. Re-mixing up hostile populations would have simply lead to far more bloodshed and civil war in the future. If you look at Lebanon, Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Austria-Hungary or India/Pakistan, you would see my point. Sometimes, the choices are between bad and worse, not good or bad.

That would seem to be at odds with the position you took in the recent Northern Ireland thread, anyway it's not hard to also think of examples of countries with internal ethnic tensions were conflicts have been resolved successfully without ethnic cleansing. As you've stated in this thread Israel still has a fairly large Arab population, why didn't this lead to more bloodshed?

[Jon AS]

And the US, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland seems to do OK

Only because we are keeping a close eye on those Bavarians. :ninja:

[Yoadm]

Baed on the fact that there was no real trouble wiht the actual israeli-arabs?

And the US, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland seems to do OK:

Neither of the countries you mentioned had significant minorities within them with separate national identities and aspirations. In Yugoslavia or India, the situation would be more similar, since those minorities each aspired to self-determination, which instigated the violance. It was allso true in Western Anatolia, untill Turkey and Greece signed a 'mutual population transfer agreement'. Thus, in Palestine, where there were allready two national groups, each with its own national aspirations, re-mixing them up after 1948 would have created more tragedy than the alternative, of creating two states for two people's.

I also find it somewhat ironic that you use Sweden and Denmark of all people as an example of peaceful neighbours :P You don't know much about the history of the region do you?

I was refering to their modern versions, ofcourse. Each is content with its own territory and does not infringe on the other. In addition, there is no massive Danish Minority in sweden or the other way around.

The civilian population fled a region out of fear of violence from Jewish groups whether real or exaggerated and in some cases were probably deliberately expelled by Israeli forces and then were prevented from returning by "force and intimidation". That seems to match the requirements for ethnic cleansing to me and a lot of historians, even Benny Morris who supports the act seem to agree. Regardless it is essentially the same principle of adjusting the ethnic balance of a region by force whether you want to dispute the term ethnic cleansing or not.

Ill repeat: Forced transfer of a population is ethnic cleansing. Preventing a population from returning is not. Thus, if Israel is guilty of forcefully transfering the Palestinian population, then it can be blamed for ethnic cleansing. If its only act was to prevent their return, then it is not.

That would seem to be at odds with the position you took in the recent Northern Ireland thread, anyway it's not hard to also think of examples of countries with internal ethnic tensions were conflicts have been resolved successfully without ethnic cleansing. As you've stated in this thread Israel still has a fairly large Arab population, why didn't this lead to more bloodshed?

Because that population was too small to have a hope of winning controll of the country. Indeed, now that the Arab-Israeli population is slowly growing as a percent of the total population, ethnic tentions in Israel have risen tenfold in the last decade. Allso, in the countries where the above has worked, either the populations were allready separate (due to forced or agreed transfers), or ethnic strife was not based on a national identity aspiration (as in Lebanon).