I'm with momo -- such a loss of life would be very unfortunate.

Here's hoping Hamas stops its terrorist attacks and Israel doesn't have to defend itself so successfully yet again.

Along the same lines, here's hoping that those around the world who have been wont to give support and comfort to Hamas and other terrorists by tacit -- and even active -- support, will roundly condemn such despicable and cowardly attacks on the part of these Palestinian douchebags.

And here’s hoping that Israel stops its terrorist attacks too. You did get that the Israeli douchebags  started their attacks before the Gazan ones started theirs, didn’t you?

http://blog.thejerusalemfund.org/2011/04/twitter-timeline-revealing-context-in.html

Oh, btw -- trying to imply that IDF has already named its terrorist response -- and especially that it's calling it Scorched Summer (the title of the documentary detailing the Hezbollah-sparked 2nd Lebaonon War of '06) is pretty scummy.

Here's the link -- but we already know you won't watch it, don't we.

Do you think Israel's policy of genocide by attrition is a humanitarian advance? It lacks the big numbers but, otherwise, the ongoing program to wipe Palestine off the map merits bringing the perpetrators to the attention of the International Criminal Court. The Minister of Justice of the Palestinian National Authority has petitioned the Court but the initial barrier to further action is whether or not Palestine can be considered a state.

You'll have to ask Hamas that one -- since they seem to want to incur perpetual counterattack with their terrorist strikes, it's hard to see how Israel can avoid bloodshed in its own defense. And yes, I was going to ask you where this "Palestine" is ... or ever was. There is no "Palestine" to wipe off the map. The "Palestinian" identity is first and foremost, and continually defined, by its opposition to Israel and Zionism. Without Israel, "Palestine" and Palestinians would be what they always were -- part of Syria. What's despicable, from any intelligent person's point of view, is how Syria, Jordan and the rest of the Arab world are content to allow the disapora to continue, keeping half of Palestinians living in refugee areas and slums. This serves their political and national aims, of course, but if you want to gripe about "second-class citizens," you should take your whining to the Arab states that keep the Palestinians in that status for their own aims.

It will be interesting to see whether Dr. Kashan can make any  headway with the ICC complaint. I applaud his efforts, although his case can't be helped by calls from the UN and Mahmoud Abbas himself for a separate Palestinian state -- a de facto admission, I'm sure you'll agree, that there isn't one at present.

Kashan's efforts might also be somewhat hampered by the fact that the government he works for is a terrorist organization.

The Arab League calls for a no-fly-zone over Gaza!

The explanations of the usual suspects vetoing that will make beautiful headlines.

But I don't want it, thanks. Nor did I want the one over Libya, as my comments have shown. But please, feel free to keep painting with that HUGE brush of yours.

Good to know you're just as prejudiced and morally vacillating as I suspected, though. Thanks!

 Without Israel, "Palestine" and Palestinians would be what they always were -- part of Syria.HH

The usual claim is that Palestine is Jordan. I've heard the 'Palestine is Syria' slogan much less often, but it does show you're in the hasbarist camp, as a simple American citizen, I suppose.

Simple citizenzs of any country – provided they have the wit to read and comprehend, and know even a little bit about history – know that “Palestinians” merely describes that group of people who occupied what was a part of ancient Syria. Jordan is a relatively new construct. There’s no sloganeering involved here, merely knowledge of history. I suggest you acquire some.

The ongoing campaign to gobble up what's left of Palestine includes the propaganda spiel, 'There's no such thing as Palestine or Palestinians'. No harm in genocide if there's no such people to commit genocide against. A cunning wheeze but a transparent one.

Talk about wheezing … you ought to see someone about that.  And propaganda? The terrorists (and those who support them) are past masters (witness the moronically gullible swallowing of such terrorist pap as “the ongoing campaign to gobble up what's left of Palestine” and “no harm in genocide if there's no such people to commit genocide against.”)

 What’s interesting is how many Israelis and Palestinians want and think possible a two-state solution, and how many reasonable people around the world agree that it’s the best course. However, there will always be those like yourselves and your friends – supporters of terror and ongoing bloodshed and division – who think justice demands the destruction of Israel. It’s a shame, but there it is.

The tactic of hasbarists is to say something so obviously false that it's a victory to get a response that leads away from the realities of Israel's continuing crimes to wrangling about Zionist myths.

The tactics of Palestinian terrorists and their appeasers is to throw around the terms "hasbarists" and "Zionists" because they can't bring themselves to use the term Israelis. Those who defend Israel's right to exist (not to mention the right of Israelis themselves to exist) is automatically a "hasbarist". It's a successful tactic Hamas, other terrorists and anti-Semties around the world to sway weak-minded westerners that their cause is a "fight for freedom." Your remarks and those of your pals here is excellent evidence of the tactic's efficacy.

Forgive the German reference eric ... mistook you for momo (infer from that what you will).

Let's try a little exercise: Define "hasbarist" for me, if you would.

"Simple citizenzs of any country – provided they have the wit to read and comprehend, and know even a little bit about history – know that “Palestinians” merely describes that group of people who occupied what was a part of ancient Syria."

You'll be hard pressed to find an "ancient Syria".  "Ancient" refers to the period from the emergence of Cuneiform to the beginning of the Middle Ages.  Damascus was the seat of the Ummuyads and the area may have been loosely known as Syria (though I thnk you'll find it's called Aramea in the Bible) but it cerainly wasn't a self contained entity until it  was a province of the Ottoman Empire - which is well after the Ancient period.

If you're referring to that Ottoman province (which was vast) then you would be including Armenians, Kurds, Chaldean Christians, Lebanese, Druze, Turkomens and quite a few others.  I think most of these would be surprised, if not a little annoyed, to be called Palestinians.  The part of Palestine we now call the West Bank was in that province but most of what is now called Israel was in the Egyptian Eyalet.

Until the Zionists started arriving in large numbers, all the people who lived in pretty much what Palestine is now were called Palestinians, whether they were Jews, Muslims or Christians.  When Israel was created the term was abondoned by Jewish Palestinians and has generally only been used only to refer to Christians and Muslims since then.

Of course, if your well stocked bookshelf on the Middle East has alternative information, I'm sure we would all be thrilled to hear it...

You'll be hard pressed to find an "ancient Syria".  "Ancient" refers to the period from the emergence of Cuneiform to the beginning of the Middle Ages.  Damascus was the seat of the Ummuyads and the area may have been loosely known as Syria (though I thnk you'll find it's called Aramea in the Bible) but it cerainly wasn't a self contained entity until it  was a province of the Ottoman Empire - which is well after the Ancient period.

I cannot stress enough how necessary I feel it is for you to do some more reading before you post something like this. The suggestion that there was no ancient Syria boggles the mind. I am being as serious and non-insulting as I can be.

Just so we're clear: Are you contesting that there was no ancient Syria? Or that present-day Palestine was not part of it?

The most generic book I can point you to is the Bible, which references throughout Syria and Syrians, starting with Genesis.

I'm not at home so I can't give you book or journal titles, but if you google "ancient Syria" and "greater Syria" you'll get more hits than you know what to do with.

Suffice to say, there was indeed an ancient Syria. Here's a map.

I'll try to get some actual book titles from home, but meantime, you might do a little more research.

Very good.  Jean Baptiste Bourguignon, late 17th century.  Some indications of JBB's accuracy can be found by checking out the position of Ethiopia or Libya.  You might also note that the inclusion of a name does not indicate a discrete political entity.  Arabia is marked as if it was a country, for example.  For what it's worth he includes a Palestine separate to Syria.

The other thing that struck me is that there were no "Palestinians" in "ancient" anywhere.  In the ancient World they were Hebrews, Samaritans, Phillistines etc.  Modern Palestinians are pretty much the descendants of these.

The other thing that struck me is that there were no "Palestinians" in "ancient" anywhere.  In the ancient World they were Hebrews, Samaritans, Phillistines etc.

Which largely underscores the argument that Palestine has never been a country, only a geographic region populated my many cultures and peoples.

But why do you think this is an argument for anything? “Nations” are a fairly young invention, “people” and “country” are terms with different meanings in different cultures and different times.

I find this debate of ancient nations funny: there were NO nations in ancient times. What does that prove in your opinion?

Quite right Momo.  Israel was never a nation either, Mike.  It's all Hasbarist invention.  David's Royal City was probably a collection of mud huts and the Walls of Jericho  was probably a wooden stockade.  More to the point, there is not a scintilla of evidence that the Hebrew People trudged off en masse into exile and wandered about for 2000 years, longing for their homeland.  The vast majority of them remained in Palestine   and, along with the other peoples of the region, became the Palestinians.  Some kept their Jewish faith, some became Christians and most became Moslems.  Now they're being treated like second class human beings by foreigners who claim to be the descendants of a history that never happened.

It’s right, BC, but even that is irrelevant: if all of the Hebrews had gone into exile and Palestine been settled by other people who then lived there for centuries, the new inhabitants would own the country, surely? Don’t believe we want a crowd in Anglia, Anglos. Or that the Kenyans would be pleased if all of us turned up in our ancient home, the Rift Valley.

I agree. That would be an extremly unlikely course of events but even if it were the case, the legal precedent it would set would be the most potentially explosive in history - especially for nations based on invasive colonisation like the Americas and Australia.

But the plain fact is that the mythical exiles did not happen.  Indeed the logistics involved mean that they could not have happened.  One of the telling little facts which gets by the Hasbarists is the fact that neither the Israeli government nor mainstream Zionist academics actually make these ridiculous claims themselves.  They allow the narrative to be set by charlatans like  Leon Uris,  Ephraim Karsh or Joan Peters.  Bogus DNA "investigations" or "historical" revelations are never reported directly.  These things are always leaked to friendly journalists whom they know will quote out of context and extrapolate extravagant claims which the "studies" themselves ( if we ever get to see them without subscribing)  never actually make.

The techniques are all detailed here if anyone's interested - though Hasbarists will faithfully dismiss this as a left wing source which cannot be trusted.  it's a perfect racket!

There was a province of the Roman Empire called Syria but, as you can see from the map, it included even less of Palestine than the Ottoman province did.  Before  then it had been a part of many other empires but had never been an entity in it's own right.  Damascus later became the Umayyads' capital but this was before nation states so it was an imperial rather than national capital and the Umuyyads themselves were Penninsular Arabs rather than Syrians.   Syria as a country didn't come into existence until the Ottoman Empire disintegrated.

I said there was an ancient Syria, you said there wasn't.  I never said it was its own country (in the modern sense) or even that it ran itself. But there was most definitely a region known as "Syria" that encompasses the modern state, and that then included Phoenicia and Philistia. It was thus named by the Greeks as early as the fifth century B.C. The common theory is that Its peoples were descended from Arameans -- but as you point out, since the area was often contested and overrun, it was a polyglot that also consisted of Hittites, Canaanites, peninsular Arabs, Hebrews, Assyrians, Persians and, later, Greeks and Romans.  To deny it’s existence is rather odd.

But as Palestine was to the south of it and itself consisted of various peoples (the ancestors of the current Palestinians), I can't see your point.

Well, this is all definitely a tangent, started when eric disputed that Palestine was historically part of ancient Syria, then compounded when you denied there was any such thing. Both odd sidetracks.

But Palestine was not “to the south of it” – it was part of it. Ancient Syria extended all the way down to about where modern El Arish is.

And my point was that, even less so than the created modern states of Syria and Jordan, there was no “Palestine.”

You guys do like to argue about everything. This side-track about Syria has even Momo quiet -- I'm impressed!