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    wellheytherepartnerHamilton Nolan
    7/23/14 1:45pm

    This is one of the finest middle school essays I've ever read.

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      workburner2wellheytherepartner
      7/23/14 1:51pm

      don't you think the logic that uprooted millions of Palestinians, swirled in irrational Judeo-Christian mythology, was middle school logic as well? The Palestinians didn't owe anything to the Jews after the Holocaust. The Germans did.

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      williamhungjuryworkburner2
      7/23/14 2:01pm

      The logic was that Britain owned the land, not Palestinians or Jews, thus they could partition it however they wanted.

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    RoyalcanadianHamilton Nolan
    7/23/14 1:48pm

    This is about as problematic as the "Abolish the Senate" post or Adam's authoritarian take on jailing climate change deniers. Good fuck....

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      Max ReadRoyalcanadian
      7/23/14 1:49pm

      What's "problematic" about abolishing the senate?

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      RoyalcanadianMax Read
      7/23/14 1:58pm

      The fact that you would ask that question in earnest makes me question my dual citizenship.

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    Smut KaleidoscopeHamilton Nolan
    7/23/14 2:04pm

    Before being allowed to post, Gawker commenters should have to take a tutorial on subtext. HamNo is not proposing we get in a time machine and attempt to rewrite history. The point of the post is to challenge people's assumptions about Israel's right to occupy the land it's in. Given the nation's already shaky claim to its own territory, its expansionary policy is all the more unjustifiable.

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      james51380Smut Kaleidoscope
      7/23/14 2:38pm

      Shaky claim. The biggest problem here is primarily that Jerusalem, which sits in Israel, is the holy land for the three largest religions on the planet. That said, Judaism predates (and is the basis of) Islam and Christianity. I'd say they have a pretty solid claim . That said, say the Jewish homeland was elsewhere, Christians could still consider Rome to be a holy land for themselves, Islam has Mecca and then there is Judaism who wouldn't be welcomed in their holy land of Israel because it is governed by Islams and they would risk a similar fate to that which they suffered in Germany. The primary problem with this entire article and most posts thereafter is that we assume than the Islamic Middle Eastern countries are not inherently violent (which they have proven they are) and side on either civil unrest or a genocidal dictator. But hey, let's blame the Jews.

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      williamhungjurySmut Kaleidoscope
      7/23/14 3:11pm

      They have precedent given the rights of military conquest. Britain gave them the land through conquest (Palestinian Protectorate), Israel got more land by winning wars. That is the easiest most definitive way to draw borders.

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    MongoOnlyPawnInGameOfLifeHamilton Nolan
    7/23/14 1:54pm

    Well, sorry—a mystical and empirically unjustified belief in the "holiness" of some particular place is not a reason to march in and take it from someone else, by force. Grow up.

    I think that's what gets me the most about this issue: the calls for a "return", the birthright trips, all the handwringing about a plot of land supposedly promised to a group of people by a desert hallucination. But I digress.

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      MassiveDong420MongoOnlyPawnInGameOfLife
      7/23/14 2:07pm

      Exactly. Why would anyone "return" to Israel when NYC, the real home of the Jews, exists?

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      JoshDigiMongoOnlyPawnInGameOfLife
      7/23/14 2:08pm

      A book says some stuff happened in that arid wasteland thousands of years ago so obviously its worth dying over!

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    Adam WeinsteinHamilton Nolan
    7/23/14 2:13pm

    I find this proposal trollish and wrongheaded for many reasons. That said, let's consult the clam.

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      infodelikAdam Weinstein
      7/23/14 2:25pm

      The solution offered is obviously stupid and trollish, but there is validity in the fact that the Palestinians NEVER did anything to deserve being displaced by Europe's victims. The outcome of the creation of this state is that Europe's Jews have transferred their age-long suffering on to the Palestinians. They were never given a say in this matter. A bunch of rich white Europeans got together and decided to compensate their victims with another group's property. As far as I am concerned, the state of Israel, the US, and the UK owe the Palestinians reparations for taking their property and subjecting them to decades of suffering.

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      Threestar80infodelik
      7/23/14 9:01pm

      If no one's told you yet, Zionism was started after the Dryfus affair in the 1880s, because Jews realized they would always be persecuted in Europe (France in this instance) and thus had to leave.

      Israel was not a "prize" from the holocaust, but the realization of an 60 year movement to leave Europe after a millenia of persecution

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    MassiveDong420Hamilton Nolan
    7/23/14 1:56pm

    I didn't do a birthright trip by a similar logic. I've got no connection to Israel; my family was expelled from/murdered in Germany and came to the US. America is my home and Germany is where I'm from, Israel does not factor in anywhere.

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      ASnowdenofYesteryearMassiveDong420
      7/23/14 2:09pm

      Same. There is nothing more depressing than going to a Kosher grocery in Europe and only finding Israeli food. No blintzes. No farmer cheese. Nothing I grew up eating.

      I kind of wanted to do a Birthright trip just to use up their money, but everyone I know who's gone is now repeatedly posting IDF propaganda all over facebook. No thanks!

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      JediMasterCommenterMassiveDong420
      7/23/14 2:12pm

      How do you think you got that massive dong? Yup: Israel.

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    TenorSoundsHamilton Nolan
    7/23/14 1:49pm

    Looking at it from a completely logical and humanitarian viewpoint, this makes total sense.

    From the context of millennium of cluster-fuck holy wars? I think you're going to get some flack for this one.

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      Slim934Hamilton Nolan
      7/23/14 2:19pm

      There is a good moral argument for carving up a section of Germany for this. On the otherhand, I think there is a better argument for carving up part of the UK and making it a Jewish state. It was Britain afterall that carved up the middle east (along with the French) from the Ottoman Empire in World War 1. They then subsequently went back and forth between the Arabs and Jews concerning what the "Palestine Mandate"'s size and composition would be. It is that government more than any other which is responsible for the current mess by taking it upon themselves to start declaring their newly conquered territories this and that, thus birthing the underlying conflict to begin with.

      Granted, carving up a section of Germany post-WW2 would definitely have been reasonably politically easy compared to any other alternatives.

      Of course, the US could always just ctake up a huge chunk of Federal land (the US government owns I believe 40% of the landmass of the United States) and carve out a nice chunk for a Jewish state in it and basically treat it as an internal country in the US. It would be hugely beneficial to us economically given the huge number of productive Israelis (one of the highest number of engineers per capita on Earth) to have them right next door as neighbors on what was before essentially useless land.

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        Nite_OwlSlim934
        7/23/14 3:55pm

        It wouldn't work in the US for the same reason it hasn't worked in Palestine. If some Americans complained about being ethnically cleansed from the only home they ever knew the Israeli Jews would attack them, take more land and put settlers on it. Them they'd build concentration camps to hold the Americans and bomb their infrastructure into rubble every couple of years.

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        Slim934Nite_Owl
        7/23/14 4:41pm

        .....this argument does not make any sense. There is no way on earth this would occur. The underlying reason this has occurred in the palestine region is 1) 2 wars in which the arabs lost to the israelis causing territory disputes, 2) since this is federal land (owned by the government which means nobody holds property titles to it) there is no one for Israel to "ethnically cleanse". Furthermore, even if they were brain dead enough to try it they would have to contend with the US military, which unlike the underpowered and incompetent palestinians would utterly destroy the Israelis (and politicians would happily call on them to since the Israelis would not actually hold standing in the US government, whereas actual US citizens would be their constituents). It's one thing for US politicians to be buddies with Israel when they're blowing up people who ARE NOT US citizens. That relationship would go right in the shitter if Israelis tried to pull that shit on their voting constituents.

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      MuscatoHamilton Nolan
      7/23/14 2:52pm

      This is exactly what I heard growing up. My mother, whose life even as a young American woman in rural Pennsylvania was upended by the Second War, used to say, after an Old Fashioned or three, "If we felt so damn bad for them, we should have given them Bavaria."

      Sadly, even her prominent role in the local Junior League didn't give her a place the policy table in '45.

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        alvinstraightHamilton Nolan
        7/23/14 1:48pm

        And America's Indian reservations should be in Manhattan.

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