Friday, August 05, 2005

Partition of Palestine and Israel's Scant Historical Legitimacy

In 1947 the U N paritioned historic Palestine-it passed by one vote. This created the state of Israel. The U N vote was delayed several times until an Israeli-favored tally was assured. Bernard Baruch, super-Zionist and a stock market operator, played a large role in orchestrating American government intimidation and acquistion of reluctant voters. These voters included France, Liberia, Philippines, Greece, Haiti and others. Notably Baruch also had a large part in writing the terms of the Treaty of Versailles which ended World War I. Many historians blame the burdensome terms of that treaty on Germany for World War II. The U N did not have the power of eminent domain over Palestine. Sure, a staged democratic vote could deliver the Israeli state. But the displacement of Palestinians from their homeland only sowed the seeds of the barbaric response of the inarticulate and politically unconnected suicide bomber.

So now, 48 years after the vote charade , some Zionists like the Shalem Center are trying to discover and/or justify a basis for Israel's existence. The Shalem Center is funding a dig that is trying to line up any archaelogical facts that will fit the biblical record. But that is not really going to fix the credibility problem of Israel's past .

A book " The Bible Unearthed " which was written by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman has already done a lot of serious archaelogical research.Their work points to the possibility of Jerusalem and the historic Jews occupying scantly more than a hill top in those biblical times. And thats the real problem. Today Israel is the size of New Jersey and historic Palestine doesn't officially exist. This is probably the mirror image of the realities of biblical times.

America's support of a mythical super-sized Israel at the expense of Palestinians and world peace is not worth it. Israel would be more suitably sized as a theme park- without nuclear weapons.

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