Hebrew4Christians, praying for Israel, Palestinians, etc

[Rose of Shushan]

Marie I am replying to you in this thread since Vic specifically asked for it in the other one where we were discussing.

Quote:From all my reading and understanding about Israel is that there were Arabs living in Israel, but mostly normads. The Palestinians, were Arabs, mostly from Syria, Arafat was a Syrian who started the PLO. There is no Palestinian nation, language or country.

The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) reports that, according to Ottoman records, in 1878 there were 403,795 Muslims, 43,659 Christians and 15,011 Jews in the Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre districts of the Ottoman Empire. There were also several thousand Bedouin and about 10,000 Jews with foreign citizenship. By 1914 the population of Jews had risen to about 60,000 and the Arab population (Christians and Muslims) was around 683,000.

Marie, maybe you need to check out wider reading sources. A good Israeli historian is Ilan Pappe who taught at Haifa University.. He has written a few books that you might want to check out to get true historical viewpoints from a jewish source. In his book A History of Modern Palestine: One land two peoples, he writes;

One the eve of the Crimean War, about half a million people lived in the land of Palestine.They were arab speaking.Most were muslimsbut about 60,000 of them were Christians of various denominations and around 20,000 were jews.In addition they had to tolerate the presence of 50,000 ottoman soldiers and officials as well as 10,000 europeans.

Israel Zangwill, one of the early Zionists , stated as early as 1905, that Palestine was twice as thickly populated as the United States;

"Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to the square mile, and not 25% of them Jews ..... [We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us." (Righteous Victims, p. 140 & Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 7-10)



Here is a link to a scanned page from Ben Gurion's book where he states that jews made up 12 percent of Palestine in 1914
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/...ry873.html

Quote:When Mark Twain was in Israel is the 1800's is was mostly desert and few lived there. It was with hard work that the Jewish people turned Israel into a Garden to produce fruit and etc which is sent to Europe.

Mark Twain said similiar things about Greece yet we don't expect to believe that Greece was uninhabited .The following link addresses the Mark Twain quote and makes a few very interesting points.

http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/...ry845.html

It seems you have unwittingly believed the story that Israel made the deserts bloom etc. As you are a Christian, it is really sad to see you falling for what are essentially lies in this respect and thus defending a system that is totally against everything that Jesus and Torah stand for.Thus I urge you to read and get informed on the other side of the story.You can do it relying solely on jewish sources so that you can be sure you are not getting what some might say are anti semitic people attacking Israel for whatever reason. Read the other side and then reject what you wish but as a Christian you owe it to yourself to get acquainted with facts and the side from different perspectives. From what you've written so far you remind me of myself a few years ago. My information on Israel was so one sided that I look back and cringe at myself!
Here are some jewish organizations that speak and work to promote information and peace on the Occupation
http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

The Coalition of Women for Peace is a feminist organization against the occupation of Palestine and for a just peace.
http://www.coalitionofwomen.org/?lang=en


Jews for Justice for Palestinians
http://jfjfp.com/

http://www.justpeaceforpalestine.org/

http://rabbibrian.wordpress.com/

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/

The Jewish Fast for Gaza/ Taanit Tzedek
http://fastforgaza.net/
There are loads more websites but I don't have too much time now to delve for more and with these you get the idea.

Quote:I would much rather support a Secular Government of Israel than a "terrorist organization" who claim they are the rightful owners of the land.

Palestinians are not a terrorist organization that claim to be rightful owners of the land. Isn't that extremely harsh, especially coming from a Christian? If you delve a bit more into the history of the state of Israel you will see that the Palestinians actually lived in the land for many many years and they're not claiming to own it but just want to live there with equal rights as jewish citizens.
When the UN voted for Palestine to be partitioned in 1947, over half of the land was allotted to the Jewish state, even though Palestinians were over two thirds of the population and only 6% of Palestine was under Jewish ownership.
In 1948, as the State of Israel was established, up to 90% of the Palestinians who would have been inside the new Jewish state’s borders were expelled. As many as 500 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed. And this is why Palestinians refer to the creation of Israel as the Nakba (‘catastrophe’ in Arabic).
There's more info on the population of Palestine at various points in the past 200 years at

http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/...ry559.html

Quote:Hatred is taught! I remember on 9-11 and watching the Palestinians dancing in the streets! I will never forget it.

There's a lot of doubt about whether it was really Palestinians dancing on 911 or not,personally I won't get into it as it's something we won't really know either way.The same goes for the 5 dancing Israelis. Have you heard of those? There's a bit more evidence for those (and their motivation more sinister) by the way but again it's not something I want to get into. Whoever is interested can just google the matter.