Reaction to "Not Stealing Palestine but Purchasing Israel"

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Jun 23, 2011 at 12:28

Dear Dr Pipes:

Thanks for writing this article. What you state is a strange but deep truth. You are right when you say "..... Ironically, the building of Israel represents about the most peaceable in-migration and state creation in history."

If a lot of people peacefully move from one place to another and make a new society in their new homeland, it should be considered a ligetimate way of creating a country. Let us not forget another example of this phenomenon -- the entire western United States was added to the original United States as a result of a purchase).

The irony that you have mentioned works in other direction also. Imagine what would have happened if the Zionists of 1948 had systematically destroyed the culture of the local people. Had they forced everyone convert to Judaism (think examples of forced conversion around the world), had they planted bombs in the cafes and killed innocents (think Pakistan and current Israel), had they forced others to become refugees and leave their lands (think Kashmiri Pundits, think zoroastrians of Persia), had they committed genocides (think Turkey), if all these things had been done and an Israel would have resulted from those things, we would some how have called that nation a legitimate nation! What an irony.

But by the same token, we can not afford to be hypocrites. As much as we do not like the idea of Park 51 (Islamic center in lower manhatten) and the hypocricy of its perpetrators, we cannot deny that building that center after legally purchasing a property is a valid action by itself.

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