Solitary Man

Depends on the agreement of the said rights. Ultimately, no one has a right to anything except by which someone or something even mightier allows it. That's basic Darwinism.

No, so they would have a national epic.

Point being?

Well, made-up isn't exactly the word anyone would use - memories of long ago savagery or traditional retelling of conquests (the place was often conquered, being in precisely in the middle of the Hittites and Egypt, and a battleground for everyone to the east).

Philistines are real. I seriously doubt they were ever in Egypt, or that Moses existed as a real person.

I think most Israelis would beg to differ.

perfectidius

[QUOTE]Hmm. So you are saying that there is no such thing as rights unless "might makes right"? Well than, insofar as the English are conquered, we should genocide them and the Jews, and we would be right to do so. No?

One that "fits in" with the other nations.



The point being, which should be obvious to you, is that insofar as they invented the strange and deplorably violent, murderous, rapine, sacrifice, etc in the OT, why don't they code it less violently, more civally, to make them appear to be "the good guys"? And why all the weird stories that don't seem to fit with a story being made up, such as the towns that helped the israelites, and those that opposed them?


Well nothing is "made up out of thin air," solitary man. Everything comes from older material. But why do the Jews keep making God say "I brough you out of Egypt, so believe in me," if everybody knew that they weren't brought out of Egypt? Surely there were existent stories and legends to compete with.


Real what? Canaanites? Nonjews?

Yes, but on what grounds? That they happen to be there right now? Or because they have a "right" to it based on England's "might" in the Darwinian sense of "Right" which you seem to prescribe to?

Daniel

judge

This is just nonsense. What genetic studies are you referring to?

judge

What we know is that it cannot be answered with a yes but can possibly be answered with a no.

Solitary Man

You're equivocating here, conflating two distinct definitions of right, the first a noun meaning "legal privilege or entitlement" and the second an adjective meaning "good or just".

Not necessarily - you would have to show evidence for that assertion.

Probably because it wasn't written this century. You live in a totally different world than then - no one wrote their national epics like that. The Assyrians were all about conquering the enemy, rape, pillage, plunder, destroy. So were the Babylonians, and the Akkadians before them, and the Hittites, and the Egyptians. You can't expect something from the 8th century BCE conform to your 20th and 21st century standards.

How do they not fit?

Sure, and everyone had their own religion too. The Bible is just one Levantine collection of books that was preserved.

Greek invaders, actually. Non-canaanites.

Do you know what question you asked? Your response is a non-sequitur.

perfectidius

Pardon me, I don't know how to work out these quotes and comments. This "multiquote" function still confuses me. This a repetition of the last post with hopefully some helpful formatting.
Huh? You assume they are different? According to you, one has to do with the legality (the justice system) and one has to do what is good and just (according to justice). How can one have a legal privelege that is unjust? Isn't all manmade law based on "natural" law. Insofar as England is "right" (legally) to do whatever they want, just because they have power, how is this a right?

In what way do I equivocate when you said that "England has a right to do with whatever they want to the land, having conquered it," and I say that might doesn't make right? First of all, they don't have the right to do whatever they want, as in, "whatever they want is legally right," since they have their own laws to follow. Do you think the fact that you conquered a people gives you "rights" on any terms--you call them "Darwinian" terms, and then later say that it is "legal" terms--your own equivocation. I said that the Jews had no right to it, and you, strangely, say the Jews did, becaues the English have a "Darwinian based form of legal right" (huh?) "to do WHATEVER THEY WANT to the land they possess."

And of course, England and the Jews exist in no vaccuum, but what they do (by some whim-based darwinian, whatever they want "right"--per your equivication) affects the whole world and every nation, and so we have just as much right to comment and correct these decisions.

I was responding to the one who posted saying that the tales of genocide were to fit the genre of the time of national epic. If they just pretended to genocide people, to be cool, well doesn’t that make them twice losers?
Oh I see. Although it is believed in this century, influences much of our politics and warfar in this century, and is even seen as the very words of God in this century, I should forgive it because back than it was nice and normal to write such things? I think history will not bear you out. There are many peoples and cultures in the anceint past who also would be shocked and dismayed to hear this “the word of God.”

The story seems to me to be overly complex and detailed to be simply an invented national optic without any basis in history. I am not saying its impossible. But insofar as we take the thesis: the complete ancient history of the Bible as believed in by the Jews is a fabrication, seems like it will have flaws in it. Forgive my ignorance, but haven’t Christian archeologists found at least some evidence for the stories in the OT?
So the Jews got the story completely backwards. Rather then them taking the land from the ones who lived there originally, they were the ones who were there from the beginning, and the so called canaanites were in fact invaders?
Pardon me, but I don’t know enough about the topic to make an intelligent response for or against this claim. I have never heard it before, however.
I asked what right do the Jews have to claim Palestine as their own country. Since they were the conquered people of WWII, by your argument, they had no right at all, being Darwinian losers. But since England owns Palestine, by might, they also have the legal (darwin based?) right to give it to whom they choose?

Solitary Man

I think you're seriously confusing legal concepts. Legally speaking, a right is a legal privilege. Rights can be unjust - the noble class had many more rights than the peasants in various places, England, France, Rome, China, doesn't matter. They had the legal right to flog peasants, for instance, in France only a couple hundred years ago (before the revolutions). Is that unjust? No, but it was their right to do that.

Now you're creating a strawman. You see, might does make right, because their laws and the institutions that enforce them would be mightier than the government that would try to conquer whatever they want. The conquest of the Levant, for example, was legal with respect to English laws. There was nothing wrong legally speaking with conquering a part of the world. However, was it just? That's a matter of opinion, to me.

Do you know what equivocation is?

Please try not to misquote what I say, and keep it in context.

Only so much as we have the power and the majority of the people in America (or politicians in power, for that matter) agree to it, then we can interfere by right. However, our power now is weakened a tad bit by the United Nations.

What are you talking about?

Once again, what the fuck are you talking about? Who said you had to forgive it? Gibberish.

Once again, another strawman. I didn't say all ancient Jewish history is a fabrication. I was referring specifically to the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan, and no, no Christian archaeologist has found anything corroborating the story.

Yes.

Great! I'll ignore whatever else you say on the topic, then.

Ah, you're not familiar with social Darwinism, either, are you? They aren't the Darwinian losers, because the conquistadors of Palestine, the British, allowed the Jews to live on that land. The only Darwinian "losers" are the ones that have lost, and right now neither side has "lost". You'll need to correct your information on what social Darwinism actually is, what political theory is, and what legal rights are.

J-D

The historical facts have not been presented in a technically correct way.

Before the First World War, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. (The Ottoman rulers had no claim to the territory except conquest, but their claim was internationally recognised.)

The Ottomans were one of the defeated powers in the First World War. In 1920, the Ottoman Sultan accepted the treaty of Sèvres with the victorious Allied powers. The territorial settlement under this treaty included the surrender of any Ottoman claim to Palestine (along with other territories). However, the treaty was not accepted by the Turkish nationalists who had set up a new government which did not accept the Sultan's authority. Eventually, the new Turkish government, having secured control of what is now the republic of Turkey, accepted the treaty of Lausanne (1923), under which a different territorial settlement came into effect, but one which still involved their surrender of any claim to Palestine.

Palestine became a League of Nations mandate. The mandatory power was the UK. This meant that Palestine came under UK administration, but the UK exercised its role under League of Nations supervision and was expected to prepare the territory for independence. A special clause in the Palestine mandate additionally required the mandatory power to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.

The mandate continued until 1948. In 1946 the League of Nations was wound up and its continuing responsibilities (including in relation to mandates) were transferred to the United Nations. The UK tried to negotiate with the Arabs and Jews of Palestine to make arrangements to follow the termination of the mandate. An agreement could not be reached and the UK announced that it would surrender its responsibilities under the mandate in May 1948. The United Nations established a special commission to investigate the Palestine issue and recommend a solution. The majority of the commission recommended that Palestine be partitioned into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, with an international zone surrounding Jerusalem and an economic union. This recommendation was accepted by the UN. The Jewish community in Palestine officially accepted the UN decision; the Arabs did not. On the day the mandate terminated, the Jewish community declared the independence of the State of Israel.

Note that the UK never claimed Palestine as UK territory, and that the UK did not give the land to the Jews.

J-D

There have been roughly as many Jewish migrants to Palestine/Israel from Middle Eastern countries as from European countries. (What you mean by 'caucasian' in this context I am not sure.)

J-D

Supposing for the sake of argument that's true, what do you suggest should be done about it now?