Israel

Keep the nazism here as low as possible, please...

I don't think Israel should exist.
Thoughts?

Let's take a look at the history of the region. The Jews lived in Israel and ruled the land for several thousand years. Around 70 AD, the Romans began to exile the Jews from the region. They were repeatedly exiled or massacred under the rule of various Arab Empires and by the Christians during the Crusades. Several Arab empires subsequently took over the land and exiled the Jews. Eventually, the Ottoman Empire took over the region in the 1200s and maintained control until the end of WWI.  While some Jews remained in the area throughout the duration of the Ottoman Empire, they made up a very small minority of the population.

A lot of people say that the area of present-day Israel was nearly deserted before the Zionist movement of the late 19th-early 20th century, but this is not true. According to Wikipedia (not always the most accurate source, but I digress) the population in that area in 1890 was about 520,000. Of those 520,000, there were approximately 20-25,000 Jews, or roughly 4.8% of the population.

To put this in perspective, Israel is approximately the size of New Jersey. The population density in 1890 would have been roughly equal to that of present-day Mississippi (would you say Mississippi is deserted?). In fact, it was more densely populated that the United States was at the time. The Jewish population (as a percentage) in Israel at that time was approximately the same as the Asian-American population in the US today. By 1917, the Jewish population was over 11%.

People sometimes talk about how the Arabs treated the rising Jewish population prior to the formation of Israel, but consider the attitude of people in the United States against the rising Hispanic population. The ancestors of the Jews that lived in Europe had been kicked out of Israel hundreds, if not more than a thousand, years ago. So when they decided to immigrate back to Israel, the Arab population already living there views them as unwanted immigrants (and many were probably illegal immigrants).

Then, in 1917, Britain issues the Balfour Declaration, giving the Jews a homeland in Israel. If you were an Arab living in the area and Britain decided they were going to give the Jews the land that your family had lived on for hundreds of years, wouldn't you be pissed?

Jewish people consider the land of Israel the "Promised Land", given to them by God. However, that is not the belief of the Muslims. To draw a parallel, the land that is now Kentucky was considered sacred to the Shawnee. They believed the "Great Spirit" gave them that land to hunt on. Do you support giving the land back to them now? What if China issued a declaration that they were going to create a Shawnee homeland in Kentucky? Or what if they decided they were going to give Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico back to the Mexicans?

Many Muslims consider the entire region of Palestine as their holy land, just as the Jews do. Do you understand where they are coming from when they are so adament about this issue?

Granted, it has been 60 years since Israel was officially made a nation and the Arabs need to get over it. Yet, they refuse to let it go and will likely stop at nothing until Israel is no more.

This is one of those issues where religion gets in the way of rational behavior (on both sides). If Israel wasn't the "Promised Land", the Jewish people would have been happy to take refuge in any country in which they were treated as equal citizens. If it wasn't the "holy land" for Muslims, they would have let the dispute go by now. In the end, one group or the other will probably be completely destroyed. In the meantime, the United States is caught in the middle.