No my family doesn't but I also don't pretend that my country and my families' gain of the land my family is on was in accordance with the law. Each must be judged according to its times.
Ah, so let's pick a standard of judgement that's convenient for you and lets you feel morally superior to everyone else. Yes, we'll say that your ancestors were thieves expelled from Britain and sent thousands of miles across the ocean to go thieve from less developed, more helpless people instead. It was the 1700's, that kind of behaviour was "acceptable" in a world that still largely practiced serfdom and other archaic systems. And because that behaviour was accepted then, you should continue to reap the rewards of that theft while others suffer from it, and go on deflecting the blame by casting judgement on a people who have been fighting for their basic existence thousands of years.
Israel, unlike your stolen home, was formed right after half the world's jewish population was exterminated, and in spite of multiple attempts by the arabs to drive jews completely out of the region (reference: Hitler's Mufti). Couple to that the fact Israel has spent 60 years building a state on land that was almost completely unused and available for settlement (as far as international law is concerned), and they absorbed the bulk of the ~800 000 jewish refugees the arabs drove out from their own countries. How many ways do you want to look at this? International precedent says Israel was attacked by the arabs and had the right to take land from them in defense. Then the arabs decided in 1967 that they wanted an independent Palestine after all, so it's their prerogative to come up with the bulk of the lands needed, unless they're content to build it in areas Israel occupied only after 1948. Again, the jews had just as many refugees from the wars as the arabs did, so from that POV it's still Even Steven. I can't understand why you have this pig-headed obsession with annihilating an entire people and way of life, when there are many other ways for the Palestinians to have a sovereign and viable nation.
Yeah I can really see why 300 years after the fact, your aboriginals continue to suffer at the bottom of the food chain in a land of plenty, but Israel, having existed more than 60 years and having a demonstrable historical attachment to the land, is completely up for grabs from the Mediterranean to the West Bank. Well go on then, keep judging them and spitting on the idea of compromise, if that's what it takes for you to be able to look at yourself in the mirror every morning then more power to you. I find when dealing with complaints, the fair and just principle is to deal with the complaints in the order in which they're served. But I don't expect to learn anything about fairness or justice from a man who goes to bed fantasizing about Israeli kids having their arms blown off, and talks about using the outdated morals of his ancestors as an excuse.
I expect the law to be followed and there is not normal rational straight forward way to look at the law and say Israel has followed it.
Hi. Hello? Yes, hi. Uhm, pardon me for asking, but who the frack made you the arbiter of law? There's this international body called the UN that gave official recognition to Israel in 1949. The recognition is legally binding. There was also a call for Israel to accept Palestinian refugees back into the country after the war, and this was made as a "call", not "demand", making it a non-binding suggestion/request. Maybe you don't like how the UN did things, I don't like it either because of all the historical muslim conquests and slaughters it also legitimizes, but life is unlivable if you can't let bygones be bygones. Then again, I guess once you define your life by spending most of it on the internet looking for ways to hate Israel, you get trapped in that mentality, and the thought of Israel's continued existence is even more disturbing than the thought of perpetual conflict caused by the efforts to destroy it.
Not at all trying to say that Israel is innocent or has acted commendably in the region. Far from it. I believe Israel is in violation of all sorts of international laws, and you could easily argue the same thing for a wealth of countries of all shapes and sizes who aren't themselves under existential threat. But people like me look for ways to improve the situation as it stands, finding a peaceful compromise for everyone. When you talk about Israelis, you make it sound like they're criminals just for breathing the air and for not inviting militant Palestinians to come live right on top of them.
Yes, every Israeli baby is sleeping on stolen land, the question is what are they going to do about it?
They're not going to sit there and take rockets just to keep you smiling, that's for sure. More likely, they will do what every other person accused of living on stolen land has done, like the muslims and christians and hindus and buddhists have been doing for more than 1000 years- they will stay exactly where they are, and bring pain and misery to anyone who tries to make them leave.
Maybe they don't but you'd be hard pressed to find any other country where a family was living in sight of their stolen home and was not allowed to return to the home their children were born in simply because they are the wrong tribe. While anyone of the tribe from anywhere in the world can.
Well that's just a matter of personal opinion on your part. I can go live close to you for a few decades and then start whining about how you guys once stole your house from my grandparents too. In some cases, the claims might be true, and often enough the claim is a load of BS- where's the scientific means of distinguishing? The world is just a wee bit more complicated than that, SAM. Perhaps there are better things to focus on than a 60 year-old shack in the desert fit for only 2 people.