Jewish right of occupation, thread drift continuation

This is an absurd distraction. Of course its great to recognize that Israel is a colonial project, very much the same as the British Imperial project in North America. Indeed, the comparison is bolstered by the fact that the primary sponsor of the European colonization of Palestine was the same empire.

Also, if one were to make a direct comparison between First Nations Canadians, and the Arab-Israelis, one can continue to find parallels, such as the fact that the Arab-Israelis are legally citizens of the colonial state, and accorded the rights of citizens, even if these rights are abridged by administrative measures that skew the system against them, and do not officially recognize their traditional ownership of the land, and award them proper compensation for their loss.

However, there the similarities end, because once one moves beyond the semi-official border of Israel, as defined by the pre-1967 borders, none of the kinds of rights afforded Arab-Israeli's extend to Arabs living in the occupied territories.

Saying the conditions there are in anyway similar is to suggest that First Nations Canadians live under martial law, are not allowed to travel freely, have their homes destroyed so that they can be replaced by the homes of newly immigrated Israelis. They are not part of, and have no say at all in the decision of the government that imposes its laws, and decides their fate.

Indeed, were all Palestinians living under the direct supervision of the laws of the Israeli state afforded the same rights as Arab-Israeli's this would be a non-issue. But to draw a recent comparison to Canadian history, to say that the current situation of FN's Canadians is the same as the 4.1 million Palestinians (4 times the population of recognized FN's people in Canada) living in the occupied territories, would be to say that FN's Canadians live in a permanent state of siege far worse than the Oka crisis.

That would be Canada 100 years ago. To make this comparison, and to suggest that Canadians are hypocritical in denouncing the occupation, or worse, that Canadian colonialism justifies Israeli colonialism is to draw entirely the wrong lesson from history. What was wrong 100 years ago in Canada is still wrong today in Israel, as it is taking place now, in the immediate frame.

While it is the case that Canada is a long way off from compensating its FN's people for policies of the Canadian government in the past, and equalizing its policy in the present, it does accord citizenship, rights, and even recognizes (however reluctantly) that FN's claims are a tangible legal fact, even when it fights those claims tooth and nail. For the majority of Palestinian Arabs living under the boot of the IDF, Israel does no such things.

Of course another big difference is that Jews have lived in the region we now refer to as Israel/Palestine for thousands of years and there has been a continual presence there (though at some points in the 17th and 18th centuries it was very small). In contrast, the British and French and Spanish had zero links to the western hemisphere before 1492.

Stockholm, I'm astounded by the ignorance and Eurocentrism of your post at #9. Never mind the disrespect and misrepresentation of history. Stop, now.

I'm not trying to claim "legitimacy" for anyone. The question was about comparisons between Israel and North American in terms of "occupying" land. One of the differences is that there have been Jews in what is now Israel for as long as there have been Palestinians (depending on who you think the Canaanites were the ancestors of) - Europeans on the other hand never had any settlement in North America prior to the 16th century.

I leave it to other to argue about whether or not this confers more or less legitimacy on Israel or Canada or the United States or Mexico.

I thought she was talking about how you thought Arabs should be grateful that Europeans settlers didn't occupy and destroy all of Arab civilization, as opposed to what they did in North America, instead they should be thankful that the British merely cut out the heart of its trade economy, while making it impossible for an Arab from Damascus to visit their cousin in Cairo by land.

You think that the subtext of the Arabs being ungrateful for being treated as an homogenous and indistinguishable people who could be shuffled from one place to the next like so much office furniture, without regard to their personal rights, affinities, cultural background, fits in the category of humanitarian ideas I suppose? Obviously the Arabs should be thankful that we did not utterly destroy them in order to give everything from the Nile to the Tigris for the foundation of a Jewish state, as originally conceived of by Theodore Herzl.

What more could any people want?

From Wikipaedia:

Constantinople, Turkey, June 15, 1896; Herzl sees an opportunity. With the assistance of Count Philip Michael Nevlenski, a sympathetic Polish émigré with political contacts in the Ottoman Court, Herzl attempted to meet the Sultan Abdulhamid II. Herzl wanted to present his solution to the Jewish State to the Sultan directly. He failed to obtain an audience with the Sultan. He did succeed in visiting a number of highly placed individuals, including the Grand Vizier who received him as a journalist representing the Neue Freie Presse. Herzl presented his proposal to the Grand Vizier that the Jews would pay the Turkish foreign debt, and attempt to help regulate Turkish finances, if they were given Palestine as a Jewish homeland under Turkish rule. Prior to leaving Constantinople, June 29,1896, Nevlenski obtained for Herzl a symbolic medal of honor.[12] The medal was a public relations affirmation for Herzl, and the Jewish world, of the seriousness of the negotiations, the "Commander's Cross of the Order of the Medjidje".

(Five years later, May 17, 1901, Herzl did meet with Sultan Abdulhamid II[13]. The Sultan, perceiving himself as the titular head of the Islamic world, refused to cede Palestine to Zionists, saying, "if one day the Islamic State falls apart then you can have Palestine for free, but as long as I am alive I would rather have my flesh be cut up than cut out Palestine from the Muslim land.")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl

Excelent. I am glad that you are reasserting the prime directive, which is that empire (Ottoman or otherwise) has the right to determine the future of peoples over the head of those that live there. Israel as we know, is first and foremost a colonial project. An excelent point to bring up, since we can note that the Israeli "Declaration of Independence" asserts the principles of the right of "self-determination" of peoples. An principle that directly contradicts the "right of imperial conquest".

One could say of the Zionists, that they never miss an opportunity to contradict themselves.

I asserted nothing, Cueball. I presented information from wiki elaborating on your comments on Herzl. #25 is a personal attack and #27 I lovely followup on it.

I wasn't questioning  your assertion at all, Cueball. Now what was the point of your personal attack on me?

I was giving another example of Herzl's conceptions of a state.