Cancelled Israel Lorde gig sparks anti-boycott lawsuit

[aranthus]

16. The problem is that you don't seem to recognize the consequence of him saying it.

The problem of the Palestinians believing that from the beginning.

Ken: "There were valid reasons for Israel to exist in 1948(now, in an era in which Jewish people are fully welcome to immigrate to any English-speaking country and live there in absolute peace and safety, can we be sure those reasons still exist?"

Of course they still exist. In fact, there really is only one reason for Israel to exist. That the Jewish nation in Israel chooses to exercise their inherent right to have it. That's the same reason there needs to be any other state. That the Palestinians reject that right is the cause of the conflict. Full stop. If you don't understand that, and the consequences of that rejection for the Palestinians (refugees and no state of their own), then you seriously don't understand the issue.

Ken: "And those doing the rejecting in 1948 weren't the Palestinians"

Of course they were. They may not have been the only ones, but they were the initial instigators of the war. They also fomented the war in 1967 along with the Syrians.

Ken: "The Palestinians had no real say or role in the Arab decisions of '48. They had no voice in any negotiating process and none of the parties who claimed to be acting on their behalf gave a damn about them.

Perhaps not after they started the war, but if they hadn't; if they had tried to reach a compromise with the Jews, then would the Arab states have had the opening to ruin them? The truth is that if the Palestinians really wanted their own state (and that's a huge if as opposed to merely wanting to prevent a Jewish state), then the way to have done it would have been to compromise with the Jews and not give the surrounding Arab states a reason or opening to invade. In fact, the Palestinian leadership was counting on Arab state participation to win the war.

Ken: "BTW, at the time of 1948, had the Palestinians themselves had a real say in anything, what possible reason would they have had to trust the new state to actually ALLOW them to create a state on their own? Why should they have assumed that they could trust the people who were in the process of expelling those 800,000 people and in destroying hundreds of Arab villages?"

You have the year wrong. The relevant year was 1947. Had the Palestinians accepted the Partition Plan (or any compromise) instead of starting a war, then they would have had a state, and there wouldn't have been any refugees to talk about today.

Ken: "It's not as simple as 'if they' said 'yes' in 1948, everything would be fine now'."

But if they had said "yes" in 1947, then there would have been no war, no refugees, and the state of Palestine would be over seventy years old today. So it really is that simple.