You had specifically identified "Palestinian Christians" and I was following your lead. Please retrace chain of posts.
No you need to retrace the chain of posts because this all started when Brian asked you what you think about how Palestinian Christians are being persecuted.
You then crudly announced that you believe that most Palestinian Christians are not real Christians. This is not only a non-answer to Brian it is extremely offensive to someone who is a Palestinian Christian. In particular, you KNEW that I am a Palestinian Christian and you still had the gall to make such a broad comment as that. Even if you didn't say "All" it is still a wanton generalization. You do this a lot and should stop.
I'm not ignoring you, just got caught up in the shorter posts on the last page here. I expected you to respond to that issue but haven't gone back to read it all yet. I know, I'm taking time out to answer all this so why couldn't I do that first?
That is fine. It is just hard when you seem to skip posts to tell if you are ignoring or just havent got to it yet. It is better to be explicit. A simple, "I am responding to this and plan to get back to some of the earlier posts that I haven't read yet" does worlds for putting minds at ease.
position is on the Palestinian People thing because although Peters' research can't be taken as such solid evidence as I was assuming, there IS other evidence.
Take this for example. After reading this I can think of one of 3 things.
1. That you did not read the statistics I put out that refute your original position.
2. That you did read them and are choosing to ignore them.
3. That you did read them and have not had a chance to respond.
Number 1 and 2 make it seem like you are not debating in good faith. I just won't be able to tell which one it is unless you tell me. Personally I am inclined to believe number 1 because I somehow still think there is a resonable person on the other end of the keyboard out there who will recognize when they are wrong or at the very least mostly wrong.
The research she did was prodigious, and the fact that she started out biased for the Palestinian cause against Israel, and changed her views in the process of researching the book, also influenced me.
You seem to often use this type of argument. It is basically, "This person changed their mind from one position to another so therefore their argument must have more value at face." I nor many of the other people posting here consider this to be in any way a measure of the strength of the argument. If you recognize this cultural difference then you might be able to debate more effectivly.
Nevertheless I admit that the book is flawed and can't be used to prove what I was originally contending about population changes. But there is also no clear unequivocal evidence AGAINST her position either as it is hard to interpret the statistics and as Martin Kramer said she was very likely right in her guesses.
What about the population statistics for the late 19th centry Ottoman Empire? Did you even read those? This makes me think you have not.
So, I'm not going to base anything on Joan Peters any more, and I grant that there is some basis for your view that at least the current "Palestinians" may be mostly those who were already on the land even if they didn't have an identity as a Palestinian People.
But they did. You are not understanding me. Were were called Philistini. And we were also identified by a surname based on the name of our town. And we were also called by our clan name. And also by our family name. In that culture you fit into many groups that all together make up your identity.
I have always said, there was no
national identity but there also was no concept of nation. This is similar to the cultural identity of many of the native american tribes. You can be a Navajo and then also be part of a smaller group withing the Navajo culture and then also part of a smaller family type unit. Yet there is still such a thing as the Navajo people.
Walid Shoebat's saying that he went from a Jordanian identity to a Palestinian identity because of political pressures has to carry some weight. And there is a lot of stuff out there on various PLO deceptions in general that I may get around to digging up if I live so long.
I don't doubt that some of this kind of stuff is going on. I know for a fact that there is deception going on on both sides. Palestinians say that the IDF used 50 people as human shields while the IDF says they only used 10. In reality is was probably something in between.
The WHOLE POINT about why I was arguing against this was that it is not evidence against the existance of the Palestinian People. The argument is equivalent to, "This one guy says that he was duped into being called a Palestinian therefore all Palestinians are fake."
Your point that nobody had a national identity in the Middle East is somewhat reasonable too, but not across the board.
I never said that it was. I was always talking specifically about the people living in the region called Palestine.
but in Palestine there was not even a tribal identity until recently as I understand it. There was more than one tribe living there anyway according to information I already posted to you, including Jews, and they were scattered in the area rather than forming any clear tribal unity.
Thats funny because in actuality any givin individual had many "tribal" identifications ranging from family to clan to town to regional. Just because they didn't wake up in the morning and say the pledge of allegiance to the Palestinian flag does not mean they did not have a common identity.
This could only be proved one way or the other by written texts from prior to the founding of Israel and even from the period of the early Jewish settling there too
Assuming there was an anthropologist or equivalent writing this stuff down at the time.
and if you have produced that kind of evidence, I'm sorry but I simply haven't seen it yet. Not statistics, but written texts that refer to a unified Arab or Muslim group in the area.
What do you mean by unified? If you mean they all identified with eachother and shared the same culture then they certainly were unified. Once again, there
was no such thing as nationalism!
My evidence is my personal experience with the culture. So therefore we have 1
first hand source versus....nothing except claims.
So far the indications are that there were scattered groups of different tribes who did not identify with each other,
So far all you have is a claim and nothing more. You have nothing that is even close to be considered an "indication."
They were scattered in the sense that the culturly was nearly 100% agricultural. Tribes who do not identify with each other is a claim right now and not even a very well defined one. I have already shown that they DID identify with eachother at a level you would expect of a culture with no concept of nation.
and also Jews with roots there for centuries.
Right next to my ancestors who had been there for nearly a millenia. Sorry, you can only win the "we were there first" argument if you go all the way back to Abraham.
This message has been edited by Jazzns, 02-25-2005 15:00 AM
By the way, for a fun second-term drinking game, chug a beer every time you hear the phrase, "...contentious but futile protest vote by democrats." By the time Jeb Bush is elected president you will be so wasted you wont even notice the war in Syria.
-- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
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