Panzeh posted:

So the Jewish religion is also an ethnicity?

Yall love playing it both ways when it suits you.

TheImmigrant posted:

Many, probably most, West Bank settlers are best likened to suburbanites looking for cheap(er) housing than they could afford in Israel proper. A large number of them live in what are now suburbs of Jerusalem, and not likely going anywhere. (I see the suburbs being annexed to Israel eventually, hopefully with an exchange of equally-productive land from Israel proper to the Palestinians.)

Some settlers are hardline ideologues - those people are the problem.

Irony Be My Shield posted:

I think the government continuining to build settlements is the actual problem

Like if someone kicks you off your land and bulldozes your home do you give a poo poo about whether the person who moves in was super into stealing your land?

My Imaginary GF posted:

Eminent domain. Would you prefer that those individuals receive higher rates of compensation? It is unacceptable to shoot at, to carry out acts of violence against, someone who has lawfully purchased land for development or who has lawfully rented land on redeveloped land.

Perhaps the answer is for Palestinians to construct settlements and rent them out to Jews. Have any Palestinians tried that, renting out apartments to Jewish inhabitants?

TheImmigrant posted:

Germany gave citizenship to thousands of ethnic Germans from Russia and Romania, most of whose families hadn't been to Germany in generations. Ireland grants citizenship to anyone with a single grandparent who was born in Ireland, regardless of any actual connection to Ireland. Italy and Spain and Portugal and Poland have similar jus sanguinis principles of citizenship, as do countries like Japan and Norway.

Israel is not at all unusual in its law of nationality.

My Imaginary GF posted:

Eminent domain. Would you prefer that those individuals receive higher rates of compensation? It is unacceptable to shoot at, to carry out acts of violence against, someone who has lawfully purchased land for development or who has lawfully rented land on redeveloped land.

Perhaps the answer is for Palestinians to construct settlements and rent them out to Jews. Have any Palestinians tried that, renting out apartments to Jewish inhabitants?

TheImmigrant posted:

I think that's illegal in the Palestinian Authority, renting to Jews.

My Imaginary GF posted:

Eminent domain. Would you prefer that those individuals receive higher rates of compensation? It is unacceptable to shoot at, to carry out acts of violence against, someone who has lawfully purchased land for development or who has lawfully rented land on redeveloped land.

Perhaps the answer is for Palestinians to construct settlements and rent them out to Jews. Have any Palestinians tried that, renting out apartments to Jewish inhabitants?

My Imaginary GF posted:

Eminent domain. Would you prefer that those individuals receive higher rates of compensation? It is unacceptable to shoot at, to carry out acts of violence against, someone who has lawfully purchased land for development or who has lawfully rented land on redeveloped land.

TheImmigrant posted:

It's actually a few ethnicities, but there is without question an ethnic component to Jewish identity. A person named Mandelstam who was deported from Warsaw in 1943 was definitely not an ethnic Pole. Someone with the surname Dahan who left Casablanca in the 1960s was definitely not ethnically Arab or Berber. An atheist resident of Tel Aviv with the name Cohen is not an Arab or a Phoenician or an Assyrian.

My Imaginary GF posted:

Perhaps the answer is for Palestinians to construct settlements and rent them out to Jews. Have any Palestinians tried that, renting out apartments to Jewish inhabitants?

DarkCrawler posted:

How many of those countries exclude part of Germans, or part of Spanish, etc? Jews are not the only native people to Israel, which renders this excuse moot. Multi-ethnic immigrant countries don't have just sanguinis ethnic immigration laws, hence when it happens with places like South Africa, Australia...or Israel, its apartheid. When a random Russian Jew has greater immigration rights then an Arab refugee who was actually born in Israel and can trace their descent back to several millennia, you can't hand-wave that by naming countries with single dominant ethnicity that also accepts several other ethnicities under their umbrella. I could get to Germany and become a German citizen, and a German national. There is no Israeli nationality because Israel is an apartheid state which by its own laws reserves nationality only for Jews. Arab Israelis are poo poo out of luck

Kaal posted:

Oh the answer is clearly along those lines, but it won't happen for another few decades because of politics. But yeah, eventually people will figure out that Palestinians need money and resettlement, while Israelis have lots of money but need land and security, and money will swap hands en masse and the problem will be solved. Kids in the 22nd Century will look back at the Israeli/Palestine conflict and be like, "Why didn't they just do that at the beginning rather than fight for 150 years? Couldn't they see that those ridiculous borders would never work?" And their teachers will just say, "Well they tried, but the world was very violent in the 20th and 21st century and there wasn't much public interest in peaceful solutions to conflict."

Lum_ posted:

So, by your logic, it is entirely legal for Palestinian residents to shoot at or carry out acts of violence against the residents of wildcat outposts like, say, Migron, which was illegal even under Israeli law, because the settlers blatantly ignored the minor fact that they were seizing Palestinian privately-owned land.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migron,_Mateh_Binyamin

But your "logic" fails simply because the West Bank isn't Israeli territory under either international law or Israeli law and thus Israel has no legal right to expropriate any of it. (Helpful hint: this is where you switch from legalistic trolling to might-makes-right ethnic cleansing advocacy trolling.)

Kaal posted:

Oh the answer is clearly along those lines, but it won't happen for another few decades because of politics. But yeah, eventually people will figure out that Palestinians need money and resettlement, while Israelis have lots of money but need land and security, and money will swap hands en masse and the problem will be solved. Kids in the 22nd Century will look back at the Israeli/Palestine conflict and be like, "Why didn't they just do that at the beginning rather than fight for 150 years? Couldn't they see that those ridiculous borders would never work?" And their teachers will just say, "Well they tried, but the world was very violent in the 20th and 21st century and there wasn't much public interest in peaceful solutions to conflict."

DarkCrawler posted:

Multi-ethnic immigrant countries don't have just sanguinis ethnic immigration laws

The Insect Court posted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_sanguinis
And that's without pointing out the fact that "an Arab refugee who was actually born in Israel" cannot trace his descent back to Israel over "several millennia"(hint: look up the words several, millennia, and Arab) and that you probably should not be arguing that those who can trace their ancestry back several millennia to the area of modern-day Israel derive a claim to ownership of the land from that.

The Insect Court posted:

And that's without pointing out the fact that "an Arab refugee who was actually born in Israel" cannot trace his descent back to Israel over "several millennia"(hint: look up the words several, millennia, and Arab)

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

I am ethnically Jewish. This must be a shock to you but some religions have close-knit communities that begin to blur the line between religion and culture.

The Insect Court posted:

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

Come on D.C, step it up buddy. When the time it takes to demolish the central factual claim of your post is dictated mainly by how fast Wikipedia's servers are at the moment, it's embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for you. Reading yours posts is getting to be like an exercise in Larry David-esque cringe comedy.

And that's without pointing out the fact that "an Arab refugee who was actually born in Israel" cannot trace his descent back to Israel over "several millennia"(hint: look up the words several, millennia, and Arab) and that you probably should not be arguing that those who can trace their ancestry back several millennia to the area of modern-day Israel derive a claim to ownership of the land from that.

Disinterested posted:

You do realise that the Palestinian population has been there for thousands of years too, right? I know that whole 'b-b-b-b- they speak Arabic' thing is complicated but it must may be that the Arabic speaking population of Palestine converted when Palestine was invaded by Muslims. In any event, most legal definitions of time immemorial would readily embrace the duration of the Palestinians provable stay, and that is not withstanding Palestinian claims by way of praescriptio to the land given Israeli abandonment.

Arguing that Palestinians do not have at least a good historic claim as the Israelis is ridiculous.

hakimashou posted:

They both have historic claims, and the Jews and Arabs had a struggle over who would own the land, and the Jews won.

hakimashou posted:

They both have historic claims, and the Jews and Arabs had a struggle over who would own the land, and the Jews won.

My Imaginary GF posted:

It is crime for an individual to attack another.

Now, if it was a lawful Palestinian militia attacking Israeli housing, that's different. That's a state-sponsored act, one which would rightfully entail a state response from Israel.

quote:

The transformation of a piece of West Bank land from a Palestinian field into a Jewish settlement has roots in an unlikely place _ Orange County, Calif. _ and in a document that a man supposedly signed more than four decades after the date of his death.

Unfolding from the West Bank's terraced olive groves to a strip mall in a Los Angeles suburb, the story of this posthumous deal offers a rare glimpse into the underworld of straw companies and middlemen through which chunks of land move from Palestinian to Israeli hands. Each transaction further complicates an Israeli withdrawal that would be key to any peace agreement.

The land now houses a thriving Jewish settlement, another of the "facts on the ground" that strengthen Israel's grip on the West Bank and outrage the Palestinians. Such property deals are driven by the settlers' belief the land is their God-given right; the cooperation of Israel's governments, even those that have talked peace; and cash from wealthy donors, many of them American Jews.

In this case, a 2004 document shows a Palestinian farmer named Abdel Latif Sumarin sold a plot long tended by his family near the village of Burqa, east of the city of Ramallah, to a company with an Arabic name. The paper contains Sumarin's signature in clear English script and that of a California notary.

But an Associated Press investigation that made use of court papers, public records and interviews in the West Bank, Israel and the U.S., shows that the document is a poorly executed forgery.

There's no evidence Sumarin ever visited America, his family says he couldn't write English, and public records show he died in 1961. The notary in California says he did not sign the paper either.

The land now houses part of Migron, one of the some 100 unauthorized outposts established by settlers in the West Bank over the past decade. The six acres (2.5 hectares) of rocky soil are caught up in two court cases in Israel and investigations by Israeli police and, it appears, the FBI.

Sumarin's grandson, Abdel Munam Sumarin, can see the trailers and utility poles of Migron from his living room in Burqa. As one of his grandfather's heirs, he has appealed to Israel's Supreme Court to get the land back; other Palestinians who say they own plots occupied by the settlement have joined the suit.

"The connection between us and our land is like religion. It's our family. It's not about money _ you can't state its worth in money. Money goes, but the land remains," said Sumarin, 51, a preacher at a mosque in a neighboring village.

Beginning next to a hilltop cell phone antenna in 2001, Migron is home to 45 young families. It was never officially approved by Israel's government, but the government nonetheless provided security, an access road, and infrastructure for electricity and water.

Anyone who examines the Israeli military's West Bank land records can find the owner of Parcel 26, Lot 23: Abdel Latif Sumarin of Burqa, his name still listed on documents long after he died and bequeathed the land to his children.

The settlers say they purchased the land in 2004, after they had already effectively seized it. They cite a document bearing Sumarin's name and the stamp and signature of notary public D.K. Shah, who runs the Postal Annex, an office-services business in a strip mall in the Los Angeles suburb of Tustin, about 7,600 miles from the West Bank.

Documents signed in strange places _ and crooked deals _ are not unusual in the lucrative and clandestine trade in Palestinian-owned land. Another recent challenge to a settler land deal in the town of Hebron involved forged documents, and a third revolved around Israeli businessmen who set up a notary with a prostitute, filmed their encounter, and then blackmailed the man into signing a sales document in Cyprus.

quote:

Large-scale fraud halts land deals in West Bank settlement of Beit El

The World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division has decided to halt land transactions in the Beit El Aleph neighborhood of the West Bank settlement of Beit El, following the discovery that documents had allegedly been forged for years to cover up the fact that some 250 structures there had been built illegally.

The division, which works to settle the West Bank as well as Israel proper, decided not to contact the police about the matter, but instead alerted the head of the Beit El local council, asking that he address the problem.

Following years of legal complications, the WZO Settlement Division began conducting a comprehensive examination at the start of this year of all of the lands registered in Beit El Aleph. The inquiry revealed that the registration was fraudulent on roughly 250 homes in Beit El, some of them old houses, some recently built. Consequently, the Settlement Division ordered the head of its central district, Yuval Funk, to stop the WZO’s transfer of property rights in the neighborhood until the matter could be settled.

The alleged forgeries of WZO Settlement Division documents were discovered as a result of the evacuation of Beit El’s Ulpana neighborhood in the summer of last year. The evacuation was ordered after it was shown that 14 buildings in the neighborhood were constructed on land owned by individual Palestinians, beyond the boundaries of the settlement.

Following a 2008 petition by some of the Palestinian landowners to the High Court of Justice, five residential buildings in the Ulpana neighborhood, containing a total of 30 apartments, were demolished. The fate of the remaining buildings on Palestinian-owned land is still pending in court.

The buildings were developed by the Company for the Development of Beit El's Yeshiva Complex. The firm's CEO, Yoel Tzur, has ties with officials associated with the Beit El yeshiva, including former Knesset member Yaakov Katz.

Of the 30 apartments that were torn down, 27 had been occupied by rental tenants. Only three had been sold to residents of the buildings.

It was in the course of efforts to head off the demolition that the owners of those three apartments became convinced they had been the victims of fraud on the part of the yeshiva. Two of the three families settled their claims for a cash payment of more than NIS 1 million, but the third, Guy Sagiv, refused to settle.

Digging through documents

Sagiv studied at the Beit El yeshiva for four years. In a letter he distributed to the residents of the settlement, he wrote that he saw a notice at the yeshiva advertising the sale of the apartments. In 2008, he met with yeshiva representatives, who told him that there was a problem with the land, and that a demolition order was issued for the construction project. In July of that year, an agreement was signed by the two sides.

According to the contract obtained by Haaretz, it was written: “Whereas the Settlement Division holds lands recognized as part of the Ulpana Hill neighborhood of Beit El, according to the agreement made between it and the administration for abandoned government property in the West Bank, and as the new resident has declared that he has received, or is about to receive, authoritative rights over the portion of the land labeled lot 373 by the zoning scheme, to build a residence, labeled apartment number 2, and recorded in the Zionist Organization’s records as number 373/2.”

None of the settlers’ ownership rights are recorded in the Civil Administration’s land registry. The land is handled by the Civil Administration, which transfers ownership to the World Zionist Organization, which then passes them along to settlement organizations like Amana. Instead of an official land registration document, each apartment owner is issued a “authorization certificate” by the World Zionist Organization, which lists the number of the plot on which their apartment is located. This document can be used to obtain a mortgage and to prove legal ownership. As such, in August 2008, Sagiv signed a contract with the Settlement Division, which granted him apartment number 2 on plot 373, according to plan 218.

After the buildings were demolished, Sagiv began to investigate how the home he purchased, legally built on state land, was actually built on stolen land. He was surprised when he looked into the World Zionist Organization’s records. The plot in question, number 373, was not located in the Ulpana neighborhood, according to the records. Rather, it was located in a different part of Beit El, called the Maoz Tzur neighborhood, which was built after the 1996 murders of Ita and Ephraim Tzur. The widower and bereaved father, Yoel Tzur, is one of Beit El’s well-known land dealers. In response to the murders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then in his first term, authorized the development of the neighborhood. Documents obtained by Haaretz show that lot number 373 and plan 218 are located in the Maoz Tzur neighborhood.

In Decmber 2012, Yuval Funk, head of the WZO Settlement Division’s central Israel department, sent a letter to Sagiv, in which he wrote: “It was made clear to you that the World Zionist Organization (henceforth – the settling body) did not receive nor record property rights for the Ulpana neighborhood. It was made clear to you that the settling body does not deal with construction permits, and did not submit requests for such permits regarding the Ulpana neighborhood. The settling body does not grant permits for transferring ownership rights in the Ulpana neighborhood.”

Beit El is not alone

This practice - the use of legal plot numbers to disguise illegal construction - has been seen in other settlements as well, but not on such a large scale. Following the High Court of Justice order handed down in 2008 to demolish nine houses in Efrat, it was revealed that there, as well, contracts had been signed that listed lands supposedly owned by the WZO.

Despite the fact that the method was exposed, the WZO decided not to report the practice to the police. At the same time, yeshiva officials are concerned over where the matter could lead. Last January, the yeshiva went to court with a request that it determine the maximum amount of reparations that could be paid to the Palestinian families who owned the land. Also, the court was asked to “prohibit them from turning to any organization, including government authorities, with requests for reparations, as paying such reparations would have ramifications on the continued development of the settlement of Beit El.”

The court was also asked to “prohibit them [the families] from tarnishing the name of the yeshiva, by approaching government authorities with any kind of request.”

The issue lies at the heart of the fierce election campaigns currently going on in Beit El, where four candidates are competing, two of whom are from the yeshiva. The candidates include Rabbi Hanoch Hacohen Pyotrekovsky, one of the yeshiva leaders, as well as attorney Ehud Yelink, who signed the contract with Sagiv. Yelink has since accused Sagiv of simply chasing after money.

The issue of land registry has come up frequently at campaign events. One Beit El resident said that according to an appraiser, the value of his home dropped 40 percent because of the registration issues. In a letter to Beit El residents, Yelink stated that the yeshiva has never shirked its intention to compensate the residents, and that the only issue has been the amount. In his letter, Yelink wrote: “It is your right to fight for each and every shekel, but please, do not turn an argument over money into some kind of argument over principle.”

The WZO’s Settlement Division did not provide a response to Haaretz.

Pyotrekovsky told Haaretz he is engaging in dialogue with those who purchased the homes directly.

Yoel Tzur refused to comment.

Avshalom posted:

DarkCrawler posted:

Why don't you point out an equivalent situation there instead of just posting a link

quote:

Armenia: Article 14 of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia (1995) provides that "[i]ndividuals of Armenian origin shall acquire citizenship of the Republic of Armenia through a simplified procedure."[4]

Greece: Ethnic Greeks can obtain Greek citizenship by two methods under the Code of Greek Nationality.

Lithuania: The Constitution of Lithuania grants a right to citizenship to foreigners of ethnic Lithuanian origins

Rwanda: The Rwandan constitution provides that "[a]ll persons originating from Rwanda and their descendants shall, upon their request, be entitled to Rwandan nationality."

Turkey: Turkish law allows persons of Turkish origin and their spouse and children, to apply for naturalization without the five-year waiting period applicable to other immigrants.

South Korea: South Korean nationality law grants special status to some descendants of ethnic Koreans.

The Insect Court posted:

You're right, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have just posted a link because I mistakenly assumed you'd actually click on said link before squeezing out a new post. So here, some C&P from that article:


And that's without really trying very hard and just picking out the more blatant examples, because it wasn't necessary to expend much effort to demonstrate that you don't seem to know what you're talking about. What is it about Israel that cuts off the flow of blood to certain people's brains?

DarkCrawler posted:

"Of Armenian origin", "South Korea", ethnic Greeks" "of Lithuanian origin?" are these multi-ethnic countries where most descend from immigrants? No? Not equivalent.

Dead Reckoning posted:

Wait, so if you establish your state as mono-ethnic from the start, that makes it OK to discriminate in immigration policy?