A similar site written about the US from a militant Native American viewpoint would have the nation returned to Native Americans, in toto, regardless of the fact that many hundred millions are now native in the "born-here" sense instead of in the "indigenous peoples" sense.
So what viewpoint do you want? Legalism can take you to "possession is 9/10ths of the law" (pro-Israel), or it can take you to "no profit from stolen property" (pro-Arab). It can also take you to an extension of the first copyright ruling, "To each cow her calf; to each book its copy", a viewpoint the website you ask about appears to espouse: Old Israel built it, so New Israel owns it. Or you can look at the squatters' rights argument: the Arabs moved in when the Jews moved out, and so obtained the rights to it because of abandonment by the original owners. It's true that the Jews were expelled and didn't leave voluntarily, but the Arabs were not responsible for that. The Romans were, and that Empire is beyond prosecution.
Britain has been closely tied to the history of Palestine, and the US, as the sometime inheritor of the British sphere of influence, has inherited that complex relationship too.
In that spirit, I recommend, as a start, Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour by Barbara Tuchman. It's one of her earlier books, in which she didn't achieve the depth of scholarship that won her the Pulitzer Prize, twice, for later works of history, but she does outline the relationship very well, and she always wrote in a colorful, descriptive style that makes history read more like story than study. She also has strictly avoided the inclusion of fictionalized supposition: if she says someone said a thing, you can count on there being an end note citing the original source of the statement.
Mrs. Tuchman came from a wealthy and well-connected family. Her uncle, Henry Morgenthau, was FDR's Secretary of the Treasury, and her father, Maurice Wertheim, was a banker and a publisher who also served as president of the American Jewish Committee and founded the Theatre Guild. Her grandfather was US Ambassador to Turkey during the Wilson Administration, at the same time that T.E. Lawrence was fighting against the Turks (allies of the German Empire) alongside Britain's Arab allies during WWI.
I include this biographical information so you can know a little about the author, the better to judge how her viewpoint was formed. Historiography can be boiled down to three words: consider the source. No source is without merit, but the merits vary. Perfectly good scholarship can come to wildly differing conclusions, because of the points of view of the authors, which must be considered. Read from several viewpoints and decide which one best reflects yours. Shoddy scholarship reflects out-and-out bias and often includes lies and lies of omission. This is also important to observe, in order to recognize it again, in content but also in style.
Flame » in reply to What about the site itself?
Viewpoint gives many colors to facts.
The whole thread (43 posts)
- FLAME, meet Flame...
- "This land is mine"
- The solution remains....
- Truman's Folly and Ancient Kool Aid Drinkers
- What about the site itself?
- Jerusalem belonged to the Jews long before there were Christians.
- All essentially true
