I read your Address to Ariel Conference on Law and Mass Media with interest. It is clear from this document – and the large number of other articles you have written on the subject of the Middle East – that you do not support the creation of a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli state. You believe that people of Jewish faith or ethnicity* have the right to settle anywhere within the biblical land of Israel as citizens of Israel, but you do not believe that people of Christian or Muslim faith and Arab ethnicity currently living outside the currently internationally recognized borders of Israel have the right to settle within those borders or, indeed, much in the way of rights as to where they settle outside those borders but still within the biblical territory. You do not accept that the Arab population within the biblical land of Israel but not living within the currently internationally recognized borders of Israel should be given the right to become citizens of a future Israel with expanded borders. (Please correct me if I have any of this wrong).
So now my question:
What is your proposal for what should happen to the non-Jewish inhabitants of these territories when you (and people who think like you) eventually get your way and Israel is expanded to include much or all of the biblical territories?
I have tried to make no judgements about who is right or wrong here and have tried to avoid opening any arguments about the historical background to the current situation. I am genuinely intrigued as to what your proposed solution is to the question I have raised. I cannot find the answer to this question in any of your extensive writings on this subject.
Yours sincerely
Mike
*I separate out these two facets of “Jewishness” because a number of members of my family have the right to go and live in Israel (or the areas Israel currently controls) under the “Law of Return”, but none of them are actually religious. Their recent ancestry is German rather than Middle Eastern.
Melanie's reply:
Your message displays a quite astounding degree of ignorance; virtually every one of your assumptions is based on a false factual, historical or moral premise. I have no intention of wasting my time answering you. There is ample information on my website already, were you able to understand it -- which clearly you are not.
Do not bother me again.
Melanie
Interesting that Melanie took the time to reply to me but did not use that time to correct any of my "assumptions" about (I'd call them "descriptions" of) her views or to answer my question.
I have read Melanie's website in some depth. I have read her forthright views on evolution, abiogenesis, and climate change and her descriptions of the various conspiracies amongst the world's scientists to keep us all misinformed in these areas. I also have read her extensive writings on the situation in the Middle East. While there is a great deal of material advanced in favour of Israeli policy - past and present - I have searched in vain for any proposals as to what should happen to the non-Jewish inhabitants of the territories in question under any future scenario that would be acceptable to Melanie P.
I think Melanie owes (not necessarily me but) her general audience a response here.
It's more of a response than I've ever got from her, but then, I've not ever been as polite as you have here. How she has a job as a journalist in 2011 is almost beyond me; her views are on a par with Alex Jones et al., in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI suspect I'm wasting bytes here, but MadMel has just written concerning Israel's claim to the "disputed territories" (see link below) so I thought I'd try again:
ReplyDeleteI wrote:
Sorry for "bothering you again" in spite of your having asked me not to last time I asked you this question, but you have (partially) addressed my question in http://www.melaniephillips.com/at-last-israel-starts-to-make-its-case and I thought I'd take this opportunity to ask you again.
You say "This is not to say that Israel should hold on to all the disputed territory -- far from it." and you also observe that the "Palestinians [...] never owned [this land]".
So this begs the rest of my original question:
What, in your view, should happen to the Palestinians who *live* (whether or not they "own" that land) in the areas of land you believe that Israel *should* hold on to?
I fail to see why you think this is such an outrageous question for me to put to you given the rest of what you have to say on this subject.