The Promised Land? - Pioneers - 5 May 08 - Part 2

A three-part series examining the origins, violent creation, and modern-day reality of the state of Israel, told through the stories of individual Israelis.
In Epsiode 1 Al Jazeera examines how and why Jews returned to Palestine after 2,000 years of exile, and how the political Zionism first articulated in 1896 became reality with such speed.

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[abksharma]

I Soo much wish all the jews would have come to iNdia...india would have become a developed country by Now.........

[vadimzdonutube]

if the zionism never existed, the holy land would still be a filthy desert that no one would ever visit

[LampPlaceThing]

1:10 "many of the secular new comers held religion in contempt"

Yep of course those "secular" people did. They HATE religion, and if they claim not to, they most certainly want nothing to do with it except helping to push it away.

Seriously tho, religion is a way of LIFE. In EVERYTHING (almost) I do, I do it with the knowledge that there is a God. Secularists can not force their ass in the doorway of religion without conflicting interest, and vice versa.

[ModerSverige]

@wrsda Not a Centimeter is Acceptable by Arab Philosophy.

[wrsda]

@wrsda allowed any homeland at all, right? When that small part was declared as a Jewish state, 7 Arab nations attacked because the idea of Jews having their own land - they had 47% and Palestinians had 53% at the time - wasn't acceptable.

[wrsda]

@neverfearchrisishere No, they didn't burn them, no one burned them. That's the issue - they're still there, only different people live there now since they were for the most part abandoned. Not all were abandoned - that's why there are still Palestinians living in Israel. And, they were given basically a bit of land near the coast and the Negev, which was all desert. that's it. The fertile land and Jerusalem was given to Palestinians, but apparently that wasn't enough because Jews shouldn't be

[neverfearchrisishere]

@Lagolop erm, it was one of the more developed areas of the Med before. More developed than the portugese and spanish coastal regions. Its amazing how much they have done. I wonder how much you could achieve if someone gave you a big free house and land, not to mention huge piles of free US cash $ gotta love aid... damn isn't it unreasonable that the people we kicked off this plot are annoyed.

Israel has always been densely populated, it wasn't an empty wasteland before it swapped hands.

[neverfearchrisishere]

@wrsda so all the palestinians burned there own homes and fled with next to nothing to avoid there friends...... got ya. and the fact that this happened to leave all the UN mandated 'mixed zones' purely Jewish was just a happy coincidence.

oh look, said the newly arrived Jews, all of the sudden everything in this promised land suddenly belongs to us Jews, even though we previously only made up a tiny minority of the population. And much celebration and siezing of property ensued.

[wrsda]

@wrsda be a Jewish state that the Arab countries surrounding them wouldn't like that very much. I believe they ended up fighting a war on all fronts led by several larger countries, who still lost. And, that was when many Palestinians abandoned their homes, under the promise that once the Jews had been kicked out, they could return to the then war-zone. Of course... then Israel took all of present day Israel and won the war, then grew into the prosperous country it is now.

[wrsda]

@ neverfearchrisishere younger ones who probably shouldn't have fought but lied about age who smuggled some amunition and homemade tanks/bombs. Look up some of the stuff they used, it wasn't exactly top-notch. They were fighting for their lives because if they didn't fight back they would have been "Driven into the ocean" aka every man, woman, and child butchered. And, they were as prepared as possible in 1948 because they new the moment they declared their half of Israel (as given by the UN) to