Iran proposes moving Israel to Europe

[Clio]

Link:http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051208/wl_afp/iranisraelgermany_051208164944

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that if Germany and Austria feel responsible for massacring Jews during World War II, a state of Israel should be established on their soil.

Ahmadinejad, who sparked an international outcry in October when he said Israel "must be wiped off the map", also repeated his view Thursday that the Jewish state was a "tumour".

"Now that you believe the Jews were oppressed, why should the Palestinian Muslims have to pay the price?" the hardline president asked in an interview with Iran's Arabic-language satellite channel, Al-Alam.

"Why did you come to give a piece of Islamic land and the territory of the Palestinian people to them?

"You oppressed them, so give a part of Europe to the Zionist regime so they can establish any government they want. We would support it," he said, according to a transcript of his original Farsi-language comments given to AFP.

"So, Germany and Austria, come and give one, two or any number of your provinces to the Zionist regime so they can create a country there which all of Europe will support and the problem will be solved at its root," he said.

"Why do they insist on imposing themselves on other powers and creating a tumour so there is always tension and conflict?"

Al-Alam said Ahmadinejad was speaking in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia where he was attending a two-day meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference that opened Wednesday.

"Is it not true that European countries insist that they committed a Jewish genocide? They say that Hitler burned millions of Jews in furnaces ... and exiled them," Ahmadinejad told Al-Alam.

"Then because the Jews have been oppressed during the Second World War, therefore they (the Europeans) have to support the occupying regime of Qods (Jerusalem). We do not accept this," he said.

He also noted that European countries "believe in this so much and are so determined that any researcher who denies it (the Holocaust) with historical evidence is dealt with in a most harsh way and sent to prison."

The Holocaust was Nazi Germany's systematic slaughter of an estimated six million Jews between 1933 and 1945, mainly in the latter years of World War II.

Official Iranian media frequently carry sympathetic interviews with Holocaust revisionist historians -- who attempt to establish that the number of Jews killed by the Nazis was wildly exaggerated.

Iran refuses to recognise Israel.

Ahmadinejad said his second proposal was for "a referendum in Palestine for all the original Palestinians" to decide on the future of what is now Israel, the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

But the president said that "the best solution is resistance so that the enemies of the Palestinians accept the reality and the right of the Palestinian people to have land."

[Dr. Shane]

The Jews have been oppressed over the centuries. Both before and after Christ. Now many Christians believe this has been their own fault, but is undeniable nonetheless. In the late 1800s the zionist movement began. It was a political, not religious, movement to create a homeland for the Jews so they would not be oppressed by other religious groups. At one time those in the zionist movement actually considered a homeland in what is now Uganda.

During World War 1 Great Brittian expressed interest in establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine although they promised the Arabs they would limit the settlement. After WW1 Great Brittian was given control of Palestine which included present-day Israel and Jordan.

Initially the Arabs accepted the proposal of Palestine becoming a Jewish state as long as the rest of Arab lands remained free. They had just been "liberated" from the Ottoman Empire so giving up Palestine seemed like a small price to pay for their freedom AND up until that time there had not been a nationality known as Palestinian. Arabs living in Palestine were considered to be the same nationality as those in Egypt or Iraq. During the time between the first and second world wars a Palestinian movement began to resist the idea of a Jewish state. There was a lot of riots and terrorism from both sides.

The Holocuast brought the need for a Jewish homeland to the forefront. Many Jews trying to flee Germany had been turned back by many countries including the US, UK and Palestine. Many of those Jews ended up in Nazi death camps. The UK turned the issue over to the newly formed UN which devided the territory between the Arabs which called themselves Palestinians and the Jews.

The Jews accepted this but the Arabs did not. The Arabs went to war with the Jews to drive them out. The war lasted a year and the Jews won it and took more territory as a result.

A few points are noteworthy:

• The Palestinians have a problem because the surrounding nations, Lebanon, Syria, Jordon and Egypt will not let them become citizens in their respective countries. Palestians leaving Isreal are only granted refugee status.
• While Isreal does have some natural gas and copper mines, it is not rich in natural resources like many other nations in the region.
• The Jews have developed the area by building irrigation systems, highways, water treatment plants, power plants, airports, communcation systems, etc. This is in vast contrast to the land they migrated to and to the Arab nations around them.

The honest truth is the Jews have as much right to the land in Israel as Americans have a right to land in North America or Austialians to Austriala. The big difference is that the American Indians have no where to go. Palestinians should be able to seek citizenship in the neighboring Arab states. If the neighboring Arab states want peace, they need only grant citizenship to Palestianians seeking it. BUT they don't want peace.