A rebuttal from Obadiah Shoher
Reader comment on item: "Transfer" the Palestinians? Reasons Against

Submitted by SamsonBlinded (Ukraine), Mar 14, 2009 at 11:53

1. Transfer of foreigners cannot be morally wrong by definition because morality is an intra-group phenomenon. Our morality needs conflict with those of Palestinians. Also, something which is standard cannot be immoral, and population transfer took place many times in 20th century.

2. A lot of Israelis are against their state, anyway. Haredim despise Zionist state. Ultra-leftists despise Jewish state. Almost everyone down to hardcore leftists despises Arabs, so the transfer is unlikely to exacerbate tensions. On the contrary, on long-term perspective, the transfer would remove a major reason for Jewish-Arab and right-left divisiveness. Also, why did not the government worry about division when evicting Gush Katif?

3. The United States cannot afford to rethink its alliance with Israel, its only honest ally in the Middle East, a major arms customers, and the lobbist par excellence. President Wilson approved Greek-Turkey's population transfer, and equally idealistic President Roosevelt approved a forced transfer of 12 million Germans from Eastern Europe.

4. Transfer would end the terrorism by Israeli Arabs. Almost all recent terrorist attacks were perpetrated by Arab citizens and residents of Israel. They riot continuously and developed into a backbone of Israeli crime. Enmity with foreign Arabs is not a real problem because they are afraid to attack Israel. Other Arabs don't care about Palestinians and hate Israel to the utmost, thus the transfer cannon worsen the situation.

The transfer is the only option to sustain a Jewish state. Arabs already constitute 34% among Israel's young and in 20 years will become the largest Knesset faction.

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