[dotancohen]

> It's propaganda.

What?

The reply I'm replying to is the propaganda. He has no idea where I live, he sees the word "Israel" and assumes that means that I stole land.

In fact the place where I live, like the vast majority of places, has had good relations with the Bedouins and has since the beginning. These are grazing lands, and the Bedouins do graze most of it. We're built up on the rocky hilltops where there is nothing to graze, the only thing that could grow there might be olive trees. The Bedouins likely have had their herds graze here before the houses were build, but that doesn't make it "their land" and more than the store where you buy your bread is "your store". Unless you think that each Bedouin has the equivalent personal land sized several times any large city, and they all overlap!

I'm not disputing the fact that there is an Israeli-Arab conflict. I understand the argument "Israel steals land" even if I dispute it. Separate from that, there is an issue of Bedouin land. But neither argument is the one that is being made here, parent poster is conflating issues to influence your opinion. That's not uncommon when people are motivated by hate.

[yosamino]

> The Bedouins likely have had their herds graze here before the houses were build, but that doesn't make it "their land" and more than the store where you buy your bread is "your store"

That is a naïve comparison applied to how land ownership in Palestine works and worked and in that way it's just feeding the myth of "A Land with no People for a People with no Land". That is not hate, that just means that the entire modern country of Israel was founded by driving out the people that were already living there.

Maybe consider what would happened to the Bedou if they weren't trying to make "good relations" with the people who were suddenly bulding on the land that they need in order for their livestock to survive. Pretending there is any space for "terrificness" in that situation is clearly incorrect.

And labeling any opposition to your narrative of "terriffic relation" of the occupiers to the occupied as "hate" is kind of supporting the idea that the term "propaganda" seems not entirely incorrect.

[dotancohen]

For one thing, we both agree that the "A Land with no People for a People with no Land" argument is bullshit. Of course people were living here.

Estimates of percentages vary depending which side of the narrative the estimator sits, but most Arabs who left the land of Palestine in 1948 did so at the insistence of Arab leaders who promised to clean the land of the Jews. I'm not disputing that the Jewish armies of the time committed atrocities. In fact, there is a place less than a half-hour drive from my house where an atrocity took place. You won't be surprised to hear that the Arabs committed atrocities of their own.

But none of that is under discussion. You are conflating the Bedouins with what are nominally termed Palestinians. The Bedouins are a different people, don't intermarry with them, and have had a separate spate of problems with the Jews than did the Palestinians. There is even some animosity between the groups, for instance the Bedouins can volunteer in the Israeli Defense Forces.

I understand exactly your viewpoint, and you probably do not even realize that you are conflating two issues. I'm not even disputing the general gist of your viewpoint even though I reject it. I am disputing the relation of your viewpoint to the relations that my settlement has with the Bedouins. Not all Arabs peoples here consider themselves part the "the Palestinian struggle", or consider their grief with the Israeli state as part of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict.

[yosamino]

> I understand exactly your viewpoint, and you probably do not even realize that you are conflating two issues.

There is no useful discussion to be had based on your belief that I am too stupid, while you understand exactly what I am thinking.

So while I obviously do not agree with you, let's leave it at that.