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Re:Einstein as a Jew and a Philosopher by Udik on Sunday April 19, 2015 @07:28PM (#9405313)
The history of the land is irrelevant here. The idea that you can claim ownership of a land because it used to be your homeland thousands of years ago is completely abstract. While the hard reality is that in order to take, or retake, ownership of that land, you have to displace other people that has been living there for many generations. You can't do it peacefully. You have to take their houses, their fields, evacuate and destroy their villages, steal their property, and push them back each time they try to defend themselves against all this.

Remote history won't convince anybody, anywhere, to leave their houses and live in a refugee camp. Though it might work to give a veneer of reasonableness to this expropriation, for the exclusive benefit of those who won't lose anything in the process.

Re:Einstein as a Jew and a Philosopher by bsaul on Monday April 20, 2015 @03:48AM (#9406656)
They didn't claim "ownership". People seem to forget jews didn't invade this land militarely. Under the ottoman empire or the british empire that would have been foolish. They purchased pieces of land.

Only when the empire collapsed after two world wars, and israel was created, did people start to fight overall the country.

Let's not inverse the chronology here. They didn't come from russia and ukraine with guns, but with agricultural tools. The Tel aviv region was built from scratch out of swamps and rocks that noone wanted. It wasn't "claimed". The fact that population got displaced is a result from wars, that happened after the state was created, and which were absolutely not part of the initial project.