[continued from previous message]   
      
   The 1878 Ottoman census showed ~350,000-400,000 inhabitants (85% Muslim   
   Arabs), growing to ~500,000 by 1890 and 757,000 by the 1922 British   
   census (78% Arab). This wasn't sparse—it was a substantial indigenous   
   population.   
      
   On "recent immigrants": The claim that "most" Palestinians descend from   
   immigrants who arrived around the same time as Zionist settlers comes   
   directly from Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial (1984), which was   
   thoroughly debunked by demographic historians across the political   
   spectrum. Ottoman registration records show 93% of Muslims in 1905 were   
   born in their locality, and Justin McCarthy's authoritative demographic   
   analysis found "evidence for Muslim immigration into Palestine is   
   minimal" and "statistically untenable" as an explanation for population   
   growth.   
      
   The critical omission: Even accepting that land purchases were legal, by   
   1945 Jews owned approximately 5.23% of Mandatory Palestine's total land   
   area (1,393,531 dunams out of 26,625,600). The question isn't whether   
   purchases were legal—it's whether legal purchase of 6% of the land   
   creates sovereignty over 100% of the territory and justifies   
   displacement of the 95% who lived there.   
      
   This framing—emphasizing legality of purchases while overstating Arab   
   immigration and understating Arab presence—could give the impression   
   that the goal is to suggest Palestinians lack legitimate claims to the   
   land. Whether intended or not, it risks conflating property purchase   
   with territorial sovereignty, which are entirely different concepts in   
   both law and ethics.   
   ----------------------------   
      
      
   Profile photo for Mattika (Bensouas) d’Sabetai-Rosenthal   
   Mattika (Bensouas) d’Sabetai-Rosenthal   
     · Nov 8   
   Did you know that during World War I the Ottomans had TURKISH SOLDIERS   
   IN OTTOMAN CONTROLLED LAND? My father‘s grandfather was one of those   
   Turkish soldiers, and you know how he got there? To fight a war, that   
   Turkey lost.   
      
   Did you know that the Turkish soldiers were abandoned there at the end   
   of the war? Did you know that they stranded Turkish soldiers at the end   
   of the war? And the Turkish soldiers consisted of both Jews and Muslims,   
   and that they were abandoned there with only the uniforms on their   
   backs? So that’s how the first Jewish relative of ours got to Israel,   
   and they decided to stay. Abandoned them there with nothing. They   
   approached the Jewish Zionists to work in exchange for food. And the   
   Zionists fought them, because they were wearing Turkish uniforms, they   
   had to prove to them that they were Jews, and they did that by picking   
   up SIDDURS and reading them in Hebrew. And the Zionists were astonished!😯   
      
   Profile photo for Harry Shamir   
   Harry Shamir   
     · Nov 8   
   Thank you for this input. It is interesting. Would you know how many   
   such abandoned Jewish soldiers there were?   
      
      
   Profile photo for Eli Elyzium   
   Eli Elyzium   
     · Oct 25   
   A few hundred K in a land the size of New Jerseys is a sparsely   
   populated region. And a larger number of Arabs there do not override a   
   smaller group of people with cohesion that actually owned their lands   
   legally. So your calculus is riding on a premise of simplistic false   
   equivalences.   
      
   Profile photo for Joe Mandt   
   Joe Mandt   
     · Oct 21   
   The population of 1800 was about half of what it was in 1878. Prior to   
   the changes in immigration laws and the arrival of Europeans, the   
   population of the region was stagnant. The post plague population of the   
   1300s is about 150,000 people. It had only gotten up to about 275,000   
   some years later in 1800.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)