Any Zionists here?

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For a clearer understanding of Israel from a reporter who lives and works there see http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery02162009.html

Or, http://camera.org/.

counterpunch.org? sounds like a contrarian organization.
Otherwise a site dedicated to getting page hits.

Take a look before you judge.

What's your basis for the assertion that *most* people do not want Jewish people to have one tiny country the size of Rhode Island?

Do you have any poll results, or statistical analysis, or reports, or any facts or evidence at all that backs up your assertion that *most* people don't want that?

The country of Israel is recognised by the vast majority of states in the United Nations, isn't it? Doesn't that mean that *most* people, in actual fact, want Jewish people to have their own country?

In fact, a bit of rudimentary research on a popular reference website totally rebuts your assertion (from Wikipedia):

"...Israel maintains diplomatic relations with 161 countries and has 94 diplomatic missions around the world.[146] Only three members of the Arab League have normalized relations with Israel; Egypt and Jordan signed peace treaties in 1979 and 1994, respectively, and Mauritania opted for full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1999. Two other members of the Arab League, Morocco and Tunisia, which had some diplomatic relations with Israel, severed them at the start of the Second Intifada in 2000.[147] Since 2003, ties with Morocco have been on the upswing, and Israel's foreign minister has visited the country.[148] Under Israeli law, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Yemen are enemy countries[149]..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel

So, if Israel maintain diplomatic relations with 161 countries, how many countries are there in the world? Bearing in mind that the United Nations created Israel, let's go by their numbers, shall we?

"...There are currently 192 member states, including nearly every recognized independent state in the world..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations

So, out of 192 member states of the United Nations, six of them are officially "enemy countries" according to Israeli law. Although I'm pretty certain you can also count Iran and make that seven. And 161 member states of the United Nations have diplomatic relations with Israel (although I vaguely recall Bolivia and Venezuala kicking up a fuss, maybe they broke off ties, maybe that number includes or doesn't include them, I'm not sure).

I'm not too good at working out percentages, but by my rough calculations I estimate that less than 4% of the United Nations' member states are official "enemies" of Israel, and about 84% of United Nations member states have diplomatic relations with Israel.

And your analogy doesn't even work. In terms of the French having France, you can't draw a direct parallel with the situation of the Jewish diaspora, that doesn't make sense, because most of the Jewish people living in Israel aren't necessarily ethnically from that geographical reason, e.g. you have lots of Ashkenazi jews who are from Eastern Europe, and I'm not sure about Sephardic Jews off the top of my head, but Spain rings a bell.

What would make more logical sense, in terms of drawing an analogy, would be to say something like the French-Maghrebans, i.e. people from the former colonies, the French-Moroccans, French-Tunisians, French-Algerians, they want a country for themselves, they only want a small piece of land, say, the 5th arrondissement in Paris, where the Grand Mosque is located, and where I would guess there's a relatively dense population of French-Maghrebans?

Did they throw shoes? topic

Still nonsense.

Look, seriously, you shouldn't be making such bold face lies when the rebuttals to your assertions are available at the click of a mouse, with minimal effort and research:

"...The 1948 Palestinian exodus (Arabic: الهجرة الفلسطينية‎, al-Hijra al-Filasteeniya), referred to by Palestinians as al Nakba (Arabic: النكبة‎), meaning the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm,"[1][2][3] was the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem during and after the 1948 Palestine war.

During the war, between 700,000 and 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from the territories that became Israel in 1949. They were not allowed to go back to their home after the war and became refugees. The circumstances of these events are still hotly debated among historians and commentators of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict..."

[source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba ]

So, nearly three quarters of a million people *were* displaced. Although it's arguable that some were forcibly evicted by the Israeli authorities and armed forces, whereas others fled the fighting and were not permitted to return afterwards.

Even some Israelis, along with Palestinians/Palestinian-Israelis marked the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Nakba last year, by visiting parts of west Jerusalem, a tour organised to see the homes formerly owned by Palestinians in what is now West Jerusalem, who were displaced.

[source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/982390.html ]

And one of the footnotes to the wikipedia article provides a quote and a link to a United Nations report:

Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine Submitted to the Secretary-General for Transmission to the Members of the United Nations Part 1 Section V para 6. It is not yet known what the policy of the Provisional Government of Israel with regard to the return of Arab refugees will be when the final terms of settlement are reached. It is, however, undeniable that no settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged by the hazards and strategy of the armed conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The majority of these refugees have come from territory which, under the Assembly resolution of 29 November, was to be included in the Jewish State. The exodus of Palestinian Arabs resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumours concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism, or expulsion. It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.

[source: http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798a ... enDocument ]

And one would assume, given that the United Nations was the body that created Israel, that they can hardly be argued to be misleading for nefarious reasons, and they can hardly be accused of anti-semitism, having created the state of Israeli only a couple of years previously.

So the regular demolitions of Palestinian homes helps facilitate employment and opportunities and the growth of the Arab population in places like East Jerusalem, and the the land grabs occasioned by the building of the security barrier, and the land grabs by settlers also aim to create jobs and opportunities and the growth of the Arab population in Israel, because Israel/Israelis are occupying those Palestinian lands, co-opting them into Israel...?

You are aware, aren't you, of the disparities in incomes between Israeli Arabs and other Israelis aren't you? How, statistically, many more Israeli-Arab children live in poverty in Israel than other Israeli children?

"...According to official figures, 65 percent of Arab-Israeli children live below the poverty line, compared to 35 percent among the general population. According to the same figures, the income of Arab families is only 60 percent of that of a Jewish family..."

[source: http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/02/10/66173.html ]

I think I read about the disparity of the poverty statistics in an article in Haaretz about it a few weeks ago, but the search facility doesn't seem to be showing me the text of the article headlined. So while the above is a quote from Al Arabiya, note, though, before you jump to conclusions and make accusations of bias, they are quoting "official" i.e. Israeli figures, and this issue was reported in the Israeli press.

So if the Israeli government are providing jobs and opportunities and helping the growth of the Arab population, why is it that according to their own statistics nearly twice as many Arab-Israeli children are living in poverty compared with the general population? Can you explain that anomaly?

So the continuing displacement of Palestinians doesn't have anything whatsoever with the continuing land grabs of Palestinian territory to facilitate Israel's building of the illegal-under-international-law security barrier, and the continuing development and construction of settlements?

Seriously, if you're going to lie so blatantly, you could at least make a half-arsed attempt to manufacture or come up with evidence to support your assertions.

you could have saved some time and efforts by reading my response and pay attention to the context by which it was written,
the immigration to Israel by the Jews as a Zionist movement began at the around 1900 and as such displaced no one,
on the contrary,
the displacement occurred as the result of the Palestinians and neighboring Arab nation rejection of the UN resolution which led to a war they lost.
no one was displaced prior to that war[48] which was initiated by the Arabs,u get that ? it simple fact known to all so i didn't want to wast mine and other ppl time by citing history again and again.
The present state of the Arab citizens of Israel has a lot to improve but is not much different from the state of any other minority in any other country'
in fact it is much better than that of most arabs living in an arab countries in term of standard of living and personal freedom and rights,
poverty is also the result of the traditional social structures which result in big families with single provider and the traditional Jewish minorities such as the orthodox religious groups are even poorer than the Israeli Arabs,for the same reasons.
i live with and work with the Israeli Palestinian daily,
lot to be done but in many ways it is still much better,despite the continuous war, to be an Arab in Israel than in Europe.
personally, i think,Israel should've evacuate the land seized in the 67 war long time ago,
most Israelis are against the settlements and evacuating gaza stripe was met with no public resistance except that of the settlers but the results of this move toward peace,as the result of many other attempts in that direction toward the Palestinians left many ppl here very disappointed and mistrustful toward the Palestinians.
if u really know history u would also know that serious efforts towards such goal were made
and failed and it would be stupid and irresponsible to place all the blame to this failures on Israel alone.
the security wall which most countries condemned has put a stop to a continuous slaughter of innocent Israelis,mainly defenseless old ppl and children,
your one sided views of complicated situation does not benefits the palestineans or the region at all and the Palestinians insistence on the right to return and the destruction of Israel will only prolong the suffering in this region so i think u shouldn't support it.
most first generation Israelis are also refugees,from Europe where they were slaughtered by millions and from many Arabs countries who robed them clean and throw them out,
still,they found the courage to forget their home and the dead and build a new future for their children,it may be time for the Palestinians to forget the past and do the same.

hm..

how do you separate jewish ethnicity from jewish faith anyway?
what if i become a jew?

either way, to just GRAB a piece of land, is wrong enough for today's result to be apparent.
its religious, and most countries can fit several religions.

zionism isnt about having a homeland for the poor jews, but about control and power.
the jews can live anywhere they want (except for iran )

I think they should have a right to their nation.

The problem with Israel is that it's in the wrong place. The US and UK gave the Zionists 55% of Palestine because of the Holocaust, but the Palestinians had nothing to do with that. They should be residing in 55% of Germany right now.

Strange question.
In reality there are no national borders, they are imaginary lines drawn on a map,
and as long as people will fight wars about all these imaginary lines,
I guess they will be respected as if they were real.
And if that's the way it works, who does or doesn't have "the right" to do it?

Welcome to Earth, named after all that $#!+ heaped up on it's entire surface.

I wouldn't mind the change. I'm fed up with the heat in this desert, the scorching sun, the lack of trees and the Middle Eastern atmosphere. But our ancestors established here, so here's our land.

Unfortunately, in 1920, Palestine was 90% Arab... it required a lot of ethnic re-engineering to change the demographics and of course there's a lot of chatter in Israel about measures to maintain favourable demographics... that's one reason they shipped 1 million Russians over there in the late 80s early 90s and yet another reason why certain people cheered Boris Yeltsin's drunken catastrophic sanitarium-run rule... if Russia does too well then some of those Russians may start returning... Germany lost about a quarter if not more of its territory after World War II, had 10 million people forced out of their homes and 1 million died during the whole thing... this is one of the things the Israelis like to say, "Sure we threw out 750,000 Arabs, but look at what was going on in Europe..."

i wouldn't call an imigration of 360,000 jews to a land which was then under no nationality an ethnic re-engineering but then again ,
i don't have your demagogic skills,
the land of Israel was part of the Jewish history and inspirations for thou years and it is only natural that some Jews feels its better to live here than among ppl like you who see every thing Jews do as some kind of conspiracy,
history proved it is very unhealthy for us to live to close to ppl like you so yelztin or no yelztin many of us prefer to live as far away from you as possible/
not that u ever cared about facts but i'll give it another try anyway
prior to the Arabs declaration of war against the jews which did them no harm no one was forced to live thiere home,if u declare war and u lose u should at least have the dignity to accept the consequence of your stupidity and evil deeds
at 1920 the land of israel was one of the most backwards and desolated places on earth
mostly empty
u should at least take a look at some of the maps,demographics and pictures before u spread your ignorance based hatred,
today Israel is one of the most advanced societies on earth and no thanks for the Palestinians
they were never interested in claiming nationality and development of the land prior to the Jews doing so,
and why should they,it was never part of their culture,at least not as an national entity
and we never take European history as justifications because we nver consider u to be more than pretentious barbarians and please don't make me recite again your blooded and evil history,after all'no one can match American and European and arabs when it comes to jenociding and deporting entire nations,
BTW
the number of arabs killed or deported by israel is a very small fraction of the number of arabs killed and deported by the arabs themselves