From: oaf@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Oded Feingold) Subject: who does the land belong to (was Re: Jews Shoot Muslim Infants) Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab. Lines: 70 Distribution: world <1993May19.142202.20722@ncrcae.ColumbiaSC.NCR.COM> <1tft9k$71c@bagel.cs.huji.ac.il> <1tnu7f$19b@bagel.cs.huji.ac.il> Reply-To: oaf@zurich.ai.mit.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: klosters.ai.mit.edu In-reply-to: aplebaum@irs01.cs.huji.ac.il's message of 23 May 1993 13:29:19 GMT Lovely arguments. But do we write about historical ownership of any place - Palestine, Pakistan, Cyprus, Aegean Islands (and the oil that may lie beneath them), whatever - for any reason other than justification for stomping others? DOES IT TRULY MATTER whose ancestor lived where 20, 200, or 2000 years ago? More than how you treat the land and each other? Who is wise enough to decree that a person's right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in a particular place depends on accidents of birth? Who can even be sure about the precise tracks of the sperm that birthed the people we wish to despise? IMHO, the American Indians have it right. We belong to the earth, it does not belong to us. Failure to understand that is a good way to cause lossage all the way around. My guess is that once we trash our environment sufficiently we shall die along with it - the baby eating and killing its mother, then dying for lack of milk. Death and disease do not respect national boundaries, not as toxins, disease vectors, lost farmland/wetlands/forest cover/water supplies, nor any other way. When we fight over which national group owns which piece of turf, we are merely contending for the best vantage point from which to kill others, "our" land and eventually ourselves. That is something of which to be proud. Very proud. Makes me glad to be human. I'm not mindlessly rejecting all nationalism. Maybe it's fair to ask whether a recent immigrant deserves a share of the infrastructure that all _my_ ancestors (hah!) labored to produce. But it's an artificial distinction: is the recent immigrant, even a refugee, less likely to contribute to the next generation's legacy than anyone else? [In history the reverse is often the case: recent immigrants strive hardest. If nothing else, they fill open eco(l/n)ogic niches.] Then again, my tribe is infinitely better than your tribe, so I can understand you all have nothing but plot to knock me off. While I, of course, will make sure it doesn't happen, even if I must shoot Muslim infants (or bash Jewish ones against the walls of schoolhouses) to do so. That'll prove my moral superiority, by golly, as well as the rightness of my cause. Clearly, there is no higher purpose in life than killing others because they are not like you. I would never get in the way of such fun. Let's see: soc.culture.turkish - Why don't you Turks go back to Lake Baikal where you came from, and leave the land to the Greeks, who stole it fair and square from the Scythians? soc.culture.pakistan - Why don't you guys redistribute yourselves over India, as God meant for you to do? soc.culture.jewish, soc.culture.arabic - we stick together, fight together, die together. We are brothers, and inseparable. talk.politics.mideast - oh well, had to be there. Oded [Planning on being a Scythian irredentist, as soon as I finish my present assignment.] P.S.: I can't get a semi-decent death threat anymore? P.P.S.: Yeh, the Native Americans had it right. We had to kill them off to keep their sedition from spreading.