Short Quiz - American Policy Toward Israel

[johnkarls]

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SHORT QUIZ - AMERICAN POLICY TOWARD ISRAEL

1. When did the Jewish Diaspora occur? What caused it?

2. Following the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine by the Romans, how much longer did Palestine remain a part of the Roman Empire?

3. Following the fall of Rome and the Western Roman Empire in 476, how much longer did Palestine remain a part of the Eastern Roman Empire (aka the Byzantine or Greek Empire governed from the Greek capital of Constantinople)?

4. After the Byzantine/Greek Empire (aka Eastern Roman Empire) was evicted from Palestine and the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean in 632-655 by the first three Caliphs in the initial expansion of Islam following the death of the Prophet Mohammed, how long was the new Arab Empire able to hold it?

5. Who were the Seljuk Turks sweeping in from Central Asia (Chinese Turkestan, aka Sinkiang Province, and Russian Turkestan which later fragmented into all of today’s "stans" (except Afghanistan which had always been independent and Pakistan which had been part of India)), and how long were the Seljuk Turks able to rule Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean?

6. Why did all of the Crusades occur “on the watch” of the Seljuk Turks?

7. Why did the Ottoman Turks sweeping in from Central Asia (Chinese Turkestan and Russian Turkestan) seem so different from the Seljuk Turks if they came from the same place and from the same ethnic people?

8. For how many centuries did the Ottomans rule Palestine?

9. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Turks by the British as part of World War I, how long did Britain rule Palestine (and the other Ottoman Turk areas of the Eastern Mediterranean such as Lebanon, Syria, etc.)?

10. According to the 31 Aug 1947 Official Report of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, what was the break down of Palestine's population?

11. Was the UNSCOP report the basis for United Nations Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947 dividing Palestine into a "Jewish State" and an "Arab State" based on who owned what?

12. What two things happened on 14 May 1948?

13. What was the reaction of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon?

14. Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (known in Israel as the War for Independence and in Arab countries as The Catastrophe), how many Jews were expelled from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon, and had to flee to Israel? How many Arabs were displaced from Israel?

15. Following the 1948 war, what happened to the West Bank? to Gaza?

16. What happened in 1956?

17. When was "The Six-Day War"? What happened to the West Bank? to Gaza?

18. What was the Yom Kippur War?

19. In the Yom Kippur War why, according to Pulitzer-Prize winner Seymour Hersh (in his book "The Samson Option") did Israel NOT follow its long-standing policy that if it ever reached the point that it had fewer than 24 hours to go until complete annihilation, it would launch all of its nuclear weapons (about a dozen at the time) which, interestingly, were trained on Russian cities rather than Arab capitals?

20. When did Egypt get the Sinai Peninsula back? Why wasn't the return of Gaza included?

21. When did Israel withdraw from Gaza, including the abandonment of all of the Jewish "settlements" in Gaza?

22. Despite Israel PR claims that the 2006 invasion of Southern Lebanon and the 2008 invasion of Gaza were unsuccessful, did both invasions in fact achieve their objective?

23. What happened to all the suicide bombers that used to dominate the world headlines by blowing up Israel restaurants, buses, etc.?

24. Why couldn't Yasir Arafat simply say "yes" to the Peace Plan he negotiated with Israel and President Clinton in 2000 which would have resulted in a Palestinian State?

25. Did the same unofficial group of Israel and Palestinian experts and former official negotiators that produced a 2003 report on a "two-state peace plan" based on the 2000 Clinton-Arafat-Israel Agreement on which Arafat reneged, produce a much more detailed 424-page blueprint based on the 2000 Agreement this past Tuesday? Did it, among other things, call for the division of Jerusalem, an underground highway between Gaza and the West Bank, and 100,000 Jewish settlers to move from the West Bank (in similar fashion to the way Jewish settlers were forced by the Israeli government to move from Gaza in 2005)?

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And for extra credit, a few geo-political questions that relate to the Israel-Palestine imbroglio -

A. If ethnic-cleansing and forced migrations have been common throughout the 20th century (and even the 21st so far), why has there been so much trouble with the Israel-Palestinian imbroglio which did NOT involve ethnic-cleansing and only a small displacement of fewer than a million in each direction off-setting each other?

B. What are some of the major tragedies of ethnic cleansing and forced migrations that have occurred recently in Europe?

C. What are some of the major tragedies of ethnic cleansing and forced migrations that have occurred recently in Africa?

D. What was the cause of the genocide in Sudan/Darfur?

E. What was the cause of the genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsis by its Hutus? Was there even a Tutsi tribe and a Hutu tribe, or was the distinction an invention of European colonial masters?

F. Why do commentators frequently refer to Islam as the religion that always has "bloody borders"? How many of the major tragedies in Questions B-E involved Islam?

G. What is the Battle of Armageddon? Is it likely to occur in the near future, the way matters are being handled?

H. What is “The Right of Return”? Wouldn’t it be cheaper for the United States to simply offer to make each Palestinian a millionaire by offering to buy her/his “right of return” on condition s/he move out of the refugee camps and start a real life – rather than spending so much of American attention and resources on a conflict that may otherwise continue for another 60 years – IF NOT ENDED SOONER BY A NUCLEAR BATTLE OF ARMAGEDDON IN A WORLDWIDE “TWILIGHT OF THE HUMANS”?