lestine. [3:14] The Arab nations contended that the rights of the Arab residents, or former residents, of Palestine were trampled on by the creation of the state of Israel, and continued to be trampled on by Israeli repression of the country's Arab population in the late-1960s. [3:17] Israelis viewed the creation of the state of Israel as a vindication of Jewish rights; however, the Israelis were divided over the justification for their presence in Palestine. Secular Zionists justified the creation of the state of Israel as the only solution to the repression and other forms of anti-Semitism suffered by Jews in other countries. [8:20] For most secular Zionists, the creation of a Jewish state need not have occurred on Palestinian territory, although it needed to occur on territory somewhere. [8:22] Religious Zionists, by contrast contended that Israel had to have been created on Palestinian territory, because the land was theirs by biblical promise. [5:25]
Some people contended that both the Arabs and the Jews have legitimate rights in Palestine, and that the irony of the conflict between competing rights was the development of great injustice. [11:68] In the case of the state of Israel, the injustice was said to be the loss of Palestinian Arab rights through a securing of Jewish rights. This argument was supportable, if one agreed with the proposition that Jews from all parts of the world have rights to the territory of Palestine which are at least equal to those of the Arab Palestinians who were born there. [11:72]
If one agreed with the religious Zionists, of course, there is no question of competing equal rights, because, as God promised the territory to the Jews, there were only Jewish rights to be considered. [11:69] If one accepted the position of the secular Zionists, it was also difficult to support an argument of equal competing rights. The secular Zionists, for one thing, did not accept that Arab Palestinian ri...