(Cross-Posted at My Left Wing.)
When discussing Israel one of the questions that perpetually arises is the question of land ownership among Jewish people, in terms of the size of the state of Israel, after the smoke cleared in 1948. The perpetual charge is that Israel, Zionists, or Jews, "stole the land."
In order to put this into any sort of perspective the first thing to note is that Israel is about the size of New Jersey. Its population as of May, 2008, was 7,280,000 people, about 20% of whom are Arab.
In 1948, the year of the War for Israeli Independence, there were 538,000 Jews living in the area partitioned by the UN for Israel, alongside 397,000 native Arabs.</div>
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