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Palestine discussion

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Vastness said:
Because your standard when it comes to criticism of violence against Israel from the direction of Palestine is that lack of overt criticism is effective endorsement of the perpetrators of that violence, but your standard when it comes to criticism of violence against Palestine from the direction of Israel appears to be "eh, violence isn't ideal but it's a part of human nature."

You presumably don't think that it is not ideal but basically fine that tens of thousands of people have died in Palestine as a direct result of Israeli bombs. So where's the specific criticism of Israel's own moral crimes?
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I condone no violence from either side man. When it inevitably does happen, violence begets violence.

Never said it was "less than ideal" that 10k Palestinians died, I only said Israel has a right to defend itself against a prolific terrorist organization whose entire life statement is to kill Jews with total prejudice.

I have stated multiple times in this thread and the other that I think Israel has gone way too far with the bombing.
 

I grew up thinking that modern Israel was a wonderful entity. I believed all the propaganda that we were fed: "A land with no people, for a people with no land." I thought there was this big piece of uninhabited desert, which the Jews moved to, and cultivated, and caused to bloom. "They made the desert bloom." was what everyone used to say.

The problem is that the land the Zionists took was not uninhabited. Britain started all of this by giving away what was not theirs to give. From the get-go, Zionists were brutal to the Arabs of Palestine. In 1947 and 1948, British soldiers in Palestine were shocked at that brutality. They even asked for permission to defend Palestinian Arabs against the worst abuses. Their superiors told them to stand down and not intervene. That was because Britain was getting ready to bug out of there and didn't much care who killed who, since they were washing their hands of the whole mess (which they laid the groundwork for.) The behavior of the Zionists during those early days was so ugly that it shocked the soldiers of the greatest, biggest, most conquering and most exploitative imperial nation the world has ever known. Ponder that for a moment.

Everyone taking a position on this conflict needs to go to YouTube and view some documentaries showing the history of what went on from way back. In 2 hours you could learn the essentials. Look at films made by both sides. THEN draw your own conclusions.
 
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Electrum1 said:
This is why old books are valuable. I'd trust first hand accounts in books from 1950's more than Youtube, but there are good history videos on YouTube
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That's a very good point. So much bias and editorializing gets done to how things are reported. I used to actually rely on CNN to find out what was going on in the world. Ukraine broke me of that. They're still telling us that Russia is losing. Now I also watch Al Jezeera News, which is funded by Qatar. I also stream news from various sources. I also look for historical films. On Youtube, you can find filming done in the Middle East at the time of the founding of Israel. I look at online Israeli newspapers. I look at interviews with experts on the middle east. There are plenty of respectable Jewish historians who will discuss the truth of what was done to the Arabs of Palestine. There are even veterans of the Israeli military who will tell hard truths. It takes a little effort, not much. But it's so worth it. Real history is way more interesting than the phony narratives being pushed on us. My faith in mainstream media has recently been destroyed.
 
DesertHarp said:
I believed all the propaganda that we were fed: "A land with no people, for a people with no land." I thought there was this big piece of uninhabited desert, which the Jews moved to, and cultivated, and caused to bloom. "They made the desert bloom." was what everyone used to say.
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Really? I support Israel but at no point in my life did I think that Palestine was uninhabited. But it is actually factually correct to say that roughly 80% of the territory was uncultivated. It was mainly desert. That doesn't mean uninhabited of course.

DesertHarp said:
From the get-go, Zionists were brutal to the Arabs of Palestine
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The first real outbreak of violence was in 1929 and it was mainly Arabs attacking Jews. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre Notably, this event was what galvanised the Jews into forming an embryonic defence force.

DesertHarp said:
Everyone taking a position on this conflict needs to go to YouTube and view some documentaries showing the history of what went on from way back. In 2 hours you could learn the essentials.
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No, don't get your facts from YouTube. Read books by historians. You will never understand what is happening in a situation as complex as this one in 2hrs on YouTube.
 
@swilow Violence between Arabs and Jews in Palestine did not start in 1929.

Ahad Ha'am was a Zionist who promoted the idea that Hebrew should be the language of the Jews in Palestine. He died in 1927, before the violence of 1929, obviously. He was severely critical of the way Arabs were being treated by Jewish settlers, long before 1929. Look up his quotes. (I'll find links.)

en.m.wikipedia.org

Ahad Ha'am - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

www.palestineremembered.com

Ahad Ha'Am-A Brief Biography & Quotes - Palestine Remembered

Zionist Quotes: Ahad Ha'Am-A Brief Biography & Quotes - .
www.palestineremembered.com www.palestineremembered.com
 
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One way Israel legitimatized their acquisition of land in Palestine was to say they bought it fair-and-square from Arabs. That needs closer scrutiny. Often the land was being bought from wealthy Arabs living outside of Palestine whom the Ottoman regime had allowed to register land in Palestine as "theirs." Well-funded Jewish organizations offered these "owners" more money than they could extract from the "tenant" Arabs already on the land. The absentee Arab landlords took the Jewish money. Next the Arabs actually living in and working the land got expelled. Colonizers always find those who will sell out their own kind.

 
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DesertHarp said:
@swilow Violence between Arabs and Jews in Palestine did not start in 1929.
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I'm talking about the start of the conflict as we know it. Most historians point to the 1929 riots as the first real spark. Prior to 1929, there were incidents but there was also mutual cooperation as some local Arabs benefited from the influx of Jewish refugees. 1929 was the line in the sand that lead to a more militant Jewish presence and it wasn't the Jews who struck first.
 
swilow said:
I'm talking about the start of the conflict as we know it. Most historians point to the 1929 riots as the first real spark. Prior to 1929, there were incidents but there was also mutual cooperation as some local Arabs benefited from the influx of Jewish refugees. 1929 was the line in the sand that lead to a more militant Jewish presence and it wasn't the Jews who struck first.
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In history, there are antecedents to everything. And there are antecedents to the antecedents. Truthfulness requires peeling back each "incident" to explore the preceding context.

When an area is colonized by settlers who are more educated than the inhabitants they seek to replace, there are myriad ways in which the more sophisticated newcomers can outmaneuver the locals and subject them to injustice. I mention one manner of land acquisition in a post above, by way of example.

Long before frank political apartheid was established, Jewish leaders in Palestine were erecting a system of economic apartheid. They promoted a boycott of Arab vendors selling Arab produced goods. The motto was "Buy Jewish." They objected to Arabs being employed by Jewish enterprises. The motto was "Hire Jewish."

Though largely illiterate, Palestinian Arabs were not completely stupid. They could see that the Zionist entity was systematically freezing them out of participation in the evolving economy of an increasingly Jewish-controlled Palestine.

en.wikipedia.org

Hebrew labor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Snafu in the Void said:
What is the status of all the refugees who fled south as instructed? Is Egypt still refusing to help them?
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The following article is almost 2 months old. It outlines why Egypt didn't want to take in Palestinian refugees. I doubt Egypt's thinking has changed much since this was written.


Note the interest the Israeli govt has had in wanting to send Gazans to tent cities in the Sinai Desert.
 
elgoucho9 said:
However, Britain and America being so closely tied to Israel, a loss there could be the beginning of the end for the West.

How many of us would really be willing to loose the quality of life we have become accustomed to over this?
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Let's just get over with it. World is shit anyways. Ok, now I am just being bitter and indifferent of others lives.

But srsly, I'd rather face the consequences of civilizations we have formed early enough rather than postpone the conflicts. Works in personal relationships, so might possibly be better option in global politics too.
 
Snafu in the Void said:
Israel offered a 2 month ceasefire to exchange hostages. Hamas declined.

So, is Hamas and Oct 7th really a "natural reaction" to Israeli aggression?

Because apparently they don't give two shits about Palestinian people dying. They'd rather keep the hostages to perpetuate this war than do anything to helpful for their civilians.
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Exceptional hatred and violence are natural reactions to exceptional hatred and violence. They are shitty reactions anyway.

As in, it is not surprising this happened, even if I would rather live in world where it didn't happen.
 
Snafu in the Void said:
But Muslims own 1/3rd of the world. Jews own... a tiny little area that doesn't even show up on global maps because it's so tiny? Why cannot an established major religion not own Israel, when Christians and Muslims own 90% of the rest of the world? Objectively, I seek fairness, not any religious idea of homeland.
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This is interesting and catched my attention. By default, I would not base justice on these kind of patterns. But also, I recognize the need for people to gather with their own kinds to do their own thing, it is very valuable.

So, I am just not sure where to put it in priorities list. I'd argue that presence of people in area in close history is the most important factor-and that means also that the rationale for allowing migration therefore should not be based on religion or ethnicity. Secular, non-nationalist states all the way.
 
Snafu in the Void said:
Good question.

I hate organized religion, but what are my alternative views here? "Fuck them all, I hope they all die on both sides because I don't believe what either think about God?" or the more naive "why can't they both just get along?"

I am not an atheist.

But Muslims own 1/3rd of the world. Jews own... a tiny little area that doesn't even show up on global maps because it's so tiny? Why cannot an established major religion not own Israel, when Christians and Muslims own 90% of the rest of the world? Objectively, I seek fairness, not any religious idea of homeland.

"I hope they both get along" is not not based in reality.

If you want to argue that Jews don't necessarily deserve their own little country to live in (and to defend it with utmost reciprocity), then why has Islam spread around the world and killed millions of dissenting Africans or Asians?

Sure, Islam /=/ Palestine... then in that case, eliminate Hamas, which is an extremist Islamic agenda which got innocent Palestinians into this situation in the first place!

How can you ignore Gaza leadership as their stated own purpose as a fundamental Islamic fucking Jihadists and then discount them from the crimes of Islam throughout history?

I mean, dude I've said this before, this whole conflict and argument can be extrapolated into a convoluted argument on historical politics, human nature, and semantical bullshit. It's all bullshit.

This whole war can be translated into a "blame game" of human atrocities that goes back at least two millenia.
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I hate to be a nit-picker, but how do Christians and Muslims own 90% of the world, if neither one owns India or China? (That's between 2 and 3 billion people, out of world population of 8 billion.)

I don't begrudge a homeland to the Jews, but then I didn't get kicked out of where I live to give it to them. There are about 7 million Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Within that same geographic region, there are about 7 million Jews. Zionists want all of that land for Israel. The Arabs think that's unfair. I think the Arabs have a point.

Israel's first head of state, David Ben Gurion, said he would accept the limited area allocated by the U.N. to Israel, but he also said that acceptance would be temporary to buy time for Israel to consolidate power, grow in population, and develop militarily. Eventually, he intended that Israel would expand its borders to encompass all of Palestine. He expected that, as Israel expanded, Arabs would tend to flee and abandon their homes and land, which Jews could then appropriate to themselves.

Here is a link containing quotes of Ben-Gurion:

www.progressiveisrael.org

Ben-Gurion’s Notorious Quotes: Their Polemical Uses & Abuses

I’ve been engaged in a long-term e-mail debate with anti-Zionists, associated with David McReynolds, a former leader of the War Resisters’ League and a tiny remnant that still calls itself the Socialist Party, USA. Seth Farber, one of the most vociferous (although not quite the nastiest) of my...
www.progressiveisrael.org www.progressiveisrael.org
 
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