NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
So there’s this place called Palestine which, to be clear, I’m not implicitly recognizing as a state by referring to it. I’m just saying it’s a geographical area approximately between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean. Definitely a place.
Lots of people live in Palestine. Some of them are Palestinians and some are Israelis. They don’t always get along with each other. Some of the people in Palestine also have disagreements with people in other countries, both within the region such as Syrians and not within the region such as Americans.
There are many opinions about what has previously happened in Palestine. Also lots of new things keep happening so people can have new opinions on those new things.
Has something happened in Palestine that you have an opinion on? Why not link a news story and then make a series of assertions in this topic. It doesn’t need to be current, lots of things have already happened in Palestine, you can choose from any of those. If you want a current crisis to refer to then good news, Palestine is in a perpetual state of crisis, there’s always something.
It's such a complex topic to unravel. The grievances between the Palestinuans and Jews have very deep roots and it seems like new cycles of violence are bound to happen in favor of finding a solution that works. Extremist groups seem to be able to keep tension high at all times.
Does anyone know of any situations where there was something in the air tangible to peace at a certain point in time, or has it always been a state of more or less hostile situations?
---Big edit--- If you look at other geographical regions, there's NK and SK; Russia, Ukraine and the Krim; Turkey, Greece and Cyprus; Hong Kong and China and many more I don't even know of. You could also look at the Scotland/NI GB conflict and the Catalonia Spain conflict for intranational struggles. Are there any situations comparable from a diplomatic standpoint and why/how do these things keep being a thing. I guess a lot of propaganda/resentment carried over from former generations?
Kwark seems to have gone pretty far out of his way to make an unbiased OP for this thread, but I think it would be valuable to have a summary of the facts-so-far on the first page of the thread, even a biased one. Fortunately Kwark has also created just such a summary recently in the USPMT (spoilered for length): + Show Spoiler +
On May 18 2021 09:26 JimmiC wrote: I am referring to political persecution and being murdered, I am not saying the pilgrims were not.
Let's recap. DarkPlasmaBall said that the colonization of Palestine after the Second World War appeared to be a parallel of the colonization of North America.
On May 18 2021 07:07 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Seems like an eerily accurate parallel to colonizing North America.
You disagreed and provided a list of pertinent facts that you would have to leave out to make the parallel work. Your specific argument was that the similarities could only be drawn if you left out these facts. "if you leave out a whole bunch pertinent facts ... you can draw similarities". That these facts would disprove any similarity due to their obvious differences between the settlers of North America and the colonization of Palestine.
1) What was happening to the Jews in Europe and the rest of the world compared to the colonizers of North America (you subsequently clarified this was an explicit reference to religious persecution) 2) Whether they were colonizing to extract wealth 3) Whether they sent wealth back to a motherland 4) Whether they intended to turn the new country into their motherland
On May 18 2021 07:23 JimmiC wrote:
On May 18 2021 07:07 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Seems like an eerily accurate parallel to colonizing North America.
If you use the recent, forget the whole part about the history, ignore what was happening to the Jews in Europe and the rest of the world, forget that unlike the Europeans the Jews were not coming to extract wealth, nor were they sending it back to any motherland, this was going to be their motherland, it was not the Jews deciding this but rather the same colonizers that were still pillaging much of the world, that no other country was willing to accept the Jews (one of Canada's great shames is we turned away a boat of Jewish refugees that no one would take and they ended up all dying at the sea.
So yes if you leave out a whole bunch pertinent facts and make it for a specific time frame you can draw similarities!
If you're now saying that the pilgrims were victims of religious persecution and were seeking a new home in North America then I fail to see why that's a pertinent fact which proves the dissimilarity of the settlers of North America vs the Jews settling Palestine after WW2. Is your argument now that the Jews didn't face religious persecution or is it that both groups did face religious persecution and it is that very similarity that makes them so dissimilar?
Just as a FYI, you can at any time cease to argue that what makes NA a colonization and Israel not a colonization is that the settlers of NA weren't fleeing religious persecution and trying to found a new homeland where they could practice their religion freely. Nobody is going to make you argue that.
Maybe it would be helpful to boil it down to this: Do you think the formation of Israel after WW2 was ethical? I would say it was not.
Unquestionably not. I don't think anyone anywhere would argue that a group of armed people can move into an area uninvited, commit terror attacks on the local authorities, and set up their own exclusionary state.
The question of what to do with their descendants who were born on the seized land is much more ethically complex as it would not be just to force them all out. But the formation of Israel is unquestionably unethical and there is no nation in the world that would have not responded to the violence of the Zionist movement with violence.
The blame principally falls on Britain. Palestine was a League mandate and was not permitted its own military nor control of its own borders. Instead it was forced to entrust Britain with these powers and hope Britain defended the interests of the people who it had denied the right to defend themselves. Britain fundamentally failed to protect the people of Palestine and once the crisis reached melting point British forces bailed and left the question to be settled by bloodshed. The radical Zionist invasion of Palestine never should have been allowed by Britain and once it had taken place Britain should have stayed to ensure a peaceful transition.
For those of us who don't know much history, how in the world was Israel able to be formed? It feels like this would have been opposed be a lot of countries. So many obviously wrong things here. But maybe back then brown people were even less important?
The Ottoman Empire collapsed and Britain + France divided it into League mandates which were what they called colonies in the civilized post WW1 era where they weren't making new colonies. The mandates were to be protected and guided towards statehood by a colonial power.
The Zionist movement had previously been growing for a few decades, driven in part by the rapidly growing Jewish population in the United States. In 1917, before Britain actually controlled Palestine, Lord Balfour, a British foreign secretary, famously said that he was in favour of a Jewish state provided that it did not harm the existing Palestinian peoples. While the governments changed and Palestine had not previously been Britain's to give away this was subsequently used as a justification for migration.
In 1939 Britain tried to slam the brakes on, noting the increasingly militant and totalitarian nature of the Zionist migration to Palestine and the harm that was coming to the Palestinian population. It placed a cap on Jewish migration to Palestine and called for the establishment of two states. This proposal didn't go down well with the radical Zionists in Palestine who promptly tried to make an alliance with Hitler (yes, that Hitler) and establish a totalitarian fascist Israel through a campaign of terrorism against the British authorities. They committed massacres against the Palestinian population, assassinated British colonial administrators, and collaborated with Nazis.
After WW2 there was increasing American support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine while Britain tried to maintain a semblance of control including limits on immigration etc. which were obviously unpopular in the wake of the Holocaust. The terror attacks on British forces and administration, as well as on Palestinians themselves, increased to the point that the British called in the UN to mediate and bailed. The Zionist terrorists promptly assassinated the UN mediator because of course they did. The UN came up with a partition plan in 1947 and Britain decided to withdraw without any plan for implementing the partition plan. The US also changed its mind on the partition plan and felt like an expanded Arab Jordan might be able to absorb the new Palestinian state. Ultimately the question was moot because the day the British left the Zionists felt themselves strong enough to simply seize power in Palestine through a coup. The neighbouring Arab states all declared war on the new Israel because it wasn't doing the orderly transition and partition the UN had recommended but the Zionists had secured sufficient weapons and training ahead of time to defend themselves. They had a fun rationalization for why the Israel declared in their coup got to be bigger than the UN partition plan. Basically they argued that because the Palestinians thought that the Zionists should get less land than the UN agreement then it was only fair if the Zionists in turn tried to make the Palestinians get less land than the UN agreement. They made the argument that because they accepted the UN agreement (they didn't) but the Palestinians didn't (they didn't) then they didn't have to accept the UN agreement and so they wouldn't accept the UN agreement because although they did accept the UN agreement (they didn't) it wouldn't be fair if they were the only ones who accepted it and so they didn't have to be bound by it even though they accepted it (they didn't). The fascist Zionists who allied with the Nazis in WW2 and specifically wanted a totalitarian Jewish state modelled on Nazi Germany all got medals and their leader subsequently became the Prime Minister of Israel because that's just how Israel is.
It's not so much that nobody cared as it was that nobody cared enough to actually bleed for it. Britain made a good faith effort to protect the Palestinians until it became clear that the only people who gave a shit about the Palestinians were the Palestinians. The United States was giving them shit for putting Zionist migrants into camps (what else are you going to do with illegal migrants who keep showing up in excess of immigration caps) while funding the Zionist movement and it wasn't like Britain had manpower and treasure to spare after WW2.
If you make a list of groups who were meant to stop the Zionist takeover of Palestine then it was chiefly 1) Britain. Made a good faith effort through the 20s and 30s, got burned out in 1947 because it was a thankless job made much harder by the United States being dicks about it and nobody wanted to put Jews in camps after WW2. Bailed the moment the UN came up with a plan without actually doing anything to make that plan happen. They're the most responsible for the current crisis because they were responsible for the administration of Palestine and they fucked off. 2) The UN. Sent a mediator who was killed by Zionist terrorists. Came up with a two state solution but never sent anyone to actually transition British Palestine into those two states. Watched as shit hit the fan. Zero actual effort made. 3) The Arab world. Got pissed about Israel randomly declaring itself but then lost the war so put them down as made an attempt. Also it wasn't a great attempt because they probably weren't planning on defeating the new Israel only to partition Palestine in accordance with the UN plan. Probably for the best that they lost.
One of the dynamics of this issue (at least as it gets debated in the US; I couldn’t speak for other places) is that for those with strong opinions on the subject it winds up being an indicator of where you’re at on atrocities and human rights abuses generally. Do you believe atrocities are inevitable/distractions from the “real” issues? Or that they’re local issues the international community should generally stay out of? Or are you relatively (maybe willfully) unaware of the evidence that atrocities are occurring? You’re probably at least somewhat pro-Israel. Do you believe the international community has a strong obligation to stay vigilant against human rights abuses? Do you follow Amnesty International on Twitter? You’re probably at least somewhat pro-Palestine. There’s lots of nuanced positions in there depending on the context of the conversation, but that’s the contours of it in my experience.
Of course, the vast majority remain in a state of moral indecision based on a vague idea that the issue is complicated and intractable and they’re not informed enough to have an opinion.
On May 19 2021 04:42 Uldridge wrote: It's such a complex topic to unravel. The grievances between the Palestinuans and Jews have very deep roots and it seems like new cycles of violence are bound to happen in favor of finding a solution that works. Extremist groups seem to be able to keep tension high at all times.
Does anyone know of any situations where there was something in the air tangible to peace at a certain point in time, or has it always been a state of more or less hostile situations?
---Big edit--- If you look at other geographical regions, there's NK and SK; Russia, Ukraine and the Krim; Turkey, Greece and Cyprus; Hong Kong and China and many more I don't even know of. You could also look at the Scotland/NI GB conflict and the Catalonia Spain conflict for intranational struggles. Are there any situations comparable from a diplomatic standpoint and why/how do these things keep being a thing. I guess a lot of propaganda/resentment carried over from former generations?
Northern Ireland is possibly the most similar example of invasion and displacement but in NI they were forced into a single state for hundreds of years after the settlements. By the time that state was divided into two states based on demographics a dozen generations had passed. NI also had a lot of violence for decades after the two state solution and it was only through a series of commissions and reforms on gerrymandering, electoral representation, policing, economic and administrative cooperation within the EU, and so forth that peace was achieved.
In terms of whether there’s any example which shows hope for peace in Palestine, there is not. Ireland isn’t really applicable, if the Elizabethan settlements of Ulster happened today there would be unending war. The majority of historical examples result in the kind of peace Native Americans have with the US government which would not be a good outcome.
One thing to note is the demographics of the Gaza Strip, over 5,000 inhabitants per km2. That’s comparable to London (5,700). The median age in Gaza is 18 years. To be clear, that means that 50% of the inhabitants of Gaza are below the age of 18.
There can be no attack on Gaza that does not result in killing children because Gaza is a sardine can filled with children. When people suggest the reason Israeli bombs kill so many Palestinian children is because Hamas are using them as human shields you should remember these numbers. There isn’t a designated rocket launch site in Gaza that is cleared of children and inhabited only by militants for Israel to safely bomb, there couldn’t be. It’s not that they’re deliberately launching rockets from schools, it’s that they have been compressed into a tiny space filled with children.
The question is therefore “if it is impossible to bomb Gaza without bombing children is it ethical to bomb Gaza in self defence?” Different people have different answers to this. Some people argue that the violence of a rocket launch must be met with violence in return, even if that response kills far more civilians than the rocket. Others argue that as a state actor that is responsible for cramming those civilians into Gaza Israel should follow stricter rules of engagement regarding bombing children. One thing is undisputed, the Israeli attacks kill far, far more civilians than the Palestinian attacks.
Edit to add: This question is also often phrased by apologists as “does Israel have a right to defend itself (by dropping bombs on children)?” to which the answer is clearly yes. I believe that the question misses the point. Can it not be true that Israel has the right to drop bombs on Palestinian children AND that it should be extremely judicious in exercising that right?
Kwarks summary is just one of a short timeframe of the issue and should not be used as a description of the conflict. Without context, it is also super onesided, basically not mentioning the contribution of the palestine people at all. So, please do not present it at everything an uninformed person needs to know
Not hating on it, it just cannot be used as a summary of the roots of the conflict.
I don’t think anybody should read one TL post about the Israel-Palestine conflict and think it everything they would need to know to be informed. I’d be interested in comparing and contrasting Kwark’s narrative with others, but it’s a pretty readable summary that broadly outlines the origins. Read multiple sources from multiple perspectives if you want to be informed, but I think Kwark’s post is as good a place as any to start.
My view is that broadly speaking the Palestinians were minding their own business until all the Zionists showed up and built an Israel on Palestine. I’m not going to assert that there was no violence committed by Palestinians because that wouldn’t be true. What I will assert is that the Palestinians did not initiate the conflict. They weren’t roaming around Eastern Europe picking fights with Jewish people, they were in their homes when Zionists showed up and started picking fights.
I am broadly speaking extremely sympathetic to the Palestinians in the 30s and 40s who saw their country overrun by an invasion of colonists from Europe. I can’t imagine any people not resisting that kind of invasion of their land, I view the Palestinian opposition to the declaration of the state of Israel as wholly rational. What happened to Palestine is essentially a real world example of the right wing fever dream of Central Americans flooding into Texas and establishing a Sharia law Caliphate.
I am fairly sympathetic to the Jewish people, particularly those who came to Palestine after WW2, because their desire for a homeland is rational and the trauma of the Holocaust explains, if not justifies, a lot. That sympathy becomes far more limited after they did not adhere to the UN partition plan.
I’m unsympathetic to the UN as this was essentially the first test of the UN after WW2 and they did absolutely nothing to prevent the question being settled by arms and ethnic cleansing. They came up with a partition plan and did nothing to implement it.
I’m unsympathetic to the Arab nations who, after losing the war with Israel, could have done far more to help the displaced Palestinians. I cynically believe they preferred an ongoing Palestinian crisis as a nationalist rallying cry to the costs that would be involved in fixing it.
I outright condemn the British Empire which inserted itself into Palestinian affairs uninvited and then failed to honour the most basic duties it had assumed towards the Palestinian people. The conflict started under British stewardship and Britain was the party responsible for ensuring that there was no conflict. Perhaps the two state solution would have collapsed after Britain left and perhaps war was inevitable. We won’t know because Britain, entrusted with implementing the UN partition plan, fucked off.
And to be fair, the wikepedia source that JimmiC posted is basically written from the perspective of the Jews, the part about the british mandate is especially one sided. It is basically not the History of the area now known as Isreal, but the history of the land when there were Jews around. It reduces 500 years of history where there was only a peaceful minority of Jews around to one sentence. It reduces the conflict of Jewish and palestine people before 1928 to "the palestinians did not like, that so many Jews were arriving. They claimed that the jewish settlers wanted to claim the muslim holy sites and then massacred them. It is not interested in explaining the creation of the conflict.
On May 19 2021 05:54 Broetchenholer wrote: And to be fair, the wikepedia source that JimmiC posted is basically written from the perspective of the Jews, the part about the british mandate is especially one sided. It is basically not the History of the area now known as Isreal, but the history of the land when there were Jews around. It reduces 500 years of history where there was only a peaceful minority of Jews around to one sentence. It reduces the conflict of Jewish and palestine people before 1928 to "the palestinians did not like, that so many Jews were arriving. They claimed that the jewish settlers wanted to claim the muslim holy sites and then massacred them. It is not interested in explaining the creation of the conflict.
Yeah, that’s the problem. I think Kwark’s OP is indicative of how few facts are agreed upon about this issue, which makes a “non-biased summary” very difficult. JimmiC disagrees with Kwark’s summary, but there isn’t an official record we can go to for God’s truth. We have to take people’s perspectives, check their work on proof and sourcing, and come to our own perspective (which others can then use for the same process).
That said, I’m maybe overemphasizing the complexity here. Aspects of this (the full history of the origin of the state of Israel, for instance) are extremely complex, but you don’t have to understand all of it to have an opinion about the most recent flare-up, for instance.
On May 19 2021 04:46 xM(Z wrote: i'd hopped Netanyahu would've been jailed by now 'cause for sure this latest escalation wouldn't have existed without him in power.
Hence why this happening. The bombing will stop once time runs out for the opposition to form a Government.
I believe in the end the truth about the beginings of the state are irrelevant. Both sides of the conflict have their own versions of them and they won't go away until the situation is peeaceful and deescalated anyway. What is relevant is the current status, because everyone right now bringing up the life of 3 generations ago is usually just interested in explaining or even defending the status quo. At least when used in politics, not in our academic discussions. Right now we have this mess and to the people involved it is irrelevant who started it. I would be interested if somebody here believes that 50 years from now, there could be 2 seperate states living in some state of just peace, or one state with both sides living peacefully together. Who here believes this could be possible?
The US has blocked a 3rd attempt from the UN security council to issue a joint statement calling for a ceasefire. The US's enabling of the continued bombings by Israel is wholly unconscionable to me.
A third United Nations Security Council emergency meeting in a week – amid the deadly Israeli offensive in Gaza – has again ended with no concrete outcome after the United States blocked a joint statement calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
The meeting on Sunday came after the US reportedly twice blocked over the last week resolutions that would have condemned Israel’s military response and called for a ceasefire. Nearly 200 people, including 58 children, have been killed in the intense bombing of the besieged enclave of two million people.
The latest round of inaction also comes as US President Joe Biden has given no signs of plans to step up public pressure on Israel, instead repeatedly stressing Israel’s right to defend itself.
On May 19 2021 05:44 KwarK wrote: My view is that broadly speaking the Palestinians were minding their own business until all the Zionists showed up and built an Israel on Palestine. I’m not going to assert that there was no violence committed by Palestinians because that wouldn’t be true. What I will assert is that the Palestinians did not initiate the conflict. They weren’t roaming around Eastern Europe picking fights with Jewish people, they were in their homes when Zionists showed up and started picking fights.
I am broadly speaking extremely sympathetic to the Palestinians in the 30s and 40s who saw their country overrun by an invasion of colonists from Europe. I can’t imagine any people not resisting that kind of invasion of their land, I view the Palestinian opposition to the declaration of the state of Israel as wholly rational. What happened to Palestine is essentially a real world example of the right wing fever dream of Central Americans flooding into Texas and establishing a Sharia law Caliphate.
I am fairly sympathetic to the Jewish people, particularly those who came to Palestine after WW2, because their desire for a homeland is rational and the trauma of the Holocaust explains, if not justifies, a lot. That sympathy becomes far more limited after they did not adhere to the UN partition plan.
I’m unsympathetic to the UN as this was essentially the first test of the UN after WW2 and they did absolutely nothing to prevent the question being settled by arms and ethnic cleansing. They came up with a partition plan and did nothing to implement it.
I’m unsympathetic to the Arab nations who, after losing the war with Israel, could have done far more to help the displaced Palestinians. I cynically believe they preferred an ongoing Palestinian crisis as a nationalist rallying cry to the costs that would be involved in fixing it.
I outright condemn the British Empire which inserted itself into Palestinian affairs uninvited and then failed to honour the most basic duties it had assumed towards the Palestinian people. The conflict started under British stewardship and Britain was the party responsible for ensuring that there was no conflict. Perhaps the two state solution would have collapsed after Britain left and perhaps war was inevitable. We won’t know because Britain, entrusted with implementing the UN partition plan, fucked off.
Weren't arab palestinians aspiring towards building a state aswell? Was that not a radical nationalist movement? What were the initial crimes of jews/zionists against the arabs? I haven't found any source for this, even more so, only contradicting sources in german aswell as in english. How would you have prevented jewish refugees/migrants from going to palestine? How can you possibly paint the jewish side as only fascists (who might have at some point contemplated to work with fascist countries to get rid of britain) while painting the arab side (who I think you mean when you say Palestinians, wrongly so btw) who was lead by an islamist national antisemitic guy and actually partnered with the nazis as innocent?
On May 19 2021 05:44 KwarK wrote: My view is that broadly speaking the Palestinians were minding their own business until all the Zionists showed up and built an Israel on Palestine. I’m not going to assert that there was no violence committed by Palestinians because that wouldn’t be true. What I will assert is that the Palestinians did not initiate the conflict. They weren’t roaming around Eastern Europe picking fights with Jewish people, they were in their homes when Zionists showed up and started picking fights.
I am broadly speaking extremely sympathetic to the Palestinians in the 30s and 40s who saw their country overrun by an invasion of colonists from Europe. I can’t imagine any people not resisting that kind of invasion of their land, I view the Palestinian opposition to the declaration of the state of Israel as wholly rational. What happened to Palestine is essentially a real world example of the right wing fever dream of Central Americans flooding into Texas and establishing a Sharia law Caliphate.
I am fairly sympathetic to the Jewish people, particularly those who came to Palestine after WW2, because their desire for a homeland is rational and the trauma of the Holocaust explains, if not justifies, a lot. That sympathy becomes far more limited after they did not adhere to the UN partition plan.
I’m unsympathetic to the UN as this was essentially the first test of the UN after WW2 and they did absolutely nothing to prevent the question being settled by arms and ethnic cleansing. They came up with a partition plan and did nothing to implement it.
I’m unsympathetic to the Arab nations who, after losing the war with Israel, could have done far more to help the displaced Palestinians. I cynically believe they preferred an ongoing Palestinian crisis as a nationalist rallying cry to the costs that would be involved in fixing it.
I outright condemn the British Empire which inserted itself into Palestinian affairs uninvited and then failed to honour the most basic duties it had assumed towards the Palestinian people. The conflict started under British stewardship and Britain was the party responsible for ensuring that there was no conflict. Perhaps the two state solution would have collapsed after Britain left and perhaps war was inevitable. We won’t know because Britain, entrusted with implementing the UN partition plan, fucked off.
Weren't arab palestinians aspiring towards building a state aswell? Was that not a radical nationalist movement? What were the initial crimes of jews/zionists against the arabs? I haven't found any source for this, even more so, only contradicting sources in german aswell as in english. How would you have prevented jewish refugees/migrants from going to palestine? How can you possibly paint the jewish side as only fascists (who might have at some point contemplated to work with fascist countries to get rid of britain) while painting the arab side (who I think you mean when you say Palestinians, wrongly so btw) who was lead by an islamist national antisemitic guy and actually partnered with the nazis as innocent?
I wouldn’t call Palestinians living in Palestine aspiring for a decolonial Palestinian state a radical nationalist movement. No more than I’d call Indians living in India wanting freedom from British rule radical nationalists. Self determination is a fundamental right of all peoples. You’d have to be a radical 19th century imperialist to argue that the British, rather than the Palestinians, should govern Palestine. You cannot draw an equivalency between on the one side the people of Palestine wanting freedom from colonial rule and the Jewish settlers wanting to establish their own colonial rule in someone else’s land. These are not equivalent nationalistic movements. You might as well argue that the desire by extreme Polish nationalists in 1939 to occupy Poland was equivalent to the desire by friendly German nationalists in 1939 to occupy Poland.
Crimes of the Zionists against the Palestinians include this famous example. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre But more generally just taking their land and displacing them with mass migration and violence.
Ideally it wouldn’t have been up to me to police the borders of Palestine. Ideally a self governing independent Palestine would have been given the right to police its own borders. But in the context of British rule, turning around ships of illegal migrants. The settlements were not legal, just as it would not be legal for the Palestinians today to sail to Germany and seize land. If you imagine a reasonable policy for Germany when faced with hypothetical ships of Palestinians attempting to illegally enter Germany then I’m sure you can imagine a similar policy for Palestine faced with ships of Jewish refugees.
I don’t paint all Zionists as fascists but fascists were certainly among them and there were a lot of terror attacked committed against the British and UN. It also doesn’t make them not look like fascists when the state of Israel gave the fascist terrorists medals.
I’m not misspeaking when I refer to the Palestinians living in Palestine as Palestinians, you’re misspeaking when you call them Arabs. The name for the people of Palestine is Palestinian, just as the name for the people of Germany is German (in English). In 1947 Palestine existed and the people were Palestinian. I don’t know if this is a language thing but you’re the one misspeaking when you call the people of Palestine an “Arab side”.
On May 18 2021 19:18 Broetchenholer wrote: At the moment of the first massacres of Jews in in Palestina, 1929, there were already militant nationalistic movements on both sides. Sources are pretty scarce on the internet, but i think it is safe to say that the Jewish Zionists were not deescalating anything and used the mandate of the British to create a Jewish state to excerpt a lot of influence over areas they were not settling in.
Several months earlier Zionist leader Menachem Ussishkin gave a speech demanding "a Jewish state without compromises and without concessions, from Dan to Be'er Sheva, from the great sea to the desert, including Transjordan." He concluded, "Let us swear that the Jewish people will not rest and will not remain silent until its national home is built on our Mt Moriah," a reference to the Temple Mount.[11]
Now, i am sure he intended to do that without harming, displacing or subjugating the people already living there. And of course the arabian uprising in 1929 and later were largely arab mobs killing Jews. But to say that the Jewish zionists were just defending themselves and then later might have become terrorist organisations is also conveniently ignoring the beginnings of the state. And while some of these settlers were just fleeing progroms and persecution in eastern europe and were just happy to have a new home, others were militantly pushing the idea of creating their holy land. It's messy and complicated, but the situation is certainly not as easy as "they started it, we had to defend ourselves".
I mostly agree. I'm not saying the Jews were innocent in all of this. I merely pointed out the numerous atrocities committed by the Palestinian side as counterweight to Kwark's one-sided depiction of the events, which pretty much left them out entirely.
On May 17 2021 23:41 Broetchenholer wrote: Why? The democratically elected government of Israel has not made any attempts at deescalating the situation. Instead, they keep pushing the Palestinians further into the sea. They do that because the majority of their people want it or the majority of their people does not oppose it loud enough. Every society is defined by the action of their majority. The political majority of Israelis do not want their government to improve the situation of Palestinians. Where am i wrong?
Hamas will find any excuse to kill innocent people. They've found an excuse just recently, they'll find another one whenever they like. Would you say it's acceptable or even understandable to kill innocent people because of police doing their job (not killing anyone)?
Again, why is it okay for israel to kill people in response?
It's not ok for Israel to kill innocent people in response. But they also can't sit still and do nothing. To my knowledge they're not purposely targeting innocent people. Hamas on the other hand is doing exactly that. Again, I've said multiple times that the Israeli government isn't perfect either. What are we arguing about? I will always argue that they're doing some things that are wrong.
I will not, however, agree that Israel is worse than Hamas, which is what I was disputing when I originally posted historic facts for context. And I will also not agree that the attacks against Israel will stop if Israel simply stops doing what it's been doing. And I also not agree that Israel should just surrender and let their land be reclaimed. None of that seems outrageous or obviously false to me.
I'll have to go now, my day's over.
Isn't the very existence of Hamas a direct byproduct of Israeli violence towards Palestinians? Hamas was formed in 1987, which was after (at least) 20 years of Israelis settling on Palestinian land and terrorizing Palestinians; the rest of the world (sans the United States) seemed to acknowledge that what Israelis had been doing for decades was illegal and antithetical towards peace in the region. The protests and riots during the First Intifada indicated that Palestinians had had enough of being helpless, and were finally willing to explore more confrontational and aggressive options against Israel to try to make their voices heard. Without the consistent poking and prodding and occupying and invading and evicting and killing by Israeli forces, I don't think Hamas ends up ever gaining the traction it needed to counter Israel (because there would have been no overwhelming violence to "counter"). If Hamas is a monster, then Israel is responsible for creating a monster. Hamas is considered to be a terrorist group by some countries, but wayyy more countries acknowledge Israel to be the party primarily responsible for terrorizing the "other side", going so far as to cite international human rights violations and the Geneva convention:
In February 2011, the United States vetoed a draft resolution to condemn all Jewish settlements established in the occupied Palestinian territory since 1967 as illegal.[57] The resolution, which was supported by all other Security Council members and co-sponsored by over 120 nations,[58] would have demanded that "Israel, as the occupying power, immediately and completely ceases all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem and that it fully respect its legal obligations in this regard."[59] ... On January 31, 2012 the United Nations independent "International Fact-Finding Mission on Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory" filed a report stating that Israeli settlements led to a multitude of violations of Palestinian human rights and that if Israel did not stop all settlement activity immediately and begin withdrawing all settlers from the West Bank, it potentially might face a case at the International Criminal Court. It said that Israel was in violation of article 49 of the fourth Geneva convention forbidding transferring civilians of the occupying nation into occupied territory. It held that the settlements are "leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination."
Also, to your point about Israel hypothetically surrendering and losing all their land, I don't think that's what the majority of Palestinians are even interesting in seeing happen (and it certainly isn't possible). Most people on both sides say they support a two-state solution. If anything, Palestinians generally want Israelis to just stay on their side of the drawn borders, even after Palestinians have compromised and conceded a majority of their land to Israel. On the other hand, a lot of Israelis are saying they want a two-state solution... yet their military is clearly interested in keeping control over *both* states. A two-state solution implies that both sides are independent entities, not "Israel + Israeli-controlled Palestine".
You're talking as if Palestinians hadn't been engaged in political violence (including numerous massacres and terrorist attacks against civilians) for decades prior to the formation of Hamas...
I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but the dates from that source appear to begin when British imperialists started screwing with Palestine and who is "allowed" to live there (e.g., the Balfour Declaration, which undermined the fact that 90% of the Palestinian residents were Muslim and Christian, not Jews): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration#Opposition_in_Palestine
So if your point is that other groups, such as the British, were screwing with the Palestinians decades before Israel ever existed, then I totally agree with you.
So you agree you were selling a false narrative of helpless Palestinians "finally being willing to explore more confrontational and aggressive options" after decades of passively accepting abuse from the Israelis? And by the way, Muslims were oppressing minorities in the Middle East for centuries and deciding who can live where and on what terms for centuries before the British took over. Also, Jewish pogroms in the Middle East predate the Balfour Declaration.
What do you mean by false? That's literally why Hamas was formed and gained power:
Hamas was founded in 1987,[i] soon after the First Intifada broke out, as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood[26] which in its Gaza branch had previously been nonconfrontational toward Israel and hostile to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).[27] Co-founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin said in 1987, and the Hamas Charter affirmed in 1988, that Hamas was founded to liberate Palestine, including modern-day Israel, from Israeli occupation and to establish an Islamic state in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.[28] Since 1994,[29] the group has frequently stated that it would accept a truce[j] if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, paid reparations, allowed free elections in the territories[31] and gave Palestinian refugees the right to return.[k]
I never said that the Palestinians never attempted to fight back against the Israelis before Hamas existed, but clearly previous attempts at stopping Israel from infringing on the rights of Palestinians had failed, and there was sufficient support for a more militant organization to try doing things *their way*. Heck, even Hamas is currently failing at protecting Palestinians from the Israelis.
By "false" I mean the fact that Palestinians did not finally start exploring "more confrontational and aggressive options" with the formation of Hamas. They had been engaging in massacres of the Jewish population, terrorist attacks (on both military and civilian targets) and outright war for decades prior to the formation of Hamas. How was Hamas any more confrontational and aggressive?
Hamas distinguished itself from the PLO in a few key ways, such as focusing on religious ideology and extremism (compared to PLO's secular approach) and had initially taken a stance that was much more resistant to peace talks and compromise (as opposed to the attempts at conversations and resolutions that had preceded their rise to power), although Hamas eventually walked back their refusal to engage in conversation with the Israelis. One of the central premises of Hamas's origin was "In its 1988 charter, Hamas maintained that Palestine is an Islamic homeland that can never be surrendered to non-Muslims and that waging holy war to wrest control of Palestine from Israel is a religious duty for Palestinian Muslims. This position brought it into conflict with the PLO, which in 1988 recognized Israel’s right to exist." https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hamas
So yes, Palestinians weren't pacifists or completely passive before Hamas came to power, but there was a very significant philosophy change (for a while) between the previous idea of "let's talk about a two-state solution" and the new (albeit temporary) "one-state solution only - Palestine - because Israel shouldn't have ever existed in the first place and we want to go back to the way things were".
Here's a bit more on how Hamas escalated things and acted more aggressively/confrontationally, from the above source: "Hamas soon began to act independently of other Palestinian organizations, generating animosity between the group and its secular nationalist counterparts. Increasingly violent Hamas attacks on civilian and military targets impelled Israel to arrest a number of Hamas leaders in 1989, including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movement’s founder. ... From its foundation, Hamas rejected negotiations that would cede any land. The group denounced the 1993 peace agreement between Israel and the PLO and, along with the Islamic Jihad group, subsequently intensified its terror campaign using suicide bombers. ... Hamas activists further escalated their attacks on Israelis and engaged in a number of suicide bombings in Israel itself."
For a while, Hamas wouldn't even play nice with other Palestinian organizations, due to Hamas's extremism and hard-line stances. Fortunately, the source goes on to explain how Hamas ultimately started to moderate its views and consider peace talks and two-state solutions, not that I think we're anywhere near solving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
I still fail to see how the founding of Hamas marks the start of exploring "more confrontational and aggressive options". Different flavor perhaps. The Palestinians committed numerous massacres in the '20s-'30s and engaged in conventional warfare and terrorism throughout the '40s-'70s. As a matter of fact, Fatah, a prominent actor within the PLO, rejected the idea of Israel since it's beginning in the '50s until late '70s/early '80s. I can't understand in what sense Hamas was supposedly more confrontational or aggressive.
EPT
