Israel/Palestine thread

The irony of this ahistorical account is that during the 19th-20th centuries, when all the old Empires were breaking up and ethnonational nation states were forming; the prevailing opinion in Europe was that Ashkenazi Jews belonged in what we now call Israel, and should go back. Most nations actually encouraged their Jewish populations to emigrate to Israel, where it was believed they belonged*; but the majority of Jews right up to the Holocaust were not interested, instead opting to stay and face increasing abuse or emigrate to the US (up to the point the US halted Jewish immigration).

The concept that Jews were Europeans is a very recent invention, and was not believed by anyone at the time (or indeed most of the 2000 years of exile).

Once Israel was founded, many Arab nations at the time actually considered their Jewish populations to be Israeli foreigners also. Gad Saad is a Canadian Jewish refugee from Lebanon, and he says growing up in Lebanon his ID card actually listed his nationality at Israeli, although he had never been to Israel.

And the Algerian Jews who fled Algeria with the French upon Algerian independence were mostly native to Algeria, having lived there as an indigenous minority for hundreds of years. But like most of the rest of the indigenous Jews in the Arab world, they were told there was no place for them in post French Algeria. And most fled to France, and some to Israel or Canada/US.

*Britain was an exception to this sentiment for purely pragmatic reasons that had nothing to do with believing Jews were Europeans. As they understood Arabs better than everyone else and (correctly) anticipated Jewish emigration would cause domestic unrest throughout the Arab world and potentially disrupt their access to newly discovered ME fossil fuels. Of course the British solution was to block Jewish emigration out of Nazi controlled Europe, facilitating hundreds of thousands if not millions of possibly preventable Jewish deaths in the Holocaust.

If you are referring to Ehud Olmert, he did not call what Israel is doing a genocide. He has been critical of Israel’s actions. No former Israeli Prime minister has called this a genocide.

This genocide talk is a false narrative that I will talk more about tomorrow. I just wanted to briefly fact check here.

I’ve seen it brought up on a couple podcasts. A lot of it has to do with estimating what’s real from the inflated numbers given out by Hamas. I’ll post one of the podcasts tomorrow.

Gad Saad was on the Joe Rogan show. He is very informative about is the truth about Israel and the Gaza war.

He is fairly conservative, so one may disagree with his politics. That being said, no one is disputing that as a Jewish child in Lebanon his ID card listed his nationality as Israeli, because the Arab world at that time (like most of the rest of the world) considered Jews as foreigners who belonged in Israel, the Jewish state.

The idea israeli Jews are European colonists who should go back to Europe (ignoring over half of them don’t even have European ancestry) is a very recent ahistorical progressive viewpoint.

It’s a Reddit/twitter talking point. No one who has been to Israel would say these things.

I just haven’t seen anything to support those figures. Also, there have been phases in the fighting where civilian casualties seem to have been higher, especially in the early part of the war when there was still an ongoing shock and awe campaign, for lack of better words.

But really there just doesn’t seem to be good data as far as what percentage of the reported deaths are civilians.

I will say that from what I recall the figures for Gaza were not 1:1. I think they were at least to 2:1. And if you are talking about all wars, 5:1 civilian to military is way too high. Of course not every war is an urban war, which tends to have a higher risk ratio for civilian casualties compared to most wars, so the numbers were expected to be worse for civilian casualties given that background information.

Not really. Zionism was considered a novel crank belief until the Balfour Declaration by Britain in 1917.

This is drivel. See above re: Balfour Declaration. A quarter-million Jews emigrated to Mandate Palestine during the 1930s, more than doubling the Jewish population there. (The Jewish Agency cut a deal with the Nazis to facilitate this, though it was costly for the people involved.)

The British White Paper of May 1939 limited further immigration to 75,000 over the next five years, but the outbreak of war with Germany in September complicated matters. By the time the Nazis 'controlled Europe', they weren't keen on allowing Jews to leave. By 1944 only just over 50,000 of the permits had been taken up. Britain then allowed a further 1,500 a month till the end of the Mandate in 1948 (the timing of which had been fixed ten years earlier).

The US, for its own part, was helpful, up to Pearl Harbor, but a bit sticky. The Dresden diarist Victor Klemperer found that you had to be sponsored by one of the US Jewish committees, and they tended not to accept Christian converts -- which Klemperer and a lot of other German and Austrian Jews were.

who cares what a bunch of backward European murderers thought about where the Jews of Europe belonged? they lived in Europe for 100s of years and had no ties to any other land. they were European. just bc Hitler and the rest concluded they were some alien other from another land doesnt mean that we should agree with that bullshit.

I will tell you of 2 groups that thought the European Jews at the time were, well European (lol that thats an actual sentence that we are typing in this debate): those Jews themselves and the Arabs.

You dont just get to (extremely selectively) undo history because you disagree with historical decisions that were made based on what was commonly believed when the decisions were made. Which is basically your contention.

The Palestinian position has generally been "If we refuse to accept Israel happened, we can reverse history through sheer nihilistic stubbornness;" and after 80 years I think we can all see how well that position has worked. And continuing on this path moving forward will not yield any better results. And I think the rest of the world should stop facilitating it. Stop funding Palestinian obstinacy. Force the Palestinian people move on (either through making peace or emigration) because they will have to without the rest of the world funding their stubborn belligerence.

By who? If you stopped any random European on the street in the year 1910 and asked them whether the Jews belonged in the Middle East and should go back, what percent do you estimate would have agreed with this?

I would guess well over 90%.

I dont think Western political elites pre WWII thought that Zionism as a political project would actually succeed. But that doesn't mean that in the wave of ethnonationalism that was sweeping Europe at this time, Jews weren't considered Middle Eastern outsiders; because they certainly were.

And it certainly wasn't just Jews that were viewed this way.

There was actually a lot of forced resettlement that took place throughout Europe during this time of nation building and increase in ethnonationalism, where entire communities were relocated based on ethnicity/language (for example Polish and German communities were relocated so that generally Germans ended up on the German side of the border and Poles on the Polish side).

As another example (of many) the genocidal pogroms of "non Turks" from Turkey were particularly brutal and deadly, on par with the Holocaust in intent an impact.

As an interesting aside, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire there was some "crank" energy by ethnic Greeks to retake Istanbul/Constantinople. But there wasn't much general interest and it never happened. Which I suspect what is would have happened wrt Zionism if it wasn't for the Jewish pogroms sweeping Europe at this time (culminating in the Holocaust) where everyone (except Britain) felt the best solution was just to send the surviving Jews to Palestine/Israel and let them fight it out with the Arabs.

Thanks for the fact-check.

You are correct Olmert did not use the word genocide. But he did say that Israel was "fighting a war of extermination", which is certainly close to genocide.

In the same an op-ed piece, Olmert quoted a University of Pennsylvania survey that showed that 47% of Israeli's thought every Palestinian man, woman and child should be killed.

Disgusting.

In my opinion (and historically), evil actions by a government doesn't invalidate the very existence of a country. Germany and Japan didn't lose their nationhood after WWII. Regime change is far more doable than making a country no longer exist. I'm not even sure what that would entail.

But those Germans and Japanese settlers left Eastern Europe and China and SE Asia. Just like the French left Algeria and Vietnam. Or the Italians left Ethiopia. Just like the Crusaders left the Levant after spending like 200 years there.

Consistent with your ideology, You are a European invader living on stolen land. When are you leaving?

Why should anyone take you seriously when you make demands of others you don’t make on yourself?

there are some key differences but ultimately you arent wrong.

And of course the real interesting question of our day is wondering when the Europeans will finally decide they have had enough of the current invaders from North Africa and the Middle East and throw them out.

There are far more invading Algerians in France right now than there ever was the other way around.

And at some point Europe will come to its senses and like all the indigenous movements you listed above, throw out the foreign invaders.

If Algeria is allowed to be freed from the French, why should the French live with occupation by Algerian’s?

bc thats nonsense. there is no grand plan to colonize France or Europe. these are economic uand refugees due to the West destroying their countries via war and theft.

Israel ofc is the opposite. rich Westerners, including man Jews, planned and funded a massive land theft project..

This whole conversation is a ridiculous larp. Israel is not going anywhere and Europe isn’t going to expel its Muslim population anytime soon.

I guarantee that number is higher amongst the Palestinians if the question was reversed. Let’s face it, both sides have reasons to hate each other.

Remarkable collection of quotes from Israel's founders about how they initiated the 1948 war to expel Palestinians.

The Story of the Creation of Israel.

A sample:

Many more.

And Arab Legion announced May 15, 1948 that they were going to war because of the ongoing attacks on Palestinian villages.

In 1937 and 1938, they wrote/said they “initiated the 1948 war to expel Palestinians”?

yes they planned to do it for decades. since the start of Zionism that was the plan.

Say you didn't watch the film without saying you didn't watch the film.