Comment by dragontamer
2 years ago
Mmmm.
It's not like the collective West (aside from USA) offered safe haven to Jews. We kinda just threw them into that corner of the world.
The important issue here is the obviously shrinking pseudo-state of Palestine. The 1947 borders of Palestine have shifted dramatically in Israel's favor, but Israel continues to send settlers to the West Bank.
---------
Hamas was wrong to attack Israel. But Israel is wrong to continue expanding its borders.
It is interesting to note there are about as many Jews in the US as there are in Israel. There are about 7.6 million Jews in the United States [1]. There are about 8 million Jews in Israel [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel
The context for "safe haven" is the end of WW2. Most of America's Jews can date their arrival in the US before then; one of the most common windows is 1870 through 1920.
Not sure why that's relevant, same could be said of the Irish in Ireland vs. United States. On the topic though, there's only a few hundred Jews left in the first Jewish jurisdiction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast
Irish-Americans outnumber Irish-Irish nearly 10:1. For a very long time Jewish Americans outnumbered Israeli Jews, if not as lopsidedly.
Around 1AD, the greatest concentration of Jewish people was Alexandria, Egypt, where they made up 1/3 the population, not Jerusalem. The actual history of the Middle East defies simplistic narratives.
To say the west threw them in Israel, forgets to mention the mizrahi Jews who are 50% the Jewish-Israel population and were kicked out/ethnically cleansed from Arab countries.
The Mizrahi are also recent settlers in Palestine, coming from surrounding areas like Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, etc. Of course this was all one unified Arab nation under the Ottomans.
Earlier today, I was listening to an interview with a child of early Zionists (he grew up on a Kibbutz in Israel, but now resides in the US, escaping the [his words], "Fascist turn" in Israel) who said that Israelis (referring to the European Ashkenazi Jewish Zionist settlers) were very happy to have the Mizrahi come. They referred to the Mizrahi as, "Jews at Arab wages." Israeli Ashkenazi Zionists were and are very racist; where it would be odd, but arguably correct to call them a brand of white supremacists.
I think you’re referring to the term “Arab labor”?
The US was extremely late to offering any kind of safe haven to Jews. Even when it did, it was a single town in upstate NY.
Only about a thousand jewish refugees were let into the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/nyregion/oswego-jewish-re...
In 1947 there was a British rule. Before that the region was ruled by the Ottomans for some 400 years. Palestinians weren't self-governing at any point before the Oslo accords in the early 90s.
> Before that the region was ruled by the Ottomans for some 400 years.
You don't see how being part of a large, well-regarded Muslim Empire (a true Caliphate) has an effect on the psyche of the largely Muslim Palestinians? Or why they'd be against Western-rule in the post-Ottoman world of 1918+?
I'm certainly not calling the Ottomans saints. But the Ottomans were stewards of the Muslim world for those centuries.
---------
If Britain realized how much trouble all of this Middle Eastern crap would be after the dissolution of the Ottomans, I'm sure they would have rewritten the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres.
I didn't write anything about any effects on their psyche. Just mentioned some facts. The grandparent post had an implicit idea that in 1947 jews suddenly appeared to slice land off a functioning self governing Palestinian state.
Truth is since the Babylonian captivity in the 5th century BCE the area was not ruled by any indigenous people but held by interloping empire after empire, none of which were shy about relocating peoples into and out of that tiny piece of land.
British mandate rule lasted long enough for Irgun and fellow terrorist militias bombing the King David Hotel, attacking Palestinians such that, the British gave up and left.
Are you comparing that to being part of an empire for the preceding 400 years?
No one threw the Jews into Israel. The Balfour Declaration was the result of decades of Zionist lobbying.
Zionism is a very complex topic, and some elements seem quite murky.
But I certainly agree with your final point. Ignoring the religious angle, in terms of political dynamics this seems to be a fairly straightforward case of extremist nationalism.
> No one threw the Jews into Israel. The Balfour Declaration was the result of decades of Zionist lobbying.
I mean, the explicit goal post WW1 was to cut up the Ottoman Empire (which inevitably would divide the Muslim world, as the Ottomans were the major Muslim empire). The Jewish/Zionist cause is a useful means to that end. No better way to cut-up that region by offering it to Israel / a different religious group who had publicly lobbied for a place there.
I'd more rather blame 1917 / WW1 politics for this than the Jewish people per se. Cutting up and humiliating the Central Powers post-defeat was just one of the World War 1 issues.
Its Britain who signed it after all, and we all know what Britain wanted post WW1. (And one can argue that Britain treated the former-Ottomans with more respect than some other Central Powers...)
----------
I can imagine a parallel universe where Britain would cut up the Ottoman Empire differently without creating a Jewish land / start of Israel in years following WW1. But in most concievable alternative-histories I can think of, the four central powers / empires would be dissolved and otherwise cut up into tiny pieces and scattered into the winds in a humiliating defeat.
> Hamas was wrong to attack Israel.
I am against all violence and murder of civilians, but per international law, Hamas resistance fighters[1] had every right to attack Israel, the occupying power, but not civilians. And, as more comes out, there are more questions about who is responsible for the majority of the civilian casualties in the Hamas resistance fighter's attack. E.g., hundreds of the 1400 originally reported Israeli victims of the Hamas attacks have now been identified as Palestinian Hamas resistance fighters "burned beyond all recognition" [by Israeli forces]. And, the majority of Hamas targets were military. Whereas nearly 100% of the Israeli targets in the current massacre are civilians (including literally babies in incubators); the majority of the murdered have been women and children.
And, per international law, Israel, as occupying power, does not have a "right to defend itself" against the occupied Palestinians.
The International Criminal Court was investigating Israel for past crimes against humanity, but the Chief Prosecutor was replaced with one more friendly to the Zionists (no doubt under US pressure). Past Israeli activities and especially the current massacre is textbook genocide per international law, and while Israel refuses to sign onto the the ICC, Palestine has (which provides jurisdiction), but even if it hadn't, universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity such as the genocide being perpetrated by Israel allow for the prosecution of Israel's crimes. Israeli leaders (and hopefully soldiers) will eventually be brought to justice (as well as those who facilitated the genocide like Joe Biden, Anthony Blinken, Ursula von der Leyen, Nearly all Democratic members of congress and all Republican members of congress and many many more).
[1]There is also a lot of confusing Hamas the political wing with Hamas the militant resistance fighters. These are distinct, and there is good evidence that the political wing of Hamas was unaware the attacks were going to happen until after they had occurred. Think of it as Sinn Féin political wing of IRA vs. IRA resistance fighters, fighting the English colonizers, in Ireland. The political wing Hamas, is the democratically elected government of Gaza.
so filming and live-streaming violence against elderly, children and women who hold no weapons is resistance fighting.
> The important issue here is the obviously shrinking pseudo-state of Palestine.
Yes, the Arab states started wars to conquer the holy land from the Jews, and lost. Do you really think that if they had won anybody would be talking about how the Jewish state is shrinking? Losing territory in a war that they started in order to gain territory is somehow controversial?
> Israel continues to send settlers to the West Bank.
Israel has never sent a single citizen to settle the West Bank. People have moved to the West Bank of their own accord, which by the way is legal and encouraged under the legal frameworks applicable to the area (Ottoman law actually, because everything since had been mandate or occupation). But the state has not and does not move people.
Israel hasn't expanded its border by an inch since 1967.
It also left Gaza in 2005, forcibly extracting settlers, and left no military presence. In Gaza, in every real sense, Israel contracted its borders.
This is blatantly ignoring the partitioning of the West Bank and the numerous illegal settlements within it. It is also ignoring the very real military campaigns inside Gaza in 2008-9, 2012, 2014, and 2021. It is also ignoring the blockade Israel imposes on Gaza from land, sea and air (including a border wall a la Berlin).
None of this constitutes border expansion. As for blatant ignorance, please check the reasons for the "blockade", for the wall (which is nothing like Berlin), and even for the very existence of the "West Bank" entity.
1 reply →
That's not right; the end of Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip is not an example of Israel contracting its borders. Israel's borders have never included the Gaza Strip.
In that case, outside of the Golan Heights, Israel hasn't expanded its borders since 1948 when it declared independence.
2 replies →
Who controls the airspace of Gaza?
Who controls the water, electricity and internet in Gaza?
Who controls the borders of Gaza?
Who has military ships control sea waters of Gaza?
Who randomly sends missiles, air strikes and “mows the grass” in Gaza?
Israel.