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Comment by senderista

2 years ago

I'm not trying to deflect, but I do find it interesting that just 2 months ago, >100K Armenians were permanently displaced from their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh where they've lived for literally millenia, and I saw essentially no coverage of this in Western media (in contrast, it was all over Russian media, possibly because Armenia is a historical ally of Russia and a lot of Russians are frustrated that Russia and the CSTO did basically nothing to prevent this ethnic cleansing). The Armenian-American community is rather large (>500K) but apparently nowhere near as influential as the Jewish-American community.

There are many other recent instances of ethnic cleansing that nobody seems to care about. The number of ethnic Germans who were permanently expelled from their homes in Europe and the USSR (at about the same time as Palestinians) exceeds the number of Palestinian refugees by more than an order of magnitude (10-12M, with at least 500K dead), making it the largest ethnic cleansing in modern history, but this episode is basically forgotten (presumably because sympathy for Germans was rather scarce after WW2). The hundreds of thousands of Turks and Greeks who were mutually expelled from their homes after WW2 will never get to return either. Nor will all the ethnic minorities in the former Yugoslavia who were "cleansed" from their historic homelands. So my question is, given that ethnic cleansings are not uncommon in the recent past, and that the Palestinian Nakba is not even close to the worst case, why is it basically the only one that anyone seems to care about?

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senderista

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skitout  2 years ago

You do point some interesting points.

Note that the issue in not the Nakba anymore. From memory Oslo was about giving to a demilitarize Palestinian state about 10% of the Palestine mandate territory mostly in "islands" controlled by Israel, then progressively over a long period, increasing it to 22%, with quite no hope to get East Jerusalem back. And now (even before oct. 7) that seems impossible, far too much for the Israelis. (in 1992 89% of the population was "Palestinian")

In general westerners don't care about what happen abroad when there is nothing connected to them. In French media we have seen many stuff about Nagorno-Karabakh (with an Armenian point of view), because there are Armenian in France, and because it fits the narrative of the clash of civilizations Christian Vs Muslim. But it was far, in unimportant countries for us, few dead, no suspense, nothing spectacular...

Israel Palestine is another beast :

- Jerusalem in Holly for half of the world population and most westerners

- Israel as been important in US politics for decades (partly because of the first point) and the USA are direct and strong ally

- Most non western country have been colonized or assaulted by westerners in "recent" history... This conflict is also the echo and symbol of this : westerners assaulting non westerners (while giving moral lesson to the world)

- For some westerners that is the echo of Muslim and terrorists attacking westerners - us (9 11, Paris attack are in all minds), and for some kind of a symbol of the clash of civilization

- And this is happening now, with a lot of pictures, media coverage, with new images everyday, some suspense, some twist...

  • senderista  2 years ago

    Now that I think about it, one salient distinction might be that Palestinian refugees became largely stateless after their expulsion. The Arab states didn't want them (and still don't, no matter what they say), and there was nowhere for them to go in Palestine besides the refugee camps. Most expelled ethnic refugees have a homeland willing to receive them, or at least sympathetic nations willing to give them asylum.

dragonwriter  2 years ago

> I'm not trying to deflect, but I do find it interesting that just 2 months ago, >100K Armenians were permanently displaced from their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh where they've lived for literally millenia, and I saw essentially no coverage of this in Western media

Strange, I saw a lot of coverage of it in Western media when it happened (and a kot today, because of an apparent diolomatic breakthrough.)

Its true that a lot of the coverage during the event was colored by relating it to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, Armenia’s status as a CSTO ally of Russia.

> So my question is, given that ethnic cleansings are not uncommon in the recent past, and that the Palestinian Nakba is not even close to the worst case, why is it basically the only one that anyone seems to care about?

In the West and the US specifically, the role of Israel and the local governments degree of positiive engagement with Israel creates a rather different context to most ethnic cleansings elsewhere in the world.

ComputerGuru  2 years ago

Totally unrelated, did you know it was Israel that armed the Azeri army for their ethnic cleansing campaign?

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rjhofzoet