Comment by cool_dude85
2 years ago
I'd say your focus on what happened in other areas of Ottoman control is contrived. It seems obvious that what should have mattered to the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine is the disposition of Mandatory Palestine - it doesn't help them at all to say "well, these other guys over there got a whole country."
You’re projecting western individualism onto the situation. The correct analysis is to look at how the territory was partitioned between Arabs and Jews. Thats how Arabs themselves viewed it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War. Why did Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi, and Yemen all attack Israel the moment it was created, and several times after that?
Why do the Arab countries care so much about Palestine? It’s not like they go around spending their blood and treasure to protect other oppressed groups. Saudi just bombed the shit out of Yemen. The reason they want to get rid of Israel is because they view this as a matter of Arab territorial integrity.
My Bangladesh family is posting the paratrooper meme on my FB. Why? Because they view the existence of Israel as an affront to territorial integrity of the Islamic world. You cannot understand the situation Israel is in from a western secular point of view.
> Why did Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi, and Yemen all attack Israel the moment it was created, and several times after that?
Since after Israel's founding, the Arab states have initiated war against it exactly once: the 1973 Yom Kippur war. (Technically, I guess you could count Iraq's 1991 rocket attacks as a second time?) In all other cases, either Israel attacked first, or Israel's opponent was not a recognized state actor.