Comment by nailer
2 years ago
> their homes being stolen from them by foreigners and inept leaders as happened with the formation of Israel.
The population of British Palestine was 31% Jewish, 9% Christian and 60% arab in 1946 UN Survey. Jews got more land after partitioning but a huge chunk of that was the Negev desert. Arabs rejected partitioning and the Arab nations started a war to destroy Israel. You can confirm this from any source you like.
dang: can you kill this article? The article has biased language (Israel is fighting Hamas not “bombing Palestinians” as if the war is on the civilian population) and the conversation here is political advocacy.
Not sure what those percentages are supposed to show. Most of the ethnic Arabs were living in all of the cities of Mandatory Palestine (as it was called at the time), and around half of them fled those cities after the war started and Zionist forces established the state of Israel. They were encouraged to flee both by the Zionist militias and by their own leaders, as civilians do in most wars. But, since the war was lost, the vast majority never got to return to the homes they abandoned in the new state of Israel. Some of them still live in Gaza and the West Bank, as do the children and grandchildren of the others.
Of course, the war started because surrounding Arab nations didn't accept the UN plan of splitting up that territory - with both good and bad intentions to be sure. But even if you think the intentions of those nations were entirely mosntruous, my point is that the Arab population of Mandatory Palestine were victims of this whole war, and they (and their descendants) are the people who today live in ghettos of Gaza and the West Bank. And it is understandable that they would bear malice on those who caused them or their parents or grandparents to lose their homes, especially when they now live in squalor. And it is also to be expected, though sad, that some of them will turn to terrorism and hurt other innocents in their own turn.
But the existence of terrorists among a population does not give one carte blanche to attack that population.
> Not sure what those percentages are supposed to show.
That the narrative of Israel stealing land is false.
Israel encouraged arabs within their partition that were not resisting the new nation to stay. You can find many references to this, and it was Hertzl’s origin intention is his writing. This is why the 2M Israeli arabs - that have more freedom that in any arab nation - exist. Pity the arabs that left.
> is understandable that they would bear malice on those who caused them or their parents or grandparents to lose their homes
They don’t though. They have no malice towards their leaders that constantly started wars trying to destroy Israel and resulted in their losing their homes. They just hate Jews.
> But the existence of terrorists among a population does not give one carte blanche to attack that population.
Yes agreed. This is why the war is on Hamas rather than Gazans (even though Gazans overwhelmingly support the slaughter of their Israeli neighbours) at the cause of a great many Israeli lives.
While Hertzl may have believed so, I don't think Ben-Gurion would have agreed. If the Palestinian Arabs had not fled, they would have been driven away in time. The Jewish character of Israel was immediately enshrined into their constitution: an Israel with a majority Arab population was never a possibility. A minority of Arabs can easily be tolerated, and represents a nice defence against accusations of racism or ethno-nationalism.
> They don’t though. They have no malice towards their leaders that constantly started wars trying to destroy Israel and resulted in their losing their homes.
Of course, they are living under propaganda and they are being actively oppressed by Israel, not by other Arab nations.
> They just hate Jews.
This is just false and racist.
> Yes agreed. This is why the war is on Hamas rather than Gazans (even though Gazans overwhelmingly support the slaughter of their Israeli neighbours) at the cause of a great many Israeli lives.
If this were true, than the population of Gaza would not be starved, with aid being trickled in such low quantities that even the USA under Biden is trying to go around Israel's official quotas and provide aid separately. And if this were true than the IDF would not be deliberately targetting aid workers, hospitals, nurseries and so on.
And for every Palestinian happy to see an Israeli killed, there is at least one Israeli happy to see Palestinians killed. Both sides have their disgusting extremists. The difference is that one has access to every weapon on Earth and is currently rampaging and killing tens of thousands of civilians, while the other side has killed a few hundred civilians in the worse attack they have ever mounted. And flaunting every international law they can find, such as recently bombing an embassy in a different country.
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Tens of thousands of women and children killed suggests Israel is doing much more than fighting Hamas
According to Hamas.
According to everyone who is giving any numbers at all. The IDF also cites these same numbers.
Now we need our central overlords to shut one side down so we don't hear inconvenient truth. You don't get to suppress the truth because it is inconvenient. HN is consistently flagging and removing articles about Israel and Palestine which doesn't fit the "approved truth". You and people like you need to hear "the other side" and not just keep repeating convenient lies. Israel is perpetuating a genocide against unarmed civilians under the guise of "war" and the people supporting the genocide don't want to hear it. Does it upset you that you support all out genocide and want the other side to shut up? That's the truth, killing 30,000+ Palestinians, and now aid workers, is not a war it's a genocidal slaughter.