Palestine v Israel.

[rainbow]

What ahistorical bullshit. Please tell me you don't believe that nonsense?

Jerusalem a "Palestinian city", I don't even...

...think beyond Zionist brainwashing.

You've not explained why Secular, Jewish, and Muslim people can't live in peace in a united Palestine.

[Svartalf]

you'd better try to tell a depressive to "just get it over" rainbow

as for your question, I think that 78 years of bad blood might have to do with it...

[rainbow]

you'd better try to tell a depressive to "just get it over" rainbow

as for your question, I think that 78 years of bad blood might have to do with it...

The people of Bosnia managed to get over it, hundreds of years of bad blood between Christians and Muslims.
Bad blood between Hutus and Tustis in Rwanda, now considered by the Conservatories in UK to be safe for refugees
South Africa, Northern Ireland, even Algeria managed to work out their ethnic and religious differences

...so the Zionists whingers can get over it as well.

[Strontium Dog]

What ahistorical bullshit. Please tell me you don't believe that nonsense?

Jerusalem a "Palestinian city", I don't even...

...think beyond Zionist brainwashing.

You've not explained why Secular, Jewish, and Muslim people can't live in peace in a united Palestine.

Jews and Muslims already live in peace in Israel.

But if you think anyone can live in peace with the people who perpetrated October 7th, I can't do anything for you.

[aufbahrung]

It'll get worse as Islam fails around the world like Christendom did....expect lots of lefty weaping as their new mind control religion folds its card, with horror following horror as it does so. Gaza was just the first move in a Global Islamic Rapade that serves no purpose other than to say it was here in the genetic record.

[rainbow]

What ahistorical bullshit. Please tell me you don't believe that nonsense?

Jerusalem a "Palestinian city", I don't even...

...think beyond Zionist brainwashing.

You've not explained why Secular, Jewish, and Muslim people can't live in peace in a united Palestine.

Jews and Muslims already live in peace in Israel.

But if you think anyone can live in peace with the people who perpetrated October 7th, I can't do anything for you.

...so Jews and Muslims can live in peace.
Great.

...just give the Palestinians the vote and equal rights in a unitary state and the problem is solved.

You're a genius.

[Strontium Dog]

It'll get worse as Islam fails around the world like Christendom did....expect lots of lefty weaping as their new mind control religion folds its card, with horror following horror as it does so. Gaza was just the first move in a Global Islamic Rapade that serves no purpose other than to say it was here in the genetic record.

It's incredible how so-called atheists and so-called progressives keep going into bat for the most vile homophobic, misogynistic, racist theocratic regimes around the world. Do they actually think the caliphate will stop once it's swallowed up the rest of Judea and eliminated all the Jews? They've literally told us that the West is next. When people tell you who they are, believe them.

[rainbow]

It'll get worse as Islam fails around the world like Christendom did....expect lots of lefty weaping as their new mind control religion folds its card, with horror following horror as it does so. Gaza was just the first move in a Global Islamic Rapade that serves no purpose other than to say it was here in the genetic record.

It's incredible how so-called atheists and so-called progressives keep going into bat for the most vile homophobic, misogynistic, racist theocratic regimes around the world.

It is incredible that Israel doesn't understand that their Genocide is causing moderate Palestinians into becoming militants.

Destroy Hamas, and see an even more extreme movement coming into play.

[Brian Peacock]

Now now. One can grant that Jerusalem existed as a "Palestinian city" if one accepts that Palestine existed as a geo-political entity under the League of Nations mandate that gave the British administrative control of "Palestine" after WWI up until the formation of Israel in 1948? Through the mandate and the Sykes-Picot agreement Palestine was effectively created as a colonial possession by the Western powers. Acknowledging this shouldn't have any impact on your current views, unless you wish to disavow the legitimacy of any and all claims the previous non-Jewish residents of that territory, and more significantly perhaps their descendants, might have to the land within the borders of the nation of Israel created in 1948.

You could argue that Paris was a German city between 1940 and 1944, and that would be equally absurd.

You could, if you thought equivocation was an appropriate response.

"Palestinian city" Tel Aviv didn't even exist until it was built out of the desert by Jews, on land purchased from the Bedouins; there are photos and everything.

The scare quotes there seem to presuppos that anyone referring to a claim Palestinians' have to land within the borders of Israel are probably advocating for the exclusion of the Jewish population - which I am not.

The whole point of these gloriously specious maps is to perpetuate the falsehood that there was some independent nation of Palestine from which the "native Palestinians" were dispossessed (they didn't even start calling themselves Palestinians until the 1960s; until then they were always Arabs who baulked at the term Palestinian, which was traditionally interchangeable with Jew).

Palestine wasn't "created" as a colonial possession by Western powers, it was only ever a colonial possession under that name.

"Palestine" was nothing but the occupied region of Judea, renamed* by the Roman occupiers , then ruled over by different colonial powers continually over the millennia, until midway through the last century, when part of it was liberated from imperialism and returned to the native Jews.

Anyone who thinks the Jews are going to be driven from their land again is pissing in the wind. The sooner the Arab Muslim colonisers recognise that and make their peace with Israel's existence, the better.


(*of course the Romans, always fans of irony, still gave a nod to the original inhabitants; check out the meaning of the Latin word palaestes, then check out what Israel means)

Whether or not you recognise "Palestine" as the geo-political entity that existed before Israel was formed (or whether you wish to wrestle the historical conception of Palaestina Prima into submission), the territory which became Israel was not "a land without a people for a people without a land" but a region occupied by a richly varied society with historical continuity extending back well before the relatively recent invention of the nation state.

As for returning the land to the "native Jews", well you could similarly take that argument up with the Amorites, the Phoenicians, the Elbans, the Akkadians or the Canaanites etc, or after them the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Rashidun Caliphate, the Mamluk Sultanate, the Ottomans or latterly the Europeans powers.

So, basically, I'm not accepting the premises that the territory of modern-day Israel did not belong to anyone in particular before 1948; or that it morally, historically, or politically necessarily exists as the exclusive possession of and for the Jewish people; or that the occupants prior to 1948 had (or their contemporary descendants have) no legitimate claim to live within the same territory as their grand- and great-grandparents.

It seems to me that you're equivocating ("Palestine was nothing but...") only to assert that it was not a legitimate geo-political entity or a nation-state - and so if Palestine was not a proper country then those who were living there cannot be considered to be a proper people, and therefore their descendants cannot have any sort of legitimate claim. I understand why you might wish to feather your nest like this, but I don't think it's actually very helpful.

So where does that leave us?

Well, where it does not leave us is having to say that the current Jewish population in the region are all invaders, or that they should all be forced from their homes, or that the nation-state of Israel should not exist. Similarly, it does not downplay the historical injustices wrought against Jewish communities through history, or deny the purges or the horror of the holocaust, or deny that the foundation of nation of Israel was the culmination of a long struggle for self-determination by a persecuted and stateless minority.

It merely leaves us acknowledging a broader historical and social context to the formation of Israel, one that steps beyond a purely Israeli-centred or Jewish-focused narrative to include all the people impacted by the consequences of the creation of Israel, and one that recognises all parties in the 70+ years of ethnic and religious conflict and political turmoil that has followed. It acknowledges that while the formation of Israel was a belated attempt to recognise the gross injustices suffered by the Jewish people, and to create a place where Jews could at long last live their lives securely, it was simultaneously an act of colonial settlerism that resulted in a massive forced displacement of an indigenous population which has been militarily suppressed by a superior, dominating power ever since. This itself represents a gross injustice against another people.

My question is this: do you acknowledge the injustice carried out against the people of what was called Palestine before 1948, and which has been carried against the people who identify as Palestinians up until the present day? I ask, because if we, as reasonable, rational people cannot acknowledge the contexts as well as the injustices and sufferings of all those impacted by the current situation, then how are we to move towards addressing and putting an end to those injustices and those sufferings? Without such acknowledgements I think the only thing we will be able to reliably say is that in five years time the Palestinian people will be worse off than they are today, and five years after that they'll be even worse off still - and Israeli's will still feel less secure than they should.

[L'Emmerdeur]

It's been a few years since Hermit last posted this classic...

[Brian Peacock]

I saw that a few years back, and thought it wry, and dry and funny. Totally different vibe watching it again today.

Hope the Librarian is bearing up.

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-15/ ... /103446882

A very interesting discussion about the differences between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism (although of course there is some overlap). I would suspect that virtually all diehard anti-semitics are also anti-Zionist, for example.

But Dr Rutland believes there's a distinction between legitimate criticism and sloganism.

"There is a big difference between criticising government policies, being opposed to actions of settlers or settlements in the West Bank, and saying that Israel has no right to exist and should be destroyed," she says.

[aufbahrung]

Push a peaceful man too far and it ain't gonna be peaceful too long

[Brian Peacock]

Holding the Jewish people collectively responsible for the actions of the state of Israel is certainly antisemitic, as is associating all Jewish people with radical zionism, but according to the IHRA definition of antisemitism* so is comparing what the Israeli govt are doing to Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank to what Jewish people have suffered historically - claiming Israel is prosecuting a genocide against Palestinians, for example. This is what n part the basis for the Israeli defense minister, the J7, and others charging South Africa with being an antisemitic country and the ICJ with being an antisemitic court.

* https://holocaustremembrance.com/resour ... tisemitism

[pErvinalia]

* https://holocaustremembrance.com/resour ... tisemitism

Won't load. My browser must be anti-semitic..