Israel, Palestine and Iran

[Mr_Dogg]

I set my neighbour's house on fire and the other neighbours didn't even help. So who's the real bad guy here?

[KentVillan]

5 hours ago, El Segundo said:

 You seriously don't think Israel is a unique case? I'm not singling them out because they are a Jewish state (although that in itself makes them unique) but because, while other countries may have been shaped and influenced by the Colonialism of Britain and France in particular, and other countries persecute minorities, can you name any other examples in modern times where a minority ethno/religious population were artificially supplanted into the midst of a majority, supplemented and supported by the established Colonial Powers, and then proceeded to act like a colonial power themselves?  Taking over and expanding with extreme prejudice?     

The USA (or any white majority country in the Americas), Australia, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, etc.

And Israel was part of a carve up of the Middle East pre WWII which involved similar top down decisions by the colonial powers to give different groups (Hashemites, Sauds, etc) control over multiethnic regions, often where they started out as a minority group (and remember Jews were present in the region for millennia).

I’m not saying any of this was right, but we don’t seriously expect to rewind any of these processes. The aim nowadays in any of these other parallel examples is usually to give equal rights to oppressed groups within established borders, and for any change in those borders (eg the reunification of Ireland) to be a democratic process.

Once you have generations of people of the “new” ethnic group born on the land that was unjustly acquired, it does become “historic” yes, unfortunately. You go past the point of no return, which we have in Israel.

None of this justifies Israel’s behaviour, but it also makes Hamas’s position untenable too. Any position that sees Israel as a state that shouldn’t exist (or that should be dramatically smaller than it is at the moment) just doesn’t work, even if you’re right to see the settler expansions and oppression of Palestinians as completely outrageous.

[magnkarl]

5 hours ago, El Segundo said:

My reference to the 1948 two state "solution" was in response to the other poster bringing up the subject of its rejection as a criticism of Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan, as well as other Arab nations.  To my mind they most likely saw it as a deeply unjust and unfair proposal that strongly favoured the Jewish minority and considered the Palestinian people as disposable and dispensable.   I find it hard to disagree. 

I'm not sure you can label  injustices that have been ongoing for at least 75 years and continue now as "historical".  The events of 1947-48 may have been something of a starting point (although not completely) but it has been a more or less continuous process of enlargement, oppression and displacement ever since.  And context is crucial to understanding any situation.  Why would you want to suppress it or ignore it?  The UN resolution of 1947 remains a root cause of what's going on today and is therefore still extremely relevant.  Can you just say "oh it happened so long ago it's not relevant"?  That could lead to a whole can of worms as to what can be dismissed as "historical".   

You seriously don't think Israel is a unique case? I'm not singling them out because they are a Jewish state (although that in itself makes them unique) but because, while other countries may have been shaped and influenced by the Colonialism of Britain and France in particular, and other countries persecute minorities, can you name any other examples in modern times where a minority ethno/religious population were artificially supplanted into the midst of a majority, supplemented and supported by the established Colonial Powers, and then proceeded to act like a colonial power themselves?  Taking over and expanding with extreme prejudice?  

Finally I'm not convinced that being born there as the child of a member of an occupying colonial power endows you with any rights to that land.  On what basis would those rights exist?   And do those rights extend to continuing  to expel Palestinians , take their land, and put them in open prisons?     

The same nations are/were widely racist to Jews, Kurds, Yezidi and Koptic Christians, enforced religious taxation on the local non-muslim population and in some cases ethnically cleansed people based on religion and nationality (i.e Armenians and Assyrians), I think you're adding a lot of credit to nations who in their very core have extremely bad treatment of Palestinians themselves. A lot of the displacement of Palestinians occurred due to Israeli aggression, but a fair part of that also occurred due to the whole Arab world attacking Israel in 3 major conflicts before Israel in its current form was even 30 years old.

My family is a migrant family fleeing from war and ethnic cleansing, it's not like the British government decided to put my grandparents and parents in a camp, and then denied them and their kids rights for 5 generations. It's convenient for Jordan, Egypt and Syria in particular to keep the blame game up against Israel so they don't need to do anything about the now estimated 2.4 million refugees, who after 70 years are treated like stateless people. 750.000 are in Saudi Arabia being worked to death, about a million live in squalor in Egypt and another million is spread between Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. How many of them do you think were there when the Arab League decided to attack Israel in 1948-9? The treatment of Palestinians is as inhumane in these countries as in Israel, and in some cases it's a lot worse. That's not to say Israel isn't bad because it clearly is, but the faux outrage from Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon in particular is hypocritical to its very core. The same goes for many of the people now protesting in London waving Egyptian, Lebanese and Jordanian flags around.

Edited November 3, 2023 by magnkarl

[chrisp65]

I stole my house 75 years ago and the dumb **** I stole it off, well I killed him, but his relatives still sit in next door’s garden.

Hardly my problem is it.

[OutByEaster?]

9 hours ago, KentVillan said:

Just like today's Northern Irish Protestants are as legitimately Northern Irish as the Catholic community.

Is there such a thing as being legitimately Northern Irish?

[bickster]

16 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Is there such a thing as being legitimately Northern Irish?

Well yes obviously, it is still currently a recognised country. How individuals choose to identify is a different matter

[magnkarl]

45 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I stole my house 75 years ago and the dumb **** I stole it off, well I killed him, but his relatives still sit in next door’s garden.

Hardly my problem is it.

Calling a UN-mandate 'stealing' land is quite rich, isn't it?

How far back should we look? When the Romans butchered the whole Judean population and sold them as slaves, or when Salahadin forcefully converted most of the Christians and Jews in the area, or when the Crusaders butchered anyone not Christian in Jerusalem? Or when Jews were made to walk on death marches under the Ottoman Empire into the Sinai?

All I'm saying is that Israel's neighbours contribute massively to this issue by keeping at least 2 million Palestinians in continuous generational squalor themselves, leading to movements like Hamas, Black September and Hezbollah. I don't think it's much to ask that a refugee should at least get some rights when you've lived in a camp your whole life, and all your parents and grandparents did the same.

Edited November 3, 2023 by magnkarl

[icouldtelltheworld]

9 hours ago, KentVillan said:

Just like today's Northern Irish Protestants are as legitimately Northern Irish as the Catholic community.

This really doesn't work as a comparison, seeing as a majority of the Catholic population don't really recognise the legitimacy of the Northern Irish state and would favour unification with the Republic.

Where it might work as a comparison is that the Good Friday Agreement gave the Catholic/Irish Nationalist/Republican population the same citizenship rights as the Protestants and enshrined power sharing constitutionally. However, the likelihood of any such agreement being agreed by the Israelis that makes similar concessions seems somewhat unlikely...

[KentVillan]

3 minutes ago, icouldtelltheworld said:

This really doesn't work as a comparison, seeing as a majority of the Catholic population don't really recognise the legitimacy of the Northern Irish state and would favour unification with the Republic.

Where it might work as a comparison is that the Good Friday Agreement gave the Catholic/Irish Nationalist/Republican population the same citizenship rights as the Protestants and enshrined power sharing constitutionally. However, the likelihood of any such agreement being agreed by the Israelis that makes similar concessions seems somewhat unlikely...

My point was about the position of the Protestant community there - the international community doesn’t seriously believe that Protestants born and bred in Ulster shouldn’t be there, and nor do many people (inc on Catholic side) nowadays believe that it could be justly resolved with a war of independence.

If Ireland were to reunify it would be via a democratic process.

You’re right that resolving this through power sharing and concessions seems extremely unlikely any time soon in Israel-Palestine, but that isn’t purely because of Israeli reluctance - both sides have too many people in power who want the winner-takes-all outcome.

 

[El Segundo]

1 hour ago, KentVillan said:

The USA (or any white majority country in the Americas), Australia, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, etc.

And Israel was part of a carve up of the Middle East pre WWII which involved similar top down decisions by the colonial powers to give different groups (Hashemites, Sauds, etc) control over multiethnic regions, often where they started out as a minority group (and remember Jews were present in the region for millennia).

I’m not saying any of this was right, but we don’t seriously expect to rewind any of these processes. The aim nowadays in any of these other parallel examples is usually to give equal rights to oppressed groups within established borders, and for any change in those borders (eg the reunification of Ireland) to be a democratic process.

Once you have generations of people of the “new” ethnic group born on the land that was unjustly acquired, it does become “historic” yes, unfortunately. You go past the point of no return, which we have in Israel.

None of this justifies Israel’s behaviour, but it also makes Hamas’s position untenable too. Any position that sees Israel as a state that shouldn’t exist (or that should be dramatically smaller than it is at the moment) just doesn’t work, even if you’re right to see the settler expansions and oppression of Palestinians as completely outrageous.

I specified "in modern times".  The examples you give are from times when Colonialism was the norm and every large economic and military power considered it their right.  In post-Colonial times, are they not retrospectively regarded as massive wrongs perpetrated against native peoples?  And are the neighbours blamed for being "just as bad" as the invaders? 

Such travesties were played out to more or less completion and are now so embedded that I doubt anyone would suggest reversal is possible.  In this case 1947 is within living memory, and the continuing process of cleansing and expansion has been playing out before our eyes for 75 years and with the complicit agreement and backing of the Western Powers.  This in an era that was becoming post-Colonial, and where the UN is, among other things, meant to prevent repetitions of such wrongs.   Instead they instigated one.  I don't accept that Israel/Palestine has reached the point of no return that the other examples you mention have, because it is an ongoing and evolving process.  Isn't Israel's drive to get to that point of no return what the conflict is all about? 

Sure Jews were always present in the area, but from what I can see they were a tiny minority for the last 2000 or so years.  Those Jews do not appear to have ever had Zionism as their aim and I'm not convinced their minority presence endowed the Zionists with any rights to become the forced majority in Palestine.  

Democratic processes and attempts at peace agreements have not helped the Palestinians much in the last 75 years.  Such moves  tend to revolve around an acceptance that Israel has done what it's done and the other parties just need to accept it and move on, with little or no benefit or reparations to the Palestinian population. which seems to be pretty much what you are proposing.  Is it any wonder they, including Hamas, aren't willing to accept such terms?  Would you?

   

       

[icouldtelltheworld]

12 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

My point was about the position of the Protestant community there - the international community doesn’t seriously believe that Protestants born and bred in Ulster shouldn’t be there, and nor do many people (inc on Catholic side) nowadays believe that it could be justly resolved with a war of independence.

If Ireland were to reunify it would be via a democratic process.

You’re right that resolving this through power sharing and concessions seems extremely unlikely any time soon in Israel-Palestine, but that isn’t purely because of Israeli reluctance - both sides have too many people in power who want the winner-takes-all outcome.

 

All fair points

[El Segundo]

3 hours ago, magnkarl said:

The same nations are/were widely racist to Jews, Kurds, Yezidi and Koptic Christians, enforced religious taxation on the local non-muslim population and in some cases ethnically cleansed people based on religion and nationality (i.e Armenians and Assyrians), I think you're adding a lot of credit to nations who in their very core have extremely bad treatment of Palestinians themselves. A lot of the displacement of Palestinians occurred due to Israeli aggression, but a fair part of that also occurred due to the whole Arab world attacking Israel in 3 major conflicts before Israel in its current form was even 30 years old.

My family is a migrant family fleeing from war and ethnic cleansing, it's not like the British government decided to put my grandparents and parents in a camp, and then denied them and their kids rights for 5 generations. It's convenient for Jordan, Egypt and Syria in particular to keep the blame game up against Israel so they don't need to do anything about the now estimated 2.4 million refugees, who after 70 years are treated like stateless people. 750.000 are in Saudi Arabia being worked to death, about a million live in squalor in Egypt and another million is spread between Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. How many of them do you think were there when the Arab League decided to attack Israel in 1948-9? The treatment of Palestinians is as inhumane in these countries as in Israel, and in some cases it's a lot worse. That's not to say Israel isn't bad because it clearly is, but the faux outrage from Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon in particular is hypocritical to its very core. The same goes for many of the people now protesting in London waving Egyptian, Lebanese and Jordanian flags around.

I'm not giving "credit" to anyone.  I get that you are trying to highlight  the hypocrisy of criticising Israel and not criticising other countries for what you believe to be similar transgressions.  For me the situations are so different that your comparisons have little or no valid basis as evidence of hypocrisy.       

[El Segundo]

47 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Calling a UN-mandate 'stealing' land is quite rich, isn't it?

UN Mandate or not, if it walks like a duck....

[one_ian_taylor]

58 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Calling a UN-mandate 'stealing' land is quite rich, isn't it?

How far back should we look? When the Romans butchered the whole Judean population and sold them as slaves, or when Salahadin forcefully converted most of the Christians and Jews in the area, or when the Crusaders butchered anyone not Christian in Jerusalem? Or when Jews were made to walk on death marches under the Ottoman Empire into the Sinai?

All I'm saying is that Israel's neighbours contribute massively to this issue by keeping at least 2 million Palestinians in continuous generational squalor themselves, leading to movements like Hamas, Black September and Hezbollah. I don't think it's much to ask that a refugee should at least get some rights when you've lived in a camp your whole life, and all your parents and grandparents did the same.

I agree with your post, but minor correction - Hezbollah is Lebanese and always has been. While it has supplanted Amal in many ways (despite starting off as a militia with  a lot of Iranian backing), it's  part of the same movement of Shi'a emancipation that kicked off in South Lebanon  in the 1950s and it's  main constituency is Lebanon's Shi'a population

[Chindie]

Despicable.

[sne]

2 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Despicable.

I think it's refreshing that they are no longer even pretending to hide what their actual plan is. There are obviously reasonable and tempered voices in Israel but the ones leading are pure evil

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, sne said:

I think it's refreshing that they are no longer even pretending to hide what their actual plan is. There are obviously reasonable and tempered voices in Israel but the ones leading are pure evil

Slight point, its a minister in a coalition government calling for something and not (as yet) an official government policy. No idea who he is or what party he's from but it is still a step away from actual policy re their endgame

[KentVillan]

13 minutes ago, El Segundo said:

I specified "in modern times".  The examples you give are from times when Colonialism was the norm and every large economic and military power considered it their right.  In post-Colonial times, are they not retrospectively regarded as massive wrongs perpetrated against native peoples?  And are the neighbours blamed for being "just as bad" as the invaders? 

Such travesties were played out to more or less completion and are now so embedded that I doubt anyone would suggest reversal is possible.  In this case 1947 is within living memory, and the continuing process of cleansing and expansion has been playing out before our eyes for 75 years and with the complicit agreement and backing of the Western Powers.  This in an era that was becoming post-Colonial, and where the UN is, among other things, meant to prevent repetitions of such wrongs.   Instead they instigated one.  I don't accept that Israel/Palestine has reached the point of no return that the other examples you mention have, because it is an ongoing and evolving process.  Isn't Israel's drive to get to that point of no return what the conflict is all about? 

Sure Jews were always present in the area, but from what I can see they were a tiny minority for the last 2000 or so years.  Those Jews do not appear to have ever had Zionism as their aim and I'm not convinced their minority presence endowed the Zionists with any rights to become the forced majority in Palestine.  

Democratic processes and attempts at peace agreements have not helped the Palestinians much in the last 75 years.  Such moves  tend to revolve around an acceptance that Israel has done what it's done and the other parties just need to accept it and move on, with little or no benefit or reparations to the Palestinian population. which seems to be pretty much what you are proposing.  Is it any wonder they, including Hamas, aren't willing to accept such terms?  Would you?

   

       

“Modern” can mean different things, but Israel really originates with the creation of Mandatory Palestine over a century ago (1920) and that isn’t much later than the main waves of European settlement in Australia and New Zealand.

My argument is that now you have multiple generations of born and bred Israeli Jews living in the country, something roughly resembling the current nation-state of Israel (in terms of borders and a majority Jewish population) is an essential and unavoidable part of the eventual outcome. I don’t see any realistic solution that doesn’t involve that.

Do you think there is one? And if not, what is the practical relevance of Israel being a young / badly conceived state to the current situation?

And I completely accept that democracy and conciliation hasn’t worked well on either side, but it’s still the only approach that has ever worked in a situation like this, besides the complete annihilation of one side.

I can see the argument for attacks on Israeli military, govt buildings, etc but what Hamas did to innocent civilians was unconscionable and there’s a hint of “well, they had no other option” to some of the commentary. That seems to get bolstered by this idea that ordinary non-settler Israelis are recent colonisers.

I can totally see Hamas’s frustration at being boxed in by Israeli govts who often act in bad faith and make land grabs while conceding almost nothing, but I find it pretty hard to empathise with anyone who gets joy out of murdering children?

 

[sne]

8 minutes ago, bickster said:

Slight point, its a minister in a coalition government calling for something and not (as yet) an official government policy. No idea who he is or what party he's from but it is still a step away from actual policy re their endgame

True, wonder if he will be reprimanded for speaking out of term.

[bickster]

9 minutes ago, sne said:

True, wonder if he will be reprimanded for speaking out of term.

Given the fragility of the coalition there's a good chance of that not happening regardless