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On Israel and ‘Root Causes’
According to today’s Hamasophiles, Gaza’s leadership is justified in their terror attacks against Israel because “Zionists stole their land.” Before that, the British “stole their land,” which they seem to forget.
Of course, the Brits stole the land from the Ottoman Empire in the first world war. Well, kind of. The sultan decided the region wasn’t populated enough, so he imported Arab Muslims from other regions, such as Yemen and Syria, creating many of today’s “Palestinians.” In other words, Gaza’s ancestors stole it from the Arabs, Jews, and Christians who already lived in the region.
The Ottomans stole it from the Egyptian Mamluks, who inherited it from Egypt’s Ayyubids, who had stolen it from Frankish Crusaders. Those short-lived Christian rulers had stolen it from Fatimid Caliphate, which was preceded by several other caliphates. Which had stolen it from the Byzantine/Roman Empire.
Before that, Rome stole it from the Jews, who stole it from the Greeks, who stole it from the Jews, who were given it by the Neo-Babylonians, who had stolen it from the Assyrians, who had stolen it from the Jews.
People who rely on root causes always stop the historiography the second they discover a group they don’t like. Funny how that works.
Published in General
Huh. Didn’t expect you to agree with that. So in the totally abstract event that Israel would accept millions of Palestinian refugees, then Arab countries should accept he descendants of Jews expelled from Arab countries?
People should have a choice between return and compensation or some combination. Can’t right the world and ignore some wrongs just because of who did them, imho.
Part of the problem is that overall the grievances might net out to zero, or even on the opposite side. That’s when you get the “‘shut up,’ he explained” type stuff.
For example, black people in the US should first get “reparations” from the black people in Africa who sold their ancestors into slavery. Then let’s talk.
So Arab countries can make an apology and some compensation to the Jews who were expelled but Israel has to accept all the Palestinian refugees? I’d be fine if everybody got together and said that, “Civilian populations were forced around in 1948 and that was wrong but we should move forward in peace and harmony.” I don’t see Jews moving into Arab states or Palestinians moving into Israel but I wouldn’t mind if both sides said that the forced expulsions of people were wrong.
But yet even then Zafar, Israel has Israeli-Arab Muslims and the Arab states don’t have Jews. So, as you know, I am more favorable to one side than another.
And everybody knows that Muslims are famous for their reasonable approach.
No, use the same rules for everybody.
I knew that Henry, but this is more about individuals than ‘rating’ states or even societies. Irresistible though that seems to be. (Could it be a deflection?)
Thank you!
I really dislike it when you lefties are smarmy and dismissive. You should be better than this.
Your response is no more honest than I expected it to be.
Not to mention their Palestinian outreach program.
You are getting progressively harder to like Zafar. You have rated Israeli and criticized the collective Israeli society for not being sensitive enough to the welfare and rights of Palestinians. You have also said that Israeli society is obligated to the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war.
Obviously there are Palestinians who are saintly and there are Israeli Jews who I wouldn’t spit on if they were on fire. Every society has good and evil people. But some societies are Quakers and some societies are devoted to slavery. We should judge societies as well as individuals.
And to repeat myself, for all the many faults of Israel and the West (the West has alot more because it has been around longer) there are some societies that are better than others.
For example, Australia is nicer to
people like yougays than India or Pakistan. We should promote societies that are good and criticize societies that are bad while respecting that there are a bunch of Palestinians who are saintly.But some societies are still better than others.
I do not understand your response to his response can you please explicate your feelings. I am quite lost here.
I expected a smarmy and dishonest answer from him, and that’s what I got.
They cannot be.
Ever.
Because to face the truth would be too painful.
?
I have criticised policies, individuals, political party platforms. I have never made broad statements about Israeli society – positive or negative.
Sure Henry, if you want, but how is that relevant to resolving the refugee issue?
Because some societies are incapable of acting in a way that would make your approach to refugees either practical or moral; any Jews stupid enough to return to Algeria would be the subject of repeated pogroms at the slightest alleged ‘provocation’ at best, genocide at worst….and Jews living within an Israel swarmed by Palestinian refugees (which has been a completely artificial status for seven decades, promoted and maintained for the purpose of justifying and promoting an perpetual genocidal war against Israel) would be subject to vicious ethnic warfare reminiscent of 1970s Lebanon at best, and genocide (either gradually from Palestinian militias, or all at once when opportunistic neighbors attack the country while its compromised from within) at worst.
Anyone who cares about the ‘refugees’ more than using them as a weapon against the existence of Israel would be far more concerned with encouraging the Arab and Muslim world to finally accept the refugees as equal citizens after taking part in repeated genocidal wars ostensibly on their behalf (incidentally making their numbers higher and situation progressively worse), than they are about a ‘right to return’ that almost none of them would apply to, say, the Anatolian Greeks-and Armenians-or the Algerian French (who had incidentally been living in Algeria about as long as most of the ancestors of ‘refugees’ had been living within the borders of the British Mandate of Palestine).
Those who have excused their evil behaviors for years are also responsible for the massacre. The Hamas goons fully expected the lefties of the world to side with them and thus the guardrails were gone, the guardrails that would have convinced them not to do the evil they did. Now they have done the unimaginable and Israel must destroy them.
If only. (See the bolded part.) If it was inimitable, it might not be so necessary for Israel to destroy them.
The “right of return” is simply the demand that enough Arabs be imported to make a significant majority and put an end to Jewish democracy and Israel. An alternative cash payment would (a) never be deemed sufficient and (b) would instantly become a record-setting fraud in which the number of claimants would rise exponentially.
Arabs displaced because the Ottoman Sultan and his buddies were happy to sell off land holdings they no longer controlled after losing WWI should take it up with the current government in Ankara. Arabs displaced entirely because of the war launched by Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in 1947 should reach out to their brethren in those countries.
No Muslim Israeli citizen is barred from buying or owning land in Israel. I always found it odd that with so much alleged compassion for the Palestinians, that the oil-owning Arabs did not prop up building Arab communities within and adjacent to Israel to give roots, security and stability to the displaced.
But of course, for some reason, the welfare of those people is the sole responsibility of Israel and the USA and silly contrivances like the “right of return” become great ethical questions when more practical issues of material welfare are brushed aside.
You are correct. My Apple Pencil, with assistance from autocorrect, bit me. I have corrected the post to this: