fionwe1987

That's what nations are today. Unless you're pretending we've reached the End of History, and the concept of a Nation will never evolve again. When was this lovely time when the UN wasn't corrupt? What they would not agree on was a division where the people on the ground were not consulted. Which they have every right to disagree on. Its not like there isn't a mechanism to answer these questions. A plebiscite, it is called. Most of the world? Most of the world says Israel shouldn't invade Gaza, or hold it penned up the way it is today. I didn't realize most of the world had a right to tell Palestinians how to divide their land. Shouldn't they have been given a voice in this decision? Yep, that's the one. Ok, let me ask you this. Fast forward 30 years, and tell me if you'd substitute Gaza, headed by Hamas, in this conversation about moving on, if it behaved exactly like Britain or France did. Is a "sure would be nice if they'd acknowledge their awfulness" an acceptable future to you? If not, why should it be an acceptable present to the rest of the world? And the bolded part is where this isn't the case with colonialism. And hence why a "moving on" won't happen with the perpetrators still blithely in power, refusing to acknowledge or redress their harms.

And that is the proof that they are bullies, not responsible members of a global governance that prizes justice and peace. I mean, America isn't part of the ICC, so this is obviously true today. Which is also why you can't take the UN as some kind of true trans-national body which is insulated from the national agendas of the Permanent members. Its "fairness" is tinted through their lenses, and while the fact that they're often busy shooting at each other means they can't use the UN to actively force their agenda forward, they can keep it in limbo from doing anything useful. Its a dumbass system that has no chance of success in the long term. The current UN structure assumes a, well, permanence to the world order. The more the gap between the real world and this structure, the weaker the UN becomes till it will inevitably get shaken up.

I'm not saying at all that colonialism caused the fissures. I'm saying it exploited the fissures and inflamed them, for considerations, financial and geopolitical, of rulers far away who had little concern for a sustainable, long term, non-extractive governance in the region. And those inflammations do indeed have relevance to what came after. "Divide and Rule" is the name given to this strategy. And as you've noted, the divisions that were used existed before colonial rule, but they were also codified and given legal power in new ways while the British ruled. In Palestine, this took the form of laws that hindered purchase of land by Arabs. In India, this included creating constituencies for different religions, assigning legislative power based on religious identity over geography, language and other considerations. These laws and political structures reinforced these divisions, and gave them new battlegrounds, and this was explicitly done to keep the local populace from uniting against British rule. That is, to benefit someone in England, horrifyingly illogical and stupid governance decisions were taken, that meant the displacement of tens of millions of people as these political concepts the British introduce took force and ran completely out of the control of the British. At which point, they beat a hasty retreat, drawing nonsensical lines on maps without going on the ground, talking to people, listening to what they wanted and aspired to. Those lines on the maps, surely, are fair grounds for criticism even today, because those are the flash points of conflict, and they literally did not exist before the British. To use a modern term, the British gerrymandered Palestine and India, and placed lines bang in the middle of mixed communities, and fear of being in the wrong side of these lines caused mass displacement during both the Nakhba and Partition. There are people alive today who have just a rock or a bottle of soil from their homes, with little hope of going back, or even meeting their childhood friends and sometimes, family that stayed behind. On this, my prescription is simple. No permanent members in the Security Council. You want to be permanent, earn it permanently. No one gets a veto. But there is an exit clause, and if an action taken by the Security Council is such that a member state decides to exit, this should prompt a General Assembly debate automatically, and recommendations should be made to modify the charter that may induce the exiting nation to come back, if there is popular will for it in the General Assembly. Basically, a more democratic UN. But I suspect the UN will have to go the way of the League of Nations before we get to something like this.

This is patently untrue. If you'll go through the link I provided, you'll see that the UK, specifically, had many major political figures supporting Zionism because they couldn't conceive of Jews as a genuine part of British citizenry. They were Europe's "people apart". This "apartness" wasn't purely religious, but also has to be taken in the broader context of British and European views on all non-White ethnicities. For this reason, any definition of colonial Britain as "secular" is incorrect. Here's a question. Take out the Nuremberg trials and the reckoning over the Holocaust. Do you think Europe would have been able to move on without it? Imagine Germany, as a state, refused to teach the Holocaust in its schools much, and most of its citizens today dismissed the Holocaust as a minor part of their history, and when you bring it up, you're as why you don't talk about the good things Hitler did. Would the Europe of today be possible in such a world? Bear in mind that about 84% of the world's land was European colonial possession at one time or another, and while that number was lower by the mid-1940s, there was no reckoning at all for the crimes committed and the horrors inflicted over the preceding centuries. And before someone brings up older empires, none compare in size or the period of time, or the rapacious greed and wealth transfer of the European colonial project. Nor was any measure of equality or respect afforded to former colonies once they gained independence. Instead, their colonial rulers were rewarded in the new world order, allowed a great pantomime of moral superiorty, and to this day, they remain top of the heap of global power that is shaped to their advantage. We will move on. Once there is acknowledgment, apology and some kind of restitution. Instead, we have denial, dismissal and continued bullying and imposition of a crafted narrative. That is no recipe for reconciliation and moving on. That's the move of bullies, comfortable in the knowledge they have the bigger stick.

So lets focus on this. A grievous harm was perpetuated in Europe, harm that for a long time, European powers like Britain ignored. Once they got in on the fight and ended the horrors, they decided to keep these people safe not by reexamining and modifying their awfulness, but by a NIMBYish solution that actually didn't keep these people safe at all. I certainly don't accept any reversal of this. The people of Israel today didn't do any of this, and any solution that requires displacement of millions is unacceptable (no less so than displacing all Gazans to the West Bank, which someone blithely suggested a few pages ago). But the morality and practicality of "create Israel to keep the Jews safe" is highly questionable, not just because of how it impacted Palestinian Arabs, but because it didn't really deal with the anti-Semitism in Europe that led to the Holocaust, nor really create a safe haven for Jews. That is why discussing colonialism is important. Because neither the Jews or the Arabs of Palestine actually got any of what they were promised or hoped for. They are left dealing with the decisions and inflamed tensions left behind by the British, and they aren't even unique in this. And learning from the past allows one to hope for a different future solution. Ignoring it dooms us to repeat it, which is exactly what Israel is doing now with its refusal to draw a clear line between retaliating against Hamas and harming civilians, which is a big component of the knife we've been discussing. I know not all of the people I've been responding to have been saying colonialism is unimportant, or a canard, so I apologize if I'm overemphasizing this point in response to that atrocious comment. But to me, as a child of another land divided and scarred and left with religious divisions that were stoked for the profit of Empire, a post-colonial analysis of Israel and Palestine is the only one that gives a unifying narrative to Israeli's and Palestinian's, and dwelling on the harms of that time allow us to imagine a way forward that is respectful of the people on the ground, their histories, and devoid of the tactics and strategies of the colonial powers that are still so broadly used today.

How not? The presence of Jews in the area isn't a result of British colonization. But the establishment of a Jewish state is, as the article I posted explains in considerable detail. A lot of the political groundwork for establishing a Jewish state occured in this period, a lot of it in London, or in the halls of the British administration in Palestine. The preferential treatment by the British of the Jews in Palestine, the stomping down of the resistance of the Arab populace and the laws allowing for apartheid practices on whom land could be sold to were established and inextricably linked to this period and to British rule. What is different from America is the historical connection of Jews to this land, and their continuous migration there before the British came. But neither of those things require the presence of a state that prefers its citizens to be Jews, and is engineered to be majority Jewish so as to not be challenged by the political voices of the Arab populace. That concept, and its implementation, is entirely linked to British rule, and depended on the British for enforcement for decades before 1947. Correct. And I don't know anyone who is disputing any of this, at least on this thread. What are these secular Nationalisms we're saying influenced the Zionists? If we mean Britain, France, Germany, etc, then calling it secular is bizarre. These nations were anything but secular during that period. What you ignore here is that the British established a police state for the Arab population of Palestine during the Mandate period, made promises to them as their administrators that they regularly violated, and then washed their hands off the whole affair (as they did elsewhere) with significantly less competence than the US did leaving Afghanistan. What I don't get is why it is hard to understand this matters. Israel is not Britain, but it has continued specific practices that began during British rule, and for the Arab populace, there is a continuous history of such violence that has resulted in political leaders ending up dead, or exiled. This does not justify Hamas's actions on October 7. But if you insist none of this matters, and proceed with "solving" this problem while ignoring that history, you will perpetuate the mistakes of the past, which will lead to further violence, further civilian death, and deeper entrenchment of these divisions. You want to heal this rift? Acknowledge the history for which we have clear documentary evidence. No one is making this shit up. If you insist on dismissing it as meaningless, or a canard, and the world will see your hypocrisy and deal with it accordingly.

Why is it binary? Does talking about British colonialisation erase or lessen the impact of Arab colonialisation? Feel free to share specifics of how the Ottoman Empire's actions shape the current situation. That isn't a rhetorical challenge, I'm happy to get any context for something this fraught and complex. But you can't select and choose which history to use. And you cannot tell people that some history which makes clean narratives of good and bad impossible needs to be ignored. British colonialisation matters to a lot of people today because what they did is more fresh, and people have grandparents who lived through it, so they remember more details, and know how it shaped their lives. Educate them if you think colonialism from further back matters too, but you can't tell them this recent history is a canard to ignore. Apart from being wrong, it won't work. People aren't going to forget.

You keep setting up straw men, dude. Stop. Someone quoted a British minister refusing Palestinian refugees. That was the context in which colonialsm was being discussed, when you dismissed it as a canard. The context never was about turning back time and reversing the creation of Israel. That is your invention to justify your offensive statement. If this is your last word on this, great, but clearly, you wish to continue to impress upon us that your using the tactics of Holocaust denial on colonialism is correct. So keep shooting that shot. And expect push back. ETA: as for why the British Empire matters and history further back in time does not... This too is a straw man. Firstly, more ancient history does matter. But more recent history matters more directly and clearly, especially when things like current boundaries and population levels are direct results of those recent actions. No one can make time work differently. It has a regency bias, simply because what happens recently affects us more strongly than something less recent. This is no excuse to ignore any history, but it's certainly not excuse to ignore recent history.

For those interested, here's a piece on the intersection of colonialism, Zionism, and the history of Israel and Palestine. What's chilling is how much of this story, while different in the particulars, is similar to how Britain sliced and diced the subcontinent to effect that other lovely powder keg (stuffed with Uranium on both sides), India, Pakistan, and Kashmir: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/may/31/londonreviewofbooks The "standard tactics of anti-colonial warfare" of course, have a very traceable history. Over time, and across colonies, you can see how the British learned to suppress and end resistance. Those tactics continue to be used, and justified, today, not least in America's Middle Eastern adventures of the aughts, and by Israel right now. We have literal letters, official documents and journalism (contemporary and modern) that show us how individual decisions made by someone in London has direct reverberations to today's situation. The scars of Britain and France's colonial ambitions are the pathways of today's strife in so many places. Yet note, they continue to have a fucking veto over international decision making. Everyone agrees Hamas must go for the scale of its atrocities. Now imagine instead that it gets a Security Council seat. Of course, whatever Hamas's stated genocidal goals, it has actually accomplished a minuscule fraction of the harms and murders the French and the English dealt out, often with obvious genocidal language, and yet, we're told not just that such justice being meted out is impractical, not just that far from punishment, these nations get to have continued oversized global influence, but that somehow, the harms of colonialism are so deep in the past that discussing them today is a meaningless canard? Incidentally, this article also gives the lie to the idea that somehow acknowledging the colonial impact on the establishment of the Israeli state is somehow anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism actually drove a lot of British support for creating a home for Jews elsewhere. The framework to understand this is that the British quite literally had a hierarchy of races. I will leave it for you to find out where they placed Jews in comparison to Muslims/Arabs, though both were "obviously" below the white Christian British citizens. I do know that this hierarchy placed Indians above East Africans, and there were legitimate discussions around the end of World War 1 of, I kid you not, and Indian colony in East Africa. And there were leaders of the Indian freedom struggle, including non-violent ones, who enthusiastically wanted this, and wrote in support of it, as a reward for India's contributions to the War effort (which were somewhat massive). Of course, in this context, India was still to be a Dominion of the British Empire, but all that went to shit, of course, and we thankfully dodged that quagmire. The point being, colonialism's corrosive influence is pretty fucking vast. Its nasty little fingers leave few narratives or political groups free of complicity of some sort. Which is why ignoring it is just plain wrong. So much of how we do politics today is from frameworks established through a colonial lens. We have no business perpetuating that nonsense anymore.

No, those are not equivalent statements. Nor is "Colonialism is the proximate cause of this crisis and recognizing this will solve things" what you originally said. I'm glad you're adding sub clauses to your ignorant and historic revisionist statement, but all it reveals is your understanding of history and the impacts of colonialism is non-existent. Colonialism is not the proximate cause of this situation. The persistence of colonial power structures in global political conflicts, however, is a proximate cause, and your blindness to it, and broader Western blindness to it, is definitely a problem. It allows the same mistakes to be perpetuated again and again. Your language of justifying civilian violence is also very much identical to how such language was deployed during colonial rule. Your consistent dismissal of colonialism's impact is merely convenience, a way to seize the language of justice and peace to a Western centric lens where Western crimes and violations of basic human rights are given a different valence than that when perpetuated by non-Western peoples. That is neither just, nor a pathway to an equitable solution. As much work as Germany has done to educate it's people on the harms of antisemitism and the Holocaust, the other colonial powers (resentment of whose colonies drive both world wars, by the way) of the age have not recognized the unique and differentiated harms of colonialism. The Ottoman Empire was not a colonial empire of the kind Britain and France ran, because as far as I know, significant portions of their rule was not directly in the hands of private corporations that could and did violate common sense and basic geopolitics in their decision making which impacted millions of people. In modern parlance, colonialism represented a systematic disconnect between the rulers and the rules that is distinct in scale and impact to other empires, which, to be certain, don't get off the hook or have no role to play in this discussion. But exactly like the existence of past mass murder and genocide doesn't allow us to dismiss the Holocaust as a minor blip, so too is colonialism no minor blip. And just like antisemitism that drove the Holocaust alive and well, so is colonial power in the way modern geopolitics is shaped. Ignore that if you wish, but it reveals your analysis of the situation to be blind, and wilfully ignorant of context that drives the motivations and actions of the very people whose lives you claim to care about and claim you want to give agency. The Holocaust doesn't justify Israeli war crimes. Nor does antisemitism. But ignoring it or minimizing either will leave you proposing solutions that will neither work, nor be morally acceptable given the history. The same is true of colonialism and it's impact on modern geopolitics. Neither justifies Hamas's actions, but it is relevant context. Yet every time this context is brought up, rather than engaging in it, you dismiss it. Why is this ok? Historical revisionism will serve no one in this conflict. But that is what you're engaged in. On a separate note, I know these are not your views as an administrator, but you are aware there are a lot of citizens of former colonies in this board, and this thread, right? Are they allowed to bring in their understanding and context to this discussion? Or are you so certain of your view of the past that you'll insist on telling them their history and what it has taught them is meaningless, because you never lived through it?

I will get to the rest of your post at some point, but this is so so fucking wrong. Can I say the same thing about the Holocaust in this board and get away with this? I'd like to report this, honestly. I find it deeply offensive that colonialism is apparently a "canard". That is, frankly, racist. And if it isn't to this board, then I have no place here.

Are you kidding me with this, or is this a serious reply? I know we've had discussions on antisemitism and the failure of people who don't take that history into account when discussing this conflict. Now I'm going to call this out. I know deliberate lack of education about colonialism is fairly typical in the West by design, but it has no place in this discussion. Neither the League nor the UN is free of colonial influence. The fact that countries of a few hundred million people get to have veto power over the billions of citizens in former colonies is all you need to know how deeply unjust and captured these orgsanizations are. The League was even more blatantly an organization meant to benefit colonial powers, so I'm at a complete loss at you bringing this up as any kind of justification. Ok. So I come to you, and steal your money. Turns out, I have to pay my henchmen, and fuel my getaway car, and pay for a hideout while you try recover your money from me. If all these things cost me more than what I stole from you, I will have made no profit from my actions. Can I now claim that my net loss means I owe you nothing?

Never said it shouldn't. I am not saying the UK and France should take refugees, and Egypt and Jordan should not (though I wouldn't wish Syria as a refugee destination on anyone). But you'll note that Egypt and Jordan were themselves colonial possessions also, as were Syria and Lebanon. You cannot put this in a profit and loss column. No one asked for the colonial powers to take over. The profitability of colonialism (or slavery) is always in doubt, and in fact, in the long run, such systems tend to be unprofitable and unsustainable. You're absolutely right that whatever profit existed was funneled to a very few people, but the losses incurred are nobody's business but the colonial powers. Its not like the people reached out for the superb administrative skills of the UK as demonstrated by mass famines and economic ruination elsewhere, and therefore the failure of that adminstration should cost them. They never asked for it. The profits the colonial powers made were theft. Their losses are their folly. The net negativity of colonialism doesn't change the fact that it represented the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, and the associated loss of political, cultural and societal degradation in administered regions, of course, is additional loss that can scarcely be calculated, let alone paid for.

Of course it isn't totally misguided. The UK, especially, having been the colonial power who help create this powder keg, has little excuse to NOT take Palestinian refugees in this situation. If they disagree, they can measure their illegal colonial profits from the time they ruled this region, add interest, and transfer that wealth back to the region. If they won't do that (and I'm 99.99% sure they won't), they at least have an obligation to the civilians caught in the crossfire.

Ok, can we talk actual numbers? Or is this just "intentions count, results don't"? Are you making the argument that stated intentions shouldn't be measured against effect achieved? To flip this around, if Hamas sprouted none of its antisemitism and genocidal language, would its actions in October 7th become somehow *better*? Uh huh, and that's the exact way the Israeli government is as bad as terrorists. The two governments even collaborate closely on anti-terror strategy and training, and Israel sells weapons and technology to this government. If you do not see the similarities between the Indian right wing that wants a purely Hindu state and the Israeli right wing that wants a purely Jewish state, I don't know what to say to you. And yet, apparently, this conversation is unbalanced. You realize why arguments that this thread is imbalanced against the Israelis sounds ridiculous, now?

No. You're firstly mixing up what should happen with what is happening. Second, you're calling other humans animals, and that is a line that you shouldn't cross if you have any conception of the awfulness of the Holocaust (which you seem to), so it's clear you've written off this group of humans because it's convenient. They're no more animals than Bibi's government is for its crimes. They're terrorists and murderers and have to go. But they're not animals. You're conflating a right to defense to a right to harm civilians, and that is absolutely not the case when it comes to international law. And don't you see the absurdity of "wait to see what happens before condemning it" here? The wait means more lives lost, so sorry, no one's going to wait.

So for the sake of balance, we are to be less horrified that a democratically elected government is baying for blood, and harming thousands of civilians? I'm sorry, but I'm personally more horrified at what Israel is doing not just because of the scale of its actions, but because it is a democratic government doing this, not a terrorist organization as Hamas. I do hold democratic governments to higher standards. This isn't hypocrisy. What the fuck is the point of democratic governance if it is as bad or worse than a fucking terrorist group? Israel's government isn't alone in this. The Indian government, the American government... They all have crossed lines in the name of fighting terrorism that makes it hard to distinguish them at times from the terrorists. I think my efforts and speech are better directed at these governments than the terrorists. I suggest these governments and their supporters wear their big boy pants and stop thinking that "the terrorists did it first" is going to sell as an argument. ETA: in so far as I'm measuring empathy, I also feel the Israeli people have the infrastructure and space to deal with the horrors hey faced. Gazans do not. For every child killed, there's a possible parent who has lost a child and has to deal with continued real threat to their other children, and themselves, and displacement, and no water, and no electricity and an imminent ground invasion. Is anyone going to seriously tell me this isn't worse for the people of Gaza?

As a child of the "Jewel in the fucking crown" of the British Empire, I don't think so. But I do think it is bizarre for people who lived through this to insist the Palestinians must also, and deny them the right to return to homes they were displaced from. I'm not saying this is your view, but it certainly seems you're doing some selective moralizing here.

Not by the Gazan's choice. The Israeli government bears more culpability for the current power of Hamas than most Gazans, since a majority weren't alive in 2006, or didn't vote for them back then, and certainly didn't have the financial means to compete with the state of Israel. So, why should Gazans citizens have to pay for this? Why are we back to square one? We'd back to square one if this party, or the new democratic state you're envisioning, decides to act on this, and has the means to do so, neither of which needs to be true in the future you're envisioning. A new state can be contingent on some agreed upon definition of non aggression from both sides. If and when that is broken, we'd be back to war, but not back to this square where a people who no power and no rights are being held responsible for the terrorism of their "governing body" and are being subjected to collective punishment.

Rightly condemn away. That is not what I asked. Is Israel's statehood dependent on these positions being held by no one who can come to power? And they're a fringe minor party in a functioning democracy. But if I had used the existence of such people to deny all Israelis a country or the right to determine their lives, I think you'd correctly object. Why is this not true of Gazans? A small ask of the people of Gaza that they overthrow their heavily armed oppressors who were supported and financially strengthened by a government that has now turned around and asked these Gazans to flee their homes and face death in their thousands? Why? Why the fuck would Gazans do anything like that? I can't name a single people who will do such a thing in this context, and in fact, if they did, most anti-colonial movements of the past 100 or so years would have fizzled out. You're demand of selfless magnanimity in the face of no guarantees for future freedoms from the Gazans, who are losing their homes and thousands of their people's, while simultaneously saying that Israel has little choice but to be violent and clean out Hamas, and yes, there is sadness for the dead civilians, but what can you do? Can you explain or clarify this? Why, essentially, must Gazans display more restraint and magnanimity with no guarantees of statehood, than Israelis who are nowhere close to losing their state?

Your ease doesn't matter. Freedom for a people cannot be predicated on your ease in liking their leaders. I loathe Hamas. But I find the idea of telling Gazans that their lives are fair game unless they get rid of Hamas to be atrocious. Flip the script a little please. Would you accept restrictions on who Israel can elect to leadership as a price for it's continued existence? Meanwhile, I see we're back to the argument that the only way forward is to "eliminate" Hamas. Does this mean an air assault or ground assault on Doha, where most of the leadership of Hamas is ensconced? If not, sure, you may be able to kill every Hamas fighter in Gaza today. The leaders will just cash in and recruit from a populace that has just been told it's ok for them to lose family but not for Israelis. I don't see why exactly this plan is anything but vengeance/retribution. Call it what it is. It isn't a solution to the problem, just more fuel to the conflagration.

This is news to me. Interesting, but also pretty convoluted for no reason. Even if the Light thought she was alive, she'd hardly have trouble keeping herself hidden.

I misunderstood, sorry. Thanks for clarifying. Unfortunately, what we see as sense, is seen as sentimental nonsense by too many people. Based on an untested (and self -reinforcing) premise that there is an upper bound to human empathy and understanding. I think fighting that narrative root and branch, and exposing it for the convenient fiction it is, is the only way to arrive at a solution. This really is a both sides problem, as someone mentioned. And all my rage and fury is directed at those, on both sides, who would perpetuate horror to protect their power and position. In that light, it matters little whether the Israeli government dropped the bomb or Hamas did, because the truth doesn't change that neither body deserves respect or support, and whatever the direct cause of this explosion, neither organization is blameless in creating the conditions for this to occur.

Nothing else makes sense. The reactions and responses we're mostly seeing that try to find a clean narrative and selectively edit out this or that bit of history to justify the next act of violence as morally more acceptable...that is the crap that doesn't make sense. It is the same nonsense that brought us here in the first place.

https://jewishcurrents.org/we-cannot-cross-until-we-carry-each-other Stepping back from the discussion of who exactly caused the hospital disaster, I think there's a lot of wisdom here as we try to process the deaths that have occured so far, and the more that will come.