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Israel: When the Drums of War Have Reached a Fever Pitch


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23 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

The establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine was never based on removing anyone from their home or land, was never necessary or desired, and the only thing that caused displacement was the Palestinian and wider Arab state wars to destroy Israel. 

The current crisis was literally caused by forced removal of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah.

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This thread has been pretty educational for me. 

This too is really quite good,-- my Twitter timeline brought this one to my attention and [like this thread] has exposed how ignorant I was/am about the conflict. The contemporary discord goes back much further than I'd originally assumed

Sure, blame is for children, but... in a very shallow sense it just feels like a fermentation of NIMBYism, mercantilism, racism, colonization, et so on. It's a horrible, godsdamned mess and for what? Just another rewrite of same old story, because we suck.

[insert 'Always has been' meme of a space walking astronaut holding a gun to head of another space walking astronaut as they view the earth] 

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And, the sad part, not to be dismissive of the discussion by any means, is even if we remain an arguably technological civilization in a 150ish years, the conflicts humanity has seen to date will be as nothing compared to what's coming.

Of course I care about now, yet I vacillate nearly at once between a simmering rage at humanity's inability to be largely humane, then apathy at how collectively pathetic we are. At how pathetic I am, angry at the world yet simultaneously grateful for my privilege to buy a home on a island that I view as an eventual retreat for my daughters, where I'll no doubt occasionally ruminate whether to discourage them from having their own children [if they ask]

Clearly I'm in a mood, but I think perhaps I've become the kind of person I used to despise. 

---

So... beyond the jeocentric, there's no real value add to the topic except for that Twitter thread. Take a few minutes and give it a read. There's context to the contemporary conflict I certainly wasn't aware of, anyway.

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36 minutes ago, Gorn said:

The current crisis was literally caused by forced removal of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah.

It really wasn't. That decades-long ongoing court case over a previously Jewish neighborhood that was ethnically cleansed by Jordan in 47-48 did not cause Fatah to piss everyone off by canceling Palestinian elections, the TikTok attacks on Jews in Jerusalem throughout Ramadan, or the response from Jewish extremists praying for Arabs to be violent, or the accusations that Jews were going to destroy Al Aqsa, used, as it always is, to rile Palestinians up against Jews. Which Hamas used as a pretext to fire thousands of rockets at Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Beer Sheva, killing Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Indians. Come up with a "proportionate response" that doesn't include not responding, which isn't an option.

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9 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

This thread has been pretty educational for me. 

This too is really quite good,-- my Twitter timeline brought this one to my attention and [like this thread] has exposed how ignorant I was/am about the conflict. The contemporary discord goes back much further than I'd originally assumed

Sure, blame is for children, but... in a very shallow sense it just feels like a fermentation of NIMBYism, mercantilism, racism, colonization, et so on. It's a horrible, godsdamned mess and for what? Just another rewrite of same old story, because we suck.

[insert 'Always has been' meme of a space walking astronaut holding a gun to head of another space walking astronaut as they view the earth] 

---

And, the sad part, not to be dismissive of the discussion by any means, is even if we remain an arguably technological civilization in a 150ish years, the conflicts humanity has seen to date will be as nothing compared to what's coming.

Of course I care about now, yet I vacillate nearly at once between a simmering rage at humanity's inability to be largely humane, then apathy at how collectively pathetic we are. At how pathetic I am, angry at the world yet simultaneously grateful for my privilege to buy a home on a island that I view as an eventual retreat for my daughters, where I'll no doubt occasionally ruminate whether to discourage them from having their own children [if they ask]

Clearly I'm in a mood, but I think perhaps I've become the kind of person I used to despise. 

---

So... beyond the jeocentric, there's no real value add to the topic except for that Twitter thread. Take a few minutes and give it a read. There's context to the contemporary conflict I certainly wasn't aware of, anyway.

This is simply not true. Jews were building towards a state from the time the Ottomans would sell them anything in the late 1800s. The League of Nations mandates which included one Jewish state and a number of Arab states was in 1920, and didn't have shit to do with the Holocaust. The Europeans then actively did everything they could to then prevent more Jewish immigration and a Jewish state in the 20s-40s, including DURING the Holocaust, and leaving weapons for the Jordanian army invading Israel. All the LON mandates were intended to bequeath previously colonized lands back to their inhabitants, including the hundreds of thousands of Jews in Palestine, when Palestinian was not yet a national identity but just any inhabitant of the mandate.

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34 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

The League of Nations mandates which included one Jewish state and a number of Arab states was in 1920, and didn't have shit to do with the Holocaust.

The League of Nations didn't have anything to with Palestine being a 'Jewish State'. It was the British who somewhat endorsed it in the Balfour Declaration. Although notably it didn't say 'state' it said 'national home' and given they ruled over the national homes of large numbers of different groups at the time that weren't independent states choosing to interpret that as giving legal basis for an independent Jewish state is a little shaky.

Plus, you know, the League of Nations Mandates were pretty clearly thinly veiled justifications for more colonialism/imperialism anyway.

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43 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

This is simply not true. Jews were building towards a state from the time the Ottomans would sell them anything in the late 1800s. The League of Nations mandates which included one Jewish state and a number of Arab states was in 1920, and didn't have shit to do with the Holocaust. The Europeans then actively did everything they could to then prevent more Jewish immigration and a Jewish state in the 20s-40s, including DURING the Holocaust, and leaving weapons for the Jordanian army invading Israel. All the LON mandates were intended to bequeath previously colonized lands back to their inhabitants, including the hundreds of thousands of Jews in Palestine, when Palestinian was not yet a national identity but just any inhabitant of the mandate.

As I said, I'm far from versed in the subject. Curious to whether you actually read the thread or not however, as being a layman, at least on the surface... I don't see much dispute between what you're saying and the author wrote.

What, precisely, 'is simply not true'?

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27 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

As I said, I'm far from versed in the subject. Curious to whether you actually read the thread or not however, as being a layman, at least on the surface... I don't see much dispute between what you're saying and the author wrote.

What, precisely, 'is simply not true'?

Framing Palestinians as being in the right to proactively attack and murder Jews in 1929 is very problematic. The same language is used today and is regularly ignored by people who dismiss Jewish concerns which is a big problem in this conflict.

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Just now, Tywin et al. said:

Framing Palestinians as being in the right to proactively attack and murder Jews in 1929 is very problematic. The same language is used today and is regularly ignored by people who dismiss Jewish concerns which is a big problem in this conflict.

Is that what she's saying though? I don't know, man.

While a twitter thread is hardly a treatise, I also felt written therein more acknowledgement of the Jewish plight in comparison to that of the Palestinians. Giving a nod to perception, I parsed depiction rather than moral assignation.  

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6 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Both would have to move, and that's why Arakan can't understand this topic. He only can see one side.

That’s simply not true. Just saw videos of praying people being shot at and storming of Al Aksa during prayers. Absolutely disgusting behavior by Israeli security forces. Absolutely disgusting. You are biased to the max, simple as that. Israel Military behaves like terror forces. It’s all there to see, enough videos out there. Take a look. 

The current situation is not comparable to the times of the 1990s and first or second intifada. Since Netanyahu has been in power he and his far-right allies are actively destroying any kind of „peace“ process. 

Let’s be very clear in language here: Netanyahu is a racist and has time and time again shown his disgust of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims. He clearly dreams of Bantustans. Life in Westbank for the Palestinians becomes less and less sustainable, arable land is taken from them, they only get a small fraction of water as well. Daily humiliations on check points, the difficulty of organizing a normal life like going to a hospital. 

And do you know how I know it? By reading openly available official situation reports of EU missions. 

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Found this to be very informative.

Quote

Political scientist, prolific author, son of Holocaust survivors and fearless critic of Israel Norman Finkelstein joins Katie Halper for a livestreamed discussion about Israel's attacks on Palestinians, the significance of the reports on its apartheid state by Human Rights Watch and Israel's own human rights organization B'Tselem, why he thinks Israel may be at a turning point and overplayed its hand, and why it's a lunatic state. Finkelstein is the author of 11 books, including Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Human Suffering and Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End.

 

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21 minutes ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Found this to be very informative.

 

If you find this informative, you'd probably be interested in Uncle Ruckus' take on Black people, because that is what this fucker's use and abuse of his parents being Holocaust survivors to demonize the descendents of the survivors of the Nazis and Arab states that make up Israel's Jewish population.

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2 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

Is that what she's saying though? I don't know, man.

While a twitter thread is hardly a treatise, I also felt written therein more acknowledgement of the Jewish plight in comparison to that of the Palestinians. Giving a nod to perception, I parsed depiction rather than moral assignation.  

It's not the totality of what she wrote, but I can tell you you'll lose any Jew when in your argument you say it was necessary to preemptively attack Jews because of who they are. There is obviously a really long history this spanning as far back as the eye can see.

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1 hour ago, Arakan said:

That’s simply not true. Just saw videos of praying people being shot at and storming of Al Aksa during prayers. Absolutely disgusting behavior by Israeli security forces. Absolutely disgusting. You are biased to the max, simple as that. Israel Military behaves like terror forces. It’s all there to see, enough videos out there. Take a look. 

That's laughable considering I've discussed Israel's failures and talked about how both sides have a lot to work before real peace can be achieved. You, OTOH, continue to see only one side.

Quote

The current situation is not comparable to the times of the 1990s and first or second intifada. Since Netanyahu has been in power he end his far-right allies are actively destroying and kind of „peace“ process. 

Let’s be very clear in language here: Netanyahu is a racist and has time and time again shown is disgust of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims. He clearly dreams of Bantustans. Life in Westbank for the Palestinians becomes less and less sustainable, arable land is taken from them, they only get a small fraction of water as well. Daily humiliations on check points, the difficulty of organizing a normal life like going to a hospital. 

And do you know how I know it? By reading openly available official situation reports of EU missions. 

And water is wet. I doubt you'll find many people here who support Netanyahu. He's a garbage human being.

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31 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It's not the totality of what she wrote, but I can tell you you'll lose any Jew when in your argument you say it was necessary to preemptively attack Jews because of who they are. There is obviously a really long history this spanning as far back as the eye can see.

I could be dense right now [puppy raising, interrupted sleep, etc] but can you point me to the particular passage that indicates where the thread author stated that? 

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8 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

I could be dense right now [puppy raising, interrupted sleep, etc] but can you point me to the particular passage that indicates where the thread author stated that? 

Hmn, I think I found it. 

These two and that directly following, right? 

 

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6 hours ago, Fez said:

If there were to be peace, I think it would need to be contingent on the hard borders remaining in place for now, and maybe for decades or indefinitely. It's the only way Israel can be assured of their own security. Which means, if the West Bank and Gaza were to become a single state in a peace deal, (which I'm not positive they would be because of the Hamas-PA divide) the only way to physically connect would have to be by tunnel

I don't see Gaza being viable as an independent state, and the status quo is clearly unacceptable. What about extending the Gaza strip all the way along the Egypt and Jordan borders? The Negev appears to be relatively sparsely populated and generally undesirable land; is there anything I'm not aware of that would make this a completely unreasonable proposition? Aside from the virtual impossibility of Israel ever agreeing to it, of course.

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21 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Hmn, I think I found it. 

These two and that directly following, right? 

 

You may want to read the Wikipedia page on the history of Israel, it's pretty good, and read the pages of some of the big names in recent Israeli history. Moshe Dayan was one fierce s.o.b. 

I was looking up various names because I was trying to remember someone my father mentioned years ago, in the 70s or 80s, a big name in Israeli politics or the military. Damn my memory. My father had been in the Polish army at the start of WW 2. He and 75,000 other Polish soldiers were captured by the Russians and were forced to walk to Siberia. Before they got there the Russians changed sides, turned them around and moved them to Iran where they formed the Polish II Corps, under the British. They fought across North Africa. When they got to Palestine, all the Jewish soldiers in his unit went awol, to join the Jewish underground forces that would eventually help create the modern state of Israel. There were dozen or more of them, and they came to him in the middle of the night to say goodbye and wish him well. I keep thinking the course of Israeli history could have been changed if he had spoken up, because one of them became someone pretty famous. The name will come back to me out of the blue, I'm sure. Anyway, he knew they always intended to disappear in the night once they made it to Palestine, he had a good and close relationship with them. I'm sure hundreds, if not thousands, went awol.

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Official UN figures,

Total deaths 2008-20 in Israel-Palestinians Conflict

Palestinians: 5,590
Israel: 251

Now I don’t give a shit how many PR agencies you deploy or how many Lobby groups you weaponize, how good and sophisticated your Marketing Spin is, those two figures cannot be denied and they tell you everything one has to know. 

 

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34 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

You may want to read the Wikipedia page on the history of Israel, it's pretty good, and read the pages of some of the big names in recent Israeli history. Moshe Dayan was one fierce s.o.b. 

I was looking up various names because I was trying to remember someone my father mentioned years ago, in the 70s or 80s, a big name in Israeli politics or the military. Damn my memory. My father had been in the Polish army at the start of WW 2. He and 75,000 other Polish soldiers were captured by the Russians and were forced to walk to Siberia. Before they got there the Russians changed sides, turned them around and moved them to Iran where they formed the Polish II Corps, under the British. They fought across North Africa. When they got to Palestine, all the Jewish soldiers in his unit went awol, to join the Jewish underground forces that would eventually help create the modern state of Israel. There were dozen or more of them, and they came to him in the middle of the night to say goodbye and wish him well. I keep thinking the course of Israeli history could have been changed if he had spoken up, because one of them became someone pretty famous. The name will come back to me out of the blue, I'm sure. Anyway, he knew they always intended to disappear in the night once they made it to Palestine, he had a good and close relationship with them. I'm sure hundreds, if not thousands, went awol.

Golda Meir worth reading about. One of my wife’s grandfathers was a bodyguard of hers at one point. My mil has a photo of him (and other soldiers) with her.

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53 minutes ago, felice said:

I don't see Gaza being viable as an independent state, and the status quo is clearly unacceptable. What about extending the Gaza strip all the way along the Egypt and Jordan borders? The Negev appears to be relatively sparsely populated and generally undesirable land; is there anything I'm not aware of that would make this a completely unreasonable proposition? Aside from the virtual impossibility of Israel ever agreeing to it, of course.

Problem there (among others) is the city of Eilat, down on the Gulf of Aqaba. It's not that important a city, but I doubt Israel would ever consent to give it up or have it cut off from the rest of the country. There's also the security risk. Israel doesn't trust Egypt to properly protect a 7 mile border with Gaza, no way would they trust them with a 170 mile border. An independent state does mean sovereignty, and Israel would have to respect that. But they'd also want to ensure that independent factions, not part of the Palestinian government, aren't getting arms to continue the fight.

 

51 minutes ago, Arakan said:

Official UN figures,

Total deaths 2008-20 in Israel-Palestinians Conflict

Palestinians: 5,590
Israel: 251

Now I don’t give a shit how many PR agencies you deploy or how many Lobby groups you weaponize, how good and sophisticated your Marketing Spin is, those two figures cannot be denied and they tell you everything one has to know. 

 

All they tell is that Israel is more effective at killing. It tells you nothing about intentions or motivations. If Hamas could flip numbers they absolutely would, and that's bad. And the fact that Israel has killed that many is also bad.

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