What's the difference between Israel and North Korea/Syria?

[MichaeltheGreat]

1st time was the prolonged invasion of illegal Jewish immigrants and terrorism pre 1948

"Illegal" to who? A bunch of self-righteous ****ing Brits who had no business being there in the first place?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Interestingly, before WWII it was actually fine for Jews (secular or religious) to criticize the attempt to create a state of Israel or the Zionist movement without incurring the epithet 'Self-Hating Jew!' .


As anyone who has read about the history of Zionist movements would know...

Now of course once the magic definition 'Self-Hating Jew' is in play, anything that particular Jewish person has to say about anything relating to Israel, Middle East politics, the American Zionist lobby (both Jewish and right wing Protestant) and its effect on American foreign policy is deemed inadmissible.

Well, don't you know, Israel must not be criticized, or else the anti-Arab (doesn't have the same bite as anti-semite - maybe a new term needs to be created) brigade will spring into action.

[The Mad Monk]

What's the difference between Israel and North Korea/Syria?

They haven't been mocked Gungnam Style yet.

[Dinner]

Sometimes I wish gangnum style would just go away.

[MichaeltheGreat]

It will. Just some creatively challenged types have to milk it for a while first. Remember the macarena?

[molly bloom]

Well, don't you know, Israel must not be criticized, or else the anti-Arab (doesn't have the same bite as anti-semite - maybe a new term needs to be created) brigade will spring into action.

It's really quite sad- as if somehow just calling someone a 'Self-Hating Jew' absolves them of the need to address the argument. Fair reminds me of the 1980s in the U.K. when the rent-a-Trotskyite crowd would simply screech 'Fasheest!' at anyone who disagreed with their worldview.

Of course if you asked them to define what precisely was 'fascist' about the argument/opinion/observation, you simply received non sequiturs and rambling mutterings in reply. Bit like when regina and H.C. liberally scatter their posts with 'Islamo-Fascist'... and never give a definition when it's asked for.

[Dr Strangelove]

The 1st and 2nd time? That was the Arabs. The 3rd time? That was the Israelis simply because they didn't care to be invaded again as would have happened if they'd have held back.

Lord Balfour was an Arab?! Does his family know?

[Dr Strangelove]

How far back do you want to go?

The Balfour Declaration.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Nice arbitrary cutoff. So the history of jews and arabs in the lands that are now the modern state of Israel begins with a letter from one Brit to another?

[Dr Strangelove]

There's nothing arbitrary about it. During the previous 2 thousand years the land had passed from one conqueror to another. Then along came the war to make the world safe for democracy, as if the native people of Palestine whose descendants had lived on this same land for more than 2 thousand years had ever consented to have their homes given away to folks who had moved out of the area 2 thousnad years ago.

There is a myth that the Palestinians "don't really belong", that they're Arab immigrants who moved into the area during the British occupation. I'm old enough that I remember when essentially the same lie was told about black people in South Africa, that South Africa had been empty when the Dutch arrived and that the kindly Dutch had supplied jobs for the poor unfortunate Africans. Modern genetics though show that the Palestinians and the Israelis are from the same stock.

There's a myth that the Jews who returned to Israel are descendants of a people wrongfuly cast out of their land by the Romans. Only a minority of Israelis likely fit that description. By the time the Romans conquered Judea there were more Jews living outside Judea. There were 2 major Jewish diaspora. The first, or "Great Diaspora, in 70 CE involved the enslavement of some 90,000 Jews. The Second Diaspora in 130 CE ended in the destruction of Jerusalem, the merging of Judea into the province of Syria and the abolition of Judaism within the empire. Apparently the Romans didn't bother with enslavement or any other form of removal, they simply exterminated 580,000 of the population, estimated as having been around 700,000, so the Second Diaspora wasn't so much of a diapora. It's reckoned that there were over 4,000,000 Jews living throughout the world in the 1st century CE. Of those less than 100,000 might have been people displaced by the Great Diaspora. One hundred thousand is a tiny fragment of 4 million. It stands to reason then that most of the Jews who've settled in Israel are the descendants of people who voluntarily left ancient Judea.

Just out of curiosity Michael, do you think that you and I have a "right of return" to our ancestral homelands in Europe? I'm just saying that someday the natives might rise up and persecute us. When we return to the home of our ancestors of course we'll have to insist on forming our own nations, political entities designed to preserve our way of life.

[Al B. Sure!]

My grandmother's family, which is a very prominent one, traces back centuries to Nablus in the West Bank. My grandfather's side lived in Yaffa long before the British mandate.

I see this idea that Palestinian is a made-up ethnicity and that the Arabs weren't there before the 20th century on comment boards all the time. I know for a fact my family was there long before.

[MichaeltheGreat]

I don't know about your or anyone else's ancestors, by mine (to the extent they've been traced back that far) left paying their own way as free men. They didn't have the experience of conquest or individual or collective persecution, especially to the degree of a systematic national effort to exterminate them, with a (premature) dedication of a "museum to an extinct race." As to the likelihood of being subject to persecution, it may be a hypothetical future issue, but it hasn't been a regular occurrence for centuries, unlike the Jewish experience.

As far as the historical claims around the time of the Roman empire - well, 90% of that if not more is a matter of chosen interpretation of sparse data. Suetonius, Livy and Tacitus, among others, are great reads, but they had more editorial slant and none of the modern notion of research of history. The archaeological record is also limited, especially as to fine detail. I agree that the claim the Jews were all forcibly displaced from the Holy Land is propaganda, but it did happen to some extent - one school of thought maximizes and overplays, others minimize or deny, and we frankly don't have the means to know the truth.

I've always supported a two-state solution, and frankly disagree with a number of Israeli policies - the expansion of settlements, etc. At the same time, the arab and Palestinian approach has been more self-destructive internally and externally than anything the Israelis have done. Given the Palestinian track record, especially with Islamist groups like Hamas and supporters like Hizbullah, I'd sooner trust the fate of Palestinian arabs to Irsrael than trust the fate of Israeli jews to a Palestinian government.

We can't unring the bell at this point anyway - Israel is a fact of life. Getting to a viable, stable Palestinian state alongside Israel is the only way to actually move forward, but a lot of Palestinian leaders and supporters won't recognize that - they're still stuck in a fantasy alternative universe of no Israel.

[MichaeltheGreat]

My grandmother's family, which is a very prominent one, traces back centuries to Nablus in the West Bank. My grandfather's side lived in Yaffa long before the British mandate.

I see this idea that Palestinian is a made-up ethnicity and that the Arabs weren't there before the 20th century on comment boards all the time. I know for a fact my family was there long before.

Both sides find it convenient to ignore and distort history. That's pretty much standard for every geopolitical issue.

[Dr Strangelove]

I don't know about your or anyone else's ancestors, by mine (to the extent they've been traced back that far) left paying their own way as free men. They didn't have the experience of conquest or individual or collective persecution, especially to the degree of a systematic national effort to exterminate them, with a (premature) dedication of a "museum to an extinct race." As to the likelihood of being subject to persecution, it may be a hypothetical future issue, but it hasn't been a regular occurrence for centuries, unlike the Jewish experience.

My folks were apparently exiled to Barbados in the 17th century for reasons unknown, then entered the US as Quaker missionaries. The later part about our "right of return" was sheer rhetoric.

As far as the historical claims around the time of the Roman empire - well, 90% of that if not more is a matter of chosen interpretation of sparse data. Suetonius, Livy and Tacitus, among others, are great reads, but they had more editorial slant and none of the modern notion of research of history. The archaeological record is also limited, especially as to fine detail. I agree that the claim the Jews were all forcibly displaced from the Holy Land is propaganda, but it did happen to some extent - one school of thought maximizes and overplays, others minimize or deny, and we frankly don't have the means to know the truth.

Nevertheless it's apparent that before the diaspora there were 4 to 5 times more Jews voluntarily living outside of Judea, so regardless of how many Judean Jews managed to survive the wars with the Romans the diaspora population couldn't have been more than a small fraction of the total ancient non-Judean Jewish population from whom the modern returning Jews are descended.

I've always supported a two-state solution, and frankly disagree with a number of Israeli policies - the expansion of settlements, etc. At the same time, the arab and Palestinian approach has been more self-destructive internally and externally than anything the Israelis have done. Given the Palestinian track record, especially with Islamist groups like Hamas and supporters like Hizbullah, I'd sooner trust the fate of Palestinian arabs to Irsrael than trust the fate of Israeli jews to a Palestinian government.

Ummm, that is the current situation, the fate of the Palestinians Arabs IS in the hands of the Israelis Jews and the situation of the Palestinians is becoming more dire by the day. From owning 90% of the land in 1947, to being allowed only 45% by the UN in 1948, to being crammed into 23% after the first war, and now it's down to 13% and declining every few months.
The Zionist Organisation in 1919 presented to the Pais peace conference a map of their proposed homeland. It's pretty much the same as the current map of Israel except it also included the area of southern Lebanon previously occupied by Israel.

We can't unring the bell at this point anyway - Israel is a fact of life. Getting to a viable, stable Palestinian state alongside Israel is the only way to actually move forward, but a lot of Palestinian leaders and supporters won't recognize that - they're still stuck in a fantasy alternative universe of no Israel.

If you take a look at the distribution of seats in the Israeli Parliament over 1/3 belong to parties that pledge themselves to the vision of a Greater Israel, meaning no Palestine, ever. The ruling coalition is dependent on an alliance with them. Also, just because we can't "unring the bell can't we at least give back to the Palestinians at least what they were promised in 1948? Remember, in 1948 though Jews amounted to only 1/4 the population the UN apportioned 55% of Palestine to them because there were millions of refugees waiting to immigrate. Today there are 5.5 million Israeli Jews and 4.5 million Palestinians in Israel, not counting Israeli Arabs. There are another 5 to 9 million Palestinians living in exile. Using the same logic that the UN used in 1947 giving the Palestinians the land promised to them would be unfair..... to the Paletinians. They should get an extra slice equal to the extra slice taken by Israel in 1948.

[Dr Strangelove]

Nutz!