Israel, Palestine and Dispossession

[Paranoid]

Originally Posted by maddog

In practical terms in my own life, the main thing I run into is that if I criticize Israel at all, I'm labeled anti-Semitic. This is very disconcerting to me.

You would think that, of all people in the world, the Jews would understand what it means to be dispossessed, and to need a homeland.
#461

The problem with that statement is that you assume that the Israelis dispossessed the "Palestinian people" of their homeland. Before 1880 or so, Palestine was basically an unpopulated wasteland. There were maybe a quarter of a million people in all of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, a land that now supports some 12 million or so? And probably a third of them were in Jerusalem. The place was a waste due to centuries of overtaxation under Arab and Turkish domination. When the Brits took it over, they were absolutely amazed at how few people were actually there. The "holy" places to Muslims there now were old temples that had gone unused and unentered for hundreds of years.

In the late 1800s, the Zionist movement (by which I mean the movement to get people of Jewish heritage to move to Israel, I mean nothing about any religious-dominated society) started getting some big backers to move to Israel, to hook up with the continuous Jewish community of Jerusalem, and to start building cities and farms. The Jews, mostly from Europe, brought a great deal of money with them, and needed help with the work, so they hired a lot of laborers. Most of these laborers were Arabs, some were Lebanses or Turks, some were Egyptian. These were the ancestors of most of the current-day Palestinians.

So the "dispossessed" Palestinians are really a mix of many other people, and most of their ancestors were NOT in Palestine 200 years ago. And much of the land was BOUGHT, for cash, not "stolen". As enmity grew between the two peoples from 1910 through maybe 1948, atrocities were committed on both sides. But that doesn't negate that the original claim of land in Israel was that of purchased land, not "stolen" land.

Yes, go ahead and give evidence that some of the land were forced purchases. Some was, during the period of fighting. AND A LOT WASN'T. One statement saying that some was does not a whole story make. Sure, the original Zionists committed some atrocities. SO DID THE ARABS. Again, unlike the crypto-Nazis, I will not mislead by telling only one side of the story. BOTH sides committed criminal acts. The Crypto-Nazis will only give evidence for one side.

But in the end, in 1948 Britain partitioned off a tiny sliver of Jewish land out of the land already bought by the Jews, and a big piece of Arab land. Basically, they said, like a frustrated parent, "separate!" The Jews were not happy with the partition, the original plans had given them much more, but they were willing to settle for it. THE ARABS WERE NOT WILLING TO SETTLE. They attacked, and Israel got bigger. Land was not "stolen", it was won in a war Israel did not start. If the Palestinians want to complain that that land was taken from them, they only have to look in the mirror to see who is to blame.

And the Arabs attacked again. And again. One time, they massed all their armies on three different borders of Israel, preparing for a simultaneous attack on tiny, difficult to defend Israel. Israel shot down their planes on the ground, and won even more land.

So, we get into this quagmire now. But to claim that Israel was stolen from an indigenous population, well, that's quite a stretch of the truth. Land was bought from, and more land was won in battle from, a people who only showed up in the first place looking for work.

So go ahead and criticize the Israeli government. (Hint: it's a lot more effective when you give a VIABLE OPTION to their current plan of action. "Knock down the wall" means nothing if you have no plan to stop suicide attacks.)

And go ahead and attack the settlers for trying to take all of Judeah and Samaria.

But criticizing Zionists for "stealing" the "holy" land of the "indigenous" people is stretching the truth 3 different way. Land wasn't stolen, it wasn't holy, and the people weren't indigenous.

So quit attacking Israel merely for existing. It's not constructive. Attack their methods, but ONLY if you can give an option that's better. Don't attack their people, they are not a monolith. And although Israel has some religion entangled with the government, they are NOT a religious state in the least, and they allow free worship of any religion without penalty or jail, unlike Iran or Saudi Arabia. Calling them religious fundamentalists is again a disservice. The Orthodox are a small minority in Israel, most of the country are pretty secular.

And most of all, if you come up with a demonizing statement like "we should even deny them humanitarian aid if the Arabs drive them into the sea", well, you need to take a real long hard look in the mirror and figure out *who* has become the demon. Those are the kind of statements that you can't turn back from, and define you as either a moral human being or a racist monster in the making.

I would never deny humanitarian aid to ANY group, anywhere. We are all human beings.