this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
1170 points (90.3% liked)
Memes
46039 readers
3538 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Other than a small minority of religious zealots, the pro-Israel folks don't base the justification of an Israeli state on ancient history.
This is usually only brought up to rebut Palestinian claims that they were their first.
The justification for the modern state of Israel is that the entire world sat by for years while the Jewish population of Europe was slaughtered. Most countries closed their borders to fleeing Jewish refugees.
And the Holocaust was just the latest in a thousands-of-years long history of Jews being scapegoated and exiled from almost every county in Europe.
The post-Holocaust refugees needed a place to live, and needed the autonomy to self-govern and to defend themselves.
So, they worked with the international community to carve out a tiny piece of land, and tried from the beginning to create a two-state solution.
The neighboring Arab countries shot this down because they assumed that they could destroy Israel and take everything for themselves.
Which is exactly what they tried to do.
To everyone's great surprise, Israel won. And they've been fighting for there survival ever since.
Even today, Palestinians aren't asking for peaceful coexistance. They elected a government whose charter includes wiping Israel off the map.
At a certain point, Israelis military might crossed a threshold where the world is no longer concerned that Israel might not survive. And at that point they decided that Israel was no longer the underdog, and sympathy for them started to wane.
Now a lot of people who love to root for underdogs in any situation have decided that Israel is the villain.
It goes largely unnoticed by them that Israel has never once been given the opportunity to have a peace with the Palestinians with any deal in which the Palestinians did not secure Israel's total destruction.
I agree that Jews have been horribly persecuted for millenia. I understand that a bunch of countries decided that there needed to be a Jewish state to protect Jews from further persecution. The part that I don't understand is why did these countries give them land that was already settled by someone else? Why didn't these countries give them their own land?
The way I understand it now would be like me arguing that homeless individuals have been persecuted enough and they need their own home. Therefore, me and my friends have agreed that they can have my neighbor's house without my neighbor's consent.
The one argument I've heard is that the land was the ancestral home of the Jewish people. However, it seems hypocritical to me if this argument holds true for the Levant but not all of the Americas. To maintain integrity and congruence based on this argument, then I'd think Israel would be highly allied with the Native Americans to help them get their ancestral home back. Because this isn't the case, it seems to me that I have been misinformed about or misunderstood the reasoning behind giving Jewish people this land. So, what is the actual reason for this specific land??
I really just don't get it.
Note: I am not arguing that...
Jews haven't been persecuted
there shouldn't be a Jewish state
Palestinians/Hamas are right in attacking Israel
Israel can't defend itself
Palestinians should be able to defend themselves
innocent people haven't died
anything about religion
anything about terrorism
whatever else someone might assume and get heated about
I really just want to understand the reasoning with valid congruence.
Why Israel? It's because they'd already been a movement for decades before World War II by Jews to buy up that land because it was their ancestral Homeland. Also we aren't talking about a highly populated region. Half of modern day Israel is desert.
So why didn't countries give up their own land? I mean, Britain would have considered that their own land. They had possession of it, and they were the sovereign power governing it.
Why didn't Europe give up prime real estate to Jewish refugees? Because in all of history no one has been that generous to any refugees let alone Jews.
Ahh, thank you! So some of the land was bought, which makes sense. Also, Britain was the colonial ruler, so they had the power to dictate how the land was to be used.
Were they voluntarily ruled by the UK or was it forced?
Did the people living on that land agree to give it up entirely, either by selling or donating it? If they did, then are they going back on their exchange? Or were they basically told to leave by the UK?
I think it's irrelevant if the land is desert or not because if people live there, they live there regardless of the climate.
I really am trying my hardest to understand and avoid any arguments that are based on typify-ing a group of people as bad or immoral based on ethnicity, religion, nationality, race, etc. I appreciate this discussion 🙂
I think another issue is that there's not exactly a lot of habitable land that isn't already habitated. Like, where would you have them placed, Antarctica?
To the above persons point, you're either giving up some of your own prime real-estate, or you're offering some spot in some colony you own. The latter was chosen.
Now, there's a whole separate debate about the evils of colonization in Africa and the Middle East, but that's more to the point of Britain being the bad guy, not the refugees who were looking for any port in a storm and decided to take the land that was offered.
What you said would justify Israel's violence ONLY IF ALL PALESTINIANS AGREED. They do not. Pretending it's OK to run a reverse-genocide because Jews had it rough in the past is frankly pathetic. Beyond pathetic.
Israel's violence? You mean self defense?
Genocide? ROFL... Right. Sorry, I mistook you for a serious person for a second.
Ahahahaha you don't think Israel commits violence, and you have the gall to question MY humanity?
You are beyond pathetic. You are sub-human trash for ignoring violence and genocide. Literal breathing garbage. If your answer to violence is to spread violence further... I don't care what god you claim to worship: You are still trash.
Israel is great at violence.
But violence in self defense is justified.
I'm glad we agree that the people being invaded and displaced had a valid reason for this attack.
Do you know any Palestinians? My wife worked for a couple that were forced to leave, good highly educated folks. The wife was an attorney, when Isreal was formed she was told her law degree was worthless. She went to school, got an Israeli law degree, was then told she needed to speak Hebrew. She went back to school, learned Hebrew, was then told lol nah you can't actually practice law now. Shorty after their house was seized, it had an olive orchard that had been in their family for generations.
That's not how imperialism works friendo.
Great story. Got anything to back that up, or just the word of an Internet stranger?
"Nice job backing that up with a source, but the source needs to be in Hebrew"
Personal anecdotes aren't verifiable sources, but thanks for trying.
I really don't give a shit if you believe me or not.
Do you know any Palestinians?
Yeah, went to law school with a Palestinian.
I take it you never talked to them about the occupation.
If your point is that you think I don't know how bad the occupation is, you're wrong.
The issue for me is that when you decide to walk away from the negotiating table, and start blowing up school buses, I really couldn't give less of a fuck what your grievances are.
And you think radicalization like that happens out of the blue? Do you condemn what Crazy Horse did and use the same logic on all indigenous people?
The whole fucking situation sucks but to say something as ignorant as "the imperialists wanted to negotiate with you" you're obviously coming at the situation from an point of view, one you might not even believe to be as biased as it is.
You also are treating all of the Palestinians as a homogeneous group, a line of logic used to justify their genocide. There are radicals and there are moderates, to call off negotiations because of one group takes away any political power of the other. "You can't control this group of people that we are responsible for radicalizing, so I guess we have no choice but to keep stealing more land and oppressing your people."
The amount of disinformation in this post is unreal and would take hours upon hours to explain why. It's so easy to spread disinformation like you and people like Trump do and takes so much work and effort to refute.
Europe should have given them Germany not Palestine.
Jews had already been buying up a bunch of land in the region for decades before the start of WWII, and this was a largely undeveloped patch of land.
Not even remotely true that it was undeveloped. Some ppl buying land in not their country isn't relevant in any way. I'm not saying there were no Jews there. Just that there was no Jewish state which is a fact.
I mean, there was also never a Palestinian State there if that's what the world should go by.
You mean in the former British colony that was gifted to them.
Takes two to tango.
Country 1: I want us both to exist.
Country 2: I want only one of us to exist.
Internet genius: TakeS tWo to tANgo.
All sides think this applies to them. Which goes back to my point. Everybody is their own good guy. Nobody thinks they're doing wrong.
Good thing their personal opinions on whether they're a 'bad guy' are irrelevant.
Who's?
Anyone's.