[Decky]

Okay, let us dumb is down a notch. Lets say we go with your full assumption that Israel is a coloniser. There is no alternative viewpoint and no alternative argument. (For the sake of discussion)

If we take Israel in that context then what is the solution? Deport all of the people from Israel? (Note America is a colonialy created country and nobody is deporting Europeans out of North America/USA) How is this solution fair to Israel compared to any other colonially created country? (USA, Canada, Brazil, etc)

If it is not full deportation then forceful removal to 1947 borders? Do you understand that is more or less 1 000 000 individuals that you will have to dislocate from their current homes. That is 1/8th of Israels population. Where are they gonna get money for it? How are they going to absorb the economical impact from that ? Do you honestly believe that it is possible to force a country to do this without resorting to direct military enforcement ?

So it is all fine to do it to evil untermensch Palestinians (the mass deportations you have described are how the Jews got the land in the first place) but suddenly it is immoral if the rightful owners of the land do it to Israeli master race? Your hypocrisy is obvious to all.

The violence of a home invader against the occupants of a house is not morally or legally equal to any violence that might be necessary to remove him.

[Zionist Nationalist]

There were no mass deportations. most of them left by their own will because the Arabs called them on the radio to leave and return after the war is over

[Decky]

You sound like David Irving. It never happened!

[noir]

Thanks to @anarchist23 and@Decky, I've been reading some fascinating books about the origin and the history of British antipathy to Israel.

[JohnRawls]

:lol:

So it is all fine to do it to evil untermensch Palestinians (the mass deportations you have described are how the Jews got the land in the first place) but suddenly it is immoral if the rightful owners of the land do it to Israeli master race? Your hypocrisy is obvious to all.

The violence of a home invader against the occupants of a house is not morally or legally equal to any violence that might be necessary to remove him.

It is not okay to do it but the problem is that it already happened. The same way it happened in Brazil, USA, Canada etc. What is the solution then when it has happened already? Relocate 1 000 000 people? Deport whole if Israel population? I am in no way trying to white wash colonisation/etc but do you want to do the same again? (That Israel has done)

This again assumes that Israel has no right to the land. (But as said before i will simplify the position to this, when we totally ignore what Israel has to say)

[Seeker8]

@skinster



There is some merit in your words. On the other hand, Israel was promised this land. Back in the day they petitioned the British Empire for a piece of land where they can settle which was approved by the British empire. Israel is a remnant from that colonial past. Issue is that they were promised this land by the British empire and so they slowly started settling there. Israel did not appear in 1 day. It was a long process that started and was permitted to happen by the British empire. World War 2 greatly intensified the process. Israel was created (Initially) with our blessing(By the way not just Europe, this also includes USSR and USA) So we permitted Israel to exist and supported it which leads us to the current situation. Israel is a European/Western/USSR creation that was allowed to be created without consulting the local population. There was never a need to do so, because the land belonged to the British Empire in the first place. (To put it in to context)

So right now we blame Israel for colonialism. When they were permitted to have this land in a process that lasted decades. We even supported their independence on several occasions. And now we fast forward to year 2017 when we are saying to them to go away from the land...

What was the point of this post. Are you trying to justify the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. What does it matter what they were promised from some other coloniser? is it ok for me to kick you out your house and live there if Skinster promises me it?

[noir]

What was the point of this post. Are you trying to justify the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. What does it matter what they were promised from some other coloniser? is it ok for me to kick you out your house and live there if Skinster promises me it?

"Ethnic cleansing" is politically charged new term (born during the Balkan war in the 90's). Greco Turkish war ended by mutual population exchange which had been proposed by the Nobel Peace prize-winner Dr. Nansen and was sanctioned by the League of Nations and carried out under the guidance of a mixed commission.

More Jews left or expelled from the Arab world than the Palestinians from Israel. For a real and stable peace settlement in the ME, the world will need to free itself from Arab propaganda.

[Seeker8]

Ethnic cleansing is politically charged new term (born during the Balkan war in the 90's). Greco Turkish war ended by mutual population exchange and it's operator rewarded by Noble Prize.

Nah, that's not a comparable situation at all. There was no war between Palestinians and jews, just one group kicking out anyone who wasn't jewish. "Ethnic Cleansing" seems like a perfect descriptor for those actions.

For a real and stable peace settlement in the ME, the world will need to free itself from Arab propaganda.

It's not Arabs who own the media. That is exactly the opposite of what's happening.

[noir]

Nah, that's not a comparable situation at all. There was no war between Palestinians and jews, just one group kicking out anyone who wasn't jewish. "Ethnic Cleansing" seems like a perfect descriptor for those actions.


It's not Arabs who own the media. That is exactly the opposite of what's happening.

Uri Avnery, for years chief propagandist to Pal cause in Israel and fought in 1948 war, wrote this week

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.772605

Relatively few Arabs remained within Israel’s post-1948 borders, but the fact that no Jews remained in the territories conquered by the Arabs has been forgotten.

Who really started the 1948 war and when

War of Independence
Allenby Street in Haifa during the War of Independence. / Photo by AP
By Uri Avnery

Published 23:06 23.02.17

In the wake of my last op-ed in Haaretz (“The Green Line is not sacred,” Feb. 15), in which I noted that the Arabs launched the 1948 war after the United Nations adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine, I received some angry responses from readers. They argued that the Zionists started the war, with the intention of driving out the Palestinian population. Since I participated in the events – I was 24 at the time – and wrote two books about the war, one during the war itself and one immediately afterward (published in English in a single volume, as “1948. A Soldier’s Tale – The Bloody Road to Jerusalem”), I feel it my duty to describe what really happened, insofar as possible.

To describe the atmosphere before the war, I will relate one of the greatest experiences of my life. At the end of the summer of 1947, the annual folk dance festival was held in a natural amphitheater on the Carmel mountain chain. About 40,000 young people were there, a large number considering that the entire Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, numbered around 635,000. A delegation from the UN Special Committee on Palestine, which had been appointed a few months earlier to find a solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict, was traveling around Palestine.


We watched the troupes, including one from an adjacent Arab community, dance the debka with such verve that it could barely be induced to leave the stage, when it was announced over the loudspeakers that members of UNSCOP had come to visit. Spontaneously, all those thousands rose to their feet and sang “Hatikva,” the national anthem, with such enthusiasm that the song rang among the hills. It was the last time our generation was to convene. Within a year, thousands of them were dead.

Following the UNSCOP recommendations, on November 29 of that year the UN General Assembly approved a plan to create independent Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem to remain a separate entity, under UN control. Although the area designated for the Jewish state was small, the Jews realized that independence was the most important thing. It was one of the lessons of the Holocaust, which had ended just three years earlier. On the other hand, the entire Arab world objected to the solution. Why, it asked, should the people of Palestine pay the price for the Holocaust that had been perpetrated by peoples of Europe?

A few days after the UN resolution was passed, shots were fired at a Jewish bus. That is how the first stage of the war began.

To understand the events, the situation bears describing. The two populations in Israel were geographically intertwined. Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv had Jewish and Arab neighborhoods next to one another, within touching range. Practically every Jewish village was surrounded by Arab villages. Their existence depended on roads that were controlled by Arab villages. After the UN resolution, gunfire erupted throughout the land. True, formally the British still controlled it, but they endeavored not to get involved.

The Haganah Jewish militia, which was still underground, got Jewish traffic moving, in convoys that were commanded by the organization’s young men and women. The women were especially important, because they could conceal weapons in their clothes.

On the Arab side, on the other hand, there was no central command. The attacks were being perpetrated by villagers, often armed with old rifles. Since some of these villagers were primitive, there were atrocities. Our side responded in the same coin, and thus the confrontation became more vicious. A group of 35 Haganah fighters, most of them students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was ambushed on the way to delivering supplies on foot to the four besieged kibbutzim of the Etzion Bloc, south of Jerusalem. All of them were slaughtered. We saw photographs showing their severed heads being paraded through the Old City of Jerusalem.

The inevitable strategy of the Jewish side was to expel the Arabs from around the roads. The Jewish communities were ordered to stay put, at any cost. Only a handful of isolated settlements were evacuated. In February 1948, the British withdrew from the area of Tel Aviv, which became the core of the Jewish state. At the same time, the British also withdrew from the Arab areas.

By late March, both sides were suffering terrible losses. On April 1, we received the order to scramble to Tel Aviv’s makeshift port to receive a large shipment of Soviet arms. A year before, the Soviet bloc, in an astonishing turnabout, supported the Zionist side in the conflict. Joseph Stalin, who had been anti-Zionist, apparently decided that a Jewish state in Israel would be better for him than an American-British base.

We spent the day cleaning off the grease in which the rifles and submachine guns had been packed. They had been manufactured in Czechoslovakia for Adolf Hitler’s army (but arrived too late for World War II). Thus the second phase of the war began.

Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods were separated from the rest of the Yishuv by the Arab villages that controlled the road. The aim of the war’s first big campaign, Operation Nahshon, was to regain control. For several kilometers, the road traversed a narrow pass between steep hills. Bab al-Wad (Sha’ar Hagai) terrified all our soldiers. When we were shot at from above, we had to get out of our vehicles, climb the hillsides under fire and fight on the slopes. Not a cheery prospect.

A huge convoy, with 135 trucks and cars, came together, and we were assigned to bring it to Jerusalem. My squad got a truck loaded with crates of cheese. We tried to shelter between the crates. Happily, we were not attacked. We entered Jerusalem at midday on Shabbat, and were greeted by hordes of religious Jews who came out of the synagogues to welcome us with fervor. It was like Charles de Gaulle entering Paris during World War II. We returned to the coastal plain without trouble, but our convoy was the last one that got through to Jerusalem safely. The next was attacked and had to turn around.

In subsequent battles to open the road, the Yishuv failed and suffered terrible losses, especially at Latrun, where the road was held by irregular foreign Arab forces. The fighters of the Palmach, the elite strike force of the Haganah, found an alternative route. We dubbed it the “Burma Road,” after the road the British took from India to China during World War II.

By then it was already obvious that the armies of the surrounding Arab states were poised to join the war. That awareness changed the nature of the warfare completely. In preparation for the anticipated battles, the Jewish army “cleansed” large areas of its Arab population, in order not to leave concentrations of Arab civilians behind our lines. It could be justified on tactical grounds.

1948 war
Israeli soldiers guarding Egyptian prisoners of war during the 1948 War of Independence. / Photo by Government Press Office
The last of the British left on May 14. The following day, the armies of five Arab nations – Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq – joined the war, with some assistance from Saudi Arabia. These were standing armies trained by their previous colonial masters, Britain and France, who also supplied them with planes and cannons. We had none of those.

On paper, the Arab side had a tremendous advantage in arms, training and numbers, but we had three big advantages. First of all, we knew we were fighting for our lives and the lives of our families, exactly that, with our backs to the wall. Second, we had a unified command, while the Arab forces competed with each other. Third, the Arabs were contemptuous of us. Who ever heard of fighting Jews? And we had a certain tactical advantage by being inside the lines – we could move forces from one front to another quickly.

The weeks to come, the war’s third phase, brought its most desperate battles. Some of them recalled those of World War I. In the battle for Ibadis, near Kibbutz Negba in the Negev, I saw almost all our fighters die or get shot and only one heavy gun still fired. There were hours in which all seemed lost. But then, slowly, our luck began to change. As this phase drew to a close, we were still on our feet.

The fourth phase also saw hard battles, even one with bayonets. But we smelled victory. This was the stage of mass expulsions of Arabs from the cities and villages. It was clear that this was an intentional policy by the Jewish leadership. At this point I was badly wounded and quit the front lines.

When both sides were completely exhausted, the war ended with a series of cease-fire agreements and the Green Line – the 1949 Armistice Line marking Israel’s de facto borders – was created.

A small number of Arabs remained within these borders, but the forgotten fact is that not one single Jew remained in the territories conquered by the Arab side. Luckily for us, these territories were small relative to the territories conquered by our side. Both sides engaged in ethnic cleansing before the term had been coined.

Those are the facts. Anybody can build on them interpretations and ideologies as he sees fit. But, without Trumpian “alternative facts,” please.

[JohnRawls]

What was the point of this post. Are you trying to justify the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. What does it matter what they were promised from some other coloniser? is it ok for me to kick you out your house and live there if Skinster promises me it?

As i said, lets pretend that Israel is a coloniser and there is no other argument at all. (In reality there is)
Now going from that context, how does it help us resolve the situation? Let us touch only Israel and palestine and not talk about other Arab nations or the expelled jewish population from those arab nations etc. We ignore all that and put Israel in the worst position possible that it is a coloniser and it is wrong morally and politically.

Now having said that, it still does not help us solve the situation at all. What is the solution then? Can anybody at least try to answer this question please, this is the 3rd or 4th time i ask it. What should Israel and Palestine do ?

[Seeker8]

As i said, lets pretend that Israel is a coloniser and there is no other argument at all. (In reality there is)

Ok but that is the thing i take issue with. I would love to hear your argument that justifies ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. I've never heard a reasonable argument for this, so let's hear it.

[One Degree]

I usually avoid posting on Israel threads since it is so emotional, but John Rawls is right. What is done is done and any argument should not be over what Israel already controls. The land they control is now their business and no one else.

[noir]

Iraqi Jews before ethnic cleansing

[Seeker8]

I usually avoid posting on Israel threads since it is so emotional, but John Rawls is right. What is done is done and any argument should not be over what Israel already controls. The land they control is now their business and no one else.

It's not the business of the people they stole it from?

[JohnRawls]

I already put it before. You are simply refusing to hear it. The power to live on this land was given to the Jews by the British Empire. Yes British empire was an empire and colonised lands. It was still the ruling power on the land and it had the legal right to do so. Jewish immigrants started settling on it way before Israel ever existed. WW2 intensified the process. We supported Israeli independence and there are legally binding documents signed, resolution taken, diplomatic missions established etc. We justified and gave the ownership of the land to Israel. (By we, i mean people before us from Europe, USSR, USA and other parts of the world) This is where Israeli claim comes from. You can't simply disregard historical developments if they don't fit in to your moral narrative. I am not trying to fit the facts to fit my narrative and describing how the situation happened. This gives Israel a claim to the land but does not justify ALL of their actions.

From the other side Palestinians also lived on the land and nobody borrowed to consult with them. That i also understand. So both have claim to the land in this regard. One from ancestry perspective and another from legal perspective. Both are legitimate claims. You consider that the inheritance is more important which i do not agree with. Both claims are equal. If you use this argument then the Jews that were exiled over time by the Romans, Egyptians, Muslim conquest have even more claim to the land(But that happened thousand years ago so nobody really cares nowadays).

That is both sides of the story. Now having said that, this gives a background or moral basis from both sides. If you tend to ignore both sides of the story then you are never going to reach any sort of a decent resolution to the conflict. If you consider that Israel has no claim to the land then what do you propose as a solution? Full deportation of Israelis? The other side also, if they do not acknowledge ownership of the land by ancestry then what do they suggest? Full deportation of Palestinians? This is not how modern day dispute of this sort are resolved. In a sense we have a background and we have a situation as it is right now. We have to fix the situation that exists in reality and not how you think it is more morally correct to fix it.

I am not denying that Israel is performing horrible actions. This is just the fact of the situation right now and we need to find a resolution otherwise it will be so from both sides be it Israel(Who is stronger right now) or Palestinians(Who are weaker right now). The situation can be reversed in 50 years lets say.

[Seeker8]

Iraqi Jews before ethnic cleansing

So you support the ethnicly cleansed in one case and the ethnic cleansers in the other, depending on which ones are the Jews. That's some moral compass you have.

[noir]

"no man, no problem." - Joseph Stalin

Transfer (ethnic cleansing) can solve the problem. The Jews in Iraq don't suffer from apartheid today because they are no Jews left.

[Seeker8]

I already put it before. You are simply refusing to hear it. The power to live on this land was given to the Jews by the British Empire. Yes British empire was an empire and colonised lands. It was still the ruling power on the land and it had the legal right to do so. Jewish immigrants started settling on it way before Israel ever existed. WW2 intensified the process. We supported Israeli independence and there are legally binding documents signed, resolution taken, diplomatic missions established etc. We justified and gave the ownership of the land to Israel. (By we, i mean people before us from Europe, USSR, USA and other parts of the world) This is where Israeli claim comes from. You can't simply disregard historical developments if they don't fit in to your moral narrative. I am not trying to fit the facts to fit my narrative and describing how the situation happened. This gives Israel a claim to the land but does not justify ALL of their actions.

So the heart of this issue is that you think the land rightly belonged to the British, just because they said so, and so they had as equal a right to it as the Palestinians who lived there. Everything else flows from this. I think that is wrong.

From the other side Palestinians also lived on the land and nobody borrowed to consult with them. That i also understand. So both have claim to the land in this regard. One from ancestry perspective and another from legal perspective. Both are legitimate claims. You consider that the inheritance is more important which i do not agree with. Both claims are equal. If you use this argument then the Jews that were exiled over time by the Romans, Egyptians, Muslim conquest have even more claim to the land(But that happened thousand years ago so nobody really cares nowadays).

You honestly believe that biblical shit is as valid as modern day colonialism where there are still people alive who were ethnically cleansed. Are you fucking kidding?

That is both sides of the story. Now having said that, this gives a background or moral basis from both sides. If you tend to ignore both sides of the story then you are never going to reach any sort of a decent resolution to the conflict. If you consider that Israel has no claim to the land then what do you propose as a solution? Full deportation of Israelis? The other side also, if they do not acknowledge ownership of the land by ancestry then what do they suggest? Full deportation of Palestinians? This is not how modern day dispute of this sort are resolved. In a sense we have a background and we have a situation as it is right now. We have to fix the situation that exists in reality and not how you think it is more morally correct to fix it.

I try and see things from both sides. I have no dog in this race, I don't personally know anyone who is Palestinian or Israeli. But the Israeli side are just wrong, they stole people's land, ethnically cleansed men, women and children and now they humiliate them and kill them when they feel like it.

[Seeker8]

"no man, no problem." - Joseph Stalin

Transfer (ethnic cleansing) can solve the problem. The Jews in Iraq don't suffer from apartheid today because they are no Jews left.

Well i hope one day you are kicked out of your home, since you advocate it for others.

[noir]

Million Jews kicked out from their home in the Arab world. The only true ethnic cleansing in the Middle East. Thanks to Arab propaganda we don't hear about it.



https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Millio ... 0826447643


http://www.dhimmitude.org/archive/The-F ... fugees.pdf