What Does Israel Fear from This ‘Terrorist’? (2021)
nybooks.com
nybooks.com
Slavery in the American colonies went from ~1526 to 1776 (250 years), plus another ~90 years post independence. Palestinians can still vote, and are considered to be actual people, with the right to self-determination.
Also, Soviet Union, China.
Israel is an illegal occupation started by the British government, that turned into an Apartheid occupation later on.
They still want the world to believe they are Democratic, while they lack a single thing of a real democracy.
Their propaganda machine is what kept it alive.
They turned antisemitism to basically being anti-israel and anti-occupation, pretending to be a democracy while occupying a land they have no right to.
The affect of Israeli propaganda is super clear when comparing the coverage of the Russian occupation in Ukraine, and the Zionist occupation in Palestine.
But luckily their propaganda is getting defeated left, right and center, because the truth is finally available to the masses because of social media (which themselves try to censor Palestinians).
And they are killing journalists covering the truth(1) and innocent childern(2).
Its an illegal apartheid occupation that will end, its just a matter of time, just like what happened in south Africa.
By all means let’s blame the victims for defending themselves.
Jews came as refugees to Palestine in 1940s, and they were welcomed, just like how Christians and Muslims live in peace in Palestine.
Its an extremely important land for all ibrahimic religions.
But you don't come as a refuge, then turn as an occupation because "oh they did it to me so I need to do it to you so I can be safe!!!"
So yeah, if they feel guilty and ashamed of what their fore bearers did ... mebbe ... just mebbe ... they should rethink their behavior of joining with avowed jew haters to persecute the only jewish state.
Maybe.
It is also important to point out that the Europeans opposed the dictator. They did little/nothing to stop the atrocities. That they knew were happening. They could have bombed railways. They didn't (US didn't either). They could have bombed the camps. They didn't.
They focused on defeating an expansionist dictator who was taking over their lands. Anything else was secondary at best.
Given how the jews were treated immediately after the war, in the refugee camps and who would take them in ... yeah, again, the europeans (and my own US) get no sympathy from me for feeling "guilty". They were guilty.
[1] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-evian-...
This discussion, again, is not about Ukraine. It's about the propaganda piece mis-published here on HN, and the commentary that followed. Some are reasonable points, others are repeating narratives that are not supported by facts, but make for nice soundbites, to replace reasonable arguments.
A simple proposal for fixing the real issue. 1) arabs who lived in Israel accept that their side lost, multiple times, and make peace with Israel. 2) Israel welcomes new peaceful citizens back in. #1 won't happen before #2, and given how long and hard arabs have fought the very existence of Israel, I doubt many Israelis are open to considering any re-integration.
That is literally all it would take to get peace. Which means, it will never happen.
Until then, we all recognize the narratives for what they are.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
That is ... unless you have a problem with ... I dunno ... jews?
One of these things is completely, absolutely different than the other.
You are happily comparing industrial scale extermination, tossing babies into the air and catching them on bayonets, digging gold from murdered peoples mouths ... to ... the voluntary evacuation of a land at war?
You are really doing this?
Seriously?
> to people who were ordered to flee their homes by their leaders, and then denied re-entry by the new political entity..
Whats happening in Palestine is people "ordered to leave their homes" and then because of "political entity" can't return???
If you want to say the removal of rights to return to your own land, you house getting destroyed and losing all your belongings, children, Innocent people and Journalists getting killed everyday, illegal arrests and the Third holliest mosque in Islam getting regularly attacked, are all because of a "polticial entity",
Than one can argue the Holocaust was also because of a "Political entity" that was voted in by people.
Now that we apply this weird logic to the Holocaust it suddenly doesn't work huh?
Arabs left at the behest of their leadership, to return when the arab armies were victorious in the 1948 war. The arabs lost. And they lost all the subsequent wars. In 1967 they massed armies on the borders, readying attacks. They were beaten. Again. Very badly.
1973. Same thing. Etc.
Innocent people getting killed every day ... you mean the random attacks in cities? Where terrorists run around with knives, and guns, and mow people over with cars and truck, and blow up busses? What has been the response to that? A wall.
Or the absolutely uncontestable image of a war crime as a terrorist government launches missiles indiscriminately at millions of civilians including millions of children, while the rational government of Israel works to destroy those missles? And then the subsequent outcry when Israel defends herself by destroying the launch capability which, the terrorist government has committed another war crime by placing these in civilian areas ...
The temple mount is the holiest site in judaism. And no jew is attacking, storming, pouncing, on the temple mount.
The people who left Israel upon its founding, need only accept its existence and make peace.
And the other is a Fascist (even Einstein called the Irgun massacre 240 people (of Deir Yassin) a Fascist act of Menachem Begin (see his NYT letter December 4, 1948)), apartheid, militarized, racist government.
I think your main narrative is false and, after reading (at least) three major human rights reports (Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and B'Tselem) in the last 2 years, many now regard Israel as practicing apartheid in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza.
This wasn't (and isn't) a war of equals: I think if you read history carefully (Ilan Pappe, Benny Thomas, etc) this is an colonial settler occupying force inflicting apartheid on indigenous non-Jews. All Native people have a right to resist occupation and apartheid. See the Battle of Algiers recently? This is how occupied people resist their colonial overlords. At some point, one must stop calling any criticism of Israel human rights abuses antisemitism. There is indeed antisemitism but advocating for human rights of non-Jews in a "democratic" state is not antisemitic.
In 1948, over 750,000 non-Jews were ethnically cleansed from their homes and villages. My parents left Haifa in May 1948 as the city was ethnically cleansed. They didn't leave voluntarily. The Haganah were rolling barrels full of explosives into Arab neighborhoods to terrorize the local residents. It was also a psychological terror campaign: what the Haganah called a "Jewish Whispering campaign". In other words, they advertised the Deir Yassin massacre over loudspeakers (in Arabic) to warn the non-Jews about what was going to happen to them if they stayed. See the Israeli assessment of "migration" from June 30, 1948 at https://www.haaretz.co.il/st/inter/Heng/1948.pdf.
Over 500 villages were burned and/or bulldozed to prevent the return of those expelled. Over 300,000 non-Jews were expelled before Israel was declared a state (May 14, 1948). It was only after this initial wave of migration that the neighboring armies began conflict to prevent the further expulsion of Native non-Jews. After Israel's creation, another 400,000 Indigenous non-Jews were expelled from their towns and villages
(From Migration of Eretz Yisrael Arabs between December 1, 1947 and June 1, 1948 url is above)
"In reviewing the factors that affected migration, we list the factors that had a definitive effect on population migration. Other factors, localized and smaller scale, are listed in the special reviews of migration movement in each district. The factors, in order of importance, are: 1. Direct Jewish hostile actions against Arab communities. 2. Impact of our hostile actions against communities neighboring where migrants lived (here – particularly – the fall of large neighboring communities). 3. Actions taken by the Dissidents [Irgun, Lehi]. 4. Orders and directives issued by Arab institutions and gangs. 5. Jewish Whispering operations [psychological warfare] intended to drive Arabs to flee. 6. Evacuation ultimatums. 7. Fear of Jewish retaliation upon a major Arab attack on Jews. 8. The appearance of gangs and foreign fighters near the village. 9. Fear of an Arab invasion and its consequences (mostly near the borders). 10. Arab villages isolated within purely Jewish areas. 11. Various local factors and general fear of what was to come."
So the non-Jews did not appear to leave voluntarily. When people flee for their lives (and are not allowed to return to their homes (because they have been destroyed), we call this ethnic cleansing. It's a crime against humanity.
It isn't that complicated: Zionists want the land but there are people already living on it. What do you do with the non-Jews already there? Israel massacred some of them and drove the rest out to neighboring countries (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and into the West Bank and Gaza). The exiled are still there. Just visit a Palestinian refugee camp and you can meet them. And why are they angry? They want to return to their destroyed villages. They want their homes back. They want their possessions returned.
The 750k refugees "expelled" (overwhelming historical documentary evidence exists of the vast majority leaving as a result of their leaders telling them to leave so they could kill the jews, and then let them come back) seems to omit the 850k (again historically well documented) jews expelled from arab lands post 1948.
Simple google searches will provide sources to the historical material I referenced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_1948_Palestinian...
I fail to see why anyone would need to encourage Palestinians to flee, when they were subject to ethnic cleansing such as at Deir Yassin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre
Here's a good history of this conflict[1]. Worth a read. Labeling something you disagree with as propaganda, when there is so much documentary evidence supporting the thing you label thusly, is not a good argumentation strategy.
The arabs who were refugees were not expelled. They were not re-admitted. As the article notes, the failures of the arab leadership and their inability to come to terms and negotiate in good faith with the new political leadership has lead to 75+ years of their own diaspora. As the article notes, these were not innocent, nor victims.
Their children, held in these conditions for decades, should have been resettled where they landed. If they want even a chance of returning to Israel, they should bury their sword, create a genuine peace. Amazing things would happen then.
Though, given the chant is "river to sea ...", I don't expect this to occur in anyone's lifetime.
The arabs launched a war of aggression. They lost. They lost the subsequent wars they launched. Their people were displaced by those wars. They aren't victims of anything but terrible leadership.
Israel isn't going anywhere.
I know I won't change your mind (or your victim complex) over the internet, but for what it's worth I truly hope you find the truth (or Al Haq), and I'll leave it at that.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/crs/highlights/2020-hate-crimes-stat... [2] https://www.jns.org/fbi-report-reinforces-trend-that-america... [3] https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/antisemitism-jew... [4] https://www.jns.org/opinion/anti-semitism-the-numbers-dont-l...
With a ~2500 year gap between the fall of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the 1948 modern state.
Your point?