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Comment by LorenPechtel | Hacker News Reader

1) Israel serves as a lightning rod. Much of the Islamist violence is directed at them rather than at the rest of the world.

2) Israel is a nuclear power. You think they'll let themselves be exterminated (and that's what their opponents want) without using their bombs?

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There is a lot to unpack in this.

Your #1 is encoding an unexamined assumption that there is a fixed or at least somewhat inflexible amount of violence to be directed anywhere. It also ignores the lightning generation engine, so to speak, that is the settler colonialism causing unrest across the region.

On #2 - Rational people see that they are willing to do everything short of nuclear war when they feel like their century of history is being re-evaluated, and are worried about that (appropriately so). Also, it is an error to assert that nations can be exterminated. That is something evil that happens to people. As organizations of people, institutions and states can fail or be dissolved, but do not disappear permanently so long as people remain to re-form them. I think rational people can argue that the things that are being done in Palestine are unconscionable and that a state that is built to systematically support those acts needs to renew its principles and recommit itself to the idea of "never again".

The lightning generation engine is the Islamist money for terror.

And you are not addressing point #2 at all. I pointed out that the Jews know that to stay if Israel collapses is to die. You are asking them to die and you are asking that they not use their second strike capability when that happens.

When Nazi Germany was occupying the rest of Europe, it also labelled any inside movement of resistance as Terrorism. International law recognizes both occupation and colonization as crimes. Labeling and merging the Palestinians into a single entity called "the terrorists" is a lazy attempt to deny the legitimate claim for freedom and self-determination of an indigenous populations.

"Never again" - Was that ever an idea that Israel committed to? I thought this is only something that Germany and potentially other countries committed to, and Israel saw itself as the victim since forever, so they have no reason to commit to anything, but the victim card, which allowed them to have their own country in the first place.

Note though, that Germany's commitment to "never again" got somehow repurposed in exactly letting the thing happen again. Be it because politicians here are not actually educated enough to recognize the thing they should prevent, want to close their eyes to the fact that the once-victim now perpetrator, did it and they did nothing to stop it, they just don't care, the weapon exports are just too good of a business, or whatever. Germany has utterly failed to prevent the thing from happening ever again, and Israel has proven our collective "blind spot". The one entity, that no German politician is allowed to criticize. And still the political climate is such that, most likely, if you criticize Israel in any way, your political career is over and you get branded as an anti-Semite. Oh the irony of it.

While it should actually be a huge headline in every newspaper, that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians and is still committing it as we sit here, the newspapers are awfully quiet. It seems like it is not even worth a headline. Man, the truth hurts. Sucks when your reporting has been so biased all along. Hard to make a 165 degree turn now, I guess (I give them 15 degree, for the occasional reporting on the matter at all.).

> which allowed them to have their own country

That's a weird thing to say, I thought it was because they set up governance amid a collapsed empire and defended themselves in a war

There's a belief in the western left that Israel was set up by Western countries as colonialism. That way they can more easily call for the dissolving of the illegitimate country for a 1 state solution. If you acknowledge that the Jews were elbowing their way into the area of their own desire for a state, against the wishes of the Ottomans and then British, it makes it more difficult to paint them as evil invaders.

>against the wishes of the Ottomans and then the British

Who has convincingly argued that it was against the wishes of the British? It was the British government's stated objectives.[0][1]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine

Jerusalem had been majority Jewish for decades before the Balfour declaration.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerus...

more or less every territory belonged to another tribe in the past. Should descendants of Prussia be allowed to take over Poland and Germany today?

That's a great point. Should anyone be allowed to take over Israel today?

No. But does Palestine still exist or is it Israel? Is Syria Israel? Lebanon? Jordan? Egypt?

The word Palestine is a geographical term. The only political entity to include the name Palestine was Mandatory Palestine. And that entity no longer exists.

Your claim has nothing to do with the sentence I quoted or my response to it.

I was refuting the notion that British desires had little to do with the fact the Jews eventually created their own state. British presence or no British presence, Jerusalem was already Jewish decades before the fall of the Ottomans.

You're insisting on responding to some phantom comment no one made in order make it seem other people's opinion is not supported by overwhelming facts.

>I was refuting the notion that British desires had little to do with the fact the Jews eventually created their own state.

No one said this. What was claimed was that Jews were elbowing into the area against the wishes of the British without any references. I asked for evidence that it was against the wishes of the British because it was news to me and presented references pointing to the contrary. Neither you or the commenter have presented any evidence yet that it was "against the wishes of the British".

I will quote you again:

>I was refuting the notion that British desires had little to do with the fact the Jews eventually created their own state.

How would you wish me to read this sentence? So you are refuting the notion that British desires had little to do with the fact the Jews eventually created their own state, so by refuting it you're saying that the British had a lot to do with the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine?

  > How would you wish me to read this sentence?

I think that Gboard sometimes adds or changes words. Or I just messed up. That should have read:

I was refuting the notion that British desires had to do with the fact the Jews eventually created their own state.

Rephrased: The Jews were intent on creating a state, whether the British supported the notion or not.

In any case, in 1923 the British split Mandatory Palestine into two entities. Everything east of the Jordan river they gave to the Hashemite kingdom, who they helped the house of Saud overthrow after the al-Hashimi family ruled Mecca for ten centuries. The areas west of the Jordan river, 1/3 the original size of the territory, retained the name Palestine in English. The Jews were also calling the area Palestine, but the Arabs rejected the name as being the name of foreign invaders. Which makes sense, the root of the word Palestine literally means "invader" in Semitic languages. וכן, אני מדבר עברית.‫ وانا بحكي عربي كمان.‫

  > I asked for evidence that it was against the wishes of the British because it was news to me and presented references pointing to the contrary.

After the Arab uprising of 1936, the British outlawed Jewish immigration to the holy land.

The Ottomans, needing tax money after losing a war to Prussia, began encouraging immigration to the holy land for all religions. In 1856 they passed a law that anyone who comes to work the untilled land, owns it. They happily accepted what they saw as the Jews returning home, as the area was very sparsely populated (but not empty as some Jews say (and yes, I'm Jewish)). The waves of Arab immigration began after the turn off the century, mostly from Egypt and the Damascus area.

The idea is, that without the victim role of the Jews in the 2.WW, they would never have had the international support, that they enjoyed for decades. They would never have had the "social credits" among nations, that they had. Countries like Germany, supposedly would have opened their mouth much sooner and sanctioned Israel, if it were not for our perpetrator role in 2.WW. The idea was, that finally the Jews have a safe haven, and that that needs to be protected.

Israel has been playing that victim card for decades. It allowed them to get where they are. Now that card is crumbling, as they did the unthinkable. I hope that one day our German politicians will also realize this. It is becoming quite ridiculous, how Germany behaves in foreign policy in that regard, and many people here are ashamed of their own country and government. This is stuff that makes people vote for extremists, which I can tell you, we have no additional need for right now. To me it is unthinkable to ever elect the ruling parties again, due to how shitty they handled everything. Well, already wouldn't vote for them anyway, because of all the corruption in their ranks.

What a load of BS

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