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How did that Jewishness result? It didn't materialize out of thin air, but as a result of the Jews expelling the Arabs from their homes at gunpoint, bulldozing their homes, and then building over the rubble. That has been the bone of contention for 70 years now.
Most of the terrorist threat in the West is a result of Israel's meddling in the region and the atrocities that have to be committed to protect them. OBL said as much in his Letter to America.
And the expulsion and persecution of Jews from Arab countries and Iran.
Regardless of what timescale you use, the presence of Jews in the region predates both other main Abrahamic religions by necessity, as Jesus was himself a Jew.
We can complain about how badly Britain and other colonial powers carved up failing empires til the cows come home. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh certainly can have an opinion on the British Empire. And great swathes of Africa can point in any direction and be pointing at someone who screwed them over.
At some point, we have to deal with how the world is now. History is important to learn from, agreed, but unless it's a really think history textbook it's not saving you from a terrorist putting a 7.62mm-based hole in you, or feeding you pressure-cooked ball bearings.
Most of the terrorist threat to the West is from Islamic extremists, foreign (inc imported) and domestic, and to a lesser extent the opposite end of the horseshoe it emboldens. To blame Israel for global or even regional Islamic extremism is both ironic and myopic. It's also academic. No change Israel could make is going to stop the Muslim majority countries wanting Israel wiped out.
> Didnt the jewish concenteation result from decades of "soft" power that evicted palestinian civilians as outcasts? (And in return festered terrorism.)
To which you basically replied:
> But look how bad all the others are and terrorism is almost all islamic.
This ignorance dehumanises and keeps the violence going. Israel cannot make confessions in a peace effort without acknowledging its decades of palestinian desintegration and apparently, the same is true for you.
Algeria: 140,000 -> ~0
Morocco: 250,000 -> ~0
Yemen: 550,000 -> ~300
Iraq: 135,000 -> ~0
Lebanon: 20,000 -> ~40
Iran: 135,000 -> ~0
There are between 300 and 350 thousand Jews living in Iran. I presume the other numbers are similarly nonsensical.
300,000–350,000 (est.)
Israel 200,000[1]–250,000[2]
United States 60,000–80,000[1]
Iran 9,100[3]
Canada 1,000
Australia ~740
There are 300~350 thousand Jews from Iran, but only 9,100 are estimated to still live there.
Anyway read the article you linked to again, you completely misread it.
For instance, Moroccan Sultan Mohammed V protected his country's Jewish population of over 250k instead of straight up handing them over the Nazi-aligned Vichy regime.
Throughout all these countries, the Arabs & other non-Jews had a tight grip on state power and could have exterminated the Jews anytime they wanted. So, why didn't they? Why did the population of Jews in those countries grow for centuries? Isn't that the argument online Zionists use to defend their genocide in Palestine?
Western normies always lick up the 'they expelled us, so we had to expel the Palestinians,' but, please, don't do it here. It's wrong at best, and outright immoral at worst.
Palestine, or what remains of it Gaza and the West bank. Simply are resisting an foreign occupation/invasion. Modern Israel was created through the Balfour declaration.
To fight an invading force that is killing your people is very honourable, as old as tale.
It is recognised as an occupation by all British governments in the last two decades, recognised as genocide by Jewish scholars, ICC/ICJ. The only people that think otherwise is Israel and it's followers.
Further, there is no Hamas in the west bank yet we see gruesome killings of children there too.
Attempting to hide behind anti-Semitism no longer works.
Lastly, Israel has lost a new generation of young, infact it has educated them and their parents. Memories of Israel's horrible crimes will live on, and rightly the existence of Israel inside of Palestine will always be controversial.
Neither the ICJ nor the ICC (not even the ICC prosecutor) has made any determination of genocide. The ICC prosecutor sought warrants on (and the ICC itself issued warrants on some and rejected other) various offenses that are typically means of genocide, but not on genocide itself, while the ICJ has allowed to a case to proceed charging genocide, but has made no determination that that took place.
There are other international institutions which have determined that genocide is occurring, but the ICC and ICJ are not among them.
That’s not to say that Israel isn’t committing genocide (it plainly is), but it doesn’t help to misrepresent where determinations about that have been made.
Not really, Israel was created 31 years after it.
> ICC
ICC charges do not include genocide; Khan sought an extermination charge which the pre-trial chamber rejected.
> ICJ
ICJ hasn't yet made any finding on the matter.
> there is no Hamas in the west bank yet
Yes there is, though they're not the de facto government there.
False. Israel was established on its own by winning its war for independence and you are part of the remnants that still have a problem with that.
I don't know if that is to your own detriment, in most case it is just the usual inferiority complex towards Jews, which basically forms the foundation of the phenomenon of antisemitism. But it certainly is to the detriment of Palestinians.
That's quite the alternative history, it took some real guts to charge cavalry four miles across open ground into machine gun nests.
Here's an article from 2019 published by Israeli media about how Netanyahu himself has directly funded Hamas for his own political gain: https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel#Independence_and_early_...
You make a good argument why a European people should not have established a country there. Doubly so considering it was already populated.
Second, while it's possible to complain about the circumstances of the creation of Israel, I'm not sure that doing so now, in context, offers anything constructive. It seems that by most reasonable definitions, Israel is a country, if a small one. Do you suggest that Israel be eradicated? If so, what happens to all the Israelis, who likely wouldn't be welcome in the area after the country's destruction? Is it any more justifiable to ethnically cleanse one group from the area than another?
I don't have an answer to this conflict, but it isn't clear to me that suggesting "this country shouldn't have existed at all" is an answer either.
Both Palestinians and Israeli Jews have a long list of legitimate grievances, no doubt. The insistence that no, we are the ONLY ones with legitimate grievances is a major roadblock towards coming together. The refusal to recognise these grievances amounts to a refusal to recognise basic humanity and dignity of people, and is a catastrophic failure of empathy.
And yes, there are people on the Palestinian side who do this also, but they did not respond to my comment and you did.
What movement towards peace?
June 10, 2003 — Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi says in an interview with al-Jazeera: “By God, we will not leave one Jew in Palestine. We will fight them with all the strength we have. This is our land, not the Jews’.”
June 25, 2006 — Hamas militants enter Israel via a tunnel, disable a patrolling Israeli tank, kill two of its four-man crew, seize another crew member, Gilad Shalit, and drag him back to Gaza.
June 7, 2007 — Hamas wins a brief but bloody civil war against Palestinian Authority rule in the Gaza Strip and ousts all Fatah officials.
January 4, 2010 — For Hamas, power is more important than leadership, according to al–Ahram: “Here, we have to direct the following question to Hamas and its leaders: Is power more important to you than the suffering of the Palestinians which you claim to be concerned about? If the Palestinian people are suffering terribly, then relinquishing power, in fact merely returning the PA to the [Gaza] crossing points, is a small price to pay. If not, then this means that the [Hamas 2007] coup and capturing power is more important to you than that suffering.”
April 8, 2011 — “The Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the Earth because they have displayed hostility to Allah,” former Hamas Culture Minister Atallah Abu Al-Subh says on Al-Aqsa Television.
December 8, 2012 — Less than three weeks after Pillar of Defense, the head of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, marks the anniversary of Hamas’ founding by reiterating that the organization will never accept Israel and by calling for its elimination. Israel’s demise remains a core element of Hamas ideology and fervor.
May 5, 2014 — Mousa Abu Marzouk, the deputy chairman of Hamas’ politburo, says in Al-Monitor: “Hamas will never recognize Israel. This is a red line that cannot be crossed. We would have spared ourselves seven years of misery under the siege and two wars in 2008 and 2012 had we wanted to recognize Israel. … The al-Qassam Brigades’ weaponry is of national importance to confront the occupation. Hamas’ position in this regard is clear, and it will not allow any tampering with the brigades’ armament, under any circumstances, because it is a strategic asset for all Palestinians.
July 25, 2014 — Former head of Saudi intelligence Turki al-Faisal holds Hamas responsible for the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip because of its arrogance. He writes in the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat: “The knowledge that the people of Gaza would be subjected to a savage bloodshed and suffering should have put limits to Hamas’ arrogance, but it did not. Moreover, Hamas’ readiness to cause a huge amount of suffering before the inevitable return to a truce or a cease-fire clearly exposes the abyss of unconcern into which it has fallen.”
July 14, 2019 — “There are Jews everywhere. We must attack every Jew on planet Earth! We must slaughter and kill them, with Allah’s help,” Hamas politburo member Fathi Hammad says at a rally on the Israel-Gaza border, as quoted by the Gatestone Institute.
May 26, 2021 — “I’d like to use this opportunity to warn the Zionist occupation and its leaders. We support the eradication of Israel through armed jihad and struggle,” Yahya Sinwar says
I think everyone knows what happened in 2023.
But I cannot accept an off-hand suggestion that Hamas is in any way inclined towards peace with Israel. That is completely untrue, and I consider it dangerous to let that pass unanswered.
Falsely thinking that Hamas does want peace is an attitude that will not lead to peace, it will lead to more wars in the years to come.
That's something that the UK, Canada, and France all recognize, by the way. None of them want to see any role for Hamas in the future either.
You are, perhaps, not alone in thinking that Hamas has or has EVER had "peaceful" intentions, so I felt it called for a detailed justification why that was an incorrect position.
What's laughable, is to complain about "one-sided list of grievances" in a post on this issue. Have you seen any of the discussions on HN on this topic in the past two years?
Whether you believe them is another issue of course. But you need to at least try and no one ever did. After many years of refusing to talk to the IRA in the end the British government did, and that was key to the lasting peace. This was hugely controversial at the time and Major government lead talks in secret which were leaked. Lots of drama. But in the end it worked. In 1988 people could have said about the IRA what you're saying about Hamas (and they did). The Good Friday accord didn't even demand immediate disarmament by the way, but rather over time. There were plenty of violent hick-ups too (e.g. Real IRA).
And sure, long-term there is no future for Hamas – certainly not the paramilitary wing – just as there wasn't for the IRA. But Sinn Féin (IRA's political wing) still exists and that's okay. It's impossible to exclude Hamas from any and all negotiations in the short term because they're doing the fighting.
A pure military solution will never be the answer (well, except via genocide, which is hardly an "answer"). Even if one could kill every single Hamas member, you will just end up with a new Hamas-ng and we're back where we started. This is why you need to address some of the underlying injustices, which is that the British government did.
And that was my entire point. Everything may seem impossible and hopeless today. But so did things in 1988 NI. There are real challenges for sure, but the outlines of a solution are actually not all that complicated.