I don’t have the energy to dive into the pre-1948 history of Palestine beyond to say this;
The Nakba was (and remains) a stain on humanity, as a direct result of European nations like Poland, France, and the UK callously using the holocaust as cover for their own anti-Semitic motivations to ‘offload’ their Jewish population into Palestine, at the expense of the locals
The British especially, but the Allied powers as a whole, undermined the crumbing Ottoman Empire by promising self-determination to the Arab rebels, all while having already assigned and divided that land for themselves and their Allies after WW1
Irgun and other Jewish militias were doing A LOT of terrorism, against both the British in charge during Mandatory Palestine, and the existing Arab population and civilians
While acknowledging the above, the fact is that in 1948 there was a Jewish population there, who were facing a second genocide attempt that decade. The powers that be washed their hands of it, not unlike the Fall of Saigon or Afghanistan, yet we don’t learn from our interventionism. To unwind this problem requires either a robot peace that both sides want, or one of the two getting ethnically cleansed.
Wrong. There was a white supremacist colonialist Zionist presence in Palestine, which aimed to sieze the country for itself and dispossess its natives, which it did through massacres and ethnic cleansing. There was no “second genocide attempt”. There was only Palestinian and Arab self defence in the face of an armed, murderous society that sought to dispossess and erase the Palestinian people entirely. The solution is the destruction of the settler colonialist state and that is what will happen.
> 'It does not matter how many there are. We will sweep them into the sea.
Arab League Secretary-General Azzam Pasha, 1948
Idk that certainly sounds like “kill them all”
I’m not denying the origins of Israel, that it was created by colonial powers at the expense of Arabs & Palestinians, nor that it displaced a significant Palestinian population after an organized and protracted campaign of Zionist, Jewish terrorism. However in 1948 the reality is the Jews were there, and the rhetoric from the top was of elimination and eradication - and that is a genocidal act
“when I asked him for his estimate of the size of the Jewish forces, [he] waved his hands and said: 'It does not matter how many there are. We will sweep them into the sea.”
It is clear this is referring to the Zionist armed forces that were in fact committing the massacres. This was after the Zionist forces actually pushed the Palestinians of Haifa into the sea under rifle fire. In other instances, the same official declared that equality between Jewish settlers and Palestinians was to be implemented.
All this being said, I will not mince words, the Palestinian people have every right to remove the Zionist colonial presence from their land, and they had that right in 1948 when this militarized settler society put into action its goal of dispossessing the entire Palestinian people.
But one genocide is not better than another. There’s no ethical way to take sides here. What we should really do is end our involvement. The obvious way to avoid being complicit in murder is to stop taking part in it. We should end all support for Israel, no weapons no money. They can get humanitarian aid if need be, but no f-16s or cruise missiles.
Isreal can either make friends with their neighbors on their own, or they can risk getting wiped out, their choice.
There is absolutely an ethical side - pro-civilian.
Walking away completely, right now, would just leave a broken Gaza being strangled by blockade, fractured West Bank constantly being raided by the IDF and/or Zionist mobs or eaten away gradually by an illegal settlements with Israeli state support, and the Golan Heights a contested low intensity battlefield. Palestinians and Arabs in Israel would continue to live under an apartheid ethnostate as second class citizens.
Retaining the status quo doesn’t solve any of the harms done by Israel, it’s the easy out.
Honestly, if we ended US financial support for Israel, I think it would make a pretty big difference. Isreal would likely be forced to focus more on stabilizing relations with their hostile neighbors. And any attempt to do that would require employing a very different strategy with Palestine.
I don’t have the energy to dive into the pre-1948 history of Palestine beyond to say this;
While acknowledging the above, the fact is that in 1948 there was a Jewish population there,
who were facing a second genocide attempt that decade.The powers that be washed their hands of it, not unlike the Fall of Saigon or Afghanistan, yet we don’t learn from our interventionism. To unwind this problem requires either a robot peace that both sides want, or one of the two getting ethnically cleansed.Wrong. There was a white supremacist colonialist Zionist presence in Palestine, which aimed to sieze the country for itself and dispossess its natives, which it did through massacres and ethnic cleansing. There was no “second genocide attempt”. There was only Palestinian and Arab self defence in the face of an armed, murderous society that sought to dispossess and erase the Palestinian people entirely. The solution is the destruction of the settler colonialist state and that is what will happen.
> 'It does not matter how many there are. We will sweep them into the sea. Arab League Secretary-General Azzam Pasha, 1948Idk that certainly sounds like “kill them all”I’m not denying the origins of Israel, that it was created by colonial powers at the expense of Arabs & Palestinians, nor that it displaced a significant Palestinian population after an organized and protracted campaign of Zionist, Jewish terrorism. However in 1948 the reality is the Jews were there, and the rhetoric from the top was of elimination and eradication - and that is a genocidal act
The quote from Alec Kirkbride’s memoirs:
It is clear this is referring to the Zionist armed forces that were in fact committing the massacres. This was after the Zionist forces actually pushed the Palestinians of Haifa into the sea under rifle fire. In other instances, the same official declared that equality between Jewish settlers and Palestinians was to be implemented.
All this being said, I will not mince words, the Palestinian people have every right to remove the Zionist colonial presence from their land, and they had that right in 1948 when this militarized settler society put into action its goal of dispossessing the entire Palestinian people.
You are correct, I retract my position on the 1948 war and the quote’s context
But one genocide is not better than another. There’s no ethical way to take sides here. What we should really do is end our involvement. The obvious way to avoid being complicit in murder is to stop taking part in it. We should end all support for Israel, no weapons no money. They can get humanitarian aid if need be, but no f-16s or cruise missiles.
Isreal can either make friends with their neighbors on their own, or they can risk getting wiped out, their choice.
There is absolutely an ethical side - pro-civilian.
Walking away completely, right now, would just leave a broken Gaza being strangled by blockade, fractured West Bank constantly being raided by the IDF and/or Zionist mobs or eaten away gradually by an illegal settlements with Israeli state support, and the Golan Heights a contested low intensity battlefield. Palestinians and Arabs in Israel would continue to live under an apartheid ethnostate as second class citizens.
Retaining the status quo doesn’t solve any of the harms done by Israel, it’s the easy out.
Honestly, if we ended US financial support for Israel, I think it would make a pretty big difference. Isreal would likely be forced to focus more on stabilizing relations with their hostile neighbors. And any attempt to do that would require employing a very different strategy with Palestine.