If you’re anything like me, you’re probably still trying to make some kind of sense of the massacre of over 1,000 innocent people in Israel on October 7th.
The palestinians - meaning the group of arabs that wasn't moved to/didn't move to/weren't allowed to move to Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon - have received in excess of 14 times the entirety of the Marshall plan for Europe.
More than 14 times that amount of money, plus support in other forms.
Sweden alone donates more annually to Palestine, and have recognised Palestine as a nationstate, than do all other moslem states in the world together.
Yet all areas under palestinian control remain shitholes.
There's only one reason for this conflict, and that is palestinians are what they are and do what they do because that is part of being palestinian.
There are only two solutions:
One is to put together an international force strong enough to keep israeli jews (settlers and jewish racial supremacists, quite a power-group in Israel) and palestinians apart using force as and when including against the surrounding nations, and doing this for a minimum of a century at least.
Sound implausible, and is.
Withdraw all support of all kinds to either side, and let them sort it out. They will either learn to act civilised and play nice as per Ireland/Britain (or Sweden/Denmark for that matter) or one side will exterminate the other. Either way, problem solved.
And: it's not our problem. It's not our responsibility. It never was, either.
Anyone thinking Britain has a special responsibility due to colonial whatever - look at Norway. It was under danish rule for centuries, then under swedish and finally in a union with Sweden (which swedish politicians and businessmen and upper class twats of all sorts handled so badly it was dissolved in 1905).
Did Norway go to war against Sweden immediately after independence? No. Did Sweden invade Norway to occupy it? No.
No, I'm in favour of Europe and the US and the "rest of the West" getting out of there, period.
If the arabs wants to make peace, and the jews wants to make peace - great!
If they don't - their problem. Not ours.
Denmark and Sweden warred from the 13th century until the 18th - we learned to make peace and play nice. Are you seriously implying or suggestion by extension, that arabs and jews cannot do what white cultures can, and needs us meddling in their affairs to make and keep peace?
Hi Dude, I am not seriously implying anything. Are you implying that "white" cultures are superior to "not white cultures"? I would call that racism. In the Netherlands, protestants and catholics learnt how to stop warring and both to make money out of their position as a small country between arch enemies France and Germany. in Switserland they also figured that out. I am sure that Jews and Muslims in Palestine are perfectly able to figure that out, and indeed they did, a number of times. But the extremists on both sides blew it up. Similarly in Ireland. In the long run these problems solve themselves. Of course. So what should you do or say now? What should I do or say now? You seem to have solutions for yourself. I have no solution to offer. I think that I am a wiser person than you. May I?
I'd argue that on the average, we are superior (europeans and european desecended), but I'd need you to first define "superior" for me so I know what would factor into it according to you - otherwise I wouldn't have a clue as to how to describe or argue it.
We are not however superior in essence, which is usually what is implied: that some people or other has an essential yet untangible and untranslatable or untransferable superior quality. That kind of thinking is the foundation of claiming (f.e.) sikhs may wear their knives despite the carrying of knives being outlawed, or that jews, egyptians and somalis (among sadly many other peoples) may mutilate children because the practise is essential to their culture, or more recently that pigmentation and racial (oh how I loathe the term) heritage decides what hairstyles you may have.
The term "white" is an americanism and is inherently racist as it is based in dividing humans into races in the first place.
We are peoples, with ethnicities and culture. The right word for the right thing, simply, and race is so rarely relevant - some genetic disorders, differences in IQ (a blunt measurement if ever there was one), and such things are basically the only ones where race comes into play - let's keep that way despite what americans and americanised people all over the place are making noise about.
I wouldn't argue that we are superior. Agreed, we are not superior in essence. As far as IQ is concerned, Chinese are superior. I think our culture is inferior in some respects to other cultures. In particular, our idea that we are superior is a strong sign of inferiority.
You'd have to ask the UN 'bout that one I'm afraid.
Sweden's aid to palestinians and Palestine stems from the days of Olof Palme travelling the world and hugging and kissing various communist, anti-US dictators and terrorists because that's what the "young turks" in the Socialist Democrat party of the 1970s got off on.
From then on, our "foreign aid-industrial complex" as it is actually known here grew like an untreated anal fissure.
"The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war." For all the billions of words that have poured out of the mouths of pundits down the years, I have yet to hear a single one that in any way diminishes the baleful truth of these words of Benjamin Netanyahu in 2006.
Although they have never exercised dominion or control over what is now Israel, the so-called Palestinians refuse to allow the Jews to live in peace in their tiny oasis. The Arabs were given 78% of the former Palestinian Mandate but they want 100%. Given the fact that Islam is a conquest ideology, this is not surprising,
=== "The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war." ===
Lol... literally everybody who has ever stolen other people's land has said more or less the same thing.
It's the logic of the rapist: "Lie down and shut up."
"Shut up and let us roll over you" might have played well in the 18th-19th centuries, but we've had a whole 'nuther set of developments since then and we try to pretend that it's not right to just steal people's shit based on a risible fairy tale about a foreskin-obsessed Sky Maniac.
This idea of not using idiotic tribal fantasies as a justification for colonialism might be "more honoured in the breach", but it's definitely a thing. Even "spoils of war" is no longer a valid justification for a title claim - only for "new" spoils, obviously.
As to the quote: like all bullshit spouted by the political-parasite classes, the statement by Mr Mielekowski's son is "true" in a sense, but false in the most important.
The 'nation' of 'Israel' would cease to exist as an ethnic enclave that defines itself as a nation for the Jews - absolutely true. In the same way that South Africa ceased to exist as a nation that segregated populations by race - which pretty much everyone sees as a good thing (notwithstanding the ongoing unpleasantness experienced by some Afrikaaners).
The country would simply revert to being called "Palestine".
It's also highly likely that a bunch of Eurotrash - and their anchor babies - would go back to villages in Western Ukraine, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland etc where they were pretty widely reviled FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.
This odd thing of being reviled - often to the point of expulsion - for no reason whatsoever, is obviously BAFFLING to a lot of people.
Similar BAFFLEMENT abounds regarding the perplexing increase in untimely deaths of prime-working-aged people after getting jabbed with the Pfizer Magic Jizz.
One of the hallmarks of being BAFFLED by either phenomenon, is deliberate ignorance of a causative phenomenon that is
(a) obvious to an impartial observer; and
(b) copiously documented in advance of the occurrence of the BAFFLING thing.
The Palestinian Arabs lived side by side for CENTURIES with the local Jewish communities. There was similar coexistence of the local population with the Jewish communities in Iran, Spain (during al-Andalus), and even Eastern Europe when it was under Ottoman rule.
The Anglicised Arabic for the Jewish population of Palestine before British involvement is "abnaa al-balad" ('sons of the country') or "Yahud awlad Arab" ('Jews, sons of Arabs"); at the First Palestinian Congress in 1919 the resulting 'manifesto' that objected to large-scale immigration of Eastern European Jews was not antisemitic - it was anti-ZIONIST.
I would urge people to look at the relationship between Jews of Eastern European origin, and those of Levantine origin. The latter have what can best be termed as a "side-eyed' view of the pale-skinned, blue-eyed, "latkes not hummus" types.
FWIW: the 'side-eyed' relationship also existed between the Jewish communities of Western Europe and their counterparts from the Pale of Settlement during the 16th-19th century.
In the 19th century, Western European rabbis rejected Zionism as an absolute apostasy - which is why the early Zionists had to schlep all the way to Lvov to find a rabbinate theologically-ignorant enough to give an imprimatur to Zionism.
It's actually a 'thing' all over the world: in every country I've ever visited, the 'historical' Jewish community draws a line - usually at roughly the end of WWI - and that line divides "People Like Us" from "Sharp-Elbowed Eastern Europeans".
Maybe - and I'd be interested to learn more, because I'm not aware of anything the Israelis have done in recent times (as a matter of policy) that quite matches the wanton celebration and gleeful barbarism that I saw in those videos taken by Hamas.
It seems a bit odd to be trying to rank "levels of depravity" - but the actions of Hamas, coupled with their obvious relish and delight in them, were just off the scale - for me at any rate.
I have been struck by the profound immorality of many of my peers, not to mention the stupidity.
Oppression and marginalization do not logically lead to acts of brutality against those related to your oppressor only by citizenship, faith, or shared political beliefs. You need to educate people from the time they are young in hatred and prejudice and violence, and you need a lot of angry young men without prospects.
It is profoundly dehumanizing to treat terrorists (and criminals in general) as people who just had a bad lot or had no choices. We all have a choice, always, and human history shows us that oppression and suffering (which have always existed and always will) have the potential to lead us to a greater morality and wisdom, to creativity and faith and true nobility.
Violence and vengefulness are products of entitlement, not oppression. And this is why we often see them bursting forth from young men in places where girls are most oppressed and sons are valued and taught that they deserve special respect. These men are the real supremacists, and it is only the condescendingly brown-tinted glasses of the western liberal elite that make them unable to see it.
Not sure how this applies to what I wrote, which didn’t name names but spoke in broad strokes— my point was that generally acts of terrorism are not conducted by oppressed and worn-down individuals, and it’s bizarre that anyone thinks so. Terrorism is a resort of young megalomaniacal men driven by skewed ideology who think the ends justify the means. People who terrorize civilians for their supposed cause aren’t the poor and oppressed, nor do they improve things for those who are. They just give those who hold a grudge something to bring up in arguments decades and centuries later.
I would like to make a properly considered reply to what you are saying, but it’s 11:30 at night and I can barely think 😂 fwiw I think you are very wrong. Yes, terrorism / violence is generally committed by young men - that’s what young men are for - but it’s driven by desperation, hatred and futility. We have to fix that.
I am pro-chivalry, which means I think young men should brutally put down rapists and child murderers. I like to think I am raising sons who would rather put down their own lives than murder or mail the elderly, children, or women because they want their nation, religion, or ethnic group to have more power or sovereignty. But I absolutely agree with your parting words about desperation even if I think there is a huge gulf between kinds of violence based upon choice of victim.
It seems to me, the first step is to forget history - given what there is, how do we start to unfuck it? Neither the Hamas / Hizbollah or Israeli answers quite adds up.
I think the history is useful, to some extent, because a lot of the hatred is fuelled by what might be called the "propaganda" version of history. As far as I can tell at the moment - nobody involved exactly "comes up smelling of roses"
Finally. Someone asking the right question; what is to be done about it? How can it be resolved? That is the question everyone should be asking. Because, hypothetically, let's just say, Israel no longer exists, and it's finally Palestine (for the first time, like, ever, but nevertheless), with a 'government' (probably based in Doha, but again..), so what happens to the 9M Israeli's and Israeli Arabs? What? Someone give me even a half baked suggestion of what they think may happen after that? They'll keep the status quo, remain living there, the IDF is disbanded and another army put in it's place (made up of who knows what)? Does anyone with even half a brain cell, think that that's going to happen? That the current population will be able or permitted to remain there? So what then? What happens to them? They'll be permitted to leave?? You think?? Because I think, they'll be massacred and then the west can hold up their hands in disbelief that they never saw that one coming. And the others will flee. And where will they go? Well, I suspect they'll come to the UK and go to the USA. And does anyone then think that these flag waving supporters will finally say, fabulous, I'm off to Palestine to build a country, to irrigate the land, to farm, to innovate? I doubt it. But does anyone actually think, well, the 'Palestinians' will 'return' and they'll build a country, irrigate the land, farm and innovate?? I doubt it. Because none of had been done prior to 1948. How do I know this? Because my father in law went to live in the Land of Israel just after Independence in 1948 and it was just a desert with camels walking down the sandy tracks of Tel Aviv. We are a nation of builders, of innovators, of engineers, of scientists, of technology, of workers, of farmers. We are nation builders and we are survivors.
But if Hamas do destroy us, then be warned that they're coming after you. Most are just too blind to see.
If a 2-state solution was possible and the solution, I'd support it (as would many millions of others), but that 2-state solution was rejected a long time ago (and not by the Israelis). So go figure.
Anyway, the question remains. What is the solution, exactly and what will be the consequences of that solution?
My grandfather always used to say to us (he came from Vienna), "always keep a suitcase packed" and he wasn't wrong. I was born in the UK and lived here all my life and over the past few years I have been mulling over where I could go. How shocking is that?
I think the Jews should come back to Europe. They are educated, smart, in a strong sense a lot of them are European. We need more of them here. We don't need all those uneducated immigrants from developing countries and with alien cultures. I understand that the Jews would all be welcomed in Germany.
Exactly! It’s not the eradication of Israel they want. It’s the eradication of Jews. No matter where they live. Start there and let the cancer of genocide spread across the world with the massive influx of Muslim extremists into every other nation. I cannot believe that here in America we are having protests and marches where people are screaming in the streets to “gas the Jews” and “kill the Jews”. It’s sickening.
I hope you will arrive at a more even-handed position and abandon a black and white view. "Hamas is evil and it's evil because it's evi" is the same rehashed Putin flim-flam put over by propagandists throughout history who now also cheer US aircraft carriers sailing up. There are reasons why people do things and to understand them is not to condone them but it's best to ask why. I see both sides and the good and bad, the truth and lies and also that many seem too willing when egged on to take local sides in a fight that involves global players playing for higher stakes while using sophisticated information warfare.
I don't see either "side" here as having covered themselves in glory over the years, so to speak. It's a horrible clusterfuck of shittiness on both sides. But the actions of Hamas on Oct 7th were grotesque and, in my view, utterly indefensible.
The question is really about what should Israel do next? What should the Palestinians do next?
It's a conflict that, as you say, has involved both sides - and both sides need to be actively involved in seeking a peaceful solution. The onus cannot be all on Israel.
And this ethnic animosity exists in some, but by no means all, of the people involved. Not every Palestinian is, for example, some kind of rabid Jew-hater - but certainly some are. The number of haters are, I believe, a minority, but it’s a large enough minority to have caused significant bloodshed to both Israelis and Palestinians over the years.
..........
It is very disappointing to see Professor Rigger unaware of (or in denial) regarding the reality of the so-called Palestinians. The vast majority regard the NAKBA - the establishment of Israel in 1948 - as the greatest catastrophe to befall the so-called Palestinians.
Describing a historical event as a catastrophe is not the same thing as hatred - although, for some, it will undoubtedly lead to such. I've spoken with a great number of Arabs and Muslims over the years (admittedly the more "educated" ones) and the great majority do not express any kind of rabid hatred for Jews. A few do - that's for sure.
I'd also say that the majority of those I've spoken to profoundly disagree with the establishment in 1948 of Israel as a separate state - but they don't appear to wish for its eradication. They wish that it had never happened, but they accept the existence of Israel. There's a world of difference between these kinds of views and those of Hamas.
Here’s a hint to help you make sense of this insanity. Muhammad taught his followers to kill all people who did not accept that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. Muslims actually believe this insane nonsense.
Well that's not quite the correct interpretation of the Q'uran and the Hadith ("correct" as in what most Muslims believe), but there is definitely the potential to interpret it that way - as have many of the fundamentalist Islamist nutjobs over the years.
With respect, you are wrong. Have you read Raymond Ibrahim’s Sword And Scimitar. Muslim persecution of Jews, Christians, Hindus and other “non-believers has continue since Islam was invented in the 7th century and it continues today and will continue until The truth is spread.
Christian persecution of those who believe in the wrong God also continues today and will continue till everyone realises that monotheism was a very bad idea.
No I haven't read that, but I've read a fair bit of other stuff that would disagree with that crude assessment. The best people to ask are Muslims themselves. I've had thousands of discussions with Muslims about some of the "difficult" passages in the Qur'an (and I still can't remember where to put the apostrophe in that) and these passages are simply not understood in quite the same way you're implying.
Understanding any particular quote or passage is so much more than just taking a translation from the Arabic and thinking you know what it means.
Not entirely true: I visited an Ottoman era mixed-faith church in the Ihlara Valley in Cappadocia. It was carved with both Christian and Muslim symbols and was used up until the 1920s. Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in relative harmony for hundreds of years in Turkey.
So, some Christians are mad. Some Jews are mad. Some Muslims are mad. Can we stop making “other” people’s madness our excuse for being just as mad as them?
And in fact Muslims lived quite amicably with both Jews and Christians for centuries - they were in charge, but they accepted Jews and Christians as people of the book. Jews and Christians formed the intellectual and administrative backbone of both the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates.
While paying levies, taxes and tithes to be allowed to stay jews and christians, don't forget. The practice of forcing jews to wear a yellow belt or a yellow badge, denoting gold/coin, is an islamic practice originally.
I'm all for moslems in Europe being subject to sharia law. Curiously, moslems themselves aren't unless it is for privileges - they're not very keen to be mutilated or executed according the word of their prophet, despite it being the law of their god.
I do believe they call that kind of behaviour fitna; abusing the holy writ for personal gain (or however it's transcribed from their bird-scratchings of a "language").
I want to mention that the Palestinians who were displaced by those wars in the 20th century are probably the descendants of the original inhabitants of the region who worked the land. The peasants, let us say. The country folk. When the place was a Kingdom and the local religion was Jewish, they were part of all that. When the Romans destroyed the temple and either killed or dispersed the top elite of society, by which time Jewish businessmen were already active in all parts of the Roman empire, the peasants became Palestinians and at some point Muslims. The Romans called that province "Palestine" deliberately to spite the Jews, whose enemies were ... Philistines. Next I would like to say that enclosing millions of people in a ghetto is a good way to breed terrorists. And that the Israeli government's policy towards the illegal settlements on the West bank is a sure way to foment hatred and ... breed terrorists. So I am with António Guterres there, in his criticism of Israel. Do I have to say that I hate Hamas and I hate what they did? I also hate the present Israeli government, and a large proportion of Israeli's does too.
Yup - I have no idea what the Israelis think that their Gaza strategy over the last couple of decades is achieving. I can't properly fathom what this must do to the psyche of people living there.
On the other hand, I'm not sure I can properly fathom what being invaded by 6 countries at once, all intent on your destruction and wiping you off the face of the earth, does to your psyche, either. It probably makes you somewhat hyper-sensitive and over-reactive to any perceived threat.
The whole thing is a clusterfuck of action and reaction that is hard to disentangle - and that's before you even throw in the meddling of folk like us Brits into the mix. We certainly seemed to have a way of divvying up land in a way that would ensure maximum future conflict - in all sorts of places. There was probably a special class in it at places like Eton.
The British approach to empire building was "divide and rule". You take over a place, you see there are divisions in society, you recruit one of the smaller groups to become the local policemen or managers or whatever. The Dutch also did it like that in Indonesia.
“This was not a response to any aggressive military act by Egypt.” No, it was a response to Nasser nationalising the Suez Canal (which I think he was perfectly entitled to do).
Of course they didn’t - they had no need of a canal between the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans. And no one asked them. Just as no one asked the (Arabs / Palestinians / whatever you think they were) what they thought about a) the Ottoman Empire b) the Sykes-Picot agreement c) the Balfour declaration d) the League of Nations declaration e) the United Nations “plan”. And that I think is fundamentally the problem - if you keep doing shit to people, eventually they turn round and do shit to you, and they literally don’t care what you think.
It was a French plan and later taken over by the Brits. The whole purpose of the Suez canal was European empire building. Did you pay for the construction of the canal? You certainly have benefitted from its existence.
The palestinians - meaning the group of arabs that wasn't moved to/didn't move to/weren't allowed to move to Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon - have received in excess of 14 times the entirety of the Marshall plan for Europe.
More than 14 times that amount of money, plus support in other forms.
Sweden alone donates more annually to Palestine, and have recognised Palestine as a nationstate, than do all other moslem states in the world together.
Yet all areas under palestinian control remain shitholes.
There's only one reason for this conflict, and that is palestinians are what they are and do what they do because that is part of being palestinian.
There are only two solutions:
One is to put together an international force strong enough to keep israeli jews (settlers and jewish racial supremacists, quite a power-group in Israel) and palestinians apart using force as and when including against the surrounding nations, and doing this for a minimum of a century at least.
Sound implausible, and is.
Withdraw all support of all kinds to either side, and let them sort it out. They will either learn to act civilised and play nice as per Ireland/Britain (or Sweden/Denmark for that matter) or one side will exterminate the other. Either way, problem solved.
And: it's not our problem. It's not our responsibility. It never was, either.
Anyone thinking Britain has a special responsibility due to colonial whatever - look at Norway. It was under danish rule for centuries, then under swedish and finally in a union with Sweden (which swedish politicians and businessmen and upper class twats of all sorts handled so badly it was dissolved in 1905).
Did Norway go to war against Sweden immediately after independence? No. Did Sweden invade Norway to occupy it? No.
Why? Because we are not arabs nor jews.
So you are in favour of one side exterminating the other. Doesn't matter which. Nice.
I think that global warming will put the Gaza strip under water. Problem solved.
No, I'm in favour of Europe and the US and the "rest of the West" getting out of there, period.
If the arabs wants to make peace, and the jews wants to make peace - great!
If they don't - their problem. Not ours.
Denmark and Sweden warred from the 13th century until the 18th - we learned to make peace and play nice. Are you seriously implying or suggestion by extension, that arabs and jews cannot do what white cultures can, and needs us meddling in their affairs to make and keep peace?
'Cause that's racist, dude.
Hi Dude, I am not seriously implying anything. Are you implying that "white" cultures are superior to "not white cultures"? I would call that racism. In the Netherlands, protestants and catholics learnt how to stop warring and both to make money out of their position as a small country between arch enemies France and Germany. in Switserland they also figured that out. I am sure that Jews and Muslims in Palestine are perfectly able to figure that out, and indeed they did, a number of times. But the extremists on both sides blew it up. Similarly in Ireland. In the long run these problems solve themselves. Of course. So what should you do or say now? What should I do or say now? You seem to have solutions for yourself. I have no solution to offer. I think that I am a wiser person than you. May I?
I'd argue that on the average, we are superior (europeans and european desecended), but I'd need you to first define "superior" for me so I know what would factor into it according to you - otherwise I wouldn't have a clue as to how to describe or argue it.
We are not however superior in essence, which is usually what is implied: that some people or other has an essential yet untangible and untranslatable or untransferable superior quality. That kind of thinking is the foundation of claiming (f.e.) sikhs may wear their knives despite the carrying of knives being outlawed, or that jews, egyptians and somalis (among sadly many other peoples) may mutilate children because the practise is essential to their culture, or more recently that pigmentation and racial (oh how I loathe the term) heritage decides what hairstyles you may have.
The term "white" is an americanism and is inherently racist as it is based in dividing humans into races in the first place.
We are peoples, with ethnicities and culture. The right word for the right thing, simply, and race is so rarely relevant - some genetic disorders, differences in IQ (a blunt measurement if ever there was one), and such things are basically the only ones where race comes into play - let's keep that way despite what americans and americanised people all over the place are making noise about.
I wouldn't argue that we are superior. Agreed, we are not superior in essence. As far as IQ is concerned, Chinese are superior. I think our culture is inferior in some respects to other cultures. In particular, our idea that we are superior is a strong sign of inferiority.
14 times the Marshall Plan. Wow. Thanks Rikard. I am now identifying as Muslim. What do I have to do to cash in?
You'd have to ask the UN 'bout that one I'm afraid.
Sweden's aid to palestinians and Palestine stems from the days of Olof Palme travelling the world and hugging and kissing various communist, anti-US dictators and terrorists because that's what the "young turks" in the Socialist Democrat party of the 1970s got off on.
From then on, our "foreign aid-industrial complex" as it is actually known here grew like an untreated anal fissure.
fistula I think
"The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war." For all the billions of words that have poured out of the mouths of pundits down the years, I have yet to hear a single one that in any way diminishes the baleful truth of these words of Benjamin Netanyahu in 2006.
Although they have never exercised dominion or control over what is now Israel, the so-called Palestinians refuse to allow the Jews to live in peace in their tiny oasis. The Arabs were given 78% of the former Palestinian Mandate but they want 100%. Given the fact that Islam is a conquest ideology, this is not surprising,
=== "The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war." ===
Lol... literally everybody who has ever stolen other people's land has said more or less the same thing.
It's the logic of the rapist: "Lie down and shut up."
"Shut up and let us roll over you" might have played well in the 18th-19th centuries, but we've had a whole 'nuther set of developments since then and we try to pretend that it's not right to just steal people's shit based on a risible fairy tale about a foreskin-obsessed Sky Maniac.
This idea of not using idiotic tribal fantasies as a justification for colonialism might be "more honoured in the breach", but it's definitely a thing. Even "spoils of war" is no longer a valid justification for a title claim - only for "new" spoils, obviously.
As to the quote: like all bullshit spouted by the political-parasite classes, the statement by Mr Mielekowski's son is "true" in a sense, but false in the most important.
The 'nation' of 'Israel' would cease to exist as an ethnic enclave that defines itself as a nation for the Jews - absolutely true. In the same way that South Africa ceased to exist as a nation that segregated populations by race - which pretty much everyone sees as a good thing (notwithstanding the ongoing unpleasantness experienced by some Afrikaaners).
The country would simply revert to being called "Palestine".
It's also highly likely that a bunch of Eurotrash - and their anchor babies - would go back to villages in Western Ukraine, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland etc where they were pretty widely reviled FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.
This odd thing of being reviled - often to the point of expulsion - for no reason whatsoever, is obviously BAFFLING to a lot of people.
Similar BAFFLEMENT abounds regarding the perplexing increase in untimely deaths of prime-working-aged people after getting jabbed with the Pfizer Magic Jizz.
One of the hallmarks of being BAFFLED by either phenomenon, is deliberate ignorance of a causative phenomenon that is
(a) obvious to an impartial observer; and
(b) copiously documented in advance of the occurrence of the BAFFLING thing.
The Palestinian Arabs lived side by side for CENTURIES with the local Jewish communities. There was similar coexistence of the local population with the Jewish communities in Iran, Spain (during al-Andalus), and even Eastern Europe when it was under Ottoman rule.
The Anglicised Arabic for the Jewish population of Palestine before British involvement is "abnaa al-balad" ('sons of the country') or "Yahud awlad Arab" ('Jews, sons of Arabs"); at the First Palestinian Congress in 1919 the resulting 'manifesto' that objected to large-scale immigration of Eastern European Jews was not antisemitic - it was anti-ZIONIST.
I would urge people to look at the relationship between Jews of Eastern European origin, and those of Levantine origin. The latter have what can best be termed as a "side-eyed' view of the pale-skinned, blue-eyed, "latkes not hummus" types.
FWIW: the 'side-eyed' relationship also existed between the Jewish communities of Western Europe and their counterparts from the Pale of Settlement during the 16th-19th century.
In the 19th century, Western European rabbis rejected Zionism as an absolute apostasy - which is why the early Zionists had to schlep all the way to Lvov to find a rabbinate theologically-ignorant enough to give an imprimatur to Zionism.
It's actually a 'thing' all over the world: in every country I've ever visited, the 'historical' Jewish community draws a line - usually at roughly the end of WWI - and that line divides "People Like Us" from "Sharp-Elbowed Eastern Europeans".
I can level the word depravity against the Netanyahu government. And I understand that many Israelis are with me, there.
Maybe - and I'd be interested to learn more, because I'm not aware of anything the Israelis have done in recent times (as a matter of policy) that quite matches the wanton celebration and gleeful barbarism that I saw in those videos taken by Hamas.
It seems a bit odd to be trying to rank "levels of depravity" - but the actions of Hamas, coupled with their obvious relish and delight in them, were just off the scale - for me at any rate.
I agree.
I have been struck by the profound immorality of many of my peers, not to mention the stupidity.
Oppression and marginalization do not logically lead to acts of brutality against those related to your oppressor only by citizenship, faith, or shared political beliefs. You need to educate people from the time they are young in hatred and prejudice and violence, and you need a lot of angry young men without prospects.
It is profoundly dehumanizing to treat terrorists (and criminals in general) as people who just had a bad lot or had no choices. We all have a choice, always, and human history shows us that oppression and suffering (which have always existed and always will) have the potential to lead us to a greater morality and wisdom, to creativity and faith and true nobility.
Violence and vengefulness are products of entitlement, not oppression. And this is why we often see them bursting forth from young men in places where girls are most oppressed and sons are valued and taught that they deserve special respect. These men are the real supremacists, and it is only the condescendingly brown-tinted glasses of the western liberal elite that make them unable to see it.
Well yes, the big problem here is patriarchy. And: monotheism. Which seem to go hand in hand.
Please therefore explain Irgun and the King David hotel. How were they different from Hamas on October 7?
Not sure how this applies to what I wrote, which didn’t name names but spoke in broad strokes— my point was that generally acts of terrorism are not conducted by oppressed and worn-down individuals, and it’s bizarre that anyone thinks so. Terrorism is a resort of young megalomaniacal men driven by skewed ideology who think the ends justify the means. People who terrorize civilians for their supposed cause aren’t the poor and oppressed, nor do they improve things for those who are. They just give those who hold a grudge something to bring up in arguments decades and centuries later.
I would like to make a properly considered reply to what you are saying, but it’s 11:30 at night and I can barely think 😂 fwiw I think you are very wrong. Yes, terrorism / violence is generally committed by young men - that’s what young men are for - but it’s driven by desperation, hatred and futility. We have to fix that.
I am pro-chivalry, which means I think young men should brutally put down rapists and child murderers. I like to think I am raising sons who would rather put down their own lives than murder or mail the elderly, children, or women because they want their nation, religion, or ethnic group to have more power or sovereignty. But I absolutely agree with your parting words about desperation even if I think there is a huge gulf between kinds of violence based upon choice of victim.
It seems to me, the first step is to forget history - given what there is, how do we start to unfuck it? Neither the Hamas / Hizbollah or Israeli answers quite adds up.
That's really the big question here.
How does anyone unfuck this?
I think the history is useful, to some extent, because a lot of the hatred is fuelled by what might be called the "propaganda" version of history. As far as I can tell at the moment - nobody involved exactly "comes up smelling of roses"
What’s depressing is, there is very little discussion about where we go from here. It’s mostly about whose fault it is.
Finally. Someone asking the right question; what is to be done about it? How can it be resolved? That is the question everyone should be asking. Because, hypothetically, let's just say, Israel no longer exists, and it's finally Palestine (for the first time, like, ever, but nevertheless), with a 'government' (probably based in Doha, but again..), so what happens to the 9M Israeli's and Israeli Arabs? What? Someone give me even a half baked suggestion of what they think may happen after that? They'll keep the status quo, remain living there, the IDF is disbanded and another army put in it's place (made up of who knows what)? Does anyone with even half a brain cell, think that that's going to happen? That the current population will be able or permitted to remain there? So what then? What happens to them? They'll be permitted to leave?? You think?? Because I think, they'll be massacred and then the west can hold up their hands in disbelief that they never saw that one coming. And the others will flee. And where will they go? Well, I suspect they'll come to the UK and go to the USA. And does anyone then think that these flag waving supporters will finally say, fabulous, I'm off to Palestine to build a country, to irrigate the land, to farm, to innovate? I doubt it. But does anyone actually think, well, the 'Palestinians' will 'return' and they'll build a country, irrigate the land, farm and innovate?? I doubt it. Because none of had been done prior to 1948. How do I know this? Because my father in law went to live in the Land of Israel just after Independence in 1948 and it was just a desert with camels walking down the sandy tracks of Tel Aviv. We are a nation of builders, of innovators, of engineers, of scientists, of technology, of workers, of farmers. We are nation builders and we are survivors.
But if Hamas do destroy us, then be warned that they're coming after you. Most are just too blind to see.
If a 2-state solution was possible and the solution, I'd support it (as would many millions of others), but that 2-state solution was rejected a long time ago (and not by the Israelis). So go figure.
Anyway, the question remains. What is the solution, exactly and what will be the consequences of that solution?
My grandfather always used to say to us (he came from Vienna), "always keep a suitcase packed" and he wasn't wrong. I was born in the UK and lived here all my life and over the past few years I have been mulling over where I could go. How shocking is that?
I think the Jews should come back to Europe. They are educated, smart, in a strong sense a lot of them are European. We need more of them here. We don't need all those uneducated immigrants from developing countries and with alien cultures. I understand that the Jews would all be welcomed in Germany.
😂
Exactly! It’s not the eradication of Israel they want. It’s the eradication of Jews. No matter where they live. Start there and let the cancer of genocide spread across the world with the massive influx of Muslim extremists into every other nation. I cannot believe that here in America we are having protests and marches where people are screaming in the streets to “gas the Jews” and “kill the Jews”. It’s sickening.
I hope you will arrive at a more even-handed position and abandon a black and white view. "Hamas is evil and it's evil because it's evi" is the same rehashed Putin flim-flam put over by propagandists throughout history who now also cheer US aircraft carriers sailing up. There are reasons why people do things and to understand them is not to condone them but it's best to ask why. I see both sides and the good and bad, the truth and lies and also that many seem too willing when egged on to take local sides in a fight that involves global players playing for higher stakes while using sophisticated information warfare.
I don't see either "side" here as having covered themselves in glory over the years, so to speak. It's a horrible clusterfuck of shittiness on both sides. But the actions of Hamas on Oct 7th were grotesque and, in my view, utterly indefensible.
The question is really about what should Israel do next? What should the Palestinians do next?
It's a conflict that, as you say, has involved both sides - and both sides need to be actively involved in seeking a peaceful solution. The onus cannot be all on Israel.
Rudolf Rigger FN 1
And this ethnic animosity exists in some, but by no means all, of the people involved. Not every Palestinian is, for example, some kind of rabid Jew-hater - but certainly some are. The number of haters are, I believe, a minority, but it’s a large enough minority to have caused significant bloodshed to both Israelis and Palestinians over the years.
..........
It is very disappointing to see Professor Rigger unaware of (or in denial) regarding the reality of the so-called Palestinians. The vast majority regard the NAKBA - the establishment of Israel in 1948 - as the greatest catastrophe to befall the so-called Palestinians.
Describing a historical event as a catastrophe is not the same thing as hatred - although, for some, it will undoubtedly lead to such. I've spoken with a great number of Arabs and Muslims over the years (admittedly the more "educated" ones) and the great majority do not express any kind of rabid hatred for Jews. A few do - that's for sure.
I'd also say that the majority of those I've spoken to profoundly disagree with the establishment in 1948 of Israel as a separate state - but they don't appear to wish for its eradication. They wish that it had never happened, but they accept the existence of Israel. There's a world of difference between these kinds of views and those of Hamas.
How is your back holding up?
Here’s a hint to help you make sense of this insanity. Muhammad taught his followers to kill all people who did not accept that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. Muslims actually believe this insane nonsense.
Well that's not quite the correct interpretation of the Q'uran and the Hadith ("correct" as in what most Muslims believe), but there is definitely the potential to interpret it that way - as have many of the fundamentalist Islamist nutjobs over the years.
Professor Rigger
With respect, you are wrong. Have you read Raymond Ibrahim’s Sword And Scimitar. Muslim persecution of Jews, Christians, Hindus and other “non-believers has continue since Islam was invented in the 7th century and it continues today and will continue until The truth is spread.
Christian persecution of those who believe in the wrong God also continues today and will continue till everyone realises that monotheism was a very bad idea.
I would add patriarchy to that. (Bad idea).
I'm not sure matriarchy would be a better one - but we'd probably get more chocolates and boxes of tissues 😂
Well, I think monotheism, as far as religious ideas go, was a great one.
What I have a problem with is people thinking *their* particular idea of which God is the right one should be forced upon others.
I'm also quite amused by people claiming to "know" what God says on any particular issue.
No I haven't read that, but I've read a fair bit of other stuff that would disagree with that crude assessment. The best people to ask are Muslims themselves. I've had thousands of discussions with Muslims about some of the "difficult" passages in the Qur'an (and I still can't remember where to put the apostrophe in that) and these passages are simply not understood in quite the same way you're implying.
Understanding any particular quote or passage is so much more than just taking a translation from the Arabic and thinking you know what it means.
Not entirely true: I visited an Ottoman era mixed-faith church in the Ihlara Valley in Cappadocia. It was carved with both Christian and Muslim symbols and was used up until the 1920s. Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in relative harmony for hundreds of years in Turkey.
Well, many Christians have also believed insane nonsense. The Jews killed Jesus so it was absolutely fine to kill them. Ever studied the crusades?
So, some Christians are mad. Some Jews are mad. Some Muslims are mad. Can we stop making “other” people’s madness our excuse for being just as mad as them?
And in fact Muslims lived quite amicably with both Jews and Christians for centuries - they were in charge, but they accepted Jews and Christians as people of the book. Jews and Christians formed the intellectual and administrative backbone of both the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates.
While paying levies, taxes and tithes to be allowed to stay jews and christians, don't forget. The practice of forcing jews to wear a yellow belt or a yellow badge, denoting gold/coin, is an islamic practice originally.
I'm all for moslems in Europe being subject to sharia law. Curiously, moslems themselves aren't unless it is for privileges - they're not very keen to be mutilated or executed according the word of their prophet, despite it being the law of their god.
I do believe they call that kind of behaviour fitna; abusing the holy writ for personal gain (or however it's transcribed from their bird-scratchings of a "language").
I want to mention that the Palestinians who were displaced by those wars in the 20th century are probably the descendants of the original inhabitants of the region who worked the land. The peasants, let us say. The country folk. When the place was a Kingdom and the local religion was Jewish, they were part of all that. When the Romans destroyed the temple and either killed or dispersed the top elite of society, by which time Jewish businessmen were already active in all parts of the Roman empire, the peasants became Palestinians and at some point Muslims. The Romans called that province "Palestine" deliberately to spite the Jews, whose enemies were ... Philistines. Next I would like to say that enclosing millions of people in a ghetto is a good way to breed terrorists. And that the Israeli government's policy towards the illegal settlements on the West bank is a sure way to foment hatred and ... breed terrorists. So I am with António Guterres there, in his criticism of Israel. Do I have to say that I hate Hamas and I hate what they did? I also hate the present Israeli government, and a large proportion of Israeli's does too.
Yup - I have no idea what the Israelis think that their Gaza strategy over the last couple of decades is achieving. I can't properly fathom what this must do to the psyche of people living there.
On the other hand, I'm not sure I can properly fathom what being invaded by 6 countries at once, all intent on your destruction and wiping you off the face of the earth, does to your psyche, either. It probably makes you somewhat hyper-sensitive and over-reactive to any perceived threat.
The whole thing is a clusterfuck of action and reaction that is hard to disentangle - and that's before you even throw in the meddling of folk like us Brits into the mix. We certainly seemed to have a way of divvying up land in a way that would ensure maximum future conflict - in all sorts of places. There was probably a special class in it at places like Eton.
The British approach to empire building was "divide and rule". You take over a place, you see there are divisions in society, you recruit one of the smaller groups to become the local policemen or managers or whatever. The Dutch also did it like that in Indonesia.
“This was not a response to any aggressive military act by Egypt.” No, it was a response to Nasser nationalising the Suez Canal (which I think he was perfectly entitled to do).
Did Egypt pay for the construction of the canal?
Of course they didn’t - they had no need of a canal between the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans. And no one asked them. Just as no one asked the (Arabs / Palestinians / whatever you think they were) what they thought about a) the Ottoman Empire b) the Sykes-Picot agreement c) the Balfour declaration d) the League of Nations declaration e) the United Nations “plan”. And that I think is fundamentally the problem - if you keep doing shit to people, eventually they turn round and do shit to you, and they literally don’t care what you think.
So Panama would be justified in nationalising that canal then, I take it.
Just as various kings, shahs, what have you were justified in nationalising natural resources, I guess?
Like Putin nationalising Gazprom when the US tried to take control of over 60% of all russian oil, gas and coal depostis in 2008.
I'm curious you see. Is it only when it's brown people this applies, or is it an equal thing?
Does Russia owe it to Britain to return the railroad to Murmansk?
It's not as easy and clear-cut as you (it looks to me) seem to want to make it.
So what? Egyptian labourers dug it. What about them?
It was a French plan and later taken over by the Brits. The whole purpose of the Suez canal was European empire building. Did you pay for the construction of the canal? You certainly have benefitted from its existence.
Have you paid Sweden for fighting with Russia for centuries?
Have you paid the austrians, czechs, polacks, romanians and germans for stopping the moslems invading Europe?
Have you paid the spanish for the Reconquista?
I've a black belt in "playing silly buggers" you know - I was a teacher for decades.
And have you paid me and my ancestors for my work?