Weren’t there lots of powers in the middle east who went right along with the existing borders because it suited them?
What bugs me is when people say “Israel must die! Respect ancient Palestinian boundaries!”
What boundaries are those? 
The boundaries of Palestine were drawn up by the British when they split off “Transjordan” from the rest of Palestine.
Obviously the boundaries were completely different under the Ottoman Empire when Palestine was ruled by administrators from Damascus.
Alright OP, so Europe only cares about Palestinians to the extent they can criticize Israel. Now what? Does it imply something else? Or was that the main point you wanted to get across? It’s better to state your positions than to be coy.
Well yeah, if you ignore the last few decades, and pretend that “Great Satan” primarily refers to the UK. And when you say the British invaded Iraq, you don’t mean during a world war, do you?
You also ignore the fact that, between 9/11 and 7/7 there were four years of both the US and the UK in Afghanistan, and then Iraq. The difference in reaction from Iranians is unsurprising. But all of your countrymen celebrating deaths can fuck off, as can your “understanding”.
Is there something called the nationalistic fallacy? Because there should be, and that’s what this post shows. You say that the OTHER Europeans could have stopped that European before he started the war–which other Europeans exactly do you mean? Europe wasn’t a Voltron-style entity composed of all humans in the country melded together. Some of them Europeans could have done something to stop Hitler; others not so much. Plenty of Europeans tried really hard, and failed, to stop Hitler early on.
Furthermore, your post implies one of two unpleasant claims. What about Jews? Either you’re saying that the Jews in Europe, as Europeans, could have stopped Hitler and didn’t–a classic case of blaming the victims–or you’re saying that European Jews weren’t really Europeans, which plays up the othering that sits at the heart of antisemitism. I don’t think you intended either of these claims, but I also don’t think you thought through the implications of what you were saying.
I do agree with you that European governments have a lot of responsibility for buggering up the Middle East, both past and present, so we’ve some common ground there :).
Given the nature of this thread, that Europeans only protest when the Israelis do something they consider wrong, this is close to what I’m saying. Not that the Jews didn’t consider themselves European, but that the majority in the countries they resided in didn’t consider them as that. And that, demonstrated by the actions of those countries, forced them to look for another home where they held the control.
Errr… Know, the UK invaded Iraq in 2003. You have heard of it haven’t you?
There’s a reason the papers in the UK referred to it as “Blair’s War”.
Beyond that, it was the UK that thought it would be a great idea to shove together districts that had no real historical ties and then impose a foreign Sunni monarch on them.
It was also the British who imposed the Pahlevis on Persia and then overthrew the government to put in place the last Shah.
Now yeah, you’re right the US is referred to as “the Great Satan” but that is a measurement of power not hatred. The Jews and the British have always been hated more and seen as the puppet masters.
Sadly far too many Iranians still suffer from “My Uncle Napoleon” complex.
And obviously, I didn’t support 7/7 or the celebrations but you can’t be too surprised considering the fact that the British are more responsible for all the misery and failed nation-states in the Middle East except maybe for the French.
I’m sorry you were ignorant of all this.
While anti-Semitism is a bigger issue in the UK and France than it should be, and certainly all fair-minded people would be upset that roughly half of all British and French citizens buy into the canard that French and British Jews are more loyal to Israel than their home countries, I think most French and British Jews would disagree with your claim that they’re not considered European.
France isn’t Hungary. The UK isn’t Poland, and neither are Russia.
Granted that–absolutely.
But that’s not what I’m saying.
I’m asking YOU: when you said that Europeans could have prevented Hitler and didn’t, are you excluding European Jews from that statement or not?
If you are, why? And who else is excluded–are European homosexuals and gypsies and communists and others put in death camps also excluded? What about Polish peasants, are they excluded? What about Jews and homosexuals etc. who lived in Britain, are they excluded or not?
If you are not excluding European Jews–if you think they should have done more to stop Hitler–can you elaborate?
Edit: ibn, I think Uzi was speaking in the past-tense. (Also, thanks for answering my question–curious minds want to know!)
Is it so surprising a claim though? There seems to be an immense historical and theological attachment to the holy land by the Jews. If all Jews in the UK were given the choice of utterly destroying either the holy land or the equivalent size area where they currently live (the people removed beforehand of course), which would they choose? Same for UK muslims, London or Mecca?
I have absolutely no idea what the response would be but I wouldn’t be confident of only a negligible percentage saying “wipe out Jerusalem” And why would that be surprising anyway? A strongly religious group could well see their religious identity as superseding their national identity.
I’m a liberal to the core (both big and little “l”) humanist and a believer in freedom of and from religion. You want someone to stand up for little guy, the oppressed and misunderstood? That’s me. But would I be shocked If 50% of Jewish loyalties ultimately lay with Israel? No. I wouldn’t.
Is this because your little attempt to troll IMHO failed?
Let’s not forget who we’re dealing with here.
It’s not that it’s a surprising claim as that it’s part of a despicable pattern of thought. Of course people are often attached to a different land in some way or another: American Irish went a long way toward funding the IRA, plenty of Mexican Americans send money back to the homeland, and I can’t count the number of Yankees who have told me how much better things are up north than they are here.
Thing is, nobody but nobody is asked to choose between bombing their current location and bombing what they consider to be their homeland (note that many Jews, like many Irish-Americans, in some sense consider their homeland to be a place they’ve never actually been). People ARE asked to act within their communities as decent, responsible citizens.
And if folks in England or France believe that Jews are, due to loyalty to Israel, less likely to act decently or responsibly, then those folks are assholes.
No, everyone who lived there bears some responsibility for what happened. But then I don’t believe in the idea of ‘innocents’ in war (excluding children). If you don’t like what your government is doing then get them to change it. If you can’t, for whatever reason, then I guess you have a choice to make about living there, or you deal with the consequences along with everyone else.
eg. If the Palestinians don’t want Israel bombing them, then tell Hamas to stop shooting rockets. After all, Hamas was elected by these same people.
That was mentioned in the post you replied to, so I think it’s a fair assumption to make, yeah.
Look. I’m probably not as ignorant as this as you think. But I know you like to be the expert in such things around here, and I’m sure you know more about it than me. However, it is to some extent a subjective judgement, and I think you’re being a little selective with the facts in order to create a disagreement, especially by focusing on earlier events rather than more recent, and arguably more relevant, ones.
I’m sure you know about the US involvement in the coup in Iran in the 50s, although they were certainly not the only guilty party.
The Shah was supported and influenced by the US, which was part of the cause of the anger directed towards him.
The US were strong supporters of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, turning a blind eye to a lot of shit from Iraq, then of course shot down an Iranian airliner over Iranian airspace.
There was the “Axis of Evil” from Bush, which was probably not very helpful to any of the countries accused (remember my overall point was about the Middle East, not just Iran).
As for some of those other countries, you know about American wars against Iraq. You know about the support Saddam Hussein got before that from the US, even with chemical weapons. More recently, there’s the Iraqi military, dismantled by the US and then rebuilt into the world’s least effective fighting force, with plenty of American equipment for ISIS to take control of and use against civilians.
There’s American unwavering and uncritical support for Israel, right from the original unilateral declaration, even shielding them from any legal judgements or real international pressure, while supplying them with obscene amounts of money to spend on more killing.
And there’s the American attempts to hurt the Soviets when they invaded Afghanistan, which unfortunately involved supporting and arming the mujahideen who would become the Taliban. Whether you consider Afghanistan part of the Middle East or not, what happened there has obviously affected other nearby countries.
Presumably, Uzi considers all Americans culpable for this, since all Europeans (except the Jewish ones) are responsible for Hitler. The fact that millions died fighting against him, and millions of non-Jewish Europeans were murdered just as Jews were, is obviously not important. Again, I’d be interested to know which country he’s from.
Please remember the point I was making. Uzi said Europe is responsible for all the problems in the Middle East today. I’m sure you can nitpick all day and we could argue forever about whose fault each event was (especially when so much involvement from both the US and the UK was furtive) but whose assertion is, in fact, more accurate? Uzi’s absolute claim that Europe (including all Europeans alive today) are responsible for all of it, or my claim that the US is responsible for its fair share too?
As for 7/7, no, celebrations aren’t surprising, but it doesn’t make them even remotely justified. The fact they happened, and the lack of surprise that brings, says more about Iran than it does about the UK. The hundreds who were killed and wounded were not ministers or officers or spies responsible for any involvement in the Middle East (unless you think like Uzi) and certainly not any of the events from 60+ years ago that you’re referring to. That kind of glorification of death and violence is something to be ashamed of, not apologized for, especially when we both know that, for all the crimes western countries have done to Iran and other Middle Eastern countries, it doesn’t compare to the claims of the propaganda which comes from, and props up, regimes like the theocracy in Iran. Speaking of those guys, don’t you think people like Khomeini are owed a large amount of responsibility themselves?
Again, I must ask which country’s history you are responsible for.
I like your idea, though.
"*Dear Hamas
I am writing to you today to express my opposition to your campaign of rocket bombardment in the strongest possible terms…*"
Wow–so you literally think that German Jews bear some responsibility for the Holocaust? I admit I’ve never heard that one before, if I exclude Stormfront.
That seems facile to me. If Israelis don’t want Hamas shooting rockets at them, tell Netanyahu to negotiate the right to return. But of course it’s more complicated than that, just as it is for Palestinians.
It comes down to your non-belief in the idea of innocents in war being a bizarre belief.
, comma, kill the people shooting rockets at them.
I’d say it’s not rocket science, but I guess it kinda is.
As the last election was in 2007 and 64% of the Gaza population is under the age of 24 and 43% under the age of 14 (2013 figures) I think you’ll find that ‘these same people’ did not vote for them.
The right to return won’t stop the bombing.
They could alternatively tell him to wipe out the Palestinians. I’m not advocating that, but it would solve the problem. It is certainly what Hamas is saying they would do if they had the power.
Is it your contention that the actions of the government are divorced from the people? Even in the worst dictatorship someone is supporting those in power. So, responsibility is shared in different measures between the people who live there and support, accept, or are ultimately victims for what is occurring.
Sucks to be them, I guess. What are they now doing to throw these guys out of power?