It’s not abysmal ignorance to refer to “Palestine” and mean the West Bank and Gaza. It’s arguably wrong, but, then, it’s also wrong to refer to Israel and Gaza as being in the “Middle East.” The terms have changed over the course of the decades.
If an enemy combatant fired hundreds of rockets at my country and I was president I’d declare war and hunt them down. If they did this on a yearly bases I’d declare war with a “winner takes all” intent and take their.
No, Jordan was always part of Palestine under the Ottoman Empire and may Palestinians have long argued that it was part of Palestine and fought a war to turn it into a Palestinian state.
As for your reference to “the Middle East” I’m not sure your point.
Are you trying to contrast that to “the Near East”?
Far as that goes, I didn’t know that a war had been fought to try to turn Jordan into a Palestinian state. As far as ignorance goes, I’ve got plenty, and won’t deny it. Does the war have a convenient name (like, you know, “War of the Spanish Succession”) so I can look up more about it? Can you (and I am not being sarcastic here, but honestly open to suggestions) recommend a decent book on the subject? Er…maybe something slightly more directed at people new to the affair?
(I know a guy whose views on Israel and Palestine are almost entirely informed by Leon Uris novels… I do not want to be that kind of guy!)
re the “Middle East,” in the days long gone by when the Balfour Declaration was headline news, Palestine and the Levant and the Sinai and Jerusalem were referred to as “Near East.” Over time, this usage has changed, and, today, nearly everyone says “Middle East.” There’s actually a nice Wikipedia article about this– the top three sections cover terminology.
But, really, I was just giving an example of pointless pedantry, obviously an exaggeration. More seriously, I think the best forms of debate try to enlighten as well as criticize. Not, “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” but, rather, “The truth is more complicated, but here’s a rough outline…” It makes it more clear what the debate is actually about.
(I hate it when the debate degenerates into, “You didn’t read my post,” or “Go back and read what I actually said,” or “No, it’s you who misunderstands,” etc. At that point, communication has essentially failed.)
(And what’s the saddest of all is that Israeli-Palestinian communication has essentially failed, and I want to see some sort of talks resume. But I guess we have to wait for the weapons fire to abate first…)
There was much heated argument about that on the Palestinian talk show feed I sometimes watched on C-Band.
When the British and the WWI victors were slicing the area up in the late 1910s and early 1920s, what area did they call “Trans Jordan”, and why?
Well, see? This is just useless. Instead of playing “Riddle me this,” why not state the facts (or at least an opinion) so we can move forward.
I’ve seen Transjordan on maps. Tell us why!
Transjordan was all the British Mandate for Palestine on the east side of the Jordan, hence the name (trans=across). It was set up as an emirate under Abdullah in 1920 and administered separately from the rest of the Mandate territory, in accordance with the French-British agreement for an Arab state east of the Jordan…
If anything, Israel has been doing easy on Hamas. They’d be well within their rights to invade, disestablish Hamas altogether, execute its leaders, and establish a direct occupation government.
I think the best summary of the situation is here:
www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-07-11/is-hamas-trying-to-get-gazans-killed
Thank you, Captain Amazing.
Er…not quite, I think. Executing the leaders of a country – or even a non-state polity – defeated in war is against international law as currently understood.
They might be within their rights to put the leadership on trial for war crimes, but it would be politically disadvantageous. Israel’s closest supporters would urge them, most emphatically, not to pursue that.
Otherwise, all very true.
Really, so they executed the emperor?
I don’t know that Jews were hated more in the middle east than they were anywhere else at the time. Or was there a particular hatred of Jews in the middle east?
cite?
Oh? Is Jordan part of what we consider the occupied territories today or are you playing historical word games?
How is that relevant? Or are you about to appeal to authority?
no.
Really???
So all of what is Israel today was purchased from people who had the right to sell it? Pffft.
By “they” you mean the zionists right?
Who pretends that?
So that justifies the formation of the state of Israel in the middle of occupied land?
What percentage of the people in the state of Israel a year before its formation were in favor of its formation?
You should really learn to read.
In post 2 Malthus asked: What would you do?
In post 4 I replied: I’d get out of those settlements and give the Palestinians their own state.
In Post 73 handsomeharry said: Me too. I’d call it Jordan.
In post 86 I responded: There is already a country called Jordan. I think the Palestinians want to call theirs Palestine. But if you want to go back in time to what we could have done differently, perhaps the Zionists shouldn’t have created a country for themselves in the middle of land that was already occupied.
Then you make a somewhat non sequitor reference to some irrelevant historical trivia.
English isn’t your first language is it? I mean seriously, in what way does anyone today consider Jordan part of Palestine?
We get it, you know a lot about the area but unless there is some knowledge you have that is not being communicated in the news that would make my opinion invalid in some way, what exactly are you trying to achieve?
So I can see where Palestine and Jordan were once jointly ruled as Transjordan but i don’t see where Jordan was called Palestine anytime in recent history. Can you cite a reference that jordan was once part of Paestine? Or are you saying that because the Brits controlled both under a legal document called Mandate for Palestine - Wikipedia that this means taht Jordan was once considered part of Palestine.
In what way was your comment relevant to the discussion or was it just a non sequitor interjection to display your deep deep knowledge of the area and its issues.
Oh my God, is this a serious question?
You’re actually demanding a cite for where Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon and the rest of the right-wing members of Likud proposed federating the West Bank with Jordan as a solution to the Intifadas?
Are you next going to demand a cite that Netanyahu is a Zionist?
Ok, you can check out his book. A Place Among the Nations: Israel and the World.
I’m genuinely shocked that you’d never heard of what’s usually called “The Jordan option”.
You’ve seriously never heard Israeli leaders or their supporters proclaim “Jordan is Palestine”?
http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/ariel-sharon-jordan-option
Er… no and nobody has claimed it was, though the Occupied territories, or at least the West Bank, were once part of Jordan and at that time nobody classified them as occupied.
However what is now Jordan was classified as part of Palestine under Ottoman rule.
Under the British who took over front the Ottomans and split off Palestine from Southern Syria it was classified as “Mandatory Palestine”.
You should learn to read your cites more carefully. You’ll notice it states that Transjordan was created in 1921 and split off from Palestine.
This caused a huge amount of anger among the Zionists who felt betrayed.
No offense, but this isn’t the first time you’ve had this issue with reading your cites. It wasn’t that long ago you were strenuously arguing that Madeline Albright had to be hostile to the Arab causes because she was a Jew and when it was pointed out to you that she wasn’t a Jew and hadn’t been raised as a Jew but was a Christian you rather furiously for several posts kept insisting that she was a Jew because her parents were Jews and kept pointing to her wikipedia entry and failed to read the section where it mentioned that she was raised as a Christian and still was a practicing one.
When asked why you were so sure she was a Jew and why you were so certain she couldn’t be supportive of Arab causes you confessed you knew nothing about her other than that her name came up when you googled “Jewish Secretary of State” and therefore you assumed she had to be hostile to their cause.
Ok, this is really odd. You clearly are very passionate about this issue yet you continually refuse to ever read anything about the subject. No offense, but that comes across more like someone who’s made up his mind and is afraid to read anything that might challenge it than as someone who’s genuinely curious about the situation.
:rolleyes: You can’t be serious. You said:
Apparently you never heard of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, or have much understanding of who the actual leadership was in Imperial Japan. Here’s a clue: it wasn’t the emperor, who was little more than a figurehead. It wasn’t the civilian government, which by law the Japanese military could cause to fall at any time by simply having the war minister resign and refusing to appoint a new one. Two prime ministers and a war minister were found guilty, sentenced to death and hung. Of the sixteen major defendants sentenced to life imprisonment there are three war ministers, two navy ministers, two prime ministers, a finance minister, a president of the Cabinet Planning Board, an Ambassador to Italy, an Ambassador to Germany, a Chief Cabinet Secretary, a chief of the Military Affairs Bureau and the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. If you think this wasn’t the leadership of Imperial Japan, you’re delusional.
I assume he’s referring to Black September, the first paragraph in wiki gives a good summary:
Here’s where politics make for strange bedfellows; Syria intervened in the war on the side of the PLO, invading Jordan. The Syrian Air Force however remained conspicuously absent so after some initial success and panic caused by the Syrian intervention, the Jordanian Air Force proceeded to pound the Syrian Army unmolested by the Syrian Air Force and drive them off. It was apparently made clear through back channels that Israel would intervene if the Syrian Air Force showed up.