No, I am not showing bias by pointing out that your comment was ridiculous. Everybody does not blame Israel.
Not that it excuses their attempts but Hamas’ rocket attacks can’t be described as “shelling the shit” out of anything when stood against the Israeli assault. Is there any upper limit in civilian casualties that might give you pause in your biases? I’ve said elsewhere in this thread that I think the only long term solution to this is probably a reoccupation coupled with some kind of Marshall plan. Beating them bloody isn’t going to work. Syria was willing to be 10 times as bloody with their rebels and look how that worked.
“Okay Israel, you’re allowed to use force to defend yourself, but only if fewer than 200 civilians are killed. And don’t you dare use the ‘they’re using civilians as human shields’ argument either!”
The difference is that those debates don’t last very long because there isn’t bunch of Turkey apologists ready to imply that any critics of Turkey must have a bias against Turkey or its people (or perhaps just their religion)
Ok, then perhaps you can show me some threads of people criticizing Turkey’s invasion of Northern Iraq or their invasion, occupation and ethnic cleansing of Northern Cyprus that continues to the this day.
Similarly, to bring up another European country that’s behaved worse than Israel, in recent memory Bulgaria forcibly ethnically cleansed its entire ethnic Turkish population(who’d lived there since before the US Constitution was drawn up).
How many times have they been criticized for this?
Hell, how many people reading this don’t have to run to google to find out about what I’m talking about.
Beyond that, you keep making yourself look very foolish by claiming that anyone who criticizes Israel is labeled an anti-Semite but provide little evidence to support this.
In your effort to rebutt everything the other side says, you ignore reasonable conclusions and it makes your position look weaker. That fact that we cannot get exact numbers does not prevent us from reaching reasonable conclusions about the proportion of immigrants in the arab population in 1948. The arab population in 1948 was about 1.2 million. The arab population in 1922 (after WWI, it looks like the population dropped a lot during and after WWI) was about 589,000. Using a growth rate of 2.5% (which the article doesn’t seem to consider unreasonable), we arrived at about a million by 1948.
It is clear that the vast majority of Jews in Israel in 1948 were immigrants. There is reasonably clear evidence that the majority of the Arabs were not.
If the Israel apologists cannot even accept these reasonable assumption then it is hardly surprising that they think “we will give you peace if you give us peace” should be enough to settle the issue and leave it at that.
Israel seems to be much more ready to Negotiate with those who actually have the potential to destroy the state. They don’t seem very motivated to negotiate with people who mostly just fuck up the morning commute every few years.
You don’t get it. You have no idea what the arab population actually was, neither in 1948 nor in 1922. Because of (and I quote) “lack of completeness in Ottoman registration lists and British Mandatory censuses, and the immeasurable illegal, unreported, and undetected immigration during both periods”
The fact that **Trinopus **was probably not even aware of this speaks for itself. Not that I blame him. When was the last time there was a UN resolution over it, or for that matter an article in NYT or WP?
I don’t recall seeing a vigorous defense of Hamas anywhere in this thread.
How about we have a poll of Palestinians vs illegal Israeli settlers or Palestinians vs the Israelis that kidnapped and executed a random Palestinian teenager.
Its not a debate, its kind of open and shut. Why would anyone start a debate thread over it?
No one leaps to their defense. Criticism is not necessary.
Shit happens all over the world and we don’t really pay attention for several reasons:
It fades into the background of “shit that happens over there”
There isn’t enough of a debate over what we can or should be doing to support the oppressors.
The violence doesn’t spill into our back yard (or military bases).
No one jumps to the defense of the oppressors so it just fades into the background of horrible shit that happens in other parts of the world.
Every time I make this claim I give examples and every time, those examples are dismissed as the opinions of a small handful of posters. Do I really need to go back and dig up flat out accusations of anti-semitism by Brazil84 or persistent questions asking why I am singling out israel for special treatment; questions asking what it is about israel that is different that makes me so biased against them or their people?
So I don’t think I’m making myself look foolish so much as you are making yourself look arrogant and dismissive.
I don’t need to know exact numbers to be able to say the overwhelming majority of jews in Palestine in 1948 were immigrants and the majority of arabs in Palestine in 1948 were not.
You have no way to back this up. As even the link you posted says - there is no way to know not just the “exact” numbers, but no way to even estimate it.