Agreed.
The British policy was not “divide and conquer” but rather “divide and leave.”
This thread is about Israel and Palestine. Someone contested that the peasants and many Arabs don’t have any reason to fight. All my post was doing is pointing out that this isn’t the case. If you want to discuss other ethnic cleansing campaigns, I suggest a new thread.
The narrative that the Jews who immigrated to the M.E., bought up some empty land, and then were attacked by mean old Arabs is false. Israel was founded in a populated area with the plan to make the residents, who had been living there for centuries, second class citizens in their own land. The fact that those people fought against that, and other Arabs helped them doesn’t require an explanation.
No doubt the above post will be followed by cites of its assertions. Yes?
Other than the Jews who had been living in the ME since biblical times, thousands of Jews did buy land from the Arabs and then emigrated there. When Israel declared her state, there was no plan to make non-Jews 2d class citizens, and to this day they are not. Some Israeli Arabs old high political offices. The plan (as envisioned by the UN) was to have Israel and Palestine declare their states and live peaceably side by side. Unfortunately, the Arabs did not declare the state of Palestine for themselves, and, to this day, 65 years later still intend to destroy the state of Israel.
Which particular fact do you dispute? That what became Israel was populated, that the people had roots going back a century, or that the state of Israel was to be a Jewish state?
Of course they are. There is 0 chance the next prime minister of Israel will be Arab, the government is conducted in Hebrew, and the primary language of business is Hebrew. I don’t really see how this is in dispute. If Israel was founded as, and is, a Jewish State, almost by definition the power has to be held by Jews. The early Zionists had varying views of how the relationship between the natives and Zionist immigrants would play out, but none of them conceived of any situation other than Jews holding power in their own country.
Perhaps the British and later the UN should have asked the people living there what they wanted before letting in a few hundred thousand people bent on founding their own country.
Yes, they are.
Minority citizenry is very different from “second class” citizenry.
It is very unlikely that the U.S. will elect a President who speaks only Vietnamese or Spanish, and most laws in the U.S. are written in English. This does not make Vietnamese speakers in the U.S. “second class citizens.” Completely different concept.
True, but until very recently 97% of the land in the United States was not reserved only for whites, nor does the United States send Vietnamese and Spanish speakers to different schools, nor has the US ever required it’s citizens to have their ethnicity stamped on their IDs.
Beyond that, there are tons of little ways in which Israeli Arabs are regularly discriminated against.
I’d recommend reading Sleeping on a Wire, by the noted Israeli journalist David Grossman.
I dispute that the intent of the founding of Israel was intended to make any current population second-class citizens. I recognize that Israeli Arabs do not have full rights under the current Israeli government, but that can be attributed to mistrust due to being regularly attacked by other Arabs.
I don’t think the early Zionists said “Hey, you know what would be cool? If we made a country where Arabs are second class citizens”. Their intent was to make a Jewish dominated state. Marginalization of the current population is an inherent part of that. I mean, what else could have happened? It wasn’t practical to create a Jewish State in Palestine without any Arabs, because there were a lot of them living there. So whatever X% of Arabs fell within Israel were going to be denied power, have their government conducted in a foreign language, and essentially not enjoy all the rights and privileges of Jewish citizens.
I think if you are denied access to power, and don’t enjoy the same privileges as other citizens, then you are a second class citizen. Besides, we haven’t designed the U.S. specifically to deny these people power. On the other hand, that’s the entire point of Israel. A country for Jews, by Jews. No Arabs need apply.
But Arabs are in power; there are quite a few Israelis of Arab ethnicity in the Knesset.
Being disempowered by being a member of a minority is simply not the same as being denied access to power. There are no atheists in the U.S. Senate; this isn’t because the rules forbid it, but simply because none ever get elected. It sucks, but the only alternative would be to have an artificial “House of Tokens.”
Ibn Warraq gave a better answer; he pointed out ways that truly are functionally discriminatory. You, so far, are only pointing out the ways in which being a minority is intrinsically disempowering. That’s just the way democracy works.
A good constitutional democracy protects minorities. And, in fact, there have been numerous decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court, overruling various legislation that was discriminatory.
Are there Jews in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait?
Early Zionism did not involve creating a Jewish state, so that’s one strawman right there. The creation of Israel was from Jewish-majority areas, so no forcing Arabs out of power was necessary. Minority status does not necessarily mean oppression. So, again, what proof have you of any plan for disenfranchisement of the current population of Palestine?
No, and I don’t think anyone denies that those countries are dramatically anti-Semitic.
I don’t think bringing them up helps your case.
Wouldn’t you agree that plans to make sure that non-Jews couldn’t buy any land in the area and were dramatically restricted in the jobs they could do counted as discriminatory?
You’re far better off pointing to Hertzl’s silly book if you want to prove that the early Zionists wanted to live with Arabs as equals, because I don’t think Ben Gurion and the others, who actually set up the Yishuv ever even pretended that they would treat “the natives” equally.
For the most part, they just tried to pretend they didn’t exist and tried to believe that Palestine really was “a land without a people for a people without a land.”
I’d rather undergo root canal. Between Alan “Let’s legalise torture” Dershowitz and Noam “There’s no genocide happening in Cambodia” Chomsky I can’t think of two worse sources of factual information.
Yeah, ok. I think there’s been one Arab cabinet member in Israel’s history, and they have no chance of reaching a position of any importanance anytime soon. A few token Arabs in the Knesset doesn’t change that.
The point is that being a minority shouldn’t automatically keep you from power.
laugh Ok.
No, minority status does not necessarily mean oppression. However, when you found your country as For People X, people who aren’t People X are by definition unequal.
You should probably read the entire page before citing something:
My understanding of the land ownership in Israel is that the government owns or holds over 90% of the land and doesn’t sell it ever, to anybody. It only leases out the land.
What jobs were non-Jews restricted from taking?