I don’t know what constitutes large numbers to you, but large numbers don’t equate to everyone or most of them. I would think their opinions are based on the oppression they’ve been facing at the hands of the Zionists. End the Zionists’ oppression of the Palestinians and their thinking will change.
Or, here’s a wild idea, Israel continues to exist and the Jewish people can ensure their own security. Like they did in Ethiopia, or Yemen, or Iraq, or in Iran after the Revolution. And with antisemitism on the rise across Europe, immigration to Israel has been up again in recent years. Hopefully that’s just a minor uptick and nothing beyond isolated incidents comes of this rise in hatred. But if things do take a turn for the worse, the Jewish people will have somewhere they can go.
This isn’t a research paper. Look up the books and search the texts.
Given the subject of his research it’s expected that Morris would have detractors.
That’s merely Morris’ opinion.
Many scholars laud his works, as well.
See my first reply.
You’re being redundant in your obtuseness.
Opinion noted.
Cite, please.
And how do you propose that that happen? Shall the international community invade and subjugate Israel and Palestine and force them to get along? Wouldn’t that be (saints preserve us!) a violation of international law?
There is no cite for that claim because it’s patently absurd, just like your claim that Jewish people wouldhave nothing to fear if only they weren’t such mean Zionists. Jews were repeatedly massacared under Ottoman rule, when the rulers of the land were Muslims and the Jews were just subjects, just like the Arabs slaughtering them.
My sentence in the post above is a link to a Wikipedia page listing numerous massacares that occurred in the Ottoman province of Syria, which included modern Israel. The chart clearly labels which were carried out by locals and which were carried out by Turkish soldiers, as well as which targeted Jewish people.
I think the idea is that the UN issues some strongly worded statements while Hamas is firing up the gas chambers.
Moderator Note
Attack the post, not the poster.
I realize that this is a hot-button topic for a lot of folks. This is a discussion thread for the issue, so we welcome discussion and debate, and everyone is certainly free to express their opinions. Be respectful to other users though, no matter how much you disagree with them.
Personal attacks and insults belong in the Pit. Not here.
Hmmm. I would think their hate speech ( or “opinions” if that’s how you want to define clear cut promotion of genocide) has been based more on a thousand years of bigotry and racism. Hard to erase that with hopeful thoughts.
My Orthodox but anti-Zionist grandparents had a great deal to say about America being a refuge for Jews. There are places for Jews to go besides Israel.
Really, the notion of “all Jews go to Israel and live there” which I have heard espoused by not just Israelis but also evangelical Christians here in the US, always struck me as putting all the eggs in one basket. The fact Jews are spread all over the world and no longer dependent/focused on a single location for their religion since the Temple was destroyed has always struck me as a significant pair of factors in their long-term survival.
I find the assumption that all Jews even want to go to Israel annoying. Why would I want to go to a country that essentially has lived under siege since its inception in a hot, dry area under a blazing sun? (I have the complexion of a vampire thanks to my Jewish ancestors absorbing a certain percentage of Eastern European genes, whether by voluntary or involuntary means. I flee from direct sunlight) The fact that there is a significant percentage of people there who’d question that I’m a Jew also puts the kibosh on the notion that I’d be welcome there. Sure, let’s go to a country where I would forever be a second-class citizen and never quite good enough, that sounds like fun [/sarcasm]
Right of return? No one in my family has lived in Israel for nearly two thousand years. I have a better claim to return to Russia or Ireland or Germany than the Middle East. None of which is happening, by the way. My ancestors fled all those countries as refugees, any “claim” I might have to what they had when they lived in those nations (for centuries, and my Irish and German ancestors were not Jews but native citizens of those lands) would be laughed at were I to try to assert it.
Then again, I wasn’t raised from infancy to regard another country I had never been to as my home. Yes, I have both a cultural and a (very, very distant) genetic connection to the Levant but I am not Israeli and can’t imagine ever being such even if I am Jewish. There is, frankly, nothing that appeals to this American Jew about even a visit to Israel other than a lot of historical monuments and relics which would be interesting to visit… if it weren’t for all the conflict in the region.
Mind you - if the Israelis can find a way to co-exist with the other peoples in the region more power to them. I realize there are people who are in love with Israel. I just wish they wouldn’t assume that because I’m some way or other related to them I feel the same way.
Meanwhile, despite not being a Zionist and not being an Israeli, I have to worry about people taking out their anger at your country on me, personally. Fortunately, where I happen to live things are quiet and we are not having problems in that regard (at the present time). Nonetheless, I am more than a little annoyed at how this conflict is something I have to worry about on the other side of the world.
While Israel certainly has some refugees, if you, Jewish or not, were fleeing oppression or a conflict, would it necessarily be your first choice compared to any random country like the UK, Germany, China, Spain, Canada, Greece that you could get to?
And, if you are not a refugee but rather just a yuppie, Tel-Aviv is pretty nice but, even before the current round of conflict (and there is always the next round to look forward to) I heard about people leaving Israel to go work in Japan, Canada, South Korea, Portugal, Germany, Czechia, and other places. [OTOH, I did recently run into a guy about to move from London to Tel Aviv; I am not providing any statistics or trends here.] These are just people motivated by pragmatic concerns like career opportunities, cost of living, quality of life. It’s true that many of them are not Jewish, but even among Jews it’s not self-evident to me that anyone feels an obligation to live in Israel if that means they cannot find a job or affordable housing.
And let’s be clear, every Jew has recent ancestors who were ethnically cleansed from somewhere else.
My family also views the US as a refuge for Jews. In fact, the Passover Haggadah i grew up with ended with a section of patriotic (US) songs. It was printed during WWII, by Jews who were very happy to live in the US. It is still my custom to end the Passover service by singing America The Beautiful.
But i just don’t get why Palestinians, uniquely among all the people who have been displaced by war, have a right to retake the land their ancestors fled. I don’t have that right. (And if i did, one could argue that Israel is that land. Or Ireland. Or Russia. Or Poland. Or Latvia.) The Greek and Turkish Cypriots who were displaced during their war (about the same time as the Israeli wars) don’t have that right. Hell, the Jews who were thrown out of other middle eastern countries as retribution for the creation of Israel don’t have that right.
And insisting on that right has been a disaster for Palestinians. It’s given lots of other countries an excuse to refuse them refugee status. It’s prevented families from settling down and getting on with their lives. It’s the proximate cause of the prison-like conditions in Gaza.
I’m doing a lot better as a US citizen than i would be if i were living in a refuge camp somewhere insisting that Russia restore my family’s shtetl.
Certainly, I live and own property in America. I’m married to an American. I’m heavily invested here.
Buuuuuut… in the event that tiki torch wielding maniacs take control of the country… I have somewhere to go.
Good thing that’s not at all what I was suggesting.
No one told you you need to want to live there. Hopefully you never have to. It’s an insurance policy, not a utopia for all Jewish people.
Please. People chanting “Gas the Jews” aren’t “taking out their anger” at my country. They’re anti-Semites. They’d be there regardless; they’ve been there for 2,000 years. The difference is, if they ever take power in your country, you have somewhere to go.
By whom?
What outside force do you think is going to “encourage” the “international community” to force Hamas to live peacefully with the current residents of Israel?
And how do you think they could do so?
I had a neighbor, many years ago; a wise woman. One of her favorite sayings was “Ought to ain’t is.”
It’s all very well to say that Jews, Muslims, Christians, and everybody else “should” live peacefully together all over the Middle East, whatever the names of their countries are, and whatever their ethnicities are otherwise. I agree with that. I think everybody in this thread agrees with that. But it doesn’t do a bit of good for us to agree with that when the people actually living there do not agree with that. And there is no existing international force capable of, or willing to, impose such a peace – which would require armed international forces on the ground in multiple countries, and quite a lot of them.
Israel, despite a few voices some of which are mostly crying out in pain, is not trying to destroy all the Palestinians. (Yes, I am well aware that Palestinians are also crying out in pain.) Hamas (not all Palestinians, or all Gazans) is trying to destroy all the Jews. Until and unless they stop doing so, Israel is going to defend itself.
“It can’t happen here”? Seriously?
There are people doing their damndest to get it to happen here and some of them have been getting into political power.
The USA was my parents’ and grandparents’ refuge, also – despite significant and often legally-allowed and officially encoded prejudice here at the time. I’m not leaving. And I sure as hell hope it doesn’t happen here; and it may not. But it might. The reason there were so many Jews in Germany in the 1930’s was that for some time it had been one of the the best, and one of the safest, places in the world to be Jewish. The lesson of the Nazis in Germany isn’t that there was something specifically nasty about Germany – there wasn’t. That lesson is ‘if it could happen there, it can happen anywhere.’
It may not even happen in our generation. But if the US goes Fascist in my kids’ lifetimes, or their kids’ lifetimes, Israel will still be there.
Also, the fact that it hasn’t happened in America doesn’t mean it hasn’t been happening, from Ethiopia to Yemen to Iraq and Iran. Without Israel, I highly doubt the US would have taken tens of thousands of brown refugee Jews who had to flee their homes with the clothes on their backs.
Since the Zionists cite intrenational law for the creation of their state, an international intervention could be enacted citing that law.
Opinion noted.