The tone of this was harsher than I intended, but you really ought to read something other than a couple of paragraphs on wikipedia.
So what ? It’s not like he was democratically elect with 80% of the vote, is it ? I mean, Franco was “the leader of all Spanish Spaniards” too, but you really can’t infer from that factoid that all or even a majority of Spaniards were fascists.
In fact, under British Mandate the Mufti was appointed by the Brits themselves (who had their own issues with Them Jews at the time), so you can’t even blame him on Them Crrrrazy Muslims/Arabs.
As for Palestinian nationalists siding with the Axis : The British were on their turf, all colonial-like. It’s not exactly surprising that they’d sidle towards whatever the Not British side happened to be at the time for support of their local beef. Some proto-Israeli nationalists did as well (or rather tried to, but Hitler wouldn’t take their calls for some reason).
First of all, I haven’t implied you’re a bigot so I’d ask that you not do that of me.
Second, I never said he was representative of all Palestinian Arabs, however he was their most popular political leader and to this day is a national hero and viewed as the father or Palestinian Nationalism even by people who despise him such as Rashid Khalidi and the late Edward Said.
Third, I was responding to Damuri’s claim that Husseini was the only Palestinian higher up who supported the Nazis.
In fact the majority of Arab nationalist leaders both outside and inside Palestine supported the Germans, not just because they were anti-British but because Arab Nationalism and Arab national consciousness, which at that time was barely out of it’s infancy, was largely modeled on German nationalism and German national consciousness since the Germans invented or at least popularized the concept of blood-and-soil nationalism.
Also, since you’re going to use phrases like “Them Crrrrazy Muslims/Arabs” it’s worth noting that Christian Arab nationalists were, if anything, even more likely then Muslim Arab nationalists to be pro-Nazi and, for obvious reasons, Arab nationalism was stronger among Christian Arabs than Muslim Arabs and Arab Christians, at least then, were probably more anti-Semitic than Muslim Arabs.
The last part isn’t terribly surprising since the Jews had murdered their God for the Muslims, the Jews had been beaten and forced to submit the God’s final messenger and his followers.
If you read my whole post that was part of my point with the last few questions. However, I would quibble with the use of the term “Palestinian nationalists”. Kawukji and the rest would have strongly objected to the phrase and even Husseini wasn’t much of a Palestinian nationalist, at that time. They were fervent Arab nationalists which is why they made a point of having “the Arab High Command” and “the Arab Liberation Army”.
By contrast, the Jews were regularly referred to as “Palestinian freedom fighters”.
I’m not sure why you’re saying “proto-Israeli nationalists” instead of Zionists. However, Lehi was a group of a few hundred people and Avraham Stern never had remotely the kind of influence and popularity amongst the Palestinian Jews that Kawukji and Husseini had amongst the Palestinian Arabs. That doesn’t really compare.
He also, obviously never was remotely as anti-Semitic as either of those men though he was obviously not a fan of the Arabs.
Wasn’t meant as such, sorry if I gave you that impression. I was just poking general fun, not targeted at you in particular.
Wuh ? Did you mistype or something, or misplace punctuation ? That part doesn’t make much sense to me.
Potaytoe, potahto. Their modern counterparts self-identify as “Palestinian”, that’s good enough for me.
Because I first typed “Israeli nationalists”, then realized while proof-reading that of course that wouldn’t have applied since there was no Israel back then. So I edited as such.
I guess “Zionist” would have worked, yeah, but it’s kind of a loaded word by now, isn’t it ?
Is one somehow worse (or loftier) than the other ?
How was I shown that I was wrong?
The partition territory was gerrymandered. Doesn’t the UN partition borders look weird to you? They didn’t take areas that were majority Jewish and give it to Israela nd take areas that were majority non-jewish and give it to Palestine. They took every area that had a significant Jewsih population and gave it to Israel and gave the almost homogenously non-jewish areas and gave that to palestine. This resulted in Israel (the jewish state) having an higher population than Palestine (the non-Jewish state) despite the fact that over 2/3rds of the population of palestine was not Jewish.
Israel was 55% Jewish while Palestine was 99% non-Jewish.
The Jews in Palestine were overwhelmingly immigrants having immigranted between the end of WWI and mostly after Jewish persecution in Europe really got off the ground.
The muslims in Palestine were mostly born there (based on British census and assumed population growth rates) the rest were from the immediate area.
And there is no obligation on the part of the palestinians to stop fighting.
BTW, when you say “many Jews already lived in teh area” Are you talking about Palestine? How many jews were there in palestine in the 1700 or at the beginning of the 20th century? As a gross number or percentage of the population, how many jews were there?
I realize that the brits were dirty double dealers and they made promises to both that they could not keep and we should put much of the blame for this clusterfuck at their doorstep.
Well, now I feel bad. Please ignore any snark that I threw in your direction in the past few hours.
So seriously i asked you to recommend one book to read if I was only going to read one book. You probably missed it or thought I was being snarky but i wasn’t. You seem to have read a thing or two in teh area and I was wondering which one you thought would be most helpful
Let’s be practical. Israel’s not going anywhere. Not for a long time.
If they care anything at all for their civilian’s lives and property, there certainly is.
No problem. The internet makes us all vastly harsher than we mean to be.
Yes, I was talking about specifically in Palestine. I don’t have specific numbers (I doubt there are really specific numbers for demographics by religion for the region), but it probably wasn’t a large percentage. You have to remember that the area was dominated first by Christians (who didn’t exactly look favorably on Jews either) and then Muslims, which tended to keep down the Jewish population in the region. The point I was making is that there were Jews there, especially in the larger cities, all along…they didn’t all migrate from somewhere else. And the longing or whatever you want to call it for Jews to move back to their ancestral lands marked by the phrase This Year/Next Year in Jerusalem has pretty much resonated down through the ages…long before there was a formal Zionism or Zionism movement.
And yes…the Brits didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory over this whole mess. Neither did the other Europeans in the region, to be honest. No one comes out of this cluster fuck (including the US and Israel) smelling or looking good. But you have to look at this from the whole historical context and how it got to where it is today, and why it is how it is today.
Well, sure, I agree that the Jews have been in Israel at least since Joshua. I am not saying that there shouldn’t be any Jews in the middle east. I’m saying that when the Zionists created a Jewish state, they took something and that taking seems to be continuing with settlement activity.
You can justify keeping what you have through right of conquest but if you want a lasting peace, you have to make that peace and right now the Palestinians have nothing to offer but the cessation of hostilities and israel has not offered them anything to make them want to give up the right of return. Like I said, I think the Camp David Summit envisioned a $30 billion restitution fund which comes to $3K-$6K per Palestinian. That doesn’t seem like a lot. Make the number high enough and enough will choose money over the right of return.
Until the hard-liners execute anyone who publicly accepts.
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Well, sure, I agree that the Jews have been in Israel at least since Joshua. I am not saying that there shouldn’t be any Jews in the middle east. I’m saying that when the Zionists created a Jewish state, they took something and that taking seems to be continuing with settlement activity.
[/QUOTE]
No, you are wrong. The ‘Zionists’ didn’t ‘take’ anything, unless you count ‘take’ as 'we occupied enemy territory after they tried to wipe us from the map and failed. If you mean that the ‘Zionists’ took the original Israel, that’s wrong as well…the UN attempted to broker the exact solution you seem to want. Israel took the deal for half a loaf. The Palestinians, at the urgings of their Arab neighbors didn’t. So sad. To paraphrase from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade…they chose unwisely. As for Jews in the ME, you concede that Jews were there all along. Good enough. Do you know how the rest of the Jews got there during the time period you set? THEY didn’t ‘take’ anything either…they bought lands and titles from people who, at the time, thought that land was worthless.
How can you have a lasting peace with an organization who’s charter clearly states they want to destroy your nation and wipe out your people? Consider…Israel unilaterally gave up it’s claims to the entire Gaza region (which they had won through ‘right of conquest’), ceding it to the Palestinians…who elected Hamas to lead them. You know, that groups who’s charter clearly states there can be no peace and that their stated aim is to wipe out Israel and cleanse the region of Jews? That Hamas? The one who keeps attacking Israel every chance it gets?
So, how did making concessions (short of closing down Israel and every Jew in the region killing themselves) help things? From Israel’s perspective, why would they ever make any concessions again, when doing so bought them NOTHING?
I suspect it depends on how high the number is.
They weren’t entitled to half a loaf.
And yes, the Palestinians chose unwisely. They could have been involved in setting the borders of the two states and perhaps gotten a more equitable partition. If Israel was limited to those areas where Jews were in the majority, Israel might have looked more like Gaza (in size). Instead, they turned their back on the process and the zionists were able to make a case for including all areas that had a significant jewish population. But they were not obligated to go along with the partition, bad choice in retrospect.
Well it depends on the time period but it seems like there was a huge wave of Jews would best be described as refugees or illegal aliens or people otherwise fleeing persecution. How much land do you think was Jewish owned in 1948 compared to he tsize of Israel? Its not like Jaffa, Hebron and Haifa were settled by Zionists. These cities were occupied.
Yes you have to satisfy them somehow or destroy them utterly or you will never know peace. They have a legitimate grievance and you have to address that grievance.
Every arab nation in the region signed onto the three no’s of Khartoum and Israel has somehow managed to make peace with several Arab states. You can do so with the Palestinians if you are willing to address their grievances, their greivances are more significant than the grievances of distant arab states so you’ll have to dig deeper but they are the aggrieved party. You can only point to a piece of paper written by people who have almost no ability to destroy you as proof that you are in mortal peril.
In law there is a concept of proximate cause and the proximate cause of the Arab israeli conflict was zionism not hamas.
Was the UNILATERAL disengagement from Gaza a concession? Or did Israel have its own reasons for doing this? You can’t keep pretending that you were acting out of charity and good will when Sharon did this.
The Palestinians sound like the biggest crybaby poor losers in the history of the world. What is this “legitimate grievance” of which you speak? Legitimate to whom? To them and only them, is what it sounds like. “They weren’t entitled to half the loaf” you say. Why not? Since when does the loser get to pick the terms?
Ibn Warraq, I am not on this site to be offensive to anyone, may I ask where you were living when you were two?
I was born in Iran. My family left when I was 2. Before you ask, it was before the Revolution nor were my parents fans of the Pahlevis.
I lived in Iran as well, not born, a memory I have is silly really, I remember when you went to the pharmacy they didn’t give you change they would give you bandaids. Still doesn’t make sense to me.