Finn Again's Wake

The BBQ Pit
501

Would be far better if you read for comprehension, rather than filtered through your ideological filters.

Of course, I did not say anything like what you wrote there, I said that standards changed and Gandi won by moral suasion, and that had Britain decided to be bloody minded (I would add like the 19th century, such as the Boer War), the colonies could have been strung along another decade or so, but at the cost of ending up with a bloody resolution a la the Portuguese. This is clear comparable fact, the UK made the active choice not to be like the Portuguese (or the French in Algeria), although can’t claim it wasn’t close. The lesson is there is are moral choices occupiers eventually have to make.

That rather reads differently than your straw man.

The reality is that changed morality after WWII made that unacceptable, although it was within capacity (certainly it was within the Portuguese dictatorship with rather sadder state of administration).

The reference to France is merely historical, it was the French who fought a bloody war in Algeria, not the British. Over settler colonialism

The reality is the resistance stayed generally peaceful and Gandi’s methods worked due to changed morality. Salazar’s Portugol would have disappeared Gandi and the others.

Of course, as I already noted, that would have merely kicked the ball down ten or fifteen years and made the resolution a bloody mess like Angloa, Mocambique, Guinea Bissau.

But that’s somewhat discomfitting to your straw man, eh what?

That doesn’t read differently than what I wrote - not your straw man (not sure if that is due to impoverished reading skills or ideological blinders, but your problem, not mine).

What is a joke is someone writing that Falklands is held for “prestige reasons” - no one in their fucking right mind would write some silly clap trap, not even as a pitiful attempt at an insult.

But of course what I wrote - again in contrast to your sad straw man - was that changed morality which rendered past habit drove decolonisation, and yes I would say the Empire decolonisation was morally superior to what happened under the Portuguese and the Belgians, and generally better than the French if you count Algeria or say Guinea - we never ripped out the phones in fits of childish spite as the French did. Not that I would claim great moral distance between the French and British empires, but it does say something that the Commonwealth are generally better performers as compared to their French peer groups.

Sad. I suppose the mirror is uncomfortable.

502

Thing is, though, there’s nothing in your explanation that provides conclusive proof that the choice Britain made was a moral one.

Based on the way you describe Britain’s options, and the way you describe the course of British decolonization (compared to the French and Portuguese experience), we could just as easily conclude that Britain decolonized for reasons of self-interested pragmatism.

There’s nothing in your argument that precludes this possibility. Britain might have said, in effect, “Well, we could hang on to the colonies for a while longer, but if we try to do it, there’s a good chance that all this peaceful protest will turn into armed resistance. We could suppress it, like the French and the Portuguese do, but in the long run it will be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain our dominance against a local population that is committed to independence, and willing to fight for it.”

I’m not saying that this is what happened, necessarily. But, based on the argument you are making, it is just as plausible. If you want to make an argument about motivations, which is what you’re doing with your argument about morals, then you need to provide some direct evidence for this. It’s clear from the history that Britain chose to do things differently from the French and Portuguese; what is not so clear is that the reason for this difference can be ascribed wholly, or even largely, to a differing sense of morality. It could have been simply a better sense of pragmatism, of realpolitik.

Admittedly, pragmatism and morality seem rather interchangeable for some actors in international affairs, but we should still do our best not to confuse the two things.

503

Yes, but if enough of us insist on it, morality and pragmatism will be effectively identical. When we cease to avert our eyes.

504

The settlements are usually built on empty land, so there’s not really much actual displacement of people going on. The big issue with the routing of the barrier is that in some cases, it’s separating Palestinian farming villages from their fields. It’s not that the barrier is being built on occupied land (generally), but that the barrier limits necessary free movement of Palestinians. That’s one of those things that has been litigated a lot, gone up to the Supreme Court a lot of times, and probably will continue to.

As for the “no serious plans to make the West Bank part of Israel”, pretty much everyone agrees that the West Bank won’t be annexed, and that there will eventually be an independent Palestinian state. The big question being debated is what the borders of that state will be. That’s primarily what people are fighting about right now, with the Israeli right wanting to incorporate most of the settlement blocks within Israel, the Israeli left wanting the border to be closer to the Green Line, and the Palestinian moderates wanting the border to be on the Green Line, with Palestinian control of East Jerusalem.

505

Isn’t that because the Jewish race gives that privledge, regardless of orthodoxy? The nation of Israel was created FOR Jews after the Holocaust. Some Arab natives were replaced/displaced, and they have an honest gripe.

What I’m going to ask is…if Israel were America, would those displaced natives even exist, or would they be wiped out? What would America do if it were Israel? Would it be any different?

If not, then why is ascribing an ethnic cleansing charge to Israel, the Jews themselves victims of the same during WWII (and let’s be honest, pretty much since there has been Jews), stick to their actions now?

506

Why is the situation in Israel different than colonization in the past, if you want to argue it that way?

507

The colonization of Ireland resulted in 400 years of violence.

I suppose you could aspire to that if you like.

508

So, in wmfellows’ view, a post-WWII Britain that had already had several colonial possessions stripped from it by military force, was being forced out of others by impending revolt, and was drastically scaling down its military due to bankruptcy, decided to decolonize solely due to an improved sense of morality?

What a load of hogwash.

There’s nothing wrong with pragmatism (something that will hopefully take hold amongst Israel and its enemies sufficient to break the current bloody stalemate), but let’s not confuse it with superior morality.

I supposed there are a few Brits like wmfellows who need a figleaf to cover the loss of Britain’s grand place in history. For them it takes the form of “we British are ever so morally superior to the rest of you lot”.

It’s less destructive than the jingoism that which led to British colonialism in the first place, but profoundly stupid in its overweening self-righteousness*.
*if I’ve somehow misread wmfellows and the problem is instead a profound ignorance of history, so sorry old chap - but then you really do need to read up on it if you want to be taken seriously about the Middle East and related subjects.

509

I’m still a bit… amused… by the claim that mideastweb shouldn’t be trusted because it stated that the British Mandate was designed to set up a Jewish homeland. Since, after all, the Mandate was very ambiguous and only said that it was designed to set up a Jewish national home and that it was being set up to allow close settlement of Jews in the entire area something like half a dozen times. And all that in the context of explaining exactly how it was going to set up the Jewish national home, including several explicit mentions in its preamble and explicit confirmation via the Balfour Declaration. Of course, I must have missed the retraction that was immediately posted, withdrawing that honest, well-intentioned factual error. Equally obviously I am a bad, bad man for alleging dishonesty, what with the absolute blizzard of retractions that the usual suspects voice when their claims are shown to be false.

Luckily we have such knowledgeable and keen eyed reporters of history as wm, who are always ready to educate us about unreliable cites, even if they don’t know what they’re talking about.

510

In case anyone is curious, here’s a copy of the mandate:

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp

Here’s what exactly it says about setting up a Jewish state:

So that does suggest that at least one of the goals of the Mandate WAS to set up a Jewish state in the area.

511

Nah, it’s very ambiguous.

(On a serious note, it isn’t necessarily clear if the intention was to set up a Jewish sovereign state or merely a semi-autonomous Jewish state. It is, however, not at all unclear that they were most certainly setting up a Jewish homeland of one sort or another.)

512

Complete with laws that let anyone with some claim to be Jewish move there, but never those who were kicked out. Hence the “Zionism is racism” charge that gets so hotly denied but never refuted. What other past colonizations have had something comparable? South Africa, maybe.

You really don’t know much about American history if you’re asking that. There certainly were natives displaced, the ones who were left after 90+% *were *wiped out, by diseases introduced unintentionally by Europeans, leaving the land mostly vacant. It took several centuries to resolve the repercussions of what we now generally understand to have been a disgraceful and unrationalizable pattern of racism and destruction. Even so, the native population we have today, now all citizens, has a pattern of privileges under law as some effort at compensation.

What would Israel do if it took any lessons from the history of America, or for that matter any of the other places that have been colonized and have dealt with violent repercussions ever since?

And there we see the “Finally it’s *our *turn to do it to someone else” mindset previously mentioned.

513

Did anybody ever live there before? What happened to them? :dubious: Disingenuous.

That’s the immediate, practical issue, along with such “minor” matters as property ownership and destruction of croplands, but there’s a broader one of it seemingly representing a unilateral attempt to define a national border.

Would you say that is true of the Jews moving there, and the proponents of the Eretz Yisrael attitude in general? That the squatters are going to be Palestinians someday, not Israelis anymore? I’m sure you can see the basis for skepticism on that point.

Being debated internally, you mean, as if it were strictly an internal matter, and not actually negotiated with the people who would share that border. You do see the problem there, don’t you?

514

As the Mandate calls for Jewish settlement, without prejudicing the rights, etc. of the non-Jewish population and means of granting “Palestinian Citizenship” it is rather forced to read the Mandate as focused on the creation of a Jewish state.

That is certainly how the Zionist orgs in London wanted to read it, for their own purposes, but to blandly as The Goal of the Mandate is a distortion pure and simple. The Mandate was ambiguous and British goals contradictory.

The languge for reference:
*“in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”
*

“The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.”

This is not the language of a Mandate aimed at setting up a Jewish state, its the language of a British empire document trying to use divide and conquer for its own purposes within two communities.

As for the usual Settlement apologist spin

You Apologists seem to have made quite the habit out of Strawmen and gross distortion.

“Several colonial possessions stripped by military force”: You mean by the Japanese Empire?

That has fuck all to say about British colonial policy (any more than British victory in Canada said something particular about French empire).

Let’s talk about Malaysia since you seem to like to play sweeping yet vague assertion.

And of course, let me note that you once again grossly distort what I wrote in service of your sad straw men arguments. I noted that the British government made an active choice relative to other possible choices - not even theoretical ones insofar as we see the other European colonial powers in actual fact clinging bloodily on to their possessions for far longer than the UK. I note as well that I claimed no morality for the Empire in its actual operation (e.g. the Boer War example) - further highlighting how ridiculous your penny-novel straw-men are.

The instance of Malaysia is instructive, the Labour government wanted out, although some influential parties in Malaysia preferred longer British presence due to the Communist threat (in particular with its strong ethnic component, the Chinese). Indeed, that was a such a strong driver we saw the Malay Union proposal of 46 pitched overboard in favour of the gradual evolution to independence as the Federation of the Malay, independent in 1957 a full decade after the war.

Similar evolutionary settlements are common throughout the Commonwealth for decolonisation and (again relative to what other colonial powers did) show far better behaviour. Moral? Yes, relative to the choices seen on the part of the other powers.
Yes, indeed, post-WWII budget woes and pressing Home problems made keeping the Empire a losing long-run proposition, but I reiterate, we know from other contemporaneous colonial powers of as budget stressed and lacking UK resources (noting again Portugal), the choices made were not only pragmatic but morally superior to the others.

Describes your cartoon version of history adequately.

So in effect your reasoning on history is subsidiary to your desire to argue a certain line relative to Israel.

I suppose there are always a lot of provincials who have such small minds that they feel small due to their history, or perhaps personal imperfections. That’s their problem not mine.

Of course you are, you’re disingenuous scum, rather like the apologisers for Apartheid.

515

No. Most of the settlements in the West Bank are built on lands where nobody has lived recently.

That is a broader problem, but it’s partly caused by Palestinian refusal to participate in bilateral attempts to define the border.

That’s not true of most the settlers, obviously, but the settlers make up a lot of the right wing fringe I was talking about. But even among the settlers, you’ll find people who will say that there should be a Palestinian state in the West Bank (just not including my settlement).

Being debated internally and externally. That was the whole point of Camp David and Taba, to try to negotiate the final border. And remember, too, at Annapolis in 2007, both sides committed themselves to a two state solution.

516

How does that language in that Mandate not indicate an intention to set up a Jewish state? That whole “so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship” of Jews from elsewhere seems to be intended to contribute to the idea of Palestine becoming the Jewish national home (said Jewish national home not prejudicing the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities, of course.) But how does “We’re going to make sure all the Jews who want to can become Palestinian citizens” not help contribute to turning Palestine Jewish?

517

It does, and it also denies it in the same breath, it is a marvel of ambiguity. Much like our own 2nd Amendment, which clearly states that every citizen has an absolute right to own a weapon, and clearly states that this is only in service of a well-regulated militia. If they didn’t mean that such rights were dependent on membership in a well-ordered militia, why did they say it? And if they didn’t mean that such rights could not be abridged under an circumstances, militia or no, then why did they say that?

There is little doubt that the intent of the Mandate was to provide a place where displaced Jews might find a home. And there is no doubt that some of the people involved in the wording of the Mandate did ensvision a Jewish state. The fact that the Mandate does not explicitly say so is clearly because there was some resistance to that notion, which necessitated settling on an ambiguous statement of wholesome and admirable intentions, without soiling itself with the stark realities to be expected.

Thus, once again, demonstrating the wonderful paving power of good intentions.

518

Readers should probably note the tactics wm is employing. His first argument was not that the Mandate didn’t set up a Jewish state, but that it wasn’t designed to setup a Jewish homeland. Obviously, he either hadn’t read the Mandate or didn’t quite care what it actually said, since it mentions again and again that it was designed to set up a Jewish national home and one cannot honestly disagree on that point (wm disagreed anyways).
Without a retraction on that factual error, he has moved on to arguing that it really wasn’t about setting up a Jewish state, and let’s forget all that ‘homeland’ business.

The new objections seem to serve the function as post-hoc rationalizations. After the League of Nations agreed that the entire Mandate of Palestine would be the Jewish national home and open to “close settlement” by Jews, claiming that allowing an unlimited number of immigrants and Jewish government as long as it’s in accord with the Mandatory authority shows a lack of support for a Jewish state is, well, curious.
Likewise, saying that it’s designed to set up a Jewish national home but they can’t prejudice the civil and religious rights of non-Jews means exactly what it says, that there will be a Jewish national home but that the rights of non-Jews to worship as they see fit and to have civil rights won’t be abridged. How that’s supposed to mean anything but that Arabs have to have religious and civil rights in the Jewish national home is anybody’s guess.
Evidently wm honestly thinks that having to respect civil and religious rights of people in your territory means you can’t be governing it. Or at least, that’s what he’s arguing even if he doesn’t think it, I guess.

To say nothing of the fact that the British explicitly confirmed that the text which was to be used in the Mandate was crafted in accordance with the Zionist goals as expressed by Weitzman, who had been lobbying them for some time.

[

](Middle East Documents Balfour Declaration)

Likewise, the Feisel-Wieitzman agreement reflected their understanding that Palestine would be distinct and separate from the Arab states.

[

](MidEast Web - Feisal-Weizmann Agreement)

Along the same lines, Lloyd George, who took the British Empire through WWI and was instrumental in informing the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference, said in reference to [del]legal Jewish immigration by buying and living on land[/del] Jewish Colonial Apartheid Devils:

[

](Middle East Documents Balfour Declaration)

It should also be noted that the final Partition plan was indeed drawn along ethnic majority lines, albeit after Britain took a huge chunk of the “Jewish national home” and created Transjordan.

Again, wm is displaying that general ignorance about history doesn’t get in the way of arguing passionately about it. The way he’s arguing, one would almost think that the British crafted the Mandate in order to ‘divide and conquer’. The only problem is, of course, that they didn’t.
Which even a cursory knowledge of history shows.

The Mandates were drafted by the League of Nations, not solely by the individual Mandatory power. Likewise, the Mandates were approved by the individual nations that participated in the League of Nation’s creation of the Mandates, not solely by the Mandatory powers. It is, shall we say, beyond just a bit odd to suggest that France helped draft or approved the British Mandate in order to help Britain to gain an even stronger colonial foothold in the region by pitting both sets of its populace against each other. Especially considering that France wanted the area of Palestine for its own sphere of influence.

519

Do not speculate on the motivations of the French. That way lies madness.

520

It’s more fun to excoriate them for it, anyway. Whatever it is. You don’t even have to understand it.