Well, because a lot of the wars and conflicts in the middle east didn’t involve Israel at all. The overthrow of the Shah, the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the rise of Bin Laden, the war between Libya and Egypt, etc., Israel didn’t have anything to do with that, and it’s safe to assume that these conflicts still would occur.
Then, who knows what would have happened in the land that’s now Israel and Palestine if it hadn’t been created? Would there be an Arab Palestinian state? It would have to deal with Jewish resistance forces that would want an independent state (and remember, there were half a million Jews in 1945, compared to just over a million Arabs…so you’re talking about a third of the population). It would also have to deal with Jordan, which had claims on the West Bank, as well as Syria, which claimed the northern border. So there would be plenty of opportunity there for conflict.
So it’s not that “Those people just like killing each other”, but that there are a lot of conflicts in the Middle East other than the existance of Israel, and that, for most of the Middle East, Israel is nothing more than a minor annoyance…they have other problems to deal with.
That is a bit difficult, the closest thing I can come up with is describing Fundamentalist values. Or listening to their rhetoric.
We in Europe had mad clerics, who had to be excluded from political control.
I don’t recall us doing much to to anyone in the ME during the Cold War, the USA kicked the UK, France and Israel out of Suez, the Shah got a bit of CIA assistance, the UK helped out with Oman (and a few other things that are not general knowledge).
That is not a bad argument - it is a bit like saying dogs bark - empirically true :-}
I don’t mean to derail the thread but how much of that violence would have escaped the Middle East if Israel didn’t exist? If we set up Israel in Germany or Austria, would we have terrorists flying planes into building here anyway? Is the fact that we tolerate homosexuality and miniskirts going to doom us in any event or would the conflicts have remained regional?
I know you’re not being serious, but I’ll answer the question in a serious way:
IMHO, No. I still think decolonisation (as pushed by the UN) is a Very Bad Thing, but I’ll leave my reasonings for another thread, as I know most people disagree with me.
Oh, good grief. I guess the fact that Israel has been forced to this ‘Apartheid rule over the Palestinians’ has no bearing on things, ehe BG? :rolleyes: Originally Israeli intention WAS to allow Palestinians who chose to stay on Israeli (read the original charter that Israel agreed to as part of the UN partition) land to both keep that land AND have full rights…it was only after the Palestinian’s chose to toss out the UN’s partition plan and side with the massed Arab Armies to impose a one state solution (in their dreams, as I SERIOUSLY doubt those Arab Armies would have, after slaughtering every Jew they could find simply hand the land over to the ‘Palestinians’) that the trouble started.
Even so, Arab Israeli non-Jewish citizens DO have most rights of Jewish citizens in Israel (off the top of my head, the only ‘right’ they don’t have is conscription of military service). Care to tell me exactly why Israel SHOULD offer full citizenship type rights to the hostile non-Israeli Palestinians: a people who demand to be separate and who are obviously hostile in the extreme toward Israel?
Do you consider this a reasonable demand that most countries would meekly go along with? ‘Sure Palestinians…though you chose not to have your own country initially, though you have striven literally for decades to have it all for yourself, though you have been hostile towards us and our people in the extreme, though you have repeatedly attacked our very citizens, sure! Come on in and enjoy the full rights our own citizens enjoy…though you don’t want to BE citizens or part of Israel, and though a not insignificant percentage of you will simply use this to strap on an explosive vest and go shopping at the local mall…’
Yeah, that really makes em the bad guys. They are JUST like South Africa was, ehe? :dubious:
As for the West Bank, Israel’s only mistake there (and it WAS a major mistake) was in not formally annexing that land when they first took it. The West Bank, along with the Golan Heights are strategically important land for Israel…bummer that Jordan, Syria and Egypt (who got back most of their land) lost land in a war of aggression, ehe? I suppose to be ‘good guys’ in your book that land should have been given back so that they could have another go at a war of aggression with all the advantages? Sort of a handicapping of the mighty Arab armies…give em a sporting chance to win this time, ehe?
I suppose it hinges on what ‘recently’ means to you BG…and to Oy! (I always think ‘Ake! Ake!!’ whenever I see his username :)). From Wiki:
I’d say that 1921 is fairly recent, when the yard stick of history of that region is used. The portion known as ‘Palestine’ of course was not a soveriegn nation, nor its people perminent inhabitants. It was merely a province in the old Ottoman Empire. Jordan of course, like most of the other nations in the region, was a construct of the post war (WWI that is) partitioning of the entire region between the Brits and French after the Ottoman Empire folded.
As to the OP:
If the state of Israel had never been created, the prospects of peace in the ME would be about what they are now. In fact, I think we’d have had several more vicious wars there…as the various Arab constructed nations battled it out with each other a la the Iran/Iraq war in the 80’s. Without the reasonably unifying goal of a common Jewish enemy to put them in some rough kind of alliance they would have been at each others throats…and they probably would have had about the same level of ‘success’ that the Iranian’s and Iraqi’s enjoyed pounding at each other for nearly a decade to no purpose (except a hell of a lot of dead young men).
Well, yes. Al Qaeda’s actions against the US really have nothing to do with Israel. Bin Laden is upset with us because we stationed troops in Saudi Arabia just before and since the Gulf War, and he thinks that Saudi Arabia is “holy land” that non-Muslims shouldn’t be in, and also because we support the government of Saudi Arabia, and he wants the Saudi monarchy overthrown.
Now, the Saudi government exists because of the actions of the British just after WWI, when Philby convinced the British to back ibn Saud over the Hashemites. They’re American allies because they’re one of the largest producers of petroleum, which we need .
Now, US troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia due to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, and because we were afraid they’d then invade Arabia. Iraq invaded Kuwait because it wanted Kuwait’s oil, and also because Iraq was in debt to Kuwait and the other gulf countries. It accrued the debt when it fought its war with Iran, which it fought because it wanted an ocean port, and also because it was encouraged by the Arab countries of the middle east, who were afraid that a strong Shi’ite theocratic Iran would destabilize them. Iran is a Shi’ite theocracy because they had a revolution against the secular, modernizing autocratic government of the Shah in 1979. The Shah was able to have so much power because, back in the 50’s, the US helped Iranian royalists overthrow a popular Iranian prime minister who had succeeded in limiting the Shah’s power. We did this because he was a socialist who wanted to nationalize foreign industries, and because he had ties to the Tudah, the Iranian Communist Party, which was controled by the Soviet Union.
How many of these wars can be blamed upon the antique political systems that the British set up? i mean, Jordan was given the Hashemite clan (which rules to this day), Iraq was bequethed to another “royal family” (now dead). Suppose versailles had included a provision for real democratic governments in 1918-the whole mess might have been avoided. Of course, the next big blowup wil be the fall of the tottering house of saud-and that doesn’t involve Israel.
In 1918 (and a bit later) the political systems that were set up in the Middle East were not exactly ‘antique’.
Democratic government was a pretty new concept to quite a lot of Europe, let alone the ME. Most people nowadays would not have said that Britain’s government was ‘democratic’ by current standards.
In the ME the problem was to find people that would be acceptable as ‘leaders’, sensibly Britain et al decided against ‘colonial’ government (actually I would say Imperial) probably because they could see it would become a blood bath.
I’m not so sure that the next blow-up will be Saudi, they have been in a fragile state for quite some time. I would not be surprized if there were an outbreak of Fundamentalism in Syria or Egypt. Things can happen where you don’t expect them.
You can’t simply tell people they’re a democracy and expect there’ll be no more problems. The colonial powers tried this in Africa and the United States is trying it in Iraq. Democratic governments only work when the people in a country want them to.
If israel didn’t exist the american jewish communauty would be doubled.
The americans wouldn’t be hated.
The palestinians would not have been victims of ethnic cleasing and palestine would still have 3% of jews 32% of christians and 65% of muslims as per 1911 sensus.
Judaism would not be confused with sionism and jewish fundamentalism and its muslim conterpart would not have their ideologies poisoning our daily life. None the less they would still exist with a far reduced influence as they always existed in any dogma religious or not.
The tension between arab countries and the rest of the world would be reduced but not inexistent.
It is not in the muslim tradition to be democratic almost in this part of the world where you can still find slaves living in the Arabic peninsula.
The need for secure energy source would probably have the west policing the area.
The mollahs in Iran would still be in power whilst some argue that the Shah was a victim of poor Amrican foreign policy which seems to always be the case with the middle east
But lets be optimistic, the jewish lobby having no sionist state to defend promote trade relations even with Iran which in turn liberalise the Iranian society.
Now the Russian war of Afghanistan still hapen but the jewish lobby with their understanding of religious bigotry dissuade the white house to train the jihadist and
convince the middle eastern dictatures of the dire consequences of supporting an insurgency with religious fanatics.
Sadam, Assad and Khadafi stil exist as they are not the biproduct of a jewish state in Arab land. But thanks again to the understanding that the jewish have of the Arab psyche they have become more open to the west well before the fall of the Berlin wall. Judasm and islam are two secular and patriarcal religion whose precepts have yet to evolve and as such will always the seeds of integrism. As such they use to approach each others with more deference and respect, this is exactly what is missing in the west foreign policy.
The jewish sionist dominated lobby in the west is aiming to disrupt the nations states through out the middle east to insure the safety and expension of Israel. To that aim they infiltrated western political decision making and controled the media. It is nearly taboo to critisise openly Israel on Western media. The sionist is a reaction to german
nazism from which lessons where learnt. Like the nazy the need for endoctrination of the population is important, control of how the information is presented at home and abroad. I would argue that the jewish diaspora would still have controled the media without the existence of Israel and that propaganda apparatus would have helped to improve the relation between islam and christianity.
This is important because the fall of communism has brought back the chasm between the differents religions.
The inexistence of Israel could have seen a growing number of atheist in the muslim maybe not in par as in the christian world but spread enough to conteract integrism.
With no focal point for hatred it is difficult for extremism to take root. The Arab spring never hapened as arab society had an organic evolution towards a half democratic haf totallytarian system more in par with their religious and cultural differences. In these new societies yes women do have the same rights as the men but they do have more than in this reality. With no outside evil to focus the collective rage of the populations governments do tend to the civil societry no per altruism but for survival and this leads a step further toward democracy.
The arab world is prosperous and has such the growing number of the middle class is changing the attitudes the entertainment industry is booming hotel, bars ,restaurants and night clubs even a dysnee park opened its doors in Catar. European, Asian tourists are flocking by the millions. There is talk of opening casinos in Bahrein. Businesses have changed the perception of the middle east, Even Saoudi Arabia has passed new laws to liberalise society.
The new moto is petrol will not last forever.
Yes this is an utopic view but a prosperus society rarely rarely breeds fanatics and a world with Israel well we all know what it did.
Now lets look at how Israel came to be. It is born of the shame the christian world felt when it realised the extant of the nazi final solution. Well the governants , the vatican, everybody knew but did not want to admit. Well as the forces of the axe retreated deep into Germany the mass graves the concentration camps every thing was exposed. Deep shame and disgust spread through Europe and America. In fact from France to Ukraine and all the local euopean population handed over the jews to the german. In fact everyone helped the Nazies and in some cases even the church.
It is in the middle of this climate that sionism is born.
The rest is history The jewish ask for a state in palestine they are timidly proposed one in Australia which they refused under the pretence that Israel is their promised land.
We could argue that most inhabitants of the original Israel converted first to Christianism then others to Islam few centuries later to the point that during the crusades they were already reduced to tiny minority according to all records. So who went back to Israel. Well Ukranians Tchecs Polishs…
The semite jewish or I will call them the closest group to the original ethnic jewish inhabitants of Israel in the antiquity. Lets not forget that according to the bible they came out of Egypt they are not eurasians. Well, they were living in the arab world, from Marocco to Irak some even in Persia. Now the jewish faith like any other religion was spread to other ethnic group of Asia and europe. This does not give them any rights of possession of the land over the Palestinians who in all likeness are the direct descendants of the original israelites.
In short Sionists with their ethnic cleasing are killing the remnants of the original israelites.
Incredible but true