Israel - can someone tell me the facts?

Factual Questions
1

Like:

  1. How did all the Jews end up there after WW2?

  2. Where the Palestinians peaceful before WW2? What country was it?

2
  1. Palestine was a British protectorate before WWII. It was probably relatively peaceful – the concept of independence hadn’t taken root and the British didn’t do anything strongly offensive to the Palestinians.
3
  1. All the Jews did not end up there.
  2. There has been violence in that part of the world for centuries.
4

They didnt? How are they there then?

Between who?

5

I don’t think this is Israel.

<looks around, curiously>

Nope - still Los Angeles, as of 16:40PST

6

Oh, I forgot to add…

;j

7

The roots of the [modern] problems between Jews and Palestinians goes back to British policies for the region starting with the end of World War One. This site seems to give a reasonably balanced synopsis of the period.

8

DISCLAIMER: the site I linked to above is part of ArabNet, so they can’t help but have a bit of an agenda. I meant that it was reasonably balanced considering the source.

Carry on.

9

I think the OP is poorly worded and too simplistic and it is impossible to write an accurate response within the limits of a post. There have been countless threads on this topic where you can find much information to answer the OP.

I will let the OP speak for himself but, in an attempt to be helpful, I will say that I believe when he says “How did all the Jews end up there after WW2?” he is referring to all the jews who ended up there and not implying all of the Jews in the world did in fact end up there.

10

Thanks for that link Cerowin. Basically this is the end result:

So yojimboguy you see, the jews did end up there.

11

Yes, that is what I meant. To assume otherwise would be a tad stupid.

12

Sailor is right, but let me try to give a thumbnail synopsis of “how did all the Jews end up there after WWII?” Jews have been “there” for thousands and thousands of years. Around 1900 there was a mass immigration to the land that is now Israel. The Arab link gives what has happened since then. The Jews got the land from purchase from the Arabs. In many cases, the Arabs sold desert land and got, what they thought, was a good price. When the Israelis irrigated the land and made it valuable, the Arabs thought they were swindled, and wanted the land back.

You have to realize that much of the land was in possession of Arab tenants, while the title was actually held by Arabs in other nations. The Jews bought this land also and kicked the tenants out. Something they did not take kindly to. But, in any event, the Jews bought the land and had legal title.

That’s how “all the Jews ended up there.”

13

This thread is cross-posted to GD, perhaps inadvertently.

Just noting this since I replied ( very briefly ) to that one :slight_smile: . I imagine it could actually fit into either fora easily enough ( But GD might be more appropriate considering the almost inevitable debates that arise on this issue ).

  • Tamerlane
14
  1. The Palestinians were not peaceful before WWII. There were many anti-Zionist pogroms, most notably in Hebron in 1929 and in Jerusalem in 1936.
15

Not spectacularly more so than anywhere else, far as I can tell. Excluding the Crusades and a few other scattered periods, it has more often than not been a sleepy backwater. This was certainly the case for most of the four centuries of ottoman rule.

While not disagreeing with the second sentence, I’d quibble with the first. Granted no people, anywhere, have ever been entirely peaceful, saying the Palestinians were “not peaceful before WW II” is pretty broad. Do you mean they were not noticeably peaceful in the 1700’s, for instance?

A more precise answer, IMHO, would be to say that the region of Palestine was pretty quiet pre-WW I and only gradually began to experience more inter-communal violence as the years marched on and the deomgraphic split became more and more pronounced. And compared to the situation today ( which is preety unfair, I’ll grant - The situation today is a horror-show ), the situation in Palestine was poisitively benign pre-WW II.

  • Tamerlane
16

Just to clarify - I don’t mean to downplay any of the inter-communal violence in the inter-war period. There was certainly some real ugliness. But my understanding was that it was a slow-building process, that occurred simultaneously with an increasing radicalization of both the Arab and Jewish populations. And the roots weren’t terrible deep, time-wise.

Before this radicalization I don’t think there was a great deal of inter-communal violence by local Arabs towards the indigenous Sephardic Jews, for instance. Though I’m certainly open to being corrected on that count.

  • Tamerlane