No one really knew what the two bombs dropped on Japan would do. They ultimately saved likely millions of lives from not just combat and traditional bombing but starvation in Japan and its occupied territories.
The world will be a far more dangerous and violent place without them.
Arguably that is so.
That does not, however, bar nuclear weapons being used again.
Agreed. Mao said it best, or maybe worst:
Chairman Mao Zedong famously declared, “I’m not afraid of nuclear war. There are 2.7 billion people in the world; it doesn’t matter if some are killed. China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left.”
Well, until it does, and then it’ll be a billion deaths. I happen to agree that nukes have been a net stabilizing force, but they’ve also upped the ante tremendously and net stabilizing does not mean 100% stable.
I doubt that. They already tried it in 1967 and it did not go well for them at all. Israel doesn’t just have air superiority, they have better tank crews, better infantry doctrine, far better special forces, better engineering and logistics, they’re just better at fighting wars than their neighbors. And they had to fight for survival, which is more of a motivator than their opponents, who already had their own territory to retreat back to if things went badly.
Well if anyone’s in any doubt why this will continue for decades more, this thread is a good summary. Both sides framing their own actions only as retaliation. Whatever violent action is justified because it’s just fighting back.
And when I brought up settlement building, there was one non sequitur answer, and the rest was crickets. Because there is no answer. You can’t claim to be the victim at the same time as playing fucking Risk
But admitting that that’s just wrong seems to be too difficult for those who want to blanket defend everything their side does.
If you want an honest answer to “the settlements” its because Israel is a democratic chimera of conflicting interests that enacts widely divergent policy in dissonance to its long terms goals.
The Israeli government is a frankenstein marriage of (sometimes bat-shit insane) extremist and average secular citizens. It stuggles to keep its legislation running with various factions happy (from liberals, to a dying left-wing, to divergent special ethnic interest groups, to a political right of many flavours, to a fairly large centre, to its many sects of religous right, etc.).
This causes it to throw favours to these groups in support of political support. You are 100% correct. Settlements are not helpful, they are not safe, they are damaging, but the government needs to keep certain voting blocks happy… one of those blocks are settlers.
Thank you for that lengthy and informative post.
Actually, thank all of you - this thread has been less contentious, more informative, and more rational than most discussions about these issues I’ve encountered.
Now for my comment: the main drive of my statement “90% of the people living in the area were Palestinians” was to emphasize that the land now called “modern Israel” was not empty when the Zionists showed up. There were already many, many people living there who had been living there centuries, if not millennia. Understandably, they are pissed off at being displaced.
There are a number of reactions people can have to being displaced. You can say “sod it - we lost, we’re starting over in this new place”. That’s what my grandparents did when they were kicked out of Russia. That doesn’t mean they were happy about it, but they decided starting over in a new land was their best option. In fact, some Palestinians have opted for that - millions of them, in fact. Again, they may not be happy about it, but whether or not they started over halfway round the world, or accepted a land-swap in the Middle East, they took that option.
Another reaction is to demand your lands and possessions be returned. Millions have opted for that path. Given the asymmetry of the two groups in opposition as well as the length of time that has gone by their chances of winning are pretty low. However, this faction is a major driver of the on-going conflict. It is not the only factor at play, and I hasten to add that even among this group the vast majority are NOT terrorists.
You don’t seem to be reading the same thread I was. You asked what the argument people made for the settlements was; I gave you the argument, as I understood it, from people who are pro-settlements, and then stated that EVEN IF WE TAKE THIS ARGUMENT AS A GIVEN, the settlements are a terrible idea on a practical level.
But I guess if you don’t pretend Israel is engaging in genocide you are “blanket defending everything on your side”?
Are you under the mistaken impression that 1800s Zionists were the first Jews in the region? In fact there have always been Jewish communities living there as second (or third or fourth) class citizens within the Ottoman empire.
I think that is an accurate summation of the problem: both sides are convinced they’re right. Both sides are crying “self-defense”. Both sides are claiming retaliation and accusing the other of provocation.
Personally, I think that not only should new settlements be stopped but any settlements created/increased without true legal sanction should be emptied of those same illegal settlers. But, again, no one puts me in charge of anything. If they did, I wouldn’t have trouble shuffling some Jewish extremists off their snatched homesteads. If it’s OK to displace Palestinians who had been on the land for centuries it’s OK by me to displace some Jews who have been on the land illegally for a few years or even decades. The adults should be subjected to legal penalties, which might be fines or might even be real jail time. Stealing land is not acceptable.
Then again, I don’t view “God gave us this land in the Bronze Age!” to be a legal deed of ownership. Yep, if I was in charge I’d piss a LOT of people off…
I think any landswaps given to Palestinians after the foundation of Israel should be respected and protected by law.
All that just to start. Actually solving some of this mess will come after that. If it is at all possible, which I’m not convinced it is.
In post-war Germany there was the “Werwolf” brigades, which were some kind of guerrilla units that were supposed to carry out sabotage and killings in the allied-occupied zones of Germany. Although the real extent of their activities and their effectiveness are disputed, it is undeniable that they wrought tangible effects in terms of suffering for a lot of people in post-war Germany, especially in the areas of Germany under Soviet occupation. At least one scholar (Perry Biddiscombe) estimates, in his monography on the subject, that there were between 3000 and 5000 deaths directly attributable to Werwolf actions and the subsequent reprisals; one of the biggest actions was the blowing up of an ammo dump in Ústi nad Labem (in today’s Czech Republic) on July 31, 1945, killing 27 and wounding several dozens. That triggered the “Ústi massacre” as a reprisal, wherein at least several dozen ethnic Germans were lynched.
And there were plenty of arrests as well. In Soviet-controlled areas, it has been determined that at least 10.000 Germans (mostly young people) were sent to prison camps on the suspicion of being part of the Werwolf groups. A large amount did not come back. However, it is not possible to get exact numbers here, because archives are sorely lacking.
There is more information about the amount of civilians arrested in the other occupation areas, especially the areas under US and British control. There, by the end of 1945, more than 100.000 Germans (both soldiers and civilians) were held in mostly makeshift prison camps to “prevent Werwolf activity”.
Werwolf groups were considered beaten by 1948. But they were not the only ones in Germany. There were others; for example, in 1946, 80 Germans from the so-called “Edelweiss Piraten” group (ironically it was the same name used by an anti-nazi resistance group) were arrested when getting ready to assassinate 400 persons (between allied military commanders and German government officials that were working under the allied occupation forces, including the then prime minister of Bavaria), and they had in their possession caches of weapons and ammunition, including anti-tank rockets.
Interestingly enough, this lasted essentially until 1949 (year of the creation of the modern state of West Germany and its counterpart, East Germany).
Things were not dissimilar in Japan under the occupation - there were also cases of terrorism, guerilla attacks and similar examples of post-war anti-US activity (and that does not include the isolated cases of Japanese soldiers fighting the war in the jungles of the Philippines and Southeast Asia until the 1970s).
So, anyway. There was indeed terrorism after WWII in occupied Germany and Japan. What made it stop? I do not know. It is tempting to say that, in Germany, it was the creation of the German state(s) in 1949 what proved instrumental, but I suspect that it would be simplistic to assume so. In Japan, my theoriy (100% extracted straight from my behind) is that it possibly was the realization that the US was actually a guarantee against a hostile and rather close communist China.
There were big dreams of those Werewolf brigades being a long term and consistent opposition to the occupation, but they never amounted to much because it seemed with Hitler dead and the empire crumbled most Germans simply were done fighting.
Nope, not at all. The mizrahim have been in the area for thousands of years. However, as a percentage of the population they were a small amount - around 1900 they would have been 2-5%. Foreign-born Jews were probably around 1-2%, there was always a bit of migration in and out and the Jews were just as fond as traveling to visit the Holy Land as every other Abrahamic religion.
Hence, I said Palestinians - that is, non-Jewish Arabs - were about 90% of the population, not 100%.
Things changed immensely after the start of the 20th Century and the rise of Zionism, with millions of Jews leaving Europe and going to what is now Israel. Personally, I think the Europeans were more than happy to see the Jews leave their territory and didn’t give a damn if their arrival elsewhere might be disruptive.
Yes and I responded to you.
In this latest post, what I meant was, the argument is a non sequitur. It was just a mistake between “answer” and “argument”, so no need to go all BLOCK CAPS on me 
The argument makes no sense because there is no such right to claim territory forever in the future.
As for your point about practicality, I don’t know why you even mention that. It’s like saying that one shouldn’t become a human trafficker because the profit margins are too low. Are you implying the settlements are morally fine, such that we can move on to debating the practical issues?
No, I’m implying that even though I personally disagree with the settlements, even if you DO believe they are fine/there is some kind of right to them, from the perspective of the most hardliner fanatic on the Israeli side, you have to say to yourself, “is some underdeveloped West Bank land worth years of terrorism? Is it worth dozens of Israelis killed by rocket strikes? Is it worth dozens of soldiers killed or captured in military operations every few years? Is it worth the civilian casualties on the Palestinian side, which yes are morally wrong, but even if you were the kind of person who doesn’t care, surely you recognize that they make the hatred grow deeper and peace even less likely?”
I don’t think you’re fully grasping what Babale has written.
ETA: Neither does Babale!
Do you want to elaborate or just make snarky remarks?
I also suspect the Japanese seeing what Russian occupation was like might have made some conclude that the Americans were not the worst alternative. It’s often forgotten that the Soviets had some desires for Japanese territory and were poised to invade along with the US. So… .between China, Russia, or the US occupying your country and controlling it which would you choose?
There is still resentment and anger about post-WWII occupation in both Germany and Japan. It’s a small group of people at this point, but they do exist.
Right…and this is why I take the position that we did carve out homes for a number of the Ottomans other subjects, I’m not opposed to how we (the collective “we” being the “West”) did so for Jews. How we drew the lines on the other hand was highly suspect.
It’s undeniable there’s a line straight from the Balfour Declaration to the 1947 map that was unfairly pro-Jewish when adjudicating the issue. The first British High Commissioner of Mandatory Palestine was an avowed pro-Zionist. The British approach to Palestine was acknowledgement of the Balfour Declaration which had announced support for the creation of a “National Home” for the Jewish people; but it appeared they were kind of seeking to do that by trying to turn Palestine into a shared Jewish/Arab state where Judaism would have special rights and privileges (the British were vehemently against the 1947 UN partition plan which carved it into separate states.)
But the way the British went about this was all but guaranteed to enrage the Palestinian Arab population–and it did so. In the first legislature the British setup, despite constituting around 88% of the population, Arab Muslims only had around 42% of seats in the legislature, Arab Christians around 8%, and Jews the rest. Which is obviously not in line with broad concepts of equal representation. Thus it isn’t terribly surprising there was Arab-Jewish fighting for almost the entire period that Mandatory Palestine was a thing.
The 1947 Partition Line also kind of followed this model, a whole lot of land was carved off for a Jewish state even though the population at that point was still disproportionately more Arab than Jewish.
I don’t really know what the right answer was, but obviously the way it was partitioned was not fair to the people then living there and it was guaranteed to cause long term problems.
If you take the take that in order to build a Jewish homeland, you had to put your thumb heavily on the scale in favor of the Jews, you probably needed to have committed to trying to make it right by the Palestinians. Probably through a system of subsidized resettlement, so instead of being refugees you were helping resettle Palestinian Arabs into neighboring states. That might have had the effect of “cooling tensions” somewhat, but it also likely would have been more expensive than the West wanted to fund.