Aroubi.
although if you are not maghrebine it will make no sense.
Indeed, I’d say that modern-day European-style ethno-nationalism is completely at odds with the genesis of Islamic history; the explosive increase of the Dar al-Islam could never have occurred, if it was understood as the triumph of an exclusively Arab ethno-nationalist state at the expense of other ethnicities.
It was the political genius of the Islamic Empire at its height that it could, and did, incorporate other ethnic groups. The Arabs were destined to be a minority in “their” own empire.
In fact the fall of the (eastern) Ummayad to the Abbasides was due to the Ummayad trying to be Arab based where the Abbasides specifically opened up to all and were the extreme cosmpolitans in their approach.
it is very notable that the Abbaside cosmopolitanism was more successful and longer lived than the Ummayad
Its not really race. Its nativity. The Palestinians have been there for centuries, the middle eastern Jews have been there for centuries. The Zionists were interlopers who came along and carved a nation out of a land where people were already living. Then they went ahead and oppressed the original inhabitants and insist that the original inhabitants should do what the oppressors want because its the best deal they can get at the moment.
Yeah, umm, ok. The Zionists are Palestinian oppressors of non-Jewish Palestinians. Is that really better?
I agree that there is really no point in compounding the tragedy of the Palestinian oppression by replacing with an era of Jewish oppression. But the attitude of the Zionists towards compromise has been pretty disgusting.
But I’m glad you at least acknowledge that there was an injustice at the birth of the nation.
Or you get yourself a nuke.
I meant that the Holocaust is not justification for the creation of the state of Israel. As in WTF does the Holocaust have to do with the creation of the state of Israel? The Zionists have used it as an excuse for the shit they pulled and people here have referred to it as justification of… I don’t know… something having to do with Israel.
I might have also been a little perturbed by the apparent nit-picking about my failure to consistently capitalize certain words. It almost seems like grammar policing.
OK fair enough.
Okay, that’s a different argument, but do you really not sympathize with the Jews after the Holocaust (and all the pogroms and horrible shit in Europe before the Holocaust)? Maybe it’s because I am a descendant of Jews who barely escaped Germany in the 30s, but after the Holocaust it’s no wonder that hundreds of thousands of displaced Jews believed that the only possible chance they might have at long-term safety was to create a state of their own. That doesn’t justify everything that occurred, but that’s a pretty reasonable belief in those circumstances, right? And there’s no place on Earth that would have welcomed hundreds of thousands of displaced Jews with open arms and said “sure, here, have your own country!”. When all of the options are pretty bad, choosing their (our?) ancestral homeland seems about as logical as any other possibility, based on what they could have known at the time. At the time, had I been a displaced Jew, there were no options that I could reasonably be certain were a safe place for Jews to live in the long term.
Again, that doesn’t justify any atrocities, but when the only choices for hundreds of thousands of displaced humans are shitty, those humans are going to do what displaced humans with no good options have always done, which will include good choices, bad choices, and everything in between, in their attempts to survive.
The indelible and incredibly significant connection between “blood” (nativity, race, descent) and “soil” (that is, a geographical location) is a standard trope of ethno-nationalism … but that is not a reason to believe it has some sort of inevitable moral validity.
Certainly in other contexts it does not, and indeed, it could be considered very offensive to insist on it.
For example, as a Canadian, if I were to insist that I ought to have more rights because my family can trace its roots in this country back to the 17th century (which it can, on my father’s side) - and so a recent immigrant (say, a Palestinian who just obtained citizenship last year) is an “interloper” who is worthy of less rights … well, it wouldn’t go well, rhetorically.
I think the reason why “colonial” and “colonist” is not a good term to use for this situation - and why this distinction matters - is as follows: it is incorrect, and so leads to radically incorrect solutions.
A “colonist” is, by definition, someone basically working on behalf of a “metropolitan” nation. For example, a French “colonist” is working, when it comes right down to it, for France.
Why is conflict between a local ethnic group and “colonists” different from (say) a native ethnic group having a conflict with another native ethnic group?
Very simply put: a true “colonist” can always, in the last resort, simply “go home” if they lose such a conflict. If the French colonists lose control of a French colony, the survivors can simply – go back to France, where they came from.
A native ethnic group cannot “go home” if they lose a conflict. They are already “home”. They have no-where else to go, certainly not en mass.
This has all sorts of implications.
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If they lose, what will the winners do with the losers?
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Fear of having no options if they lose makes native ethnic groups fight extra-viciously to avoid losing.
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“Colonists” can, in some cases, be driven by fear, economic necessity or even guilt into returning “home”. Natives cannot, because once again, they are already “home”.
In the Arab-Israeli wars, the Israelis are not “colonists” because there is no-where for them to “go home” to. The techniques developed during the decolonization years of the 50’s through the '70s to drive out European colonialists simply will not work on them. Using such techniques is just likely to make them fight the more viciously, because for them, losing and “returning home” simply isn’t an option.
Of course I sympathise with them. I think the UN ought to have given them Austria and Bohemia for a Jewish state. But the Zionists were insistent on Israel because that’s where all the Jews were at the time and it was easier to take away Palestinian land then move all the Jews back to Europe.
I understand the instinct and desire for a sovereign state. But its sort of like invading Iraq because A bunch of Saudis blew up a building.
I thought there were a few other options. Giving them Austria and Southern Germany was probably doable while those countries were occupied by the Allied forces. You see in that case, the Holocaust has direct relevance.
YOu can say "look at what the fuck you did. YOU fucking people did this and now the Jews need a nation so we are going to give them one carved out of your ancestral home and you’re going to thank GOD for giving you this opportunity to atone for the horrible shit you let happen right under your nose. And we are going to diarm you and give a shitload of guns to the Jews. Tanks too.
I think they had other choices but the Zionists wanted something in Israel. There were other plans weren’t there?
It would if those Palestinians tried to carve Canada in half and keep half for themselves. I don’t think the criticism of Israel would be nearly as harsh if noone ever tried to create a Jewish state of Israel. If it was just a bunch of Jewish immigrants in Palestine who wanted equal rights or some shit like that, then I think people would have a better view of zionism.
Just because they have nowhere else to go doesn’t make them native. They were interlopers.
I’m not aware of any serious proposals for a Jewish state in Europe. And considering Europe’s history in terms of treatment of Jews, why would Jews want to go back to Europe? There were certainly instances of mistreatment of Jews in the Middle East, historically, but nothing in recent centuries compared to the mistreatment in Europe (culminating, of course, in the Holocaust). Jews had already been emigrating to the land that would become Israel for decades, and by the end of WWII, there were hundreds of thousands of Jews who had fled to that land. Again, that doesn’t excuse everything that occurred afterwards, but that land was certainly the most likely land to become a Jewish state, especially from the perspective of those Jews already there.
The Qur’an has no addendum. That would be sort of implying that it wasn’t complete. The hadiths are a separate corpus of texts, of varying reliability.
ikr!
According to you, all the Jews were there already. So how was it Palestinian land to be taken away for the Jews? If Jews were living there, wasn’t it Jewish land?
Ha ha ha, you think? Guess what? There was a Palestinian activist for nonviolent change, expressly on the model of Gandhi and King, named Mubarak ‘Awad. The Israeli government couldn’t allow that sort of thing to catch on, so they expelled him from his own country of birth and have never allowed him back. That was in the 1980s, while Israel was colluding with the founding of Hamas to counter Fatah.
Mubarak Awad?
Wow, talk about a blast from the past. He was a darling of the Western media but had virtually no influence among the Palestinians, particularly among Palestinian Muslims since he’s a Christian.
Any support he got came only because the Israelis made him into a mini-hero but deporting him.
FTR, I know someone who knows him and he’s a great guy but he never had any real influence and I’d be stunned if even 5% of all Palestinians even know who he is.
So what? His project was aborted before it had much of a chance to get anywhere. Now why would Israel have expelled him if they didn’t fear his effectiveness? Especially because they court American support, of whom you say he was the darling, making them look bad? Particularly when at the same time they were colluding with the founders of Hamas? You could have said the same thing of Martin Luther King Jr. if America had expelled him only 5 years after he’d gotten started on activism. Gandhi needed decades of satyagraha to get anything accomplished. What’s your point by dismissing him so lightly? Anti-Palestinians claim there’s never been an apostle of nonviolence for Palestine. They claim that nonviolence has “never been tried.” My point is that’s false. There was one, and Israel aborted his movement. The authorities arrested Gandhi and King for nonviolent activism too. If Gandhi and King had been deported only 5 years into their respective movements, they would have been footnotes to history like ‘Awad too, and scoffers would now be blithely dismissing their significance, and claiming that Indians or African-Americans are violent savages incapable of nonviolence, and worthy only of being stomped into submission instead of negotiated with. We have to ask: Why did they deport the nonviolent one while abetting Hamas?
I don’t think that there were any serious proposals for a Jewish state in Europe, I think there were some in Africa and South America, each with their own complications but at least a few did not have natives hostile to the notion. There was even a notion that Jews could create alargely jewish state right here in America like the mormons have with Utah. And I agree that there is a history of horrible history in Europe. However IIRC, the majority of Jewish immigration to Israel occurred after the end of the WWII. Most of it from Eastern Europe. Its probably too late to give Austria to the Jews but it would have been more just than giving them Palestine.
There was no real practical impediment to carving a nation out of Germany and Austria rather than Palestine. It seems to be a matter of convenience and cultural desire on the part of the Zionists.
No they weren’t all there. A lot of them got there after WWII. Jews represented about 1/3rd of the population when they got half the land.
I’m not anti-Palestinian and suggesting that Awad could have become remotely as popular as Ghandi is ludicrous.
You’re aware aren’t you that Awad is a Christian whereas most Palestinians are Muslims aren’t you?
As to why they expelled him. Because they were dicks, they were stupid, and because he was viewed as one of the leaders of the Intifada.
“Come back to the country that just tried to exterminate your people from the Earth!”
Zionists: “No thanks, that’s not very convenient for us, and our culture doesn’t really desire going back to the country that tried to kill us all.”
That’s how you think it went? Just “convenience” and “cultural desire”?