# The Crane Brouhaha over Gaza, Pit edition **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 19, 2024, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742 "2024-04-19T08:11:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/81 "2024-04-24T19:50:48Z")
The Jews who declared the state of Israel already lived there at the time. Yes, they had some help from Europeans who felt guilty about the holocaust, and perhaps wanted a place to send WWII refugees. And yes, they took in a lot of refugees that Britain wanted to keep out. But it would never have happened without local Jews. Yes, some were refugees from far away, who had purchased land in Palestine. Others were refugees from the Ottoman empire. Yet others were basically always there. > **[United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine)** > > The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United Nations, which recommended a partition of Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted the Plan as Resolution 181 (II). > The resolution recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish States linked economically and a Special International Regime for the city of Jerusalem and its surroundings. The Arab state was to have a territory of 11,100 square... I don’t claim any special indigenous status in Israel. I am American. I grew up here. My grandparents immigrated here as babies or small children, from Eastern Europe. But yes, there were indigenous Jews in Palestime. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/82 "2024-04-24T20:29:59Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > But yes, there were indigenous Jews in Palestime. No-one’s disputing that there were. Doesn’t make all Jews indigenous there. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/83 "2024-04-24T21:12:13Z")
ASL kinda was. Quite a lot of them were refugees, of course, not indigenous. Also, as a grandchild of refugees, and as someone who is active in my temple’s refugee resettlement program, i am generally a fan of helping refugees get established in a new home. I don’t believe they should rot in horrible conditions because “the right answer is for their home country to clean up its act”. That just forces a lot of people to die, or to raise their children in barely viable conditions. And I’m excited that the first family my temple sponsored (Syrian Arabs, for the record) are now established enough to sponsor more of their relatives on their own, to move to the US and become US citizens. None of this means i support what Israel is doing in Gaza. I don’t. I think it’s horrible, and I’m sceptical that it even helps the Jewish residents of Israel in the short, medium, or long term. But the idea that the grandchildren of those Jewish refugees who helped found Israel, people who live there today, who were born in Israel and grew up in Israel, should be forced out is ALSO wrong, imho. Basically, i think it’s part of human nature to move from time to time, for a variety of reasons, including being forced off their land. And i don’t think people ought to retain land rights from their ancestors. I think they earn land rights from living in a place. And while i think there’s a place for reparations to people whose ancestors were screwed, i view that as, ideally, a tax on those who indirectly benefited, not as punishment for the sins of your ancestors. (And yeah, my ancestors didn’t keep slaves, and didn’t kill native Americans. But i benefit from those actions. So i don’t feel guilt, but I’m okay paying a tax.) This rambly answer will likely make me a lot of enemies. Oh well. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/84 "2024-04-24T21:14:16Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > ASL kinda was. No he wasn’t. Babale, being a disingenuous fuck, was responding as if I was. But I wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/85 "2024-04-24T21:32:07Z")
The original post I was responding to is right there for anyone to read, you lying fuck. > [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2621): > > > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > > The problem isn’t that one set of people has a legitimate claim to the land and the other set doesn’t. The problem is that both sets of people have a legitimate claim to the exact same land and, while many individuals on both sides are willing to live with each other, all too many of them are not. > > Well now that is tricky. Is cultural heritage by itself enough to give rise to a legitimate claim to the land? Or is this just another example of people colonizing first, claiming title later, not unlike how indigenous peoples have been deprived of their land I’m the Americas and elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/86 "2024-04-25T01:17:49Z")
And that’s why you stopped when ASL made it extremely clear they weren’t talking about Jews that were already in the Levant, right? And you definitely didn’t just clip > [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > Which isn’t to say that such a response to allegedly dormant claims to land ownership is the appropriate response, just that such distant claims to ownership only seem to get traction when it’s about carving up the Levant for people who have much more recent history in Europe than anywhere else from the post you responded to. Nope, not at all. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/87 "2024-04-25T01:28:07Z")
> [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2670): > > And that’s why you stopped when ASL made it extremely clear they weren’t talking about Jews that were already in the Levant, right? Uh, absolutely not? I’m descended from two lines of Jews from opposite sides of the Jewish world, neither of which was in the Levant, and neither of which was allowed to make a home anywhere else; and both lines were involved in the Zionist project and the creation of Israel, long before 1947; but if I accept ASL’s argument that this breaks our connection to our land, then I have _no home at all_, and I’m not gonna take it while some internet asshole strips me of my homeland because it wins him brownie points in a discussion about a war that he knows nothing about that is completely academic to him. _Fuck. That._ > [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2670): > > And you definitely didn’t just clip > > > [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > > > Which isn’t to say that such a response to allegedly dormant claims to land ownership is the appropriate response, just that such distant claims to ownership only seem to get traction when it’s about carving up the Levant for people who have much more recent history in Europe than anywhere else The fact that the United States did a more thorough job of genociding the people who lived on what today is US land than our enemies managed to do to us is a horrible tragedy; it shouldn’t be an excuse to deny us our homeland. The extra bit you quoted certainly doesn’t make ASL come across as _better_. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/88 "2024-04-25T01:29:18Z")
ISTM that the Jews indigenou to the land now called Israel didn’t so much immigrate but were forcibly deported. Yes I realize there have been Jews who remained in that area, but didn’t the vast majority get dispersed by the Romans? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/89 "2024-04-25T01:39:15Z")
> [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2672): > > ISTM that the Jews indigenou to the land now called Israel didn’t so much immigrate but were forcibly deported > **[Jewish diaspora](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora)** > > The Jewish diaspora (Hebrew: תְּפוּצָה, romanized: təfūṣā) or exile (Hebrew: גָּלוּת gālūṯ; Yiddish: golus)\[a\] is the dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancient ancestral homeland (the Land of Israel) and their subsequent settlement in other parts of the globe. > In terms of the Hebrew Bible, the term "Exile" denotes the fate of the Israelites who were taken into exile from the Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BCE, and the Judahites from the Kingdom of Judah who were taken int... Correct, on a few occassions. Oh, and, just to be clear, another reason this is bullshit: > [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > such distant claims to ownership only seem to get traction when it’s about carving up the Levant for people who have much more recent history in Europe than anywhere else A, as has been established, half of Israel’s population isn’t even European in any way, so ASL is full of shit. B, I’m all for “carving up” other countries if it means oppressed minorities get their freedom. Elsewhere in the Middle East, it means I strongly support an independent Kurdistan; in the US, I support tribal sovereignty; etc. And I fully support Palestinians getting their own state; I think that’s a precondition to lasting peace. All peoples should have the right to self determination. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/90 "2024-04-25T03:06:43Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > such distant claims to ownership only seem to get traction when it’s about carving up the Levant for people who have much more recent history in Europe than anywhere else I could also mention what that “much more recent history in Europe” was like. ---
**Author:** ![saucywench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@saucywench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saucywench)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/91 "2024-04-25T03:16:37Z")
Would someone please give me the nutshell version of what is being argued concerning the Israelites and the Palestinians. I don’t want to Google a bunch of stuff unless it’s for credit. Thank you for your consideration. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/92 "2024-04-25T03:38:51Z")
> [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2674): > > > [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > > > such distant claims to ownership only seem to get traction when it’s about carving up the Levant for people who have much more recent history in Europe than anywhere else > > I could also mention what that “much more recent history in Europe” was like. You sure could. For starters, you might note… > [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2631): > > Inasmuch as I am not a fan of ethnostates, I appreciate, as much as I can without being Jewish myself, the particular harm done to Jews in the Holocaust and countless pogroms before it. But to the extent a grave harm was done, the harm was, by and large, done by Europeans. It seems like if a remedy is to be had, and that remedy should consist of an ethnostate (and I do accept, inasmuch as I don’t care for, the reality that many states today have their root in ethnostates), then at the very least the place for that ethnostate is in Europe, where the harm was done. > > But instead, what we got was Europeans carving up the Levant for largely, if not exclusively, the sins of various European states. Or you could pretend like I never wrote any of that, not unlike how @puzzlegal stopped short of quoting that text when admonishing me that in fact many modern states have their origins in ethnostates (of which, again, I am not a fan). I mean, I guess I could be grossly ignorant of history at best and an antisemite at worst… if you don’t actually read what I wrote and instead pretend like I wrote something else entirely (which seems to be a recurring theme here). ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/93 "2024-04-25T04:24:31Z")
Or, possibly, if a lot of people seem to be misreading what you think you are saying, there’s something about what you are actually writing that isn’t quite exactly what you meant to say… ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/94 "2024-04-25T04:29:21Z")
Or people aren’t reading, just fitting what’s written into their own previously-decided opinion. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/95 "2024-04-25T04:30:31Z")
Hmm, that’s hard, since I’m not sure we all agree on what is being argued. 😉 I think that ASL has stated that he dislikes “ethnostates”, and thinks that it was wrong for Israel to have been created in the middle east, because really, the remaining Jews should have been cared for by the European countries that hadn’t quite killed them all. And if, somehow, despite ethnostates being bad, the Jews ought to have had one, it should have been carved out of a piece of Europe, not the Middle East. There’s a side argument about the extent to which Jews have any claim to being indigenous in Israel, which Jews, how many, and whether the Jews in Palestine who fought to create Israel were to any extent indigenous there. (to what extent the Palestinians are indigenous in what is now Israel hasn’t really been discussed, but there’s an undercurrent of that question, as well.) ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/96 "2024-04-25T04:34:16Z")
And I’m not sure any two people agree on all the points in that discussion. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/97 "2024-04-25T04:53:17Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > ASL kinda was. Nope. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > i am generally a fan of helping refugees get established in a new home Who here isn’t? Doing so via settler colonialism, though, I’m absolutely _not_ a fan of. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > the idea that the grandchildren of those Jewish refugees who helped found Israel, people who live there today, who were born in Israel and grew up in Israel, should be forced out is ALSO wrong, imho. I’m not saying they should be forced out. Saying they’re morally wrong is not the same as saying they need to suffer complete removal as a punishment. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > i don’t think people ought to retain land rights from their ancestors I don’t think people should retain land rights at all, so this works for me as well. > [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2671): > > did a more thorough job of genociding the people who lived on what today is US land than our enemies managed to do to us is a horrible tragedy As, no doubt, is the fact that Israel didn’t completely manage to do it to them. Yet. Although the IOF’s done a way better attempt than they ever have. > [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2672): > > ISTM that the Jews indigenou to the land now called Israel didn’t so much immigrate but were forcibly deported. Jews were already dispersed throughout the Roman Empire (and the Assyrian and Persian Empires before that) way before the Judean revolts and the Roman response. I mean, Paul the Apostle wasn’t born in Israel, for starters. > [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2677): > > Or, possibly, if a lot of people seem to be misreading what you think you are saying, there’s something about what you are actually writing that isn’t quite exactly what you meant to say… Or people are so het up they see what they want to. [![](https://i.imgflip.com/8ny66p.jpg) ](https://i.imgflip.com/8ny66p.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/98 "2024-04-25T04:56:49Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > the remaining Jews should have been cared for by the European countries that hadn’t quite killed them all. That’s a completely shitty reading of what he wrote - “Create an ethnostate in Europe” is not the same as “Cared for by the Europeans that hadn’t killed them yet” America, the UK and France were actually in a dominant enough place at the time to carve out a Jewish ethnostate in Germany, should they have wanted to. And kept said state safe. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/99 "2024-04-25T05:04:52Z")
It’s been a long day. I read him as saying that no ethnostate should have been created, because ethnostates are bad. Instead, the nations of Europe should have taken better care of their minorities (not just the Jews.) But if a Jewish ethnostate HAD to be created, it should have been in Europe. And maybe that would have been a better thing than what happened. But it’s not what happened. And now we have a lot of people who all want the same land. And an awful lot of them were born there to parents who were born there. > [@MrDibble](#): > > I don’t think people should retain land rights at all, so this works for me as well. You might talk me into that. Land rights clearly lead to a lot of problems. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/100 "2024-04-25T05:10:30Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Land rights clearly lead to a lot of problems. As do borders, which is one reason I am against those also. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742.md?page=6)