In his speech against antisemitism Chuck Schumer decries the antisemitism that has surfaced since Hamas’ terrorist massacre in Israel and the resultant war waged in Gaza against Hamas by Israel, what with the massacre of innocent men, women, and children being justified by some because of the actions of the Israeli government. I don’t see Hamas’ terrorism as justified. I don’t see Hamas’ terrorist massacre as justified. I do see Hamas’ terrorist massacre as a reaction by Hamas to the oppression of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel. As long as this oppression persists Israelis are going to be in danger of violent expressions of indignation against this oppression. The massacre is a terrible tragedy. Schumer mentions the displaced, dispossessed, and expelled Mizrahim throughout the Arab world after the 1948 Nakba that saw the displacement of Palestinians after the creation of the state of Israel. Had it not been for the creation of the state of Israel those Mizrahim of the Arab world and the Palestinians would not have been displaced, dispossessed or expelled. These atrocities are the direct result of the creation of the state of Israel in Palestine, a cause and effect that Schumer and other Zionists are utterly oblivious to.
Schumer goes on to invoke the hope that there would be two states living side-by-side, and that he and others still support this solution. What Schumer doesn’t mention is that this solution was proposed at the time that the Zionists looking to found the state of Israel were at war with the Palestinian militias who were opposed to this two -state solution that negated their rights throughout all of Palestine. The Zionists ethnically cleansed vast areas of Palestine that came under their control. Further ethnic cleansing was perpetrated by The Zionists during the 1967 war. The Palestinians are clamoring for these rights to this day. A two-state solution would merely formalize the present oppression of the Palestinians.
Schumer invokes the centuries of trauma—the humiliation, ostracism, expulsion, enslavement, and massacre— suffered by Jews in many parts of the world, and the Holocaust regarding those inclined to examine the world through the lens of the oppressors verses the oppressed. The centuries of trauma—the humiliation, ostracism, expulsion, enslavement, and massacre— suffered by Jews in many parts of the world throughout the centuries does not justify the Zionists’ oppression of the Palestinians.
I agree with your last sentence, but I’m an American simpleton.
Why can’t the support of innocent lives be a simply accepted way to live? What happened on Oct. 7 was an abomination of humanity, but it seems that as soon as someone says: There are innocent people in Gaza, too. Now you’re a Hamas sympathizer. It’s like the fallacy of the excluded middle on methamphetamine.
So do we get to go back to our homes in Poland, Germany, Egypt, Morocco, Norway, and Mandatory Palestine (and others) when the Arab world refused a 2 state solution in ‘48? What would you have us do?
While I’m sure that there are a lot of counterarguments to the claims made in the OP, I’m not really seeing them being made in this thread.
You guys seem to be operating under assumptions the OP does not share. He does not seem to believe that a one-state democratic solution would lead to persecution of the Jewish people. And no one seems to actually be making an argument for why that would necessarily be the case. There are more Jews that Palestinians, after all.
And I definitely don’t see how pointing out the persecution of Jews in pre-Israel Palestine refutes the idea that the creation of the Israeli state resulted in the forced relocation and persecution of Palestinians. Both can very well be true. Not saying they are, but it’s still possible.
I’m sure that the underlying arguments have been fleshed out elsewhere, but the OP definitely seems unaware of them.
I know a lot less than these other guys. But I do have a counterargument based more on basic principles than any knowledge:
Just because “Zionists” rejected a solution in the past doesn’t mean it’s not the correct solution today. Heck, it doesn’t mean it’s not the best solution today.
You seem to be arguing from a position of what should be. But you don’t seem to be considering the practicalities. Schumer can’t do that. He has to recommend something that is actually possible.
And, from what I can tell, a one-state solution is a nonstarter. You’re proposal that Israel give up its sovereignty to a new combined nation just will not happen. And we already have the current situation with a single Israeli state.
At the end of the day, Israel is a nuclear power. And you cannot deal with a nuclear power with an existential threat, or you get WWIII. That’s what Biden and the Dems have been spending most of their time trying to prevent.
And this is going to solve the massacres inflicted by ethnic groups against each other how exactly? Forcing them to live in a single state isn’t going to make that and the hatreds behind it go away, and the outcome isn’t going to be democratic, egalitarian, or pluralistic. It’s like trying to solve the Balkanization of former Yugoslavia when it collapsed by forcing the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Slovenians, etc. etc. to exist as a single state and imagining that the outcome would be democratic, egalitarian and pluralistic. That doesn’t work when significant parts of the populations want to kill each other. That’s actually why it devolved into separate states in the first place.
Right, but the fact that antisemitic pogroms were common in the Islamic world and elsewhere for all of history shows that the idea that if only those damn Jews didn’t get so uppity wanting their own state and all, the Arabs wouldn’t have had to oppress them is laughable. Scratch that, it’s not laughable - it’s disgustingly offensive.