5 ms·

My ancestors lived in Israel since 1880, and the Arabs raided their villages, burned their fields, and massacred them in riots. Before Israel they lived in Yeme

by dagav 6y ago

My ancestors lived in Israel since 1880, and the Arabs raided their villages, burned their fields, and massacred them in riots. Before Israel they lived in Yemen, where they faced pogroms and blood libel. What the West cannot understand about the Arab-Israeli conflict is that it's not just a political war, it's also a race war and a holy war. What's happening in Israel is biblical, and reducing it to politics cannot possibly capture its complexity.

entelechy0 6y ago
this is what everyone says. to say it is anything more than pure racism is idiocy
abraxas 6y ago
IMO there are very, very few nations who can truly understand the mindset of Jewish people. Only those that faced systemic extermination have the means for comparison. Armenians, Roma and a handful of others. Though I'm not Jewish myself I fancy myself a big supporter of their plight to have a safe country where they can live without fearing expulsions or genocide.
- opportune 6y ago
  I’m picking on you a bit but I am Jewish and I really dislike this ignorant attitude conflating Jews and Israel. Do yourself a favor and educate yourself on the various non-Zionist movements and individuals who are also Jewish. The state of Israel is a racist apartheid state and this is bigotry masquerading as ignorance
  - dagav 6y ago
    Picking out a population of thousands to say "some Jews oppose Israel", and then conclude that the state of Israel is extricable from Judaism, is extremely disingenuous. Almost all Jews globally support Israel, half of the world's Jews live in Israel, Israel is built on Jewish laws and values, and you need to contend with that.
Gabriel_Martin 6y ago
This is a good point. An area steeped in sectarian violence and racism must surely take a completely different approach than an area with purely political struggles. I wonder what mechanisms other that political pressure might make progress in the Middle-East or if there are any success stories to learn from in other areas?
- rowanseymour 6y ago
  > "An area steeped in sectarian violence and racism must surely take a completely different approach than an area with purely political struggles" I'm not even sure how to respond to this. Are you suggesting the people of that region are inherently violent? Are we talking about the violence caused by Western countries starting several wars there in the last few decades? Are we talking about the colonial powers' exploitation of Shia/Sunni divides to further their interests?
  - Gabriel_Martin 6y ago
    I'm not suggesting anything, I'm wondering what mechanisms other that political pressure might make progress in the Middle-East, given the historical context that the OP mentioned. Also, the guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
- Udik 6y ago
  > An area steeped in sectarian violence and racism So they say. In the meanwhile, Israel has taken almost all the land. It's a very convenient racist and sectarian hatred this of the Palestinians, it has a return measurable in square kms, hundreds of thousands of low price houses, arable land and water resources. For the Israelis, of course. Problems are always infinitely complicated in the words of those who profit from keeping them unsolved.
  - Gabriel_Martin 6y ago
    OP's context went back thousands of years, so maybe I'd be more accurate to say sectarian violence and tribalism? Either way, maybe there's a hint in your comment. Finding ways to add sharp external costs to all parties involved? Whether Israel's state sanctioned abuse of Palestinians, Hamas or any other faction's violence, and likely also costs to neighboring countries who continue to have motivations other than seeking resolution. Do methods to add costs/pressures like that exist?
Solstinox 6y ago
Palestinians got screwed over by something geopolitical. Again and again they were egged on by their Arab neighbors to walk away from more equitable treaties. All in the name of geopolitical Arab nationalism. Today their Arab neighbors are building cutting edge cities, while Palestinians are asking for a fraction of what they were offered in the 1920s/30s.
- smitty1e 6y ago
  Or: would they go back to Oslo and tell Arafat not to be a putz, if they could? I typically hate counterfactuals with a passion, but at some point pragmatism becomes worth considering. Not that I'm in their context and capable of making that call, mind you.
  - Solstinox 6y ago
    Oh it's absolutely possible that if they had settled in the 1920s they'd eventually get screwed anyway.
- onyva 6y ago
  To be clear, not a single Arab country wants to see an independent Palestinian state. Not a single one. The Palestinians were not even included originally in the Arab League that was supposed to represent their cause. Palestinians were considered a threat to the stability of the post colonial “middle east” (a fabrication created by the west) and they are still treated as such. The crimes committed by Israel not withstanding.
  - apta 6y ago
    > To be clear, not a single Arab country wants to see an independent Palestinian state. Not a single one Where are you getting your information from if I may ask? There are literally millions of anecdata for the contrary.
    - onyva 6y ago
      Wow. 1M. That's so many. Why not start with one. Go check who represented the Palestinians in the 1st summit. I'm waiting...
rbecker 6y ago
I think a part of the West could indeed understand (if not approve). Many things such as you mentioned happened in a large part of Europe as well, 19th century included: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Horrors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Horrors You can justify many things if you go digging through history this way.
ykevinator 6y ago
First of all, this is irrational, holy is a deprecated concept. It's for children. Second, you all should embrace multiculturalism. Inter marry, hire each other, etc. Embrace American ideals along with the free American money.
rowanseymour 6y ago
Building a settler colonial ethnostate is not biblical or holy. It's a lop-sided geopolitical conflict over land, and talk of "complexity" is usually an attempt to obscure that.
- dagav 6y ago
  Calling it a "settler colonial ethnostate" is precisely the political lens that I'm criticizing. It does not properly capture the complexity and nuance of the conflict. For example, what you would call an ethnostate, I would call a reconstitution of the Kingdom of Israel, after the Nation of Israel fell into exile 3000 years ago, and its people scattered into a global diaspora. The Jewish people are already a nation, and this is why the Law of Return exists. Plus, how can a state be an ethnostate if Jews come from Yemen, Iran, Morrocco, Argentina, Spain, Germany, etc?
  - Kednicma 6y ago
    Well, for starters, Judaism never really left the Levant. When the rich were captured by the Babylonians and taken East, about 80% of the population stayed, and when the descendants of those captured returned, they called those who stayed Samaritans and refused to recognize them as being the same folks. Same story when the Romans destroyed the Temple and scattered the rich. Whoever got to write the histories got to tilt the discussion of who mattered as a real believer and who was an imitator. What you see as a complex and nuanced affair, I see as thousands of years of misled believers of Abraham and Ishmael carrying out fulfillment of myths and legends by committing violence upon each other, with this latest installment of violence originating in precisely the mid-40s relocation efforts that the article is detailing and critiquing.
    - dagav 6y ago
      I'm not sure your first point matters. There is one canonical Jewish nation today who live and die by the Torah. The history of Jews isn't them committing violence against others, but of violence being committed onto them. The Jews in the diaspora weren't going around stealing people's land and possessions, they were merely trying to live in peace, integrate into whichever nation they were a part of, and suffered pograms, massacres, and blood libel for trying. The violence in 20th centruy started to defend their nation from a second Holocaust, once the lesson had been learned that integration into another nation was impossible. Your impression of Jews as violent people is horribly misguided.
Udik 6y ago
> My ancestors lived in Israel since 1880 No, they lived in Palestine. In hindsight, having been the Palestinians pushed away from their lands, first through mass immigration, then by the generous gift made by Europe of those lands to the immigrants, and finally through ethnic cleansing and land grabbing, in hindsight their violence towards the newcomers was perfectly justified. How can you blame them if they saw in advance what was happening?
- skinkestek 6y ago
  There never was a Palestinian people or a Palestinian contry. After last time the Jews (Israeli) lived there those areas went from being Roman to Turkish to British to being split into mostly Jordan and Israel. Jordan was the big part - for the Palestinian Arabs - and Israel was about the about 30 % that was left for Palestinian Jews. At no point in time however before the Oslo process has there been a Palestinian country, only Arabs and Jews living in Palestine, better known as Israel until that massive propaganda effort last century.
  - Kednicma 6y ago
    You're being disingenuous; if we call them not just Palestinians, but Philistines or the Peleset, then they are mentioned in multiple histories of the region. While the region passed through Roman, Turkish, and British control, the only time when there was a large influx of foreign folks was during the Islamic expansion, when many Arabs moved into Palestine. Other than that, they've been there since around the Bronze Age Collapse; their history traces through the Iron Age just like Israelite/Jewish history.
  - apta 6y ago
    > There never was a Palestinian people or a Palestinian contry. Quite a ridiculous statement. The entire region that spans today's Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine "Israel" was known as Bilad Al-Sham. There were no individual countries with today's borders under the Rashidun Caliphate, to the Ummayads and all the way to the Ottoman empires, just regions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilad_al-Sham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilad_al-Sham
  - 6y ago
bosswipe 6y ago
Historical whataboutism like this is the source of much of the moral justification for outright evil in the world.
- dagav 6y ago
  I'm not spouting whataboutism, I'm giving some much needed context to a conflict that very few truly understand. No one in the West understands the Jewish side of the story, but it's important if we want peace.
onyva 6y ago
Race? Really? Which races are involved? Aren’t we all Semitic? Especially concerning Yemenite Jews who are literally Arabs who converted to Judaism en mass before the 7th century. The article doesn’t reduce anything to politics. It “exposes” a very effective propaganda machine. Anyone who studies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is aware of this. Not going into why you want to compare Bedouin raids to a state sponsored violence. Bedouin tribes attacked both Jews and Arabs since before the time of Mohammad.
- dagav 6y ago
  It's Jews vs Arabs. And this isn't my opinion, this is precisely how the conflict is perceived by both the Jews and Arabs involved. I'm not really making any statements about the article, but I tend to believe my ancestors over articles I find online, considering the sheer amount of anti-Israel sentiment that exists in the world. And the Arabs raiding their villages weren't Bedouins, they were Palestinian Arabs who weren't happy to have them as their neighbors. This is why the Haganah was created: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah
  - apta 6y ago
    > It's Jews vs Arabs No it's not. It's Zionist occupiers vs. the natives. https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/hs69hs/jewish_people_marching_in_new_york_city_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/hs69hs/jewi...
    - onyva 6y ago
      Using “Zionism” to describe the regime in Israel is misleading. Hertzl was an emancipated Western Jew who was on a personal mission to reinvent the idea of Jews like himself. Western, educated Sephardi. Not Eastern Europeans living in the Middle Ages, which he was culturally and emotionally detached from. Most Sephardi Jews would not marry Eastern European nor consider them to be Jewish at this stage. Hertzl wanted to take on a colonial project to prove the world Jews can be as assertive and proactive as other people. At this stage of history it was to colonize something. He didn’t see Israel-Palestine as a destination nor was he religious. He wasn’t even aware of the activities of the failed “lovers of Zion” project of couple of Russians that tried revive a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine. What happens next was a takeover and repurposing of his agenda, one the two movements “merged”, which eventually will coincide with the holocaust. Ps Ben Gurion’s treatment of diaspora Jews, ruppin’s race pyramid and eugenics plan for the Jews, and other “anecdotes” are beyond the scope of this discussion, but should be remembered. There’s nothing saintly about pre-state Israel, nor innocent.
apta 6y ago
> lived in Israel since 1880 There was no "Israel" in 1880. > and a holy war. No it's not.

by dagav 6y ago

entelechy0 6y ago

this is what everyone says. to say it is anything more than pure racism is idiocy

abraxas 6y ago

IMO there are very, very few nations who can truly understand the mindset of Jewish people. Only those that faced systemic extermination have the means for comparison. Armenians, Roma and a handful of others. Though I'm not Jewish myself I fancy myself a big supporter of their plight to have a safe country where they can live without fearing expulsions or genocide.

opportune 6y ago
I’m picking on you a bit but I am Jewish and I really dislike this ignorant attitude conflating Jews and Israel. Do yourself a favor and educate yourself on the various non-Zionist movements and individuals who are also Jewish. The state of Israel is a racist apartheid state and this is bigotry masquerading as ignorance
- dagav 6y ago
  Picking out a population of thousands to say "some Jews oppose Israel", and then conclude that the state of Israel is extricable from Judaism, is extremely disingenuous. Almost all Jews globally support Israel, half of the world's Jews live in Israel, Israel is built on Jewish laws and values, and you need to contend with that.

Gabriel_Martin 6y ago

This is a good point. An area steeped in sectarian violence and racism must surely take a completely different approach than an area with purely political struggles. I wonder what mechanisms other that political pressure might make progress in the Middle-East or if there are any success stories to learn from in other areas?

rowanseymour 6y ago
> "An area steeped in sectarian violence and racism must surely take a completely different approach than an area with purely political struggles" I'm not even sure how to respond to this. Are you suggesting the people of that region are inherently violent? Are we talking about the violence caused by Western countries starting several wars there in the last few decades? Are we talking about the colonial powers' exploitation of Shia/Sunni divides to further their interests?
- Gabriel_Martin 6y ago
  I'm not suggesting anything, I'm wondering what mechanisms other that political pressure might make progress in the Middle-East, given the historical context that the OP mentioned. Also, the guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Udik 6y ago
> An area steeped in sectarian violence and racism So they say. In the meanwhile, Israel has taken almost all the land. It's a very convenient racist and sectarian hatred this of the Palestinians, it has a return measurable in square kms, hundreds of thousands of low price houses, arable land and water resources. For the Israelis, of course. Problems are always infinitely complicated in the words of those who profit from keeping them unsolved.
- Gabriel_Martin 6y ago
  OP's context went back thousands of years, so maybe I'd be more accurate to say sectarian violence and tribalism? Either way, maybe there's a hint in your comment. Finding ways to add sharp external costs to all parties involved? Whether Israel's state sanctioned abuse of Palestinians, Hamas or any other faction's violence, and likely also costs to neighboring countries who continue to have motivations other than seeking resolution. Do methods to add costs/pressures like that exist?

Solstinox 6y ago

Palestinians got screwed over by something geopolitical. Again and again they were egged on by their Arab neighbors to walk away from more equitable treaties. All in the name of geopolitical Arab nationalism. Today their Arab neighbors are building cutting edge cities, while Palestinians are asking for a fraction of what they were offered in the 1920s/30s.

smitty1e 6y ago
Or: would they go back to Oslo and tell Arafat not to be a putz, if they could? I typically hate counterfactuals with a passion, but at some point pragmatism becomes worth considering. Not that I'm in their context and capable of making that call, mind you.
- Solstinox 6y ago
  Oh it's absolutely possible that if they had settled in the 1920s they'd eventually get screwed anyway.
onyva 6y ago
To be clear, not a single Arab country wants to see an independent Palestinian state. Not a single one. The Palestinians were not even included originally in the Arab League that was supposed to represent their cause. Palestinians were considered a threat to the stability of the post colonial “middle east” (a fabrication created by the west) and they are still treated as such. The crimes committed by Israel not withstanding.
- apta 6y ago
  > To be clear, not a single Arab country wants to see an independent Palestinian state. Not a single one Where are you getting your information from if I may ask? There are literally millions of anecdata for the contrary.
  - onyva 6y ago
    Wow. 1M. That's so many. Why not start with one. Go check who represented the Palestinians in the 1st summit. I'm waiting...

rbecker 6y ago

I think a part of the West could indeed understand (if not approve). Many things such as you mentioned happened in a large part of Europe as well, 19th century included: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Horrors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Horrors You can justify many things if you go digging through history this way.

ykevinator 6y ago

First of all, this is irrational, holy is a deprecated concept. It's for children. Second, you all should embrace multiculturalism. Inter marry, hire each other, etc. Embrace American ideals along with the free American money.

rowanseymour 6y ago

Building a settler colonial ethnostate is not biblical or holy. It's a lop-sided geopolitical conflict over land, and talk of "complexity" is usually an attempt to obscure that.

dagav 6y ago
Calling it a "settler colonial ethnostate" is precisely the political lens that I'm criticizing. It does not properly capture the complexity and nuance of the conflict. For example, what you would call an ethnostate, I would call a reconstitution of the Kingdom of Israel, after the Nation of Israel fell into exile 3000 years ago, and its people scattered into a global diaspora. The Jewish people are already a nation, and this is why the Law of Return exists. Plus, how can a state be an ethnostate if Jews come from Yemen, Iran, Morrocco, Argentina, Spain, Germany, etc?
- Kednicma 6y ago
  Well, for starters, Judaism never really left the Levant. When the rich were captured by the Babylonians and taken East, about 80% of the population stayed, and when the descendants of those captured returned, they called those who stayed Samaritans and refused to recognize them as being the same folks. Same story when the Romans destroyed the Temple and scattered the rich. Whoever got to write the histories got to tilt the discussion of who mattered as a real believer and who was an imitator. What you see as a complex and nuanced affair, I see as thousands of years of misled believers of Abraham and Ishmael carrying out fulfillment of myths and legends by committing violence upon each other, with this latest installment of violence originating in precisely the mid-40s relocation efforts that the article is detailing and critiquing.
  - dagav 6y ago
    I'm not sure your first point matters. There is one canonical Jewish nation today who live and die by the Torah. The history of Jews isn't them committing violence against others, but of violence being committed onto them. The Jews in the diaspora weren't going around stealing people's land and possessions, they were merely trying to live in peace, integrate into whichever nation they were a part of, and suffered pograms, massacres, and blood libel for trying. The violence in 20th centruy started to defend their nation from a second Holocaust, once the lesson had been learned that integration into another nation was impossible. Your impression of Jews as violent people is horribly misguided.

Udik 6y ago

> My ancestors lived in Israel since 1880 No, they lived in Palestine. In hindsight, having been the Palestinians pushed away from their lands, first through mass immigration, then by the generous gift made by Europe of those lands to the immigrants, and finally through ethnic cleansing and land grabbing, in hindsight their violence towards the newcomers was perfectly justified. How can you blame them if they saw in advance what was happening?

skinkestek 6y ago
There never was a Palestinian people or a Palestinian contry. After last time the Jews (Israeli) lived there those areas went from being Roman to Turkish to British to being split into mostly Jordan and Israel. Jordan was the big part - for the Palestinian Arabs - and Israel was about the about 30 % that was left for Palestinian Jews. At no point in time however before the Oslo process has there been a Palestinian country, only Arabs and Jews living in Palestine, better known as Israel until that massive propaganda effort last century.
- Kednicma 6y ago
  You're being disingenuous; if we call them not just Palestinians, but Philistines or the Peleset, then they are mentioned in multiple histories of the region. While the region passed through Roman, Turkish, and British control, the only time when there was a large influx of foreign folks was during the Islamic expansion, when many Arabs moved into Palestine. Other than that, they've been there since around the Bronze Age Collapse; their history traces through the Iron Age just like Israelite/Jewish history.
- apta 6y ago
  > There never was a Palestinian people or a Palestinian contry. Quite a ridiculous statement. The entire region that spans today's Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine "Israel" was known as Bilad Al-Sham. There were no individual countries with today's borders under the Rashidun Caliphate, to the Ummayads and all the way to the Ottoman empires, just regions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilad_al-Sham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilad_al-Sham
- 6y ago

bosswipe 6y ago

Historical whataboutism like this is the source of much of the moral justification for outright evil in the world.

dagav 6y ago
I'm not spouting whataboutism, I'm giving some much needed context to a conflict that very few truly understand. No one in the West understands the Jewish side of the story, but it's important if we want peace.

onyva 6y ago

Race? Really? Which races are involved? Aren’t we all Semitic? Especially concerning Yemenite Jews who are literally Arabs who converted to Judaism en mass before the 7th century. The article doesn’t reduce anything to politics. It “exposes” a very effective propaganda machine. Anyone who studies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is aware of this. Not going into why you want to compare Bedouin raids to a state sponsored violence. Bedouin tribes attacked both Jews and Arabs since before the time of Mohammad.

dagav 6y ago
It's Jews vs Arabs. And this isn't my opinion, this is precisely how the conflict is perceived by both the Jews and Arabs involved. I'm not really making any statements about the article, but I tend to believe my ancestors over articles I find online, considering the sheer amount of anti-Israel sentiment that exists in the world. And the Arabs raiding their villages weren't Bedouins, they were Palestinian Arabs who weren't happy to have them as their neighbors. This is why the Haganah was created: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah
- apta 6y ago
  > It's Jews vs Arabs No it's not. It's Zionist occupiers vs. the natives. https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/hs69hs/jewish_people_marching_in_new_york_city_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/hs69hs/jewi...
  - onyva 6y ago
    Using “Zionism” to describe the regime in Israel is misleading. Hertzl was an emancipated Western Jew who was on a personal mission to reinvent the idea of Jews like himself. Western, educated Sephardi. Not Eastern Europeans living in the Middle Ages, which he was culturally and emotionally detached from. Most Sephardi Jews would not marry Eastern European nor consider them to be Jewish at this stage. Hertzl wanted to take on a colonial project to prove the world Jews can be as assertive and proactive as other people. At this stage of history it was to colonize something. He didn’t see Israel-Palestine as a destination nor was he religious. He wasn’t even aware of the activities of the failed “lovers of Zion” project of couple of Russians that tried revive a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine. What happens next was a takeover and repurposing of his agenda, one the two movements “merged”, which eventually will coincide with the holocaust. Ps Ben Gurion’s treatment of diaspora Jews, ruppin’s race pyramid and eugenics plan for the Jews, and other “anecdotes” are beyond the scope of this discussion, but should be remembered. There’s nothing saintly about pre-state Israel, nor innocent.

apta 6y ago

> lived in Israel since 1880 There was no "Israel" in 1880. > and a holy war. No it's not.