A Phony Narrative: Arab Nationalism

reply to post by dontreally


By that logic it would have probably been easier for 800,000 Jewish people to be absorbed by the Jewish community in America, without starting a 60 year war.

The land is holy is Muslims as well...Jewish people don't really have exclusive rights to it. Jews had an international community too, just like Muslims, but smaller. And most of it was not in Israel.

reply to post by PatrickGarrow17

The concept that Palestinians should just relocate to Jordan is a bit ridiculous, do you really think that would quell all resentment?

But that was the purpose of the creation of the Transjordan. What else do you think the Jordanian civil war (black September) was about? The PLO was trying to oust the western client state - Hashemite dynasty - which rules to this day. In fact, many believe that the possibility of a Palestinian state in Jordan could be resurrected if the Hashemites were booted out of power.

These same European powers that drew up the whole region are the one's that forced in Israel.

Jews forced in Israel. Zionist activity in the area, buying up land, immigration, DEVELOPMENT of swamp land by Jewish immigrants, forced the British to take into regard valid Jewish aspirations for statehood.

You are lacking in sympathy for the Arabs in the entire situation

I'm trying to to look at it from both sides. Look at the map of the Arab world. The Arabs have no lack of sympathy. It's quite the opposite: Kurds, Berbs, and Jews, lack sympathy, whereas Arabs, led by consortium's like the Arab League, have power.

And, Israel has definite elements of theocracy. It is hardly a democracy with millions of Arabs being excluded from governance.

And what are these "elements of theocracy"? Israel also has 1.63 million Arabs. There are PLENTY of Arab mks. If you're going to make claims, make sure you have evidence to back them up.

reply to post by dontreally


So Palestinians should be forced with violence to leave the homes they own because Jews have some historical ancient ties there?

You make absolutely no sense. Zionist logic is so weird.

Would you willingly give up your house because I said my family used to own it? No, you wouldn't.

reply to post by dontreally


Israel includes Gaza and the West Bank, in reality. There are close to 5 millions Arabs and that population is rising.

Jews didn't create the state of Israel on their own, they had a whole lot of support from the Allies.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that a break between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, particularly its American variety, is fast approaching. The reason for this is that Israel is slowly but inexorably turning into a conservative theocracy while the Diaspora is largely dedicated to liberal democracy.

Jewish Daily Forward

The storm over remarks made by Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman is in many respects a tempest in a teapot, which has for a long time taken on holier aspects than it seems. Neeman wants Torah law, or in other words, he wants Israel to be a country governed by Jewish religious law, halakha. In any event, Israel is already a semi-theocracy.

www.haaretz.com...

You may make the argument that Israel has a democratic, secular government. But that's really just not true.

reply to post by PatrickGarrow17

By that logic it would have probably been easier for 800,000 Jewish people to be absorbed by the Jewish community in America, without starting a 60 year war.

The issue is self determination.

The land is holy is Muslims as well

Less Holy. You can't compare the holiness and centrality of Jerusalem to the religious Jew to the role of Al Quds to the Muslim. Rather, the proper comparison would be Jerusalem = Mecca. For example, when a Jerusalem Muslim prays, he turns his back to the Al Aqsa mosque, towards Mecca. Conversely, a Jew anywhere on earth faces towards the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. There is simply no comparison in terms of holiness here. Muslims may consider Jerusalem 'holy', but it is less holy than Mecca or Medina. And if it is subordinated to some other physical location, than it is no longer on the same plane as Jerusalem as seen by the religious Jew.

Jewish people don't really have exclusive rights to it

I never said they did. Jews have a responsibility towards the holy sites of Christianity and Islam.

just like Muslims, but smaller. And most of it was not in Israel.

Unlike Islam, Judaism doesn't proselytize. This means that Jews are a combination of ethnicity and religion.

reply to post by PatrickGarrow17

Jews didn't create the state of Israel on their own, they had a whole lot of support from the Allies.

It's actually quite the opposite. Truman enforced a weapons embargo on the region in 1947, so, unlike the Arabs, who had arms left by the British after WWII, the haganah (forerunner of the IDF) was in comparison poorly equipped.

This is related to the altalena affair.

reply to post by PatrickGarrow17


You can't just take claims from Haaretz without providing tangible evidence i.e. from existing law.

Show me how Halacha determines law in Israel. It's a lie. The liberals at Haaretz are just pissy that the country is turning more conservative - but conservative does not mean "theocratic".

For example, Turkey has become more conservative, but they are a secular democracy. Islam is separated from state; similarly, Judaism is considered an important part of Israeli culture, but Judaism has no say in the formulation of Israel's domestic laws. No one is forced to live religiously; to follow a religious lifestyle. This freedom from coercion is a staple of libertarian democracy.

How you can even claim Israel is theocratic - and sully my thread with this nonsense - only shows you don't know too much about how government works.

reply to post by dontreally


It's a de facto theocracy. Theocracy and democracy are not necessarily exclusive.

Theocracies can come in different degrees. They don't have to force their religion on the public. Israel has theorcratic elements for sure, almost everything about it is religious in nature. I guess it's mild as far as theocracies come, but still.

A lot of the Israeli public education includes religion.

High schools in Israel prepare students for the Israeli matriculation exams (bagrut). These are exams covering various academic disciplines, which are studied in units (yehidot limud) of one to five on an ascending scale of difficulty. Students with a passing mark on the mandatory matriculation subjects (Hebrew language, English language, mathematics, scripture, history, state studies and literature),

Education in Israel

reply to post by dontreally


Can you answer this question?

Would you willingly give up your house because I said my family used to own it? No, you wouldn't.

reply to post by dontreally

It's actually quite the opposite.

Yes it is. Why do you have to lie constantly, in order to create your own 'phony narrative'?
Even prominent Zionist leaders do not agree with you, much less history itself.

In 1930 and 1936 the World Zionist Organization vigorously opposed British proposals for a legislature, fearing that, if the Palestinians received the majority status that proportional representation would require, then they would try to block Jewish immigration and the purchase of land by Zionist companies. Zionist opposition was couched indirectly in the assertion that Palestine was not ripe for self-rule, a code for not until there's a Jewish majority.

To bolster this position, the yishuv formed defense forces (Haganah) in March 1920. They were preceded by the establishment of guards (hashomer) in Jewish rural settlements in the 1900s and the formation of a Jewish Legion in World War I. However, the British disbanded the Jewish Legion and allowed only sealed armories in the settlements and mixed Jewish-British area defense committees.

Despite its illegal status, the Haganah expanded to number 10,000 trained and mobilized men, and 40,000 reservists by 1936. During the 1937-38 Arab revolt, the Haganah engaged in active defense against Arab insurgents and cooperated with the British to guard railway lines, the oil pipeline to Haifa, and border fences.

This cooperation deepened during World War II, when 18,800 Jewish volunteers joined the British forces. Haganah's special Palmach units served as scouts and sappers for the British army in Lebanon in 1941-42. This wartime experience helped to transform the Haganah into a regular fighting force.
When Ben-Gurion became the World Zionist Organization's secretary of defense in June 1947, he accelerated mobilization as well as arms buying in the United States and Europe. As a result, mobilization leaped to 30,000 by May 1948, when statehood was proclaimed, and then doubled to 60,000 by mid-July-twice the number serving in the Arab forces arrayed against Israel.

source

"Perhaps the most important [of the Arab armies problems] was a crippled shortage of ammunition, owing to the international arms embargo ..., in the case of the Iraqis and Egyptians, long lines of communications. For example, after February 25, 1948, the Arab Legion received no new ammunition for its 20mm guns.

Some of the ammunition used by the Iraqi artillery was more than thirty years old; the Syrians had no ammunition for their heavy 155mm guns. Whereas Jewish stockpiles were growing all the times [especially the big arms shipment from Czechoslovakia in May 1948], the enemies were so depleted they stole ammunition shipments for each other. In addition, they were ill-coordinated, technically incompetent, slow, ponderous, badly led, and unable to cope with night operations that willy-nilly, constituted the IDF's expertise."

The Sword and the Olive

Does this sound to you as an operation planned for and by a 'poorly equipped' (Israeli) army?

"Maklef [Carmeli brigade] should receive reinforcements. His job is to occupy South Lebanon after bombing Tyre, Sidon and Beirut from the air. We will also shell Beirut from the sea. Yigal [Alon] should hit Syria [Syrian army] at [Mishmar Haemek] from the East and the North.

Our airforce must bomb and destroy Amman. The weak link in the Arab coalition is Lebanon because Muslim authority there is artificial, and easy to undermine. We must establish a Christian state with the Litani River as its southern border (5). We will form an alliance with it.

Once we destroy the power of the Arab Legion [the army of Trans-Jordan] we will destroy Tran-Jordan and Syria will then fall. If Egypt dares to continue fighting, we will bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. This is how we shall end this war and wind up our ancestors’ accounts with Egypt, Ashur and Aram…. " David Ben-Gurion - War Diary

source

In summary.

"This popular-heroic-moralistic version of the 1948 war has been used extensively in Israeli propaganda and is still taught in Israeli schools. It is a prime example of the use of a nationalistic version of history in the process of nation building. In a very real sense history is the propaganda of the victors, and the history of the 1948 war is no exception."

The Iron Wall - Avi Shlaim

reply to post by PatrickGarrow17

It's a de facto theocracy

If Israel is a de-facto theocracy, then, by your standards (which are no standards, no one would respect your claim), so is America, so is Italy, so is the Philipines, and a plethora of other countries which give precedence to one religion over another.

In my Catholic high school, I used to go to mass. Is Canada theocratic because of that? No. Of course not! Canadian education is, thank God, not socialized. If you're religious, you send your kids to religious schools, if you're secular, you send your kids to public schools. Hence, Israel, has a two tier school system: one for the secularist (Israel's state controlled media, for a so-called "Theocratic country" is surprisingly extremely liberal) and another for the religious.

And by the way, study of scripture is anthropological, not religious. You should really try to read up. Or, give it up. Stop trying to defend a claim that has no factual basis.

reply to post by dontreally

If Israel is a de-facto theocracy, then, by your standards (which are no standards, no one would respect your claim), so is America, so is Italy, so is the Philipines, and a plethora of other countries which give precedence to one religion over another.

In my Catholic high school, I used to go to mass. Is Canada theocratic because of that? No. Of course not! Canadian education is, thank God, not socialized. If you're religious, you send your kids to religious schools, if you're secular, you send your kids to public schools. Hence, Israel, has a two tier school system: one for the secularist (Israel's state controlled media, for a so-called "Theocratic country" is surprisingly extremely liberal) and another for the religious.

And by the way, study of scripture is anthropological, not religious. You should really try to read up. Or, give it up. Stop trying to defend a claim that has no factual basis.

By my standards all of those countries have theocratic elements. But in Israel religion is tied much tighter into the state. I wasn't talking about private schools, like you noted. Israel has a sizeable portion of its public education system with definite religious elements. Politics is defined by zionism above all else, which is religious in nature. Arab parties have 3% of the seats in knesset despite about half the population in the territory, and around a fifth of the population among Israeli citizens.

You really see no elements of theocracy in Israel?

And if you're going to use historical land rights as a reason for the state, you should consider that the Jews that moved back are genetically identical to Palestinians. They are all essentially a part of the same ethnicity. It is religion more than anything else that separates them, which further lends to the idea that Israel is theocratic as much as it is ethnic/democratic.

So, as far as male lineage goes, the genetic story is very clear. Palestinians and Jews are virtually indistinguishable.

link

At last somebody told the truth . I've been avoiding this topic because a lot of the people who speak on middle east issues are so rabidly anti-Israel , which I cannot understand .
I firmly believe that the Palestinians could have their bit of a homeland if they would just stop attacking Israel. Let no one forget that before Israel turned their school buses into light tanks the Palestinians favorite move was to toss hand grenades into them . That's pretty much all I need to know about them .

reply to post by dontreally

The Palestinians didn't have to suffer.

Since they were part and parcel to a larger Arab cultural identity, they could have been relocated (just as Pakistan/India did) to Jordan...which was established for them in the first place.

And the Jews didn't have to be subjected to Arab / Muslim anger.

After the Nazi threat was eliminated, Europe was safe for Jews once again. They could have all gone back to their respective European countries where they had been living for generations.... instead of heading to the middle east and displacing another people.

Who the # gave you the right to say they can't have nationalism? (I wrote this last, but I figured I'd move it up here since it's the best line.)

reply to post by dontreally

What makes a nation a nation? What differentiates, say, Portugal from Spain? Well, for one, the Portuguese speak a different language: Portuguese, while the Spaniards speak Spanish. This difference warrants a national differentiation. Throughout Europe we see this difference from state to state, from the swiss near the Alps to the Germans, the Dutch, the Swedes, Norwegians, Lithuanians and Latvians, Poles and Ukranians: there are actual linguistic and historical differences here warranting national distinction.

Even in these cases, they were first created from arbitrarily drawing up lines on the map.... it's how every country is formed.
The linguistic and historical differences don't come along until AFTER the lines are arbitrarily drawn.

You apparently don't know much about the history of the middle east? You seem to only know the names of the present day countries and some recent events.

Who the # gave you the right to say they can't have nationalism?
Because some of the countries were formed more recently than others that gives you the right? If you're from the US, which you probably are, you should know our country isn't even 250 years old and look how nationalistic this country has been since its founding....

One day, when new world super powers want to get into the USA they will hear the determined plight of the native americans here in our country. they will hear how they want to take back some of their land back.. heck maybe some of their holy sites.

Then those super powers will divide some land up that is in the USA and land that encroaches on canada and mexico. Then all these nations especially the USA will go apesh#t.

how will you feel then??

it is very easy for use as foreigners to sit back here and tell those nations to suck it up when they are asked to give land back to a people that was beat out of it.

We can sit here and split hairs and do mental gymnastics to try to justify this but if we were in the situation those arabs were with the native americans here EVERYONE in the USA would be up in arms.

None of you are there. None of you are involved. Your government is involved and it shouldn't be.
convincing anyone on these boards will do NOTHING to help the situation.


so have a coke and smile keep quiet.

Originally posted by RizeorDie
I understand your point, but the Arabs are very diverse and different groups, they also had different EMPIRES and they hardly spoke the same language up until Islam arrived, in fact they are only called Arabs because they share/speak the same language, Arabic. Had the Turks(Turkey) or Persians(Iran) or Afghans(Afghanistan) also inherited Arabic they would be refereed to as Arabs, even though they are NOT Arabs.

Iraqis, Syrians, and Lebanese are very light skinned compared to the true Arabs which came from Arabia,.

True Arabs are Yemenites from Yemen and Hejaz (Arabia)

UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Southern Saudi and Oman have a mixture of Arabs, Persians, and Indians way before Islam came to be, yet they all became known as Arabs!

Jordanians and Palestinians are a mixture of Arabs, Syrians and Berber

Egyptians and Libyans are a mixture of Arabs and Berber, while Algerians and Moroccans are Berbers

Sudan and Somalia are African, very dark skin, they had their own history, to claim Sudan and Lebanon as the same thing is like saying France and Finland are the same entity regardless of their separate histories

If you compare a Yemenite to a Qatari person, you would notice a huge difference even though they are considered Arabs. And if you compare a Yemenite to a Syrian, you will notice an even bigger difference.

best way to prove this is to use something like MAKE HUMAN
www.makehuman.org... (it's free, btw)
which has various racial type skin colors you can apply to your model. then you can actually visually see the differences. i was trying to approximate the egyptian skin colors and not only are skin colors different but eyes and noses, lips, body types. all kinds of variants.

Originally posted by ShotGunRum
reply to post by dontreally

 

Can you answer this question?

Would you willingly give up your house because I said my family used to own it? No, you wouldn't.

Do you know why no one else, let alone OP, except me, will answer your question?

The answer is because that's a dumb question without any reality in relation to the palestine issue, smacking of total ignorance.

The only reason why I reply instead of ignoring you is simply because I am tired of hearing the same idiotic refrain over again, fooling many naive to believe that your analogy is true and support it with even their precious lives.

The truth is, palestinians NEVER had a state by themselves before 1948. All that land belong to conquerors, who allowed both jews and arabs to live there as long as they pay taxes or buy those lands from corrupted administrative officials of conquerors.

Thus, how can one be kicked out of a house when one is never the owner?

All that changed when after WW2, UN, and not England, that voted to return the British mandate for both jews and arabs with rights to the land, to share it and live in peace, which unfortunately, the arabs REFUSED and launched war after wars to rob jews of their share of the land, with 'death to all jews' policy even TODAY.

In analogical terms - the owner decides to give the house he won decades back to those 2 orphans whom had been staying in the same house for centuries.

Unfortunately, the 1 of the orphans want the entire house, and started bitter fights with the other.

Neighbours and the owner decides to do the only rational thing - split the house into 2, to end the fights, with both having a share.

Unfortunately, 1 of the orphan refused, and continue to fight, while the other return in good measure, and hope that by demanding more of the share will make the other come to their senses and accept the partition plan, so that all may finally live in peace.

With this analogy, may more understand the reality of what is truly happening, and END once and for all - the other sickening analogy of the arabs\palestinians being the owners of the house which is pure BS.

reply to post by dontreally


The Difference of Qaumia and Watania are important to understand. Though Qaumia, the sense of Arab unity is wide spreas, it coexists with Watania, the local, nation-stat patriotism.

There are dialects and cultural differences. Throughout Histroy, various city-states, Emirates and other governing structures existed and battled on the field of international relations. just like Europe emerged through the dark ages and states were formed through long battles, also the Middle east is no different. but it is a diffrent legacy than the europan one you are used to.

John

reply to post by dontreally


So I don't get it OP What are you trying to say

That Israel has a right to erase Palestinians from existence and
take whatever land they have left to live on. Because of past
victimization by the British

No Really

think about what you are saying.

You are saying bla bla bla and then WHAT ????