Gaza Versus Israel (and the rest of the arab world) for dummies

In regard to the video in the OP:

What this esteemed professor fails to acknowledge is the main point of the conflict:

By what right was the land of another people given to Israel?

Most people think that it was done only after the holocaust, and that was the reason and therefore justified, but no; it was in the works long before then. Google 'The Balfour Declaration'.
And even if it WAS on account of the holocaust, the question remains, and is entirely valid.
By what right was land taken from one group by a second group and given to a third group? A people that, it should be mentioned,weren't responsible for the crimes of the holocaust?

To make a video which describes the conflict as simple, and does not even raise this central point, is disingenuous at best.


edit to add: @LostNemesis: yes; your comment wasn't in yet as I was writing this.

reply to post by curiouscanadian777

By what right was the land of another people given to Israel?

Why is it people continue to say this? Read this Link

Here's a quick rundown of the facts.

The Jewish agency purchased land from absentee Arab effendis living in Damascus. The Tel-Aviv, Jaffah area into large areas in the Galilee were purchased fair and square, well above their actual worth, by Jews.

The Belfour Declaration aimed to establish a Jewish state. In 1921, the transjordan was created and separated away for the Brother of king Faisal of Iraq, Abdullah. In 1937 the peel commission pondered the borders that ended up in the 1947 UN partition plan. Israel was granted 53% of the land, and Arabs 46%, with a corridor in between controlled by the UN. Arabs rejected it, Jews accepted it. In 1948, Israel declared itself a state based on the lands which they controlled, which were the Galilee down to Jaffa. This was only a portion of the UN's partition plan. The Arabs had the majority of the land. 7 Arab states declared war on Israel. In 1949, a ceasefire was called, and Israel had won much of the land the Arabs had before the war - the Negev and parts north of Gaza.

Any you know the history after that. So, to repeat, the land initially partitioned to Israel was largely purchased by the Jews. Since the Jews had been persecuted and suffering wherever the had lived, it was determined that their 2000 years of exile and wandering could only be remedied by giving the Jewish people a national home; and no place was home like the Holy land. The fact that most cities in the "Palestine" have Arabized names of Biblical Hebrew names should indicate how legitimate Jewish claims are to the land.

Don't bite the hand that feeds you. Simple thing really

Yeah sorry this video presents a very one sided view of the facts; to exemplify how biased this video is, let's say I'm Israel and you're Palestine: I kick you out of your home, so you go and you get your friends and you come and try to force me out. I manage to fend you off, then I make a video and put it on youtube exclaiming that you and your buddies tried to break into MY home and throw me out. I have presented facts, right? Yes, but I have also left out a great many.

Just because the UN says, "you can have this land" doesn't make it just or ethical; in order to understand this conflict, you must learn both sides' story. The methods Israel employed to kick out the Palestinians are nothing short of horrifying, to the point that some would even compare them to Hitler's Nazi regime.

This map shows the reason why Palistinians are fireing rockets into Israel. This is the extent that Palistinians have been pushed back off their own land.

You cannot take a peoples land and persecute them and then play the victim because they want to fight back.
If you take away a peoples land,pride and dignity all they have left is the bomb and the bullet, its human nature to do what the palistinians are doing.

It seems to me, that the decisions made for the people who were actually living there were made by 3rd parties; be it the Jews, the British, the UN or the Arabs who fought wars in their name, which was, more for imperialistic benefit, than for the people on the land.

"Since the Jews had been persecuted and suffering wherever the had lived, it was determined that their 2000 years of exile and wandering could only be remedied by giving the Jewish people a national home"

This statement just...Your sympathy for the wandering Jews just will not extend to the people who were displaced to make that home, will it?
And why are people vilified for trying to remedy the exile and suffering of the Palestinians? You just don't see the hypocrisy in this...

"The fact that most cities in the "Palestine" have Arabized names of Biblical Hebrew names should indicate how legitimate Jewish claims are to the land. "

But you give no legitimacy to the claims of the people who were actually living there?


My main point, as you have demonstrated, it is by no means 'simple', as the video in the OP suggested, not even getting into what he left out of the story.







edit to add: I'm not even going to get into what I think of what is happening right now, as that really was not the point of the OP; it was whether or not that was a 'really good video to describe whats happening in the middle east'.

Originally posted by auraelium

This map shows the reason why Palistinians are fireing rockets into Israel. This is the extent that Palistinians have been pushed back off their own land.

You cannot take a peoples land and persecute them and then play the victim because they want to fight back.
If you take away a peoples land,pride and dignity all they have left is the bomb and the bullet, its human nature to do what the palistinians are doing.

This is bogus map. It shows in white territory owned by Jews and in green territory not owned by Jews. Kind of forgetting that British empire was controlling the land and owned territory. Foreign states owned territory.
Palestinian Arabs did not control all the green part.

reply to post by ZeroKnowledge


Nonsence, these people lived there for hundreds of years, its their land.The fact that the British took it from them doesnt take away from the fact that its still their land.Pre 1946 they could go,farm,live move through any of the green bit.Now they cant,It was taken from them.

That guy in the video is deluded, I bet he is an Israelite and has a nice mansion over there somewhere built on a christian/muslim graveyard, or at least hes got his pockets full, that old zionist fart

he overlooked the fact that Israel has no right to be in that land to begin with. The jews lived throughout the middle east until 1948, and you can refer to the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries for more information on that...

reply to post by curiouscanadian777

imperialistic benefit

Can you make out the difference between a Jewish nation state and a "vehicle" for imperialism? This is a claim which is quite popular in Islamic countries, and obviously, it makes sense to them.

This statement just...Your sympathy for the wandering Jews just will not extend to the people who were displaced to make that home, will it?

I'm sensing that you just don't want to change your views, regardless of what I write.

I sympathize with the Jews because they've been forcibly exiled from that land. Not one day in 2000 years did they not face Jerusalem and read from the prayer books, longing to return home.

A people needs a home; The Jews qualify in every anthropological sense for what accounts as a people: language (Hebrew), Culture, religion, history.

Now, you'll say to me, "why don't you commiserate with the Palestinians"? It's not that I don't sympathize with their sufferrings; it's just not Israel's fault. The first war in '48 was waged by Arabs; the resulting dislocation of Arab Palestinians wasn't remedied by the governments of Egypt or Jordan, both of which administered Gaza and the westbank. No, the problem was left to fester, left to stay alive. Is that right? Can Israel be excoriated for what Egypt and Jordan failed to do? Then in '67, Egypt blocked the strait of Tiran - a cassus belli according to international law. Blocking that strait meant choking off Israel's source of Iranian oil. Thus, it was economic warfare. Israel held off an attack for 3 weeks, while the Egyptians amassed 100,000 troops at their border. So Israel carried out a preemptive strikes on Egyptian airfields. Fast forward to the end of the war, in which Egypt, Syria and Jordan fought Israel, Israel won control of the west bank, and thus, the burden of tending to Palestinian refugees.

Its important to know that Palestinians as an 'ethnicity' or people is a very recent invention, after the '1948 war Musa Alami, an Egyptian diplomat, propounded on the need to create a 'great myth' of a palestinian people. So before 1948, Palestinians were identical, virtually indistinguishable in culture, ethnicity, Arabic spoken, and religion (sunni Islam) as their neighbors in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. So why should a 'made up' people, who's nationalistic fervor is very real today, be treated in the same category as Jews? That's the first question. The second question I have to ask is, will the Palestinians ever live in peace with Israel? Neither Fatah - who won't recognize a JEWISH state, and Hamas - which won't recognize any non-Islamic state - are willing partners in building a Jewish state. Israelis are understandably frightened that if they were to trust the blandishments of palestinians for peace, that this would just be another ruse to gain sovereignty in areas where the IDF currently patrols.

Originally posted by auraelium
reply to post by ZeroKnowledge

 

Nonsence, these people lived there for hundreds of years, its their land.The fact that the British took it from them doesnt take away from the fact that its still their land.Pre 1946 they could go,farm,live move through any of the green bit.Now they cant,It was taken from them.

Nonsense. In the country you live in there is lots of state-owned land.
British took the land from Ottomans and it was not even called Palestine then. It was in parts of several districts with different names,not a single one called Palestine. Ottomans took land from.... and it goes on and on.
So farmer Ahmad who lived in Gaza or rich land owner Salim who lived near Tsfat owned their own land land - and it is green, and British government owned Kineret lake and deserts and it is also green. But under Ottomans Salim and Ahmad lived in completely different districts.

Originally posted by RizeorDie
That guy in the video is deluded, I bet he is an Israelite and has a nice mansion over there somewhere built on a christian/muslim graveyard, or at least hes got his pockets full, that old zionist fart

he overlooked the fact that Israel has no right to be in that land to begin with. The jews lived throughout the middle east until 1948, and you can refer to the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries for more information on that...

Jews lived here too. So Israel has every right to be in this land. Palestinian Arabs also lived here and in larger numbers and borders are ... debatable, but they are where they are due to complete refusal by other side to recognize Israel. Just like you do.

reply to post by ZeroKnowledge


Yes but they dont have the right to throw non Jews off it either.

reply to post by cody599

Excellent video. It states what's going on in simple terms. Basically, a nation is being attacked wrongly and ruthlessly by a terrorist government that has taken over the Gaza Strip. Many thousands of rockets have been launched since 2000. This is in addition to suicide bombings and other terrorist events that have killed 100's of Israeli citizens. Israel is under attack and has exercised excessive restraint given their circumstances. As I see it, ANY nation will act to defend itself, just as Israel is.

The only problem I think some people will have with all this is Where did it all start? We can see that the moment Israel was created in 1949 several Arab states immediately declared war. We can see that Israel survived but the wars haven't stopped. They've morphed into proxy wars and terrorist actions. Basically, these wars will not stop until the Arab interests in this region can forgive the creation of Israel and move on. Apparently, they do not understand that fighting forever based on something that happened in 1949 is not productive. They have to be able to accept present circumstances and work with all parties to negotiate a peace. It was the UN that officially created the state of Israel, so if it's war the Arabs want then they're at war with the whole world.

Asking Where did it all start? is something people are going to do and it's not easy to answer that question. In fact, the area formerly called Palestine has been taken over by several powers that be over the past 1000 years: Ottomon Empire (Turkish), European Crusaders, Mongol Empire, Ayyubid Dynasty, Egypt and Britain. A lot has happened and we could bicker for a long while. However, what's easy to say is that Israel is under attack and has been for a long, long time. Ultimately, innocent people are dying and what's happening NOW matters more than what happened 60+ years ago.

Here is a list of suicide attacks on Israel between 1989 and 2008:
en.wikipedia.org - List of Palestinian suicide attacks...

804 deaths are attributed to those attacks.

That does NOT include the rocket attacks. There have been I think over 10,000 of them since 2000. There're ups and downs. You can find out more about that here:
en.wikipedia.org - Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel...

Originally posted by auraelium
reply to post by ZeroKnowledge

 

Yes but they dont have the right to throw non Jews off it either.

This is true. There were ethnic cleansings in 1948 war and there is no way to defend it. All i can say is that it was mutual and Jews were thrown out from places Arab armies captured. Due to military success of both sides there were much much more Palestinian refugees.
However this is not the reason for refusal to recognize Israel.

No, I won't change my views, which are that the Palestinians who were living there at the time have a legitimate claim to their land.

Oh, I see, another "Palestinians are a made-up people" argument. Lame.
I don't know what other people are referring to when they talk about the Palestinians, but I am talking about the people who were actually living there.

Maybe you misunderstood me, or maybe I didn't make myself clear, but when I said imperialism, I meant by all parties, including the Arabs. I don't believe most, if any, of the Arab nations pontificating today actually give a flying # about the Palestinians or improving their circumstances, and yes, they are helping to make things worse.

I think the video seemed one sided but there is allot of good information in there. Also, for a one sided video it had this in there.

Between 2006 and 2010 the UN human rights commission condemned Israel in 20 of its 25 resolutions.
Myanmar, 4 times
N. Korea once.

I think that speaks volumes.

reply to post by cody599


I am almost certain that they would be different instances as this from the sounds of it was in a run down area with all people indoors during the 24hr curfew.

Thanks for your opinions and replies though, I have found them interesting.

reply to post by cody599

Thank you had my wife and 14 year old son watch when they asked what this "whole middle east thing" was about. I find it odd that my son hasn't even heard about this in school.

Originally posted by iwontrun
reply to post by cody599

 

Thank you had my wife and 14 year old son watch when they asked what this "whole middle east thing" was about. I find it odd that my son hasn't even heard about this in school.

It is our responsibility to teach our children about the world as best we can,not the school system.
I try to include my kids in current world news as much as possible.