yomomma wrote:Cunning Punt wrote:
I certainly believe Israel has a right to exist, but I think it's a right that's only been established since 1948. I'm curious to know why, assuming you and others here don't believe in a god, let alone one that does real estate deals, on what basis you're a Zionist? Historical claims? Well, then, all white people leave North America and Australia/New Zealand/South Africa.
Humanitarian claims.
While Jewish people have always lived in that area, you're right in that there was a massive migration to Israel after the Holocaust leading to it's admittance into the UN in 1949. Personally, I believe that Jews have suffered persecution for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. Where were they supposed to go? Kentucky? They felt a personal attachment to Israel and the UN helped facilitate it. Nobody was willing to take them in as refugees.
I'm not saying that Israel has always taken the higher moral ground when it's come to tolerance. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis share the blame for part of the gridlock in that area, however, like you, I certainly believe that Israel has a right to exist. I also believe they have a right to defend themselves.
I also believe, and this is just my opinion, that Israel would live peacefully with Palestinians if it weren't for the fact that they want to blow them off the planet. Any time Israel has put forth an olive branch, they've been screwed over, causing them to increase their borders as a buffer.
Obviously, it's way more complicated than that, but I don't have time to go into all the details, so that's the ultra condensed version of where I stand.
I can completely understand how the world's jews, after WW2, would feel that there was nowhere in the world where they would feel safe and that they had to have their own country. Here's the problem. There were people living there already. About three quarters of a million people were expelled from their homes in 1948. Don't those people matter too?
The Palestinians have certainly fucked everything up since, and if they had used non-violent resistance from the start they would probably have secured the world's sympathy and have a homeland by now. Probably. Cause it's all such a clusterfuck, who knows?
I am skeptical about Israel's olive branch remark though. I don't think they have tried that hard, and why should they? The only time there was serious chance at peace and the Palestinians fucked it up was the Camp David 2000 talks. At other times the Israelis have pulled out. It's harder for them to agree because they often have coalition governments.
I would also suggest that much of the building of settlements on the West Bank is not strategic or based on security needs: most of them are religious in inspiration, and many of the most zealous of the settlers are not even born in Israel. I've been there. Not that that makes me an expert, but I've been to the West Bank, back in the 80's, during the first intifada, before suicide bombings. The weapons of choice then were a general strike, and the occasional bit of stone throwing. I remember seeing a jewish flag flying from the top floor of an old building in the old quarter of Al Khalil (Hebron), and this jewish guy in his shawl with a fucking sub machine gun draped over his shoulder walking through the arab quarter. This was before Baruch Goldstein. You can bet the locals weren't allowed to carry. The tension there was palpable.
I remember getting a shared taxi from Jerusalem to Ariha (Jericho) on the way back to Jordan, and there was this distraught girl in the car with me being practically carried by her aunts. I think she was on her way to Jordan and leaving her family behind. But at least as a woman she would have been allowed back at some point. I met a Palestinian guy in a bar in Amman, the capital of Jordan, and he was a drunk, he'd left El Quds (Jerusalem) because there was no work there for him, no future. Trouble is the Israelis only allow one way tickets for men, so there was no going back for him. I thought he was going to pick a fight with me because I'd been there recently and he hadn't seen the place in years and he hated Amman.
Anyway I'm ranting and none of that has anything to do with anything. The thing I took away from that whole experience was: religion: what a ridiculous, divisive bullshit thing religion is. All these people fighting over a patch of desert that they'd otherwise have no interest in if it wasn't for their belief in a divine being that does real estate deals with his chosen people(s) whoever the fuck they are.
And don't get me started on the evangelical christian Americans hanging around Jerusalem. Fucking morons.
