Israel

Zooey wrote:

So if Hitler had never done his Hitler thing, the state of Israel presumably would not exist.

Right?

I am not sure that causal relationship ever dawned on me before which is kind of embarrassing because it seems pretty obvious.

I know there were Jews in Palestine, but I never heard/read that there was any kind of serious drive to form an independent country, but there must have been something. I can’t imagine that the UN just planted a country there without some kind of pre-existing political base in Palestine. Anybody know?

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It ‘might’ still have come about, but who knows. From talking to Jews (and dating a Jew) I can tell you that the Holocaust did indeed ‘change everything’ for many of them and lead to a white-hot-focus on creating a safe-space. There’s even a whole body of jewish-literature on how the Holocaust kinda created this…oh…this ‘fuck God’ attitude among many Jews. God ‘broke the covenant’ so fuck him, and fuck the palestinians and fuck the liberals and lets just survive by creating our own fucking safe-place. No-one is going to help us, no-one is going to protect us, not even God — so, right or wrong, we need Israel.

Etc, and so forth.

So yeah, Hitler certainly was a huge factor in creating Israel. And the Occupation. And the Fuck-the-Palestinians and everyone else attitude.

Thousands of years of persecution and THEN Hitler. Kinda hard to play nice, after all that.

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Zooey wrote:

But…how was it sold?

Because Jews did not suddenly form an army and invade. They had help. And did the UN just say, “Hey, we’re giving all the land from here-to-here to the Jews to form a country, and that’s that.” Or did they try the smoother “We recognize the independence movement of these poor people dispossessed here in Palestine, and we are taking their side in the conflict.” Or what? I’ve always assumed it was the former. But all I have ever seen in documentaries or what I’ve read is just…Israel was formed in blah blah blah, and people went there from all over the world” like it was just the wilds of Alaska or something.

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Well, I’m no expert.
I like this article though, just as food for thot, on some general notions and myths:
link:https://portside.org/2020-07-22/forgotten-history-jewish-anti-zionist-left

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Its a long complicated history, as you know.
Various factions of zionists, and non-zionists, and semi-zionists argued, conversed, debated and wondered about a ‘homeland’ for decades.

After the Holocaust an organized form of zionism kinda emerged and grew, and they lobbied the US/Britain/The UN. (The UN basically was the US and Britain). “We deserve a homeland” “Israel is where are roots are” “God promised us this land”

An undercurrent of racism was always part of the project. The Arabs are primitive savages, etc.

So Britain/UN just carves up the Middle-East.
Partly out of a sense that ‘we gotta give these poor jews a safe home’ and
partly because of a sense of anti-semitism: “we dont want these damn jews in our country.”
And partly because of geo-political reasons, etc.

So the UN/Britain just drew fucking lines in the sand, and gave the Zionists the best land.

Gosh, what could possibly go wrong with the idea that the UN/Britain/US should just be able to carve up the middle-east ?

In essence it was ‘sold’ the way all colonial projects are sold. With lies, half-truths, backed by powerful-military-force.

I mean the Jews do deserve a homeland as much as any group I can think of, but that doesnt mean a super-power can just carve up a populated area and give it to them. But they did.

I’ve always thought, if i could put one single human history story in a time capsule for aliens to read after the final apocalypse, it would be the Story of the Jews and Palestinians. The story has everything. Every kind of fucked up human drama and poignancy. The victims become the victimizers, etc, etc, etc.