Hamas, Israel, and Palestine: What History Will Tell

I don't have any solutions. But I have to agree with Bells on the religious superiority thing. I mean, if people believe this land was previously given to them by God, the same God that basically told them to kill anything that moves... I don't know where you go from there.

 

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Yes one book that claims the creator gave the land to the ancient Hebrews and another that claims he really does not like the Jews after all.
If a UN force to police the area is not tenable as Bells suggested then some other neutral peace keeping in the area is the only option.
The protagonists cannot be trusted to sort it out on their own.

 

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Are you implying that Zionists were forcing Palestinians out of their homes before Palestinians declared war on them in 1947?

 

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I read through your source (Qatari government-run Al Jazeera) and I see nothing there about Jews forcefully displacing Arabs prior to their declaration of war in 1947. The only thing I do see is that Arab tenants hosted on lands they didn't own were required to move elsewhere when the Arabs who did own the land voluntarily sold it, is that the "Nazi" behaviour you're talking about?

Nothing Israel has ever done in its entire history justifies any Hamas militant attack targeting unarmed Israeli civilians whatsoever, under any circumstances.

The Jewish language and culture originate from the Levant as does 50% of Ashkenazi DNA and an even higher proportion of DNA amongst the majority of Israeli Jews. How exactly is it not their homeland? Note that I'm not arguing other people don't have a right to also call it a homeland, but what grounds is there for treating Jewish refugees as aliens if they're returning from exile rather than voluntarily migrating to a stolen colony where their ancestors have no history, like your ancestors did when they came over to share in the spoils of Australia?

 

How many generations do people get to claim the title of exile?

 

No more than the number that would conveniently satisfy your personal sensibilities, naturally.

Of course I think a vastly more fair and just criterion would look at whether the people in exile have continued to maintain a claim to the ancestral homeland they were exiled from, and whether they continue to be persecuted in the territories that opinionated outsiders want to invent as their new homeland.

 

But 70 generations!? Geez, that's Lord of the Rings time scales!

My Dad did a lot of genealogical research on my family, but he was only able to trace back a few hundred years to when our ancestors left Scotland during the Highland clearances. Do we still have a legitimate claim to Scotland?

 

I suggest you read at least one book on the subject that wasn't written by radical leftists. 10 people repeating the same nonsense from the same primary source doesn't make it more true.

They had a choice to either accept unrestricted immigration from Jews returning from exile abroad or accept a UN-backed partition that would limit where those Jews could settle. They chose war because they wanted the country to only be a homeland for Arabs and other colonists who joined their fold over the centuries.

There were both Jews and Arabs who behaved like Nazis and also Jews and Arabs who didn't. Those who didn't behave in this way don't deserve to be stained by the actions of those who did.

Yes apparently you feel this way since you only seem to care about alleged genocides when there are Jews involved and ignore when the people fighting against Israel commit even bigger massacres than the ones they accuse Israel of. No Jews, no news right?

I repeat, you should stop trying to justify deliberate attacks against civilians where there is no evidence of anything of military value being attacked.

October 7 happened because Gaza is run by the same sorts of militant Islamists who declared their intention to commit genocide against Israelis and subsequently attempted this in 1947 and many times since. If they felt that something that allegedly happened during the Nakba justified retaliation, then they could have picked military targets and enjoyed the backing of the Geneva conventions to limit Israel's right to retaliate in kind.

First you argue that the Zionists were secularists willing to accept a piece of land anywhere, then you argue they were spiritualists who could only accept Israel. Most of the early Zionist movement founders were openly self-proclaimed atheists, so your argument makes even less sense in that light.

The reason they settled on migrating to Israel rather than somewhere like Uganda is because they had no justification to appropriate land in Uganda that would otherwise be reserved for locals. In Palestine only a small fraction of the total land was being cultivated prior to the return of the Jewish diaspora, and they were perfectly legitimized in appropriating unused lands and settling on purchased lands from voluntary sellers, because those were the same lands their own ancestors once lived on and were forced to leave.

So if a Jew born in Tel Aviv can trace half of their DNA back to Ice Age Canaanites, you are saying they are more alien to the land than a Palestinian born in Beirut who traces their ancestors to Turkey and Iraq?

Personally I think the Palestinians should receive the equivalent of whatever they were cultivating prior to the Nakba, from some portion of the existing territory in dispute, but nothing beyond that.

As far as I'm aware your ancestors weren't forcefully exiled from those territories, so I believe the answer under international law is no. If your land and the wealth accumulated on it is one day recognized as all belonging to the aboriginals you and your ancestors stole it from, then maybe the answer would change because you'd become a refugee and you'd still need a place to return to.

Britain had no ancestors forcefully exiled from Australia when it settled there, just like many of the colonists who came to settle in Palestine over the centuries after Rome kicked most of the Jews out. I do however feel that there is a similarity in that most of the land wasn't being used by anyone at the time and could therefore be claimed by anyone able and willing to make effective use of it.

I don't think there's much similarity there whatsoever, in part because there were no aboriginals attacking Britain or threatening and attempting genocide against it at the time when Britain asserted military control over the island. Absolutely Israel's right wing settler movement is a huge problem but I don't see the point in condemning or confronting them if that's just going to provide more ammunition for people to go after everyone else in the country.

 

Was your dad's family forcefully exiled from Scotland and denied any realistic opportunity to return? If so then I say absolutely yes.

 

One thing that this thread has purposely and by design failed to discuss is the fact that the fighting in Gaza and the undoubted suffering that fighting has brought upon Gaza residents could end today. All that would be necessary is Hamas surrendering and laying down its arms.

I don't think that Israel has any hope of eliminating pro-Hamas sympathies among the population of Gaza. And separating fighters from civilians will be hard, since fighters can blend back in with the civilians easily enough.

So my guess is that the Israeli objective is to destroy Hamas as an effective military force. That will require the Israeli military moving through Gaza building by building, searching for arms caches, tunnel entrances and rocket workshops. Certainly if Hamas fires on the Israelis while they are doing that, the Israelis will be happy to return fire and call in artillery and airstrikes. I expect any building from which fire comes will be flattened.

The hoped-for result will be the elimination of Hamas' ability to execute Oct 7 style raids into Israel and their ability to fire hundreds of rockets into Israel. They will probably continue in Gaza as a shadow organization with whatever small arms they are able to hide from the Israeli searches.

And I expect Israel to take over responsibility for security in Gaza. Israeli military patrols will continue to enter whenever they feel like it and conduct whatever searches they please. If they encounter any armed resistance, they will eliminate it. I expect the Israelis to carefully search all civilian traffic into Gaza to prevent Iran from again smuggling in arms. Civilians will probably be permitted to fly in and out of the Gaza airport (now closed) since their baggage and the planes are relatively easily searched. Trucks, buses, automobile and foot traffic might be allowed across the Egypt border, again with searches. So the Gazans can no longer call Gaza the world's largest prison, since they would be free to travel to and from any country that will receive them. They just can't bring arms back in with them.

Gaza has some attractive Mediterranean coastline and if the people waving Palestinian flags in Western cities were willing to invest real money in Gaza, it could be rebuilt into a rather nice place. It would have to be free of armed gangsters and political enforcers though, which isn't something that I foresee. Hamas probably will always be there darkening the lives of the locals, until those locals decide to do something about it themselves.

 

Agree, however Hamas will pick themselves up, regroup and plan the next attack on Israel as soon as they can. They do not want peace, they want the destruction of every Jew.

Israel are well aware so want to destroy Hamas utterly, even if that involves complete destruction of the Palestinian community, hospitals, schools and residential. 23,000 dead so far.
No sane person wants this to continue.
The Yanks will have to step in and get it stopped.
After that god knows.

 

I think there would be no way to eliminate Hamas as an organization or idea without eliminating all the millions of Palestinians who support it or sympathize with it, and thus Israel has no intention of actually eliminating it as an organization, but as you say rather they will eliminate the vast majority of its physical ability to fight and its ability to smuggle in more weapons alongside humanitarian aid, as well as making it much easier for Israeli troops to operate wherever they please in Gaza whenever they feel the need.

I've spent more than a decade on this website advocating for an international peacekeeping force to take over Gaza and take responsibility for halting Islamic terrorism there, but guess what? The standard agitators baying for Israeli blood complained that Hamas wouldn't be able to murder Israeli families and chase them away to Poland and impose Sharia on everyone if peacekeepers got involved. Now they apparently want a ceasefire and everyone singing Kumbaya. There has never been a speck of doubt in my mind that the human rights of actual Palestinians living in Palestine were far from their top concern.

 

As the 2006 PL election illustrated, allowing the Gaza Strip autonomy like that once more would eventually accommodate another terrorist or militant group takeover of the region. Of course, there will be occasional intifadas (riots, uprisings) even if Israel returns to military/security occupation. But that's better than guaranteed rocket barrages and massive October 2023 slaying attacks (from the Israel perspective) that provoke having to raze GS to the ground to weed out the violent ruling "party".

The West apparently doesn't want to be a neutral occupier in policing the Gaza strip (so Israel doesn't have to). And even if it did, it would sheepishly vacate that role at some point due to either its social-justice naïveté or an intellectual reality-impairment of allowing GZ autonomy again and expecting different results.
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You do know what the Highland Clearances were, correct? Basically the British conducted ethnic cleansing on the Scottish clans.

But, really my only point is that the Jews were not returning home anymore than my going to Scotland would be returning home. However, there are people living in Gaza who personally remember working in the olive groves that had been in their family for generations. Those same groves were bulldozed down in recent memory and Israeli "settlements" have been built on the land. They have a legitimate complaint.

 

I don't know that the Yanks will step in. There are too many people here who believe that YHWH gave them that land. Not to mention the prophecies of Armageddon... Actually that might get the evangelicals to jump in whole hog... so to speak.

 

Most Jews don't even think that. Just over 50%?

 

As for on here, I have come across one or two theists so far. The Christians among them may think that.
Most Christians I have spoken to do not understand scripture so they tend to repeat what they have been taught which is usually wrong. In my experience.
Are there any Jews on the site? Be good to get their view.

 

Sure, but my point is that prior to 1947 there were no real legitimate grounds for complaint because no one was being forced off the land they legally owned or lived on. Zionist settlers prior to 1947 had lots of unused land to settle and a decent amount of land the Arabs were willing to sell them.