MSA Student Would Prefer Second Holocaust

Please: personal insults - and especially ones with little substantiation - aren't really useful or important to the debate. I recommend refrain, or a perusal of the relevant history.

 

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Is there better evidence of genocide than wiping off a people from their land? The fact that you, an American supposedly believing in secularism also considers himself a Jew by race is sufficient evidence of the pervasiveness of such primitive ethnocentrism.

You would support such race based land wars for no reason other than an irrational attachment to myths that you do not even believe in. This is the tragedy of Israel and of Jews. They put their mythological attachments before the people they starve and kill for land. The fact that real people are being kicked out of their homes, deported to a ghetto and starved of freedom, food and medication to support such irrational attachments means nothing to them. The oppressed are even blamed for fighting back against their oppression.

 

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there is no muslim people there are muslim peoples

 

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I'm sorry: who said we were talking about Lebanon? :bugeye: Yet, if you don't like me calling the religious oppression of Jews by Muslim Arabs cultural, then I suppose I could just call it religious oppression. Is that term preferable?

I'm sorry: Jewish people are ethnocentric? In what way? Have I made such a claim for Arab Muslims? Why would you think this?

?? I know quite a few Jewish people, Sam - I even work for one - and he's never mentioned anything to me about displacing Palestinians to build his house downtown. Are you referring to a specific example or something? Maybe you could define your terms.

 

Well - and forgive me for saying so - you don't seem to have a problem with the same being to Jews prior to 1948. Is there some reason you make such a distinction?

 

Geoff you need to figure out if people should be punished for their past and whether children inherit the sins of their fathers on not. Let me know because either your children need to be punished for 30 million Indians dying of starvation or Nasrullah is not responsible for whatever culture you have ascribed to him.

 

Well, I think I've made it abundantly clear that I don't. Did you not understand my argument? I was pointing out that Israel is as much a creation of Arab Muslim oppression as Western. I think I even wrote that, above. But tell me: surely you agree with your own suppostion above? You mention often that Jewish people ought to be punished for their supposed detrimental ethnocentrism.

Well, I suppose you would argue that I did, if indeed I supported such a thing, or were as historically ignorant of its wrongness as some people are of nearly a millenia and a half of religious oppression in the Middle East. I don't think you'd be right, but it seems to me that you would think so.

Well, unfortunately for your position, the issue goes back further than Nasrullah. What I'm arguing is that you don't seem cognisant of this fact. But as to whether or not Arab Palestinians deserve oppression for their own history - I mean, you really haven't understood anything I've written, have you? Would you like me to explain it again?

Edit: since the above almost seems nebulous - or could be read that way if so desired - I state plainly and for the record that I don't think Palestinians deserve oppression for their own history of Jewish relations. I hate for it to come to the necessity of such a droll statement, but there it is.

 

I don't think there is any reason to explain anything again Geoff. I look at this discussion and the rigid positions as being endemic of the entire situation, meaning that there is never any actual productive discussion concerning peace. Its nothing more than divided lines with stone throwing or rather endless recrimination; this one did this, that one did that. An endless tit for tat.

Does it help Jews find security? No. Is it leading the Palestinians to any justice? No. Is there peace on the horizon? Never! Not if this is the around the bend circular approach. No one forgives, no one forgets, no one moves forward, nothings achieved. Hate reigns.

The Palestinians or muslims (what have you) will not win by aggression, sometimes that works but this situation calls for a different tactic as it hasn't made any meaningful headway towards having their needs met or having their cause addressed.

Can Jews feel secure enough to lay down their arms and rid their nation of paranoia? How can they when there is still talk of Nazi's (as if hunting a nazi to face proper trial is the same as killing nazis) the holocaust, a second holocaust, students calling for a jewish genocide, characterizations of all jews no matter where they live as being somehow inherently 'ethnocentric' and somehow 'evil'. If people say 'there is no honor in turning your back on your enemy' and then calls for those to 'pick up arms' then how can you expect Israeli's to put away their bulldozers and lock up their guns?

The situation is fruitless and goes nowhere like these discussions.

Its a shame.

 

Yes it is a shame. But it is as unrealistic to expect a colonised occupied people to not defend themselves as it is to expect the British to establish a caliphate in Buckingham palace. Have the Muslims reached 7% of the population of England? Perhaps it would be interesting to see how the British view such policies from the other side of the fence.

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After all they have no problem expecting others to take whatever they dish out.

 

Well whatever, I mean if the tactic and the discussion doesn't change then neither does the outcome. If its the 'last cry of the mohicans' type of thing then the Palestinians have their 'honor' from never 'turning their back on their enemy' but they achieve nothing but dissipation, continued loss of land, dignity, rights etc.

On the same note what do Israelis achieve? They may have the land but no peace and the constant bane of paranoia from 'living among ones enemy'.

Both lose in different ways and still there is no resolution in sight.

 

Lucy, you make quite good points. I'm not arguing for this endless series of tit-for-tat, but rather just of the recognition that the history of Jewish-Arab/Muslim relations did not begin in 1948, even if some argue so for reasons of disingenuousness or ignorance. Ergo, the solution to the problem must take into account the issue of that quite well-founded Israeli 'paranoia', a term I disagree with, since it hardly seems irrational given their history. Different people, for example, have argued for the one-state solution: this, given the history of the region right up to 1948, is a laughable idea, or would be, if it were not so dangerously foolish a notion. Paranoia is the feeling that 'someone is out to get you'. If history suggests that, given the right circumstances, that might well be true enough to have practical consequences, then it's hardly delusional, is it?

Or, maybe more simply and in fewer words than the entire thread: There's a reason two-state makes sense.

Buona sera.

 

That is some surprisingly endless bitterness. And you call me a little biased.

 

As long as the rights of Palestinians as human beings are not recognised there will be no resolution in sight. Like the blacks who were worked to death and buried under the New York city they built or the Dalits who were starved and worked to death because they were not good enough to eat or drink what was set aside for the British army, they will have to wait for more enlightened times for their rights as human beings to be recognised.

 

Hopefully it will take less than 1400 years.

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That depends on how long people keep clinging to primitive attachments like race and support ethnocentric groups who practise racism.

 

Doesn't need to be racist. Could just be religious.

 

Not race, culture. Palestinians still live in Israel, but we call them Israelis, so the map is absurd. I support the Jewish people organizing for their own defense. Sure, it is the Jewish religion that created the Jewish people, but now that they exist, one can discuss their fate in secular terms. Anti-semitism is irrational, like religion, but it affects the fate of Jewish people as a whole whether they happen to worship the Torah or not. Do you think there was a religious test for the murder of Jews in Nazi Germany?

That is incorrect. Real people, 60 years ago, fled their homes due to violence on the part of the armies of 5 Arab nations (and one fledgling Jewish one). They built new homes, but even though they lost their war, which was conducted in opposition to the international community, they continued to murder innocent people, and so would never find peace. They are not oppressed, they are policed, because when they deliberately attack innocent Israelis (Jewish and Arab alike), they are victims no longer.

I'm sure there are completely innocent Palestinians who do not deserve the treatment made necessary by the most hostile among them, those prideful arrogant people who don't remember a time when they weren't in the majority, but it would be myopic to focus only on the innocent and shape policy just for them. No country could afford to do so. Yes, I do blame the Palestinian militants for continuing to fight after 1948, long after they were free from any personal danger. I'm sure any of my relatives would have been overjoyed had they been given the choice, in Nazi occupied Poland, of simply moving away. In the Palestinian's case, how far did they have to move, 200, 300 miles? That's still freaking Palestine.

 

Tamahto, tomayto. You identify with a racial group that gives you right to citizenship in a Middle Eastern land based on mythology, not culture. You are not Palestinian. Or Arab or Middle Eastern. You are not even of the same faith, forget culture. You are a westerner who clings to a distilled Judaism, based on what? a couple of recipes? A celebration of myths based on fiction, like Passover and Exodus?

This is not "culture":

You support Europeans colonising Palestinians in the Middle East because of beliefs that they are "your people". Thats racism.

If it was culture you would support the Palestinians, who are the descendents of Judaic culture and who follow, even today, customs that are written about in the Old Testament. But that is alien culture for you, isn't it?

Not according to the Geneva conventions which does not oppose resistance and which does oppose replacing occupied peoples with peoples of the occupier. Even by international laws, the Palestinians are victims with the right to resist and all settled Jews are occupation.

Every single Jew who has displaced a Palestinian is in contravention of the Geneva convention. Every single Palestinian who has been displaced has the right to resist.

 

Okay let me clarify what I meant when I use the term 'paranoia'. When I speak of paranoia I am referring to 'hyper-vigilance'. Its often seen in victims of all kinds whether in groups or in individuals. I remember once a long time ago when I was in Paris I stayed at a hotel in Montparnasse. The whole city was booked. The hotel where I stayed was run by Tunisians and I became quite friendly with them, the staff and owner. There was an Israeli woman staying in the hotel and we also became friends. We would go out for a drink and come back and she would have me escort her to her room and she would lock the door behind her and then have me make sure it was securely locked from the outside. She feared them. They were not especially concerned about her, not enough to want to cause her harm at least, but that wasn't the point. Have Jews been victims throughout Europe (long before the holocaust) and in the Middle East and to a lesser degree in the US? Yes. No one can deny this. Has this experience lead to a hypervigilance especially among Israeli's who have had to fight their neighbors, who were the last remaining from atrocity, who have had to ban together no matter what their differences because of 'the surrounding enemy'? Yes. But if they never learn to have the benefit of the doubt, if they take on offensive measures from a defensive position, if there is never a moment when their guard can be lowered so that those palestinians and other muslims who are sincere about peace can sit by their side then, over time, this position becomes an impediment to what they really desire which is to 'relax' to be 'at peace', a kind of waiting to exhale. Do you see what I mean? I am not suggesting a paranoia where there is nothing to fear or where there is no enemy , I am suggesting the kind of paranoia where no matter how strong and secure one becomes they can still not feel confident, they still have to behave as if they are in a position of weakness or terrible risk when in fact that position is exactly what increases the risk. Even if Israeli's gained ALL the land, Gaza and everything else, do you really believe that they would feel safe? No. They would still feel the threat from their surrounding neighbors. If every Palestinian fucked off to Jordan would they feel safe in a land mostly made up of jews? No because there will always be that feeling that the enemy is out there somewhere, whether it by Syria or Iran, its never ending.

The story of that woman in Paris is not the first time I have noticed this behaviour. Even in Phnom Penh a young Israeli tourist (male) who was visiting for a month or so was convinced, and I do mean convinced, that there could never and would never be any peace among muslims and jews. Why? Because he couldn't see it as a possibility. His back was up in the discussion of it, he was ever ready, ever prepared to strike back because he believed he could see clearly that 'they' whomever they were, because the 'they' doesn't simply extend to muslims, were trying to destroy him, his people and his nation.

Its that attitude that doesn't allow many Israeli's to see aggression as not being offensive but defensive. Its that attitude that doesn't allow many Israeli's to see that the 'other' is hurting. There is no more formidable aggressor than a former victim, but the former victim isn't aware that they have now become the aggressor. I have met many Jews who are aware of this dynamic or phenomenon, it is somewhat ingrained. Kind of like meeting african americans who are convinced that everything in the white world is against them. They think if they go into a white restaurant and the waitress is a little slow or someone looks at them that its because they are black and because of this they don't extend themselves outside of their community because they perceive a greater amount of fear than is actually there. I've met some african americans who are just like this, they are confrontational and aggressive but most of all they are uncomfortable. Why? Because they don't know its safe to relax just a little, just enough to give something outside of their community a chance.

Have I explained this correctly because I really don't want to be misunderstood. There are individual circumstances such as the victims of crime or rape that also follows this dynamic, its not exclusive to Israeli's or Jews. I have come across it in Khmers when they have to deal with their Vietnamese or Thai neighbors, they are uneasy so they can never tell the difference between a paper arrow and a real one as their hypervigilant awareness have them react to both as if they are the same.

Am I making any sense? I am not suggesting that there are not real enemies nor that all fears are unwarranted. Its the reason why I can never see a one state solution as a viable solution, there's simply too much resentment and fear and anxiety among both groups to make it work.

 

Yes, it is a pretty good explanation. I have seen the same in many Israeli Jews. However, I have not seen the same in Palestinians, many of whom have Jewish friends. Why do you suppose that is?