Israel

I was going to call this thread
Churchill turning his back on Palestine.
But then I thought
'It's probably not worth it.'



...
Colonial Britain offered the Jews large territories in Africa but a Zionist movement wanted the Jews in their ancestral homeland.

Mostly Arabic; Palestine had a concentrated Jewish population, but because of WWI and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Palestine was under British control.The Balfour Agreement, signed in 1917 by Great Britain was a huge boost for the Zionist cause because it pledged Great Britain would do everything it could to establish a Jewish state in the region. This lead in part to even more migration back to 'The Holy Land' which already had settlements of persecuted Jews from Russia bank rolled by Americans and Europeans.

Created out of Palestine in 1948 by the British and recognised by the United States of America as a result of centuries of persecution I should imagine.
The mother of all post war settlements from WWII some could argue.

 

If a colonial power or powers had moved large numbers of Jews to someplace in Africa or wherever, with the intention of making it a distinctly Jewish homeland, wouldn't that be just as much a source of conflict with the natives thereof as it was in Palestine?

The Balfour Declaration also stated that the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine would be without prejudice to existing non-Jewish communities, which was easier to write than to achieve. Palestine was sometimes referred to as the "twice-promised land".

 

I can easily imagine that, so - 'yeah' - It probably would.

Both of my neighbours growing up, not one side of my terraced house but both, were Indians who were British subjects so came here in the 1970s when there were tensions between them and Amin in Uganda. Loads of Indians in Africa from the Haj.

 

The problem is no one has taken this on with any conviction and as a result chaos resulted with most of the West lining up against Palastine. No wonder Israel believes it can do as it wants and get away with it.

 

Correction :with most of the West lining up against Israel and kissing the behind of the Muslims .No wonder ISIS believes it can do as it wants and get away with it .

 

Not sure how you define the West but your list includes????????, and those who provide arms and support for Palastine????????????

 

When the Ottoman Empire got divided up, many people got screwed. Where is Kurdistan, the Yazidi homeland, the Druze homeland, the Coptic and Byzantine Christian homelands? Jews made up about 10% of the Ottoman population and got about 2% to 3% of the territory.

In fact, the "Palestinians" are mostly Arab and got the great majority of the land outside of Turkey itself. It is the Syrians, Jordanians and Egyptians who have walled them out of their homelands. They even withdrew the Jordanian and Egyptian citizenship they held prior to the 67/72 wars. Those who stayed in Israel hold Israeli citizenship. Those who lived outside Israel became stateless because of their Arab brethren, not the Israelis.

Israel is the Jewish homeland. Period. They share it with those Arabs who chose to stay. They have no obligation to allow the descendants of those who left for Egypt or Trans-Jordan two or three generations ago to immigrate into Israel today. There is no "right of return" because few of them ever lived there, beyond a few very aged people who left in 1947.

 

Are you certain? I think you have confused the fact that Jews made up 10% the population of Ottoman Palestine in 1914,
http://orientxxi.info/l-orient-dans-la-guerre-1914-1918/the-jewish-yishuv-in-ottoman-palestine,0733
with the Ottoman population as a whole - pf which they made up slightly over 1%.
http://psi424.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Shaw,%20Ott%20Census%20System%20and%20Pop,%201831-1914%20%281978%29.pdf

So, slightly over 1% of the population getting 2%-3% of the land is a very good deal.

 

And that 2% was not enough for them, so they grabbed more in 1956 and 1967, though the first time they were forced to give it back by international pressure. By which strange reasoning do you call Syria, Jorsan and Egyptt "homeland" of people who have been living in Palestine for generations and where the majority there (and probably still are if you sum the exiles with the residents) ?

 

By the reasoning that they held Jordanian and Egyptian citizenship until those nations withdrew it.

 

The Palestinians are a distinct population group with significant differences from both the beduins that control Jordan and the Egyptians, as long as they had their own territory those countries had no objection to claiming sovereignty over them, but once they were forced to abandon it nobody wanted them as the ties to the controlling country were pretty weak. They were not Jordanian or Egyptian by choice or historical tradition but because the colonial powers divided the area that way.

 

Treasured momento given to me at a BDS/Boycott Israel rally I ran into at Dam Square outside the Royal Palace of Amsterdam in Amsterdam an attractive young lady wearing jeans and a burqa and nice/cute boots when I saw her and the rally and expressed my support. She came up to me, give me this pamphlet;
Side A
Side B

She told me all about it but I just remembered thinking she looked hot/beautiful... Anyways, this is what she gave me that day in Amsterdam.

 

Wish i knew more, speaking as a mid aged dude who doesn't have to deal with religious zealots or their philosophy . yet.
Just going to speculate. ..If a small country is threatened with annihilation from day 1 of their inception, it would make sense for the threatened country to fight for / and maintain a buffer zone...Look - they are building a wall.
If had to make a choice between a country who does dubious things to survive, or countries who want to eliminate a whole people and their religion...well- who would you side with

 

why IDF does not kill them all ?

why are they still alive ?

how many more have to be killed (by terrorists, you call them : Arabs) ?

if coup 1979 was defeated, now there were no KSA, Iraq, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, and...

after iran turned to islam, it was getting thiner year by year ...

 

classic case of land reform gone wrong.

 

Was it necessary to relocate the Jews in the first place, the Nazis were defeated and the death camps shutdown, could they have just stayed in Europe?

 

This brings me to what is, in my mind, a deeper mystery than the fate of The Afghan Girl: what happened to these two (European) Jewish children who lost their parents and were about to be deported from Palestine? This picture has haunted me since childhood.

 

The Jewish state; infrastructure, roads, schools - all that was created before the WW2 by five distinct waves of Jewish immigrants starting from 1880. So the people and infrastructure was there, they simply weren't allowed to declare independence earlier.

Many Jews, especially religious Jews didn't support Israel or were indifferent. For this, but mostly for economic reasons, most of the European Jews emigrated to the US, Western Europe, and other places, or stayed in their home countries.

So the relocation was not needed in the sense that only a minority of the European Jews ended up there.

Similarly, wholesale removal of the Arabs living there were discussed and informally planned among Jewish leaders before the war, to make room for more Jewish settlers.

Another interesting fact, without Holocaust Israel would be a radically different country today.
Majority of the European Jews were strongly religious: conservative, orthodox and ultra-orthodox. And they were the main victims of the Holocaust, most of them didn't survive - as they were the most defenseless part of the population, they had the least chance of survival.

This means that a non-Holocaust Israel would be much more like today's Iran than a modern, Western country.

 

After all that prelude, I was half-expecting a picture of some venereal disease.

 

I can see Jewish leaders having plans/aspirations to wrench Israel from the Arabs, but my question was more about the Allies agreeing to relocate the jews following WW2 as being "necessary."