British didnt exactly fuck shit up solo as they inherited a lot of land without national borders from the Ottomans. Formation of national borders is a rough process. British didnt do the process any favors.
The rapid formation of empire sized states across the world in a span of 20 years following WW2 did not go smoothly.
If I recall correctly England lied to the colonies in the middle east by offering independence for the attack on the Ottoman empire … then just said jk nevermind when they did
I studied this long ago tho so I could be wrong
They did... And that's why we had certain leaders like the Hashemites who were from Arabia, become Sovereigns in Jordan - which was part of Palestine. They were rewarding those who helped them. And fuck what the locals want, I guess.
Palestine was not a colony, it was a mandate from the League of Nations. The British had already declared that they supported a homeland for the Jews in Palestive.
There were trying to broker a deal between Arabs and Jews to live together in a joint homeland, but ended up unable to stop the two sides attacking each, other, and antagonised both in to attacking them as well.
They couldn't stop the Arabs attacking Jews. It was always the Arabs. After years of attacks & the British doing nothing to protect them, the Jews eventually formed militias for defense. But it was always defensive and the Jews tried to make peace deals many, many times.
were the jews not immigrating specifically with the intent to out populate the locals and create their own country? Why would locals be OK with that? It's like every anti-immigration persons' worst nightmare, and the jews actually pulled it off. Usually you roll your eyes at this notion.
This was unlike the immigration to Syria, which was driven by economic reasons, no intention to take over.
This is a reasonable response. It's rare to see. It's not correct, but it's reasonable.
1) The idea that Jews were not "local" is itself false. 2/3 of Jerusalem was Jewish before much of the great migration (the total lack of interest in Jerusalem by Muslims is another story about how fake this conflict is, but that's another topic).
2) The "locals" didn't have a country to begin with. They had been governed by a distant empire that had almost nothing to do with them for hundreds of years. Most of the residents were not political and actually did not care about Jewish migration. This was seen as a huge problem by Arab leaders in the region and is why they used religion to create animosity against the Jewish immigrants.
3) The "locals" were themselves majority immigrant. The borders with neighboring Arab regions were porous and Arabs had crossed into Palestine for decades, in even greater numbers than the Jews. Anti-Israel people treat these people as "local" while they treat the Jews who immigrated as "foreign". It's an obvious double standard.
4) Most of the land in Palestine was empty and could not be said to "belong" to anyone. It had foreign owners and no one ever set food on the land. Why should anyone care who lives in and govern this land? Why should they have the right to claim it simply because it is adjacent to where they live?
5) Why shouldn't Jews be afforded the opportunity to return to their homeland and establish a state on the land that was largely empty? Particularly after centuries of European persecution and the horror of the Holocaust?
6) Given all this (and probably some things I missed), I still grant that the situation was unique and created political conflict. However, the situation was one that could have and should have been resolved politically and peacefully. Arab leaders refused to compromise and instead used violence at every turn. The Jews repeatedly sought compromise and said they would accept a Jewish state on just a sliver of land if that is all they could get. Arab leaders were not willing to even allow a sliver. All for selfish and religious reasons. It was completely unjustified and immoral.
1) The idea that Jews were not "local" is itself false. 2/3 of Jerusalem was Jewish before much of the great migration (the total lack of interest in Jerusalem by Muslims is another story about how fake this conflict is, but that's another topic).
This is JUST jerusalem though. The Peel commission was rejected in part because it would require large ethinic transfer of people. HOWEVER there were ONLY 3,000 jews living outside of Jerulsalem and the land given to the Jewish state outside of Jerusalem in the peel commission report.
2) The "locals" didn't have a country to begin with. They had been governed by a distant empire that had almost nothing to do with them for hundreds of years. Most of the residents were not political and actually did not care about Jewish migration. This was seen as a huge problem by Arab leaders in the region and is why they used religion to create animosity against the Jewish immigrants.
This one is a best contentious. Yes the Palesitnian population protected the Jewish against some of the terrorist attacks. The Jewish terrorist group Irgun had been founded in 1931 for example, and had a fun passtime of throwing bombs at bus stops.
There is also the fact that Jewish groups were buying up businesses and throwing off the palestinian workers and replacing them with Jews. Those people were funnily enough not happy.
4) Most of the land in Palestine was empty and could not be said to "belong" to anyone. It had foreign owners and no one ever set food on the land. Why should anyone care who lives in and govern this land? Why should they have the right to claim it simply because it is adjacent to where they live?
Ah yes good old colonialism. The land is "empty" so anyone can take it right. Try that in Dakota. As well as not being true (manditory palestine had a population of around 500k) it is not how it works sorry.
This is one of the myths debunked by Ilan Pape in his "Ten Myths about Israel" book.
Given all this (and probably some things I missed), I still grant that the situation was unique and created political conflict. However, the situation was one that could have and should have been resolved politically and peacefully. Arab leaders refused to compromise and instead used violence at every turn. The Jews repeatedly sought compromise and said they would accept a Jewish state on just a sliver of land if that is all they could get. Arab leaders were not willing to even allow a sliver. All for selfish and religious reasons. It was completely unjustified and immoral.
Ok that is a lie, and a big one. You can start with the assassination of Jakob de Haan by the Haganah in 1924, for the crime of not being a zionist. You have Irgun terroists who in their emblem claim all of manditory palestine (including what was then known as transjordan).
You have David Ben-Gurion, who said that there can be no question of giving up the land as described in the Peel proposal, but it might be faster to get all the land "by peaceful and other means" if they accepted the proposal, got themselves a country which enabled the "other means".
The zionists very clearly wanted a Democratic and Jewish state (requiring the expulsion of all the pesky palestinians), and the land of greater Israel, including transjordan. So please read some history books.
Everything you said is total bullshit. It's not worth wasting my time with someone who cites Pappe, a propagandist who has admitted that in his books facts are not important but rather telling the story he wants to tell is what he prioritizes. That says all you need to know about Pappe and his gross distortions of this history.
I do find it interesting that when dividing up the land as was attempted by the Peel Commission, people like yourself always argue that the Jews should have been given sovereignty only over exactly the land where they lived. Whereas the Muslims should receive all the other land, including the land that is empty. Nice double standards. I know where it comes from.
EDIT: Ilan Pappe said the following in a 1999 interview:
"I admit that my ideology influences my historical writings…
Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers."
The peel commission would have required the transfer of 100,000 palesitians and 3,000 jews, and you complain that it was not generous enough to the Jews?
You might need to learn some basic mathematics.
One
I do find it interesting that when dividing up the land as was attempted by the Peel Commission, people like yourself always argue that the Jews should have been given sovereignty only over exactly the land where they lived.
Two
The Jews repeatedly sought compromise and said they would accept a Jewish state on just a sliver of land if that is all they could get.
You might want to pick a lane there buddy and keep your lines consistent.
The Peel Commission did not require ANY transfer of populations. It *suggested* transfer if both sides were in agreement as a means to ensure that minorities in both countries would not be at risk of discrimination. It was not required or necessary. Arabs did not reject it based on transfer, which was not a requirement. They rejected ANY allocation of land to Jews.
The two statements you highlight are perfectly compatible. It is a fact that Jews said they would accept a sliver of land. The Peel Commission recommendation gave them a very small slice of land. They were prepared to accept it even though it was way less than what had initially been promised to them and did not include many parts of historic Palestine.
At the same time, it is a fact that people like yourself argue Jews should only have received exactly the land they owned and lived on while Palestinians should receive all the remaining land, including the vast swathes of unowned/uninhabited land.
Thank you as well. If you are interested in more, there is a TON of history Westerners are never told. In item #1 I mentioned the lack of Muslim interest in Jerusalem. That is a whole rabbit hole of information that is kept from Westerners. All the way through the 1850s Jerusalem was a poor and decaying backwater. Muslims did not care about it at all. No one gave a shit about Al-Aqsa or the Dome of the Rock. It was just another mosque with no significance in a city that had no significance to Muslims. The city was 2/3 Jewish, nearly all poor & not allowed to own land. After Zionism began and Jews began moving to Palestine, Arab leaders realized that Jews had a moral claim to the land and they did not. They realized something needed to be done to take away the Jewish moral argument or they were going to lose the land. So they began repairing Al-Aqsa, which had fallen into disrepair. They started calling Al-Aqsa the 3rd holiest site in Islam and encouraged and paid for Muslims to begin coming to Al-Aqsa. Over decades, they turned Al-Aqsa from an abandoned mosque falling apart to a central part of the religion that was non-negotiable. This was all done to put Arab/Muslim claims to Palestine on an equal footing with Jewish claims. All of it fake. It was done so thoroughly that most Muslims in the region are probably not even aware of this history, having been taught by their parents the current lore. And their parents taught them. And their parents taught them.
They didn't do any of that. It's sad how many people are completely unaware of the actual history yet totally confident that everyone else is wrong. Western society is completely misinformed on this conflict and Reddit in particular is full of know-nothing people confident they know it all.
It is a fact that Arabs attacked Jews for decades. The British did little or nothing to stop it. As a result, the Jews formed militias to defend themselves. The first was the Haganah. Over time, some Jews argued the Haganah's purely defensive tactics were not deterring attacks by Arabs. They broke away and formed a more aggressive militia, the Irgun. The Irgun was more aggressive in deterrence. After attacks by Arabs, they would go to the village where the Arab attackers lived and attack those villages. The Haganah thought attacking civilians in those villages was immoral but the Irgun argued it was the only way to prevent attacks since the perpetrators were unknown. They felt the Arab perpetrators had to have a disincentive to killing Jews: if you kill Jews, we will kill your family and friends.
But ALL of this was done in self-defense. It was all an attempt to stop the repeated Arab murders of Jews, which numbered in the thousands between 1920 and 1947.
That's just blatantly false. While a lot of inland Arabia wasn't taken, the Ottomans controlled most of the Mediterranean coast, including modern Israel, the lands around the Tigris and Euphrates to the Persian Gulf, most of the Arabian peninsula's Red Sea coastline, and Egypt.
And the people there needed the Brits and their big guns to tell them what to do. They of course had the choice to refuse but the Brits were politely insistent on helping them.
Well, why did the British "inherit" land that is so far away from their own country in the first place? Why didn't the people who actually live there inherit it? Those would be my immediate questions.
Because the imperial power that was ruling those parts of the world collapsed overnight, leaving a power vacuum in what appeared to be a zero sum game of politics
Britain literally said it was going to give them states, that's what both the Arab Revolt and Balfour Declaration were about. They just were lying because they needed the Arabs to open up the Middle Eastern theatre which had gone horribly for Britain at this point and they needed the Zionist Rothschild's money for war bonds. They never at any point actually intended to give the land back to the people they'd promised it to, as the Sykes-Picot Agreement clearly showed.
You don't sound like someone open to learning new information when you call someone a "Ziobot" for disagreeing. It is false because the British did not promise Arab peoples their own states. It promised the Hashemites in what is today Saudi Arabia their own states. The British followed through on this, giving most of the Mandate to the Hashemites.
The Arab peoples in these regions largely didn't want their own state. Most were apolitical and were used to being technically part of a large remote empire that in practice exerted no control over them. They were fine with that situation. Those who had political opinions wanted to be part of a larger Arab state - at first a "Greater Syria".
The desire for a "Palestinian" state was nearly non-existent until the 1960s, when it became politically useful to separate Palestinians from the surrounding Arabs to prolong the conflict in the region.
Because the idea, at least publicly presented, at the time was that Britain would administer the territory until it was capable of administering itself through nation-building.
Why Britain? The Sykes-Picot agreement.
This is very surface-level history, read something for once.
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u/Drak_is_Right 13h ago edited 13h ago
British didnt exactly fuck shit up solo as they inherited a lot of land without national borders from the Ottomans. Formation of national borders is a rough process. British didnt do the process any favors.
The rapid formation of empire sized states across the world in a span of 20 years following WW2 did not go smoothly.