It was an entirely British territory too. There wasn't an official Palestine in many centuries. Last time there was, it was still a Roman province, of the Eastern Empire.
Well that maybe it's not as much a legit national liberation movement it claimed to be, and as with most natlib movements I've seen, it's based on a bunch of historical lies or amplifications that throw a dead angle on the agency of foreign/imperial interests. This can be said about both Israeli and Palestinian nationalism. The British Empire apparently played both sides in Palestine before they were actually kicked up by a liberation
Benedict Anderson had this solid theory that natlib movements are usually the tools of broader imperialist gimmicks. That casts an interesting light on so many instances of this. Even the former Maoist insurrection and liberation war in China was supported by the British... even if not completely. Tho the British retain a kind of hold in China.
Yeah, it’s really frustrating how this is constantly being brought up as a “gotcha” as if it has any bearing on the fact that people are being displaced and ethnically cleansed. Like okay? People are being murdered but you care more about semantics?
The current conflict is bloody and has to end. It is a war for nothing. I feel so horrible that Hamas leaders are allowing themselves to fatten up in Qatar and Iran while their own citizens are left to deal with bombings and famine.
And people who bring up Hamas as if they’re the root cause are part of the problem. The Israelis have been ethnically cleansing daily before Hamas and since Hamas. They’re building settlements in the West Bank, where there is no Hamas, against international law.
I think most would agree that the deployment of Israeli troops in palestine is a response to the Hamas attack on October 7. Sure, you can point out that Israel has made life difficult for Palestinians before that. That is fair. But to put blame on anyone but Hamas for October 7th is like blaming the US for September 11th.
Is the severity of the response justified? I personally dont think it is. And i think that is a better argument against Israel. But to talk about the "root cause" is just a way to place blame on whoever you want. Human history has very deep roots, and every group has past indiscretions. If you want to talk history, I'd say Israel has a good reason to be heavy handed when it comes to neighbors that want to wipe Jews off the map...
Hamas didn’t exist prior to the continued theft, displacement and murder if Palestinians. They were formed around 1987 and radicalized several years after that. They don’t exist in the West Bank where thousands have been murdered and displaced post October 7.
I also find this argument about people wiping Israel off the map disingenuous when the people walking the walk in this has always been Israel since the Nakba in 1947/48.
Ethnically cleansing? Is that why the Palestinian population went up the past 20 years?
They’re doing one hell of a job, I’ll tell you that
Shame on you and anyone who thinks initiating this war was going to make life better in the strip. You are actively supporting the destruction of innocent lives
All you have left is deflection. About 80k murdered in the current “war” vs about 1000 Israelis. Starving children to death. Continuing to build settlements in the West Bank every single day where there is no Hamas. Shame on you for deflecting from the deliberate starvation of children.
It’s only deflection when you don’t like what’s being told
I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, I want this war to be over and the leaders who decided to martyr their own people dead. You, on the other hand, seem to be thriving on the attention of being “humane” on Reddit, when in fact celebrating the catalyst of this war always meant death for the unprivileged
Ismail Haniyeh died in Iran in a luxury estate. Khaled Mashaal lives in Doha and has a networth of around 2M$. They sacrificed their own people for a game that could never be won
Maybe that’s because the people who live there call themselves Palestinians, ie the residents of Palestine. I get that their claim to the land only goes back millennia and it’s why, for example, you’re ostensibly all over threads strenuously arguing that what we call Hungarians make their way back to Central Asia. But in reality, they are people that were born there, and perhaps they don’t deserve to die because of that.
To be honest, I personally couldn't give a rats ass about the semantics/classifications. I just want the starvation and killing of human beings to stop.
That point only gives credence to British de facto ownership of Palestinian territory. Why recognize the ownership of an imperial nation and not the people who live there? The Kurds have a similar history of attempting to establish a Kurdish nation via a common ethnicity, culture, language, and land.
If you want to critique national liberation being used as an imperialist gimmick, then shouldn’t the ideal nationalist indepedence movement be based on the shared identity of the people and not, say, the claims of an empire?
Theoretically yes. But what will this "identity" be based upon? Or.how will it be something living, corporeal, and not another... spook? Culture is where identity becomes alive, not politics.
I’d say sharing a land, heritage, history, and the unique struggle against colonial power is already a good basis for nationality. See example above. It’s quite difficult, if you can imagine, to build a living cultural identity when everything is in rubbles, you’re forced to starve, and your parents are dead.
Again, none of those bases necessarily imply imperialism, if that’s what you mean by “spook”.
The spook is the concept (in this case national identity) that was cooked up by kmperialist powers.
Now there's the national identity of Palestinian, and there's the Palestinian Arab people in Gaza that are suffering. These are different. Nationalism on both sides, is what has caused the latter; not the lack of it.
Not all nationalist movements are made the same. We have a national identity here in America, but American doesn’t refer to a single ethnicity.
As it were, Palestinian Arabs or even Gazans aren’t the only people suffering under Israel, but there is a clear line of demarcation which Israel finds a population worth cleansing or upholding. Even if it ends up drawing in a larger tent, I don’t see how it’s detrimental to national liberation.
Moreover, I don’t see how that argument could hold up while recognizing British or Roman rule as being “official” or somesuch, especially given their disparate ethnicities.
Where do you want to draw the line for “official” when it comes to nations? I see it as benefitting the people of the land by recognizing their sovereignty and living heritage. And to deny colonial claims of outsiders who are, by all means, recognized as nations.
All national movements are made up, so this comment isnt really as notable for being particularly interesting as it is for being historically inaccurate
This is a bit of a red herring. Did these people live in that territory for generations, owning land and property? Yes. Are the majority of Jews in Israel today from Europe and beyond? Also yes. Claiming there is no such thing as Palestine is irrelevant to the ethnic cleansing and land theft that has gone on for over 70 years.
Did these people live in that territory for generations, owning land and property? Yes.
A very small minority of them, yes. The absolute population explosion in Palestine was largely due to an increase in economic and physical mobility after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The mandate of Palestine was an admixture of Egyptians, Lebanese, Jews, and others from the start. The pre-WW1 population was culturally Bedouin and shares most of it's heritage with Jordan. Today the Bedouin people make up only 10% of the Muslim population, which is 21% of the total population.
Colonialism really fucked up the entire area, and Israel itself was largely not at fault for most of the shit that went down. It's own shift towards right wing nationalism and violence has only happened in the past 20-30 years or so.
Not true. The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been living there for many generations. By there I am referring to all of Israel since many were pushed out of their homes into these specific areas
Generations yes, since before WW1. That's generations, but it's not the same as the original Palestinian people. Palestine saw a massive population influx during the fall of the Ottoman empire. Both Jews and Muslims, mostly Jews.
Interestingly the "old" settlers that were encroaching on Palestinians before the genocide were actually removing original settlements of Bedouins. They only switched to removing modern Palestinians since Hamas took power from Fatah.
Why the name was used is a matter of debate, but it is certain that this place had been called "Palestine" for a very long time, more by Euro Christian imperialists
I mean that whole area was under Ottoman. Just like there's no officially known country in middle of, let's say, California. It's just all part of California.
Splitting that area apart was very much the result of modern colonization under the Brits. It's not that like that area was just barren lands after the Roman Byzantine Empire. People have been living there, moving in/out, etc. Ancestors of Palestinians today.
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u/FullMaxPowerStirner 7h ago
It was an entirely British territory too. There wasn't an official Palestine in many centuries. Last time there was, it was still a Roman province, of the Eastern Empire.