| Topic: | Re:Reply | |
| Posted by: | Steven Rose | |
| Date/Time: | 23/08/25 00:30:00 |
| You are fond of quotation, David, so how about this one from ‘Oxford Languages’ on the meaning of bigotry: ‘obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group’ This word exactly describes your attitude to Zionists aka Jews (with very few exceptions). Your post of 21/8 at 22.25, in reply to my question as to why you deny legitimacy to the State of Israel, is a good example. Almost every word of your post was misleading. 1) ‘The Zionists returned as colonists, not as equals’. Not true. The early Zionists in the nineteenth century purchased land from Turkish landowners and lived under Turkish rule just like the Arabs. After 1917 Jewish immigrants had to seek permission from the British authorities. They had no more privileges than their Arab neighbours. 2) ‘The Palestinians were there and in the majority’. This is obviously true but hardly worth stating. Whenever immigrants first settle in another country, the existing inhabitants are in a majority. The Jews constituted the majority of the population of Jerusalem when the Arabs captured the city in the seventh century. Native Americans were in a majority when Europeans first settled in North America. 3) ‘But the Zionists were Europeans and the Palestinians were not’. Incorrect. Actually the first Zionists immigrants in the nineteenth century were from Yemen as well as from from Eastern Europe. Up until the Second World War the vast majority were from Europe but after 1948 there was a huge influx of Jews, around 800 000, who had been forced to leave Arab countries and Iran. Today a majority of Israelis are of North African and Middle Eastern descent rather than European. 4) ‘To begin with, the Zionists depended on the guns and power of an imperial foreign nation (us)’. Inaccurate, since until 1917 the rulers were the Ottoman Turks, and rather tendentious, in that Jewish immigrants did not ‘depend’ on British military force. The British did their best to maintain peace between the Jews and the Arabs. At the beginning of the Second World War the British halted Jewish immigration, excluding even those fleeing Nazi persecution. 5) ‘They did not see the Palestinians as equals’. Unfair. The Jewish population accepted the UN plan to partition Palestine in 1948 whereas the Palestinians and the neighbouring Arab countries rejected it. It would be truer to say the Palestinians did not see the Jews as deserving an equal share. 6) ‘They terrorised and drove out hundreds of thousands of their “equals”. Incomplete. The day after Israel declared its existence as a state in accordance with the UN’s decision, it was simultaneously attacked by all its Arab neighbours. In the course of the war it is true that 700 000 Palestinians lost their homes, some who who responded to a call from the Arab coalition to leave and to return in triumph when the Jews had been driven into the sea, others driven out. Subsequently they were not allowed to return. This was undoubtedly ethnic cleansing and wrong. But before, during and after 1948 around 800 000 Jews were forced to leave North Africa and the Middle East. This was also ethnic cleansing and wrong. 7) ‘They will not allow Palestinians to return’. This is true, but with good reason. The influx of those who left in 1948 and their descendants, who now number 5 million, would destroy Israel as as a Jewish homeland. In 2000 and 2008 Israel offered to withdraw from 95% of the West Bank in return for peace, but the Palestinians turned the offer down because they insisted on a right of return. 8) ‘The talk of a “National Home” was just a mask - they wanted a state.’ What mask? Jews had for centuries had a home in other people’s countries and had suffered persecution as a result. Zionists always wanted a home of their own, which means a state. And the UN agreed that they they should have a state. 9) ‘Lebanon is a state, Iraq is a state, Jordan is a state, Syria is a state, but somehow Palestine is a special case, outside the normal developments.’ The Palestinians could have had a state in 1948, in 2000 and 2008 but each time they rejected it because they were not prepared to coexist with Israel. Now the Israelis no longer trust them to stick to any agreement. 1) |