How Hot is Israel Gonna Get?

[chuckdyke]

51 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

We have been fed a steady diet of anti-Islam sentiment for over 20 years.  

Islam is not a race but a religion. You can convert into and apostate out of it. Religions outside Europe are very much political ideologies. Looking after refugees is humane but to have politics without integration has proven to be a disaster. Soon I am moving away from a European culture. First one must do is to learn the language. Three weeks to go and I am off. Australia was great to work not so great to be retired.  So I won't comment often for the next few months till I am settled properly. Wish you all the best for the new year. I support Israel but I don't agree with the present leadership.

Edited January 3 by chuckdyke

[kohlenklau]

On 1/1/2024 at 9:42 AM, The_Capt said:

But let’s be frank and let me ask the real question.  How much of this is western biased and good old fashion racism against Arabs for all the trouble and pain we have gone through in that region?  

You first brought up racism. You later made the (I thought) loose lipped comment about "some white people". I poked you on why you did that. Now you bring up colonialism and slavery and shame and guilt and white supremacy (and my wife). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

The real question is out of that 22k how many are actually Hamas?  

Comparatively few. Because Hamas of course understands that anything above ground is going to get bombed. They are not likely to have kept anything of real value inside the buildings.

That being said, I do believe Hamas has taken considerable losses. And while Israel now talks about a long war dragging out through 2024, I think we are not that far from them taking control of the whole surface of Gaza.

Then it will be a long operation to clear out the tunnels. Maybe some kind of sedative gas will be used, just like the Russians did in the 2002 Moscow theatre siege. Probably mixed to be so strong that nobody wakes up again, but that of course was not the intention, just a tragic accident.

Most of the hostages are probably already across the border to Egypt though. I don't think they are really a main priority of the Israeli government, even though they are something that has to be dealt with from a PR perspective. Taking over the ground is.

The end state will be all Palestinians in a big refugee camp in the south of Gaza, with Israel and Egypt blaming each other over who is responsible for them. And then Israel taking over what used to be the cities.

The rubble (and any evidence of who is buried under it, militants or civilians) will be cleared with bulldozers and Israeli settlers will enter, creating new "facts on the ground". The UN might write a sternly worded letter, but Israel will shut them up with an accusation of anti-semitism.

Some years will pass to allow things to settle down, and then one day, there will be another 'surprise attack', this time from the West Bank.

All this is speculation, and I hope I will be proven wrong.

Edited January 3 by Bulletpoint

[The_Capt]

7 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Islam is not a race but a religion. You can convert into and apostate out of it. Religions outside Europe are very much political ideologies. Looking after refugees is humane but to have politics without integration has proven to be a disaster. Soon I am moving away from a European culture. First one must do is to learn the language. Three weeks to go and I am off. Australia was great to work not so great to be retired.  So I won't comment often for the next few months till I am settled properly. Wish you all the best for the new year. I support Israel but I don't agree with the present leadership.

That is a very good point.  Perhaps Religious based-bias is a better term?  Of course visible race does start to bleed into the calculus as it become an easy button to “other” another group.  In the last 20 years most of Islam that we have been pointing at as “the enemy” has come from a certain race.  Not a lot of movies with a Hui or Uyghur antagonist in the last 20 years…well at least not in North America.

[The_Capt]

10 minutes ago, kohlenklau said:

You first brought up racism. You later made the (I thought) loose lipped comment about "some white people". I poked you on why you did that. Now you bring up colonialism and slavery and shame and guilt and white supremacy (and my wife). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Loose lipped?!….you have a leading presidential candidate openly channeling Mien Kampf, how is this not a contemporary and relevant issue in this war?

In fact your level of defensiveness and offense that I dare even mention race (ethnic or religious) relations is in itself telling.  As to your wife…you brought her up in the first place!  I have to tell you this is one of the most bizarre and convoluted debates I have seen in some time.  I am not even sure what your point is beyond “take Israel from my cold dead hand”.  

I am somehow being racist by pointing out that there is a white supremacy problem in the US which was really offhand from the main point that race and ethnicity may very well be playing a role here.  Your automatic response appears to be “hey wait a minute, I am not racist…look at my wife”.  When I never inferred that you (or your wife) were racist in any way.  In fact I never inferred that all pro-Israel supports are racist either, but suddenly here we are with white “shame and guilt”?

We had Arab Muslims carry out 9/11, were fed a steady diet of Arab Muslim antagonists for over 20 years and now see another group of Arab Muslims commit more terror atrocities - which I do not even debate in the least - but it appears to be taboo in discussing the real fact that there appears to be a tendency to ignore the very real possibility of IDF warcrimes against…wait for it…more Arab Muslims?

 For  “good Christian folk” one cannot but see Jesus shaking his head and going “seriously WTF?”
 

[Lethaface]

1 hour ago, kohlenklau said:

I guess I am older than you and retired. I am lucky I don't have to act woke and get on the hate whites blame whites band wagon. I don't see why you went down that path here. Earlier you had asked if racism was a reason to support Israel. Then I was just calling you on your own racist comment that came out of nowhere. 

 

Personally I'm not a big fan of the extreme 'woke bandwagon', although neither of the other extreme side (although woke literally means 'alert to prejudice and discrimination', which is a good thing imo).

That being said, history is quite clear and we (the West) weren't always the bright beacon of civilization as we'd like(d) to see it. 

AFAIK he asked whether racism played a role in how some people seem to not care about the bloody death toll the Israeli regime is (and has been) causing in Gaza at the moment. I think it does.

Also imho it is stupid to 'support' only one side. Because supporting one side exclusively defacto means denying the other side, both have millions of people, (of a normal) life. Does supporting one side mean you don't care whether the people of the other side get slaughtered in the many thousands? That is not a humane perspective imho and goes well beyond any woke bandwagon; that's just supporting mass killings of civilians.
Don't know about you, but that's not my cuppa.

[Erwin]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

We have been fed a steady diet of anti-Islam sentiment for over 20 years.

This may have something to do with an examination of who over the pat decade or two has been responsible for most of the suicide bombings, beheadings on video, burning, drowning and burying people alive etc.

[kohlenklau]

25 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

Also imho it is stupid to 'support' only one side.

So, support the allies in 1944 but also the axis? But I forgot, we can never use WW2 as an example anymore. A war where we supposedly did defeat the enemy and tried to eradicate the philosophy of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The wars since then have all been lost or partially won. Call me stupid all you want but I HAVE picked 1 side in this case. You equate it to supporting mass killings of civilians. I don't. Israel can answer in the ICJ. maybe you have already rendered a verdict. Also, should our own soldiers not support only one side, our own side? In a future conflict.    

@The_Capt I met a wonderful Canadian couple about 20 years ago. She was a teacher in Saskatoon. Unprompted she somehow brought up the (new?) direction of the curriculum of her elementary school. Government directed curriculum. "First Nations". Maybe I am all wrong but it seems to be about instilling in white people from as early an age as possible some type of guilt for the past. 

I know you were Canadian Forces active duty in Afghanistan.  I don't know for sure but maybe now you are a civilian employee academic type professor/instructor of the Canadian Forces in some type of war college or armed forces type university? Did that require you to go to a civilian school to get a degree? I had started an online degree, a masters in social work, I was disgusted by the intro course to diversity and all the same trappings of white guilt/blame it tries to instill/teach/indoctrinate.

A comment was made about "North American voters". Now I suspect you meant white voters. Or maybe it was a general comment about the current low level of intelligence/intellect/IQ in people. Low Information voters is the term maybe? If the mantra to whites is to feel guilty and ashamed of the past to understand how non-whites feel...then the same low information/intellect/IQ people of non-white voters just pick-up the corollary. "I am not responsible for my feelings. It is someone else's fault based on the past. I am owed something. I can't be held responsible for my actions. I am oppressed." I have seen a press conference by native American groups openly praising the 7 October attack by Hamas with aspirations of how this might help them get "their" land back. Another video I saw showed an African American watching a pro-Palestine protest and he was asked what he thought. He said he felt a kinship to them as he was also living in occupied land. 

I am here today as the first day of the future. white, yellow, black, brown, red, whatever. Move forward to achieve prosperity and security. Don't have an agenda of restorative justice or whatever for the past. The US Armed Forces has gone more woke than ever. Meritocracy is apparently out the window. Both the US Armed Forces and many airlines now have a goal to get more non-white pilots. Them being non-white is the number one aspect of the application process. Will it help us win a war? We used to be told to be color blind. Now they instruct us to see the color of the other guys skin and make certain changes in how we treat them. 

I thought this was a good thread and some folks here were very smart. I could learn. I still feel the same way but I also see now that the current pathology of wokeness and "identity politics" is very widespread.   

The image in my signature is just a modern take on an old flag used in the early 1800's. 

[Anthony P.]

23 hours ago, Lethaface said:

That being said, for anyone wishing to (better) understand the roots of the current problems in Israel/Palestine (and the broader ME) and how it's basically a European/Western created problem exported to the region, I picked up an interesting book at the airport during my recent holidays: "A line in the sand", by James Barr (2012).

My one objection to that notion would be that... it's just, objectively, completely and utterly false.

There's no mental gymnastics in the world which can explain away these three fundamental truths:

1, All nations have been recognised as possessing the right to self determination for over a century, including the Jewish nation: ipso facto, Israel had the right to be founded. Additionally this means that the Jews had the right to determine how they would be ruled: they wished to reside in a democratic state with full rights afforded its citizens; since no Arab state meets those standards even today in respect even to Arab citizens, it's beyond disputing that a multi cultural one state solution would never allow the Jews neither democracy nor equal rights, since it would entail being a minority in a state dominated by the same Arabs who had for over a millenia violently subjugated them and at best tolerated them as second class non-citizens.

2, The Jews had a right to founding a state in the Palestine Mandate because A, they had an uninterrupted presecence and connection to the region and B, there existed no prior state there which that would conflict with.

3, a peaceful partitioning of the lands was proposed well in advance, accepted by one side, and thoroughly rejected by the other side which verbatim replied that their preferred course of action was "a war of extermination".

 

No "perfidious Albion" or "decadent West" argument in the books can twist that into creating a "all the peoples of Palestine lived in harmony until the West came along and ruined it" narrative, not one which concerns itself with truth at least.

[The_Capt]

39 minutes ago, kohlenklau said:

So, support the allies in 1944 but also the axis? But I forgot, we can never use WW2 as an example anymore. A war where we supposedly did defeat the enemy and tried to eradicate the philosophy of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The wars since then have all been lost or partially won. Call me stupid all you want but I HAVE picked 1 side in this case. You equate it to supporting mass killings of civilians. I don't. Israel can answer in the ICJ. maybe you have already rendered a verdict. Also, should our own soldiers not support only one side, our own side? In a future conflict.    

@The_Capt I met a wonderful Canadian couple about 20 years ago. She was a teacher in Saskatoon. Unprompted she somehow brought up the (new?) direction of the curriculum of her elementary school. Government directed curriculum. "First Nations". Maybe I am all wrong but it seems to be about instilling in white people from as early an age as possible some type of guilt for the past. 

I know you were Canadian Forces active duty in Afghanistan.  I don't know for sure but maybe now you are a civilian employee academic type professor/instructor of the Canadian Forces in some type of war college or armed forces type university? Did that require you to go to a civilian school to get a degree? I had started an online degree, a masters in social work, I was disgusted by the intro course to diversity and all the same trappings of white guilt/blame it tries to instill/teach/indoctrinate.

A comment was made about "North American voters". Now I suspect you meant white voters. Or maybe it was a general comment about the current low level of intelligence/intellect/IQ in people. Low Information voters is the term maybe? If the mantra to whites is to feel guilty and ashamed of the past to understand how non-whites feel...then the same low information/intellect/IQ people of non-white voters just pick-up the corollary. "I am not responsible for my feelings. It is someone else's fault based on the past. I am owed something. I can't be held responsible for my actions. I am oppressed." I have seen a press conference by native American groups openly praising the 7 October attack by Hamas with aspirations of how this might help them get "their" land back. Another video I saw showed an African American watching a pro-Palestine protest and he was asked what he thought. He said he felt a kinship to them as he was also living in occupied land. 

I am here today as the first day of the future. white, yellow, black, brown, red, whatever. Move forward to achieve prosperity and security. Don't have an agenda of restorative justice or whatever for the past. The US Armed Forces has gone more woke than ever. Meritocracy is apparently out the window. Both the US Armed Forces and many airlines now have a goal to get more non-white pilots. Them being non-white is the number one aspect of the application process. Will it help us win a war? We used to be told to be color blind. Now they instruct us to see the color of the other guys skin and make certain changes in how we treat them. 

I thought this was a good thread and some folks here were very smart. I could learn. I still feel the same way but I also see now that the current pathology of wokeness and "identity politics" is very widespread.   

The image in my signature is just a modern take on an old flag used in the early 1800's. 

You see it right here.  Even people on different sides are just people.

I am indigenous.  Cree and visible enough to get pinged on the street.  And I think this trend of white guilt is incredibly harmful and in some case just plain wrong - it is a topic of hot debate around The_Capt family table I can tell, especially with my daughter.

It is relevant that you mention it because it is exactly what we are wrestling with at the staff college right now: Are we teaching future senior officer "how to think" or "what to think".  I am in that first camp, deeply.

The reality is that racism exists in just about every culture on earth since the dawn of time.  Native Americans had a slave trade long before white men even showed up.  It was broader then economics but it definitely was there.  To lay all the modern ills on the White Man's table is nothing more than a convenient excuse to avoid dealing with internal social dysfunction goin back generations.  White men have got sins, there is no doubt about this, but they do not give me license to abuse my wife and family or lean on substance abuse.

Now where we likely differ is on the "so what?"  Our aim moving forward is to stare all that bad directly in the face and say "Ya, ok. But not me and mine."  I could give two figs about white colonialism, my son is going to be a lawyer and master the system at its own game.  I can be proud of my heritage (good and bad) and still be better at this world.  And make damn sure my kids are even better than me.

I am not pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian.  I am pro "let's stop acting like a bunch of insular and scared primates and evolve to the bigger game and better natures our ancestors really had in mind."  It is hard.  It is not fair.  But we can be better than them...that is what they really wanted for us in the first place.     

[A Canadian Cat]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I can be proud of my heritage (good and bad) and still be better at this world.  And make damn sure my kids are even better than me.

Very well said.

 

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I am not pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian.  I am pro "let's stop acting like a bunch of insular and scared primates and evolve to the bigger game and better natures our ancestors really had in mind."  It is hard.  It is not fair.  But we can be better than them...that is what they really wanted for us in the first place.  

And even more so.

[kohlenklau]

5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

And make damn sure my kids are even better than me.

I agree with you sir. I hope my 2 sons are also better than me. One is active duty USAF C130J loadmaster. The other is a nurse dating a nurse from Peru. I would say in some ways they are better than me. In other areas maybe they just have some maturing to go through! 

So, maybe it sounds corny, but I offer my hand to shake hands with you virtual style and just move onward. I wish you the best sir and we all hope for a better world. 

[BFCElvis]

We're going down a path that I don't want us to go down. Please keep this thread on it's intended tracks.

[The_Capt]

Just now, BFCElvis said:

We're going down a path that I don't want us to go down. Please keep this thread on it's intended tracks.

We just proved that people on different sides of an issue have a lot more in common once we realize we are all just people and not 'positions.'

And now the den mother comes in a yells at us.  Way to break a moment, John!

[BFCElvis]

1 minute ago, The_Capt said:

We just proved that people on different sides of an issue have a lot more in common once we realize we are all just people and not 'positions.'

And now the den mother comes in a yells at us.  Way to break a moment, John!

I didn't read everything. but I didn't like what I had read.  #imabuzzkill

[Probus]

More Houthi missile shots.  I swear the UK is going to be shutting that down shortly:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/houthi-missiles-target-french-owned-container-ship-in-red-sea

[Centurian52]

Just chiming in to say that I've finally caught up with ISW's December 27th report (I've really fallen behind on these). That's significant because it's exactly two months after I predicted, on October 27th, that it would take the IDF 1-2 months to secure Gaza city. And I can see that ISW has not yet colored in all of Gaza city in blue on their map. So, in the spirit of maintaining accountability, my prediction is now officially wrong.

[Probus]

ISW Iran/Israeli/Houthi update.  Its a long one but packed with good info and maps:

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-january-2-2024

[kohlenklau]

I pulled into Djibouti for fuel one time. Uh, way back after the Gulf War. Woulda been 1991. My son deployed there back a few years ago. Camp Lemonnier.

Approx 70 miles from the straits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Lemonnier

Djibouti is strategically located by the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which separates the Gulf of Aden from the Red Sea and controls the approaches to the Suez Canal. As a result, the country hosts many other foreign military bases, including a Chinese naval base, a French airbase, an Italian Support Base and a Japanese base. Unlike French troops, who are allowed to enter Djibouti city and interact with the locals, US troops may only leave Camp Lemonnier by special permission, and most of Djibouti City is off limits.

These Djiboutians(?) are really smart. Lease a base to everybody! $$$

Maybe just get the Houthis over there and settle it all with a softball game? The Chinese too while we are at it?

[Lethaface]

2 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

So, support the allies in 1944 but also the axis? But I forgot, we can never use WW2 as an example anymore. A war where we supposedly did defeat the enemy and tried to eradicate the philosophy of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The wars since then have all been lost or partially won. Call me stupid all you want but I HAVE picked 1 side in this case. You equate it to supporting mass killings of civilians. I don't. Israel can answer in the ICJ. maybe you have already rendered a verdict. Also, should our own soldiers not support only one side, our own side? In a future conflict.    

@The_Capt I met a wonderful Canadian couple about 20 years ago. She was a teacher in Saskatoon. Unprompted she somehow brought up the (new?) direction of the curriculum of her elementary school. Government directed curriculum. "First Nations". Maybe I am all wrong but it seems to be about instilling in white people from as early an age as possible some type of guilt for the past. 

I know you were Canadian Forces active duty in Afghanistan.  I don't know for sure but maybe now you are a civilian employee academic type professor/instructor of the Canadian Forces in some type of war college or armed forces type university? Did that require you to go to a civilian school to get a degree? I had started an online degree, a masters in social work, I was disgusted by the intro course to diversity and all the same trappings of white guilt/blame it tries to instill/teach/indoctrinate.

A comment was made about "North American voters". Now I suspect you meant white voters. Or maybe it was a general comment about the current low level of intelligence/intellect/IQ in people. Low Information voters is the term maybe? If the mantra to whites is to feel guilty and ashamed of the past to understand how non-whites feel...then the same low information/intellect/IQ people of non-white voters just pick-up the corollary. "I am not responsible for my feelings. It is someone else's fault based on the past. I am owed something. I can't be held responsible for my actions. I am oppressed." I have seen a press conference by native American groups openly praising the 7 October attack by Hamas with aspirations of how this might help them get "their" land back. Another video I saw showed an African American watching a pro-Palestine protest and he was asked what he thought. He said he felt a kinship to them as he was also living in occupied land. 

I am here today as the first day of the future. white, yellow, black, brown, red, whatever. Move forward to achieve prosperity and security. Don't have an agenda of restorative justice or whatever for the past. The US Armed Forces has gone more woke than ever. Meritocracy is apparently out the window. Both the US Armed Forces and many airlines now have a goal to get more non-white pilots. Them being non-white is the number one aspect of the application process. Will it help us win a war? We used to be told to be color blind. Now they instruct us to see the color of the other guys skin and make certain changes in how we treat them. 

I thought this was a good thread and some folks here were very smart. I could learn. I still feel the same way but I also see now that the current pathology of wokeness and "identity politics" is very widespread.   

The image in my signature is just a modern take on an old flag used in the early 1800's. 

Without trying to give Elvis more work, my comment about sides was about choosing between Palestinian vs Israeli people.

I don't know why you bring the woke stuff in this, but fwiw I'm white and I don't feel guilty or ashamed for things other people did in the past; whatever their skin colour was. I wasn't there.

That isn't to say that being informed about the less rosey colored parts of our history is a bad thing. This isn't a zero sum game. In fact one or my grandfathers participated in a colonial war, I don't think he did 'bad' stuff but I wasn't there. Not everything my country did there was bad, but according to todays standards (which I mostly endorse in this case) it was not a 'good' war. I don't feel guilty of it, but I like to see it for what it was.

I don't want to call anyone stupid, just my opinion that it is a stupid position to grant 'things' or 'humanity' to one people but not to another people. I grant Jewish/Israeli people the same right to live as I grant it to Muslim/Palestinian people. I don't support Hamas or the Israeli regime.

The perspectives we all hold come forth from our experience in life. I was granted the fortune of having travelled many parts of the world and get to know various peoples and cultures. It has provided me, at least I like to believe so, with an open mind towards other perspectives. 

I wish the same for everyone and hope one day the people in 'the holy land' can also live in peace together.

[Lethaface]

3 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

My one objection to that notion would be that... it's just, objectively, completely and utterly false.

There's no mental gymnastics in the world which can explain away these three fundamental truths:

1, All nations have been recognised as possessing the right to self determination for over a century, including the Jewish nation: ipso facto, Israel had the right to be founded. Additionally this means that the Jews had the right to determine how they would be ruled: they wished to reside in a democratic state with full rights afforded its citizens; since no Arab state meets those standards even today in respect even to Arab citizens, it's beyond disputing that a multi cultural one state solution would never allow the Jews neither democracy nor equal rights, since it would entail being a minority in a state dominated by the same Arabs who had for over a millenia violently subjugated them and at best tolerated them as second class non-citizens.

2, The Jews had a right to founding a state in the Palestine Mandate because A, they had an uninterrupted presecence and connection to the region and B, there existed no prior state there which that would conflict with.

3, a peaceful partitioning of the lands was proposed well in advance, accepted by one side, and thoroughly rejected by the other side which verbatim replied that their preferred course of action was "a war of extermination".

 

No "perfidious Albion" or "decadent West" argument in the books can twist that into creating a "all the peoples of Palestine lived in harmony until the West came along and ruined it" narrative, not one which concerns itself with truth at least.

Well you can believe whatever version of History and call it absolute truth how much you like; I rather stay with the version of events as researched and presented by vetted historians. 

It is interesting you feel the need to call your version 'the truth' so many times. In my experience such behavior doesn't indicate a strong argument. Anyway, I don't think any further response from my side would bring any constructive dialogue so I wish you all the best.

[kohlenklau]

4 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

I wish the same for everyone and hope one day the people in 'the holy land' can also live in peace together.

Yes indeed. I have also been fortunate to travel around. 52 countries visited so far. I hope to do a few more before I hang it up. I enjoyed a night in the Netherlands. I think Arnhem. 

I have naivety to think or hope that Gaza strip could have become a Singapore. {According to the internet the population and area of Singapore is about double that of Gaza. So, the population density is nominally the same.} Maybe it will eventually. 

~~~~~~~

I now recall an old Star Trek episode. (TOS, the original series baby!) It was the one where the 2 warring planets had a system where they had to eliminate people by computer simulation. A 500-year long war. "A Taste of Armageddon"

 

[Anthony P.]

16 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

It is interesting you feel the need to call your version 'the truth' so many times. In my experience such behavior doesn't indicate a strong argument. Anyway, I don't think any further response from my side would bring any constructive dialogue so I wish you all the best.

It's because it is the truth. Not all things are open to discussion, many things are frankly indisputable historical facts, such as "the Holocaust happened", "slavery and Jim Crow laws were immoral", etc.

My argument wasn't even about "is Israel right or wrong in the war" but about established facts which no serious historian questions regarding the first half of the 20th century, and the background set by several centuries of Arab oppression of the Jews: the Jews had an undeniable right to a nation state, and there was never any way on Earth that the Arab majority would accept losing their "right" to oppress them. That is what caused the conflicts with Israel, and they would have occurred no matter what the West, the Jews or Israel ever did.

Edited January 3 by Anthony P.

[Lethaface]

28 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

It's because it is the truth. Not all things are open to discussion, many things are frankly indisputable historical facts, such as "the Holocaust happened", "slavery and Jim Crow laws were immoral", etc.

My argument wasn't even about "is Israel right or wrong in the war" but about established facts which no serious historian questions regarding the first half of the 20th century, and the background set by several centuries of Arab oppression of the Jews: the Jews had an undeniable right to a nation state, and there was never any way on Earth that the Arab majority would accept losing their "right" to oppress them. That is what caused the conflicts with Israel, and they would have occurred no matter what the West, the Jews or Israel ever did.

Arab oppression or European oppression? The funny thing is that while you grant the Israeli people a right to a nation state (which I don't deny; as a matter of fact it's a done deal), you don't allow the Palestinians the same right.

Anyway I don't like to repeat myself, see my previous post.

[Probus]

11 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

Arab oppression or European oppression? The funny thing is that while you grant the Israeli people a right to a nation state (which I don't deny; as a matter of fact it's a done deal), you don't allow the Palestinians the same right.

Anyway I don't like to repeat myself, see my previous post.

If what this admittedly armchair historian points out is that the Palestinians were offered states at different times and for different reasons they said not acceptable.

So they are still at loggerheads.