Israel Considering Saudi Peace Plan

[Darth Wong]

The Nazis attempted to exterminate Jews wherever they found them, not just inside their own borders.

That does not change the fact that the Nazis tried to deport German Jews before deciding to kill them. Major candidate locations were Palestine, Madgascar, and one or two other places in Africa. I find it likely that they intended to also deport Jews from conquered nations in the West, and exterminate those found in Slavic lands to the East. Nazi policy toward Slavs was essentially genocidal pretty much from the start.

Hitler laid it out in Mein Kampf: he believed the Jews should be exterminated, and he believed that from the beginning. The fact that he phased in his program in small steps doesn't mean he didn't have that ultimate goal all along.

[eyl]

God, what racist drivel. That sounds like the same garbage spouted by our white supremacists who say the exact same thing about people who aren't white or Christian.

You've still got it linked in your head that Israel cannot exist if it isn't a Jewish state. That's simply not true. But, please, explain why people of the Jewish religion are the only ones qualified to run the state of Israel and no other people can do it or even share in it as equal members. Why MUST it be Jewish to be Israel? Why can't it be a secular state with the same rights for anyone? Unlike the opinion of your more conservative citizens, the Torah isn't a land deed to that patch of nowhere.

Shit, if I went around saying that the US must be run by white Christians, because the population is largely white and Christian (and some people do say this here and every single one of them is a shithead, believe me), I'd get my ass scorched off from all the people lining up to call me a bigot. Yet when someone goes "Israel must belong to the Jewish and be a Jewish state with Jewish laws!", somehow standards stop applying. But, hey, what do I know, right? I'm just one of the goyim.

Well, you might have more of a point if "white" was a cultural group, rather than a large number of subgroups (and the same for "Christian", except that that isn't an ethnic group at all) And like it or not, Jewish culture is intertwined in Israeli culture - much more than "white" ulture (whatever that is) is in the US.

Let me ask you this - if someone dumped, over the course of say a year, 50 million Mexican immigrants in the US, do you think that would in any way go smoothly? Now image that the US consists of only the Eastern seaboard and that the two countries have been at war for the last century.

And you can see that was I said was correct. People CAN only get formally married in Israeli law if they meet the standards of Orthodox Judaism with equivalent councils for Christian/Muslims/Druze. That doesn't imply anything and why alot of people go through such a song and dance as legally getting married in another country and have that marriage recognized by the Israeli government.

What you wrote wasn't correct because you left out the bolded part.

While I stand corrected on the Golan Heights not being a desert, bullshit on the rest. Israel exists on the strength of its American patronage and because Arab armies tend to be even more abysmally poor at fighting than the IDF, not because it holds any bit of land. If it came down to choosing between suckling on US tax dollars and keeping the Golan Heights, your country would drop the land in a second.

Which is, no doubt, why Netanyahu (the right wing's candidate for PM) is against returning the Heights but, back when he was Finance Minister, began a plan to phase out US aid.

The Golan Heights may not be critical to Israel's defense, but they help a lot.

[eyl]

The Nazis attempted to exterminate Jews wherever they found them, not just inside their own borders.

Which would matter if it was Israel against the Axis with the rest of the world being neutral. As it is, the Nazis never reached Palestine (and in the alt hist we're discussing I can't see the Allies just ceding Africa to them) so it's a moot point.

If Israel was founded in 1937, it would barely exist for these Holocaust refugees, it would come under constant attack from its neighbours as it did in 1947, but it would not have the international support that it did later, thanks to Holocaust guilt. How could it serve as a safe haven for anyone?

What international support? There's some myth that Israel came into existence in 1948 - and has only remained in existence since - due to massive Western aid, especially American assistance. In point of fact, in 1948, while we had moral support in the UN (for whatever that's worth) the US had us under an arms embargo (well, the US had all the belligerents under an arms embargo, but the Arabs weren't getting weapons from them in the first place) and the British were, if anything, helping our enemies (the Arab Legion was trained, supplied & led by British officers, and I've seen references* of the RAF conducting operations (mainly recon, it seems) in support of the Egyptian army towards the end of the war. Our major arms supplier (and most of the weapons had to be smuggled past the British, or else cunstructed here) was the military superpower of Czechoslovakia.

The US only became a major ally (and military supplier) after 1967 or so (after the break with the French). And while Operation Nickle Grass in 1973 is sometimes touted as an example of how Israel could not survive without US asssistance, the IDF had already stalled the Arab advance (and advancing of Damascus) by the time the munitions actually started landing.

It's true that the Jewish military forces were in a weaker position in 1937 than they were in 1947 - but the same is true of the Arabs.

So while it may have been more difficult, I doubt a Jewish state establsihed in 1937 would have been doomed.

Also, it may have made the ensuing period more peaceful. I suspect part of the reason the Jewish forces weren't particularly inclined, in many places, to let the Arab population stay was the annihilationist threats made by the Palestinian and Arab leaders - threats which, following the Holocaust, would have touched particularly raw nerves. Without that event in recent hostory, they may not have been quite so..fierce, let us say**.

I would hope that any American who supports the no-strings-attached integration of millions of refugees into Jordan and Lebanon would have the same policy about Mexican immigrants in America.

Not quite an analogous situation regarding Jordan, given that it was originally part of the Palestine Mandate and has a sizable (a majority, IINM) Palestinian population.

Nations will act according to their own self-interest. If Jordan has no self-interest in agreeing to this deal, why would they?

So why does everyone expect Israel to do so?

*I've only seen second-hand references - I haven't tracked down the original book - so I don't consider it

**Though of course, this also depends on the other side as well. 1937 was just after the end of a several-year-long wave of violence which saw several Jewish communities destroyed. And while the Palestinian refugees from Palestine are often talked about, and to a lesser extent so are the Jewish refugees form Arab countries, a relatively forgotten group is the Jews who lived in the areas which later became the West Bank and Gaza. While Israel retained a sizable Arab population, the entire Jewish population of the Territories was driven out during the war by PAlestinian and Arab forces.

[eyl]

I can't speak for anyone else; my issue with the integration of Palestinians into Israel is that it puts the onus of such an integration on Israel. Previous experiments with mashing together people who don't like each other (Yugoslavia, most of Africa, Iraq, the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union, etc.) demonstrates that when the unification is forced upon one side (or both sides), it doesn't end well

Or, for a more local example, Lebanon.

[eyl]

As a bonus, this might actually solve the demographic issue the Israelis keep yammering about. If the Palestinians become prosperous enough then they are likely to stop breeding like peasants. Or in the words of Gary Brecher, "if you really hate the enemy tribe, the best thing you could do would be to make them rich."

Yeah, I've never understood why the Israeli right wing doesn't understand this point. Those who don't argue in favor of deporting the Israeli Arabs (either explicitly, or by shifting the border in a peace deal so that the Israel-Arab townships are in the Palestinian state) seem to just ignore the whole issue.

[eyl]

Didn't Britain try, in the late 19th Century, to offer a place for Jews in Africa?

There was such an offer (the Uganda plan), which was examined by the Zionist Congress and rejected.

Of course, it's not like that area was empty either.

[Coyote]

The Blacks' best hope to avoid repeating the past is to cultivate favour and assimilate, not to segregate and irritate.

Doesn't this essentially read the same way?

[Vendetta]

The Blacks' best hope to avoid repeating the past is to cultivate favour and assimilate, not to segregate and irritate.

Doesn't this essentially read the same way?

Not really, because the initial situation was inverted. Black people were seeking integration, segregation was imposed on them from without. Jews for most of their history have structured social and religious customs to achieve segregation from within.

[Ekiqa]

What international support? There's some myth that Israel came into existence in 1948 - and has only remained in existence since - due to massive Western aid, especially American assistance. In point of fact, in 1948, while we had moral support in the UN (for whatever that's worth) the US had us under an arms embargo (well, the US had all the belligerents under an arms embargo, but the Arabs weren't getting weapons from them in the first place) and the British were, if anything, helping our enemies (the Arab Legion was trained, supplied & led by British officers, and I've seen references* of the RAF conducting operations (mainly recon, it seems) in support of the Egyptian army towards the end of the war. Our major arms supplier (and most of the weapons had to be smuggled past the British, or else cunstructed here) was the military superpower of Czechoslovakia.

Much of the Israeli military in 1948 was British. The Air Force was equipped with Spitfires flown by ex-RAF veterans.

But to give the British government its due, the Jews in Plestine had been conducting terrorist operations for years. You cant really support terrorists, now, can you?

[Darth Wong]

The Blacks' best hope to avoid repeating the past is to cultivate favour and assimilate, not to segregate and irritate.

Doesn't this essentially read the same way?

Segregation = bad. Assimilation = good. Works both ways, except that in the case of the Jews, as noted by Vendetta, they have imposed segregation on themselves.

[Coyote]

The Blacks' best hope to avoid repeating the past is to cultivate favour and assimilate, not to segregate and irritate.

Doesn't this essentially read the same way?

Not really, because the initial situation was inverted. Black people were seeking integration, segregation was imposed on them from without. Jews for most of their history have structured social and religious customs to achieve segregation from within.

Not necessarily; I believe you are inadvertently parroting an old anti-Semiting line about how "those Jews aren't a part of us/they don't want to be with us". Jews want to have their own social customs and religious practices and be allowed to do so without being persecuted or harassed, but the problem is that plan requires a compliant neighbor who is willing to allow the Jews to do their thing on weekends while they participate in the community otherwise. Jews actually were willing to seperate their social interaction from their religious interaction, and in the social sphere sought assimilation-- or, art least, acceptance or tolerance.

Bear in mind that the places where some of the worst discrimination occurred against Jews was in places where they were deeply assimilated (Germany, for one) or where they took pains to seperate themselves from the neighbors and live in isolated enclaves so they wouldn't upset the "decent folk" (Russia). In each case, it didn't work-- the neighbors insisted on seeking Jews out and using them as a reason why the last battle was lost, or why the harvest wasn't as good as last year, or why some girl in a village 30 miles away was raped, or some shit.

Jews have gotten by for thousands of years living in various degrees of assimilation in various states, only to have the tables turned when it became popular to do so. So after years of this, the Jews decided that relying on others' good graces wasn't doing so well, and maybe if they had a country of their own they could just go there and live and folks would leave 'em alone. It is true that there were arguments against the founding of the state of Israel, by Jews, who feared it would be "ghetto-ization" on a state level.

Which leads to the founding of the modern nation-state of Israel, and where we are today. Why did the Jews get their own state while other persecuted minorities didn't? I don't know. Sometimes minorities get what they want and their own free state (former Yugoslavian states, East Timor). Some get half a loaf-- a semi-autonomous region without total independence (Nunavut). Some get a parody of a free state which is utterly dominated by a surrounding majority (Cherokee, Apache, etc). Some get a free state that is contested on all sides (Israel). Some don't get jack diddly squat (Armenians). Is it fair? No, but you can't judge the rightousness of all these states as one monolithic bloc.

But as for the case for assimilation, bear in mind that it requires the approval of the society being assimilated into. Jews have had slightly better results with this than Blacks, at least in America.

[Coyote]

Much of the Israeli military in 1948 was British. The Air Force was equipped with Spitfires flown by ex-RAF veterans.

But to give the British government its due, the Jews in Plestine had been conducting terrorist operations for years. You cant really support terrorists, now, can you?

The Israeli military was also equipped with Czech-made Me-109s (the irony), and American B-17s and P-51s acquired under questionable circumstances.

And your one-sided picture fails to mention that the Arabs in Palestine had been committing terrorism and atrocities against civilians, as well, and that the British Mandate government really had their hands full with both groups. Massive Arab revolts in 1927 and 1929 resulted in the deaths of Jewish civilians, in some cases families executed in their homes "death-squad style". No one's hands were necessarily clean in this.

[Darth Wong]

You've gotta be kidding. If Jews had actually tried to assimilate for that long, they would no longer be identifiable as a distinct group at all. Why do you think we can no longer identify groups like the Goths? (the original ones, not the teenaged girls wearing black lipstick)

The problem is that the Jews always did try to maintain their cultural distinctness. You even say it yourself: they either segregated themselves from the surrounding community or they "assimilated" but only in ways they found acceptable. In all other ways they insisted on maintaining their distinctiveness.

[Ekiqa]

You've gotta be kidding. If Jews had actually tried to assimilate for that long, they would no longer be identifiable as a distinct group at all. Why do you think we can no longer identify groups like the Goths? (the original ones, not the teenaged girls wearing black lipstick)

The problem is that the Jews always did try to maintain their cultural distinctness. You even say it yourself: they either segregated themselves from the surrounding community or they "assimilated" but only in ways they found acceptable. In all other ways they insisted on maintaining their distinctiveness.

They cordoned themselves off in ghettoes. They still do, to an extent. The vast majority of them in Toronto live along Bathurst Street.

It's much easier to pick on a group of people that goes out of its way to maintain a distinctness and aloofness from the rest of the population.

[Coyote]

We're running in old circles here-- the thread is about the Saudi Peace Plan, not whether the founding of the state of Israel was justified or not. Love or loathe the state of Israel, it's here now, and that's the cards that are dealt. There are, however, borders to negotiate and that is what the Saudis (and the rest of the Arab League) are offering to finalize.

The idea of land for peace is not new to anyone, and it had become popular in Israel. In the early days of the state, facing land invasion after land invasion, the Israelis wanted more land to trade for strategic depth and buy time against any invader. The Scud-missile attacks of 1991 showed that land doesn't have the same value in the modern era, when an enemy can drop shit on you regardless of how much land you have. Basically, the Middle East finally, truly woke up and joined the 1970's Cold War standoff.

So Israel is faced with this-- 'let's go back to 1967'. The borders aren't perfect, but the Arabs are finally willing to recognize the state of Israel, declare peace, and get on with life. Why 1967? Because the UN and international community largely recognises the legitimacy of the 1967 borders. There will be some give-and-take here and there to reflect population reality on the ground, but it can be dealt with.

As mentioned the big problem here is Right of Return, which is where it all bogs down. A lot of it seems to do with ethnicity, which we in the West find distasteful and primitive, despite the fact that we largely just paper over our own problems with race and try to look down our collective noses at oh-so-primitive Middle Easterners who can't get along-- but our own hypocritical problems with race & class in the west are another topic entirely.

Even without race involved, there are two things to bear in mind-- one, the Palestinians are seen as enemies of the state of Israel who have openly vowed said state's destruction. Rhetoric? Perhaps. But no state wants to let in 1 million potentially angry, resentful security threats. Second, what guarantee is it that the Palestinians who claim RoR actually want to settle in among a bunch of foreigners who they don't see eye-to-eye with in a state which may or may not care about their intersts? Especially since, as mentioned before, even descendants of the original ingabitants of that land are by now dying of old age and have no real connection to the territory and would be as foreign as a immigrant fresh off the boat.

A similar dynamic exists for the Arabs. They want the Jewish Settlers out of their land. They don't want Jewish aliens in their midst as security threats any more than the Jews want Arab aliens in their midst, either. So there's the bargaining chip. --'If you want your Jews living in Arab land, then we get to have our Arabs living in Jewish land. So there'.

So the Palestinians will be given a receipt for the land they lost in Israel waaayy back-- probably even inflated to recognise modern value for the development that has taken place. We all know the US will pony this up (maybe, but not guaranteed, with help from the EU, UN, Russia, etc). The receipts will be used to buy equivilent land in the brand-new Palestinian state (or as likely, cashed in to buy land or immigration in the EU or USA, or a more prosperous part of the Middle East). A few Palestinians will be let in, to the popping of champagne corks and obnoxious 'welcome home let's all be buddies now' parties for the international media, but this will just be a closure event for people who can now move on to other causes like Tibet.

A few Jewish Settlements will stay in Palestine as well (Hebron & Ariel come to mind) just as some Palestinians will be welcomed back into Israel proper. But all the little hilltop settlements will either be forcibly evacuated or left to their fate, and good luck to y'all.

All ranting and raving about history & ethnic this & that and apartheid and 'Israelis eat babies' or 'Arabs eat babies' etc aside, the reality of it all will play out over land, payouts, and economics.

[hongi]

You've gotta be kidding. If Jews had actually tried to assimilate for that long, they would no longer be identifiable as a distinct group at all. Why do you think we can no longer identify groups like the Goths? (the original ones, not the teenaged girls wearing black lipstick)

What's so good about assimilation? If you define assimilation as the destruction of culture, of course assimilation is bad. And it's not only the Jews that don't assimilate, there are tons of groups here in Australia that want to remain distinct. I know third to fourth generation Australians of Korean descent who still practice Buddhism, speak Korean, do their ancestor-worshipping rituals every year etc.

The problem is that the Jews always did try to maintain their cultural distinctness. You even say it yourself: they either segregated themselves from the surrounding community or they "assimilated" but only in ways they found acceptable. In all other ways they insisted on maintaining their distinctiveness.

There's nothing wrong with cultural distinctiveness. Integration with neighbours, living side-by-side is what I'd support. If you're going to criticise Jewish distinctiveness, do it on the ethnic level. Marrying only Jews is racist.

[Coyote]

You've gotta be kidding. If Jews had actually tried to assimilate for that long, they would no longer be identifiable as a distinct group at all. Why do you think we can no longer identify groups like the Goths? (the original ones, not the teenaged girls wearing black lipstick)

The problem is that the Jews always did try to maintain their cultural distinctness. You even say it yourself: they either segregated themselves from the surrounding community or they "assimilated" but only in ways they found acceptable. In all other ways they insisted on maintaining their distinctiveness.

Then I'm curious-- if Jews want to maintain a distinctive cultural identity, how is that diffierent from the distinctive cultural identities maintained by any other ethnic group? In this case, there is also a religious angle to it, but if one wanted to be exact, similar arguments could be made about the animist roots of many Native American tribes.

Wouldn't it be more fair to ask society to accept these differences, so long as they are not disruptive to the overall society at large? Looking at the history of the Jews as I've studied it-- rather more intensely than the casual observer, I feel justified in saying-- I see where the Jews have tried to maintain their own cultural awareness and distinctiveness and practices while siultaneously interacting normally with society. The problem has been that "society" frequently wasn't willing to accept that entirely-- they insisted that even the areas of non-overlap had to overlap, and that was in the arena of religion.

I don't think I'll get any argument here if I say that religion is not only entirely subjective, but most people here will say it is a pointless waste of time ruminating on something that isn't real. Yet, because Jews believed an 'unreal thing' that was different from someone else's 'unreal thing', they got slammed for it, even though the Jews themselves were willing to let the whole matter slide. So I say that it seems to me that the onus of responsibility for acceptance is on the outside.

Since there is nothing in Jewish beliefs that challenges the good of society (we're not into multiple child marriages or such things like that), why not let the Jews (or any other cultural group) enjoy their heritage and distinctness? What level of assimilation is necessary for people of any ethnic stripe to get along/be accepted? And as for the "ghettoization", again, if members of a certain group enjoy one anothers' company, and they feel comfortable with each other and their cohesiveness doesn't undermine society's greater good, what's the problem?

[hongi]

/snip post

All ranting and raving about history & ethnic this & that and apartheid and 'Israelis eat babies' or 'Arabs eat babies' etc aside, the reality of it all will play out over land, payouts, and economics.

So what do you think will stop this from coming about (and I have no doubt this current round of talks will get bogged down and fizzle out without much ado)?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

All ranting and raving about history & ethnic this & that and apartheid and 'Israelis eat babies' or 'Arabs eat babies' etc aside, the reality of it all will play out over land, payouts, and economics.

Seem to remember that an Israeli soldier telling me that back after the Yom Kippur war, the Israelis actually offered the Egyptians Gaza strip. And nope, the Egyptians said "nyet". Just goes to show, "muslim solidarity" goes only so far especially when no state wishes to be saddled with hundreds of thousands of poor people.

[Darth Wong]

Then I'm curious-- if Jews want to maintain a distinctive cultural identity, how is that diffierent from the distinctive cultural identities maintained by any other ethnic group?

It isn't. They're all harmful to social cooperation, whether it's Jews who insist upon their religious practices and ethnic inbreeding or Natives who rant about their precious "heritage and traditions" or WASPs who hate the new liberal white man and want to return to the 1950s when whites and everyone else were kept apart.

In this case, there is also a religious angle to it, but if one wanted to be exact, similar arguments could be made about the animist roots of many Native American tribes.

Precisely. It's stupid and counter-productive for the Native American tribes to hang onto those traditions as well, since they make no sense at all and they only cling to them in order to generate some sense that they are a distinct community. Now you're getting it.

Wouldn't it be more fair to ask society to accept these differences, so long as they are not disruptive to the overall society at large?

It makes sense for society to accept individual variation. But when an entire ethnicity tries to create a uniform variation for itself, that is not individual variation; that is a deliberate attempt at self-segregation.

Looking at the history of the Jews as I've studied it-- rather more intensely than the casual observer, I feel justified in saying-- I see where the Jews have tried to maintain their own cultural awareness and distinctiveness and practices while siultaneously interacting normally with society. The problem has been that "society" frequently wasn't willing to accept that entirely-- they insisted that even the areas of non-overlap had to overlap, and that was in the arena of religion.

If you go back far enough, Christians did that to everyone other than themselves, not just Jews. That's not a particular Jewish problem. That's why atheists three hundred years ago had to pretend to be Christian in order to avoid persecution. I'm not saying that was a good thing, but again, the Jews would have been better off if they did the same.

I don't think I'll get any argument here if I say that religion is not only entirely subjective, but most people here will say it is a pointless waste of time ruminating on something that isn't real. Yet, because Jews believed an 'unreal thing' that was different from someone else's 'unreal thing', they got slammed for it, even though the Jews themselves were willing to let the whole matter slide. So I say that it seems to me that the onus of responsibility for acceptance is on the outside.

See above. If atheists three hundred years ago had tried to form a "community" and let everyone know who they were, they would have simply been slaughtered. Instead, they formed no such community, kept their heads down, and as individuals, occasionally tried to needle their ideas into public discourse. That was the wiser course of action.

You seem to think that I'm saying that Christian persecution was a good thing, which is not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the Jews did no one any good, least of all themselves, by being so stubborn about their precious "distinctiveness".

Since there is nothing in Jewish beliefs that challenges the good of society (we're not into multiple child marriages or such things like that), why not let the Jews (or any other cultural group) enjoy their heritage and distinctness?

Do you not see what's wrong with this? Let's try a word substitution: why not let the white people enjoy their distinctiveness from the blacks? Why force the two races to live together?

What level of assimilation is necessary for people of any ethnic stripe to get along/be accepted? And as for the "ghettoization", again, if members of a certain group enjoy one anothers' company, and they feel comfortable with each other and their cohesiveness doesn't undermine society's greater good, what's the problem?

If white people enjoy each others' company, and they would rather be a cohesive commmunity without outsiders, what's the problem?

[Illuminatus Primus]

And of course, in this case, their cohesiveness DOES undermine society and the international community's greater good.

[Vendetta]

There's nothing wrong with cultural distinctiveness. Integration with neighbours, living side-by-side is what I'd support. If you're going to criticise Jewish distinctiveness, do it on the ethnic level. Marrying only Jews is racist.

The trouble is there's no identifiable difference between ethnic seperatism and cultural distinctiveness in this case. Jewish as an ethnicity and as a culture might have some kind of seperation (though I've seen two Jews argue over precisely what the definition is), no-one else can actually tell the difference.

And that's critical when dealing with questions arising around the state of Israel because of the oft repeated claim that Israel is and should remain a Jewish state. For all practical purposes, that means an ethnically Jewish state, not a Jewish state on the level that, say, Britain is a Christian state, where we have an official state religion and national holidays based on that religion, but that's the only influence on the nation that the religion has.

[Big Phil]

And of course, in this case, their cohesiveness DOES undermine society and the international community's greater good.

In what way does Jewish culture "undermine society and the international community's greater good?"

[Vendetta]

And of course, in this case, their cohesiveness DOES undermine society and the international community's greater good.

In what way does Jewish culture "undermine society and the international community's greater good?"

Sixty years of shitstorm and occasional wars around the state of Israel?

[Illuminatus Primus]

And of course, in this case, their cohesiveness DOES undermine society and the international community's greater good.

In what way does Jewish culture "undermine society and the international community's greater good?"

Because they use it as an excuse where no criticism can be levied for having an ethno-religious supremacist state of their own, and specifically basing their policies around keeping it ethnically and religiously pure. As Mike has said, you all have a blind spot because its Jews and the Holocaust. But these statements would be disturbing and rejected coming from Natives in your own country, as well as racial and religious groups.