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"We need to kill them – not just the Hamas militants but all the people in Gaza"

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DY_nasty

NeoGAF's official "was this shooting justified" consultant
If you are going to ignore the similarities and dismiss them as lazy then you are not thinking critically. I think there is a lot in that wiki article that you are; glancing over, rejecting, or ignoring. Its not a parallel and I'll leave it there.

No one is glancing over them. But saying that just because Israel is racist as hell =! South Africa's apartheid and that entire situations are similar in the way that people should look to history for all the answers.

You can't just throw around "Its like South Africa", repeat yourself, and dip out, like you just explained the entire situation. People do that. Its lazy as hell.
 
No, I really want to know. It is not an option because it is not feasible politically. But why not?

I never asked this for the opposing side and I really want to know.
How do you uproot and relocate a population like that? Ask nicely? Put a gun to everyone's head? Use your imagination, and think about it. What would that do, where would they go?
 
No one is glancing over them. But saying that just because Israel is racist as hell =! South Africa's apartheid and that entire situations are similar in the way that people should look to history for all the answers.

You can't just throw around "Its like South Africa", repeat yourself, and dip out, like you just explained the entire situation. People do that. Its lazy as hell.

I can make a thread for the comparison. Later today.
 

collige

Banned
South Africa was a massively contingent racist state. Israel is producing MORE racist policies but it has a long way to go before it gets to that level. Key questions:

- Are people allowed to vote as citizens in Israel regardless of race (yes)
- Are people allowed to become Israel citizens regardless of race (kinda)
- Is race highly stratified and subject to state control? (yes)
- Are people allowed to operate businesses regardless of race (yes, mostly)
- Are people protected from abuse if they're from a racial minority (increasingly not)

Israel is a -very- racist country, true. But it exists in context in a very racially divided part of the world and the condition of a Jewish person in Egypt would be, let's say, subject to tensions equivalent to many of the above.

There's no getting around the fact Israel is a racist state. But there's no point comparing it to South Africa. What Israel does is sometimes worse, most often not as bad, but most of all - it's completely different. Israel is not strictly a colonial project, either.

I think this depends on whether you're treating the occupied territories as a part of Israel or not. If we're only considering Israeli citizens, then your post is totally right but the apartheid comparisons are usually done in the context of the Palestine conflict which makes the Palestinian people part of the oppressed segregated group as well. From that angle, I think the apartheid analogy makes a lot more sense. The situations are pretty different regardless though.
 

marrec

Banned
Someone on my feed (pro Israel, naturally) posted this. Pretty accurate? I have no clue. I'd like to find a solid book on the history of this whole thing.

That video is hilariously misleading and flat-out wrong in almost everything it lays out.

It should be banned from being posted, if it weren't so funny to re-watch and see just how wrong Prager is.
 

cackhyena

Member
That video is hilariously misleading and flat-out wrong in almost everything it lays out.

It should be banned from being posted, if it weren't so funny to re-watch and see just how wrong Prager is.
Well lay out some obviously flawed things beyond practically all of Palestine wanting Israel wiped out. I knew that couldn't be true.
 

Opiate

Member
How so?

EDIT: By that i mean, what right does Isreal have in existing in the first place?

The land which is now Israel was formerly a British territory which had no sovereignty (and before that, it was simply part of the Ottoman empire). Israel exists because of the following sequence of events:

1) While Jews already lived in the region now known as Israel, a large influx of additional immigrants arrived in the late 1940s. Jews were a severely persecuted minority who were not particularly welcomed anywhere in Europe.

2) Once England was looking to relinquish the territory (Imperialism was falling out of favor and the land was too messy and violent to bother with anyway), the U.N. looked to established a state of Palestine.

3) The Jewish Agency (leaders at the time) accepted the U.N. plan, but neither the Arab League nor the Arab Higher Committee did. They instead attacked the Jews, and looked to push them out of the area. While the Jews were initially on the defensive in the conflict, they quickly outmatched the Arabs and eventually crushed them. There was a mass exodus of Arabs from the region.

4) Once this conflict had occurred, the Jews were now in a controlling position in discussions about the creation of a state. Instead of recognizing a state of Palestine, the U.N. recognized the creation of the state of Israel.
 
I don't think they started as "the occupier." First, there were already a lot of Jews in what is now modern day Israel long before Israel was established; second, the nation of Palestine never actually existed (it was part of the Ottoman empire and then became the British Mandate of Palestine). It's really important to note that it isn't as if Jews were a powerful interest group that just showed up one day and said "screw you guys, this is ours now." In general, Jews in the late 1940s were a hated people in Europe who had nowhere to go.

While England didn't want to kill all the Jews, it wasn't especially fond of them, either. The Jews were not expressly outlawed in Allied Europe by any means, but they weren't especially welcomed and their communities had already been destroyed in places like France and eastern Europe during the holocaust.

In general, Jews were a people facing harsh prejudice in Europe even after millions of them had been systematically killed. They didn't really have anywhere to go where they would be welcomed. At the very least, as stated, the issue is complicated.
The World Zionist Organization had been pushing for a Jewish homeland in Palestine since 1897. They even managed to get the Balfour declaration signed in 1917.
 

kamorra

Fuck Cancer
Yes, that has happened and it is terrible. No question about that, from me.
Now here is where I disagree. What you describe as "small discrepancies," I would describe as important factors which change my sense of the nature of the conflict. I think virtually every position in this discussion that thinks "Israel are the good guys, Palestinians are the bad guys" or "Palestinians are the good guys, Israel are the bad guys" maintains this position by focusing entirely on the things which make the other side look bad while dismissing the things which counter their position as "small discrepancies."
I'm not that articulate since english is not my mothertongue but I want to give you an answer.

Again you're right. But there is a point where I can't try to be a neutral observer anymore. I just can't care about the inaccuracy of a map or if Israel wasn't always the aggressor. The atrocities against the Palestinians people are too much for me.
 

Dryk

Member
How so?

EDIT: By that i mean, what right does Isreal have in existing in the first place?
The time when we could stop Israel from existing has long since past. Multiple generations that have done nothing wrong call that land their home now and it would be wrong to force them out. That's why Israel's settlement program is so bad, by the time anyone works up the courage to stop them it will be too late.

Creating Israel was a terrible idea, but we're stuck with it now and we have to make do.
 

ASIS

Member
Jews have been living in what is now Israel for a very, very long time. So have Arabs of course. You cannot just make all Israeli's leave without fighting on a scale that would make this look like a minor skirmish.

Jews are in every arab country. And have been for thousands of years. I just don't understand why suddenly they need their own country with this massacre. And what's worse is that european and American Jews are also invited to this country, a country where they have not stayed there for a very, very long time.

Again, I understand it's not feasible to just make a complete country just "go away", what I want to ask is what right does Isreal have in existing in the first place?

What right does palestine have? They should just leave and end terrorism. See how this works?
Palastine have an ethnic, and racial right. Isreal has none. So this comparison is not the same.
 

MegaMelon

Member
Don't be so naive. If peace was easier, there wouldn't be any wars or conflicts in the world.

Can you with a straight face say this war will accomplish anything other than more bloodshed and fuel further hate for both parties to suffer with many generations down the line?
 

ASIS

Member
The land which is now Israel was formerly a British territory which had no sovereignty (and before that, it was simply part of the Ottoman empire). Israel exists because of the following sequence of events:

1) While Jews already lived in the region now known as Israel, a large influx of additional immigrants arrived in the late 1940s. Jews were a severely persecuted minority who were not particularly welcomed anywhere in Europe.

2) Once England was looking to relinquish the territory (Imperialism was falling out of favor and the land was too messy and violent to bother with anyway), the U.N. looked to established a state of Palestine.

3) The Jewish Agency (leaders at the time) accepted the U.N. plan, but neither the Arab League nor the Arab Higher Committee did. They instead attacked the Jews, and looked to push them out of the area. While the Jews were initially on the defensive in the conflict, they quickly outmatched the Arabs and eventually crushed them. There was a mass exodus of Arabs from the region.

4) Once this conflict had occurred, the Jews were now in a controlling position in discussions about the creation of a state. Instead of recognizing a state of Palestine, the U.N. recognized the creation of the state of Israel.
Thank you, this is what I wanted to know.
 
Pretty messed up.

In a hilarious ironic way, there seems to be far more calls for wholesale genocide from the Israeli's versus Hamas this go around.

But people will still believe Israeli's want peace while the Palestinians are all savages.
 

Chariot

Member
Can you with a straight face say this war will accomplish anything other than more bloodshed and fuel further hate for both parties to suffer with many generations down the line?
Are you saying that war is just an accident of people who just failed to realize that peace is good? Please, things are very complicated and it's not as easy as just saying "hey you know what, peace would be actually really cool".
 

Opiate

Member
The World Zionist Organization had been pushing for a Jewish homeland in Palestine since 1897. They even managed to get the Balfour declaration signed in 1917.

Right, Zionism has existed for a long time. The large influx of immigrants (which precipitated the creation of Israel) were not primarily motivated by Zionism, however. Those immigrants (who went not just to Israel but also the United States in large numbers) were primarily motivated by a desire to get out of Europe, and not by a desire to move in somewhere and exert their power to push others out. They didn't have any power -- they were a beleaguered people experiencing intense prejudice.
 

Zeke

Member
The victims have become the victimizers. Considering their recent history you would think ethnic cleansing would be something they are conscious of.
 

marrec

Banned
The World Zionist Organization had been pushing for a Jewish homeland in Palestine since 1897.

The immigrants after WWI didn't care about Zionists pushing for homelands, they just wanted an area in which they could leave in peace without being discriminated against.

Well lay out some obviously flawed things beyond practically all of Palestine wanting Israel wiped out. I knew that couldn't be true.

The first first point he makes "One side wants the other side dead" is wrong. Hamas does not want to kill every Israeli. Most Arab states don't recognize current borders, but they recognize the right of Israel to exist. He skips the part where armed Jewish militias were pushing Palestinians out of their lands in 1948 before any proper armed conflict began and skips two decades between 1949 and 1967 without mentioning anything.

I'm not going to go through and point out every falsehood in the video, I simply don't have that amount of time.

Needless to say, please don't get any of your information from Dennis Prager. He's a giant idiot.

This conflict is not so simple to understand that a 5 minute video infographic will accurately give you an understanding of what's going on unless you're willingly ignorant.
 

MegaMelon

Member
Are you saying that war is just an accident of people who just failed to realize that peace is good? Please, things are very complicated and it's not as easy as just saying "hey you know what, peace would be actually really cool".

Well yeah, no-ones saying that it's that simple. But why shoot down people who are asking for some change towards peace? The point is that this is horrible and things need to start changing otherwise this will just never end. Yes it won't happen overnight, it'll probably take years, but sitting there saying 'Let's let this war keep raging because peace is gonna be difficult' doesn't make any sense.
 

Chariot

Member
Well yeah, no-ones saying that it's that simple. But why shoot down people who are asking for some change towards peace? The point is that this is horrible and things need to start changing otherwise this will just never end. Yes it won't happen overnight, it'll probably take years, but sitting there saying 'Let's let this war keep raging because peace is gonna be difficult' doesn't make any sense.
Yes, but the origin post of this chain of quotes was this:
Situations like these are horrible. Why can't people realize that peace is so much easier than constant fighting?
It's just a naive thing to say.
 

MegaMelon

Member
Yes, but the origin post of this chain of quotes was this:
It's just a naive thing to say.

Is it not a fair point though? There are definitely people on both sides that are responsible for this continued war who think that if they keep fighting they'll eventually win and then that'll settle the whole Palestine-Israel feud. In reality that's not gonna happen. If Israel wanted they could easily destroy Palestine at the cost of innocents. The point being that it's not 'naive'. There are definitely people fighting because they believe war is the only solution. That viewpoint is wrong and there's nothing wrong with pointing it out as being an issue.
 

cackhyena

Member
The immigrants after WWI didn't care about Zionists pushing for homelands, they just wanted an area in which they could leave in peace without being discriminated against.



The first first point he makes "One side wants the other side dead" is wrong. Hamas does not want to kill every Israeli. Most Arab states don't recognize current borders, but they recognize the right of Israel to exist. He skips the part where armed Jewish militias were pushing Palestinians out of their lands in 1948 before any proper armed conflict began and skips two decades between 1949 and 1967 without mentioning anything.

I'm not going to go through and point out every falsehood in the video, I simply don't have that amount of time.

Needless to say, please don't get any of your information from Dennis Prager. He's a giant idiot.

This conflict is not so simple to understand that a 5 minute video infographic will accurately give you an understanding of what's going on unless you're willingly ignorant.
Thanks. Like I said, I'd like a good book on all of this.
 

ZiZ

Member
"Why isn't the foreign media talking about what's happening in Syria? Israel is seen as the black sheep. No one cares about Israel, because Hamas and the Palestinians are the underdogs, and everyone likes an underdog. They have rockets and we have a big army, so we're the always the bad guys."

we care, bro.
OMnFnBf.jpg

we care.
 

Dryk

Member
Well yeah, no-ones saying that it's that simple. But why shoot down people who are asking for some change towards peace? The point is that this is horrible and things need to start changing otherwise this will just never end. Yes it won't happen overnight, it'll probably take years, but sitting there saying 'Let's let this war keep raging because peace is gonna be difficult' doesn't make any sense.
Achieving peace will most likely require one side laying down arms and letting the other rough them up for a bit before they realise that peace is a possibility. Long-term less people will die that way but nobody wants to have to put up with that lying down.

I'd add also that Jewish immigrants (who migrated to Israel en masse post WWII) did not all go there out of a feverish Zionism; most, as I understand it, were trying to avoid anti-Semitism. While WWII was over, it was still true that anti-Semitism was rampant, in Europe, even if it did not reach "kill them all" levels post-holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of Jews decided to leave their destroyed communities throughout Europe and find a new place to live. The British even sent Jewish immigrants to interment camps.
There seems to be a running theme with people that Imperial Britain didn't want ending up in remote corners of the planet and marginalising the natives.
 

Bodacious

Banned
That video is hilariously misleading and flat-out wrong in almost everything it lays out.

It should be banned from being posted, if it weren't so funny to re-watch and see just how wrong Prager is.

It's certainly biased in its presentation, but where is it "flat-out wrong?" I've seen this video posted elsewhere here on GAF and other sites, and someone always comes in and says "that video is wrong" (and like you, also suggests it should be banned) but I have yet to see anyone actually refute the particular historical facts that he cites. Misleading and incomplete is probably a more fair assessment?


.
 

marrec

Banned
It's certainly biased in its presentation, but where is it "flat-out wrong?" I've seen this video posted elsewhere here on GAF and other sites, and someone always comes in and says "that video is wrong" but I have yet to see anyone actually refute the particular historical facts that he cites. Misleading and incomplete is probably a more fair assessment?


.

Again, it says at the very beginning that Palestinians what Israelis dead. That is wrong. Both peoples want to live in peace.
 

ASIS

Member
Can you elaborate?

Demonising isrealies, while the jews are saints is a completely inaccurate portrayal. Both sides have been killing civilians for a very long time but only one side is being called a terrorist while the other is "defending".
 

Bodacious

Banned
Again, it says at the very beginning that Palestinians what Israelis dead. That is wrong. Both peoples want to live in peace.

No, that's just opinion. Your statement to the contrary is also just opinion. I'm talking about the historical facts upon which he is basing that opinion.
 
Right, Zionism has existed for a long time. The large influx of immigrants (which precipitated the creation of Israel) were not primarily motivated by Zionism, however. Those immigrants (who went not just to Israel but also the United States in large numbers) were primarily motivated by a desire to get out of Europe, and not by a desire to move in somewhere and exert their power to push others out. They didn't have any power -- they were a beleaguered people experiencing intense prejudice.

I disagree with that. Zionisms founding ideological standpoint is the creation of an Jewish state. They desired a state.

They desired a state in Palestine and through lobbying, terrorism and ethnic cleansing, they got it.

EDIT: And for gods sake hahahahahha take a look at this video: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10153369453382316

Propaganda at it's finest.
 

JDSN

Banned
I apologize for no indulging into that "Both sides are the same" horseshit, but when one side is an established legitimate government that gets funding from a big international player and you have a technologically advance army the onus is on you to be one that tries to find a solution to the conflict or at the very least, dont have officials publicly calling for an ethnic cleansing.
 

Quotient

Member
So we have a thread created based off a sound bite of a soldier at the funeral of a comrade. This thread is going place people!
 

marrec

Banned
No, that's just opinion. Your statement to the contrary is also just opinion. I'm talking about the historical facts upon which he is basing that opinion.

No, he presents it as fact. The few historical facts he presents in the video are accurate but without any context. Oh he also says there has never been a state in the geographic area that was not Jewish which is also untrue.
 

collige

Banned
I disagree with that. Zionisms founding ideological standpoint is the creation of an Jewish state. They desired a state.

They desired a state in Palestine and through lobbying, terrorism and ethnic cleansing, they got it.

EDIT: And for gods sake hahahahahha take a look at this video: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10153369453382316

Propaganda at it's finest.
I think his point isn't that Zionism wasn't a motivator for the creation for the creation of Israel, but that most of the Jewish immigrants to the new states were trying to escape persecution in their home countries.
 

Dryk

Member
I apologize for no indulging into that "Both sides are the same" horseshit, but when one side is an established legitimate government that gets funding from a big international player and you have a technologically advance army the onus is on you to be one that tries to find a solution to the conflict or at the very least, dont have officials publicly calling for an ethnic cleansing.
When a western backed regional power is acting the same as a glorified refugee camp there's a problem.
 
I think his point isn't that Zionism wasn't a motivator for the creation for the creation of Israel, but that most of the Jewish immigrants to the new states were trying to escape persecution in their home countries.

Oh sure, I can see that point.

What a turn of event that transpired after though. Going from a helpless people escaping persecution to murdering the indigenous people of the country, they ran to safety too and taking it over.

The fact of the White Paper of 1939 shows the point that the Jewish immigration to the country wasn't so innocent as thought too be though.

There was already plans to take over the country, British attempts to curb Jewish immigration was met with violence and terrorism and now we stand here today with a nation founded on the ethnic genocide of another people.

That is what Israel stands for, for a lot of people.
 

ZiZ

Member
Someone on my feed (pro Israel, naturally) posted this. Pretty accurate? I have no clue. I'd like to find a solid book on the history of this whole thing.
http://youtu.be/8EDW88CBo-8

Well lay out some obviously flawed things beyond practically all of Palestine wanting Israel wiped out. I knew that couldn't be true.

It's certainly biased in its presentation, but where is it "flat-out wrong?" I've seen this video posted elsewhere here on GAF and other sites, and someone always comes in and says "that video is wrong" (and like you, also suggests it should be banned) but I have yet to see anyone actually refute the particular historical facts that he cites. Misleading and incomplete is probably a more fair assessment?


.

he is ignoring the palestinian side of the story completely. Palestinians aren't against Jews having their own state, they are against having their villages bulldozed, having their cities bombed, having their citizens killed or jailed, being denied food, water, electricity, medicine, building materials... etc.

he also states that there was never any non-jewish state in Palestine. I suppose all those centuries under Muslim or Christian rule don't count.
 
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