Special Note: I don’t know if violence in Israel/Palestine is going to be as topical/active crisis or war when I finish this book, which I’m not actively reading as I wrote this, (I’m not a Middle East expert), but it is now, so I’ll say: well, first, let me be the first one to say that I’m glad I’m not an Israeli citizen being bombed or whatever; I don’t will any harm on Israel. But also, I don’t think it’s as clear cut as the Ukraine thing, (Dear Little Russians: you know what would be fun? If Russia were a Great Power again! So, guess what? You guys are Nazis! ~ the Great Russian government); it’s a lot more like Northern Ireland—not to be an apologist for the IRA, a rather ugly group if truth be told, but there was a lot of violence over there over the years, and in the end, it went both ways. As someone who’s seen his fellow citizens elect some crazy people over the years, I’ll be the first one to say that I’m glad I didn’t become a refugee over that—but, you know, it’s possible to paint the picture in a way other than what it can be at times (I’m nice; you’re a terrorist—etc).

…. N.B. The Palestinians were in this war acting out and not I think acting productively; at the same time there’s also I find an enormous amount of euphemism in Israeli media/government coverage, to what is at best an extremely callous response, and never any thought given to the long-term conflict which did not begin this October, but basically in the 1890s, you know. But they cover it like it was a dip in the stock market or something. “Yes we understand there was a secondary market event, but funds are being made available….” It’s so bloody-fist corporate; it’s like a gift to the Marxists, you know.

…. N.B.2. When a jet plane with comparatively little danger drops a bomb on some refugees and kills fifty of them because some rocket man terrorist was down there, the spokesman blames the rocket terrorist for using “human shields”. But maybe he just wanted to be among his own? Surely a real Jew, a real mensch, would get that? But how do you get that the fire-a-rocket-into-the-side-of-the-apartment-building terrorist isn’t your leader, when they’ll kill four of your cousins or whatever to blow him up? And then he’s dead, so his own cousin takes over. An utter failure at the policy level, which is why we can’t have a debate. Have a debate, lose the debate, because, as the saying goes, “there’s no debate”.

………..

This guy sees the Israel-Palestine conflict as a modern affair, and doesn’t use it to justify or attack religion; however, I think it’s fair to say that something like this might correct faults coming from education and religion. There are never any Palestinian archaeological digs in some wealthy part of modern Israel to show that Jews didn’t live in that town in Bible times; there are only Israeli digs in a part of what’s left of Palestine which the settlers are eager to claim, to say that there were Jews there when the Roman Empire was an active organization, or before that, right. It’s not that there’s no Palestinian terrorism, no harmful wildfire feelings in Palestine, or even among those sympathetic to them. But the presence of Arabs in Palestine a hundred or two hundred years ago ought to count every bit as much to the society there of today, than Jewish settlements in more-or-less the same region back in the foggy mists of time. Of course, I do see myself as someone who likes Jews, that unfortunate people, and I think I understand the desire of Jews to have a place where Jews can go and be safe; they want to have a place where Jews can go and be Jewish without the goys thinking that that marks them out as freaks. But sometimes Western religion, Abrahamic religion, in its less conscious adherents, tends to have a tendency towards conflict and away from compromise, and sometimes living together with people is better than endless war, or even endless suspicion….

Of course, I’m not from the region and I don’t study it much, you know. But clearly we cannot let a group—in this case the Jews—do as they please with their enemies because we know and like them better than their enemies, and anyway since we’ve been horrible to the Jews—and you know we have!—don’t we owe them? Oppression or whatever is certainly a layer cake, and not always a simple thing. I suppose there is a sort of Indian/South Asian analogy I could make. An Indian guru or swami comes from another culture than many Americans—even, deep down, their admirers—would consider “foreign” and alien, and which many church types would revile. And yet swamis deserve respect. And yet in the layer cake of oppression, theirs is not the only layer. Beneath, if you like, the upper-class Hindu thinkers and priests and so on, are many lower-class, low-status, and female members of the same society: and if a Hindu priest beats his wife, it doesn’t make sense to let him off with a smile because, “Hindus aren’t devils, you know—and I like all that lot!”, you know.

Notes from a generalist, take it for what YOU think it’s worth. 😘

…. Just because I feel like summarizing that again:

I like Israel, but this guy respectfully points out mainly where the Israeli kinda official view is wrong. It is a modern conflict that didn’t exist in the recent past, and when Zionist settlement began, it was focused, naturally I guess, on winning the areas where a new country could be built with a strong economy, not wherever Jews happened to live in ancient times. Which isn’t to say that Arabs are always right, but as long as the conflict isn’t resolved it will be easier for other Arab rulers to say to the people, Don’t think about me, what I do—dream the nationalist dream of Palestine. ~Always sexier to get oppressed by foreigners, but there you go: it’s an excuse for the Arabs not to develop or whatever, and that holds the region/world back. Of course, the Jews, with the history of Antisemitism against them, naturally want Israel, a place where both the jailer and the prisoner might be Jews, as one of the early Zionists put it—where Jewishness can be normal in a way that it isn’t in America. But more safeguards need to be put on it, so it’s not just another colonial project, that puts being a regional power ahead of safety and justice.

…. And it’s also true that Christian Europe (Britain, for example, and also later there was America) both persecuted and rejected the Jews, and served as a sort of parent to the Israeli state in a way that it didn’t to what I guess you could call the indigenous Arabs. Israel obviously didn’t conquer the entire Arab world, but if Delaware (size) or Alabama (population) were conquered by a bunch of Mooslims, you can bet that for the average American nationalist this would indeed be the end of the world, you know.

…. Israel is the weakest Western society in some respects, but it is a Western society with all the sympathetic and unsympathetic things that go with that. It’s someone’s compared to say, Italy, you know: “having a country for Jews is no different than having Italy for the Italians”. But in the modern world, having a state by and for ethnic (or religious, or whatever) Italians, bent on keeping out poor nefarious outsiders, would be—indeed, to some extent, is indeed—a problematic construct. It can only be more problematic in a sort of ‘gone in between (say) 476 and 1890-1948’ scenario, you know. On the other hand, I’m not sure I like, say, boycotting Israel, you know. It just has exactly the same sins as other Western societies, whether Italy, the US, the UK—anything you like, and even paranoid China cuts deals with all those countries; that’s life. Obviously there are plenty of personally sympathetic Israelis doing all sorts of California things, and I don’t want to see a rocket through their house, but I don’t think everyone in that country, on the other hand, cares or is anything other than defiantly militaristic about their country’s origins and dark side—denying people basic services and housing because of ethnic origin in the middle of the twentieth century, etc.

…. Terrorism is not a good thing, but the Israeli state never stopped confiscating Palestinian land, even after they started making all sorts of promises, you know. One day you’ll be free, little red boy. One day you’ll be free. 🤫

…. I can’t help but wonder how much of this is because of little-mind Americans trying to cover their ass via the one half-acceptable minority, you know. Jesus Christ, the first white man, knows we don’t want Jews to move into our town, no matter how much money they offer us for the house—this is Bedford Falls, little Hebrew boy: leave Frank Capra and the true American boys alone! ~You know: it’s the classic hierarchy—the people in the middle are supposed to pound on the people on the bottom. The Black man is supposed to go home and beat his wife, right.

…. There have been peace proposals for a long time, maybe since the beginning, but every time something happens in Israel/Palestine, the commercials say, ‘Let’s drop some bombs on Palestinians. I like bombs. They explode. I’m a little boy, and I need my bombs to explode, you know.’

And the Israeli settler population is actually growing faster than the Israeli population as a whole, that’s how non-serious they are about letting a Palestinian state exist in a real way in the future. And there are “too many” Arabs for a single Israel/Palestine state to be both Jewish and democratic. Either Palestinians living in increasingly small cages isn’t a problem, or else they’re just not thinking things through, you know.

I’m not a Jew so I don’t know if Jews would accept this, but I can’t help but wonder if a single “non-Jewish” or binational democratic state wouldn’t be better than apartheid-and-terrorism, you know. Nothing quite ruins your afternoon like a bomb through your living room, some people even consider it worse than a shop owner waving at you who has a different national origin, you know. Protecting Jewish identity could still be written into the constitution of Israel/Palestine even if Jews aren’t a numerical majority. French culture is protected in Quebec/Canada despite the huge predominance of Anglo culture in North America and even in Canada, you know.

Probably the people in the region will choose war, though. It’s sad….

And I certainly don’t envy the civilians of the region in general. After I read the Checkmark Books Afghanistan history, I took notes on the further reading and even ordered one of the books; granted that was a different stage in my development, but I didn’t do that again here. It’s just too sad to watch two victims clobbering each other; they don’t even get to have any dignity the way a much-oppressed Afghan would be like, We’re the Afghans! We’re tough as nails! We’re not going anywhere! etc.

…….

Now that I’ve got some actual knowledge of the conflict instead of the daily news, I have to say that the Zionist posts on Threads are always pushing me away from them, you know.

—We should be able to take some more land; Israel’s real small….

🤔

Are there people living on the land you want to take?

—People have always hated the Jews. So a little military aggression now; well, you know….

🤔

Does everybody get to think like that? How about the Blacks? They might think that’s an interesting idea….

—The whole Arab World existing is just, like, injustice man. (peace sign)…. You know, America is real big; maybe things like that can still happen….

Bro, you’re tripping. 😂

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a case study of what happens when two peoples claim inalienable rights to the same piece of land. Both sides have had powerful allies, and both sides have had shameful moments when atrocities were committed. The British made a complete muddle of things with their post-World War I nation building exercise in the Middle East, and opportunities for peace have been missed repeatedly since.

The author, a professor at the University of Victoria in Canada and co-author of A History of the Modern Middle East 5th ed., writes a very clear, although dense, history of the conflict beginning with the first Zionist convention in 1897. The book is organized in twenty year chunks, covering the Ottoman Palestine (1897-1917), British Palestine (1917-37), Palestine partitioned (1937-47), Atzmaut and Nakba (1947-1967), Occupation (1967-87), The rise and fall of the peace process (1987-2007) and a bit beyond. ( )

Highly recommended to gain a better understanding of this century old conflict.
This is an area of history that I have picked up over the past thirty odd years almost entirely from journalism and television, with a couple of films and one (for me seminal) war game.
The book is a concise overview split into six chapters covering the period from 1897 to 2007, clearly explaining how the state of Israel came to exist almost exclusively through immigration from Europe, why the Arabs didn’t seize the chances to create a Palestinian state (with the benefit of hindsight) and showing with excellent maps how the land was allocated by Europeans (primarily the British), United Nations and warfare. Especially interesting was the explanation of how Jewish immigrants initially purchased land in the agriculturally rich valley and coastal areas, rather than in the biblical Israeli areas of Judea and Samaria (broadly, the West Bank), which influenced how extra-national forces considered the land should be partitioned.
As far as I can tell, the book appears impartial, noting the arguments for both Israeli and Palestinian, with consequent difficulty of reaching a compromise. ( )