At the same time, the Arabs supported the Allies in World War I because they were promised autonomy, too.
Might I point out that they got autonomy in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and many other countries, most of whose borders were likewise drawn in the British Foreign Office? What the Arabs could not abide was the Jews having autonomy in any scrap of land whatsoever. Its existence, worse, its success, puts them to shame.
The Arab proposal in 1948 was that the Jews live as a subject people under the Mufti of Jerusalem, a Nazi who had spent WWII in Germany raising troops for the Waffen SS and making it his personal business to ensure that no Jew escaped the Final Solution to emigrate to Palestine. The Zionists would definitely have prospered peacefully under that regime. Not hardly. It was win the war, or die. That simple.
The Jews succeeded because they were, and are, more advanced, culturally; thus, they were, and are, more powerful. Also, they have more powerful friends. And the Holocaust made, and makes, non-Jews feel guilty. And Westerners didn't, and don't, have a lot of respect for Arabs, anyway, especially the Brits, who were, and are, notoriously racist.
Yes, they were more advanced culturally and much more organized. No, they did NOT have more powerful friends -- how can you possibly say this about the 30s and 40s!? If they had had powerful friends, they wouldn't have lost 6 million people! The British, after the Balfour declaration, found out about Arab oil and became steadily more pro-Arab, culminating in the White Paper of 1939. The British cut off Jewish immigration to Palestine at the very moment when it could have saved a million lives! The British Foreign Office has been dominated by Arabists from that day to this.
I can understand why you'd be reluctant to criticize China for taking over Tibet - it would make your arguments about Israel untenable.
Now you are seriously twisting my words. My point was that none of the left-wing human rights champions seem to care very much about the much more serious human rights abuses in Tibet. 2000 dead in Israel certainly gets more ink than 200,000 dead elsewhere.
I was interested in whether there was a good moral or ethical reason to support Israel, and I figured if anyone could advance it, it was you.
Look, I answered in terms of real history and realpolitik. There could have been an entirely different history in Palestine if the Palestinians hadn't had such despicable leadership. I tell you, the Mufti was a beaut. Did you know he consolidated his rise to power by assassinating 2000 of his opponents? That was one of the main reasons why Arab Palestinian society remained un-organized -- the Mufti killed prominent men he couldn't control.
The Zionists brought modernization and economic development with them in the prewar years. The Zionists wanted to live peacefully with their neighbors and most of the Arabs wanted it too. Far from driving out Arabs, they attracted a huge Arab migration into their areas of settlement, drawn by jobs at good wages.
But the Arab leadership's only response to all offers of compromise was war. They promised to "drive the Jews into the sea". The problems of Palestine are not the cause of Arab aggression, they are the result of Arab aggression.
By all conventional measures the Arabs should have won, for they far outgunned the Hagannah. They had four real British trained, British supplied armies. The Hagannah was an underground militia, without heavy artillery or a single tank. But the Arabs were disunited, mistrustful of each other, lacked common aims, and worst of all, believed their own rhetoric. So they lost the war and then refused to make a peace. Then they started and lost four more wars.
But enough of them know that if they just keep demanding their "rights" people like you will be inclined to give them a do-over, or force Israel to reduce itself to a completely indefensible position, which amounts to the same thing.
Oh, the Palestinians do target civilians, which I also don't approve of, but I don't doubt that a lot of Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israelis, have they?
So it's your position that the US is no better than Al Quaeda? After all, Al Quaeda killed civilians in New York and Washington, and the US killed civilians in Afghanistan, didn't they? So what's the difference? But the US did not target the civilians. In fact, it tried to avoid killling them. Just like Israel, which also tries to avoid killing civilians. If it's not morally equivalent for the US, then it's not morally equivalent for Israel. |
