*TX* The details you describe don't conflict with what I wrote at all.
My post was more of an opinion rather than a historical treatise. Sounds like the book you read from was written by an Anglophile. History is a many faceted mountain which appears different from every angle you look at it. From the angle of the Palestinian people who were displaced at the time, it looks a whole lot different than "a large wasteland and desert that would have allowed the coexistence of two groups of people with minimal disruption to everyday life." A large wasteland to you, is a historic ranging home for nomadic people to the Palestinians. Much as N. America was for the aboriginal people here. But hey, the Indians can live just as well on reservations, so why shouldn't we take what we want?
We Americans are the epitome of arrogance.
Slavory is ok, until we decide it's wrong. Then it's wrong for everyone.
We clear cut our forests into non-existence, then try to force other countries from doing the same.
Are we leaders, or bullies? As a descendant of the British empire, America exhibits the same patronizing role of parent to the world that the Brits did for over 300 years.
Do I side with the Palestinians in their conflict with the Israelis? Not at all. I simply find it ironic that this year finds the 50th anniversary of "Palestine".
Funny, the Palestinian nomads lived there for 100 generations before 1948. They just didn't call it "Palestine". But I suppose it's their fault they were so backwards that they had no government to represent them at the United Nations. Maybe then there would have been no Arab/Israeli War. And no Israel.
You talk about the creation of Israel as if the area were a vast open park land, just waiting for homesteaders to claim it and make it heaven on earth. The truth is, the Palestinians who lived on the land were not asked, or included in negotiations regarding the "well thought out separation of a large wasteland". That was done by the well-meaning patriarchs, the British, who took it upon themselves to decide that the 100 generation old grazing lands of the Palestinians be checkerboard partitioned. Is it any wonder that they warred against the settling Jews? I suppose it's the Indian's fault they were slaughtered, since they had the audacity to fight for their lands, and lost. Same as the Palestinians.
But I'm just looking at the mountain from the other side. And it looks a lot different from over here. And it's a lot easier to talk about peace and co-existence when it's not you that's being forced onto a reservation.
"The "Rape of Palestine" mentality is just fertilizer for future types of stupidity and intolerance"? No. It's a view of history that differs from the Anglo-American account. Intolerance is also when people refuse to acknowledge when an injustice has taken place because it clashes from the "truth" they've grown up with. Take the easy road and believe the history book as that writer wants you to know history. But don't assume that version to be the truth.
To know the whole mountain, you have to see it from every angle.
TX |
