'a real old-fashioned Tory' - yes, and married to a whig ... Clementine supported the Liberal party all her life, was a member of the party i believe .... so there is a bit more complexity
'If I give you a choice between living in British Rhodesia or Mugabe's Zimbabwe'
Same old false-dichotomy approach eh, choice between two options, and only two ... not too carefully picked either, as they belong to separate time periods ..... too bad, if it wasn't for that, i expect that judging from your tone my answer would surprise you, it might start off something like this - 1. Mugabe is not representative of all indigena just because you choose him so for purposes of whatever point you're trying to make, 2. neither was Rhodes of imperialists, for that matter, 3. nor Smith - you might better have offered me the option of post-UDI self-ruled Rhodesia - who was not a brit but a rhodesian, born there, that was his country .... while the man is on record with early statements that now come across as racist, and hey they are no question, he also was raised with and around blacks, some of whom remain his friends to this day .... i think to an extent he has gotten a bad rap, largely from - wait for it - dubious politicians of perfidious Albion, who made promises and did not keep them, which is how you end up today with Mugabe, by the way ..... Ian Smith still lives in Salisbury ... fairly recent statement - 'If only we had a Mandela things would have been different in our country.' - home.wanadoo.nl
'what bs, sweeping with one brush developing a country and genocide into one pail'
Not so, the two are quite comparable - remember that for Hitler getting rid of the jews was not the principal goal, only a step on the way, his overall plan was to generate Lebensraum from Brittany to the Urals for german colonisation [call it, if you like, 'a land soon to be people-free, for a people who want more free land'].... far more russians and ukrainians and poles suffered from this, than did jews .... the nazis did in fact present it as 'developing a country', and really, from the point of view of an indigenous robbed of his land and/or shot, what difference would it make whether the thief/shooter was nazi or zionist?
Remember too, in re nazis and zionists, that the latter found allies for their cause among the former, for a period of years during the thirties ... some embarrassing statements are still around, posted somewhere on the net, i disremember where just now ... but these two causes were not felt to be mutually exclusive, by a goodly number of each party
You then go on to arab population increasing in the early days of zionist influx - well yes, a lot of places were getting both inmigration in those days, and improved natural increase as the first benefits of modern medicine and sanitation arrived .... the zionists had hard european currency, lots of it in many cases like the Rothschild plantations, of course this would have attracted a rather cashless native population ..... also, early zionists were not nearly so overtly rabid - for one thing, they were hardly in a position to be, consituting a tiny minority of population, and for another, they had not stimulated arab resistance by showing their hand, by declaring that they wanted an arab-free Palestine .... but generally i get the impression that the early ones were a kinder gentler sort anyway, and subject to a less stress-making environment as well, pre-Balfour and all .... it's only when you get into the twenties and thirties that any sizable portions seized firm on the writings of the Jabotinsky school and started up with the stern gang/irgun style
Which is a point that bears repeating i think, in the face of these constant false dichotomies presented - there are all sorts of zionists, just as there are all sorts of indigenous, all sorts of colonials of every nature, even all sorts of nazis no doubt
Raise a better class of zionist, you'll get a better Palestine .... and yes, you can grind on all day about how that applies as well to the palestinians, sure, and we know you will, but it's you i'm talking to here, innit ..... cheers |
