A single Israeli state between the sea and Jordan, encompassing the West Bank “will deteriorate into either an apartheid state or a non-Jewish state”, former Mossad chief Danny Yatom once said.

Interesting use of the word "deteriorate" to describe treating people of different ethnicities equally, but it's been obvious from the beginning that Project Astroturf Ethnostate was a dreadful idea.

It's the classic dilemma - you hate ethnic cleansing, but by golly you also hate ethnic mixing. And raises that age-old question, it racist to brutally subjugate an ethnic group for eighty years if Hitler?

The original Zionists were motivated by both the atrocious antisemitism historically visited upon the Jewish people and by their historical connection to the land. After the Holocaust this trend kept increasing.

It's easy in hindsight to say they never should have come there but conditions on the ground were quite different at the time. This is not a conflict where only one side is to blame, IMO.

The religious aspect of the strife is very real. As it was in Belfast, etc. This current war is the worst we've seen since 1973. I hope that lives on both sides are spared as much as humanly possible.

The historic connection to the land was always a crock of shit. A historical claim going back a thousand generations is ridiculous on the face of it, simply by the mathematics of genetic dispersal, but if anyone can claim to be descended from those people, it's the Palestinians, not the Israelis.

It was a very mid-20th century idea that different ethnic groups can't successfully mix and everybody should be partitioned off into their own homelands, so let's dump all our surplus European Jews in the Middle East. The United States was racially segregated. It was the age of apartheid. These are the same geniuses who thought Jim Crow laws were a good idea, or that splitting up India and Pakistan would bring peace.

Anthony Flack wrote: Sun Oct 08, 2023 4:35 pm The historic connection to the land was always a crock of shit. A historical claim going back a thousand generations is ridiculous on the face of it, simply by the mathematics of genetic dispersal, but if anyone can claim to be descended from those people, it's the Palestinians, not the Israelis.

I'm not talking about genetics per se. The Jewish people, no matter where they're from, have a strong connection to the land of Israel. It's an integral part of their culture.

InMySoul77 wrote: Sun Oct 08, 2023 4:53 pm

Anthony Flack wrote: Sun Oct 08, 2023 4:35 pm The historic connection to the land was always a crock of shit. A historical claim going back a thousand generations is ridiculous on the face of it, simply by the mathematics of genetic dispersal, but if anyone can claim to be descended from those people, it's the Palestinians, not the Israelis.

I'm not talking about genetics per se. The Jewish people, no matter where they're from, have a strong connection to the land of Israel. It's an integral part of their culture.

I know a bunch of reformed American, antizionist Jews who'd say otherwise. Imagine, centuries in Poland or Russia. Countless generations speaking Slavic languages and dealing with some tough ass winters. Then suddenly everyone's all "Learn Hebrew, move to the desert!".

It'd be like if my family and half of Boston moved to Cork and tried to switch to Gaelic, throw in a bunch of Basque folks from North West Spain while you're at it.

I know there are religious sites and all but Christ, wouldn't it be a more peaceful world if all the Abrahamic religions got really into the idea that their cosmic creator had more in mind than 2% of Earth's geography and that their spiritual lives magnify scriptural settings to make all encompassing metaphors?

losthighway wrote: Sun Oct 08, 2023 5:13 pm

InMySoul77 wrote: Sun Oct 08, 2023 4:53 pm

Anthony Flack wrote: Sun Oct 08, 2023 4:35 pm The historic connection to the land was always a crock of shit. A historical claim going back a thousand generations is ridiculous on the face of it, simply by the mathematics of genetic dispersal, but if anyone can claim to be descended from those people, it's the Palestinians, not the Israelis.

I'm not talking about genetics per se. The Jewish people, no matter where they're from, have a strong connection to the land of Israel. It's an integral part of their culture.

I know a bunch of reformed American, antizionist Jews who'd say otherwise. Imagine, centuries in Poland or Russia. Countless generations speaking Slavic languages and dealing with some tough ass winters. Then suddenly everyone's all "Learn Hebrew, move to the desert!".

It'd be like if my family and half of Boston moved to Cork and tried to switch to Gaelic, throw in a bunch of Basque folks from North West Spain while you're at it.

I know there are religious sites and all but Christ, wouldn't it be a more peaceful world if all the Abrahamic religions got really into the idea that their cosmic creator had more in mind than 2% of Earth's geography and that their spiritual lives magnify scriptural settings to make all encompassing metaphors?

Not all Jews supported Zionism. The orthodox ones by and large rejected Zionism because it was trying to pre-empt the Jewish notion of their messiah. And plenty of secular Jews criticize Israel vociferously as well. But Israel by and large plays as big of a role in Jewish culture as Passover or Hanukah do. To say the obvious, not all Jews are genetic descendants of Jacob, if such a person existed. But that hardly matters to the point I'm making which is that the people's cultural linkage to the land has always existed.

Palestinian people also have a more solidly founded "deed of property" legal right to the land because it's documented that their parents and grandparents were forced to move. It would be great if the parties could peacefully exist together. But Arabs and Jews clashed repeatedly a hundred years ago too. This problem is the world's biggest clusterfuck. Add radical Islam to the mix and it's also the biggest powderkeg.

WSJ now saying Iran orchestrated the surprise attack. US vessels and materiel are en route to the area. Israeli ground attack on Gaza appears imminent.

^ If this is true the world is in deep shit.

I'm waiting with bated breath to see if anyone else reports on this.

The darkest path forward would be if Hezbollah invades. If the US then gets involved, Iran and Hezbollah have proxies in Iraq and Syria which would attack our troops. Then we would officially be at war.

This is the horrible logic of warfare. Stuff can spiral out of control fast. Trump certainly did us no favors by pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. Iran has been moving forward with their nuclear enrichment.

Biden has always had Israel's back. Remains to be seen if that will still be true this time.

Iran was never going to have a nuke. That's a giant fucking joke. When the Israelis have their shit together they can do stuff like Stuxnet and all their assassinations of nuclear physicists in Iran that prevent it. They absolutely don't have their shit together right now, but Iran is not going to cobble together a nuke in the months that the current conflict will play out over. Even if they did, by buying from Putin or something, they would need an impractical number of them in order to launch enough to get through the Israeli defenses.

Biden is not bad at all about working out compromises, say what you will about the compromises he ends up with. He might be able to broker something that is, while notably worse than the situation a week ago, better than an all out war.

Everyone who has a hand in this is monstrous (Israeli settlers, Netanyahu, the Saudi and Iranian governments) or corrupt and inept (the Palestinian Authority) or desperate and hopeless and also probably full of people who are mixes of the above monster/corrupt/inept (Hamas). History shows that the monsters will likely come out of it unscathed.