Won’t be the first time I was ever wrong.
Something was nagging away at me about this and seeing it in black & white brought it out. How do you get to the point that Israel is expanding an empire by what it’s doing in the Middle East?
They usurped the Palestinian hold on the land of Palestine / Land of Israel – depends on your outlook and the settler camps could be called colonies if you are so minded but your version seems to glorify what it is beyond mere land grabbing of the best land and reducing the Palestinians to the detritus or unusable land.
As I said above, I’ve been wrong before. I’ll accept you know more about Africa than myself. I was only born in Kenya and I only lived all over Africa and my father only served in the British Foreign Office from India to South Africa etc during the colonial era. And a lot of the post colonial era too, they stayed on and I was born in that time.
Funnily enough, I was corrected on another thread by RightinNYC (another American) who apparently knows more about Somalian Pirates and events in Somalia than the BBC Somalia and Al Jazheera news reporters who were on the ground in another thread.
My bad. I really should stay out of these threads I know nothing about.
I will condense this to be brief.
You have grown obtuse, and are now throwing out personal affectations rather than logical consequences.
so lets start with the personal. I have served with and trained aofficers from all over the world, including, Kenya, Zambia, Gabon, Ethipoia, Egypt, Niger, The Ivory Coast, Ghana, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Japan and a few others. I also happen to have a background in diplomatic history to go with the military credentials.
There are a couple of key points here.
1. Simply because you are well versed, does not mean that others are not also.
2. Most of my hstory professors made it very clear that condensing complex subjects and conveying them in understandable, teachable fashion was the goal of application of intellect.
So when I see things like taking the condensing of the South African experience of racism through to transition of economy and governance that was smooth and without significant disruption, you quibble about tribal and political differences that continue to exist in both colonial and colonized Nations?
How does that in any way detract from applicable lessons learned that can be gleaned from what is argueable one of the most successful transitional processes ever used?
Furthermore, how is it that the march of history spanning the globe of colonizing forces withdrawing from Africa and Asia and the Middle East cramped into the middle of it, somehow leave Israel outside the bounds of history?
How is the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank any different than the German seizure of Alsace and Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War? How is this different than Britain's occupation Hong Kong? How is this different than centuries of expanding and contracting empires the world over?
Please tell me how Israel's territorial ambitions are so unique as to fall outside the classifications currently available to history?
A concerted study of historical trends and analysis can find situations of similiar circumstances and show us how different policy makers have chosen to deal with those circumstances. That every situation is unique does not mean that there are not overlapping opportunities or similiarities that can be exploited by able policymakers to effect changes in conditions that will open up yet more opportunities.
If you jump into the process full of cynicism, and see in the complexity and nuance only hopelessness and reason to justify failure you will certainly find it. If however, you look at the process to find potential solutions and to avoid potential pitfalls, you will also find it. The difference is leadership, and Israel certainly does not need any more excuses to avoid taking a critical look at the objectives it is trying to achieve and then formulating policy based on sound principals based on realistic and communicable chances for success.
How much better would it be for Israel to show its intent through analogy, to state its intent to both the Israeli and the Palestinines and say, "This is where I want to lead us. This is what success look like. This has been done before, and we can achieve this to."
You cannot do that if you think the "war" you are in is so unique that it cannot be called "war".
