The Mechanisms of Media Bias in the I/P Conflict

[Evilroddy]

Yep, that's the clip and you will find the " Bad News From Israel" to be a solid work based on much research of media framings/commentary wrt the I/P conflict.

The tide is slow but it is catching up with Israeli actions/crimes imo There is a PR/image war going on which Israel has been winning hands down for decades. That is beginning to change and many American Jews hold a negative view of the actions/policies of the state that acts as though it represents ALL Jewish people. That turning will be critical going forward imo Wait until people realize that the two state solution was killed by Israeli illegal settlements and outright racism and the only game in town is a civil rights fight for equality in the land from the river to the sea

oneworld2

Yeah, the book is only £5.00 but the shipping will be just over £17.00! I am not willing to pay £22.00+ for a paperback book. I'll head down to the municipal library and see if I can find it or get it on an inter-library loan. Therefore reading this book will be a work in progress I'm afraid.

Thanks for the reference however.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[oneworld2]

oneworld2

Yeah, the book is only £5.00 but the shipping will be just over £17.00! I am not willing to pay £22.00+ for a paperback book. I'll head down to the municipal library and see if I can find it or get it on an inter-library loan. Therefore reading this book will be a work in progress I'm afraid.

Thanks for the reference however.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

No worries, it was only a recommendation

 

[Valaisee]

This a a reasonably good video explaining why mainstream media present a pro-Israel bias in reportage about the I/P conflict and why independent media have so much trouble dealing with organised blow-back for trying to be more objective than the mainstream media giants they share reportage with.

The video is not perfect, as twice it uses the very slanted word "god-father(s)" (with a clear mafioso connotation) to describe David Ben Gurion and other early leaders of the Zionist project. But aside from these two transgressions, the video presents a very clear and remarkably accurate view of the organised media manipulation done by partisan organisations (cited often by posters in this forum, including myself) and the self-censorship of media organisations plus their censure of reporters who go against the self-censorship in the wake of that media manipulation.



How can clearer and less slanted media coverage of the I/P conflict be achieved and how can the media manipulation be hamstrung to allow more view points and greater truth of different dimensions of this conflict to be reported in this hotly contested area? The very language and vocabulary of reportage is now a battlefield in the reportage!

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

It's naive to think that there can exist an "unbiased", "objective", "clearer and less slanted" media or organization. Everyone is biased.
I agree that the "mainstream media" has a pro-Israel bias relative to your opinions, they also have anti-Israel bias relative to mine.
People should just accept that the "mainstream media" (or any other organization) will always be biased and not treat their reports as accurate description of reality and truth.

 

[Mithrae]

Sephardic Jews lived in the Levant in small numbers for much of the modern era. However when the Zionist project got started an ever accelerating stream and later deluge of Ashkenazi Jews from Europe moved in, displaced and disrupted local Arab lives and by the turn of the 20th Century were actively involved in terrorist activities and paramilitary activities in support of the Zionist project.... The Jews claimed the land as their historical homeland based on their own perceptions of history and religion and by wilfully ignoring the fact that there were people who were non-Jews living on that land when the Zionist bandwagon got rolling.

As I had pointed out to you long before you made this post, "The simple fact is that Arabs greatly outnumbered Jews both within Palestine and even more obviously in the region as a whole, so imagining that the Jewish organizations wanted warfare seems absurd on the face of it, and does not seem to be supported by the facts." "Early violence between Jews and Arabs was predominantly instigated by Arab groups (eg. 1920 Nebi Musa riots, 1921 Jaffa riots, 1929 Buraq riots and the Black Hand organization in the early 1930s)." These are what I like to call logic and specific facts. By contrast all you've offered is vague propaganda, nothing even specific enough to look up for ourselves. Exactly what "terrorist activities and paramilitary activities" were Zionists engaged in "by the turn of the 20th century"?

There were significant numbers of Ashkenazi Jews in Palestine long before the advent of modern Zionism. Again as I had suggested to you previously (albeit much more vaguely in this case) "If the 'holy land' hadn't held such religious importance to Christians and Muslims, and strategic significance as the gateway between continents, odds are there would have been an Israel centuries ago; there've been enough migration waves of Jews to Palestine over the millennia to make it an otherwise-inevitable and potentially peaceful demographic transition. Instead their numbers were kept down by intermittent and often violent oppression, for reasons which I'm sure you would agree were not exactly compelling." You did not express agreement that the reasons for intermittent and often violent oppression of Jews in Palestine were inadequate; instead, a few days later in a different thread you are championing the importance of that artificially-lowered proportion of Palestinian Jews, deriding the ongoing Jewish search for refuge from from oppression elsewhere in the world as a mere 'bandwagon' and implying (contrary to facts) that Palestine was already at its population capacity.


From a few hours' research, here's a bit of an overview of the various Jewish influxes/reclamation attempts and expulsions/oppressions/foreign influxes in historical Palestine:

67-71CE First Jewish-Roman war/destruction of temple
132-136 Third Jewish-Roman war (bar-Kochba revolt)
3rd century Imperial Crisis added to Jewish burdens, many emigrate to Babylon under more tolerant Sassanid Empire
361-363 Emperor Julian abolished special Jewish taxes and initiated reconstruction of the temple
5th century Christian persecution & influx, Jews 10-15% of population
614 Nehemiah ben Hushiel allied with Sassanids, brief Jewish autonomy in Jerusalem
628 Byzantine massacre of Jews
638ff continued ban on new synagogues under Muslim rule
7th-8th centuries, Arabic immigration and settlement
717ff Restrictions on non-Muslims, Jews banned from worship on Temple Mount
~750 Abu Isa Obadiah with 10,000 armed followers attempted conquest
8th-9th centuries Muslim civil wars drive many non-Muslims from the country
10th century leaders of Karaite community, mostly under Persian rule, urged migration to Israel
1071 Seljuk Turks expel the Gaonate (Talmudic academy) from Jerusalem
1099ff Crusader massacres of Jews, oppression and sale into slavery
1141 Spanish poet Yehuda Halevi called for Jews to emigrate to Israel
1187 Saladin's conquest of Palestine, proclamation for Jews to return to Jerusalem
1211 Group led by over 300 rabbis from France and England
1219-1220 most of Jerusalem destroyed on orders of Ayyubid sultan Al-Mu'azzam Isa
1260 Yechiel of Paris migrates to Acre with large group of followers
1267 Nachmanides viewed settlement of Israel as a positive command on all Jews, joins Yechiel
1260ff "Although the Jewish population declined greatly during Mamluk rule, this period also saw repeated waves of Jewish immigration from Europe, North Africa, and Syria. These immigration waves possibly saved the collapsing Jewish community of Palestine from disappearing altogether"

Continued...

 

[Mithrae]

Cont. from above:

1260ff Mamluk (mis)rule saw economic stagnation and decline of Palestine's population, especially Christians and Jews due to discrimination, enforcement of dhimmi laws and additional oppression
1286 Meir of Rothenburg imprisoned for trying to lead a large group to Palestine
1335 Pope Martin V issues papal order prohibiting captains from taking Jews to Palestine
1455 Large group in Sicily arrested for trying to sail to Palestine
1492 Expulsion of Jews from Spain; Joseph Saragossi leads Jewish flourishing in Safed, increasing from 300 families to 10,000 individuals
1534 Spanish refugee Jacob Berab settles in Safed and tries to initiate a new Sanhedrin, forced to flee by Ottoman rulers
1563 Joseph Nasi allowed to create Jewish city-state in Tiberias, attracting European refugees
1567 Safed threatened with expulsion of 1500 prosperous families, plan ultimately dropped
1660-62 Majority Jewish towns Safed and Tiberias were destroyed by Druze following a power struggle in Galilee
17th century "saw a steep decline in the Jewish population of Palestine due to the unstable security situation, natural catastrophes, and abandonment of urban areas, which turned Palestine into a remote and desolate part of the Ottoman Empire"
1700 About 500-1000 followers of Judah HeHasid migrate to Jerusalem, eventually precipitating expulsion of Ashkenazi Jews from the city
1742 Jewish immigrants from Morocco and Italy led by Moroccan rabbi Chaim ibn Attar arrive
1777 About 3000 Hasidic Jews from Lithuania migrate
Early 19th century, three groups known as the Perushim migrate from Lithuania
19th century "Throughout the 19th century up to the 1880s, Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe as well as groups of Sephardi Jews from Turkey, Bulgaria, and North Africa immigrated to Palestine"
1834 Peasant's Revolt, in which Jews were targetted in the looting of Safed and Hebron massacre
1860ff Jewish immigration is a major factor in the expansion of Jerusalem beyond the Old City walls
1870s Migration from Morocco and Turkey boosts the Jewish population of Haifa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_Judaism_in_the_Land_of_Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah

Of course that overview doesn't fully capture the extent of oppression, persecution and intermittent genocide against Jews throughout much of history, often in Muslim and especially in Christian regions. In the face of your dismissive rhetoric and vague propaganda against Zionism, I think this bears repeating:
Self-determination is about as fundamental as moral rights can be, and the Jewish people in particular have suffered extensively for the lack of it, in both Christian and Muslim regions and obviously including the 19th and 20th centuries. The Holocaust was different only in scale and efficiency from hundreds of earlier and later bouts of persecution or permanent oppression, including against Jews in Arab regions both before and after WWII. If the 'holy land' hadn't held such religious importance to Christians and Muslims, and strategic significance as the gateway between continents, odds are there would have been an Israel centuries ago; there've been enough migration waves of Jews to Palestine over the millennia to make it an otherwise-inevitable and potentially peaceful demographic transition.

The comparison between early opposition to Zionism and modern American nativism/Trumpism is not exact, but it's certainly interesting. From everything I've read it seems that while there were certainly some Zionists, particularly those still in Europe, whose rather vague attitude towards Palestinian Arabs (when they considered them at all) might reasonably be described as colonial, in terms of actual actions on the ground the cycle of violence was initiated and perpetuated mostly by Arab nativism and fears of what might happen if the Jews were left 'unchecked.'

 

[Evilroddy]

@Mithrae

The pre-Zionist aliyah of the Jews, with the notable exception of the 538 BCE return from the Babylonian Captivity were mostly small scale affairs involving a few thousand or hundreds of immigrants at a time. Demographically they (each Aliyot) had little impact on the Levant, but they are important to Jewish history and to Judsism as both historical and religious milestones, which have had more cultural impact than the immigrations actually had demographically. Many of these immigrations were led by rabbis enraptured by mysticism, who led their families and the families to Eretz-Israel only to meet cruel fates enroute or upon arrival. Others were more lucky and survived to open important Jewish schools and settlements. But aside from their impact on Jewish culture and religion, they were just a drop of Jewish immigration in the barrel of Arab people living in the land that would become the Mandate of Palestine.

There was also much immigration out of the region either voluntary due to the miserable poverty and petulance in the region or as a result of conflict or religious persecution.

For a better understanding of the Zionist Aliyah from 1882 onwards please see:

Jewish Immigration to Historical Palestine

This factsheet provides an overview of the major phases of Jewish immigration to Palestine, with particular emphasis on the effect of the Zionist movement, the immigration between the two world wars, and the immigration following the founding of the modern state of Israel.

www.cjpme.org

... and for balance:

Modern Zionist Aliyot

archive.jewishagency.org

So while your lists are a good tool for learning, they do not have the impact that you might imagine they do.

It is notable that despite the best efforts of a Zionists and later the state of Israel, a majority of modern Jews have preferred to migrate to America than to Eretz-Yisrael. They preferred descent with opportunity to ascent with conflict. (Aliyah means ascent btw).

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[oneworld2]

As I had pointed out to you long before you made this post, "The simple fact is that Arabs greatly outnumbered Jews both within Palestine and even more obviously in the region as a whole, so imagining that the Jewish organizations wanted warfare seems absurd on the face of it, and does not seem to be supported by the facts." "Early violence between Jews and Arabs was predominantly instigated by Arab groups (eg. 1920 Nebi Musa riots, 1921 Jaffa riots, 1929 Buraq riots and the Black Hand organization in the early 1930s)." These are what I like to call logic and specific facts. By contrast all you've offered is vague propaganda, nothing even specific enough to look up for ourselves. Exactly what "terrorist activities and paramilitary activities" were Zionists engaged in "by the turn of the 20th century"?

There were significant numbers of Ashkenazi Jews in Palestine long before the advent of modern Zionism. Again as I had suggested to you previously (albeit much more vaguely in this case) "If the 'holy land' hadn't held such religious importance to Christians and Muslims, and strategic significance as the gateway between continents, odds are there would have been an Israel centuries ago; there've been enough migration waves of Jews to Palestine over the millennia to make it an otherwise-inevitable and potentially peaceful demographic transition. Instead their numbers were kept down by intermittent and often violent oppression, for reasons which I'm sure you would agree were not exactly compelling." You did not express agreement that the reasons for intermittent and often violent oppression of Jews in Palestine were inadequate; instead, a few days later in a different thread you are championing the importance of that artificially-lowered proportion of Palestinian Jews, deriding the ongoing Jewish search for refuge from from oppression elsewhere in the world as a mere 'bandwagon' and implying (contrary to facts) that Palestine was already at its population capacity.

The number of Jewish people living in Palestine at the turn of the 20th century was commonly thought to be between 2-5%. With the advent of Zionism those numbers grew rapidly so at the time of the UN Partition Plan the percentage was around 33%, mostly European immigrants escaping European antisemitism.

To make out that these people didn't have an agenda to dispossess and displace the Palestinians via warfare or other means, because of their initially low numbers, is something of a historical truism within settler colonialist history. We see it occuring in the Americas and in the ANZAC regions where peace treaties and protection agreements were the order of the day UNTIL the settler colonialists had the numbers/firepower to make their move to dispossession and displacement of the local populations.

The same is true of Zionism imo. Recall the newly arrived European Jews were initially frowned upon by the very Jewish people you cite for being deemd by them as formenting trouble in the land. The early Zionists, thus hopelessly outnumbered , proclaimed to not want to oust their massively numerically superior hosts,( shock ) in the same way European colonists at first wanted to work with the locals. As their strength grew there is evidently less willingness to respect the indigenous people and we see the same patterns forming in Zionist rhetoric/actions as we do in other settler colonialist enterprises. I don't see how reasonably intelligent people will not see this pattern, tbh.

The cherry picking of the list is highly enlightening btw

 

[Evilroddy]

@Mithrae

The comparison between early opposition to Zionism and modern American nativism/Trumpism is not exact, but it's certainly interesting. From everything I've read it seems that while there were certainly some Zionists, particularly those still in Europe, whose rather vague attitude towards Palestinian Arabs (when they considered them at all) might reasonably be described as colonial, in terms of actual actions on the ground the cycle of violence was initiated and perpetuated mostly by Arab nativism and fears of what might happen if the Jews were left 'unchecked.'

No argument that the Jews have been persecuted, pogromed and brutalised in actual and threatened genocides. But that that does not give licence to some fraction of a persecuted people to persecute others. Israel's settler-colonialism has been going on since the establishment of the first kibbutzim in the Ottoman Levant in the 1890's IIRC the date. The cycle of violence was initiated and is perpetuated by both sides in this religio-tribal conflict over one land and each side's vision of their own versions of manifest destiny. To deny settler-colonialism has been and still is at work in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very hard to do if you wish to be objective. Is it the only flavour of colonialism which has been at work in Palestine/Israel? No. But it is there and it is what is driving the violence today. Land theft breeds hatred which leads to violent resistance, militantly and terrorism. The militancy and terrorism are then used as a pretext for state violence, state terrorism and to accelerate the land theft, breeding more hate and more violence. The cycle continues.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Evilroddy]

@Mithrae

Self-determination is about as fundamental as moral rights can be, and the Jewish people in particular have suffered extensively for the lack of it, in both Christian and Muslim regions and obviously including the 19th and 20th centuries. The Holocaust was different only in scale and efficiency from hundreds of earlier and later bouts of persecution or permanent oppression, including against Jews in Arab regions both before and after WWII. If the 'holy land' hadn't held such religious importance to Christians and Muslims, and strategic significance as the gateway between continents, odds are there would have been an Israel centuries ago; there've been enough migration waves of Jews to Palestine over the millennia to make it an otherwise-inevitable and potentially peaceful demographic transition.

Whose right to self-determination is to be given precedence. The self-determination of the Israeli people at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs or the self-determination of Palestinian Arabs at the expense of the Israeli's. In the tiny constraints of the land of Palestine/Israel this seems to be a zero-sum struggle for limited land. The immigration waves over millennia are irrelevant demographically when compared to the far larger immigration waves of the last 150 years which have created this crisis.

You have talked about the moral imperative about creating a Jewish home in the land of the former mandate of Palestine. But can a moral imperative be reached by immoral means. Look up Plan Dalet and then read about the clearing of Arab towns and villages between 1947 and 1949. Even Arab villages which offered no resistence to the Haganah/IDF forces in the Negev Desert were violently cleared by force and their inhabitants driven from their homes. There is a right of return enshrined for Jews (plus their parents, their grandparents and their children/grandchildren) who never actually lived in the State of Israel before but there is no right of return for Palestinians who actually lived there and who were driven from their homes by the Jewish Agency and the State of Israel by force and threat of force. Where is the moral imperative in all that?

Those Palestinians lucky enough to find themselves Israeli citizens right now are not even safe. They face discrimination, lower economic opportunities and regular discussion in Israeli political circles about limiting their ability to form political parties, marginalising their right to vote and even in the most extreme cases revoking their citizenship en masse.

Do not the Arabs who have identified themselves as Palestinians, also have a right to self-determination and to enjoy a moral imperative for their British and UN guaranteed homeland? Or are you simply going to try the rhetorical sleight-of-hand to annihilate the Palestinian identity and claim they're just generic Arabs and should just go to any of the Arab countries around the State of Israel? If a people have a right to self-determination then the Palestinians have the right to first determine themselves to be Palestinians and then to create their homeland by the same means that the Zionists and State of Israel has used, no? Shall we dismiss all Israelis as just generic Jews and advise that they be shipped off to America? Turn around is fair play, no?

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Mithrae]

The number of Jewish people living in Palestine at the turn of the 20th century was commonly thought to be between 2-5%. With the advent of Zionism those numbers grew rapidly so at the time of the UN Partition Plan the percentage was around 33%, mostly European immigrants escaping European antisemitism.

Wikipedia suggests that Jews were already around 8% of the population by 1890.

To make out that these people didn't have an agenda to dispossess and displace the Palestinians via warfare or other means, because of their initially low numbers, is something of a historical truism within settler colonialist history. We see it occuring in the Americas and in the ANZAC regions where peace treaties and protection agreements were the order of the day UNTIL the settler colonialists had the numbers/firepower to make their move to dispossession and displacement of the local populations.

As I suggested, it seems that in terms of actual actions on the ground the cycle of violence was initiated and perpetuated mostly by Arab nativism and fears of what might happen if the Jews were left 'unchecked.' Some basis for those fears can be found in other histories as you suggest and even in the statements of some Zionist leaders themselves. But they were still just fears, still below (far below) even the 1967 threshold of pre-emptive violence which many folk critical of Israel insist was a case of Israeli 'aggression.'

The ethnic and cultural characteristics of Jews and Palestinian Arabs were far more similar than between European colonizers and indigenous peoples in the Americas, Oceana or Africa; likewise the probable balance of power even if and when the Jews hoped to achieve numerical parity. And by the 1920s, as we see with the creation of the League of Nations and the mandate system, the tide of opinion was beginning to turn (with painful slowness) against open colonialism toward at least the pretense of respect for the dignity and rights of all peoples. Jewish people who themselves or their recent ancestors had fled from persecution might be expected to be even more willing to embrace such ideals than others in their dealings with the longer-established inhabitants of their new homeland.

There's simply no way of knowing what would have happened if the local Arab people and leaders had remained peaceful. Or - a shocking thought - what if they'd been actively welcoming and freely offered a fifth of the Palestinian mandate as an undisputed Jewish homeland (along the lines of historical invitations regarding Jerusalem by Saladin or Tiberias to Joseph Nasi)? Just as there's a big difference between the vague intentions or rhetoric of early Zionists in Europe and what actually plays out on the ground in Palestine, there's an even greater difference between Zionist hostility in the face of Arab violence and hypothetical hostility against the proven friends and allies which Palestinian Arabs could have chosen to be. I very much doubt the romantic idealism of river-to-sea Zionism would have held up in the face of real generousity and co-operation, even if it meant the formal boundaries of the Jewish-run portion were a mere fraction of the land.


I would argue that Arab hostility and British mismanagement were the two biggest causes of the whole conflict, but if it were possible to pinpoint two particular mistakes which may have been most responsible for it all, perhaps they would be the appointment of Herbert Samuel as the first High Commissioner for Palestine in 1920 and Samuel's choice of Amin al-Husseini as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921 (after pardoning his 10-year sentence for incitement of the 1920 Nebi Musa riots). Despite his prior career in the British parliament, Samuel was presumably viewed in Palestine first and foremost as a Zionist and a Jew, creating an initial impression (false as it turned out, but doubtless powerful nonetheless) that the British mandate was not going to consist of neutral arbitration but simply of Jews coming in to take over. And in contrast to the similarly-influential but more moderate Nashashibi or Khalidi families (with the three most popular candidates in the 'election' for grand mufti being Nashashibi), the Husseini family proved to be hardline opponents with Amin al-Husseini an eventual Nazi ally who after his time in Germany boasted of his knowledge about the Holocaust in progress. Both decisions seem like particularly important contributors to the rise of Arab nativism and spread of violence.

The cherry picking of the list is highly enlightening btw

What cherry picking?

 

[oneworld2]

Wikipedia suggests that Jews were already around 8% of the population by 1890.

The link you put up states that " In the late nineteenth century, prior to the rise of Zionism, Jews are thought to have comprised between 2% to 5% of the population of Palestine,"
When you also factor in that these are Ottoman figures and thus many Palestinians would have avoided the census probes on the grounds of not being registered also meant not being conscripted to the Ottoman armies.
Eitherway it is clear that there was a very small percentage of the population that were actually Jewish and those that were didn't appreciate the newly arriving European Zionists , IE the very people being used as buttresses for Jewish continuity in Palestine were actually against the Zionist immigrants themselves and saw them as people who had a very different cultural backgound and were seen as trouble makers.

You appear to underestimate the power of " fears" to stir up tensions that can lead up to violence/atrocities. Saying they are just " fears" of what " might " happen, as though that shouldn't or couldn't give rise to vioilent reactions is at best naive imho

The similarity and cultural experiences of the Palestinian Jews, pre Zionism, is the point I labour in the above. They are being used as a weapon to justify Zionism when in fact they were opposed to it and kept themselves seperate from it until tensions were such that the die had been cast and returning to preZionist Palestine wasn't an option anymore. So, and I agree with you, we saw the fig leafs for colonial exploitation becoming more apparent with the advent of the LON and the Mandate system but that doesn't, imo, infer that there was ever a willingness to truly share the land with the indigenous Arabs. Once the numbers and strength was up, and the original Jewish population of Palestine forced to side with the newly arrived immigrants from Europe and their vision of a Jewish state there they made that power count.

As I said it is only what every other settler colonialist movement has done everywhere else. The tactic is, stay on terms until you have the power not to and then force through your agenda of dispossession and displacement

There's simply no way of knowing what would have happened if the local Arab people and leaders had remained peaceful. Or - a shocking thought - what if they'd been actively welcoming and freely offered a fifth of the Palestinian mandate as an undisputed Jewish homeland

Turkeys don't vote for Christmas anywhere in the world. Well at least I have it on good auhority that it would be reasonable to assume they wouldn't

There has, afaik, never been a situation whereby a settler colonialist movement bent on displacement/dispossession of the locals was ever " welcomed" in the true meaning of the word. They may have been given some assistance and/or tolerated as curios for a while but once it becomes apparent what their plan is I can't ever remember anything like it being welcomed. To try to hold the Palestinian Arabs to a standard that is not found elsewhere is to be rejected imho

I would argue that Arab hostility and British mismanagement were the two biggest causes of the whole conflict,

The very fact that I am a Brit is the main reason why I am interested in this subject because I agree that Britain bears a great responibility for the carnage that is the ME I/P today and in the recent past. I wouldn't even agree that it was " mismanagement" and think of it more as good old fashioned imperialism based on exploitation and control.

As for " Arab hostility",well, I don't see how you can find that unreasonable or unexpected. If we hold people across the board to the same standard, as I believe we should if we are to free ourselves from national biases or any biases really, it has been the same with every other people facing colonial oppression and/or dispossession and displacement. The appointments/decisions made by the British were, imo, just based on self interest divide and rule tactics. Why have moderates when you can set cat against dog and watch them fight with little or no danger to yourself?


That list seems pretty long/conclusive but when you bother to go through it, it doesn't actually underscore the point you are making from it imho

 

[oneworld2]

Mithrae, please accept my apologies for having to hack out much of your post for word count. I did put it into a character counter a few times and it came back well less than the 5000 characters but it still wouldn't let me post it.

I am sure you can work out what is being replied to ect, but apologies anyhow

 

[Mithrae]

@Evilroddy
So... no supporting evidence for your vague propaganda against Zionism. Exactly what "terrorist activities and paramilitary activities" were Zionists engaged in "by the turn of the 20th century"?

No admission of your brazen errors; the substantial presence of Ashkenazi Jews in Palestine long before the advent of modern Zionism, or the fact that Palestine in the late 19th/early 20th century was far below its population capacity (it had some 2 million inhabitants in the 1st century).

No acknowledgement or respect for the fact that the modern Zionist waves of immigration were again driven primarily by flight from persecution, not just some "bandwagon" as you derisively called it.

The pre-Zionist aliyah of the Jews, with the notable exception of the 538 BCE return from the Babylonian Captivity were mostly small scale affairs involving a few thousand or hundreds of immigrants at a time. Demographically they (each Aliyot) had little impact on the Levant, but they are important to Jewish history and to Judsism as both historical and religious milestones, which have had more cultural impact than the immigrations actually had demographically.

Organizing a single group migration of tens of thousands is a difficult and rare occurrence; there's a surprise! And history rarely records a family of ten or twenty at a time, or even a steady trickle of those families. Another shocker. With a total population generally near or below two hundred thousand for most of Byzantine and Islamic history, even a single wave of a few thousand would have noticeably altered the demography of the Palestinian region they settled in, and there are many such waves specifically identified within the limits of recorded history. It seems little short of asinine to suppose that they would not over time have resulted in a natural Jewish majority, were it not for A) intermittent persecution, massacres or expulsions of Jews from the land - or at times parallel efforts to prevent emigration from Europe; you seem to believe that such a papal edict was issued in response to something that scarcely even existed! - and B) the hotly-contested nature of the 'holy land' itself.

It is notable that despite the best efforts of a Zionists and later the state of Israel, a majority of modern Jews have preferred to migrate to America than to Eretz-Yisrael. They preferred descent with opportunity to ascent with conflict. (Aliyah means ascent btw).

In what way do you think that's relevant? Prior and to a lesser extent after its immigration reforms of 1924 America was indeed the renowned 'land of opportunity' while Eretz Yisrael - particularly prior to the Balfour Declaration and formal British mandate in 1920 - was objectively little more than a romantic ideal, a tiny backwater province of the Ottoman Empire. After 1939 trans-European/Mediterranean migration was exceptionally hazardous for obvious reasons, and Palestine specifically either had British-imposed tight limits on immigration or had later been turned into a war zone by the hostility of surrounding Arab states. On the other hand inside that optimal window of opportunity, between 1932 and 1939 about as many European Jews chose Palestine as their refuge of choice as all the other and larger countries of the world combined (~46% according to your source), despite considerably larger Jewish communities (and hence likely far more emigrants having relatives in) America or even the UK than in Palestine.

No argument that the Jews have been persecuted, pogromed and brutalised in actual and threatened genocides. But that that does not give licence to some fraction of a persecuted people to persecute others. Israel's settler-colonialism has been going on since the establishment of the first kibbutzim in the Ottoman Levant in the 1890's IIRC the date. The cycle of violence was initiated and is perpetuated by both sides in this religio-tribal conflict over one land and each side's vision of their own versions of manifest destiny.

I haven't said that Jews have license to persecute others; I have critiqued your claim (and its associated rhetoric) that Jews began the cycle of violence in the region. Describing flight from oppression and hope for a better future as "settler-colonialism" seems particularly egregious, but perhaps it's necessary to create that narrative of an abstract 'threat' to justify violent Arab reactions. We've seen something very similar happening with the American right (and the right-wing in many other countries to be fair) in more recent decades, with the most troubling comparisons being in cases of Muslim and Chinese immigration for which proponents can quote-mine and concoct the same kind of sinister motives and conspiracy theories for their nativism.

 

[Mithrae]

As I said it is only what every other settler colonialist movement has done everywhere else. The tactic is, stay on terms until you have the power not to and then force through your agenda of dispossession and displacement

Like Evilroddy, you're simply assuming generally sinister motives for the waves of 'Zionist' immigration/refugees in order to justify violent Arab reactions. And I would invite you also to consider the comparison with current right-wing nativism in the USA and elsewhere. As I've said previously, there's no question that the attitude of some Zionist leaders - particularly those still in Europe, or after the violence was becoming entrenched - could be reasonably described as colonialist. But I think it's a pretty safe bet that for the overwhelming majority of those who migrated to Palestine, from Russia, Poland, Germany and elsewhere, they were simply fleeing oppression to seek a better life and dominating other peoples was the last thing on their minds! Similarly white nativists these days can doubtless find quotes from Chinese or Islamic 'leaders' to construct their narrative of the sinister "agenda" behind those migrants and the dreaded demographic changes they see in progress.

Odds are the truth, like the chronology, was somewhere in between 18th century colonialism and 21st century refugees/migration, but I'd expect it to be much closer to the latter than the former for several reasons, notably that (as Fishking noted) unlike colonialism Zionism was not attached to any particular nationality or government, and that most Jewish migrants were far closer to being refugees than voluntary 'settlers.'

Mithrae, please accept my apologies for having to hack out much of your post for word count. I did put it into a character counter a few times and it came back well less than the 5000 characters but it still wouldn't let me post it.

I am sure you can work out what is being replied to ect, but apologies anyhow

The character limit is my eternal enemy, especially since they stopped displaying how many characters you actually have and need a third party tool to see! So often I come in at 5500 or 6000. Be sure to include BB codes in your character count if you're over; I've pretty much had to stop using indenting because of the stupid way it forces a new tag for every paragraph now, and quote boxes with all the member and post details can tally up those numbers quite a lot, as well as URLs. A real pain for a subject like this where it'd be nice to reference information a lot more!

 

[Chagos]

The repeated demonstrations of ignorance that lead to confusing British incompetence (of foreign policy) for some devious design of "perfidious Albion" colonialism, just show that being a Brit does not save one from that misunderstanding (as if being a citizen of a country steeped in incompetence of foreign policy would make one an expert on any of it).

The screw-up that Britain engaged upon in the whole ME showed right from the beginning to be so contrary to any "empire" ambitions of colonizing the place, that to hold it all to be some deeper design constitutes the height of lack of comprehension. Britain running from the whole mess with a screech says it all.

In addition the false concept of Zionists having been colonizers (pointing out that fallacy having been ridiculed by the poster in question on here) adds to the lack of logic applied. That Jewish immigration to the territory of the Mandate cannot be equated with, for instance, placing British subjects into what became the Ulster plantation (of conquered Ireland), or French people into conquered lands of North Africa, is so apparent that anyone not seeing this needs to take a course in basic logic.

The territory in question was not conquered by some imagined (sovereign) Zionistan, to then be populated by its government planting a detachment of its people there, all in pursuit of raising the might of the home country.

As to the argument of who was there first (and in what numbers), that does a fat load of good today and certainly cannot serve to solidify any claim to the territory, no matter which side makes it. The same goes for whichever entity at some time in history established a "sovereignly" governed state on the land, in the futile attempt to define what counts as a people and what does not.

The state of Israel exists, period.

A Palestinian people of Arab language and culture (etc.) exist, no matter if they came from the Arab deserts, Mars, or were there before becoming "Arabized", period.

That the latter group is prohibited from governing itself in the form of a sovereign state is the abomination that not only they and Israel need to address, but something the whole world needs to stop ignoring beyond token lip service.

 

[oneworld2]

Like Evilroddy, you're simply assuming generally sinister motives for the waves of 'Zionist' immigration/refugees in order to justify violent Arab reactions. And I would invite you also to consider the comparison with current right-wing nativism in the USA and elsewhere. As I've said previously, there's no question that the attitude of some Zionist leaders - particularly those still in Europe, or after the violence was becoming entrenched - could be reasonably described as colonialist. But I think it's a pretty safe bet that for the overwhelming majority of those who migrated to Palestine, from Russia, Poland, Germany and elsewhere, they were simply fleeing oppression to seek a better life and dominating other peoples was the last thing on their minds! Similarly white nativists these days can doubtless find quotes from Chinese or Islamic 'leaders' to construct their narrative of the sinister "agenda" behind those migrants and the dreaded demographic changes they see in progress.

Odds are the truth, like the chronology, was somewhere in between 18th century colonialism and 21st century refugees/migration, but I'd expect it to be much closer to the latter than the former for several reasons, notably that (as Fishking noted) unlike colonialism Zionism was not attached to any particular nationality or government, and that most Jewish migrants were far closer to being refugees than voluntary 'settlers.'


The character limit is my eternal enemy, especially since they stopped displaying how many characters you actually have and need a third party tool to see! So often I come in at 5500 or 6000. Be sure to include BB codes in your character count if you're over; I've pretty much had to stop using indenting because of the stupid way it forces a new tag for every paragraph now, and quote boxes with all the member and post details can tally up those numbers quite a lot, as well as URLs. A real pain for a subject like this where it'd be nice to reference information a lot more!

The first British people to set foot in the Australian territory with the aim of staying were there to set up a penal colony.

After Tasmans early visit to New Zealand the next Europeans were there for whaling and trade.

The first European settlers to New England were there to escape religious persecution .

The above are ALL considered to be examples, even if it was later on, of settler colonialism.

The early European Jewish settlement to Palestine, in the period under review, was to escape antisemitc actions ( read religious persecution) in their own nations, predominantly Russia and Poland . As time went by, as with the other examples already cited, that morphed into settler colonialism.

In all of the above examples there were examples of a violent reaction to this ongoing influx of foreigners who were taking/controling more and more territory. The action of the Arabs was/is the same as that of the Australian aboriginals, the Maoris, the first nation Americans.

So, why are you trying to paint the violent reaction of Arabs to European influx as somehow unique or unreasonable AND why do you appear to hold Jewish people to be superior to those others mentioned ? Are they just too good to be thrown in with the other people in the examples given ? Is their religious persecution different from the persecution of Puritans and other European religious groups that sought to escape it ?

You seem to apply different standards to different groups of people so as to fool yourself into believing that

A. Jewish people were/are incapable of engaging in settler colonialism

B The Arab reaction to mass European Jewish immigration is somehow unique

The settler programme/illegal annexations of territory, going on in the OPTs today is ,imo, a quintessential example of blatant settler colonialism today that belongs in that dark past in the examples cited. You appear unable to see that and it looks like it is because of your insistance and wanting to apply an exceptionalism to Jewish actions that just isn't warranted and a demonisation of the Arabs that isn't deserved

 

[oneworld2]

The repeated demonstrations of ignorance that lead to confusing British incompetence (of foreign policy) for some devious design of "perfidious Albion" colonialism, just show that being a Brit does not save one from that misunderstanding (as if being a citizen of a country steeped in incompetence of foreign policy would make one an expert on any of it).

The screw-up that Britain engaged upon in the whole ME showed right from the beginning to be so contrary to any "empire" ambitions of colonizing the place, that to hold it all to be some deeper design constitutes the height of lack of comprehension. Britain running from the whole mess with a screech says it all.

In addition the false concept of Zionists having been colonizers (pointing out that fallacy having been ridiculed by the poster in question on here) adds to the lack of logic applied. That Jewish immigration to the territory of the Mandate cannot be equated with, for instance, placing British subjects into what became the Ulster plantation (of conquered Ireland), or French people into conquered lands of North Africa, is so apparent that anyone not seeing this needs to take a course in basic logic.

The territory in question was not conquered by some imagined (sovereign) Zionistan, to then be populated by its government planting a detachment of its people there, all in pursuit of raising the might of the home country.

As to the argument of who was there first (and in what numbers), that does a fat load of good today and certainly cannot serve to solidify any claim to the territory, no matter which side makes it. The same goes for whichever entity at some time in history established a "sovereignly" governed state on the land, in the futile attempt to define what counts as a people and what does not.

The state of Israel exists, period.

A Palestinian people of Arab language and culture (etc.) exist, no matter if they came from the Arab deserts, Mars, or were there before becoming "Arabized", period.

That the latter group is prohibited from governing itself in the form of a sovereign state is the abomination that not only they and Israel need to address, but something the whole world needs to stop ignoring beyond token lip service.

THe obvious indoctrination of a good western education in your commentary doesn't come as a surprise. We see the parroting of the usual garbage that fills that propaganda system in full throttle in your words with terms like................British " incompetence ", where they " screw up" and created a " mess" that they subsequently had to " run away " from lols .............. It's still going on today with the " mess " we left Iraq in after the 2003 invasion. Never an illegal war of aggression. Or the " struggle " to bring democracy to Afghanistan " etc etc

You see, a good education , which is really an indoctrination, ensures people just spew out these ridiculous catechisms of the religion of state without ever having the independence of thought to ever take a more objective look at events.

The British govts never cared about anything other than what furthered the interests of Brits with power and money. They misled the Arabs and Jews for their own benefit, it wasn't an act of " incompetence" at all but a self serving use of the nationalist aspirations of those two groups of people to further British interests. This is consistent with good old fashioned imperialist intentions. That these things have a hbit of blowing up in the faces of those initially engaged in the intregues of the great game of geopolitics ( ask the French in Vietnam or Algeria ) The Brits were forced to abandon Palestine because of their post war weakness/bankruptcy as were the other European imperialist powers of the time and the age of decolonisation started just as the Jewish leadership in Palestine was set to engage in their own teritorial expansion and settler colonialist agenda.

I accept the existence of Israel but we still await the existence of the Palestinian state and while those that wish to play on their suffering to act as a shield to justify the mass abuse of another people, a true misuse of that suffering imo, then I will continue to try to counter the obvious bias found in the I/P conflict commentary here and elsewhere

 

[Chagos]

Any post filled with the usual insults as the above, isn't worthy of address.

Even if it contains such funnies as a good education preventing individual thought. Maybe envy plays a role in such ridiculous statements, maybe not. But making such doesn't speak much for having enjoyed any education at all or anyone spouting this nonsense would prevent themselves from so doing.

No matter.

 

[Chagos]

The Arabs are not and were not indigenous to the area subsequently called Palestine, but as already pointed out, that doesn't matter a damn.

 

[oneworld2]

Any post filled with the usual insults as the above, isn't worthy of address.

Even if it contains such funnies as a good education preventing individual thought. Maybe envy plays a role in such ridiculous statements, maybe not. But making such doesn't speak much for having enjoyed any education at all or anyone spouting this nonsense would prevent themselves from so doing.

No matter.

It's getting tired but you don't see it. You not wanting to reply is a YOU thing. Maybe you cannot/refuse to refute the logical examples and reasoning in the post so you opt to cop out of the response with the usual projection.

You have been conditioned, as was shown in your words, to see your own as being the eternal good guys trying to do good in a bad world. They don't commit crimes, they " mess up ". They don't engage in obvious self serving geopolitical games that use and abuse others as and when required, the are " incompetent ". They " ran" from Palestine because of the " incompetent mess " they had made, not because they were on their backsides after a total war that left them facing national independence movement throughout the crumbling empire.

I get it, you can't/won't refute it but at least take the responsibility for not making the effort

 

[Chagos]

Nonsense as usual and, as usual, not worth further consideration.

 

[oneworld2]

The Arabs are not and were not indigenous to the area subsequently called Palestine, but as already pointed out, that doesn't matter a damn.

They had a far greater attachment to the land, and for millenia, than the European Zionist immigrants that even the local Jewish community, the indigenous Jews and earlier immigrants, saw as troublemakers.

The Maori only arrived in NZ around 500 years before Tasman

The only thing you are right about, imo , is that is doesn't make a difference to the subject of colonial settlement wrt I/P.

 

[oneworld2]

Nonsense as usual and, as usual, not worth further consideration.

If it was "nonsense" you would have responded, nailed on. That you haven't was expected.

 

[Valaisee]

The first British people to set foot in the Australian territory with the aim of staying were there to set up a penal colony.

After Tasmans early visit to New Zealand the next Europeans were there for whaling and trade.

The first European settlers to New England were there to escape religious persecution .

The above are ALL considered to be examples, even if it was later on, of settler colonialism.

The early European Jewish settlement to Palestine, in the period under review, was to escape antisemitc actions ( read religious persecution) in their own nations, predominantly Russia and Poland . As time went by, as with the other examples already cited, that morphed into settler colonialism.

In all of the above examples there were examples of a violent reaction to this ongoing influx of foreigners who were taking/controling more and more territory. The action of the Arabs was/is the same as that of the Australian aboriginals, the Maoris, the first nation Americans.

So, why are you trying to paint the violent reaction of Arabs to European influx as somehow unique or unreasonable AND why do you appear to hold Jewish people to be superior to those others mentioned ? Are they just too good to be thrown in with the other people in the examples given ? Is their religious persecution different from the persecution of Puritans and other European religious groups that sought to escape it ?

You seem to apply different standards to different groups of people so as to fool yourself into believing that

A. Jewish people were/are incapable of engaging in settler colonialism

B The Arab reaction to mass European Jewish immigration is somehow unique

The settler programme/illegal annexations of territory, going on in the OPTs today is ,imo, a quintessential example of blatant settler colonialism today that belongs in that dark past in the examples cited. You appear unable to see that and it looks like it is because of your insistance and wanting to apply an exceptionalism to Jewish actions that just isn't warranted and a demonisation of the Arabs that isn't deserved

Jews up until 1948 immigrated into lands they legally bought, as opposed to all colonialism example I know were people immigrated to conquered land.
Moreover, in all colonial examples I know the conqueror initiated and endorsed tho colonies to strengthen their grip on the territory, as opposed to Palestine where the Ottoman and British not only didn't do that - but even limited the Jewish land purchase and immigration.
It's little naive to chose to live in a land that is considered and well known as "the holy land" and not expect mass immigration into it.

 

[Mithrae]

The settler programme/illegal annexations of territory, going on in the OPTs today is ,imo, a quintessential example of blatant settler colonialism today that belongs in that dark past in the examples cited. You appear unable to see that and it looks like it is because of your insistance and wanting to apply an exceptionalism to Jewish actions that just isn't warranted and a demonisation of the Arabs that isn't deserved

In the past half a dozen posts, responding initially to Evilroddy's comments, we've been discussing events from before the 1960s. Emphasizing more recent events as your concluding point seems tantamount to saying that merely because the long-term consequences of the violent conflict initiated by Arabs have been bad for Arabs (even worse than for Jews), that somehow retroactively makes the earlier peaceful Jewish migration/refuge-seeking bad too, or their more organized response to violence. No doubt one could likewise find room for criticism of the occupations of Germany and Japan by the Allied powers following WW2 - and finding faults with the treatment of a defeated hostile group surely is important - but it doesn't change the actual events which led to that outcome.

The first British people to set foot in the Australian territory with the aim of staying were there to set up a penal colony.

After Tasmans early visit to New Zealand the next Europeans were there for whaling and trade.

The first European settlers to New England were there to escape religious persecution .

The above are ALL considered to be examples, even if it was later on, of settler colonialism.

The early European Jewish settlement to Palestine, in the period under review, was to escape antisemitc actions ( read religious persecution) in their own nations, predominantly Russia and Poland . As time went by, as with the other examples already cited, that morphed into settler colonialism.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, insisting that the 'early' migrations to Palestine were settler colonialism while acknowledging that they only "morphed into" settler colonialism later on.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that 'settler colonialism' requires a colony, "a territory subject to a form of foreign rule." A penal colony... is a colony. A trading or whaling outpost is a colony; though that would fall more under the definition of exploitation colonialism than settler colonialism. The New England Puritans obtained their land patent from the Plymouth Company established by King James. However if it had been an independent settlement of refugees it obviously would not have been a colony; and a settlement subject to the existing local government (eg. the Ottoman Empire) even more obviously is not a colony.

The facts, or I suppose questions, which you seem to be trying to skirt around here are fairly straightforward, as far as I can tell:
> Who are responsible for starting the cycle of violence? @Evilroddy insists that the Jews were terrorists even from "the turn of the century" but so far seems unable or unwilling to substantiate his claim, whereas you seem to acknowledge (as apparently borne out by the facts and logic) that the early violence between Arabs and Jews was mostly initiated by the group which was more dominant in the area at the time. Note of course that in cases of European colonialism, the technology disparity meant that local peoples were often victims of violence right from the start, such as George Weymouth's abduction of New England indigenous folk (believed to be murder by the locals) fifteen years before the establishment of the Plymouth colony or Columbus' brutality and slavery.

> Was that violence justified? I'm not even sure that you're suggesting it was justified, only claiming that it's the same sort of thing people all around the world might do and is therefore somehow "reasonable"... a position which might hold up if and only if we first accept the dubious assumption that the centuries-long ongoing trend of Jewish refugees/migrants moving to Palestine retroactively became "settler-colonialism" due to the later fact of this violent cycle going badly for the nativists.

Once a cycle of violence becomes entrenched, partisans from both sides reckon they can claim 'justification' for every new retaliation against the previous attack. The question of who started it all is pretty much a moot point, really, but nevertheless, for some reason it seems that you and Evilroddy and the video in the OP are determined to place the ultimate blame at the feet of Jewish refugees and lawful, peaceful migrants to an ancestral and cultural homeland far below its population capacity... based on what seems to be some pretty dubious reasoning and labeling.