It's getting there, slowly, because a lot of the initial bootstrapping problems have been worked through.
Lets say there are 1,000 decent engineers in a country and they get hired by various western companies and it's all a great success. They're very happy, obviously offshoring there works well, other companies pile in and hire 10,000 engineers. Ok, are there another 10,000 decent engineers in the country? Probably not, but maybe you can poach some of the 1,000 and use them to train up the other 10,000. But soon there are openings for 100,000 offshored jobs, then 500,000. How many well trained engineers are there again?
That ramp up takes time, and it's not just a matter of smart people, it's relevant experience. If you have two countries with the same number of competent trained people, but in one of them 5% have directly relevant experience, and in the other 50% of them do, that's a massive advantage that cannot even be solved with money.
Then there's the fact the the most talented and experienced people move out of the country. So for every 10 engineers that get to top tier, 3-4 of them move to Europe or the US. So, not only are these countries losing those people, but also they're losing out on all the juniors they could lead and train up. Hiring there is like trying to fill a leaky bucket.
None of which is to say this is impossible, or that it isn't worth doing, or that it won't work. I've seen it work, and the company I'm at now has reaped huge benefits from offshoring. You just need to go into it clear eyed and with the understanding that it has to work for the people you're offshoring to, and that country as well, and you need to be adaptable as the situation changes.
I think Jobs recognised that ads are intrusions into people’s lives. The advertiser has a responsibility to respect the audience. They don’t have a natural right to that attention, and have to earn it.
Thats why the F1 wallet add is such a bad move. It’s disrespectful and intrusive.
iAD was supposed to be about innovative, informative, well designed high quality adverts. It never really worked out though.
It's not so much them being a theocracy IMHO. It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel.
Put those Israeli shoes on. There's a state armed with ballistic missiles in easy range of you, they have the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium, recently acquired more advanced centrifuges, they have the uranium already enriched far beyond what's necessary for civilian use, they have far more of it than they credibly need for such civilian use, and they believe god has ordered them to destroy you.
> It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel.
And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.
It absolutely blows my mind that in this day and age people are taking sides on a religious war. Stay out. Stay far out. There is no winning. There is no stopping the conflict. Every side has an ordained right to blow the others off the face of the planet. The only thing to see is human atrocities as far as the eye in the name of <your god of choice>.
> There's a state ... [that has] ... the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium
Do they? It's oft repeated. But I vaguely remember this country being sold on an Iraq invasion due to nukes. Nukes that never existed and never were close to existing. This wasn't a simple miscalculation. The nukes were entirely and knowingly fictional. And that's just one example of a bullshit made-up reason this nation has started a war to waste lives.
How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?
Why should I believe my country today? Why is today the day of all days that the truth is finally being told? Why is today the day that god is real and I should jump in on the bloodshed?
Your masters are lying to you, to their benefit. They didn't wake up today and decide to be honest.
>> It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel.
> And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.
How do you even begin to equivocate this? One wants to destroy a country, one wants to protect it from destruction.
> How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?
Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian - and they've had ample capacity to do. The reverse can't be said to be true. If there's a button that the Iraqi or Palestinian leadership that can press that would wipe out the state of Israel and everyone in it, do you think that they won't press it as fast as they can?
Do you live in a place that has a death cult committing daily acts of violence and killing (against people on both sides of the fence, of both "ethnicities")?
Do you live in a place where billions are spent on offensive weapons (tunnels, rockets) and stolen from donated food aid (as Hamas has been hijacking aid for many years and selling it at profit)?
If you do not, do you have any idea how a group of people (e.g. a society) responds to ongoing violence and threats of violence?
Your dismissive "constant shifting goalposts and lack of self awareness will always startle me" is the mark of someone who sits in an armchair and experiences no threat.
Beware of being dismissive. This region needs people who push for the hard work of peace and avoid labels and dismisiveness.
There was a peace movement in the 1990s. It accomplished a lot (a million+ Palestinians live under a Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza was left to its own devices in 2005).
A death cult (probably two) killed that process. By killing people (including the Israeli Prime Minister). Years earlier, that death cult killed Sadat for his peace making work.
>I don't think "getting invaded" counts as "choosing offensive war".
Do you know what Hamas is?
Do you know their charter?
Do you know that they diverted billions of $, meant to build housing for Gazans to their own pockets and to a huge underground fortress under a civilian population?
Do you know that most Gazans support Hamas, and that Hamas has made many offensive wars against the civilians and armies of both Israel and Egypt? (Hamas killed dozens of Egyptian soldiers running wild in Egyptian Rafah in 2014... Know what Egypt did? Leveled hundreds of housing structures)
Hamas has been in a state of war since the day they took power in Gaza.
Hamas has murdered hundreds of Palestinians, including many who worked for peace.
What do you want to see?
More violence and blood?
Or more peace?
Promote what you want to see.
(Digging out the 100's of miles of offensive tunnels in Gaza is slow slow work. Hamas could end the war any time, but they will never surrender. They will fight to the last Gazan child. Do you want that?)
_How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?_
Probably pretty badly now after squandering decades on building tunnels, hiding weapons and generally being a backwards fundamentalist cultish death camp. It's a mini Iran, and just as hateful. There's a reasom there's a massive security wall along the Egyptian border. They know what's up.
It's not about democracy. If it were, we wouldn't have overthrown countless democratically elected leaders throughout South America during the 20th Century.
Our elected leaders constantly attempt to expand their own power. To maximally punish whistleblowers. Our election system is ran by a duopoly who exerts extreme power over those voicing alternative views and opinions.
About democracy, it is not.
Let's say it was though. What gives us the right to blow other countries off the face of the planet? Are we somehow so much better than everyone else because we believe we're democratic? We don't even rank in the top 10 most democratic countries. We throw more people in jail than China. Per capita AND total overall. We throw more kids in jail than any other first world country [0].
Surely, democracy does not automagically lend to treating people fairly. We have enough problems in our own damn democracy to worry about. Crazy to be starting wars to "help" someone who never asked for it. Forcing violence upon those who never consented is absolutely abhorrent.
Whose fault is that? The US and Russia have propped and warred every angle to extract as much oil as possible. The instability maintains a heavy flow of refugees into Europe, destabilising the freedoms they have there and pushing the politics further right.
The sudden switch yesterday from "they can't make nukes" to "they're a fortnight away from ICBMs" felt a little too reminiscent of Iraq twenty years ago.
If we want a stable Middle East, we have to stop bombing the shit out of it, and invest. Negotiate fairly for resources. Offer them a future. And demand Israel stop committing war crimes.
It can be simultaneously true that Iran is sitting on a huge pike of precursor materials for nuclear weapons, and is not currently actually making bombs. Last week she was emphasising the latter, now she’s emphasising the former. Disingenuous? Sure.
Trump and his people are children in the back of a car that found mummy’s gun in her purse. They have no idea what they are doing. I understand what Israel is doing but the US administration are clueless and rudderless.
I don’t think you understand what you linked to. That is about government census forms that track ethnicity, same as any other country. Nationality here doesn’t mean citizenship, but rather something closer to “tribe.”
Some well meaning citizens said “I want to check Israeli rather than Jew, Druze, Arab, etc.” Except Israeli is not a nationality in this sense. Nor is Jewish, on this form, a religious identification. It is a way of tracking, for census reasons, something closer to ethnicity. Not for nefarious purposes, but just to track demographics.
That is a very dishonest interpretation not only because the national registry is not a mere question of census but of identity, but because the Supreme Court clearly outlines that it in black and white that it is about the question of Jewish supremacy.
from the article:
> the court explained that doing so would have “weighty implications” on the State of Israel and could pose a danger to Israel’s founding principle: to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people.
- There is only one Israeli citizenship. Jews have it. Israeli Arab Muslims have it. Israeli Arab Christians have it. Druze have it. It's the same.
Is there discrimination, in all directions? Yup. The world is a tribal place.
But you should move on from that "tiered" thing. I live here. I have been doing a project with Arabs for the last two weeks. We have lunch together most days. Move on.
- Constitution -- You clearly have not read the constitutions of Syria, Saudi Arabia, or many other countries. Ethnic groups are all over the identities of most of the world's countries.
- Automatic citizenship - How narrow do you define this? African Americans can go to Liberia and other countries of Africa. Until just twenty years ago or so anyone with a German grandparent could automatically get German citizenship. If you are Cuban you can get American citizenship. Are you thinking this through?
- NPT, I am not sure anyone cares, but this is very different than your other topics.
> But you should move on from that "tiered" thing. I live here. I have been doing a project with Arabs for the last two weeks. We have lunch together most days. Move on.
As convincing as your lunch anecdote is, I'm not sure you're can hand waive away the problem so easily.
A March 2010 poll by Tel Aviv University found that 49.5% of Israeli Jewish high school students believe Israeli Arabs should not be entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel
An October 2010 poll by the Dahaf polling agency found that 36% of Israeli Jews favor eliminating voting rights for non-Jews
A 2012 poll revealed widespread support among Israeli Jews for discrimination against Israeli Arabs, including 33% of respondents believing Israeli Arabs should be denied the right to vote, 42% objecting to their children going to the same schools as Arabs, and 49% "[wanting] the state to treat Jews better than Arabs"
I live here. In places like Jerusalem, Jews and Arabs are together all day, every day. 40% of the police officers in Jerusalem are Arabs.
What is your problem?
Why do you selectively omit the polls of Arabs and Palestinians... about lots of things.... (attitudes to Jews, support of violent Jihadist groups, etc etc)
If you want peace, push for peace.
If you want violence and blood, keep doing what you are doing.
My problem is that Isreal is killing innocent people every day and I want them to stop it. Their horrible record of human rights violations is undeniable.
So I'm sorry if this colors my view of Israelis treatment of non-Jewish people within Israel and makes polls like the one's I cited easy to believe. But you're right I don't live there so I don't know the ground truth.
> If you want peace, push for peace.
That's exactly what I want. How do you suggest I push for it then? Because from where I sit, a good start is to be critical of (or at to least stop supporting) the biggest perpetrator of civilian death on the planet.
1. You have to define 'Israel' quite carefully to make it work. Palestinians in East Jerusalem cannot vote in Israeli elections. Is East Jerusalem part of Israel or not?
2. There are several other democracies in the Middle East, for example Iraq and Lebanon.
3. Some of the countries which aren't democratic, would be democratic, except that representative governments were overthrown by the United States, in part to enforce cooperation with Israel, against the wishes of most of the people in the country. For example, Egypt.
East Jerusalem is ... not a nut anyone here is going to crack.
What do those folks want for themselves? Be part of the Palestinian Authority? (Not the ones I have been doing a remodel with.) Make them part of Jordan?
Jerusalem is disputed territory. That makes it an uncomfortable mess, for more or less everyone.
The region needs more efforts toward peace, and less black and white, good/bad labeling.
East Jerusalemites are in limbo waiting for peace.
You seem to believe “democracy” is some kind of magic spell or something? This “democracy” just perpetrated and are continuing to perpetrate the worst kind of wanton and sadistic genocide in full view of the world and are doing it in high definition and with impunity. America is supposedly also a democracy and we just in fact bombed a place objectively without any provocation, in violation of our own supreme law, and being utterly counter to American interests, because an alien and foreign interest group has a stranglehold on America.
Democracy is not some magic word that justifies things
Israel, the democratic country whose prime minister appears to be deliberately prolonging the current conflict in Gaza and starting a new war with Iran to avoid facing corruption charges?
> Support for Israel extends beyond religious justifications
Yes, it extends that support to cover apartheid colonial occupation, more-than-likely genocide by all the accepted definitions, and the usual smattering of targeting civilians, executing paramedics in marked ambulances and ethic cleansing.
Hamas has started in on the 7th of october 2023, effectively rolling back years of negotiations done by Yasser Arafat. Where do you think they've got the weapons from? Netanyahu is no better, but they offered him the perfect motive for a response.
> Where do you think they've got the weapons from?
Ultimately, from the United States taxpayer. Who supply the Egyptian military government, who turn a small proportion over to the Islamists to keep them from too much rabble-rousing. Who smuggle them to Hamas.
Both Qatar and Iran supply money and other forms of support to Hamas. But no RPG makes it into Gaza (across a shorter than 10 mile border) without the Egyptian military sort of knowing about it.
None of what is going on in the Middle East is a "religious war" as such. That's a thought-terminating cliche that you're putting in practice pretty clearly here.
All this talk about nuclear weapons is purposefully misleading. Iran had agreements in place to keep its nuclear program under strict and thorough international checks, and was currently negotiating a new one. The original deal was scrapped on Netanyahu's request, and the bombing was started by Netanyahu to prevent a new one.
Israel doesn't fear Iran's nukes. Israel fears an economically functional Iran and uses the wmd excuse to sabotage it as much as possible. The worst possible outcome for them is Iran proving it has no nuclear weapons at all and having its sanctions lifted.
Realistically, a secular Iran would be the only real ally of Israel in the region. This is how it was under the shah, until 1979.
Israel is set to benefit enormously from an economically functional Iran, with sanctions lifted, and a sane, non-fanatical, non-oppressive government. Iran used to be a pretty cool and developed country in 1960s, and could be now.
The Cuban revolution was more of a coup than a widespread national uprising.
It was a blind alley anyway. Zero countries that embraced Marxism-Leninism were able to reach prosperity on that ideology. Meanwhile, a lot of desperately poor countries of the 1950s are nowadays reasonably well of, on the basis of a normal, regulated market economy.
AFAIK Castro had never more than 3 thousand armed men at his side, and often much fewer, down to lower hundreds, spending much of the protracted conflict hiding in the countryside.
A revolution is something in which a significant part of a nation actively participates, not something that almost the entire population sits out passively.
Of course we can debate what is the necessary fraction, but 3000 militants isn't a big deal in a country of several million. Every Iraqi cleric in 2010 was able to put together a bigger militia than that.
Cubans kept massively supporting Fidel for quite some time, and quite explicitly, even through the disastrous Communist economic policies.
Iranians keep protesting; last few years have seen several large protests, involving hundreds of thousands, and continuing for months. The popularity just isn't there.
Regarding revolutions, it's quite often that a relatively small group of like-minded people capture the control, and the majority is weakly supporting them, or is even weakly opposed but complies. The French revolution was mostly about some nobility wanting to remove the monarchy that oppressed them, along with the rest; most of the population wasn't overtly anti-monarchy, and not even covertly so, but it did not like the monarchy's pressure either. The Russian revolution was "communist" and "proletarian", but even by their own Marxist accounting, proletarians were less than 10% of Russian population, and communists, much fewer still. Nevertheless, they subdued most of the Russian empire.
The Iranian revolution was also done by a group of highly religious people who were fed up with the shah's secularization reforms. The shah, AFAICT, was a guy a bit like Putin, or Saudi kings: efficient and geared towards prosperity of the country, but quite authoritarian. The fact that e.g. the educated urban population in Iran wasn't happy about authoritarianism does not imply that the same people were (or are) huge fans of theocracy. Actually, the theocracy ended up even more oppressive.
Not "happy", but Iran was quite a bit more sober, not hostile towards Israel, and relatively secular.
(Similarly, China under Deng Xiaoping was not a paragon of political freedom at all, but it was quite a bit more sober than under Mao Zedong. The US administration had tons of shortcomings under president Biden, but it was in quite a bit less of disarray than under president Trump.)
> ? I seem to remember the ICJ deciding they weren't
Is this some reality distortion field? This never happened. Instead the ICJ issued multiple explicit orders to Israel that Israel has violated and the genocide case is still ongoing.
So it hasn't yet decided if there's genocide or not?
People should just say what they actually mean instead of ambiguous words like genocide. Is the genocide limiting food aid with the aim of demoralizing the population into losing support for Hamas? Or is it directly killing people in the fighting? He could have just said that so his words mean something. Those actions might or might not be genocide but they might still be something worth criticizing.
So we're just glossing over the fact that you tried to pretend the ICJ had said it wasn't genocide, a blatant lie, in your parent post? Why are you so committed to muddying the waters here?
It wasn't a lie. I really did seem to remember that. It may have been that they didn't reach a conclusion that it was genocide, or something else. I tried to look up the case and still couldn't see ICJ actually labelling it as genocide.
Who cares about ICJ or any International Law these days anymore?
Yeah, I mean we can still use it (or it's slowness and uselessness) to hide behind it but the facts are on the table. Gaza looks like post-war Germany at this point. People ARE starving. Meanwhile Israel expands to the east. Also illegally.
Anyone who calls something genocide needs to care because it has to have some definition or set of examples to mean anything, and those organizations are pretty much where the definitions come from. People love exaggerating political issues by using stronger words, so you have to tune it out, and then there's no information left.
People keep questioning the definition of genocide, as if finding some technical distinction will absolve the perpetrators.
If you actually care about international law, you might be interested to know that the ICC has issued (standing) arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the former Israeli Minister for Defense for various crimes against humanity and the use of starvation in warfare.
> The worst possible outcome for them is Iran proving it has no nuclear weapons at all and having its sanctions lifted.
Circumstantial evidence seems to be that Iran indeed was enriching Uranium beyond what was necessary for electricity. Why would they build enrichment facility deep underground? It is not that Iran is having energy crisis. The claim that Iran is thinking of green energy and climate change effects is a bit weak.
Even Iran has publicly said that they have enriched to 60%. 60% is not needed for civilian uses and only useful for research in how to make it go boom.
Remember all that evidence about iraq? Remember the british guy who worked at the ministry and went to the news saying there was no evidence and then suicided without leaving his own fingerprints on the weapon?
The uranium enrichment is confirmed by the Iranians, the have published pictures of their leaders inspecting the centrifuges. You can find them with a quick search.
It's a stupid slogan because it gives politicians ammunition, but it can be interpreted various ways. For example:
Ali Al Bukhaiti, the former spokesman and the official media face of the Houthis, said: "We really do not want anyone's death. This slogan is only against the intervention of those governments [i.e. the United States and Israel]."
How about the UN censuring Iran for not complying with the agreement? Was this a manufactured consensus? I don't see anyone mentioning IAEA's decision here.
Iran has violated the NPT so many times at this stage that no good faith observer can say what you've said here with a straight face. This is just using words to persuade for political purposes, it is not analysis.
Iran has violated the NPT because there were agreements in place for it to respect it, and the agreements have been violated by the other side. An action that must have consequences, otherwise there is no point in making deals with anyone.
Iran opposition to Israel's occupation of Muslim lands and territories, predates the current government of Iran. All rational non-racists, non-Zionistic people oppose Israel's occupation including the vast majority of UN member states.
Israel's settlements are the reason Iran feels the need for such developments though.
I can oppose IRA violence and British imperialism at the same time but if we're having a reasonable conversation we have to recognise that British colonial force in Ireland is what drove people to form the IRA.
I'm not sure how that contradicts what I'm saying.
To continue the analogy that's like going back to 1900 and saying Britain could pull out of Ireland except for Ulster and there'd still be people calling for further decolonisation.
Iran is stupid trying to covertly get to a nuclear bomb, Israel is very stupid with those illegal settlements. It’s costing them both a lot of sympathy.
Wrong. They were given the authority by general consensus after WW2. Maybe a poor choice, but it's not at all the responsibility of current Israelis to think about what their grandparents did. For a Gen Z Israeli, there's only one country.
If they don't control it, it's not the "other people's" land either.
Land belongs to whoever controls it. That's it. That is all it will ever be.
If there is not some higher power (e.g. the UN, who you say does not have authority), you have no recourse.
No matter what land it is or who they are: nobody currently living was there first. The only claim is always "I was the last to control it". But none of us are the first.
The censuses were always flip-flopping back and forth, until the 1880s. You cherry picked one nice one, but I could check pick over half a dozen censuses that show Jewish majority during the 19th century - no less than the amount of censuses that promote the other competing narrative. And all the later censuses, after 1880, show Jewish majority. That was over three decades before the fall of the Ottoman empire.
Source for census data:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerusalem
From wikipedia's article on the history of Palestine:
> "Most of Palestine's population, estimated to be around 200,000 in the early years of Ottoman rule, lived in villages. The largest cities were Gaza, Safad and Jerusalem, each with a population of around 5,000–6,000."
OP's point was "Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities."
What are you trying to dispute here? That the territory of today's Israel was sparsely populated back then, or that the Ottoman Empire existed back then?
> Almost no Jews at that time either.
What a wild claim: almost no Jews in places like Jerusalem? Please cite whatever source you have to make such an extraordinary claim.
> What are you trying to dispute here? That the territory of today's Israel was sparsely populated back then, or that the Ottoman Empire existed back then
Exactly the part that you left out: that the Jewish presence (before zionist immigration began) was of any relevance in the demography of the region.
I've never understood the argument of Muslim Land or Arab Land. If one were to call Britain White Man's Land and start a terror campaign against African, Asian, and Arab immigrants, would the world community accept that?
Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1]. How does that become suddenly Muslim Land?
> Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1]
(Links a page that shows the exact opposite)
> If one were to call Britain White Man's Land and start a terror campaign against African, Asian, and Arab immigrants, would the world community accept that?
Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleanse 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades?
This isn't Reddit. Many people here actually do read sources. All the censuses in the decades before the fall of the Ottoman empire show a Jewish majority. And for the century preceding that, the censuses flipped back and forth.
> Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleans 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades?
No. The UN designated the malaria-infested marshes Israeli (not Jewish) and the majority of the rest Arab (not Muslim, not Palestinian, and not Egyptian or Jordanian). The Arab states rejected this, and opened a war with the newly formed Israel. Many Israeli leaders pleaded with the Arab residents not to heed the Arab states' calls to evacuate. The situation in Haifa is well documented, I know this from living with Arabs in Haifa two decades ago. They tell how the Haifa mayor pleaded with their families to remain in 1948.
> This isn't Reddit. Many people here actually do read sources.
Exactly. The Ottoman rule of Palestine spans 400 years, and the graph at the top of the page you linked shows that Jews became a majority in Jerusalem only at the very end of it, following zionist immigration at the end of the 19th century.
> The UN designated the malaria-infested marshes Israeli (not Jewish)
The problem is that this isn't reddit and people actually read the sources. This is the text of the Partition Plan:
"Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence..."
Why do you have such a problem with Zionist immigration that made Jerusalem a Jewish-majority city? It was legal immigration allowed by Ottoman Empire. Do you see Muslims immigrating to Europe in the same light? Many previously "white" cities in Europe are now Muslim. Should Europeans call it "Muslim occupation of white land"? That sounds pretty racist. Why double standard?
Ah no, I have no problem with it, as much as Palestinians had little problem with the tens, and then hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants to their land.
Of course if the UN were suddenly to declare that half of my country is now assigned to them only to build their, say, Arab state- then I would be quite pissed. Wouldn't you?
> The First Aliyah, also known as the agriculture Aliyah, was a major wave of Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Ottoman Palestine between 1881 and 1903 ... An estimated 25,000 Jews immigrated.
Jerusalem was already Jewish majority before 1881. And the large waves of the movement were towards the end, not towards the beginning.
Yes, as we said, zionist immigration to Palestine began at the end of the 19th century. Nothing to do with the small historical Jewish population of Palestine or Jerusalem.
Yes indeed, if white British people were expelled from their lands and their homes confiscated by anyone, Norse, Germanic or Russian, it'd be considered ethnic cleansing and a war crime.
The jews of Ottoman era were Sephardic and Mizrahi jews of N. Africa, not the Yiddish speaking Ashkenazis of Germany, France and Russia.
After the UN divided the holy land into an Israeli and an Arab state, the Arabs began their ethnic cleaning campaign. That is why there were zero Jews left in Gaza or the West Bank after the war. The war that was started with the stated goal of eliminating the Jews.
And note that despite Arab calls for the Arabs to evacuate the holy land, it remained 20% Arab. And let's not get started on the Jews in the other 20 plus Arab states. What at happened to them?
Like how the Arab countries expelled Jews after Israel was founded? The double standard about Israel and Arab colonization and ethnic cleansing is absurd.
I actually do know the "Muslim lands" reference. Religious Muslims believe any land ever controlled by Muslims must remain Muslim forever. It's a conquest tactic. It gets slightly reframed to be tolerable for westerners by invoking the idea that they're "indigenous", when they're largely Arabs who committed genocide against the previous peoples.
The Arab culture, identity, and distinct racial features formed in the Arabian peninsula. After they accepted Islam in the 7th century, they turned to conquest other areas.
This is all well documented in Arab sources, they are very proud of this.
Oh i didn't realize we're going back more than a millennia. Well, in that case every modern nation state is the product of one form of genocide or another - the USA being the worst genocidal state, going back just 500 years.
>The Arab culture, identity, and distinct racial features formed in the Arabian peninsula
Seems silly to me to claim a land that "your people" inhabited centuries and millennia ago, as it honestly seems silly to me talk about "racial features" when talking about humans. Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"?
> Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"?
Not by virtue of being the same race, but by virtue of being the offspring of parents who are proud of their heritage and teach their children.
Denying the existence of Arab culture, of which the Arabs are (rightly, in my opinion) very proud of, is racism. Not everybody has the same values and customs as you do.
"Whilst there are a great number of perspectives that can be taken on the subject, it is impossible to form a single, all-embracing concept of European culture."
Do you frequently stop reading articles two sentences in? It's amazing how much knowledge and intelligence you must be missing.
Please do keep reading past. The next sentence (literally sentence #3) gives you: Nonetheless, there are core elements which are generally agreed upon as forming the cultural foundation of modern Europe. One list of these elements given by K. Bochmann includes:
And then a detailed list of shared-culture-related items.
- A common cultural and spiritual heritage derived from Greco-Roman antiquity, Christianity, Judaism, the Renaissance, its Humanism, the political thinking of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the developments of Modernity, including all types of socialism;[5][4]
- A rich and dynamic material culture, parts of which have been extended to the other continents as the result of industrialization and colonialism during the "Great Divergence";[5]
- A specific conception of the individual expressed by the existence of, and respect for, a legality that guarantees human rights and the liberty of the individual;[5]
- A plurality of states with different political orders, which share new ideas with one another.[5]
- Respect for peoples, states, and nations outside Europe.
And then there are 15 categories from Music to Science to History, listing cultural similitudes or shared values.
> Religious Muslims believe any land ever controlled by Muslims must remain Muslim forever.
What are you basing this on? Are "religious" Muslims some kind of True Scots Muslims? I'm willing to bet that if I speak to any of my Muslim neighbours none of them will agree with this.
Source on Swedes being steppe barbarians? Most historians agree that Vikings originated in Scandinavia. Sami peoples originated in northern Russia and moved to the furthest north regions of Scandinavia. The Vikings were also more concerned with seafaring and raiding to the south and west and all the history I know of is that they coexisted mostly peacefully (Vikings would trade with the Sami). Conflict arose centuries after the Viking age.
So why was it called Palestine Partition Plan, and not Israeli partition plan:
"Palestine Partition Plan" is United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), adopted on November 29, 1947. This resolution, officially titled "Future Government of Palestine," recommended the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem and its environs to be placed under a special international regime."
No, Philistine (and all the variants) comes from a Greek word for "uncouth" and is a word for the ancient Philistines given by their neighbours; it's unknown what the Philistines called themselves. The Philistines weren't the Phoenicians, they were more recent invaders (possibly some of the "Sea People"). For one, the Philistines were Aegean and the Phoenicians were Semitic. The Philistines also disappeared (either killed or assimilated) while the Phoenicians spawned Carthage (the ones in the Levant probably just assimilated over time as many powers controlled the area after them).
It only became the name for the land after the Bar Kockba revolt, the Romans named it such specifically to spite the Jews. And then it stuck when various powers controlled the land over time (Romans/East Romans aka. Byzantines, Caliphate, Ottomans, British).
Exactly. Ill intended actors (Soviets, competing European interests, Islamists etc.) even propped up the propaganda fiction about the "evil" Crusaders, while in fact the Crusaders fought against colonization.
The entire north of Africa, as well as the Levante and Asia Minor was still 80-90% Christian when Crusaders came.
My understanding is that most countries support a two nation solution. I have not seen any Iranian statement that accepts this. On the other hand I have seen them consistently calling for outright destruction of Israel. Given their declared intend of destruction, no one in right mind would allow them the capability of destruction.
Your "terrorists" militias predate formation of Islamic Republic of Iran, in 1979. Yasser Arafat, and all other Palestinian liberators were also labeled as terrorists.
Can you name one Palestinian who has fought against Israel's occupation and is not considered a terrorist by you?
If you fight in an active civil war you are not a terrorist (1948 Arab-Israeli war)
If you strike military targets of an occupation force in a time of guerilla warfare you are not a terrorist. (Many palestinian fighters when there is an active conflict with Israel)
If you strike military targets of an occupation force in a time of relative peace, and your reignition of violence has no goal of achieving anything for your people, you are probably not a terrorist, but probably doing something wrong and stupid and horrible that hurts your own civilians, driven by nationalism or ideology or whatever. (Palestinian fighters on October 7 that struck military bases for example).
If you strike civilian targets or tage hostages, you are a terrorist. And worse if you do it at a time of relative peace to ignite violence against your own people.
Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi's have engaged in plenty of the latter since a long time.
By the way, if you level a building with 8 militants and 20 civilians that is brutal urban warcare but not terrorism. If you go to a festival and kill predominantly hundreds of civilians, that's terrorism.
You should stop lying about a non-existent genocide. Israel just wants to live in peace. This is why 20% of the Israel population is Arab and 0% of Gaza and the West Bank are Jewish.
Gaza immediately became a mafia state run by the Muslim brotherhood and subsisting off handouts and extortion. Consider it a failed experiment in self rule.
A state with no borders that anything can cross without Israels approval, a state made up largely of refugees fleeing the Nakba, a state without much arable land, a state that had most of its infrastructure including its airport destroyed when Israel left it. Its like they were set up for success.
"Just living in peace while stealing the homes and land of the locals."
No. Jews migrated to Ottoman controlled land legally and paid for it. Palestinians were offered their own country but rejected that offer in favor of trying to expel the Jews and taking their land. Then they spend the next 70 years trying and failing to destroy Israel and rejecting every offer of their own country.
The Nakba happened when Palestinians foolishly rejected the offer from the UN for their own country and decided to destroy Israel instead. They failed miserably just like they have been failing ever since.
Palestinians need to take responsibility for reacting to the formation of Israel in the most self-destructive way possible.
I don't. But I don't find them particularly relevant to the situation in Gaza and the continued colonization/land stealing in the west bank.
For example, you recognize the fledgling UN's decision to partition the land but don't recognize any decision they've taken since, not like you're following those borders anyway.
I can all it Israeli state propaganda talking points if you want, hasbara is less of a mouthful though.
"I don't find them particularly relevant to the situation in Gaza"
Do you find the Hamas attacks that killed 1,200 people relevant?
"you recognize the fledgling UN's decision to partition the land but don't recognize any decision they've taken since"
I know that the Palestinians have rejected at least two excellent offers from Israel for their own country. If they had accepted them they would be VASTLY better off then they are now.
You cannot absolve the Palestinians of their responsibility for their shitty lives due to their terrible decisions.
>Do you find the Hamas attacks that killed 1,200 people relevant?
Relevant as far as its the latest and greatest excuse Israel can use to take more land and genocide the locals. US had a long history of doing the same when it came to Indians.
I wouldn't fault jews and other minorities in the holocaust for fighting back against their oppressors either.
Calling the brutal murder of 1,200 people an "excuse" is pretty despicable. That would be like if a Mexican cartel invaded the US and killed 40,000 people.
" US had a long history of doing the same when it came to Indians."
Yes, and you don't see Native Americans trying to take back their land using military force and mass murder because they aren't evil and aren't stupid.
"I wouldn't fault Jews and other minorities in the holocaust for fighting back against their oppressors either."
The only people oppressing Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
Can you name a single Palestinian who has actually moved the needle on a functioning democratic Palestinian state? Every single current and former Palestinian leader has been heavily theocratic, has pledged to kill Jews wherever they are and has never considered sharing any of whatever power he’s gotten with anyone else.
Nope, Islamism is an extreme position so that gets you no further in the answering the question. What set the stage for an Islamist majority? Again I assert that extreme politics don't develop in vacuums.
The thing is it doesn't help. Yes of course the horrible situation of the palestinians promotes extremism, but you still have to face that there is a lot of extremism. What was Israel to do before October 7 (besides making sure Oct 7 could not happen)? Of course there are ppints where history could have gone in a better direction but I really don't see an easy way for Israel to achieve a better situation. Say they had withdraw from the west bank in 2018 for some reason. Who says that Oct 7 would still not have happened on a much greater scale? In fact I find it quite likely that it would. And then you might be looking at 3000 dead Israelis instead. The only rational reason for the Oct 7 attacks I can see is that Hamas wants to incite as much violence as possible to put as much political pressure as possible on Israel due to the inevitable retaliation. So Oct 7 would have made even more sense, as the deoccupation of the west bank is far from the total of their political goals.
And here you are continuing to dehumanize and remove all agency for an entire religion now. Truly the bigotry required to hold these beliefs is breathtaking.
I'm not doing that in any way. Islamism != Islam, and I'm not suggesting that the entire population of following Islamist beliefs, only that there's an environment where it can gain traction.
Please explain your reading if you're going to make such personal attacks.
You’re missing the point because you’re so unaware of your own enormous bigotry.
All Muslims have their own agency. They are all humans capable of making their own decisions. And like all humans are happy to be held responsible for the decisions they make.
I'm honestly not sure if this is satire or why you feel the need to tell me what I believe.
> All Muslims have their own agency. They are all humans capable of making their own decisions. And like all humans are happy to be held responsible for the decisions they make.
And I'm not sure why you feel I don't recognise the agency of Muslims?
As I said previously please make an argument or explain your position and I'll respond to it, but it feels absurd to entertain these seemingly baseless ad hominems.
I grew up in a conflict zone and feel that I have some understanding of the group dynamics. That's totally reasonable and I encourage you to ask yourself if your apparent anger and incredulity here is misplaced.
You’re speaking in innuendo so I’m responding in kind. Plainly state your argument, which you haven’t done yet, instead opting for an odd vaguely veiled bigotry about Muslims’ ability to make their own choices.
I'm saying that Western colonial practices and violent Zionism created a situation where many people in Palestine, and beyond, felt no other choice but to support a violent counter campaign. Your turn.
Oh lol. So you’re just ignorant. There was no serious attempt at western colonialism in Judea and Samaria or any part of the ME. As soon as the Ottoman Empire fell the LoN immediately created a plan for self rule in that area that ended up having a shorter timeline than the occupation of Germany following WWII. Look up when Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, etc all became independent nations. Even Israel’s timeline from the end of WWI to its establishment was less than 30 years.
“Violent Zionism” was inconsequential in comparison to the violence the Muslim population visited upon their Jewish (Zionist) neighbors/subjects/citizens from 700CE when Islam was formed through 1947 when the partition plan was proposed, and all the way to the present day.
So again, I say, you’re dehumanizing Muslims by refusing to acknowledge that they are responsible for their own actions. Because even if everything you claim was true (it isn’t), you are still claiming they are not capable of bearing responsibility for their own actions and instead any violence they commit is the responsibility of nebulous “western colonialism” and inchoate “violent zionism”. The bigotry requires to totally remove an entire religion’s agency is, as I said before: breathtaking.
Right because slaves in the American south were offered freedom tens of times but refused it always bec it might have involved some compromise they didn’t like. These childish comparisons don’t even pass the sniff test.
In 1947 when they chose to leave. In 1948-1967 when the Arab states controlled 95% of the land that these Arabs want to return to. Wars have consequences, if you initiate a war and lose, you’re not gonna get everything back. That’s the risk of war.
I have no idea what “legally affirmed” means in the context of sovereign states. The UN, or even the UNSC passing something doesn’t actually mean anything as it applies to sovereign nations. Paraphrasing Andrew Jackson: a law is only as good as the ability to enforce it. A bunch of random people agreeing to something even if they call themselves “The United Nations” doesn’t mean anything if that group of friends doesn’t have the will or ability to enforce whatever they’ve agreed to. They’re akin to you and your drinking buddies passing out edicts after one to many dry martinis.
Yeah, PLFP was not at all Marxist-Leninist, used islamic arguments and not ethnomarxist ones, opposed women taking a role in politics and forced them to wear the hijab, didnt allow Coptic Christians or Jews in the movement, and talked about god and not oppression of workers /s
You just have no idea of what you're talking about.
Israel occupies lands belonging to the Biblical patriarch Jacob. That was something like 1800 BCE, two and a half millennia before Mohammed. Islam refers to Jacob, as does the Torah/Old Testament as "Israel".
I find the repeated suggestion that those are Muslim lands because Israel is a new territory to be strange -- it can't be a Quranic position. It doesn't appear consistent with history either.
That's a ridiculous position. We can't organize today's world based on who was where 4 millennia ago. (If we did, most if not all countries would immediately cease to exist, starting of course with the US but not limited to them.)
Islam, ie the Koran, recognises the banu Israel (forgive my spelling/transliteration) from c.2500 years ago. Apparent muslims say "Israel has only existed for 50 years" (or words to that effect). The inference made is that they then have no rights to the land.
It seems the basis for the 'lack of rights of Israel to exist' is fundamentally opposed to the origin story of Islam itself.
Personally I find the concept of nationhood a bit ridiculous; but I'm not sure how practical it would be to organise a World without statehood.
Assuming this claim were true, which it isn't, the modern Israelis have genetically nothing in common with the Jews of the old testament. They don't have the same culture, religion, language or genetics.
Revived Hebrew seems to be a child of Ancient Hebrew? Judaism seems to have a continuation? I can't say I know the genetic situation of a while country, but it seems unlikely.
Maybe you've more to add, some sources to convince me?
I find historical claims like this not very convincing. 1800 BCE looked very different from today and if people from old civilizations start claiming their land, we would not see any end of wars. Should Italy claim most of Europe because Romans had it under their control?
My point would be analogised to Italy thus: that despite it only having existed since 1946, suggesting that meant Italians have _no_ rights to occupation of that land is rather ludicrous. If it were a Roman Catholic claiming this that would be even closer of an analogue to my view.
You make it sound like the dispute is about who has some ancient religious right to the land. It's true that both sides claim that but it's totally disingenuous to pretend that is the reason for so much Arab anger.
People still have a living memory of specific properties in specific locations that they were forced out of and are now occupied by other families, often with some of their relatives killed in the process That applies both to places in Israel proper (displaced in 1940s to 1960s) and to Gaza and the West Bank (in the time since then). Even before the most recent war in Gaza, any Palestinian could be forced out of their home at any moment by an Israeli settler with no recourse.
It would be helpful if you could say what your point is rather that just point me at a 22 page PDF. I didn't even realise you were disagreeing with me until I looked at it. Is your point that no such people exist? Or that they had displaced other people before them in just the same way? Or something else?
i will suggest you to read pdf anyway, it's a wonderful peace showing how things were in 1961 and how things are same today.
back to the point.
Journalist traveled to refugee camps in lebanon/gaza and then to israel to see how arabs that decided to remain are doing.
(following are more or less exact quotes from memory)
He describes how somebody were telling him in great details about giant house that he had had, with veranda surrounding it. how he will sit there in shadow of the orchard and the fertile soil that he had.
when journalists was visiting israel he decided to stop by this location. all what he found is shack barely suitable for cattle, 2 fruit trees and rocky soil that will be really hard to work.
also, while been in refugee camp in lebanon he had a meeting with somebody who managed camp. this person told him that most of those who tell him that they had untold riches actually had nothing: they were workforce for hire and were renting from landlords both housing and in some cases soil to work. he adds that most of them in a heart beat will give up on "right of return" in exchange to $10k and place to settle "anywhere".
additional nice touch in article it's description of UNRWA school (it's 1961) where they teach children that one day as soldiers they will come back kill jews/liberate their country
For the record, I was really just looking for a couple of sentences so I understood your point. But I do appreciate the extra effort you went to for an internet stranger, thank you.
I have to say though, it's pretty unconvincing. It reads very similarly to saying: their right to stay where they are, or even not be killed by someone else that wants their land, is less because they're poor and renters (yuck!). I know that's an ungenerous characterisation of what you've said but it's really the core of the objection.
It does seem a bit low for some refugees to exaggerate their past wealth or to accept (essentially) a bribe to forget about atrocities committed against them and their families. But it's a totally incomparable to what was done to them in the first place, and certainly doesn't justify it.
I've never been in anything like that situation, and I imagine you haven't either. If I was totally destitute, forced to live in some camp (and still not safe), could I honestly say I do something similar (lie or take cash to run away)? It's hard to say but I don't think I could rule it out. But I like to think that I can rule out ever forcing people out of their homes, from land that I have no living ancestral claim to, and murdering the ones that don't run quickly enough, on religious (i.e., invented) grounds.
Last time I checked history books said Britain donated land to Jews. At the time Britain took house land there were no state and no nation called Palestinians, just tribes. Since then Palestinians formed as a nation.
So what do you want Israel to do, disappear? Or negotiate, but with whom? The only power there is hamas which is non-negotiable. I really interested in seeing any realistic solution to the problem, however far fetched it is.
So I’m not good enough for you to share your ideas, did I get it right? You realize this is not how people reach consensus? If you cannot give me a compelling argument what makes you think jews and arabs would be happy with your ideas?
Well, considering that Israeli's are occupying land that rightfully belongs to someone else, I'd say not very well indeed. It's the final major European colonial outpost, and its fighting hard not to go the way of Algeria, Kenya, Malaya and a long long list of others.
Even if you believe Israelis don’t have a right to the land, it’s still not a colonial outpost. That’s just lazy European and American self important intellectualizing in my opinion.
First a colony is one controlled by a foreign nation. Next the population of Israel is, or was, about half Sephardim. Meaning Jews from the Middle East, many of whom were unwilling expelled from Muslim countries.
Secondly Arab Muslim Palestinians could also be considered colonizers if ones that’d been there many generations.
The Israel and Palestine conflict in many aspects is more similar to between Turkey and Greece after WWI. In 1923 they “swapped populations” due to the aftermaths of Greeces independence from the Turkish Ottaman Empire and the following wars. Populations which had lived together segregated after the wars and were expelled on both sides in roughly equal numbers.
It was similar after the 1948 war with about 850,000 Middle Eastern Jews and 750,000 Palestinians being displaced.
Except Palestinians were never integrated into Egypt or Jordan. Partly by their own choice and partly by that of the Arab countries. The stated goal was that they’d destroy the new state of Israel and return.
you do know that jews come from the current state of israel right? and that they lived there before the founding of said state? and that, no, neither group of 7M people are going to pack up and leave.
This is no more relevant than the guys in the OAS banging the table and claiming 2M Frenchmen have always lived in Algeria. It's not the age of exploration any more, you can no more rock up on someone else's patch, declare it terra nullis and start building condos. What's worse again, is trying to make it some religious thing... this book here says I own all you guy's land because the book says God gave it to us guys and not yous.
> It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel.
I believe this is very important to highlight, and, unfortunately, many Iranians will suffer because of the Iranian government's views.
But I do believe there are viewpoints held on both sides that can make achieving peace in that region extremely difficult. Consider these two video excerpts (You only need to watch about 10 seconds for each)
> they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel.
Do they? What is this based on? My understanding was that they were reacting to a pattern of imperialism of which Israel was the crown jewel. Is there actually something inherent about the Shi'ite religion which says Israel must fall?
Iran was one of the first countries in the Middle East to recognize Israel. But it all changed since Islamic Revolution. Their official position since than have been that Israel cannot exist. They don't even refer to it as Israel but as "Zionist Regime". It's their official public position and what they say on their (government controlled) TV. They've been fighting proxy war with Israel since 80s.
I'm not sure that answers my question. They could have a political belief that Israel must fall but you haven't shown a reason to believe it's based on their religious beliefs. Obviously the two things are tied up together but I don't believe that if a Jewish homeland state had been created in Western Europe or in Antarctica that Iran would have an issue with it. Their problem is surely that Israel represents an historical and continuing power play by Western forces, a springboard from which the US and it's allies can encourage coups, wage wars and dominate the trade of the natural resources in the region. It seems like a very practical concern more than a religious one.
Does every Shi'ite hold these same beliefs then? What is the religious basis for the belief?
Henry VIII used religious justification for breaking off from the pope as well but surely we're grown up enough to recognise those movements came about from a desire for political autonomy more than disagreements over bible interpretations?
>In 2024, Ali Khamenei told Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh: "The divine promise to eliminate the Zionist entity will be fulfilled and we will see the day when Palestine will rise from the river to the sea."
In particular check out the "clerics" section of that article for the statements of multiple leading religious authorities in the regime on the religious justifications.
Well, to start off I want to reiterate what I said about the reformation era political upheavals in Europe and religion being used as a justification and easy explanation for very real geopolitical concerns.
But just for argument's sake and to respect your position I always want to point out that your quote subtly talks about "the Zionist entity" and not about Israel or Jews. So I can assume that you're equating Israel with Zionism, which is arguably fair. Now the question I would have is do we recognise the inherent violence of Zionism and, if so, why do we decentre that in our conversation and instead focus on the reaction to it?
What geopolitical concerns can Iran have over Israel, that Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia wouldn't have? They're all functionally Israeli allies now.
It is important to understand how we got here, to understand what might be plausibly achievable.
In the 1920s after Britain kicked out Turkey there was a partition proposal. The Jewish leadership at the time agreed saying they would accept a land "the size of a tablecloth". The Palestinian leaders refused absolutely and demanded the expulsion of all Jews. Their leader declared "It is impossible to live alongside the Jews" and threatened "A river of blood".
In 1937 there was another proposal in which 'Israel' would have been the small region from Tel Aviv north to the Lebanese border. The Palestinians rejected it out of hand.
In 1948 the Palestinians were granted considerably more land than they have now for their own independent state, but refused partition as unacceptable. Five Arab nations attacked Israel with the intention to destroy it completely. The General Secretary of the Arab League at the time Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, who personally orchestrated the attack declared the intention of the war was "An extermination and a momentous massacre".
Jordan and Egypt annexed the West bank and Gaza for the next 2 decades during which the Palestinians had no political rights or freedoms. The Palestinian leaders never pushed for the formation of an independent state during this time, and Israel took both regions during the Six Day War.
So if we include the Oslo accords, the Palestinians have been offered an independent state of their own four times, and every time they have rejected it completely as unacceptable. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" literally means free of Jews. Over and over, the Palestinian leadership have made that crystal clear. An independent state of their own alongside Israel in any shape or form, in their own statements and openly declared intentions has persistently been rejected.
Meanwhile Egypt and Jordan have realised that Israel is no threat to them, in fact both states have suffered coup attempts by Palestinians. They are now functionally Israeli allies against the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia has now pretty solidly moved in the same direction.
if you include the oslo accords, the narrative that palestinians are the one and only problem breaks down. the only time there was agreeable terms being set, and israelis assasinated their leader for proposing them.
i wouldnt expect america to ever be favourable to carving out a new independent state of Venesuela from colorado because theres a lot of non-citizen refugees. you can see americans today pushing back against having more immigrants, too and removing the people that are here
It doesn't matter for Israel weather it's based on religious belief or not. But Iran does frame their opposition in Islamic context in its communication to Iranian people. E.g. Khamenei says things like "fighting Israel to liberate Palestine is an obligation and an Islamic jihad."
https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-supreme-leader-israel-cancerous...
It might not matter for Israel but it matters for me as an Irishman watching the rest of the world getting sucked into a conflict.
Framing it as a religious opposition paints Iran as an irrational actor which can't be reasoned with, when it appears to me that it's behaving the way it's been pushed to behave by encroaching colonial forces.
I don't believe in Islam or in Judaism but I do believe in radical discourse and trying to understand the position of the other. Saying "it's their religion to be bloody violent and destructive, what can we do?" throws any space for understanding out of the window.
Nothing in most of their beliefs. They’re both monotheistic and similar in many regards as Islam largely inherited its tenants from both Judaism and Christianity.
Jews were often well treated and flourished in the earlier Islamic caliphates.
But with the formation of a Jewish Israel the conflict. Generally in Islamic belief there must be an Islamic caliphate with Sharia Law. Jerusalem is considered one of the holy sites of Islam and therefore belongs to that caliphate.
That’s contrasted with Judaism and Israel being the land promised to the Jews. Though modern Israel was largely founded by secular Jews so it’s a bit more complicated on that front.
It does not make sense to frame Iran versus Israel as religious war. Religion is so fundamental, when we frame it as this, it becomes a unsolvable problem.
The first thing I would want to do after wearing Israeli shoes would be to find a way to flee immediately and disassociate myself from being complicit with the ongoing genocide (or to resist it if I were in such a position), Iran's hostility be damned.
In which case, I suppose that any resistance I might do would have the state call me an anti-Semite.
People are just fear mongering to suggest Iran would use them or give them to those who would. The real issue here is that once you have them, you basically entrench yourself as a regional power. If the regime started falling out of favor, all their neighbors would be obliged to come to their aid to protect the nukes. Also, you would be far more limited in how you fight your proxy war. These are the things the involved parties are considering, not Armageddon fantasies.
The trouble with a regime like Iran is that they are a death cult. The price the put on human life (their own people as much as anyone else) is low, and they're all for martyrdom. With Iran, you cannot assume it's a just a deterrent in a cold war. You have to assume an increased likelihood that they will actually use them.
> They woke up and started bombing Israel for no apparent reason or they are responding to Israeli attacks ?
You failed to answer my question. Why?
Check out YouTube and see the high rate of ballistic missiles thrown at Israel. Those existed for years, and were developed for this exact purpose. It just so happened they didn't have the nuclear warhead yet.
I repeat the question: are you really asking why a country would be afraid of a regime which is literally raining ballistic missiles over them?
Reducing the Middle East conflict so much makes the entire discussion useless. If you want to point at someone guilty, look at the British who fucked up Palestine big time. Everything since then is a spiral of revenge and spite.
Reducing the Middle East conflict so much makes the entire discussion useless. If you want to point at someone guilty, look at the Romans who fucked up Judea big time. Everything since then is a spiral of revenge and spite.
I don't think you realise how ignorant and racist is this idea that an entire religion and country of 90 million doesn't behave like normal human beings.
Have you lived in Iran? It's not a whole country of 90 million people who will shout "Push the button!". Most of them are unwillingly imprisoned under a regime lead by the religious zealots who will push that button, even if it means destruction of themselves and their population. Or at least, that's the assumption that the west must make, based their religious views and their past rhetoric.
Here in the US, our soldiers insert their nuclear keys and await instructions to turn them several times per day. If even just ONE of the hundreds of pairs of soldiers turns the key, then ALL the nukes get launched. 99.999999% of Americans have no say either.
The truth is that Iran doesn't want to take out the holy sites in Israel and if martyrdom were the real goal, then Iran would have started all-out war with Israel decades ago.
There was a very interesting "street walk video" by a somewhat-famous travelling-blogger, he visited Afghanistan, talked to a lot of people, created a lot of footage of their daily life, asking about the regime etc.
This video got blocked after publishing by a political action group / NGO, it came back online only after dozens of other YouTube channels reported that.
And yes - this video depicted life of people in a theocracy ;-)
Isn't christianity the one that has martyrdom at its core? Jesus was martyred for our sins after all. Christians can’t really be trusted not to sacrifice themselves at the drop of a roman helmet.
Or not. Perhaps, we understand the nuances of that because we were raised in a christian culture, but don’t understand the nuances of martyrdom in islam because we weren’t raised in a muslim culture? I know that’s true for me, i assume that’s true for any non-muslim who claims stuff about the core of islam.
You are wrong. Muslims don't wake up trying to get martydom asap. Protecting life (own included) is top-most goal, so much that even harming your body (tattoos etc) is strictly prohibited.
It’s bizarre to read that in a world where news have been dominated by American conservatives trying to bring us to the end times for years now. Bizarre, disturbing, and terrifying.
Would they? How would they deliver it? If they were caught trying to do it, what would happen?
Why is an Iranian weapon somehow different do one held by any other country? Countries with them usually don’t use them, and the one that has is attacking Iran.
You make it sound like it's some natural law that they have to destroy the state of Israel. I mean, did you even think about this when you heard it for the first time? Do you think your common Iranian citizen wake up in the morning and feels the natural urge to destroy Israel? What is this?
Be serious.
This is no justification to ignore international law. But that's dead now. Nobody will ever care again until we're done with the next big war or something. Bomb away...
I don't think the average Iranian citizen cares at all about Israel, one way or the other, but they don't have any say in Iranian state politics.
There's no natural law setting the mullahs against the existence of Israel, as I said they think and vocally declaim publicly that it is divine law. Don't believe me, just look up what they say.
I do think the way this is being handled is a travesty though. There was a functioning agreement with international monitoring in place in 2016 and Trump tore it up. Since then Iran has increased their enrichment capacity, and their stockpile of enriched material by 22 time above what they committed to in that agreement. Canceling that deal was a foolish blunder that had lead us to this.
Ultimately the only path to long term peace has to be the fall of theocratic rule in Iran, but that's a mater for the Iranian people. It's quite possible the nuclear question could have been managed, but just as with NAFTA Trump saw personal political advantage is scrapping an old deal in order to rebrand it as his better deal, but dropped the ball because he doesn't understand the geopolitics, and here we are.
I think it's important, especially so shortly after the fact not to mix up things.
Trump wanted another deal and told Bibi not to attack. Bibi didn't want that and attacked. Trump jumped on the bandwagon and now everybody is talking about him again.
All absolutely true. In fact we're only in this situation because Trump cancelled the nuclear deal with Iran, along with as many treaties as he could get away with so he could get the credit of renegotiating them. Except for the ones he never got round to, like the one with Iran. So, here we are.
I don't particularly blame the Israelis though, and there's broad support for this over there, it's not just Netanyahu.
The word “and” can be used to delineate two linked ideas. Sometimes they’re closely linked ideas like bombing someone AND accusing them of being two weeks away from nukes for decades. Sometimes they’re less closely linked ideas, like bombing someone AND committing genocide against someone else.
The dehumanising thing is to steadfastly believe that deep down everyone holds secular liberal values, regardless of their words and actions.
Secular discussion about conflict in the Middle East frequently discounts the possibility that self-professed religious fundamentalists are in fact religious fundamentalists. A lot of Israeli settlers really do believe that they are fulfilling a sacred duty. A lot of Palestinians really do believe that becoming a martyr for al-Aqsa guarantees them an eternity in paradise. A lot of American Evangelicals really do believe that conflict in the Middle East will bring about the day of judgement.
I might believe that we live in a godless and meaningless universe in which death is final, but that puts me in a very small minority. Most people -throughout history and across the world - frequently act in ways that are totally irrational from a secular perspective, but are perfectly logical within a framework of faith.
You’d need to make a distinction between the Iranian regime, a corrupt band of thieves in charge of the government, infused by religion, and the Iranian people, who have been suffering through this for almost half a century. Any criticism is directed against the former, and fully valid: These people are fanatical idiots, albeit dangerous.
That is why they formed the Axis of Resistance. They will act through their proxies. And imagine if Hezbollah or the Houthis got nuclear weapons, the whole world would be threatened.
Why do Al-quaeda organzied september 11 attacks? I can give countless example to show that they doesnt need a reason to attack. Its just religion that matters and their goal of global islamisation.
Recently in pahalgam they killed 26 civllians by asking their religion and verifying it by asking them to pray.
You said israel regime as genocidal? What was the cause of all this issues? How many was killed in october attacks in israel?
Why did they held hostages from different countries?
So, yes i strongly believe that those terrorist doesnt need a reason to attack. Their goal is global islamisation.
Khamenei had openly said that their number 1 enemy is America.
> To suggest Iran would do it anyway is equivalent to saying that they're completely, crazy, fanatical, genocidal and stupid
It's the Iranian government saying they'd do it, not westerners. And you seem to have some sort of culture complex. Their culture is different than yours (not better, not worse, but different) and for them dying to liberate land from infidels is not crazy, it is the highest honour their society bestows.
There is nothing racist or dehumanising about acknowledging cultures different from your own. In fact, I would say that assuming everybody adheres to your cultural values is the racist position.
They might be fanatical, but to the point of desiring the destruction of themselves, their loved ones, their country, their culture, their literature, their history.. just to inflict genocide on others? This is a dehumanising thought.
Besides, the fanatical leader of that country has said in clear terms that they consider nuclear weapons forbidden by their religion. They have also said in clear terms that oppose the "Israeli regime" and the existence of Israel as a political entity- that's what they mean by "destruction of Israel", not nuking it.
In 1930s and early 1940s, emperor Hirohito of Japan approved of a number of terrible things done by the Japanese imperial armed forces to people of China and Korea, and warred bitterly with the US. But once he realized that he's losing the war, and Japan can be just destroyed by nuclear bombs, he decided to surrender, in order to avoid the complete destruction of his country and senseless deaths of Japanese people. (This is somehow documented.) He cared about the Japanese and Japan more than he cared about his majesty, or honor, or abstract ideas; he agreed to abdicate of all his powers.
Sadly, I highly doubt that the regime of the ayatollahs is going to act like that, instead of fighting fanatically to the bitter end and the last drop of Iranian blood if need be. (A bitter end is very far from the current situation though.)
yes I think so, if they believe that they are stopping another genocide then they'd conceivably be willing to risk their own genocide to help do what's right.
No, Israel is not using religious norms or holy scriptures as the law, and establishes no state religion. Iran's constitution directly says that the norms of the Sharia law are its foundation, and makes Shia Islam the state religion.
"Jewish State" literally means religious norms and holy scriptures are considered a law. Rabbinical courts are part of the Israeli legal system, which operates religious courts in parallel to the civil court system.
The rabbinical courts exist for sorting out religious issues, such as religious marriages and divorces of Jewish citizens. Judaism is not even special-cased: «Such courts exist for the recognized religious communities in Israel, including Muslim courts, Christian courts, and Jewish Rabbinical courts.» (Wikipedia).
The Basic Laws, which sort of comprise the makeshift constitution of Israel, don't seem to make any religious references, but rather refer to the founding UN principles like human rights.
you know such a clause in a rental agreement would be legal in the US as well, right? Binding arbitration clauses are legal in rental agreements at least in many parts of the US and agreeing to a rabbinical court to be the arbitrator is legal as well.
I would say the US is too at this point, given continued references to god by its leaders. A country where a senator can say he supports a certain foreign policy because it's written in the Bible?
What are you pointing at there? Their position from 1979 which is 12 years after 1967?
Also, let’s leave rhetoric aside. What is the actual record of violence between Israel and anyone else? It’s not even close https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties
Israel here is the aggressor. Not acknowledging that makes no sense and doesn’t leave grounds for any meaningful discussion.
In 2015, former Basij chief and senior RIGC officer, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, stated in an interview that the destruction of Israel is "nonnegotiable". In addition, according to the Times of Israel, Naqdi said that during the summer Gaza conflict with Israel, a significant portion of Hamas’s weaponry, training, and technical expertise was provided by Iran.[27][28] In 2019, Naqdi made a direct call for the destruction of Israel during a televised interview. Naqdi asserted that the Zionist regime must be "annihilated and destroyed," asserting "This will definitely happen." He declared his intention to one day raise the flag of the Islamic Revolution over Jerusalem.
The Zionist state as it is since 1967 has to be dismantled and it must go back to its 1967 borders. That’s international law.
Also, you seem to be putting a lot of weight from words 10 years ago by former officials when current Israeli officials including the head of state is clearly voicing support for genocide.
Rhetoric aside. What was the actual record of violence when Hitler published „My Struggle“ in 1925, laying out his ideas of solving the „Jewish question“? Why should one believe the evil of it lays out its plans way in advance?
Hey, how many people has Iran killed versus Israel in the last 20 years. Waiting for reply. Let’s see who the real terrorist is - my guess is you’re not going to pick the state that’s committing genocide. You’re gonna pick Iran because, frankly, Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate has been normalized.
Also, by your distorted rationale, given that the US has committed the most acts of terrorism in the world over the last 50 years, do you think it's OK if a random country (let's say, China) to bomb them as being sponsors of terror in Nicaragua, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, East Timor, Vietnam, Guam, etc etc? I'm guessing, no, right? But you're very comfortable with Iran being bombed. What does that say about your biases?
Yes, I am very much biased in favor of the the middle eastern state that has a democratic constitution, doesn't kill gays and offers the highest level of equal opportunities for all their citizens, no matter their gender or religion. I don't like many of their current policies, but the race between Mullahs, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis etc. on one side and Israel on the other side... it's not even close. It's a couple of centuries between them.
> Why are you assuming that Iran wants to destroy Israel? Everything I’ve actually seen is the complete opposite: it’s Israel that clearly wants to destroy Israel.
Even by your own logic, do you believe that having a country threaten your existence is not reason enough to want them destroyed?
This whole “threaten your existence” is a clutch in your argument. It smells like “but Hamas…” and tries to create a precondition of condemnation of one side which also happens to be the victim.
It's tricky. Arming a country or group than then launches an attack, or uses those weapons in a war, doesn't make you a participant in that conflict. This is why Europe and the US can supply weapons to Ukraine without being participants in a conflict with Russia.
However Iran has the stated intention of destroying the state of Israel, and actively incites it's proxies to attack Israel, and this could be seen as a valid justification for taking action. Not a lawyer though.
With a half-life between 700 million years (for U-235) and 4 billion years (for U-238). And it's dense stuff that will immediately settle on the ground. You're not going to detect it from afar.
The main problem is the Iranian regime's view that it is their religious duty to destroy the state of Israel. This is why they supply weapons to Hamas, Hizbullah, the Houthis, and anyone who will attack Israel, and incite them to do so.
They will not stop, and they can't be negotiated with on this, again because they see it as a religious duty.
i think this line of reasoning is just falling for both iran's and america's propaganda
they use theology for political mandate and to further their goals. their goals are fundamentally opposed to israel's existence and go against america's interests in the region but they are geopolitical goals wrapped in theological wrapping paper, not mad ravings. no more than israel's "promised land" and america's "christian duty" are
this dehumanization is only going to lead to US boots on the ground and iran becoming an even worse vietnam/afghanistan. the US needs to bring iran down like the soviets were brought down; from the inside. this invading and sabre rattling hasnt worked before and wont work now
Ok if this is a problem, then surely the ministers in the Israeli government are equally problematic given that they want to annex Gaza and the West Bank?
If you disagree can you help me understand the difference between these issues?
I get this a lot from a guy I do trust, and his old man is an Iranian immigrant, but I also recognize my sources are very biased against the regime.
Is there any good reporting out there or sentiment analysis that can show this? Or is it all word of mouth on the Internet? It's okay if there is nothing, but I'd feel a lot better if there was something substantial to back this up too.
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