taffimai | (no subject)

Current Mood: confused

(no subject)

Two questions from the Dyke March:

1) Why does being a lesbian have to come with a built-in political agenda? Just because I like girls I need to be an anti-Capitalist vegan? Why?
2) Why has the left so embraced the Palestinian side of the Israel/Palestine conflict? Do they not understand that Israel was created in an attempt to create a place of refuge for a group that had just barely survived attempted genocide? Do they not understand that they are siding with a group that systematically uses acts of terror to advance their cause? Can they not understand that no, Israel isn't perfect but that this isn't a black and white issue?

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Israel was conquered out from under British rule, though. It's not like it was a Palestinian country before we got there.

You know, I hate to ask, but who do you think was living there at the time?

I'm very well aware that the area was at the time a British Protectorate - my father in law was serving in the area when the Zionist extremists blew up the King David hotel and, oddly, he's never been a fan of the state of Israel since.

Given that the kingdom of Israel, ie a self governing Jewish state, had not existed since Roman times, and given that the refugees from that were decanted in on top of the indigenous population were the citizens of virtually every European nation from Portugal to the Crimea, it amazes me that anyone could ever have thought it would work.

Of course, fifty years on, the situation is not the same as it was then. The displaced population gradually dies or moves on, I suppose carrying with it the same memories that the Eastern European Jews must once have had, of a homeland they were dispossessed from. Meanwhile the incomers grow old and die, and their burials claim the soil, and the new generation grows up knowing no other home.

People don't forget - right or wrong - they carry their memories down the bloodlines.You can slap a lid on it, like Tito did in Yugoslavia, but people don't forget, and once the lid comes off, it's back to the fighting worse than it was before.

Or that's how it appears to me anyway

You know, it's amazing how little affection the Eastern European Jews I know have for their "homelands." Might have something to do with the hatred, the progroms, the ghettos, and let's not forget the camps. Was conquering Israel a "nice" thing? No, of course not. I never said it was. But considering the need for a place of refuge in the face of repeated attempted genocides it was a matter of survival and I absolutely support it.

My point above: There was no such thing as a self-governing Palestinian state before, so this hasn't changed because of the creation of the state of Israel.

There was no such thing as a self-governing Palestinian state before

There was no such thing as a self governing United States of America before the War of Independence. Did this make it right when the Superpowers of the day diced the country up between them?

You know, it's amazing how little affection the Eastern European Jews I know have for their "homelands."

I worded that badly. I meant that the Eastern European Jews must once - maybe 50 generations back or more - have come from the middle east. They didn't arise by prostelytisation, they're not converts, so if you go back far enough their ancestors must once have known Judea.

I don't believe Eastern European Jews anywhere (even Manchester) have much of a hankering for their old places of residence. We have a TV programme where well known people research their ancestry, and they've done a couple of people whose family fled from that area. In both cases, it was virtually never talked about in the family. Too many bad memories.

That was me...system didn't log me on.

Your knowledge of history is sorely lacking.

The WORD Palestinian didn't even exist until Arafat coined it in order to incite bloodshed. Were there people living in the place we now call Israel? Yes. Were they self-governing? No. Did they have the right to vote? No. Were they encouraged to stay and assist in building the land for the betterment of all? Yes. Did they choose to do that? No. Instead, they declared war on Israel and ALL JEWS the very minute the state left British rule.

So you know. I have a hard time with liberal guilt and manipulated history when it's used to support people whose entire agenda is to kill everyone like me. Which is pretty much why I don't give a flying fart what you or your father in law think of Israel.

Not to mention the part where they were each offered half of the country and the Jews said yes and the Arabs said no.

Of course they said no. They WANT US ALL DEAD. But that isn't anti-semitic!

I hate people today.

As I believe it was Douglas Adams who once postulated "The last thing you need is a sense of perspective."

I'm not in favour of killing anyone, but really, the area now occupied by the modern state of Israel has a long history between the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 and the start of the British Protectorate, and the fact that it was under an imposed external governance at the time really does not make it all go away. After all, I believe the citizens of what is now the United States were in that position once, but were considerably opposed to the idea that their Lords and Masters (and King George III) had the right to dictate their fate.

Having said all that, the modern state of Israel isn't going to go away any time soon, and calls for its removal from the Earth really are not any kind of appropriate response.

Yea. Your first mistake was wandering into a thread where a Jewish person said she felt lambasted by outsiders talking at her about why her perspective on Eretz Yisroel was wrong- and then proceeding to tell her all about *why she continued to be wrong*.

This post was in no way advertised as a place for education of the Jew-history-impaired, nor was it an invitation for debate.

"calls for its removal from the Earth really are not any kind of appropriate response."

But my, how nice of you to be so understanding with regards to the proposed mass genocide of my people!

If Taffy asks me to leave, I'll go.

I'll see your proposed mass genocide (is there such a thing as individual genocide?) and raise you mine. My family are Irish Catholics from Limerick City. The Famine (not initially the fault of the English, although they could have prevented the enormous death toll) completely depopulated the area - a million people died in Ireland, a million and a half left their homeland never to return.

Of course, trading genocide stories is tasteless. All it proves is that no-one has a monopoly on suffering. More to the point, during the period that Ireland was, like the area now occupied by modern Israel, ruled by the British, who from 1610 systematically replaced the indigenous Catholic population with Protestant immigrants.

That didn't work too well either, and I grew up in London at constant risk of being blown up by what was technically 'my own side'. I don't know if that makes it worse or better, but it made it very difficult.

So you see I entirely sympathise with the post war Jews looking for a safe haven, and I don't see the modern state of Israel as "the villain" - even though from my perspective I can't see the previous population as "the villain" either. As with the Protestants and the Catholics in Ireland, a long history has brought them to this point, and the only way forward is to find some way to stop trying to deny each other's existence and find some way to live together.

And that's something I've lived through in my lifetime.

Oh, man, you are NOT going to play the "my persecution beats yours" game for realz are you?

I declare Bingo.

Taff? (Who btw is far too nice to tell you to go away) I am done.

House rejects your call of Bingo!, declares your card incorrectly stamped.

The whole point is I am *not* trying to play the "my persecution beats yours" game. It's tasteless for one thing, and pointless for another.

My point was that while the position of modern Israel is often regarded as unique, with a unique set of factors that no-one else can understand, there are actually many examples in history where circumstance has given rise to an incoming group which is or becomes more powerful than the indigenous group, thereby creating the grounds for conflict.

I believe in the US the Catholic Irish were seen largely as the victims of oppression by the Unionists and the British. In the UK, they were largely seen as the cause of the problem, and were the group expected to make concessions. The feeling was very much that when Ireland was partitioned in 1922 they should have either moved south or resigned themselves to Unionist rule. The Catholic government of Eire was seen as stubborn and inflammatory in insisting in it's constitution that Eire consisted of all 32 counties.

Does this sound familiar?

I feel a certain way about Ireland, which is nothing to do with it as a political entity, having a self-governing identity etc, and everything to do with it being the ancestral homeland. From listening to many Israelis and non-Israeli Jews speak, it seems to me that they feel the same way.

So I can see that both an incoming population and an indigenous one can both have the same or similar feelings for a location. Which makes it hard for me to 'take sides'.

History is history, and sometimes all you can do is put the history to one side and say 'well, here we all are now, what do we do next'.

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