Can you look at this map and say Israel does not systemically appropriate land?

@Foofie,

I agree with you in all of that. We have today (as always) the overlay of multiple historical issues and conflicts operating simultaneously in one area, and doing so in the case of the Middle East, with particular peversity.

Most prominently we are dealing with (1) the awakening of the Moslem world to the modern age and the long overdue transformation to tolerant secular government; (2) residues of and reactions to European colonialism and imperialism, from Pakistan and Persia to Morrocco; and (3) The "Jewish Problem as you called it , or more particularly the mass movement of Europeran Jews to Palestine/Israel following the ravages of WWII. That's a pretty tough mix.

In such a situation it's not at all difficult to find parties/people/nations to balme for the various difficulties that appear. However, it is worth remembering that some past events that are traceable to present problems were often done with better motives than are assumed now.

I think the important point here is to recognize that all of these issues are indeed inseparably involved in what we blithely call the "Israel/Palestinian problem, and that no productive discussion can be had if these factors are excluded. Unfortunately exclusion is usually the case.

It took the UK and the Irish almost 300 years to work out a moderately peaceful and just solution to the Ulster Plantation in the early 18th century. That was an overlay what was in effect colonialism, overlaid with religious conflict and a continuing national uprising. In comparison to the Middle east, that appears to have been a relatively simple problem.

Everybody and every nation makes mistakes which are easily noted in retrospect, but usually undetected in prospect. That's human history.

1 Reply

@McTag,

Unfortunately we have a bunch of idiot U S politicians who are helping Israel build those ovens.

1 Reply

@RABEL222,

If you seriously believe that, you are mentally ill .

1 Reply

@Ionus,

He doesn't believe that, but there's a lot of US ordnance going off bang in the Middle East right now.

0 Replies

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

...Most prominently we are dealing with (1) the awakening of the Moslem world to the modern age and the long overdue transformation to tolerant secular government; (2) residues of and reactions to European colonialism and imperialism, from Pakistan and Persia to Morrocco; and (3) The "Jewish Problem as you called it , or more particularly the mass movement of Europeran Jews to Palestine/Israel following the ravages of WWII. That's a pretty tough mix...

I didn't name it a "Jewish Problem." The Nazis named the problem of what to do with German Jews the "Jewish Problem." The result was ultimately the "Final Solution."

In more than one book I've read that the explanation, by older native Germans, why the eradication of German Jewry was necessary (not saying that genocide was initially the solution) went something like this: "The Jews owned everything, the factories, the stores. They were the doctors, the professionals. IT COULD JUST NOT GO ON LIKE THAT."

So, with that being the mindset of many a German, that was an adult prior to WWII, any Jewish survivors knew there was no going back to most countries that had been part of the Anschluss. And today, the German Jewish community is made up of ex-Soviet Jews that might feel they can live more comfortably in Germany. Germans likely don't have a problem with them, since the competition with the German Jewish community, that had 500 years or more to become so successful in Germany, was NOT A THREAT ANYMORE to Gentile Germans that looked upon Jews as OUTSIDERS AND INTERLOPERS.

You seem to ignore the existential reality that WWII put into the minds of Jews. That is what I believe makes the Arab/Israeli conflict currently unsolvable, since Israelis might be thinking they are only two generations away from the big European Jew Pogrom (remember how many non-Germans were happy to help the occupying Nazis to find Jews).

And, I do not think that any analogies to the British/Irish conflict can be made with intellectual honesty, since Jews in Europe were an economic threat to the ex-peasant in a modern society. The Irish were not a threat to anyone. They were just exploited by a colonial power that had the ability to inculcate a superiority complex, and then "act out" (it's the "acting out" that is immoral, not the "superiority complex").

4 Replies

@Foofie,

Foofie wrote:

I didn't name it a "Jewish Problem." The Nazis named the problem of what to do with German Jews the "Jewish Problem." The result was ultimately the "Final Solution."

The Nazis named it "Judenfrage" (Jewish question). Hitler termed it "the final solution of the Jewish question" (die Endlösung der Judenfrage).

1 Reply

@Foofie,

Foofie wrote:

And today, the German Jewish community is made up of ex-Soviet Jews that might feel they can live more comfortably in Germany.

Well, perhaps you know it better. Our friend, who had been a member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany thinks differently: about 100,000 German Jews are organised there, including some Israeli expatriates and some more from the former Soviet Union. Up to 200,000 aren't organised at all.

1 Reply

@Foofie,

Quote:

You seem to ignore the existential reality that WWII put into the minds of Jews. That is what I believe makes the Arab/Israeli conflict currently unsolvable, since Israelis might be thinking they are only two generations away from the big European Jew Pogrom (remember how many non-Germans were happy to help the occupying Nazis to find Jews).

Well, I am hopeful that a younger and newer generation of Jews will be able to look at the Palestine/Israel problem more objectively. It would just be better for both sides if both sides were equal. People under oppression are naturally going to be fighting oppression. I mean it ain't rocket science as they say and maybe the younger generation who are farther away from the horrors of the Holocaust will be able to reason with reasonable Palestinians. I am not talking of Hamas who only have made the situation worse all these years but Palestinians such as those who wanted the UN to recognize Palestine as a state.

2 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Foofie wrote:
I didn't name it a "Jewish Problem." The Nazis named the problem of what to do with German Jews the "Jewish Problem." The result was ultimately the "Final Solution."
The Nazis named it "Judenfrage" (Jewish question). Hitler termed it "the final solution of the Jewish question" (die Endlösung der Judenfrage).

Perhaps, something was lost in translation by an author? But, "question" is so much a subtler way to precede a genocide than "problem." It gives hope to the victims, sort of like "arbeit macht frei."

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Foofie wrote:
And today, the German Jewish community is made up of ex-Soviet Jews that might feel they can live more comfortably in Germany.
Well, perhaps you know it better. Our friend, who had been a member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany thinks differently: about 100,000 German Jews are organised there, including some Israeli expatriates and some more from the former Soviet Union. Up to 200,000 aren't organised at all.

To be scientific, all Germans might want to take a DNA test. Or, using statistical extrapolation, only a random sampling from around the country.

So, who would have a greater chance of having a distant Jewish ancestor? Lutherans or Catholics?

1 Reply

@Foofie,

Foofie wrote:

You seem to ignore the existential reality that WWII put into the minds of Jews. That is what I believe makes the Arab/Israeli conflict currently unsolvable, since Israelis might be thinking they are only two generations away from the big European Jew Pogrom (remember how many non-Germans were happy to help the occupying Nazis to find Jews).

I don't ignore it at all. We have addressed this matter many times on other threads. It was the ravages of WWII, not a Zionist conspiracy, that caused the mass migration of European Jews to Palestine and which made the Zionist dream appear (quite understandably) necessary to them.

Foofie wrote:

And, I do not think that any analogies to the British/Irish conflict can be made with intellectual honesty, since Jews in Europe were an economic threat to the ex-peasant in a modern society. The Irish were not a threat to anyone. They were just exploited by a colonial power that had the ability to inculcate a superiority complex, and then "act out" (it's the "acting out" that is immoral, not the "superiority complex").

Now that pisses me off. The Irish were indeed an economic threat to the English. That's why they took their property and made educating them illegal. The German, Irish, Jewish, Italian and Polish immigrants who flooded into this country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were all from the rural & urban underclasses of their former societies and they all did about equally well here, following largely the same pattern of economic & social ascent. The only prominent difference among them was that the Italians were much more proficient in managing criminal enterprises than the others, though the Irish and the Jews tried very hard to equal them.

[/quote]

1 Reply

@revelette2,

revelette2 wrote:

Quote:
You seem to ignore the existential reality that WWII put into the minds of Jews. That is what I believe makes the Arab/Israeli conflict currently unsolvable, since Israelis might be thinking they are only two generations away from the big European Jew Pogrom (remember how many non-Germans were happy to help the occupying Nazis to find Jews).

Well, I am hopeful that a younger and newer generation of Jews will be able to look at the Palestine/Israel problem more objectively. It would just be better for both sides if both sides were equal. People under oppression are naturally going to be fighting oppression. I mean it ain't rocket science as they say and maybe the younger generation who are farther away from the horrors of the Holocaust will be able to reason with reasonable Palestinians. I am not talking of Hamas who only have made the situation worse all these years but Palestinians such as those who wanted the UN to recognize Palestine as a state.

Well, optimism might be a false hope, since that might be akin to saying that current Americans might just want to go back to becoming British citizens.

Jews have the odd experience of being a minority for most of Judaism's existence. There is no desire to convert the masses. So, it remains in perpetuity as two opposing populations.

1 Reply

@Foofie,

Foofie wrote:

Perhaps, something was lost in translation by an author? But, "question" is so much a subtler way to precede a genocide than "problem." It gives hope to the victims, sort of like "arbeit macht frei."

I don't get what you want to say. I know German relatively good. And I can read it: it definitely is "Judenfrage".

0 Replies

@Foofie,

I don't get why you want all Germans to take a DNA-test - I didn't mention anything about close or distant Jewish ancestors nor about Lutherans (why did you leave out the Protestants and Evangelicals, who are the majority?) or Catholics.

2 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Here's something which might interest many folks here. I'm reading a book by Clive James (an Australian author living here in UK) entitled Cultural Amnesia.
It is a collection of separate essays. In the very first of those, he writes movingly and with great insight and sensitivity about the Jewish diaspora forced under extreme circumstances from Austria and Germany in the 1930s. The flight of intellectuals; and indeed of the many positives which eventually flowed from that.
I was impressed by his insights, and as always, by his scholarship. You might like to seek it out, if not already seen.

0 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

I don't get why you want all Germans to take a DNA-test - I didn't mention anything about close or distant Jewish ancestors nor about Lutherans (why did you leave out the Protestants and Evangelicals, who are the majority?) or Catholics.

I never said that I want Germans to take a DNA test. I said they might want to, to be more scientific about your numbers regarding Jews in Germany today, since many Germans might find out that whatever makes a Jew a Jew is shared by the Gentile German population. In other words, being a German is being a German. Like being an American is being a American. Religion is another criterion of one's identity, but it is not one's nationality, at least in the U.S.A.

0 Replies

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Now that pisses me off. The Irish were indeed an economic threat to the English. That's why they took their property and made educating them illegal. The German, Irish, Jewish, Italian and Polish immigrants who flooded into this country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were all from the rural & urban underclasses of their former societies and they all did about equally well here, following largely the same pattern of economic & social ascent. The only prominent difference among them was that the Italians were much more proficient in managing criminal enterprises than the others, though the Irish and the Jews tried very hard to equal them.

The Irish were not a threat, as long as they, and their land, were subjugated. The German Jews were an economic threat in the early 20th century, since they had been allowed to be educated, and participate in the economy. The resentment from many Germans was based on the success of the German Jew in the German society. There was no resentment towards the Irish in Ireland. They were just held in contempt, as the British were contemptuous of their colonial populations.

The poor Jews from Eastern Europe that came in the late 19th century were just held in contempt as Jews, in the anti-Semitic populations they left. The German Jews that came here earlier, after the Revolution of 1848, many were middle class, as were the Christian Germans that also came to the U.S. at that time.

Lastly, I would have appreciated if you started your reply above without the "Now that pisses me off." A little panache of, "Now you're getting my Irish up!" would have been so much more nostalgic.

Lastly, the only reason that the Italians were more successful at criminal enterprises, as I've read in sociology texts, is that they made their criminality a family business, while Jews and Irish were ashamed of what they were doing, and hid it from the family, if they could.

1 Reply

@Foofie,

Jewish 48'ers in America gives an interesting (and different opinion to Foofie's) about the German Jws who emigrated to the USA after 1848.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Jewish 48'ers in America gives an interesting (and different opinion to Foofie's) about the German Jws who emigrated to the USA after 1848.

Many of the Eastern European Jews were minimally educated, with possibly vocational knowledge in a trade. The earlier German Jews were oftentimes educated, so they could succeed in the U.S.

By the time the Eastern European Jews started arriving in NYC, after 1880, the German Jews had already bought the garment trade factories from the previous American Protestant owners, and solicited the newly arriving Eastern European Jews to work in the factories (aka, sweatshops).

I have read that a percentage of the mid-19th century German Jews married out within two generations. Today one might find it hard to find their decendants, since some people consider having a Jewish ancestor a secret to be well kept.

If you are not aware, in the 20th century, U.S. Jews of Eastern European descent, and Jews of German descent were not exactly always the closest of associates. Nor did the Sephardic Jews really mix well with Ashkenazim. I myself, prefer Jews of Czarist ByloRussian descent (meaning their families had no experience under Communism), and I give bonus points for family having hailed from Minsk. Obviously, I'm not the most worldly of people.

1 Reply

@Foofie,

Well when I was a kid in Detroit we all knew the German and Russian/Polish Jews didn't get on very well, though we didn't know why. The former had generally been here longer, were more prosperous, and often didn't speak Yiddish. I did attend Hebrew Day school at the (largely German) local JCC under the pseudonym of Alan Weiss (30 minutes memorizing text in an incomprehensible language wasn't all that different from an altar boy's Latin drills). After class we could play basketball. Previously me and my Jewish pals played ball at the CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) gym, but it was closed for repairs. I was about 12 then, but it all ended when my mother found the mezuzah I put on before I went in..

1 Reply

Can you look at this map and say Israel does not systemically appropriate land?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know