@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:
Both Italy and Hungary refused to hand over their Jewish citizens to the Nazis. When the fascist government in Italy collapsed, many Italians made serious efforts to hide Italian Jews from the Germans. Sure, antisemitism was wide-spread in Europe, but that doesn't mean that all Europeans went along with the extermination attempt.
Not many people, it seemss , have the same concern for the Palestinians. The lies about history which are told in an attempt to suggest that Palestine and the Palestinians are false constructs are just incredible. For as long as the Palestinians can be portrayed as an oppressed people, anti-Israeli propagandists have a ready-made line of propaganda to use against the state of Israel. Is does appear, though, that there is a growing recognition in the West of the essential injustice of the treatment of the Palestinians.
Would I be correct to say that you do realize that those "serious efforts to hide Italian Jews from the Germans" basically came to naught, and Italian Jews died like Polish Jews, etc.? So, while Mussolini was not racist against Jews, the point is that upon the arrival of the Nazis, the Italians must have been cowed by the Nazi brutality to hand over most Jews. But, you pick a poor example of philo-Semitism, since at the time of Constatine making Christianity an acceptable religion, one-fourth of Rome was one big Jewish neighborhood. So, telling anyone that Jews and Italians can get along is old news. Tell me better about the Poles that taunted Jews for centuries that one day they will be living in the homes of Jews. Naturally, as good Catholics, the Poles would not do what the Nazis (or Russian peasants) did, but when the Nazis took the Polish Jews away, let's not believe that many Poles were nothing less than elated.
The Palestineans had no complaints under the Ottoman Empire, I thought. Sort of like African American New Yorkers accepting the position of David Dinkins, but not happy with the position of Rudy Giuliani. So, Jews not being Muslims (duh!), and not even being Arab in the early Zionist movement, there was just too much alienation for any real relationship. It's just a turf war. No different, in my opinion, from any other turf war as depicted in The Gangs of New York. The difference is that the Anglo-Saxon gangs died, since their community left en masse, and the Irish gangs died, since the Irish were upwardly mobile. So, does anyone see the Palestineans leaving, or becoming upwardly mobile? The turf war will likely go on, until their is urban renewal, like Turtle Bay, or Lincoln Center. That takes money, and the Arab countries would rather have the Palestineans be a thorn in the side of Israel.
By the way, when Northern Ireland had The Troubles, did Irish American Catholics lament for the Protestants in Belfast? Or, did they take an ethnocentric position?
