The Off Topic Topic

[DGuller]

Hey, all I did was make a rather un-inflammatory post commemorating May 15th.

Uh huh.  You knew damn well what you were trying to accomplish with that, and not being inflammatory was not part of it.

[Razgovory]

It's a shame captain Mihaili friend didn't get to live in the just state of Palestine, rather then Israel.

EDIT: don't randomly post torture/ death pics to score internet points.

[CountDeMoney]

Knock it off, Raz.

Capetan Mihali is the winner of the "2011 Rachel Corrie Golden Bulldozer Award for Protest and Landscape Excellence", you know.

[The Minsky Moment]

  Er, they want the country they had

The Ottoman Empire?

[Malthus]

Jews are an overwhelming majority of the population in 2016; but they weren't in 19487.  And yet you claim that the massive importation of Jews (at times, accomplished at considerable expense to the Israeli state and its backers) was not the colonization of Palestine because there are no "outposts" and the "settlers" don't necessarily have a home state (never mind all the Brooklynite-Israelis builiding IDF-defended compounds in the West Bank who could have perfectly well stayed in East Williamsburg).  Why should the process of imperialism -- of displacing an existing population and monopolizing their resources -- be restricted to the classical EUII examples?  Zionism is an imperialist project, and its founders had no shame in admitting that.

Because otherwise the word is tortured into meaninglessness. Migrants, immigrants, invaders and others who move around are not all "colonialists", and it is silly to insist that they are.

"They want their own country."  Er, they want the country they had and in which they had co-existed with Jews (as well as Armenians, Greeks, and others) for a long time before the Zionist movement intensified its promotion of aliyah, especially after the British took control of the region in the interwar period. 

I wasn't aware of any such country ever actually existing. Prior to the Brits winning WW1, from what I understand, the whole area belonged to the Ottoman Turkish Empire. I myself would not wish to hold the Turks up as a grand example of co-existence with Armenians and Greeks!  Wasn't there a massacre or two involving those ... ?

As for Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, do you really think they get treated like Jews in what should supposedly be their own country?  When an Arab man calling himself "Daniel" during a one-night stand with a Jewish woman merits an 18 month prison sentence for 'rape by deception'?  I had an "Arab Israeli" friend in college and he tended to just stick it out in the States over long breaks, since it was such a crap shoot as to what would happen to him crossing back into "his" country.

And you completely mystify the fact that members of the same family live within and without Israel -- remember, Israel moved the borders, they didn't.  So an easy trip from Haifa to Ramallah to visit your sister can turn into a protracted, humiliating affair waiting to pass through checkpoints where an unexplained denial might be the result of your hours of standing on line and getting publicly searched and interrogated.

Crossing international borders sucks, even between the US and Canada; and unlike the case in Israel, Canadians rarely travel to the US to randomly kill people there (or Americans travel to Canada for that purpose). Not sure why my heart should bleed about that situation, or why some families experiencing nasty border wait times means the whole country should be gotten rid of.

Sure other countries were founded on ethnic principle, and sure other regions were imperialistically subjugated; but, e.g., North America's experience with its indigenous people is generally considered an object lesson in immorality and greed, not something to learn from and improve upon in 2016.

Sure, and I suppose it would be grand - in theory - if the current population of the US decided to hand back the country to the Natives and departed back for Europe and Africa. But it is unlikely to happen and would - in practice - be rather bad.

But that's besides the point: the issue is why so rabid about this one case  - to the point of, apparently, contrasting Turkish benevolence with Israeli harshness!  No other country apparently gets de-legitimized, even though most are as bad if not worse offenders. You rarely hear how horrible India is, even though partition killed more people by several orders of magnitude than the Israeli-Palestinian business (indeed, as many died in Partition as lived in what is now Israel in exactly the same time period - '48-'49).

[Capetan Mihali]

Hey, all I did was make a rather un-inflammatory post commemorating May 15th.

Uh huh.  You knew damn well what you were trying to accomplish with that, and not being inflammatory was not part of it.

Only on Languish does a mournful post observing a day commemorating a people's catastrophe and exile count as trolling per se.

[CountDeMoney]

Only on Languish does a mournful post observing a day commemorating a people's catastrophe and exile count as trolling per se.

Now, now...it's just not a holiday or commemorative date without a good ol' Languish troll.  After all, think of all the orange the Languish Niggerhater Brigade breaks out every St. Patrick's Day.  And Christmas?  Martinus goes straight into anti-Catholic tachycardia. 

[Capetan Mihali]

As it were, I had been spending some time with an elderly Palestinian-American whose house was occupied and whose family fled to Jordan during the naqba ("catastrophe") of 1947/48.  So it was on my mind (it was on NPR and such, you know -- it's not a meaningless date) and I thought I'd give the topic a single post, especially given the near-total absence of sympathy for Palestine (beyond the tired bromides of "Of course Netanyahu's going too far for my taste").

Not that it's my duty to explain why I post something, but I do kind of resent the accusation that I was trying to stir shit up just posting anything having to do with Palestine.  That says more about your bad consciences then it does anything about me.

It's depressing to see so many smart people using their intellect to reason their way into a justification for accepting as necessity the vividly and profoundly inhumane behavior of Israel towards the Palestinians. 

I don't know whether it results from an identification with Zionism as a secular religion, or just a general hatred of all Arabs (Muslim and Christian alike, I guess, given the confessional variety of Palestinians), or an unshakable belief that anything "Western" must be superior and therefore defended to the end with no regard for how it got that way or how many civilians it kills (although most Western countries don't have something equivalent to the Chief Rabbinate dictating their family law...), or if it's something else entirely.  But it's sad all the same.

[DGuller]

Hey, all I did was make a rather un-inflammatory post commemorating May 15th.

Uh huh.  You knew damn well what you were trying to accomplish with that, and not being inflammatory was not part of it.

Only on Languish does a mournful post observing a day commemorating a people's catastrophe and exile count as trolling per se.

Yeah, mournful my ass, complete with the maps and all.  Yes, we on Languish are not easily fooled.

[CountDeMoney]

Says the anti-semite cossack slut.

[Zanza]

To join in the posting of Middle-Eastern multi-colored maps, today is the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot agreement.


Zones of French (blue), British (red) and Russian (green) influence and control

EDIT: I actually didn't know that the Russians were supposed to get a piece of Turkey as well. 

[DGuller]

Says the anti-semite cossack slut.

It's anti-Zionist. 

[Capetan Mihali]

Yeah, mournful my ass, complete with the maps and all.  Yes, we on Languish are not easily fooled.

A map showing the extent of the catastrophe the Arab population of Palestine underwent and continues to undergo is inflammatory?  You know, just fuck you and your ass and your razor-sharp Languish brigade.  Really.

[garbon]

Not HOTT.

[CountDeMoney]

It's a shame LeftBankerClanker and Zoupa and Zoupa don't post here anymore;  they would bring equilibrium to the discussion.

Although I think CM discounts the number of European posters here that are distinctly in the "pro-Palestinian neutrality" category.