Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Josquius]

However, the real narrative is also that by all evidence the vast majority of Arabs who fled were fleeing war, not fleeing at the point of an Israeli gun. They left of their own volition. There is also documented evidence Arab leaders in the region even sent out communications encouraging this flight--with the promise that "when we shortly destroy Israel, we'll have either your original homes, or even better land we take from the dead Jews to give you."

Always an iffy part of ethnic cleansing this. You see it thrown up around many examples.
"Oh we only killed a few hundred. The rest simply chose entirely of their free will to run away from our rampaging armies".
See for instance Azerbaijan's recent conquest.

The real narrative has to address the fact that Jews were an ancient people in the Middle East with longstanding rights of abode in the Ottoman Empire, and rights of property ownership--which they exercised by legally buying land in modern day Israel.

Jews have a long history living in the middle east. They've basically always been there.
But many of the incomers with Israel absolutely don't have historic links with the region beyond the vaguest distant ancestor 2 millennia ago level.
Also true that many of these foreign Jews bought some land legally- but then this is the case with a lot of colonialism. The Europeans don't just march into Africa, plant their flag, and shout "Mine!".  They come to some agreement with some local group or other.
Its a nuanced issue, but the nuance blows both ways.

The real narrative has to address that while there were bad guys on the Jewish side, the Jewish state actually reigned in their worst bad guys very early on. It also has to acknowledge, as I mentioned, that a good % of the Arabs who left of their own free will, did so expecting incoming Arab armies to kill all the Jews so they could later steal their land.

[/quote]
I'm really not sure on this one. If we take it as read that the Arab refugees all believe in this....
"Yeah the Nazis killed a tonne of Poles but do you know how horrible those Poles were and what they would have done if they'd been the ones invading Germany?"

The real narrative also has to address the reality, the Jewish state responded to the Jewish refugee crisis by giving Jews homes. The Arab states responded to the Arab refugee crisis--which some of these very Arab leaders helped cause by telling Arabs to leave Palestine, by making those Arab refugees permanently stateless "unpersons", with no reasonable prospects for the future. (Egypt was always careful for example to issue Gazans, when it ruled Gaza, identity documents that made clear these are not Egyptians, they are non-citizen Gazans.)

Surely the shitty treatment Palestinians got from Arab states increases sympathy for them?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Always an iffy part of ethnic cleansing this. You see it thrown up around many examples.
"Oh we only killed a few hundred. The rest simply chose entirely of their free will to run away from our rampaging armies".
See for instance Azerbaijan's recent conquest.

Sure, but at the same time you can't just simply ascribe every person who ever flees war as a "victim of ethnic cleansing." We also know, as a matter of record, leadership of the Arab invasion force even told their own people to leave. It isn't nearly as clear cut as say, the Turkish expulsion of Armenians--and even the example you cite in Azerbaijan is pretty complex. Internationally Nagorno-Karabakh has been recognized as Azerbaijani territory ever since the USSR collapsed. The whole premise of that trouble appeared to be "well, the Armenians there want to live in an ethnostate and shouldn't have to be part of Azerbaijan", which was backed by Armenian force of arms back when Russia was more interventionist in the region.

And I don't see any evidence that Azerbaijan's plans were "kill every Armenian", in fact they seemed to be saying they could continue to live there as long as they accepted the government in Baku had sovereignty of the region--which not for nothing, is pretty standard expectation for territory inside your de jure borders.

The fact most of the Armenians have chosen to leave instead of accept being Azerbaijani citizens doesn't, IMO, constitute ethnic cleansing.

[viper37]

However, the real narrative is also that by all evidence the vast majority of Arabs who fled were fleeing war, not fleeing at the point of an Israeli gun. They left of their own volition. There is also documented evidence Arab leaders in the region even sent out communications encouraging this flight--with the promise that "when we shortly destroy Israel, we'll have either your original homes, or even better land we take from the dead Jews to give you."

False narrative sent by Israel.
Show me that documentation encouraging this flight.


The plan to expel the Palestinians was deliberate:
During the "long seminar", a meeting of Ben-Gurion with his chief advisors in January 1948, the main point was that it was desirable to "transfer" as many Arabs as possible out of Jewish territory, and the discussion focussed mainly on the implementation.^[13]: 63 The experience gained in a number of attacks in February 1948, notably those on Qisarya and Sa'sa', was used in the development of a plan detailing how enemy population centers should be handled.^[13]: 82 According to Pappé, plan Dalet was the master plan for the expulsion of the Palestinians.^[13]: 82 However, according to Gelber, Plan Dalet instructions were: In case of resistance, the population of conquered villages was to be expelled outside the borders of the Jewish state. If no resistance was met, the residents could stay put, under military rule.<sup>[45]


About the "voluntary part"
Overall, Morris concludes that during this period the "Arab evacuees from the towns and villages left largely because of Jewish—Haganah, IZL or LHI—attacks or fear of impending attack" but that only "an extremely small, almost insignificant number of the refugees during this early period left because of Haganah or IZL or LHI expulsion orders or forceful 'advice' to that effect."[19]: 138, 139 

And there is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre
The village put up stiffer resistance than the Jewish militias had expected and they suffered casualties, but it fell after house-to-house fighting. Some of the Palestinian Arab villagers were killed in the course of the battle, while others were massacred by the Jewish militias while trying to flee or surrender. A number of Palestinian Arab prisoners were executed, some after being paraded in West Jerusalem, where they were jeered, spat at, stoned, looted, and eventually murdered.[1][5][6] In addition to the killing and widespread looting, there may have been cases of mutilation and rape.

Oh, dear, does not that seem familiar?  How can it be?  Both groups committing atrocities without punition and being revered for it?  What do you know.  No one is a saint.  Shocker.
And here I thought the story was of valliant Jewish combattants fighting hordes of Arab Orcs determined to exterminate them.  What if history was just a tad more complicated than that?  Could it be?  Could it be more complicated than your average Hollywood fantasy movie?  I guess not.

One more bit:
News of the killings sparked terror among Palestinians across the country, frightening them to flee their homes in the face of Jewish troop advances and it strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to intervene, which they did five weeks later.[4] Four days after the Deir Yassin massacre, on April 13, a reprisal attack on the Hadassah medical convoy in Jerusalem ended in a massacre killing 78 Jews, most of whom were the medical staff.[10][11] Archival material in Israeli military deposits documenting the massacre remain classified

Has it happens, this massacre prompted other Palestinians to flee to avoid the same fate.  this is what you call "leaving under their own volition".  And the massacre was exploited for political purpose on all sides.

And here we have what a typical surrender would look like:
 Next, the Haganah defeated local militia in Tiberias. On 21–22 April in Haifa, after the Haganah waged a day-and-a-half battle including psychological warfare, the Jewish National Committee was unable to offer the Palestinian council assurance that an unconditional surrender would proceed without incident. Finally, Irgun under Menachim Begin fired mortars on the infrastructure in Jaffa. Combined with the fear inspired by Deir Yassin, each of these military actions resulted in panicked Palestinian evacuations.[47][48][49]

No surrender under Begin.


And about your Arab leaders communications to leave (which are bollocks):
Haifa
Palestinians fled the city of Haifa en masse, in one of the most notable flights of this stage. Historian Efraim Karsh writes that not only had half of the Arab community in Haifa community fled the city before the final battle was joined in late April 1948, but another 5,000–15,000 left apparently voluntarily during the fighting while the rest, some 15,000–25,000, were ordered to leave, as was initially claimed by an Israeli source, on the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee.[citation needed]
Karsh concludes that there was no Jewish grand design to force this departure, and that in fact the Haifa Jewish leadership tried to convince some Arabs to stay, to no avail.[51][52] Walid Khalidi disputes this account, saying that two independent studies, which analysed CIA and BBC intercepts of radio broadcasts from the region, concluded that no orders or instructions were given by the Arab Higher Committee.[53]
According to Morris, "The Haganah mortar attacks of 21–22 April [on Haifa] were primarily designed to break Arab morale in order to bring about a swift collapse of resistance and speedy surrender. [...] But clearly the offensive, and especially the mortaring, precipitated the exodus. The three-inch mortars "opened up on the market square [where there was] a great crowd [...] a great panic took hold. The multitude burst into the port, pushed aside the policemen, charged the boats and began to flee the town", as the official Haganah history later put it".[19]: 191, 200  According to Pappé,[13]: 96  this mortar barrage was deliberately aimed at civilians to precipitate their flight from Haifa.
The Haganah broadcast a warning to Arabs in Haifa on 21 April: "that unless they sent away 'infiltrated dissidents' they would be advised to evacuate all women and children, because they would be strongly attacked from now on".[54]


Just as in later wars, the goal was again here to create a state for Jews and Jews only, to expel as many Palestinians as possible from the territory.  Only a tiny minority of Arabs could be tolerated as citizens of the new country.


As for the Jewish crisis refugee, yes the Arab resisted the call to accept more Jewish refugees, and we can certainly debate the morality of that, but at the time, there was civil unrest in the British mandate due to Jewish emigration, the Arab Palestinian population felt ostracized and dispossessed, rendered landless by the Jewish population arrival in Palestine.  Not the fault of the Jewish people themselves, but it's a consequence of the economic system in place and the purchase of lands by them.  But it created an underclass of citizens, were Palestinian Arabs were certainly not treated equally. Ref.  Again, history is rarely black and white like a GI Joe cartoon.  

That's the reason why the UN proposed a partition plan, to separate both groups, so both would have their own state, their own lands, their own rules.  But neither the Arab population nor the Jewish leadership wanted that.  So now there's war and terror on both sides.

The only solution for peace is to go back to the original idea.</sup>

[OttoVonBismarck]

The idea of transferring populations was also written about and proposed by British commissions as well--that isn't in and of itself evidence of why ~700,000 Arabs left their homes.

Benny Morris--a decently respected Israeli historian who (perhaps as proof of not being overly biased) has been both praised and criticized by both sides of the Israel / Palestine divide, talks about this extensively in his book (free PDF: https://yplus.ps/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Morris-Benny-The-Birth-of-the-Palestinian-Refugee-Problem-Revisited.pdf).

I suggest reading the entirety of his "Conclusion" starting on page 588; but a salient selection is below:

The first Arab–Israeli war, of 1948, was launched by the Palestinian Arabs, who rejected the UN partition resolution and embarked on hostilities aimed at preventing the birth of Israel. That war and not design, Jewish or Arab, gave birth to the Palestinian refugee problem.

But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise. The piecemeal eviction of tenant farmers, albeit in relatively small numbers, during the first five decades of Zionist land purchase and settlement naturally stemmed from, and in a sense hinted at, the underlying thrust of the ideology, which was to turn an Arab-populated land into a State with an overwhelming Jewish majority. And the Zionist leaders' thinking about, and periodic endorsement of, 'transfer' during those decades – voluntary and agreed, if possible, but coerced if not – readied hearts and minds for the denouement of 1948 and its immediate aftermath, in which some 700,000 Arabs were displaced from their homes (though the majority remained in Palestine).

But there was no pre-war Zionist plan to expel 'the Arabs' from Palestine or the areas of the emergent Jewish State; and the Yishuv did not enter the war with a plan or policy of expulsion. Nor was the pre-war 'transfer' thinking ever translated, in the course of the war, into an agreed, systematic policy of expulsion. Hence, in the war's first four months, between the end of November 1947 and the end of March 1948, there were no preparations for mass expulsion and there were almost no cases of expulsion or the leveling of villages; hence, during the following ten months, Haganah and IDF units acted inconsistently, most units driving out Arab communities as a matter of course while others left (Muslim as well as Christian and Druse) villages and townspeople in place; and hence, at war's end, Israel emerged with a substantial Arab minority, of 150,000 (a minority that today numbers one million – and still constitutes (a restive and potentially explosive) one fifth of the State's population).

[Admiral Yi]

Also true that many of these foreign Jews bought some land legally- but then this is the case with a lot of colonialism. The Europeans don't just march into Africa, plant their flag, and shout "Mine!".  They come to some agreement with some local group or other.

I do know that the Boers said mine! to the Zulus.  I do know the white farmers of Kenya said mine!  I don't *know* how the white farmers of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and the white farmers of Algeria got their land, but I would be surprised if they bought it.

[Jacob]

Seeing reports of fighting at al-Shifa hospital, as well as at the Indonesian Hospital in Northern Gaza.

I expect Israel supporters will take the fighting as evidence that Hamas is using the hospitals as defensive points - because why would Israel fight there if there was no one to fight?

Conversely, I expect Palestine supporters to take the fighting as evidence of Israeli perfidy, wantonly destroying necessary infrastructure as part of the punishment they're meting out on Palestinians.

[OttoVonBismarck]

All the reporting I have seen at al-Shifa is it was largely uncontested, IDF was able to do multiple search sweeps throughout the hospital looking for Hamas or Hamas supplies. They have supposedly found a tunnel or two, and some small arms caches, although the veracity of both that and the argument that it proves it was a Hamas command center remains disputed.

I haven't seen reports of extensive fighting there, if that is going on it is a very new development--because the IDF has had full control of the hospital for days and as I said, had conducted a few full-facility searches of the complex over the last few days.

If there has been fighting that has broken out there, it would have been some fighters arriving to contest the IDF presence, I would think--because if there had been large numbers of fighters still holed up inside the walls of the building they would have been engaging with IDF forces as they did their repeated searches of the building.

[Josquius]

Sure, but at the same time you can't just simply ascribe every person who ever flees war as a "victim of ethnic cleansing." We also know, as a matter of record, leadership of the Arab invasion force even told their own people to leave. It isn't nearly as clear cut as say, the Turkish expulsion of Armenians--and even the example you cite in Azerbaijan is pretty complex. Internationally Nagorno-Karabakh has been recognized as Azerbaijani territory ever since the USSR collapsed. The whole premise of that trouble appeared to be "well, the Armenians there want to live in an ethnostate and shouldn't have to be part of Azerbaijan", which was backed by Armenian force of arms back when Russia was more interventionist in the region.

And I don't see any evidence that Azerbaijan's plans were "kill every Armenian", in fact they seemed to be saying they could continue to live there as long as they accepted the government in Baku had sovereignty of the region--which not for nothing, is pretty standard expectation for territory inside your de jure borders.

The fact most of the Armenians have chosen to leave instead of accept being Azerbaijani citizens doesn't, IMO, constitute ethnic cleansing.   

Whether its in a country's "legal territory" or not doesn't really matter for ethnic cleansing. Most ethnic cleansing does tend to be within legally held territory.

Given the stories coming out about Azerbaijani attorcities against some villages and the whole past 2-3 decades of active attempts to erase even Armenian history in the area I really don't think it was just the locals throwing a huff because their side lost.

Also true that many of these foreign Jews bought some land legally- but then this is the case with a lot of colonialism. The Europeans don't just march into Africa, plant their flag, and shout "Mine!".  They come to some agreement with some local group or other.

I do know that the Boers said mine! to the Zulus.  I do know the white farmers of Kenya said mine!  I don't *know* how the white farmers of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and the white farmers of Algeria got their land, but I would be surprised if they bought it.

You'd be surprised.
Even with non Europeans there tended to be an at least surface attempt to make it all look legal and above board
With Algeria in particular you had a place  which absolutely did have a pretty comparable outlook on land to Europeans.

[Jacob]

All the reporting I have seen at al-Shifa is it was largely uncontested, IDF was able to do multiple search sweeps throughout the hospital looking for Hamas or Hamas supplies. They have supposedly found a tunnel or two, and some small arms caches, although the veracity of both that and the argument that it proves it was a Hamas command center remains disputed.

I haven't seen reports of extensive fighting there, if that is going on it is a very new development--because the IDF has had full control of the hospital for days and as I said, had conducted a few full-facility searches of the complex over the last few days.

If there has been fighting that has broken out there, it would have been some fighters arriving to contest the IDF presence, I would think--because if there had been large numbers of fighters still holed up inside the walls of the building they would have been engaging with IDF forces as they did their repeated searches of the building.

Fair points. I - or the article I read - may have conflated the reports of fighting at the Indonesian hospital with al-Shifa.

[Admiral Yi]

You'd be surprised.
Even with non Europeans there tended to be an at least surface attempt to make it all look legal and above board
With Algeria in particular you had a place  which absolutely did have a pretty comparable outlook on land to Europeans.

I don't find any of this convincing.

I did a quick scan on Wiki about Rhodesia and Kenya.  No mention of buying land.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Whether its in a country's "legal territory" or not doesn't really matter for ethnic cleansing. Most ethnic cleansing does tend to be within legally held territory.

Given the stories coming out about Azerbaijani attorcities against some villages and the whole past 2-3 decades of active attempts to erase even Armenian history in the area I really don't think it was just the locals throwing a huff because their side lost.

Again, you cannot simply say that all ~150,000 Armenians who have made a deliberate choice to move--after being told by Azerbaijan they would have all the normal rights of Azerbaijani citizenship--but would not have special privileges or exemptions from the law or be allowed to run an illegal state-within-a-state, as ethnic cleansing. That is just a very simplistic view of it, and it majorly waters down any moral force in using the term "ethnic cleansing."

Azerbaijan has no moral imperative to allow part of its country political independence, anymore than the Spanish did or the Americans did in 1861.

The fact there has been both Azeri-->Armenian and Armenian-->Azeri political violence cannot be extrapolated to paint the entire conflict as ethnic cleansing.

[Josquius]

You'd be surprised.
Even with non Europeans there tended to be an at least surface attempt to make it all look legal and above board
With Algeria in particular you had a place  which absolutely did have a pretty comparable outlook on land to Europeans.

I don't find any of this convincing.

I did a quick scan on Wiki about Rhodesia and Kenya.  No mention of buying land.

Every colony is different. There's no one size fits all rule.
From what I gather Kenya is particularly well known for how egregious white land grabs are.
Still. There were attempts at legality.
A big problem to be found with the way local people thought of land being quite different to the European norm.

https://gatesopenresearch.org/documents/3-982/pdf

Southern Africa absolutely did have lots of treaty interaction with locals - see the kingdoms still existing down there.
Pretty sure Rhodes got his foot in the door in rhodesia via legal trickery with treaties with local kings and conning the British government too.

It's a curious one this idea that white people just marched in and seized land with zero covering legality - it's pushed by both the imperialists who want to deny Africans had any sort of government structure and that the Europeans moved into terra nullis; and by African nationalists who want to paint Africans as pure victims and none of them deserve any blame against the pure foreign conquers that are the whites.

[Josquius]

Whether its in a country's "legal territory" or not doesn't really matter for ethnic cleansing. Most ethnic cleansing does tend to be within legally held territory.

Given the stories coming out about Azerbaijani attorcities against some villages and the whole past 2-3 decades of active attempts to erase even Armenian history in the area I really don't think it was just the locals throwing a huff because their side lost.

Again, you cannot simply say that all ~150,000 Armenians who have made a deliberate choice to move--after being told by Azerbaijan they would have all the normal rights of Azerbaijani citizenship--but would not have special privileges or exemptions from the law or be allowed to run an illegal state-within-a-state, as ethnic cleansing. That is just a very simplistic view of it, and it majorly waters down any moral force in using the term "ethnic cleansing."

To say all 150,000 just innocently decided to move and the threat of azerbaijani rule had nothing to do with it is a far more simplistic interpretation.
Azerbaijans word is clearly not worth much given the events that got us here. And as said. They were already starting the cleansing.
Really can't blame the Armenians for wanting to keep breathing.

Azerbaijan has no moral imperative to allow part of its country political independence, anymore than the Spanish did or the Americans did in 1861.

It absolutely does. If a region of your country has been pushing for independence for decades then you're quite the POS country to not give them the right to pursue this via legal means.
All people deserve the right of self determination.
Given the history of Armenia and Azerbaijan NK was a particularly obvious example of somewhere in the wrong country via foreign imperialist means.

The fact there has been both Azeri-->Armenian and Armenian-->Azeri political violence cannot be extrapolated to paint the entire conflict as ethnic cleansing.

Yes it can. Azerbaijan has absolutely ethnically cleansed it's Armenian population (as did the Armenians the azerbaijanis in NK).

[HVC]

Yes it can. Azerbaijan has absolutely ethnically cleansed it's Armenian population (as did the Armenians the azerbaijanis in NK).

So just make sure you get to the ethnic cleansing first so you get to keep the land?

[Admiral Yi]

Every colony is different. There's no one size fits all rule.
From what I gather Kenya is particularly well known for how egregious white land grabs are.
Still. There were attempts at legality.
A big problem to be found with the way local people thought of land being quite different to the European norm.

https://gatesopenresearch.org/documents/3-982/pdf

Southern Africa absolutely did have lots of treaty interaction with locals - see the kingdoms still existing down there.
Pretty sure Rhodes got his foot in the door in rhodesia via legal trickery with treaties with local kings and conning the British government too.

It's a curious one this idea that white people just marched in and seized land with zero covering legality - it's pushed by both the imperialists who want to deny Africans had any sort of government structure and that the Europeans moved into terra nullis; and by African nationalists who want to paint Africans as pure victims and none of them deserve any blame against the pure foreign conquers that are the whites.

I am well aware that white colonial states had treaty dealings in Africa.  I also know some of these protectorate relationships were established at the point of a gun and others through less violent means.  I also know in some cases land was expropriated from the natives, either administratively as in Kenya's case or by conquest, in the case of the Boers.

What I'm objecting to is your attempt to draw some moral equivalence between Jewish purchases of land during the Ottoman control of Palestine to colonial land grabs in Africa.