Writing out thoughts on Israel and Palestine
I read a post about Zionism on Tumblr last night and it made me want to organize my thoughts on Israel, since I haven't seriously revisited them in a while after having received new structural information.
Israel is a little bit of an info-hazard I think, and I don't really have the time or inclination to actually double check all the factual points that I'll be using, but I'll try my best to tag them all with citation needed and I hope my ending perspective will be pretty robust to challenges to any substantial minority of factual claims, though I'm not certain if my ending perspective will actually even be that similar to my current perspective (which is why I want to write this).
Let's start in the 1930's, which is not by any means the beginning of the situation but whatever. At this point I believe that Palestine is a British colony sort of [citation needed] which was pretty heavily populated [citation needed] but Brits didn't care about and/or weren't aware of the native Arabs [citation needed]. It is unclear to me what the provenance of the ideat that this area was related to any scriptural ideas of Zion [citation needed] or how true those ideas are [citation needed] but I also don't care much because I'm an internationalist atheist.
Around this time there was a lot of antisemitism going around [citation needed but I'm confident on this claim]. Partly in Germany, but also everywhere else. With the rise of the Nazis there were large movements of Jewish people from various places in Europe [citation needed]. Many went to the US or more liberal democracies, maybe UK and France? [citation needed]. Since the US and UK also housed a lot of anti-semitic sentiment, there was more widespread support for the idea of Zionism [citation needed] including among Germans and Nazis [citation needed] though Zionism was a bit of a fringe view among European Jews [citation needed]. As the whole Holocaust thing got going, Jewish people who didn't feel like they had to leave Europe started either getting killed or starting to feel like they needed to leave Europe [citation needed]. Britain, thinking "what if we got rid of this Palestine place we don't care about," volunteered it as a place to send Jewish people since the UK didn't want to take them [citation needed].
So a bunch of Jewish people who are like "well I don't want to be horribly murdered by Nazis" head to the newly formed Israel, displacing some Palestinians. This gets ratified as a move by the UN, with the native Palestinians having very little say in things and start feeling a bit miffed. [citation needed]
Now lots of other countries with strong anti-semitic sentiments are like, "hey, we can send our Jews away!" [citation needed] and more immigration to Israel happens, especially from places like western Asia, Ethiopia, Russia, and the US [citation needed]. This results in Israel expanding, especially because of settlements outside Israeli borders [citation needed]. At this point, Israel is pretty heavily supported by the US [citation needed] as a military outpost to counter the presence of the USSR in the region [citation needed]. This made it substantially more powerful than Palestine [citation needed], which caused Israeli settlers to be even more bold [citation needed].
At this point we're at the 1960's, a second treaty is signed with much wider borders for Israel and much smaller ones for Palestine [citation needed]. First generation native Israeli citizens are coming of age in a very diverse environment, with politics heavily fueled by interactions with other states, especially the US [citation needed]. The US grants nearly unlimited military power to Israel [citation needed], which many Jewish Americans feel bold about [citation needed]. Israeli citizens who came from the rest of west Asia or Ethiopia might feel defensively militant because of recent treatment [citation needed]. Nearby countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia begin to resent Israel for a variety of reasons including anti-semitism, dislike of US and European interference, relations with the USSR, and religious/theocratic/totalitarian internal politics [citation needed].
Palestinians are justifiably upset about their land not being respected by Israel, but are powerless to respond on the global political scene, leading to radicalization and acts of terror [citation needed]. Israelis respond pretty callously, continuing to expand, placing ridiculous limits on humanitarian aid (John Kerry once saw a truck with pasta not being allowed in because rice was the only staple food allowed) [citation needed]. Israel relies somewhat on the narrative of Palestinians as terrorists and somewhat on the reality of Palestinians as extremely radicalized, and commits war crimes [citation needed]. Israel is also largely now populated by first and second generation Israeli natives, many of whom came from countries which no longer exist or are not friendly to Israel [citation needed], which makes the claims of other Arabic countries that Israel has no right to exist and their demands that Israelis "go home" nonsensical. Palestinians, having no real infrastructure or political recourse, and being of younger and younger average age (the median Palestinian today is 18 years old; literally a country of 50% children [citation needed]) responds by becoming even more radical and without any real understanding of the complexity of the situation [citation needed]. Internet arguments break out about how even though Israel is being pretty terrible to Palestine, if Palestinians were in power they would be even worse to Israelis [citation needed].
This brings us to the present day.
Israel is a mostly pretty reasonable country, with super weird politics and very unfriendly relationships with nearby neighbors.
It survives by having pretty much unconditional backing from the USA.
It also continually fails to enforce various UN treaties which have been increasingly favorable to Israel and increasingly unfavorable to Palestine.
Palestine is filled with violently radicalized children.
Trying to integrate a large number of radicalized people can lead to a bunch of problems. Which means that Israel basically just... doesn't. This maintains the vicious cycle.
My impression of BDS campaigns is that given that Israel is basically a country because of western and especially US financial backing [citation needed] we should maybe make that funding contingent on acting more nicely toward Palestinians. I'm a bit sympathetic to this, honestly.
It seems clear that powerful Israeli politicians like Netanyahu are completely unconcerned with Palestinian welfare [citation needed]. They could be doing a better job making the world a better place, and if we have some power to incentivize them to do this, we should.
That doesn't make the problem "easier" per se; what a resolution to the situation would look like is quite unclear. But a part of it is Israel actually enforcing its own borders on its citizens, so that they don't gradually encroach on Palestinian land, and continue aggravating the situation.
Israel is a little bit of an info-hazard I think, and I don't really have the time or inclination to actually double check all the factual points that I'll be using, but I'll try my best to tag them all with citation needed and I hope my ending perspective will be pretty robust to challenges to any substantial minority of factual claims, though I'm not certain if my ending perspective will actually even be that similar to my current perspective (which is why I want to write this).
Let's start in the 1930's, which is not by any means the beginning of the situation but whatever. At this point I believe that Palestine is a British colony sort of [citation needed] which was pretty heavily populated [citation needed] but Brits didn't care about and/or weren't aware of the native Arabs [citation needed]. It is unclear to me what the provenance of the ideat that this area was related to any scriptural ideas of Zion [citation needed] or how true those ideas are [citation needed] but I also don't care much because I'm an internationalist atheist.
Around this time there was a lot of antisemitism going around [citation needed but I'm confident on this claim]. Partly in Germany, but also everywhere else. With the rise of the Nazis there were large movements of Jewish people from various places in Europe [citation needed]. Many went to the US or more liberal democracies, maybe UK and France? [citation needed]. Since the US and UK also housed a lot of anti-semitic sentiment, there was more widespread support for the idea of Zionism [citation needed] including among Germans and Nazis [citation needed] though Zionism was a bit of a fringe view among European Jews [citation needed]. As the whole Holocaust thing got going, Jewish people who didn't feel like they had to leave Europe started either getting killed or starting to feel like they needed to leave Europe [citation needed]. Britain, thinking "what if we got rid of this Palestine place we don't care about," volunteered it as a place to send Jewish people since the UK didn't want to take them [citation needed].
So a bunch of Jewish people who are like "well I don't want to be horribly murdered by Nazis" head to the newly formed Israel, displacing some Palestinians. This gets ratified as a move by the UN, with the native Palestinians having very little say in things and start feeling a bit miffed. [citation needed]
Now lots of other countries with strong anti-semitic sentiments are like, "hey, we can send our Jews away!" [citation needed] and more immigration to Israel happens, especially from places like western Asia, Ethiopia, Russia, and the US [citation needed]. This results in Israel expanding, especially because of settlements outside Israeli borders [citation needed]. At this point, Israel is pretty heavily supported by the US [citation needed] as a military outpost to counter the presence of the USSR in the region [citation needed]. This made it substantially more powerful than Palestine [citation needed], which caused Israeli settlers to be even more bold [citation needed].
At this point we're at the 1960's, a second treaty is signed with much wider borders for Israel and much smaller ones for Palestine [citation needed]. First generation native Israeli citizens are coming of age in a very diverse environment, with politics heavily fueled by interactions with other states, especially the US [citation needed]. The US grants nearly unlimited military power to Israel [citation needed], which many Jewish Americans feel bold about [citation needed]. Israeli citizens who came from the rest of west Asia or Ethiopia might feel defensively militant because of recent treatment [citation needed]. Nearby countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia begin to resent Israel for a variety of reasons including anti-semitism, dislike of US and European interference, relations with the USSR, and religious/theocratic/totalitarian internal politics [citation needed].
Palestinians are justifiably upset about their land not being respected by Israel, but are powerless to respond on the global political scene, leading to radicalization and acts of terror [citation needed]. Israelis respond pretty callously, continuing to expand, placing ridiculous limits on humanitarian aid (John Kerry once saw a truck with pasta not being allowed in because rice was the only staple food allowed) [citation needed]. Israel relies somewhat on the narrative of Palestinians as terrorists and somewhat on the reality of Palestinians as extremely radicalized, and commits war crimes [citation needed]. Israel is also largely now populated by first and second generation Israeli natives, many of whom came from countries which no longer exist or are not friendly to Israel [citation needed], which makes the claims of other Arabic countries that Israel has no right to exist and their demands that Israelis "go home" nonsensical. Palestinians, having no real infrastructure or political recourse, and being of younger and younger average age (the median Palestinian today is 18 years old; literally a country of 50% children [citation needed]) responds by becoming even more radical and without any real understanding of the complexity of the situation [citation needed]. Internet arguments break out about how even though Israel is being pretty terrible to Palestine, if Palestinians were in power they would be even worse to Israelis [citation needed].
This brings us to the present day.
Israel is a mostly pretty reasonable country, with super weird politics and very unfriendly relationships with nearby neighbors.
It survives by having pretty much unconditional backing from the USA.
It also continually fails to enforce various UN treaties which have been increasingly favorable to Israel and increasingly unfavorable to Palestine.
Palestine is filled with violently radicalized children.
Trying to integrate a large number of radicalized people can lead to a bunch of problems. Which means that Israel basically just... doesn't. This maintains the vicious cycle.
My impression of BDS campaigns is that given that Israel is basically a country because of western and especially US financial backing [citation needed] we should maybe make that funding contingent on acting more nicely toward Palestinians. I'm a bit sympathetic to this, honestly.
It seems clear that powerful Israeli politicians like Netanyahu are completely unconcerned with Palestinian welfare [citation needed]. They could be doing a better job making the world a better place, and if we have some power to incentivize them to do this, we should.
That doesn't make the problem "easier" per se; what a resolution to the situation would look like is quite unclear. But a part of it is Israel actually enforcing its own borders on its citizens, so that they don't gradually encroach on Palestinian land, and continue aggravating the situation.