Conversation between me, and another high educated Jewish women whose opinions I respect
Her: What's missing here are the facts. If we stuck to the facts there wouldn't be so much intensity surrounding this issue. Me: But you and I are both highly educated Jewish women, and we can't even agree on the facts regarding the history of Palestine as a place name, ethnic identifier, and nation. If we can't even agree on those facts, how on earth can facts help anyone move forward?
There's the question. Not just for Jews, but for everyone involved in, or concerned with this conflict. How do we move forward if multiple sides of the room dispute the veracity of such basic statements as:
-Jews are a globally oppressed minority ethnic group, the hatred of which is deeply embedded in Western thought and rhetoric.
-The Naqba was a period of ethnic cleansing in which the government and military of the new State of Israel expelled Palestinian Arabs from their homes and property; a dispossession and a series of events which continue to traumatize and negatively impact the lives and livelihoods of Palestinians.
-The Holocaust was a traumatic event in the history of the Jewish people, the legacy of which is embedded in the psyches, world views, and collective trauma of the Jewish people, and invariably impacts how this group views global issues.
-Palestinian Arabs had a full developed sense of identity and statehood before the British Empire fucked off, and made their discomfort with increasing Jewish emigration clear to the British before the outbreak of the Second World War.
-Jews had nowhere to go before, during, or really, after the Holocaust; and the governments of many Arab States ethnically cleaned their own ancient Jewish communities in retribution for the creation of the State of Israel.
-The State of Israel does not exist because the Holocaust happened, or as an "apology" for said event.
THIS POST COMPRISES A SERIES OF RHETORICAL QUESTIONS MEANT TO MAKE US APPRECIATE THE DEPTHS OF THE DISCURSIVE PROBLEMS HERE; NOT A POST FOR "DISCOURSE" AND HATEFUL, AGGRESSIVE SHIT.
If you feel you have to do that, copy & paste into your own separate post.
itsybitsylemonsqueezy: #yep even these statements are frustrating for some #and even if you accept all of them #you immediately see the conflicts and discrepancies in different perspectives #how disagreements can so easily arise #add to that investment and you quickly have an extra impass #I know the popular take right now is that this is easy #I don't think it is #this is painful and complicated and horrific #and the answer isn't do nothing #but it probably isn't shout out people trying to help and trying to understand
VERY FUCKING WELL SAID.
it's very literally one of, if not the most, complex geopolitical situations of all time.
Like, I’m racking my brains trying to think of one of equal complexity, but I’m coming up blank. Though some of the geo-political situations in parts of the Caucasus and Central Africa are extremely challenging, but then, I haven’t spent more than a decade studying parts of those histories.
*points* this is why I'm being pretty quiet right now, because this situation is quite fucked up enough without trying to stick my dick in it, too.
I make one exception, which is to flip off the British--because the mess surrounding the Balfour Declaration, in which within three fucking years the British promised the region to both Arab-nationalist groups within Palestine and to Jews and also, secretly, declared its own control over the area while partitioning up the Ottoman Empire with France. At no point did it actually tell any of these parties what they were doing or communicate directly about any of the others. Essentially, what it did was lie to Arab nationalist groups about its intentions to hand the region over to them in exchange for WWI support, secretly claim to a peer and ally that it intended to retain control over the region, and then seize on the area as a great place to stick all those inconvenient Jews without having to, like, keep or aid any of them itself.
I cannot emphasize enough how incredibly at fault the British Empire is for huge swathes of this mess as it relates directly to Palestine. (I also cannot emphasize enough how much the British Empire lying to other groups in similar ways when it was convenient to themselves outright created helpful little imbroglios like the Rwandan genocide later on. And that was in a region where there weren't hugely long-standing conflicts or massive bad feelings between various parties before the British Empire swanned on in.)
It's not so much that that fixes things now, you understand. It's not as if England the UK has exactly covered itself in geopolitical glory in the subsequent century or anything. But while we're arguing about who is colonializing whom and why, I do think it is incredibly important to understand and recognize that there is in fact a single group who took this incredible powderkeg of a situation and made it unspeakably worse as a direct function of their colonialist interests and project, and I think we should also be keeping that in mind. Decolonialization doesn't mean that we all just immediately forget about previous colonial occupation and let the literal colonial powers get off without comment.
(Also to the influence of American Dominionist conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists making absolutely everything worse in perpetuity, because it suits their apocalyptic vision of heavenly rapture to see Jews entangled in perpetual war in the Middle East. I am not joking about this, and this group has also been directly inflaming tensions in the region for decades.)
You know how they say, in a chaotic, tense situation, look for the helpers to understand what to do? Well, I think it is fair to insist that anyone who wants to declare the obvious answer to Israel/Palestine relations also look for the harm sources closer to home and start interrogating what we intend to do about those, too. If the solution to Israel and Palestine is so easy and clear, surely resolving Dominionist theology and its direct impacts at home should be equally clear and obvious. Right? Right?
Daaaamn this is a good take.
