The Palestinian Genocide, Antisemitism and Denial of the Holocaust

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

It's not insignificant. It doesn't mean there's a genocide in progress. The water claims you made were different from the water claims the BBC article made. Other things you claim prove genocide are verified by no one outside terrorists who share those views. I won't touch your redux Holocaust denialism but it's grotesque and you should be personally ashamed of it. What kind of person has to say those things about Jewish victims, and "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question"? I'm at a loss. Your history is anti-Semitic garbage. Find a real book, I don't know what else to recommend.

Mosques have been so important in leading the outcry against threats to the JCCs and actually raising the money to fix a vandalized Jewish cemetery. Media not even reporting the JCC bomb threats now - already has become too routine, I guess. Threatening to bomb babies - who were specifically targeted - is never a routine incident.

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

[Bonefish]

[Bonefish]

[Bonefish]

Hey, what about those Yemeni children, again?

[Bonefish]

Also, what exactly is Israel's claim to the land? Why do they have the right to drive the people who lived there(Jaffa?) out, and move in?

Why exactly is this a "defensive war", when they invaded? Hmmm?

[Phoebe]

If you get back to the realm of the real and want to discuss without saying false things about me, here are two places to start, and that anyone interested in the issue might find edifying:


This talks about actual solutions for the water crisis. Those who don't really want to solve it will argue that the plant creates dangerous pollution. But the EU has helped do this. The article puts the matter in an accurate context, wherein the blockade is owed to both Egypt and Israel, and Hamas has not supported this water plant, despite controlling the area.

Speaking of the blockade, an offshore island with airport, seaport, and power generation is a solution most Israelis support, so that further humanitarian relief, electricity, and trade access can flow to Gaza. Weird if the plan is genocide, that most people want both peace and humanitarian intervention.

Anyway, accurate sourcing on this hotly contested issue can be difficult. Here's a new example that explains why this is a particular problem for the UN:


The history of Israel you tell is totally biased, and you cite things that are not "terrorist sites" - that's your strawman - but you either misrepresent what they say (i.e. conflict over water automatically equals evidence of genocide, on your view) or you cite examples that are just riddled with falsity. Like the "massacre" you claimed as evidence of Zionist genocide. That's what Hamas would say.

I cannot guess what goes on in the mind of a person who falsely accuses me of having a "favorite" set of genocide victims, but, no. Most of Europe's Jews were killed. For highly specific reasons. This requires attention. To note the unique horror of 90% of Poland's Jews being killed is in no way a reduction of the horror of the millions of non-Jewish Poles killed. That this has to be spelled out to you is shocking.

[Bonefish]

IF you deny food and water to people, you are killing them. Simple as that. I can't believe you don't understand that.

And you STILL keep trying to make me a supporter of the Apostates. Which i am not. Sorry.

[Phoebe]

But "denying people food and water" is a mischaracterization of what is happening, unless you're blaming LOTS of people for this situation, including the Palestinian leadership! You blame only Israel. You cherry pick the most extreme and false examples, and fallaciously assume they point to a genocide-in-progress, while somehow forgetting that these "Apostates" bear some responsibility for that, even as you parrot their story about history which denies the legitimacy of the entire nation of Israel. It's deeply confused. People can make a serious critique of Israel's actions and leadership without implicating it in the kind of crimes against humanity you falsely attribute. Likewise, people can deny that there is anything even remotely resembling a "genocide" going on here, and accurately point out that this is the kind of rhetoric terrorists would like us to adopt about Israel, without finding Israel blameless.

Why do you keep pushing this black-and-white thinking, and arguing only with straw men? Combine this approach to Israel with your Holocaust denialism, and that's where the charge of extremism and anti-Semitism comes from. I get the sense you really, really want to argue with Netanyahu and have decided I'm him, except that I'm not.

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

Of course, the fact that a terrorist organization says something doesn't automatically mean that otherwise reasonable groups saying the same thing are thereby aligning themselves with terrorists. The problem is when people rely on the account of a terrorist group even when it's disputed by others, or repeat things that nobody else would be corroborating besides extremists. For instance, if Hamas says something was a "massacre" and other independent investigations conclude there is evidence directly contradicting this assertion, why would anyone reflexively repeat what Hamas says? When Hamas insists that none of their rockets fell inside Gaza, claiming civilian casualties, and the non-Hamas Palestinian leaders dispute this, why would external observers agree with the former before the latter? Likewise, if the only people making some claim about the Holocaust are denialists, that requires attention before it's repeated.

So that brings us to water. I would totally agree that the situation with water is unfair and among Israelis there is popular support for various solutions that provide more access to water, though you've got extreme views on all sides of this. However, what I deny totally is that this unfairness constitutes a genocide, deliberate or otherwise. To show that you have to claim that Israel commits war crimes like targeting water supply pipes. But if you're trying to stop Hamas from firing rockets at your civilians and you blow up tunnels to do it, you're also apt to hit some water pipes. Hamas is glad to advertise that as a war crime. Meanwhile, Hamas is executing Palestinians without any evidence or trial, as scapegoats for unproven collaboration. They're storing munitions in schools where displaced people live. Hamas had the authority to do so yet did not approve new water infrastructure, needed to permit water to be pumped even when levels are naturally low due to drought, and their supporters and funders didn't seem to recognize humanitarian needs of the Palestinians as more important than assaults on Israel. During the Gaza conflict a few years back, for instance, it's not clear why the greater causal responsibility for water shortage didn't fall to those who kidnapped and murdered Israeli kids and then fired rockets on civilians. Nobody is blameless in this scenario, but I don't understand how conflicts over water, in a situation where both sides have made bad choices to exacerbate the crisis, amounts to genocide of one group against another. Do you think it's genocidal for the Palestinians to want to get rid of the state of Israel, by contrast?

That brings us to your take on history. I'm sorry, but it's totally extremist to argue that Israel should not even exist, and yes, that's the position of terrorists. Who else argues that they have no claim whatsoever to be present in this land, where there always has been a Jewish presence for millenia? Did early immigrants not purchase land? Did they not occupy unoccupied land and make it newly livable? Didn't Arabs expel Jews who had been living in their cities for centuries, while refusing to admit Palestinian Arabs? Was there some sort of Arab state present in this land that had beforehand been controlled by the Turks and British, so that no other political entity should exist there too? Wasn't the French and Syrian conflict a source of considerable displacement and political reorganization that affected the whole area before Israel was founded? If you want to argue the roots of this extended conflict were laid from the beginning, or that many Palestinians were forcibly displaced, I'd agree with you. But you'd also have to acknowledge that Jewish people also had a right to immigrate, were restricted from doing so at various crucial points, and that many Arabs have been hostile to their presence and seeking to utterly eradicate Israel from before it began until the present moment. Of course Israel has a claim on this land! And of course Palestinians do too. The fact that you don't acknowledge this is a perfect illustration of THE problem, and if anything enables Israel to make decisions you don't like, it's the fact that they have to engage in a constant existential struggle like this. How can anyone doubt they'd be wiped off the map if their enemies could do it? It's not like they haven't tried! And this is precisely why Israelis say they only wish they had a partner for peace negotiation, as you can't easily negotiate peace with people who think you have zero right to exist as a nation. It's like, the most basic baby step 1 required to resolve the conflict.

[Bonefish]

Again, the "jewish presence throughout the millenia" was around 3% of the population in the region in dispute. It was the mass immigration of Ashkhanazi jews during the Mandate, combined with their zionist ideal of establishing a jewish state. And they could have done that in numerous places: They could have bought land in Uganda or Argentina, places where there wasn't longstanding reasons for war. They did not. They chose to occupy Palestine. And then they chose to use violence against the british and the arabs. That isn't a legitimate claim to land.

When the UNSCOP was formed, Jews owned less than 15% of palestine. This was after a prolonged period of violent acts against the internationally recognized authority, with the intention of founding a nationalist state. The committee formed did not contain a single representative of the Arabs who lived in the territories that were to be ceded. You CANNOT give away peoples land without their approval. That is an act of hostility.

And then to turn this around? To use offensive actions, to violently wrest land away from people, to slaughter those people? And then to claim innocence and victim hood? That is beyond the pale. To claim that every criticism is rooted in hatred of the jewish people? That's ridiculous.

[Phoebe]

Again, you embrace a particular distorted version of history and the question is, why do you have to do that? I'm not arguing the question of whether settlements are okay, or whether the Palestinians need to have self-governance, or whether humanitarian assistance and development are needed. I'm saying that we should appropriately recognize the Holocaust, that Israel is not committing genocide or anything even close thereto, and now, that the state of Israel was not illegitimately founded. These are three of the most anodyne, easily-supported claims - I haven't even begun to scratch into the things that supporters of Israel would likely argue in defense of the nation - yet for some reason you cannot acknowledge any of these.

Your view of the history of - Eretz Israel, let's say for fun - is something like "many Palestinian Arabs lived in a Palestinian land they owned, and there were hardly any Jews in this whole big area, until one day many Jews who should have gone somewhere else started moving in here randomly instead, and they were violent terrorists so the British were like, whoa, we're outta here! and then an illegal nation was founded, forcibly seizing all the land and displacing the former residents, upon whom it now continues to commit a very long, slow genocide". This is a departure, let us say, from what I recognize as reality. Historically, the Jewish people occupied this land for longer than the Arabs did after them, and always had a connection to it even after most of them were dispersed. Groups of Jewish people returned at various points throughout this period, and some of those who had returned were killed later when the Crusaders invaded. And post-Renaissance, as Jews were expelled from various places in Europe at different times, thousands returned to Eretz Israel. They continued even when the Ottomans in charge restricted immigration and tried to ban them specifically from this region while letting them settle elsewhere - an odd thing to do if the link is so random that it might as well be Uganda, and if the main thing causing it is some later-date Zionist push.

This is all going on before WWI, and a key point is that many immigrants brought modern agricultural methods with them to develop land that was not being occupied by ANYONE because it was covered with sand, swampy, and generally useless. The Jewish immigrants also paid for land they bought, which is an odd thing to do if they were a bunch of terrorists seizing this other pre-existing group's land. Now, I would not argue that economic development came to that region solely because of Jewish immigrants, because it was happening in other places and among other people nearby too. But there's no denying that the Palestinian population increased and migration occurred in parallel with the Jewish population increase and subsequent development of the land, because they were creating economic opportunities that hadn't existed before. Should have been a good thing. Some Arab clans were happier with the Jewish presence than others, who hated it, and you wonder what might have happened if the moderates on both sides had prevailed over their more bellicose sub-groups. The point is, conflict was happening long before the British showed up, and it's too bad that it didn't receive a better resolution from the start, but then again, I'm not sure it ever could have. In other places where Jewish populations had thrived alongside another majority, specific conditions obtained that were not the case here.

Anyway, there was no distinct territory of "Palestine" occupied by one group of non-Jewish people, which was then somehow invaded and seized by Jewish outsiders. There were different groups of Arabs and different religious minorities, including Christians and Druze, and people spread around with some places heavily settled and others totally unoccupied. Whatever you want to say about the economic development of the area, it's fair to say the growing nationalized identity of "Palestinians" was also a reaction against their dislike of the Jewish presence. Yet Jews had been living throughout the Levant for centuries, and one of the things you overlook is that later waves of major Jewish immigration to Israel happened after the founding of the state of Israel, when Jews were expelled from those other places and Israel's neighbors attacked it. It's kind of amazing they survived. But when people talk about violently wrestling land away, and rights of return, one wonders why those rights only apply to some people and not others. Are we going to give Jewish people back some chunks of Iraq now, or Ethiopia, or Russia, or Germany? The point is, the whole thing was difficult and entangled and still is. All sides committed acts of violence. Most of the people involved in BDS that I've encountered haven't the slightest clue what went on in the past; they're just thinking about a mismatch in economic and military power that exists right now, but they're not thinking about why it's like that and what happened very recently before it existed. Above, you talk about how Arabs had no say in any agreements, but in fact the "say" of various leaders at that time (e.g. Egypt) was that they could draw whatever line they pleased, because the Jews were going to be swept into the ocean and eliminated, so no problem. Luckily they proved capable of a more tenacious defense. Odd how often they've had to defend themselves against total aggression, when supposedly they're the historical aggressors.

But whatever - put that aside and deal only with the present day when one side takes more casualties than the other and other military powers in the area wouldn't find it so easy to attack Israel. I'm not asking you to be glad about this or accept that everything happening to the Palestinian people is an unfortunate reality for which Israel shouldn't be held responsible, which is what many vigorous defenders of Israel would in fact be arguing. Instead, I'm asking for the US leadership to appropriately acknowledge the Holocaust, and I'm refusing the idea that Israel is committing a genocide, and now I'm also arguing that Jewish people should have been able to immigrate to Israel and purchase land and so on, to the point that they founded a state when the British exited the region. The Palestinians probably should have founded a state too, wouldn't you say in hindsight? Yet what prevented that? It certainly wasn't Israel. So I'd add another thesis to our discussion, which is that both Palestinian non-Palestinian Arabs have been just as causally responsible for this whole chain of events leading to the present as anyone else. But we have such a different view of history, I doubt it does much good.

[Mike]

Seriously? Still going?

I haven't read this thread for many posts except to occasionally see if the volume of it has slacked. I'm not willing to interpret anyone's motives, so I offer the following encouragements. You pick the one most motivating to you:

1. Keep it up! Your trolling is obviously working!

OR...

2. Keep it up! You're THIS close to finding a way to encapsulate this that will finally cause them to admit you were right all along!

Either way... great work all around.

[Phoebe]

Do you want us to drop the discussion? I'm not really clear what you're trying to say. Either it's "trolling" or a futile attempt to make someone admit we're right? Are those the only or even main reasons to talk about something, or are these just the first two that sprang to mind?

[Mike]

I'm just being snarky and mean. I don't have the attention span or dedication to follow these through anymore. Usually somewhere around the 4000 word mark I start to realize that I've said everything meaningful that I have to say, and it's usually clear that all the hearts and minds changing that's gonna happen already has happened. And so I give up (while trying to squeeze in a passive-aggressive last word). The extra effort does not seem worth it to me, because I always feels like I'm nitpicking or arguing semantics or going over the same ground again and again.

But that's me. And I imposed my viewpoint on you to be snarky and mean, because it seemed entertaining in the moment. But if you are having fun and/or feeling like you're getting something out of this... by all means, have at it. It's your time and energy to spend as you choose.

[Phoebe]

It's ok, I don't mind. Down in the labyrinth is a man with the head of a bull. Everyone dreads encountering this beast. But if you're ever thrown in the pit, when you meet him you realize, once upon a time this beast was left down here like me. Now all he can do is stamp the ground with his hooves and charge the walls with his horns and rot down here in the labyrinth alone until he dies. So you have to be very careful what you do with your minotaur because if you kill him, you'll have to take his place forever. This story is not relevant to the discussion, it's just a good story. Some people are abandoned on an island rock, and other people are left alone in a maze, and some people escape both mazes and islands, and some gods appear as a maze. There's no other story quite like it.

[Bonefish]

Again, the Jews in 46 owned less than 10% of the total land in palestine. UNSCOP granted them closer to 55%. Hence the inherent rejection of it: Taking away land from Arabs who had lived in that land for decades, even centuries, to give it to europeans who had only recently arrived, is an act of aggression. It's as simple as that. The record of land ownership in the region prior to UNSCOP is undisputed. You cannot take away people's land without allowing them a say in the matter.

Now, let's also talk to a different subject, the supposed length of the the Jewish claim to the land. It's often brought up, and there's is this idea that the Arabs were recent newcomers, and that their continued occupation of the land doesn't matter, because they conquered it unfairly. This is based upon the idea that "Arab"(and even Jewish) culture and ethnicity is somehow genetic. But the truth is, that the majority of the people who lived in the region prior to the 20th century were born there. At various times they spoke different languages of semetic origin, such as hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. Many aspects of their culture, from dress, to religion, to social constructs and relationships, have largely remained the same. But generally speaking, they have been the same people for thousands of years. Thus, it's a bit strange to claim that because these people began speaking Arabic at some point, they were suddenly transformed in Arabs, and all their prior history was invalidated. Of course, if one was attempting to destroy the national identity of the fellahin and urbanized arabs, it would make great sense to support such a view of history that deligitimized the native inhabitants. And it's pretty much par for the course with colonial powers.

Again, while cheerfully skipping over the fact that the UNSCOP granted massive tracts of land to the Jews by taking them away from Arabs without representation(remember, the UN supports the rights of self-determination, right?), you then claim that the Arab leaders "say" was through violence. Of course it was. Here you have the Arab world divided up by colonial powers, dictating the drawing of borders, setting up local client rulers, and then they, without so much as a "by your leave", take a large chunk of arab land and give it to european colonists. That's not unchecked, brutal aggression, that's self defence. Again, this is part of the Zionist's need to paint what was a distinct and unambiguous seizure of land from the rightful inhabitants as a defensive action. While simultaneously buying land and using coercive means to gain land they did not hand, the Zionist calls foul when the same is not allowed to occur in other countries?

It's also alarming, given that there was clear discrimination by Ashkanazi against native Jews. Again, the Yemeni children? Hundreds, maybe thousands, were taken from their native parents and given to european jewish families. Arabic Jews were forced to live in squalid conditions, while European Jews were given preferential treatment. And this is again, ignored in the Zionist need to paint the Jews as heroic defenders, unjustly hounded from all corners, desiring peace and brotherhood. Yet their actual actions didn't reflect this.

Zionism is Fascism. It's that simple. It repaints history in a mythological way t justify deplorable actions as the requirement for a national destiny. It's foul, and it's time to recognize it.