A controversial rule restricting speech about Israel was dropped after artists abandoned festival lineups in Germany’s techno mecca.
A controversial rule restricting speech about Israel was dropped after artists abandoned festival lineups in Germany’s techno mecca.
The main reason the jews under the Ottoman empire started the Yishuv and congregated in Palestine hoping to get their own country was that they were seriously discriminated against under islamic rule. They had to pay more taxes, were restricted in what clothing they could wear, were not allowed to build or maintain houses of worship, ride horses, carry weapons, … and were generally valued as less than muslims wrt legal rulings. This wasn’t enforced everywhere throughout the entire history of the empire, but I don’t think anyone would be happy in that situation.
Currently, less than half the Israelis are descendent from ‘white European’ immigrants
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ottoman_Empire
That seems to me, as a result of the general nationalism that emerged and specifically the long lasting antisemitic tradition of the Christians to take influence with the decline of the Ottoman empire.
Meanwhile there are extensive links between zionism and anti-semitism, where secular zionists often worked together with anti-semitists to push for the zionist project as a mean to remove jews from western countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_antisemitism
Cherrypicking aside, the worsening situation coinciding with the crumbling of the Ottoman empire further supports my point. Larger nationalists groups were going to carve up the territories for themselfves and the jews were so dispersed that they would remain small minorities everywhere. But facing nationalists and religious extremists while losing the ‘umbrella’ of the Ottomans (which was already discriminatory at best).
You cite the reforms under the tanzimat period but very conveniently forget what followed: a return to a monarchist caliphate with a sultan that abandoned the millet system for the ideal of a united people under islam.
It is not my intend to cherrypick. The notion of “islamic rule” by itself could create the idea that islam is monocausal in this, because western history education generally lacks in covering the Ottoman empire, or anything that isn’t eurocentric. In school i learned almost nothing about the Ottoman empire, the Mauretanian empire, Persia, China or other important empires in global history aside from the notion of “In those years they lead conquest into Europe and in those years they were kicked out again. And in these other years Europeans were there and colonized.”
Meanwhile the ruling class in Israel is predominantly of european descent. So the fair idea of the Mizrahi and Sephardi to have a state with a strong enough jewish population to enjoy and protect equal rights for them was still taken over and led to their discrimination by the later european settlers, who enjoyed stronger support from the european countries and US.
What makes you say that Mizrahi and Sephardi jews are discriminated against? Do you feel they were tricked into migrating?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel#Intra-Jewish_racism:_Racism_between_Jews
I cannot judge if they were tricked into migrating, but they were and are subject to discrimination in todays Israel.
I think this is important to note in the discussion, where from westeren countries the current state of Israel is often painted as the only and therefore righteous way, to grant jewish people sovereignity. When seeing the origin of the current state of Israel in the context of european and american antisemitism, nationalism and post-colonialism it becomes more clear, that the underlying motives were not to genuinly prevent further anti-semitism and it did not arise from a genuine care for the jewish people.
So the ethnic discrimination inside Israel, already starting from the beginning, is an indicator for colonial motivations in establishing a state run predominantly by Europeans in the heart of the Middle East and in control of one of the holiest sites of all abrahamic religions. In terms of geopolitics Israel has been very useful to the West, to destabilize and divide the Middle East, and in the competition of reordering the world after WW2 it must have been an important project, to prevent the emergence of an Arab power bloc that could have been more powerful than the EU is today.
When looking at the way that still anti-zionism or even just general criticism of Israel is shunned as being anti-semitic in Germany, it is important to see it as the deflection that it is. The goal of this is to prevent a discussion about the actions of Israel and the current way it conducts itself. This is not to say, that there is no anti-semitism amongst anti-zionists, or also that some are merely using anti-zionism as a vehicle for anti-semitism. There is certainly both. But in Germany for the past month many jews were shunned for criticising Israel. When looking at the historical context, this conduct of German government and mainstream society becomes even more absurd.
The primary question flowing from the earlier posts is brushed aside in half a sentence and flooded with all the sins of Israel, Europe, and the world :-)
It’s actually a very essential question to answer, whether they ‘deserved’ their own country out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire instead of facing the discrimination as a minority in the hardening sectarian climate of the region. Was the UN ‘right’ in their decision to grant them a piece? Were the Arab states ‘right’ that there shouldn’t be a piece with a jewish majority?
I’d gladly discuss the other points you touch but I’m afraid they’re just added to the soup to distract from having to think about the above.
I mean to this question the answer is very simple on one side and very complicated on the other.
On the one side every human, every group of human, be it by ethnic, religious, cultural or other metric has the right to live in safety, dignity and with the ability to self develop and participate politically.
If there was a land, where any such group is settled as significant majority, they deserve to have sovereignity over their affairs, be it in a nation state or a federal state.
Founding todays Israel in the way it was founded. Without hearing the Palestinians on the matter and with the Nakba was a grave mistake. It is the root of the subsequent violence and injustice that we still see today. I believe that having a longer UN mandate, maybe taken from the British and instead given to an international coalition, would have helped in finding a diplomatic solution that could have resulted in one nation state that grants the aforementioned rights equally to the people, irrespective of their religion or ethnicity.
Given that today there is about 7 Million Palestinians and about 7 Million Israeli Jews in the area i would see a historic chance to put the area back under UN control and work towards forming a new state for everyone currently living in the area. Such a process would take decades though.
Instead of creating a nation where one group has the majority over the other, creating a state where all groups have about the same power and are forced to work together diplomatically could have been the greatest story of integration in history. I believe that it still can be, if the world decides to think in terms of working together, instead of sowing division again. However there we are back to the geopolitical goals of the global player. In so far i also see it as a great test of humanity, if we manage to solve global issues together again.
Last thought, knowing it goes beyond your question: The reason why i believe in a one state solution is, that a two state solution would on the one hand split the Palestinian state in two parts, which is pracitically impossible to govern or on the other hand deny one side access either to the sea or the Jordan. The sea is crucial for trade and development, as every landlocked country in the world can attest to. The Jordan is crucial for the water supply in this otherwise arid region. Any way to split the land between two nations will disadvantage the other on either of these key ressources.
But this is just gravely incorrect. The Palestinians were heard on the matter. They disagreed. The UN voted for a partitition regardless. Then they were invited in the committee that ‘drew the lines’. But their position was the following (quote from the first article):
“The Arab Higher Committee rejected both the majority and minority recommendations within the UNSCOP report. They “concluded from a survey of Palestine history that Zionist claims to that country had no legal or moral basis”. The Arab Higher Committee argued that only an Arab State in the whole of Palestine would be consistent with the UN Charter.”
The article mentions some colorful quotes from the Arabs regarding the two state solution:
"A few weeks after UNSCOP released its report, Azzam Pasha, the General Secretary of the Arab League, told an Egyptian newspaper “Personally I hope the Jews do not force us into this war because it will be a war of elimination and it will be a dangerous massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades.”[133] (This statement from October 1947 has often been incorrectly reported as having been made much later on 15 May 1948.)[134] Azzam told Alec Kirkbride “We will sweep them [the Jews] into the sea.” Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli told his people: “We shall eradicate Zionism.”[135]
King Farouk of Egypt told the American ambassador to Egypt that in the long run the Arabs would soundly defeat the Jews and drive them out of Palestine.[136]
Haj Amin al-Husseini said in March 1948 to an interviewer from the Jaffa daily Al Sarih that the Arabs did not intend merely to prevent partition but “would continue fighting until the Zionists were annihilated.”[135]
The Arab Higher Committee demanded that in a Palestinian Arab state, the majority of the Jews should not be citizens (those who had not lived in Palestine before the British Mandate).[108]"
And the day after the British left, they attacked. And when they lost, they rebuilt their armies and attacked again. And then again. The attacks by their neighbour states only stopped after Israel credibly threatened to retaliate with nuclear weapons.
So with this kind of mindsets (on both sides, I’m leaving out all the evils of zionistst here), do you believe a single state solution would have been viable? Which countries would have sourced the UN peacekeeping force you propose? Would they have been willing to fight off the Arab armies on day one? Would they be willing to stay indefinitely?
I think that the people that believed or still believe in a single state solution with equal rights are naive to the reality that there are just way too much religious extremists willing to inflict atrocities to ensure their place in heaven. On both sides.