Zionists are "secular" but they use God as their "land agent" who gave them the "promised land", says Professor Avi Shlaim of Oxford University. Jews are God's "chosen people" who are exempt from the rules that apply to non-Jews, according to Israeli author and journalist Gideon Levy. Israel is carrying out "ethnic cleansing … and that may become genocide”, adds Israeli American scholar Omer Bartov. "No, Palestinians did not commit acts of terrorism, Israel did", tweets Miko Peled, an ex IDF soldier and son of a former Israeli general. These few quotes summarize current thoughts of some of the former Zionists.
Israel Turns Gaza into Rubble
Israeli author and journalist Gideon Levy:
The core of Zionism is the "feeling of being chosen people" that is "deep rooted" in Israel. A consequence of it is that the rules and laws that apply to others do not apply to Israelis. Here's a quote from one of his speeches:
"This is the core of Zionism. This feeling of chosen people is still very deep rooted in Israel. The consequence is that everything which refers to any other country in the world does not refer to Israel. That we are a special case. That international law should be implemented everywhere, but we are a different case. That a Molotov bottle against a Jewish soldier is not like a Molotov bottle against a Russian soldier because we are different, because we are chosen, because of this damned Jewish supremacy".
On Israel's campaign of dehumanizing Palestinians, Levy says:
“My biggest struggle is to rehumanize the Palestinians. There’s a whole machinery of brainwashing in Israel which really accompanies each of us from early childhood, and I’m a product of this machinery as much as anyone else. [We are taught] a few narratives that it’s very hard to break. That we Israelis are the ultimate and only victims. That the Palestinians are born to kill, and their hatred is irrational. That the Palestinians are not human beings like us… So you get a society without any moral doubts, without any questions marks, with hardly public debate. To raise your voice against all this is very hard.”
Levy believes that the talk of the peace process and two-state solution is a scam perpetrated by Zionists. Here's Levy in his own words:
"Now the real turning point should be, for us, the moment that each of us realize that the Israeli occupation is not a temporary phenomenon. I think that most of the people, if not all of them, understand that the occupation is there to stay. And Israel never had the slightest intention to put an end to it. All the efforts were only to mislead the West and to maintain the occupation. All this longest peace process in history, which never led to anywhere, was never aimed to lead to anywhere. All those efforts were only in order to mislead you and enable the occupation to grow, including Oslo".
Professor Avi Shlaim:
Oxford Professor Avi Shlaim believes that Israel "prefers land to peace", adding that "land grabbing and peacemaking don't go together". Here's his exact quote:
"Land grabbing and peacemaking don’t go together, it’s one or the other, and by constantly expanding settlements, Israel showed that it prefers land to peace....Israel by its actions has shown that it is not interested in having a Palestinian partner for peace because it wants to maintain its control over the territory. Israel refuses to accept Hamas as a negotiating partner. Israel’s position is that Hamas is a terrorist organisation – pure and simple. It will never negotiate with it. Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy has been to let Hamas rule the Gaza Strip, but to contain the Gaza Strip, and this policy collapsed, because Gaza could not be contained."
Professor Omer Bartov:
Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov has warned of "genocide" in Gaza. He has talked about "clear intention of ethnic cleansing" in the narrow strip of two million Palestinians under heavy bombardment by Israeli forces since the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel. Here's a quote from him:
"So, my sense is the following. Israeli political leaders and military leaders have made very startling and frightening statements about Gaza, speaking about flattening Gaza, speaking about Hamas, but by sort of extending it also, by extension, also Gazans, in general, as human animals, speaking about moving the entire population of Gaza out of Gaza. That is a clear intention of ethnic cleansing. So, those statements show intent. And that’s a genocidal intent, which is often very difficult to prove in genocide. People who carry out genocide don’t always want to say that they’re doing it".
Former Israeli Soldier Miko Peled:
Miko Peled, whose father was a general in the IDF and who himself served in the Israeli military, says that Israel is the biggest obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Talking about the October 7 surprise attack by Hamas on Israel, he says that "Israel is behaving like a gangster who has been humiliated taking vengeance upon innocent civilians, killing thousands upon thousands". "It's not a question of self-defense, it's a question of brutality and revenge because Israel was humiliated", he adds in an interview on Al Jazeera English.
Peled accuses Israel of lying about the October 7 attack. He said the testimony is now showing that most of the Israeli civilians on October 7 were killed by the Israeli helicopters firing indiscriminately. He says the western governments who support Israel “are supporting the fight against justice, the fight against peace”.
Peled says that “liberal Zionism” is a myth and all forms of Zionism amount, in practice, to the denial of fundamental rights and freedoms for the Palestinian people. This process starts at a young age for Israeli children whose history textbooks claim that the Palestinians left their homes of their own free will, that they were not driven out by Jewish militias in the 1940s. These history books deny what the Palestinians call "Nakbah", meaning Great Catastrophe, that forced them to flee their homes as part of the Zionist plan to ethnically cleanse what is now Israel.
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Friday, November 10, 2023
Israeli Scholars Provide Insights into Zionist Psyche
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36 comments:
Now you can see how far off the mark Pakistan's persistent attempts to equate Kashmir and Palestine are, and there should be no reason for surprise why such attempts at a false equivalence consistently failed to attract the attention of international community. Even under Modi's rule, India isn't bombing Kashmiri homes or hospitals, nor is it trying to evict Kashmiris from their homes. While staking claim over Kashmir, India's official policy is to consider Kashmiris as Indian citizens, while Israel does not want to consider Palestinians as its citizens even as it is trying to absorb Palestinian lands. Killing armed militants, using batons and pellet guns on stone-pelting mobs, curfews and internet curbs are normal actions employed by even democratic states in the developing world to quell disturbances and restore peace and public order (though delaying elections and keeping political leaders under house arrest may be considered political repression).
But none of these measures India employs in Kashmir satisfy the dictionary definition of a "genocide", and it is normal for countries (especially in the developing world) to not tolerate separatism in the territories it control and have claims over (however disputed those claims may be). The closest thing Modi did so far to emulate Israel's outrageous "settler colonialism" was to issue residency certificates to some non-natives of Kashmir, but even that attempt fell flat as the few who did accept those certificates chose to settle in Hindu-majority Jammu rather than the Muslim-majority Kashmir.
Clearly, the Kashmir issue is a very different case from that of Palestine.
Vineeth: "Now you can see how far off the mark Pakistan's persistent attempts to equate Kashmir and Palestine are, and there should be no reason for surprise why such attempts at a false equivalence consistently failed to attract the attention of international community"
Hindu Nationalism and Zionism have a lot in common. Both are ethno-nationalist ideologies. Zionists believe in Jewish supremacy while Hindu Nationalists believe in Hindu Supremacy.
While Hindu Nationalists also suffer from Israel envy, the Zionists are far more advanced in their capacity to do evil than Hindu Nationalists. Hindu Nationalists are about 100 years behind Zionists.
Here's an excerpt of Tharoor's piece published in "Project Syndicate" in January 2009:
"Yet, when Indians watch Israel take the fight to the enemy, killing those who launched rockets against it and dismantling many of the sites from which the rockets flew, some cannot resist wishing that they could do something similar in Pakistan. India understands, though, that the collateral damage would be too high, the price in civilian lives unacceptable, and the risks of the conflict spiraling out of control too acute to contemplate such an option. So Indians place their trust in international diplomacy and watch, with ill-disguised wistfulness, as Israel does what they could never permit themselves to do".
https://www.southasiainvestor.com/2023/10/modi-and-netanyahu-two-sides-of-same.html
Sir, I was referring to Indian government's policy in Kashmir, not that of Hindu nationalists. Pakistan's official diplomatic narrative on Kashmir often goes on a hyperbole drawing an equivalence of Kashmir and Palestine, and calling India's actions in Kashmir as constituting "genocide". But take a look at the dictionary definitions of "genocide".
- the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
Does India's actions in Kashmir constitute "genocide" by any measure? Is India's actions in Kashmir even comparable to what Israel has been doing for decades to Palestinians (with the silent consent of Western states)? Drawing a false equivalence between Palestine and Kashmir has not done favours to either issues or for Pakistan's objectives on the Kashmir dispute. Pakistani narrative has neither drawn interest from the world powers to intervene, nor has it forced Indian government to come to the dialogue table. If anything, such hyperbole on "genocide" (and other irritants like the undiplomatic personal attacks on Modi by ex-Pakistani FM BBZ) would have only served to make Modi government even less receptive to the idea of talks.
Also, the extract from Tharoor's article you have quoted refers to what Hindu nationalists wish they could do against Pakistan in retaliation for the terror attacks, and not against the Kashmiri population. India isn't trying to occupy Pakistan. Aside from that so-called "Akhand Bharat" nonsense (which I doubt Modi or his ministers themselves take seriously other than its use in domestic posturing to its Hindutva-voterbase), India's territorial claims on Pakistan-administered territory is confined to AJK and GB alone.
Even that claim over AJK and GB is at best half-hearted since independent India never controlled that land in the first place, and capturing it wouldn't be worth provoking a destructive war. I don't think India's foreign ministry officials speak about the country's claims over Pak-administered portions of Kashmir (Pak-occupied Kashmir in our official linguo) even a tenth as much as their Pakistani counterparts do over Indian-administered portions (IIOJK in Pak official linguo). India would be just happy if Pakistan agrees to keep the Kashmir issue in the backburner for the forseeable future, or even reach a tacit agreement to consider LoC as the de-facto border.
In any case, Indian government would be well aware that Pakistan does not pose a direct military threat (other than the irritants related to cross-border terrorism), while an increasingly assertive and expansionist China pose a far greater and long-term threat to India on its northern border.
So the comparison with regard to Israel-Palestine here is India-Kashmir, and not India-Pakistan.
India and Israel have a lot more in common than just Hindu Nationalism and Zionism. Both countries came into existence at about the same time (India 1947, Israel 1948), both are occupying United Nations recognized disputed territories, and both own their existence to British colonialism and duplicities. The difference is Israel is back to the hilt by the United States while India is actively looking for the next fight with China.
As late as the 1940s after World War II, the flag of the Republic of China (nowadays usually known as Taiwan) was flying high in Tawang, South Tibet. Today the Indian flag is flying there. So what happened?
On August 14th, 1947, Nehru gave his famous 'Tryst with Destiny' speech, and with that, a country that historically did not exist suddenly showed up on China's doorstep. India is similar to South Africa, a country that came into existence only because the colonialists created the country and subsequently and willingly relinquished its power to the indigenous people it once subjugated. If the British had never landed in India, the subcontinent today would comprise thousands of fiefdoms often at each other's throats. This was the time of pre-Communist China (Republic of China), and India continued the expansionist policy of the British Raj and continued the land incursion. The Nationalist China (pre-Communist Republic of China) had been sending repeated diplomatic protests to the then-Indian Nehru government, but, schooled by the British on how to deal with these nuisances, these diplomatic protests were duly ignored. When the Communist China won the civil war and the Republic of China retreated to Taiwan in 1949, India's land incursion continued, but Communist China ceased all diplomatic protests. In February 1951, three and a half years after the British Raj had left the subcontinent, India finally trekked up to Tawang, South Tibet, expelled the officials posted there from Lhasa and annexed it. Tawang is the last major Tibetan frontier town. It is the birthplace of the Sixth Dalai Lama and home to the four hundred years old Tawang monastery. Historically the Tawang monastery is a central government friendly monastery. This means the news of India invasion and annexation should have arrived in Beijing within a few days at the latest. As expected the Tibetan Lhasa government vehemently protested, as did the Republic of China (by then has already retreated to Taiwan), but curiously, Communist China made no noise. Communist China's accommodation must have greatly emboldened India as it continued to push northward into China, eventually precipitating the one-month-long 1962 India-China war. In the run up to the 1962 war, Zhou En Lai went to New Dehli pleading to Nehru to take what it has stolen (South Tibet) and fix the boundary along the MacMahon alignment (It was termed the MacMahon alignment and not the MacMahon line because the so-called MacMahon line is a diplomatic fogery and is not recognized by either the Communist China or the Nationalist China (Republic of China, nowadays usually referred to as Taiwan)) but the offer was rejected by India. While China's mission was a last ditch effort to salvage a friendly relationship with India, Nehru saw its neighbor's posture as a sign of submission.
Anyway India was swiftly defeated and humiliated (in the minds of the Indians). Immediately blame game began in Indians political circles and Nehru propagated the narrative that India was backstabbed by Communist China when it was evident that his policy will certainly resulted in military conflict between the two countries. On the international stage, Nehru positioned India as a victim of Chinese aggression when, in fact, it had already gobbled up South Tibet in 1951. India's duplicities have far-reaching consequences beyond the dispute between the two countries. India's lies created the narrative of a land-grabbing, expansionist China, which, according to Henry Kissinger and Robert MacNamara, is the reason the US got involved in the Vietnam War. In 1987, India made South Tibet a state and renamed it the so-called Arunachal Pradesh. The Republic of China (usually referred to as Taiwan nowadays) once again issued a statement strongly condemning India.
Here is an excerpt of the statement put out by the Republic of China (usually referred to as Taiwan nowadays):
"In regard to the issue of the Indian government's illegal occupation of our country's territory and the establishment of the so-called 'Arunachal Pradesh,' the foreign ministry of the Republic of China issued the following announcement at midnight:
India's illegal occupation of our country's territory has been repeatedly stated by the government of the Republic of China as something it will not recognize. Recently, the Indian Congress unilaterally passed the establishment of 'Arunachal Pradesh' to the south of the so-called McMahon Line. The Indian government also made it a state. The government of the Republic of China once again solemnly proclaims that the government of India intends to legitimize its illegal occupation of Chinese territory. The government of the Republic of China regards this as illegal, void, and absolutely not recognized."
Besides South Tibet, I would like to bring up one of India's many land grabs, which is the kingdom of Sikkim. Sikkim was a neighbor of China for many hundreds of years and enjoyed a close relationship with China. At one point during the 18th century, Sikkim was briefly overrun by the Nepalese Gorkhas. The Sikkim king fled the country and asked China for help. The then-Qianlong emperor dispatched an expedition force, repelled the Gorkhas, and restored the kingdom's independence. Sikkim was left unmolested for the rest of its history until India gobbled it up in 1975. India's sense of land entitlement is both puzzling and troubling. The dispute with China is akin to Turkey arguing with Sweden about a piece of territory in Scandinavia. Its other land grabs are similarly unjustified. Until they were absorbed by India, Ladakh, South Tibet, and Sikkim had never even been set foot on by the brown race Indian. These places have no connection whatsoever to the subcontinent. Why is India even there? And who is the expansionist here?
Ishaan Tharoor
@ishaantharoor
"We're rolling out Nakba 2023" — Israeli minister just flatly says it, while many in the West tie themselves up in knots to avoid seeing things as they are
https://x.com/ishaantharoor/status/1723712055021105388?s=20
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https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-12/ty-article/israeli-security-cabinet-member-calls-north-gaza-evacuation-nakba-2023/0000018b-c2be-dea2-a9bf-d2be7b670000
'We're Rolling Out Nakba 2023,' Israeli Minister Says on Northern Gaza Strip Evacuation
Likud Minister Avi Dichter says that 'war is impossible to wage when there are masses between the tanks and the soldiers.' While Netanyahu does not support resettling the Gaza Strip, he says will not give up security control over it 'under any circumstances'
Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter (Likud) was asked in a news interview on Saturday whether the images of northern Gaza Strip residents evacuating south on the IDF’s orders are comparable to images of the Nakba. He replied: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.”
When asked again whether this was the “Gaza Nakba”, Dichter – a member of the security cabinet and former Shin Bet director – said “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
When later asked if this means Gaza City residents won’t be allowed to return, he replied: “I don’t know how it’ll end up happening since Gaza City is one-third of the Strip – half the land’s population but a third of the territory.”
The Gaza Strip’s settlements were evacuated by Israel in 2005 during a unilateral disengagement helmed by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon. Following coalition members’ declarations regarding reversing this move,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked on Friday if he supports Israeli resettlement in the Gaza Strip after the war. “No, I don’t think so,” he answered, “I said I want full security control. Gaza must be demilitarized. I don’t think (resettlement) is a realistic goal, I’m saying it plainly.”
Netanyahu, who spoke at a press conference alongside Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and minister Benny Gantz, added that he won’t give up control over security in Gaza “under any circumstances.”
In response to a question about the war’s aftermath and the possibility of the Palestinian Authority controlling the Strip, he said: "I repeat, we will have total security control, with the ability to enter whenever we want to eliminate any terrorists who re-emerge. I can say what won’t happen – there will be no Hamas."
"I can say what else will not happen – there will not be a civil authority there that educates its children to hate the State of Israel, to kill Israelis, to eliminate the State of Israel. There cannot be an authority there that pays the families of murderers. There cannot be an authority there whose leader has not yet condemned the terrible massacre more than 30 days after it occurred," added Netanyahu.
FIVE ISRAELI ANALYSTS CRITIQUE ISRAEL FOR THE CURRENT CRISIS AND A PUBLIC OPINION POLL SHOWS THAT ISRAELIS ARE FED UP WITH NETANYAHU
ONE
In an interview with POLITICO, Ehud Olmert argued Netanyahu suffered a “nervous breakdown,” as he sought to avoid being thrown out of office for failing to safeguard national security in the murderous Hamas attacks of October 7. Olmert added, “Bibi has been working all his life on the false pretense that he is Mr. Security. He’s ‘Mr. Bullshit.’
TWO
Professor Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian who teaches at the University of Exeter in the UK, states that despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel is only a democracy for its Jewish citizens and not for its Palestinian citizens.
THREE
Professor Avi Shlaim, an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, says: “There is no denying that the establishment of the state of Israel involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. Three-fourths of a million Palestinians, more than half of the Arab population, became refugees, and the name Palestine was wiped off the map."
Turning to recent events, in another conversation, he said: “Israelis claim that they gave the Palestinians a chance to turn Gaza into the Singapore of the Middle East. But they did nothing of the sort. They turned Gaza into an open air prison. The media attention has been on the Hamas attack and on Israel’s response, which is out of all proportion. I condemn both. I condemn the Hamas attack because it was against civilians. And killing civilians is wrong, period. But the Israeli response has been brutal and savage and out of all proportion. And revenge is not a policy. And what Israel is doing is state-sponsored terrorism. Or state terrorism. It’s on a much more serious scale than the attack on Israel.
“The point I really want to emphasize is that the conflict didn’t start on October 7. People don’t ask why did Hamas launch this attack. And the answer is to be found in the context. And the context is the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories since 1967.”
FOUR
In 2015, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy and said Israel’s right wing extremists had perfected the art of playing victim. In their eyes, they were God’s chosen people and could only do good. That gave them the right to dehumanize the people whose land they were now living on (and this was reconfirmed recently by the Israeli defense minister when he called them “human animals”). They could kill them at will without a pang of guilt.
Levy said he asked Ehud Barak, later prime minister, what he would have done if he had been born into a Palestinian family. The truth came out when he said that he would have grown up to be a terrorist. On November 9, Levy wrote in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper that he edits, that unless Israel examines its failings, soon it will be fighting another war.
FIVE
A former Israeli general, Noam Tibon, told NPR: “Benjamin Netanyahu cannot stay even one more day on the chair of the prime minister. He is a failure and he must go.”
Mantou, your arguments are non-sensical for several reasons.
- The more accurate comparison with Israel is Pakistan (and not India) as both Pakistan and Israel are countries established by the partition of a land in the name of a religion, and as a "homeland" for people of that particular religion. On the other hand, India has no state religion and the "Indian" identity has always been cultural, not religious. If it hadn't been for Jinnah's TNT, both Pakistan and Bangladesh would have been part of the same "India" due to linguistic and cultural reasons. Aside from religious differences, north Indians share far more in common in language and culture with Punjabis and Sindhis in Pakistan than they do with south Indians. Similarly Bengalis living in India's West Bengal have far greater linguistic and cultural similarity to the people of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) than with people of other states in India.
- China's present day territory has been ruled by multiple warring kingdoms for most of its history. Large areas of West like Xinjiang (populated by Turkic Uighurs) and Tibet came under Chinese imperial rule only intermittenly. To emphasize, Tibetans and Uighurs are "Chinese" only to the extent that Ladakhis, Sikkimese and Arunachalis are "Indians". Most Chinese empires except for the Yuan and Qing dynasties (which were respectively Mongol and Manchu, and not Han Chinese) held sway only over Eastern and Southern China. For comparison, nearly the whole of the Indian subcontinent (except parts of the south and north-east) were united at the heights of Mauryan and Mughal Empires as well.
- China's disputed claims over Arunachal Pradesh are only as valid as Afghanistan's claims over the areas of Pakistan's KP and Balochistan. Just as the British drew the MacMahon Line to separate NEFA (present-day Arunachal Pradesh) from Tibet, they drew the Durand Line to separate what became the NWFP (present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) from Afghanistan. Independent India and Pakistan legally inherited these territories from the British Raj, and understandably will not hand over them to China or Afghanistan on a plate.
- Just as the people of Pakistan's KP aren't clamouring to join Afghanistan, the people of India's Arunachal Pradesh aren't clamouring to be "liberated" by China as well. Arunachalis and KP's Pashtuns are happy to be counted as Indians and Pakistanis.
- You kept mentioning "Republic of China" all over your comments and not "People's Republic of China". Republic of China is presently the island of Taiwan alone, and last I checked they gave up claims over rule of Chinese mainland a long time ago, much less mainland China's other territorial claims.
- India's annexation of Sikkim is nowhere near as outrageous as China's 9-dash line claims over South China Sea. Like many states and territories of modern India and Pakistan, Sikkim was a princely state under British India and continued as a protectorate of the Indian Republic until its annexation.
If you have grievances about all of these, go ahead and make a complaint to British government sitting in London.
You kept mentioning "Republic of China" all over your comments and not "People's Republic of China". Republic of China is presently the island of Taiwan alone, and last I checked they gave up claims over rule of Chinese mainland a long time ago, much less mainland China's other territorial claims.
There is a reason I kept mentioning "Republic of China" for a reason because Indians usually think it is the CCP that has problem with Indian's annexation of South Tibet but it is not and to stress that South Tibet is part of China before the Communist China even came into existence. And when did they give up claims over rule of Chinese mainland? If they did they wouldn't put out a statement condemning India's annexation of South Tibet wouldn't they? The 1992 consensus stipulated the principle of 'One China' meaning both sides agree to 'One China', only that each side can have their own interpretation of what their 'One China' means. From the perspective of the Republic of China, the 'One China' means the Republic of China including the mainland part, and that is the status quo that is acceptable to both sides.
Independent India did not legally inherit South Tibet from the British Raj. Can you Indians be honest for once?!
Your claim that Arunachalis are happy to be Indians is just laughable. If that is the case India wouldn't impose the notorious AFSPA on South Tibet. AFSPA is imposed on areas India deemed 'disturbed', such as South Tibet and Kashmir. The population there and the northeast in general are restless. People in the northeast don't like to associate with things Indian. That's why K-pop is popular in the Northeast but Bollywood is banned in certain parts of the Northeast. Half of the people the Indians kill in the northeast are civilians. Who wants to live in a failed state filthy third-world turd country?
For comparison, nearly the whole of the Indian subcontinent (except parts of the south and north-east) were united at the heights of Mauryan and Mughal Empires as well. The Mughal is real and the Mauryan is not. There is no such thing as the Mauryan empire.
Mantou, the MacMahon Line that forms the border between Arunachal Pradesh and Tibet was agreed to as part of the Simla convention in 1914 between British colonial government, Tibet and the "Republic of China". If the govt of China had a problem with the border they should have resolved the issue with the British govt in India at the time, which apparently they did not. Republic of India therefore "legally" inherited the same border when it won the independence in 1947 and Govt of India took possession over the lands administered by the British Raj. This is similar to the issue Pakistan has with Afghanistan over the colonial-era Durand line that came into existence in 1893 and forms the border between the two countries as Afghanistan claims that it never agreed to the line in the first place. Its as if when the British ruled the subcontinent, Afghans and Chinese did not dare to challenge them, but when the colonial government left they make claims to the new governments in Pakistan and India.
This is sort of like you have an ownership dispute over some land with somebody, but did nothing to discuss and resolve the issue with them while they were around, and when they sold that land "legally" to someone else you suddenly make claims and ask the new owners to hand over the land to you. Does that even make sense, sir?
As regards to AFSPA in Arunachal Pradesh, that law applies to only 4 districts in that state that borders Assam. It does not apply to the districts bordering Tibet. Ever heard of demands for independence or an active insurgent movement in Arunachal Pradesh against Indian rule? Because I haven't. Arunachalis are well aware what kind of rights and freedoms Tibetans have under Chinese rule.
Since you bring up issues of Kashmir and Northeast, can we perhaps speak about the 2022 UN report on Uighur genocide and the concentration camps (sorry, "re-education centres") run by Govt of China for the Uighurs? You know, that shaving of beards and sterilization of women thing..
And finally, there is no such thing as "Mauryan empire"!! I wonder who was ruling Indian subcontinent between 322-184 BCE, and who was responsible for exporting Buddhism to China, Sri Lanka and South-East Asia. That Emperor Ashoka guy was a pure myth? Or, more likely - especially if you are Pakistani, considering this selective ignorance of pre-Islamic Indian kingdoms and empires - your school history texts have lost pages covering the thousands of years between end of the Indus Valley civilization and the arrival of Bin Qasim in Sindh. :)
Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
I grew up in a Zionist household, spent 12 years in a Zionist youth movement, lived 4 years in Israel, and have friends and family who served in the IDF.
When that is your world, it's hard to see apartheid when it's happening.
1/16
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Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
I grew up in France, in a Jewish community where the norm was unconditional love and support for Israel. Zionism wasn't even named because that's all we knew. Jews were nearly wiped by pogroms and repeated holocausts, and a Jewish state was the only way to keep us safe.
2/16
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aphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
All Zionism is rooted in trauma and fear. It is first and foremost an ideology of self-liberation. It's about love Jewish people, survival for Jewish people. But Zionism is like any other ethnic nationalism, it's about prioritizing *our* safety and well-being.
3/16
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Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
Like all nationalisms, we were fed a historical narrative completely divorced from reality: that Palestine was a largely uninhabited piece of desert before we settled it; that in 1948 Palestinians willingly left because they were making room for Arab armies to...
4/16
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Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
..."throw Jews to the sea"; that Arab leaders turned down all Israeli and US peace offers and were unwilling to share the land; that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle-East; that despite terrorism, the IDF upholds the highest moral standards; so on and so on.
5/16
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Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
So the first reason that Israelis will never willingly make peace with Palestinians is that Israelis (and Zionist Jews around the world) live in a parallel world. They know alternate historical facts that feed more nationalism, militarism, and extremism.
6/16
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Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
So when the IDF bombs Gaza and kills children, the average Israelis thinks that 1) it is the Palestinians' fault--for not agreeing to peace, for continuing to threaten and attack Israel, etc 2) Israel is merely defending itself and that there is simply no alternative.
8/16
Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
The same rationale justifies Gaza's open-air prison; military checkpoints in the West Bank; bulldozing homes; etc. Israelis even made up the term "Pallywood", because for them, it's all a show to turn the world against Israel. The suffering is either fake or self-inflicted.
9/16
https://x.com/RaphMim/status/1392323085718589443?s=20
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Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
Of course, there are some Israeli leftists and anti-Zionists who fight for Palestinian liberation. But it's a tiny, and shrinking, minority. Most Israelis don't consider what it means for Palestinian freedom, dignity, and physical well-being to be systematically erased.
10/16
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Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
Israel is, by every definition, an apartheid state: if a Jew and an Arab commit the exact same crime in the West Bank, they will face two different legal systems. The Jew will face a civil court, the Arab will face a military court. Two legal systems for two ethnic groups.
11/16
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Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
But Israelis can't fathom that this is unjust. When they fight against people calling the occupation of the West Bank "apartheid", it's because Israelis genuinely believe that it's all self-defense and needed and legitimate.
12/16
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Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
These two factors (alternate history and dehumanization) mean that it is *physically impossible*--and I mean that in the most literal way--for Israel to willingly end the occupation and agree to a just solution to the conflict. Peace cannot come from within Israel.
13/16
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Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
Israeli society is getting more extreme, more nationalistic, more violent, and more entrenched in its own historical narrative & its own self-victimization. At this point, it is simply delusional to expect that things change will come from Israel.
14/16
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Raphael Mimoun
@RaphMim
That means consumer boycott of Israeli goods, corporate boycott of Israeli technology, and sanctions by Israel's main trade partner and political supporters, the US and EU. Those are the only measures that can meaningfully push Israel toward ending the occupation.
16/16
If there is one thing that has hurt Palestinian cause, that is Pakistanis comparing Kashmir to Palestine problem. In Kashmir, Hindus are not colonisers. India did not import and settle Hindus from Tamil Nadu and Bengal in Kashmir. Kashmir belonged to both Hindus and Muslims who are living there.
Any comparisons are illogical and at the same time, resulted in Palestinians losing support from neutral Hindus.
@ Mantou said...
"Of the other hand the oppression and genocide of Muslims in India is real including the beating, killing and bulldozing of Muslims homes in India and the thousands of mass graves dug up in India-controlled Kashmir. This is why Israel is such an inspiration to the despicable Hindu nationalists."
----
"genocide" has a well defined meaning. Bulldozing homes of a few people is not genocide. What amuses me is that sometimes, the population of those who are supposedly subject to genocide is even increasing in the subsequent 2 or 3 years. To sound more educated, I'd recommend that you guys don't abuse the term. Call it a persecution, harassment or something similar.
William Dalrymple
@DalrympleWill
Few know the history of the violent explusion of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948: it is not taught in schools, and instead many- myself included- were taught outright lies about Palestine being an empty desert, "a land without a people for a people without a land." As ideas for a second Nakba are being drawn up right and discussed right now, as you read this post, it is vitally important we remember this terrible history, and Britain’s role in it, and do everything in our power to stop it being repeated, with the full support of our ignorant, bigoted, cowardly and sometimes outrightly Islamophobic leaders.
https://x.com/DalrympleWill/status/1719597794322006502?s=20
S.L. Kanthan
@Kanthan2030
Israel's propaganda ("hasbara") rests upon two fake logic:
🔹"Israel is defending itself"
🔹"Genocide in Gaza is justified because Hamas is using civilians as a human shield"
First, no country has a right to self-defense when it's occupying others and depriving them of basic rights. In fact, it's Palestinians -- the victims -- who have the right to use force as self-defense.
Second, Israel needs to show proof for each case of destruction of civilian infrastructure. Otherwise, wantonly bombing schools and hospitals is just genocidal and murderous.
https://x.com/Kanthan2030/status/1724454149579026883?s=20
John Oliver on Israel-Hamas war: ‘Any conversation around this has to begin with empathy’ | John Oliver | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/13/john-oliver-on-israel-hamas-war-netanyahu
Oliver sought to zero in on “one of the biggest misconceptions” bandied about over the last month: “The tendency to collapse leaders and citizens when discussing this. To assume that Netanyahu speaks for all Israelis, or that Hamas speaks for all Palestinians, because that is emphatically not the case.”
Oliver started with Hamas, which was founded in 1987 and has been in charge of Gaza for 17 years. Many commentators in Israel and the US have dismissed all Gazans as supportive of Hamas with the claim that Gazans elected them to power. “It is true that at one point, Gazans did elect Hamas,” Oliver noted, “But if you think that makes them all complicit in war crimes their government commits, then boy do I have some bad news for you about decades of US foreign policy.”
And Netanyahu has covertly funded Hamas to play them off their more organized and legitimate rival, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. “Netanyahu took the risk of betting that he could control Hamas, and use them to his own ends, and he was horribly wrong about that,” Oliver explained.
In sum, “Palestinians and Israelis have both been relentlessly let down by their leaders and the result has been a decades-long cycle of extremism, violence, retaliation and more extremism,” Oliver said. Palestinians have experienced that twice over – “subject to the inadequacies and cruelties of a Hamas government and the punishing isolation and daily miseries of an Israeli one”, trapping them in what has been called an “open air prison” by many humanitarian groups.
——-
And the US has “emphatically picked a side” with $3.8bn in annual aid to Israel, including many, many weapons used to bomb Gaza. Oliver refused to show any footage of the atrocities in Gaza, and instead played clips of displaced Palestinian children expressing their confusion in a refugee camp. “It should be impossible to see those kids and not feel shattered,” he said. “There is a natural human impulse to protect children – to grab a toddler you don’t know if you see them running into traffic. And if that impulse is broken or dis-incentivized by a government, then there is absolutely a humanitarian crisis no matter what any asshole has to say about it.”
Oliver didn’t have a solution for peace in the Middle East, and acknowledged that even if he did, “this really would be the worst voice in which to relay that message. But it does seem to me personally that a ceasefire has to be the first step,” he said. “Continuing down this path only creates more extremists, which is the last thing that anybody needs.
“Any conversation around this has to begin with empathy, or we’re just fucked,” he concluded. “We know that dehumanizing people leads to violence. We know that violence leads to even more brutality and destruction, and we know that crucially, breaking that cycle is unfortunately going to require leadership significantly different than the ones currently in place.”
"The Simla convention did take place but the so-called MacMahon line is a diplomatic forgery tacked on it years later.."
- That's what the Afghans say about Durand Line too. Come on, if Macmahon Line is a diplomatic forgery by the Brits, then so is Durand Line! Give back KPK to Afghanistan. Pashtuns are Afghans and Pashtun land belongs to Afghanistan. Balochis meanwhile are an Iranian ethnic group and Balochistan should belong to Iran as well. :)
"The subcontinent at the time consisted of thousands of tribes.. Ashoka was just the emperor of a small kingdom out of thousands of petty kingdoms at the time."
- "Emperor" of a small kingdom! So would it be the armies of a small petty kingdom based in Pataliputra (modern Patna, Bihar) that defeated the great Seleucid Empire that was ruling Persia at the time? (Seleucid-Mauryan war, 305-303 BCE) Was it to Chandragupta (Sandrokottos for the Greeks), the ruler of that petty kingdom, that Seleucus I Nicator married off his daughter in return for 500 war elephants to use against Ptolemy in Egypt? And was it to the puny court of the same petty kingdom that Megasthenes served as the Greek ambassador?
Mind you, it is not Indian sources that describe these events, but the Greeks themselves.
"There is no such thing as a single polity or the concept of a single polity what we now call India. India didn't exists until the British created"
- "India" has always existed as a distinct cultural entity, as modern political nation-states with well-defined boundaries are pretty much a European creation. There was always a distinct "India" (Hind/Hindustan/Hindistan for Persians, Arabs and Turks) in European historical sources from the time of Greeks and Romans. ("Pakistan" meanwhile is a new artificial construct of Jinnah's. There would have been no "Pakistan" without him.) Politically, the Indian subcontinent was ruled by multiple dynasties with varying geographical reach. It is the same case with "China" which was nothing more than smaller warring kingdoms concentrated in the fertile lands of east and south for most of its history.
To learn about Mauryan Empire, I would advise you to read "mainstream" history from books written and published outside Pakistan. I am well aware that Pakistani history texts do not mention an empire or a civilization to have existed in the subcontinent before the arrival of Turkic Muslims. So, I do not blame you for your laughable ignorance of expansive pre-Islamic Indian empires like the Mauryas and Guptas, not to mention Satavahanas, Cholas, Chalukyas, Pallavas, Palas and many others which covered territories larger than modern Pakistan and left behind magnificent rock-cut temples.
"This Uighur genocide thing has been thoughtfully debunked by numerous people and organizations.."
- The "OHCHR Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China" is a report published on 31 August 2022 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concerning the treatment of Uyghurs and other largely Muslim groups in China. It is an extensively researched report that Govt of PRC did its best to prevent from being published. No reputable scholar, analyst or academic has "thoughfully debunked" the said UN report except Chinese official mouthpieces, propagandists and paid "experts" with dubious credentials.
To wrap up, "genocide" is what Chinese are doing to Uighurs and Tibetans, Israelis to Palestinians, what Turks did to Armenians and Assyrians in the early 20th century, and what Pakistani state did to Bengalis in 1971. What India is doing to Kashmiri Muslims is at most political repression, but no "genocide".
You are well within your rights to close your eyes and pretend there is darkness all around, but please do not expect others to believe and do likewise. :)
The territories of China of course changed throughout thousands of years of its history, but the country came into existence of its own volition. India, on the other hand, only came into existence because the British cobbled together thousands of fiefdoms contiguous to the area along the railway constructed by the British into a single polity called India in 1947. If it were not for the British, the subcontinent today would still comprise thousands of petty kingdoms and princely states with no affinities to each other. Even in August 1947, the hinterland, including Hyderabad, was not part of India. This is a fact. The British created your country and gave your people a national identity, being Indians. And once the Indians have a country, they start land grabbing because this is what their former master has been doing all along. Monkey sees Monkey do.
Mantou, it is illogical to argue that the territories of "China" changed through history, since "China" wasn't a nation state to begin with (just like "India"). What you had were kingdoms and imperial dynasties like Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Qing, Ming etc whose territorial control varied over time, mostly in eastern and southern portions of present day "China". China's current territorial claims are based on the claims of the Qing dynasty and nothing more. Tibet and Xinjiang is no more "Chinese" than Ladakh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh are "Indian". Like "India", the name "China" too is a European creation, possibly derived from either the name of the Qin dynasty or the ancient Sanskrit word "Chin", and Western historians from anitiquity used the word "China" in the same way they used "India" - a distinct cultural realm ruled by multiple dynasties.
Your denial of even the existence of Mauryan empire (which predated the first imperial dynasty of "China" - the Qin) itself laid bare your quackish grasp of history and monumental ignorance of Indian subcontinent. So, your valiant "gaslighting" crusade based on flimsy and illogical arguments would convince nobody except those who are clueless about history or lack the ability to think rationally.
John Oliver on Netanyahu and Hamas:
https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/tv-series/israel-hamas-war-last-week-tonight-with-john-oliver-transcript/
the truth is, Netanyahu has been struggling to hold office in the last half-decade. Voters there actually endured five elections in just four years, because neither Netanyahu nor anyone else could form a stable majority. He only made it back into power last year, by forming a coalition with those on the furthest right wing of Israeli politics — leading to the most right-wing government in the country’s history. His cabinet is stocked with extremists. Take Itamar Ben-Gvir. He’s been convicted on at least eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism. He was once considered so fringe, the Israeli army rejected him from mandatory service. But he’s now Netanyahu’s minister of national security. Meanwhile, his current finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has said, “Is there a Palestinian history or culture? There is none. There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” He’s also advocated for “victory through settlement,” very basically seizing land in the West Bank, and driving Palestinians from their homes to the point where, quote, “I abort their hopes of establishing a state.” Settlements are widely understood to be against international law, yet Smotrich wants a massive expansion of them, and Netanyahu gave him a special role in charge of settlement affairs. But perhaps the most surprising way Netanyahu has jeopardized Israel’s safety is that, for years, he deliberately used Hamas as a way to undermine the Palestinian Authority, a rival to Hamas, which administers parts of the West Bank and has much more legitimacy on the world stage. Experts say the idea was basically divide and conquer — if Palestinian leadership remains split, and one of the main parties at the table has a terrorism label on it, it’s going to be much easier for Netanyahu to refuse to engage with them, and say he has “no partner for peace.” Here’s Smotrich explaining that strategy out loud in 2015.
The Palestinian Authority is a burden and Hamas is a terrorist organization that no one will recognize, and no one will give it status in the ICC. No one will let them lead a decision in the security council. The main pitch we are playing now is international delegitimization. Hamas at this point, in my opinion, will be an asset.
John: “Hamas is an asset.” If you’re calling the group that has repeatedly killed your people an asset, it shows pretty clearly that what you care about isn’t safety, but total control. And for years, Netanyahu’s government was actually allowing suitcases of cash to be delivered to Hamas, something by the way that earned suitcases of cash the title “most morally disreputable way to transfer money” for the nine hundredth year in a row. When the scandal broke, Netanyahu insisted that that money was for humanitarian aid. Which still doesn’t explain why it had to be delivered in luggage in the back of a fucking car. The point is, Netanyahu took the risk of betting that he could control Hamas, and use them to his own ends. And he was horribly wrong about that, to the point that his ministers are now getting screamed out of hospitals. So, to recap so far: Palestinians and Israelis have both been relentlessly let down by their leaders, and the result has been a decades-long cycle of extremism, violence, retaliation, and more extremism. And Palestinians have been on the receiving end of that extremism twice over — subject to the inadequacies and cruelties of a Hamas government and the punishing isolation and daily misery of an Israeli one. Because Israel’s approach to Gaza has been truly punishing — fencing people in, limiting exits, and trapping them inside of what has been called an open-air prison by many human rights organizations. Life under a blockade there has been hard for a long time, even when there aren’t bombs flying.
Excellent analysis
@Vineeth
Also worth asking how many of the so called "Islamic countries" stand behind Pakistan (or Kashmir or anything else for that matter). It doesn't really matter who gave Indians an identity and borders, what matters is where you stand after 75 years.
Excellent analysis. Actually that is not where the similarities between India and Israel ends. They are both expansionist colonial powers.
In Pakistan we are only told about Kashmir, Hyderabad and Junagarh. But India's policies towards Goa, Pondicherry and eastern states are similar to what east India company did. Some of these states didn't even want to join India but were forced to. Of course INC knew better. The white man's burden of civilizing colonies became India's burden to secularize.
Same tonic in a different bottle.
G. Ali
Vineeth, you have missed the point.
Both India and Israel owe their existence to the British colonizers.
The only similarity between Pakistan and Israel is that they were created on the name of religion. But Pakistanis were not imported from Europe. Most of us the sons of the soil who decided to separate from a make believe country. We were not created by a UN resolution.
G. Ali
Al Jazeera English
@AJEnglish
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, says that Israel cannot claim the right of ‘self-defence’ under international law because Gaza is a territory which it occupies
https://x.com/AJEnglish/status/1724872397801902304?s=20
@G. Ali
"Both India and Israel owe their existence to the British colonizers."
How else it could be and how is Pakistan or Jordan or Saudi Arabia any different? The concept of Nationalism is not there in Quran or Swaheehul Bukhari. It is a European way of organizing society. Those parts of Afpak where people could not absorb that ideology is mired in tribalistic violence. When people from those regions are desperate to migrate to Britain, it is hypocritical to complain about that.
Zen "How else it could be and how is Pakistan or Jordan or Saudi Arabia any different".
Deflect much? We are not talking about Saudi, Jordanian, Mars or Jupiter here. We are talking about India. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other mid eastern countries were helped by Europeans but at least their ruling classes were local who formed these countries. And Pakistan was voted into existence by the public.
India's ruling class was British colonizers who created a country out of thin air.
"When people from those regions are desperate to migrate to Britain, it is hypocritical to complain about that."
Are you talking about Indians? The biggest voice against colonizers come from India.
G. Ali
Mantou, regarding your comments "India is actively looking for the next fight with China".
I don't agree with you on this point. India is only acting as if it is ready to go to war with China. There are two reasons for this, first it increases it's stature to China's level and second it gets support from the West.
If you look at India's history, they only fight against enemies who are weak and numerically smaller in numbers.
Just look at the number of armies that passed through Kyber and Bolan passes. How many came from west to east and how many went from east to west?
On the other hand, Sri Lanka alone has fought at least 3 wars on it's soil against Indian colonizers. Let us not even get into Java and other places in between.
G. Ali
G. Ali, Your argument make it sound as if this penchant to wage wars, invade other lands and pillage its towns is some virtue that needs to be celebrated. In that case, go ahead and applaud the Israeli invasion of Palestinian lands as well. Unlike Arabs, Turks and Mongols, Indian kings and emperors generally did not have a desire to invade lands outside the traditional boundaries of the Indian subcontinent. (I say "generally", because the Chola Empire is known to have invaded Sri Lanka and parts of South-East Asia.) India had an emperor Ashoka who gave up fighting wars after seeing the human costs of his war against Kalinga kingdom. I would pick Ashoka and Akbar as model rulers any day over the likes of Ghori, Timur, Alauddin Khilji and Nadir Shah.
Secondly, the modern Indian Republic is a status-quo power. It does not seek new lands and is content with what it has. But like any other sovereign nation, it will not make a compromise by giving up what it possess. This applies to Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir. Will Pakistan give up Pashtun lands like KPK to Afghanistan since Afghans claim that they have never recognized the colonial Durand line? India does not seek war with any country, be it Pakistan or China, but it will not give in to blackmailing and bullying by either.
As for Sri Lanka, it would be illogical to consider Tamils there as "Indian colonizers", since the Sinhalese themselves are Indo-Aryan speaking colonizers who arrived in that island thousands of years ago from eastern India (by their own chronicles like the Mahavamsa). Both the Tamils and Sinhalese have had presence in Sri Lanka from around the same time period. The aboriginal population of Sri Lanka are the tribal Vedda people, not the Sinhalese or Tamils.
Just look at the number of armies that passed through Kyber and Bolan passes. How many came from west to east and how many went from east to west?
This may be news to you but you invade/colonise when the potential bounty is significantly more than the cost of invasion/occupation.
This is the same reason Iceland was never invaded .Not because Icelanders were supermen who scared the British or Sweden(when it was a major power that controlled what is today Norway and other countries) but because an expedition to colonise them was never worth it.
Compared to the Indo Gangetic plains Afghanistan has always been a barren wasteland.
In rare scenarios when invading Afghanistan made economic sense in the wake of post Alexandrian trade routes entities like the Mauryan Empire incorporated what it today’s Afghan territory without much difficulty.
@Anonymous, That's quite true really. There was little incentive for Indian kingdoms to invade and occupy the barren lands beyond the mountains to the West and North. For Huns, Scythians, Turks, Afghans and Persians hailing from arid countries, the rich kingdoms of India and its vast fertile lands was always the lure. The Mughals themselves suffered an invasion by the Persian emperor Nadir Shah in 1739 when Persian troops looted Delhi and massacred its inhabitants - Hindus and Muslims alike. The then Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah reportedly fell at Nadir Shah's feet to beg his mercy to halt that massacre. I wonder how Pakistani history texts portray this episode, and who would be their hero here - the invader Nadir Shah, who defeated the Mughals and plundered Delhi, slaughtering its Hindu and Muslim inhabitants?
I COULD HARDLY BELIEVE WHAT ISRAEL'S FOUNDERS AND RULERS HAD TO SAY ABOUT PALESTINIANS, ARABS AND MUSLIMS -- Each quote one is more shocking than the previous quote
Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country.
--David Ben-Gurion, 1956
We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house.
—Moshe Dayan, April 1956
As soon as we have a big settlement here, we’ll seize the land, we’ll become strong, and then we’ll take care of the Left Bank [of the Jordan River]. We’ll expel them from there, too. Let them go back to the Arab countries.
—Jewish settler, 1891
[We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to hate us.
—Israel Zangwill, 1905
Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English, or America is American.
—Chaim Weizmann, 1919
I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral.
—David Ben-Gurion, 1938
Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.
—Benny Morris, 2004
Maybe England will chance upon an empty piece of land in need
of a white population, and perhaps the Jews will happen to be these whites . . .
—Chaim Weizmann, 1914
We welcome the friendship of Christian Zionists.
—Theodore Herzl, 1897
The entire Christian church, in its variety of branches . . . will be
compelled . . . to teach the history and development of the nascent Jewish state. No commonwealth on earth will start with such propaganda for its exploitation in world thought, or with such eager and minute scrutiny, by millions of people, of its slightest detail.
—A. A. Berle, 1918
Christian Zionists favor Jewish Zionism as a step leading not to the
perpetuation but to the disappearance of the Jews.
—Morris Jastrow, 1919
Zionism has but brought to light and given practical form and a
recognized position to a principle which had long consciously or
unconsciously guided English opinion.
—Nahum Sokolow, 1919
Christian Zionism and Jewish Zionism have combined to create an
international alliance superseding anything that NATO or UN has to
offer.
—Daniel Lazare, 2003
Put positively: Other than Israel’s Defense Forces, American Christian Zionists may be the Jewish state’s ultimate strategic asset.
—Daniel Pipes, 2003
US prestige in the Muslim world has suffered a severe blow, and US
strategic interests in the Mediterranean and Near East have been seriously prejudiced.
—George F. Kennan, January 1948
An Israeli minister (Gila Gamliel) reveals one rationale for destroying so much of Gaza. By rendering large parts of it inhabitable, Israel can "promote the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons, outside of the Strip."
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-773713
One of the issues on which my office has been working diligently is how to proceed the day after Hamas has been defeated and annihilated.
Albert Einstein was quoted as saying: “In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.”
The State of Israel is in the midst of one of its greatest crises, certainly for at least two generations.
More than 1,200 of our people were viciously murdered, 239 brutally kidnapped, thousands more injured, and 240,000 made homeless by the Nazi-like regime in Gaza.
Women were raped. The elderly were abused and taken hostage. Children were beheaded. Families were tortured in front of each other for the entertainment of their captors before being burned alive while bound to each other.These inhuman atrocities changed everything.
It is clear that much has to change, as many conceptions were proven wrong on the day of the pogrom on October 7.
What should be just as clear is that many more conceptions must be addressed, challenged, and possibly destroyed in the weeks and months ahead.
One of the issues on which my office has been working diligently is how to proceed the day after Hamas has been defeated and annihilated.
We will still have around two million people in Gaza, many of whom voted for Hamas and celebrated the massacre of innocent men, women, and children.
Gaza is a breeding ground for extremism. It is a small area, by no means the most populated on earth, but one where for too long, its rulers have prioritized war against the Jews over a better life for their people.
It is a place devoid of hope, stolen by the genocidal terrorists of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups.
This situation has already led to a large exodus of youths from Gaza. It has been estimated that since Hamas violently took over the Strip in 2007, between 250,000 and 350,000 mostly young adults have left Gaza to make a new life abroad.
As we consider our options for the day after, the international community appears to be pushing to bring the Palestinian Authority back to rule Gaza. This has obvious structural flaws, as it was tried in 2005 after the disaster of the Disengagement when all 8,600 Jewish residents were forcibly evicted from the Gaza Strip. It took only two years for Hamas to seize power, largely by throwing PA leaders off high roofs.
Furthermore, as we are witnessing at this very moment, the PA does not have a markedly different ideology from Hamas. Recently, for example, the PA Ministry of Religious Affairs distributed instructions to preachers in mosques throughout Judea and Samaria to deliver a teaching about the requirement to kill Jews and the wider goal to exterminate all Jews.
So, this option – bringing the PA back to rule Gaza – has failed in the past and will fail again. It is an option that is seen as illegitimate by the Israeli public and one that would put us back to square one within a short amount of time.
Other options for Gaza's future
ANOTHER OPTION is to promote the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons, outside of the Strip.
It is important that those who seek a life elsewhere be provided with that opportunity. Some world leaders are already discussing a worldwide refugee resettlement scheme and saying they would welcome Gazans to their countries. This could be supported by many nations around the world, especially those that claim to be friends of the Palestinians.
This is an opportunity for those who say they support the Palestinian people to show these are not just empty words.
Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
This is a must-read by Omer Bartov, an Israeli professor who is one of the world’s leading Holocaust historians and genocide experts:
https://cgcinternational.co.in/the-hamas-attack-and-israels-war-in-gaza/
"On October 7 the repressed reality of Palestinians under direct or indirect Israeli rule literally exploded in the country’s face. From this perspective, while I was shocked and horrified by the brutality of the Hamas attack, I was not surprised at all that it occurred. This was an event waiting to happen. If you keep over two million people under siege for 16 years, cramped in a narrow strip of land, without enough work, proper sanitation, food, water, energy, education, with no hope or future prospects, you cannot but expect outbreaks of ever more desperate and brutal violence."
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1728998212424601967?s=20
Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
This has got to be a first in France's history. A former Prime Minister saying that France is becoming "a very diminished nation" ("un très petit pays"), notably due to the country's reduction in freedom of thought and speech with regard to Israel.
This was Dominique de Villepin, who was responding to accusations of antisemitism made against him, because he'd been very critical of Israel and of the censorship of Israel's critics. Here's a complete translation of what he said, as always extraordinarily well expressed:
"All roads lead to Rome, but not all paths of criticism lead to antisemitism. It is possible to criticize the United States without being necessarily antisemitic. One can criticize the messianic Zionism of a part of the Israeli government without being antisemitic. One can support the idea of justice for the Palestinian people without being antisemitic. One can question an economic, cultural, financial system... As far as I know, a former [french] president of the republic campaigned denouncing the power of finance, he was not antisemitic!
Essentially, in all the questions you ask me, what is the goal? What is the purpose behind you and those who prepare this kind of questioning? It is to make sure that I remain silent... By constantly wanting to limit our ability to express ourselves, by no longer being able to say anything in the media under the pretext that it might mean [this or that] or be inconvenient, by tracking all forms of thought that can overshadow a strategy or policy, we are becoming what we are turning into, that is, a very diminished nation.
Look at the United States, what is happening there? In the United States, within the Democratic Party, which is not known for its antisemitism, a major revolt is taking place regarding Israel. A generational revolt, a political revolt. And within the Jewish community itself, linked to the relationship between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, there is also a revolt organizing.
You know, what I think about first and foremost by telling you this is the interests of Israel, the interest of the Jewish community: it is necessary to help oneself, that is, not to put oneself in a situation where one risks fueling criticism. So I believe it takes a lot of lucidity, a great deal of rigor, a little bit of courage, to try to assert one's ideas and convictions."
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1728952543349498202?s=20
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