Israel to World: "Suck It."

I don't think you can understand it either solely as an opposition to "the Occupation" (assuming we're talking about the territories) or as some kind of pure, genetic anti-Semitism. Arabs in Palestine opposed, or were encouraged to oppose, mass Jewish immigration because they rightly believed that the immigration was taking place with the intention of creating a Jewish state, which, among other things, would thwart Arab nationalist goals. Then in '48, when hundreds of thousands of Arabs refugees were created, new, stronger reasons for animosity were created. Then the '67 war and the occupation further fueled the animosity. Mordy, you genuinely seem like a good guy but I never get the sense that you have tried to understand what the successive phases of this conflict looked like through Palestinian eyes.

"genetic anti-Semitism" - i mean this is obv a strawman. i don't think jew hatred is genetic. but i do think that arab antisemitism predates even the first aliyah in 1882. which is not to say that there weren't legitimate reasons to dislike jews that got added to the bonfire in 82 or 29 or 48 or 62 etc. but i do find there's a lot of whitewashing from ppl who are uncomfortable stating the plain truth that arab antisemitism + pogroms throughout the middle east predate any kind of zionism whatsoever. it's like i keep seeing idiots saying that stabbing jewish children + the elderly is explicable bc of palestinian deprivation + the occupation. there's a lot of dumbassery on this issue. i'm not trying to argue that zionism has 100% clean hands but there needs to be some push back on what appears to be historically deficient, morally decadent activism.

lol @ morally decadent

it's pretty clear everybody hates each other over there, who hated who first is an unproductive fool's game

fyi fred as late as 1940 the nazis were still considering the madagascar plan

and as early as '39 he addresses the reichstag about extermination.

as the german government spokesman said "the holocaust was germany's responsibility and there was no need for another view on it." as of now, arguments to the contrary constitute revisionism, i'm not sure how you can interpret it another way.

the only reason Bibi brings this up is to morally absolve his administration of whatever fucked up shit he is planning to do in retaliation. That's it. The precise degree of historical accuracy of his comments is irrelevant. Both sides use the best available pretext - for Palestinians it's the occupation, for Israelis it's antisemitism, both feed into each other.

hurting: i can empathize with a lot of things - even armed resistance to the IDF. but i can't sympathize on any level with stabbings carried out against civilians - particularly children + the elderly. i've seen a lot of people say that it is explicable bc of the occupation, or bc of palestinian deprivation. one person even asked me to emphasize by thinking about how they're suffering in the ways that jews suffered for eons. it's important to note that in all those eons jews never responded to suffering by murdering innocents. deprivation does not explain murdering children. the only thing that explains that is an ideology of hate.

it's important to note that in all those eons jews never responded to suffering by murdering innocents

until the 20th century that is

prior to that we didn't really have the opportunity

we had the same opportunities palestinians had today. you think we didn't have knives?

I feel like getting you to acknowledge similarities between Jews' historical situations and Palestinian's current situation is some kind of small victory

are you asking if I can dredge up examples of Jewish resistance fighters killing German children or Spanish Catholic children or something? I'd be surprised if there weren't any tbh

I don't see any justification for random stabbings of civilians either. I think what "explains" it is nicely laid out in the Ayatollah's book, actually -- low-level attrition warfare designed merely to make Israeli life as difficult as possible.

i think you don't understand my pov at all if you think i don't believe the palestinians are suffering. i think they are. i even think the occupation is the most proximate cause of that suffering. don't think that their suffering justifies their actions though, and i think that their psychotic jew hatred predates any kind of occupation or any kind of israel whatsoever. but a child born today to a palestinian mother didn't do anything to deserve the deprivation he'll grow up in. he also didn't do anything to deserve the anti-semitic brainwashing he'll be inducted into. but there's an already existing context for everything - including the occupation.

(but not so much so that it becomes outrageous and repugnant to their supporters, xp)

if you think i don't believe the palestinians are suffering.

this isn't what I said fwiw

i don't think how the palestinians are suffering today btw comes even close to how jews historically suffered under muslim rule, let alone under christian rule. but it's not a contest.

re: these particular stabbing incidents - I think identifying any specific motivating factor (such as an ideology of hate) is liable to be more complex than that. Obviously anyone who stabs a child is disturbed. The degree to which the particular range of motivations - ideology, mental imbalance, social pressures - can be separated out is never clear-cut. This was not a military operation where someone was following orders (or at least I don't think it was).

hurting: i haven't read the ayatollah's book but there are 1.5 billion muslims in the world - surely no matter what techniques the palestinians use against the jews they'll always have an extraordinarily large and wealthy base of support, no?

sry I meant their supporters in the west/outside the muslim world

btw shakey - keep in mind that this kind of "particular range of motivations - ideology, mental imbalance, social pressures" is odious when used to contextualize, eg, someone like dylan roof. worth thinking about why you'd want to attribute stabbing a child to something beyond ideology unless it's to somehow mediate or excuse said hate.

re: these particular stabbing incidents - I think identifying any specific motivating factor (such as an ideology of hate) is liable to be more complex than that. Obviously anyone who stabs a child is disturbed. The degree to which the particular range of motivations - ideology, mental imbalance, social pressures - can be separated out is never clear-cut. This was not a military operation where someone was following orders (or at least I don't think it was).

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, October 21, 2015 10:43 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My understanding is that there were calls for a "stabbing intifada." But these things get very murky in the era of social media/internet-inspired attacks. If some imam delivers a sermon calling for stabbings, and then a bunch of randoms watch a youtube video of it and carry out the attacks, are they "following orders"? Are they lone wolf copycats?

this kind of "particular range of motivations - ideology, mental imbalance, social pressures" is odious when used to contextualize, eg, someone like dylan roof.

it's not odious, it's essential!

curious if any of you read this speech, what you think:

http://www.vox.com/2015/10/20/9568145/jerusalem-israel-palestine-danny-seidemann

is odious when used to contextualize, eg, someone like dylan roof

disagree w this completely but whatevs. human psychology is not some clearly delineated and compartmentalized structure.

like to what degree a murderer is motivated by just having a shitty day vs. being raised in a household of racists vs. the easy availability of weaponry vs. underlying psych condition like depression/schizophrenia/whatever vs. following orders vs. being goaded into it by peers is never easily separable - it's always some combination of those things

I'm pretty sure tons of innocents died in the Jewish uprisings in 66 and onward. Also, you can't both say that the Palestinians have it much easier than the Jews ever did, and that the Jews had just as much ability to fight back as Palestinians does today. Those two things are related.

i don't really understand what yr saying. palestinians do have it much easier than many Jews did under Muslim and Christian rule, and those Jews had the ability to knife innocent civilians to make their displeasure known and they didn't. the only way those two things are related is that palestinians have so much more autonomy now that some representations (like hamas) don't even have to make do w/ knives - they have a military and rockets as well.

and they didn't

your certainty on this point is a bit baffling

I don't know that some individual at some pt didn't stab an innocent. However I do know that there has never been a jewish political movement or theological one that excused sanctioned or championed the stabbing of innocents as an appropriate path to political liberation.

ok that makes more sense. the latter is totally different from the former

Just to reiterate (sorry) you're not blaming the Holocaust on Muslims, right?

x-post: I don't think that's true either, btw. The bible is full of depictions of killings of innocents, Roman civilians were killed during ancient uprisings, civilians were killed during violence in the fourties, and orthodox terrorists have attacked and killed Palestinians recently. Right?

I don't really get the point? Is it exclusively stabbing that is bad, as opposed to bombings? Or do you just mean during the diaspora? Because then I'd probably point to the difference between living in diaspora and living under occupation.

I will encounter that quote a thousand times from anti-semites, who will claim that Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews - Netanyahu himself said so! Very frustrating.

Frederik there's no equivalent in Jewish ideological/theological history to things like jihad or clerics advocating the random murder of innocent civilians

Fred, the point is that when looking to understand the motivations behind someone stabbing (or bombing) an innocent civilian, there are many people who will explain it within the context of deprivation, frustration, hopelessness, etc. This should be self-evidently bullshit - one might steal bread because they are hungry, or attack a policeman, or wage an insurrection against an army. But killing an innocent civilian - and to make it more dramatic, a child or an elderly person - and to do it explicitly because of their identity is not a function of desperation or hopelessness but one of hate + bigotry. Generally I would think this is obvious but over the last two weeks I've seen plenty of otherwise sober-minded people explain the murder of an innocent as a response to the occupation. This of course also ignores a long pre-occupation history of stabbing Jews (cf the newspaper I posted above).

dowd, I certainly do not blame the Muslims for the Holocaust. I do think that some Arabs (and the leader of Palestinian Arabs at the time) supported the Nazi's genocide, and I think they did so for the same reason that some Palestinians stab Jewish children today. Because they hate Jews.

your compartmentalization of possible motivations is suspect bro

That's cool, Mordy - not in the mood for an argument, anyway. Also, Mets to win tonight? Should be good.

Shakey, maybe think about it like this - what is the operative motive? If you're hungry, and you don't hate anyone, you steal and eat some bread. If you're hungry and you hate somebody, maybe you stab them and then eat their bread. When we ask why you stabbed them, you might say it's because you were hungry and maybe if you weren't hungry you wouldn't have stabbed them, but hunger isn't what made you stab them. The hatred is.

maybe think about it like this - my life sucks and the lives of everyone around me sucks. why does it suck? well everyone around me says it's cuz the Jews are oppressing us. stupid Jews. what can I do about it? pretty much nothing. man this makes me angry and full of rage and helplessness, so angry I'll do pretty much anything. some guys I know try to kill as many Jews as possible, maybe that's a good idea. hey there's a Jew now! gonna stab

now I feel like we're in a bad theater class now

sure - hatred is always justified by blaming a particular group for your problems. even the nazis had gripes about the jews (and in particular blamed them for german defeat during ww1). everyone has problems in their lives. if your solution to stopping hate-inspired murders is to make the murderers life perfect -- you're going to be really frustrated.

like if you think ending the occupation is going to end jew hatred in the arab world you're living in a fantasy. cf jew hatred + anti-jewish violence in the arab world predates the formation of israel. cf jew hatred exists throughout the entire arab world, not just among palestinians in israel.

idk if perfection is required, "less shitty" would be a good starting point

xp

jew hatred + anti-jewish violence in the arab world predates the formation of israel

sure it does, but it's also gotten way worse since the formation of Israel, and Israel's actions are partly the reason for that.

a good starting point for what? it won't end jew hatred because jew hatred exists independently of the occupation. in fact i'd argue that the occupation exists because of jew hatred, not vice-versa.

xp gotten a lot worse? i disagree. jews in the middle east are safer now than they ever were before the formation of israel. maybe the hatred is worse (i doubt it) but arab ability to act on that hatred is much much less

While Jewish communities in Islamic countries fared better overall than those in Christian lands in Europe, Jews were no strangers to persecution and humiliation among the Arabs. As Princeton University historian Bernard Lewis has written: “The Golden Age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam.”17

Muhammad, the founder of Islam, traveled to Medina in 622 A.D. to attract followers to his new faith. When the Jews of Medina refused to recognize Muhammad as their Prophet, two of the major Jewish tribes were expelled. In 627, Muhammad’s followers killed between 600 and 900 of the men, and divided the surviving Jewish women and children amongst themselves.18

The Muslim attitude toward Jews is reflected in various verses throughout the Koran, the holy book of the Islamic faith. “They [the Children of Israel] were consigned to humiliation and wretchedness. They brought the wrath of God upon themselves, and this because they used to deny God’s signs and kill His Prophets unjustly and because they disobeyed and were transgressors” (Sura 2:61). According to the Koran, the Jews try to introduce corruption (5:64), have always been disobedient (5:78), and are enemies of Allah, the Prophet and the angels (2:97-98).

Jews were generally viewed with contempt by their Muslim neighbors; peaceful coexistence between the two groups involved the subordination and degradation of the Jews. In the ninth century, Baghdad’s Caliph al-Mutawakkil designated a yellow badge for Jews, setting a precedent that would be followed centuries later in Nazi Germany.19

At various times, Jews in Muslim lands lived in relative peace and thrived culturally and economically. The position of the Jews was never secure, however, and changes in the political or social climate would often lead to persecution, violence and death.

When Jews were perceived as having achieved too comfortable a position in Islamic society, anti-Semitism would surface, often with devastating results. On December 30, 1066, Joseph HaNagid, the Jewish vizier of Granada, Spain, was crucified by an Arab mob that proceeded to raze the Jewish quarter of the city and slaughter its 5,000 inhabitants. The riot was incited by Muslim preachers who had angrily objected to what they saw as inordinate Jewish political power.

Similarly, in 1465, Arab mobs in Fez slaughtered thousands of Jews, leaving only 11 alive, after a Jewish deputy vizier treated a Muslim woman in “an offensive manner.” The killings touched off a wave of similar massacres throughout Morocco.20

Other mass murders of Jews in Arab lands occurred in Morocco in the 8th century, where whole communities were wiped out by the Muslim ruler Idris I; North Africa in the 12th century, where the Almohads either forcibly converted or decimated several communities; Libya in 1785, where Ali Burzi Pasha murdered hundreds of Jews; Algiers, where Jews were massacred in 1805, 1815 and 1830; and Marrakesh, Morocco, where more than 300 Jews were murdered between 1864 and 1880.21

Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted in Egypt and Syria (1014, 1293-4, 1301-2), Iraq (854­-859, 1344) and Yemen (1676). Despite the Koran’s prohibition, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in Yemen (1165 and 1678), Morocco (1275, 1465 and 1790-92) and Baghdad (1333 and 1344).22

The situation of Jews in Arab lands reached a low point in the 19th century. Jews in most of North Africa (including Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Morocco) were forced to live in ghettos. In Morocco, which contained the largest Jewish community in the Islamic Diaspora, Jews were made to walk barefoot or wear shoes of straw when outside the ghetto. Even Muslim children participated in the degradation of Jews, by throwing stones at them or harassing them in other ways. The frequency of anti-Jewish violence increased, and many Jews were executed on charges of apostasy. Ritual murder accusations against the Jews became commonplace in the Ottoman Empire.23

for improving the lives of other people and reducing tensions?

idk it's so tiresome having you point out how you think one side (which happens to be your side) is moral and rational while the other side is full of amoral irrational hate-filled ideologues. it's just weird, such a blind spot, and so scrupulously maintained.

yes I have read Bernard Lewis

i don't understand - you want me to throw a bone to equivocation bc then it'll satisfy your need to blame everyone equally? israelis as well as palestinians have done terrible things and bear responsibility for the current status quo in Israel and the territories. does that mean that jew hate in the arab world is the fault of israel? no, that's historically inaccurate.

israelis as well as palestinians have done terrible things and bear responsibility for the current status quo in Israel and the territories. does that mean that jew hate in the arab world is the fault of israel? no, that's historically inaccurate.

exactly! was that so hard