The Palestinian Ambassador to Russia has said that the visit of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to Moscow "is being prepared". Putin will sort this mess out, you just watch.
@previous (Father Merrin !u5oFWxmY7U)
Good old Pootin', the calm voice of reason in the world.
Israel attacking Gaza - sends ample warning before firing rockets at military targets.
Hamas attacking Israel - slaughters and kidnaps innocent people at a music festival.
One of these is more wrong than the other.
(Edited 17 seconds later.)
@previous (D)
Which group has killed more people?
@previous (Kook !!rcSrAtaAC)
That depends on where you draw the lines around the groups and also the time.
In this particular conflict, so far about 1000 Israelis (mostly civilians) and around 600 Palestinians have been killed, so Hamas has the edge.
If we're talking about how many people Muslim Arabs have killed in general over the centuries in their Jihad against the Jews, then it's a great deal more than the number of Muslims Jewish people have killed in retaliation.
(Edited 1 minute later.)
@previous (D)
No I'm asking how many Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli government since they took over, versus how many Israelis have been killed by Hamas
@1,261,138 (Kook !!rcSrAtaAC)
What do you mean by "took over"? Gaza is not governed by Israel. It is governed by Hamas.
Also, you seem to be under the false impression that the Jews came in and displaced / kicked out the local population who were mostly Arabs... that simply is not true.
What actually happened is this (note, you probably won't find this stuff on Wikipedia, so don't bother looking):
Millennia ago, the Jews were the only people for whom Israel was their national kingdom (hundreds of years before Islam was invented). Throughout history they have been conquered a number of times by various other civilizations and reclaimed their land and kicked out again, notably by the Assyrians, the Romans, various groups of Arabs, Christian Crusaders, and finally, the Ottoman Turks.
Incidentally it was the Romans who gave the land of Israel the name "Syria Palaestina", as part of an effort to erase its Jewish identity. The number of Jews in the country dwindled to about a quarter of the population, with Christians forming the majority by the 5th century AD.
In the 20th century, around the time of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, a movement called Christian Zionism began (in Britain) which sought to return the Jewish people to the so called Holy Land - their rightful ancestral home. After the first world war, the entire Middle East was carved up between Britain and France. Britain was given custodianship over Palestine (which at that time included Jordan) called the British Mandate. Part of the binding duty which Britain had at the time was to return the Jews, as a matter of historic right, to their homeland, to recreate it (see the Balfour Declaration).
Note that these terms have never been abrogated. When the UN took over operations from the League of Nations, it took on all the obligations of its predecessor.
King Faisal of Iraq and Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, signed the Faisel-Weizmann agreement for Arab Jewish cooperation, and the Jews were welcomed back to Palestine. However...
Around the same time an Arab nationalist called Mohammed Amin al-Husseni was installed as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. His task initially was to recruit men to serve in King Faisal's army (in the Arab Revolt, which succeeded in getting rid of the Ottomans). Apparently he was originally seen as pro-British, however he turned out to be anything but this. Being a massive pan-Arabist, he of course took great exception to the Balfour agreement and incited a huge revolt against the return of the Jews. Multiple pogroms against the Jews followed, things generally turned to shit, and this eventually led to a 3-sided war between Jews, Arabs and British (see 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine). Eventually he ended up fleeing to Lebanon, and later Italy & Germany. During Ww2, he collaborated with both Hitler and Mussolini. He sought assistance from Hitler for Arab independence and the removal of the Jews from Palestine.
By this time, Britain was ready to wash its hands of the whole shitty affair. In order to try and come to some sort of state a of peace, Winston Churchill gave away 77% of Palestine - to the east of the river Jordan - Transjordan (now Jordan) to the Arabs. The remaining territory to be given back to the Jews (who at this time were starting to be exterminated in Europe) was what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
So now we come to 1948 and the so-called war of (Arab) independence, which against all odds, the Jews won. And so, 23% of their original country was now once again theirs. Subsequent to this there have been several offers of a state of Palestine to the Arabs, all of which have been (violently) rejected, and all of which resulted in nothing more than an escalation of terrorist activities against Israel.
This is getting long, so I will leave it to you to find out how the Gaza strip and the West Bank became Palestinian territories.
tl;dr: There have always been Jews living in Israel/Palestine - it is their ancient homeland. This idea that they came in and kicked out the poor Arabs is just nonsense.
@1,261,154 (D)
ok when we have to start with "Millennia ago, " it gets iffy
@previous (boof)
Where would you draw the line where history starts not to matter, and why?
@previous (D)
Well if you want to take their mythos at face value, then it wasn't originally their land... they murdered the indigenous people and took it over. Again, that's going off of their own telling of events. It's another question entirely why they would choose to present it that way, but they did.
(Edited 4 minutes later.)
@1,261,265 (D)
history by definition starts from whence there are written records of events, but that's neither here nor there
@1,261,154 (D)
> What do you mean by "took over"? Gaza is not governed by Israel. It is governed by Hamas.
>
> Also, you seem to be under the false impression that the Jews came in and displaced / kicked out the local population who were mostly Arabs... that simply is not true.
>
> What actually happened is this (note, you probably won't find this stuff on Wikipedia, so don't bother looking):
> Millennia ago, the Jews were the only people for whom Israel was their national kingdom (hundreds of years before Islam was invented). Throughout history they have been conquered a number of times by various other civilizations and reclaimed their land and kicked out again, notably by the Assyrians, the Romans, various groups of Arabs, Christian Crusaders, and finally, the Ottoman Turks.
>
> Incidentally it was the Romans who gave the land of Israel the name "Syria Palaestina", as part of an effort to erase its Jewish identity. The number of Jews in the country dwindled to about a quarter of the population, with Christians forming the majority by the 5th century AD.
>
> In the 20th century, around the time of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, a movement called Christian Zionism began (in Britain) which sought to return the Jewish people to the so called Holy Land - their rightful ancestral home. After the first world war, the entire Middle East was carved up between Britain and France. Britain was given custodianship over Palestine (which at that time included Jordan) called the British Mandate. Part of the binding duty which Britain had at the time was to return the Jews, as a matter of historic right, to their homeland, to recreate it (see the Balfour Declaration).
>
> Note that these terms have never been abrogated. When the UN took over operations from the League of Nations, it took on all the obligations of its predecessor.
>
> King Faisal of Iraq and Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, signed the Faisel-Weizmann agreement for Arab Jewish cooperation, and the Jews were welcomed back to Palestine. However...
>
> Around the same time an Arab nationalist called Mohammed Amin al-Husseni was installed as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. His task initially was to recruit men to serve in King Faisal's army (in the Arab Revolt, which succeeded in getting rid of the Ottomans). Apparently he was originally seen as pro-British, however he turned out to be anything but this. Being a massive pan-Arabist, he of course took great exception to the Balfour agreement and incited a huge revolt against the return of the Jews. Multiple pogroms against the Jews followed, things generally turned to shit, and this eventually led to a 3-sided war between Jews, Arabs and British (see 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine). Eventually he ended up fleeing to Lebanon, and later Italy & Germany. During Ww2, he collaborated with both Hitler and Mussolini. He sought assistance from Hitler for Arab independence and the removal of the Jews from Palestine.
>
> By this time, Britain was ready to wash its hands of the whole shitty affair. In order to try and come to some sort of state a of peace, Winston Churchill gave away 77% of Palestine - to the east of the river Jordan - Transjordan (now Jordan) to the Arabs. The remaining territory to be given back to the Jews (who at this time were starting to be exterminated in Europe) was what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
>
> So now we come to 1948 and the so-called war of (Arab) independence, which against all odds, the Jews won. And so, 23% of their original country was now once again theirs. Subsequent to this there have been several offers of a state of Palestine to the Arabs, all of which have been (violently) rejected, and all of which resulted in nothing more than an escalation of terrorist activities against Israel.
>
> This is getting long, so I will leave it to you to find out how the Gaza strip and the West Bank became Palestinian territories.
>
> tl;dr: There have always been Jews living in Israel/Palestine - it is their ancient homeland. This idea that they came in and kicked out the poor Arabs is just nonsense.
Thank you for this well thought out post
@1,261,138 (Kook !!rcSrAtaAC)
Not enough, I'd say! They should just nuke them and be done with it.
@previous (I)
That's probably going a bit too far. Why not just irradiate the region and make it uninhabitable for a good 100 years or so? Let everyone calm down and get their heads on straight and then real negotiations can begin, if anyone still cares.
war ... does not make one great