We can also answer (in the same way) about the escalations in the last few decades since 1948. Almost everything Israel did was reactive, they rarely shot first.
I don’t think you can justify ethnically cleansing the Palestinians in 1948, and I hardly think the (Jewish) Israeli government gets to play the “it was 80 years ago, it’s old news” since playing on the historical misfortunes of the Jewish community is their justification for existing.
After Ariel Sharon went full false-flag terrorist in Lebanon, again it’s hard to describe these actions as “reactive”. They were very proactive in their assassination campaigns up to and including their attempts to kill an American ambassador.
The sniper killings of civilians throwing rocks in recent years really precipitated the current (can you call it a third Intifada?)
It’s no easy task saying who started what, nor can we really consider it a cold conflict. It’s constantly simmering, knife attack here, sniper shots there. It’s just going on to keep going.
Even if one wants to leave what happened in 1948 in the past, Israel is still doing plenty of damage to Palestinians today, for example:
1. Indefinitely blockading the Gaza Strip by sea and air thus not allowing it to trade normally with foreign countries.
2. In the West Bank, applying separate legal systems to Jews (who have Israeli citizenship due to their ethnicity) and Arabs (who have no way to become Israeli citizens)
3. Continuing to expand Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank (remember no country recognizes the West Bank as belonging to Israel, not even Israel themselves, so this is one of the most unambiguously illegal things according to international law that you can possibly imagine).
4. Generally restricting the freedom of movement and property rights of non-Jewish civilians in the West Bank (which, again, does not actually belong to Israel). Something like 99% of building permits in Area C go to Jews only.
Does all this justify killing innocent civilians in random parts of Israel proper? No, I don’t think it does. But it’s all still horrible. I wanted to point it out because a standard pro-Israel talking point is that 1948 is so far in the past that wanting to fix it is akin to trying to evict all whites from former Native American land in the US. Be that as it may, Israel is STILL doing plenty of harm TODAY and could at least stop that much.
> Indefinitely blockading the Gaza Strip by sea and air thus not allowing it to trade normally with foreign countries
It should be noted that this didn't just happen, it was in response to threat of violence. Israel wants gaza to stop shooting them with rockets, so they tried to prevent them from importing things that could be used as weapons.
I mean, maybe you could argue the blockade is heavy handed and the military benefit didn't justify the other harm it caused. But its not that different from other forms of ecconomic sanctions used by countries when they want to do something but not actually go to war.
> In the West Bank, applying separate legal systems to Jews (who have Israeli citizenship due to their ethnicity) and Arabs (who have no way to become Israeli citizens)
My understanding is that under the geneva convention it would be a warcrime to apply israeli civilian law to the arabs who live in the west bank. So its not like that is totally in the hands of israel.
(I agree that 3 & 4 are fucked up and pretty impossible to defend)
Compared to what it was like during World War II, everything in 1948 was realistically in an opposite state of World Peace.
Not exactly complete peace, but the closest thing ever, that's why they called it a world war. Just like World War I had been the "war to end all wars" since more people than ever were aware and truly wanted a future benefit from such an exercise, even though it didn't really work perfectly either.
You sometimes have to ask yourself how do you know what it was like in 1948?
Was your late father a World War II combat veteran and able to tell you all about it first-hand over a period of decades?
Or at the opposite end of the spectrum among the vast majority of backgrounds whose World War II veteran ancestors or even regular civilian ancestors are many generations removed by now and there was never as much chance for direct dissemination of first-hand recollections? I would estimate that most people today have not ever met a World War II veteran, much less a World War I veteran like so many grandfathers were when I was growing up.
I accept that type of legacy is informed more so from only one side of the conflict. So it has always made me interested in further understanding those having different perspectives over the decades. And more aware of the natural difficulty of grasping the feelings of those who were on the other side at the time.
One thing about World War II, it was big and it ended with a bang. Real big in both respects. Everybody knows that.
The War to End All Wars wasn't officially upgraded to full World War I status until after World War II got underway. Sequels call for that type of nomenclature.
But what most people worldwide fail to remember now, is that WWII was so big and so deadly that there were only three (3) kinds of people remaining after World War II was over.
1. Those that won World War II.
2. Those that lost World War II.
3. Those that were saved by the ones that won World War II.
That's it.
Everyone else was killed.
Even those at the time having no knowledge that WWII even took place, were still saved by the victors or they would have been cruelly overcome by the more-inherently-violent losing aggressors had they prevailed. More cruelly than anything seen since, although some things are coming closer as memories continue to fade. But on a much smaller scale for now.
In this respect it was the least diverse that humanity had ever been, kind of an unrepeatable bubble of world peace where all everyone can do is pick up the pieces of what's left afterward. So many things were completely destroyed never to be the same again. Everyone has been repressed in some way ever since, with different paths to resolve the devastation but no one could ever realistically expect to "recover" what has been lost forever. But after such a devastating four years of intense combat, huge majorities everywhere were enthusiastic about working together to rebuild rather than fight each other any more. Survivors were so damn lucky and peace was simply worth it so damn much.
Well naturally as time marched on we are all now mostly mixed decendants of those 3 surviving archetypes, nothing that came before really matters as much after WWII than it did before, but difficulty has always arisen among those who could not realize & accept this type of thing. With nuclear proliferation ever since increasing the probability that almost all past human accomplishment would be more fully destroyed if worldwide conflict were to get underway again.
This is how people, some of whose ancestors were not even directly involved in WWII, "lose" World War II in the 21st century.
You lose the memory of it.
Either way the only thing that could ever obliterate the relative world peace that existed from 1946 and beyond, regardless of how that imperfect peace has been forgotten and steadily faded, would be World War III.
And you have to ask yourself who is most likely to actually want to start World War III, should they be stopped, and how would that be accomplished?
Now applying these generic observations to the Palestinians & Israelis today, as well as the Arabs & Jews worldwide, these are peoples that were largely saved by the victors of WWII more so than participating as active combatants. They all should not forget this although I think a lack of appreciation here is basically what's happening when you look at it.
It's not much different than it was in the 1970's during the Arab-Israeli Peace negotiations, and even back before the 1967 conflicts.
The ongoing Cold War was much more ominous and threatening to the entire world, but it was because the governments of US & NATO countries, and the government of the Soviets truly hated each other. This was in contrast to the majority of regular American & Russian citizens who were both fundamentally very similar, having no historical record of animosity, just mostly possessing worthwhile national pride on both sides without prejudice.
OTOH it looks like the majority of Arabs & Jews have hated each other religiously, enough for it to be a source of strife since before anyone living was ever born, and at any one time during recent centuries that was the case and it had been true for centuries before that. It was the modern governments that wanted peace more than the regular citizens, they did the best they could but since then it has been up to the citizens on both sides to pick up the baton and carry it forward into the 21st century. Governments can do no more, it has been up to the citizens themselves to each fully halt all violent aggression & retaliation on their own initiative more & more through time if they desire any kind of peace.
They will have to settle for whatever they can accomplish for themselves, governments have not been able to solve this for centuries even when they try.
And it looks like the governments haven't even been trying for a number of years, those in power might even hate each other more than the opposing citizens do now or there would not have been nearly as many casualties on both sides.
After Ariel Sharon went full false-flag terrorist in Lebanon, again it’s hard to describe these actions as “reactive”. They were very proactive in their assassination campaigns up to and including their attempts to kill an American ambassador.
The sniper killings of civilians throwing rocks in recent years really precipitated the current (can you call it a third Intifada?)
It’s no easy task saying who started what, nor can we really consider it a cold conflict. It’s constantly simmering, knife attack here, sniper shots there. It’s just going on to keep going.