[monocasa]

> What about the Jews who were ejected from neighboring Arab countries during these various wars? Do they get to go back home?

Yes, they should also be allowed back and several countries have explicitly allowed such a thing.

> Do you truly believe a compromise can be reached with an organization that committed a massacre on the scale of October 7th? Personally, I'm willing to compromise a lot for peace (divide Jerusalem, give up the west bank, whatever. Fighting over land/religion is absurd), but I honestly don't believe that's what Hamas is aiming for. Their actions at least indicate otherwise.

I don't think compromise is an option that has legitimately been tried.

[_rahy]

Compromise has been tried. The creation of Israel was a compromise. Rejected by the Arab states. Oslo was a compromise. Rejected by Arafat. Camp David 2000 was a compromise. Rejected again by Arafat.

The Palestinian position is that Oslo and Camp David were not good faith compromises by Israel, but even if so Arafat made no counter-offer. He rejected the offers out of hand. Then the second Intifada started and ushered in Likud and Netanyahu which led us to where we are today.

As far as a Palestinian right-of-return to within Israel's borders. It would be the demographic end of a Jewish democratic Israel. It's the one thing that Israel absolutely will not and cannot compromise on. It's an unreasonable demand.

To my mind: Palestinians have never had effective leadership and they've been used as pawns by the other Arab nations. The lack of Palestinian leadership is not entirely the Palestinians' doing, at least since Arafat anyway. Israel has intentionally kept West Bank and Gaza leadership divided. Nonetheless, Palestinians are going to need to figure out a way to have effective leadership. Someone who is motivated and empowered to negotiate for peace, recognizing that Palestinians are not negotiating from a position of strength.

[jraby3]

This is a ridiculous comment. Do you really think the decedents of 150k Iraqis are going to go back to Iraq for example???

In what world would that ever happen? Would those people ever be safe there?

And that’s just one of a dozen countries that tortured and killed Jews in the name of Allah.

[isr]

Unfortunately for the general tenor of this thread, you're repeating propaganda which has been widely debunked by Iraqi Jews themselves.

For example: [Avi Shlaims book "Three Worlds"](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62918049-three-worlds)

There has been a longstanding and unsinkable narrative that, frustrated by the refusal of Jewish communities in Arab lands to move to the early Israel, an active campaign of bombings etc was launched by Israel itself, surreptitiously, in order to exarcerbate tensions already caused by 1948.

Of course, the fact that these communities had existed within the Arab world for centuries itself belies the notion that the Arabs wanted to exterminate them "for Allah". As anyone with even a passing knowledge of history can attest to.

[jraby3]

I was born in Iraq where the Jewish community there was ethnically cleansed.

Way before the foundation of Israel, my father and uncles were restricted in numerous ways because of their Jewish ancestry. For example there were quotas on the number of Jews allowed in universities.

Jews were frequently imprisoned there (including my father and his brothers) for the sole reason of being Jewish.

[shwouchk]

> Of course, the fact that these communities had existed within the Arab world for centuries itself belies the notion that the Arabs wanted to exterminate them "for Allah". As anyone with even a passing knowledge of history can attest to.

Let’s apply that argument to eg mid 20th century Europe. Let me ask you this directly: are you denying the holocaust?

[jraby3]

You are right. I shouldn’t have used that phrase. It was wrong and I agree with you 100% that isn’t the real reason, just a very poor abbreviation of a deeper reason.

It was for the more common reasons. To scapegoat the Jews while the government steals and does horrible things to its citizens.

[isr]

Jraby, you need to distinguish between sectarian tensions which were deliberately inflamed

(campaign of Mossad bombings targeting Jewish communities elsewhere in the Middle East, to force sectarian fault lines to implode - documented BY an Iraqi Jew whose father left Iraq, served in the IDF, then left for London where the daughter wrote a book detailing this very thing),

vs the long tradition of Muslims and Jews living peacefully side by side. The Caliph Umar, when he took control of Jerusalem from the Byzantine's, actually invited the scattered Jews BACK to Jerusalem. When Jews were being banished from Al-Andalus (Spain) after the Christian reconnaissance (Spanish Inquisition and all that), the Ottoman Sultan actually sent multiple ships to RESCUE them, which is why there was such a large Jewish presence in N Africa.

There is simply NO comparison between the Jewish experience under Muslim rule, and the Jewish history of repression under European rule. None.

And then Zionism came along. If not for that, you would be Iraqi today. That's the sad truth.

[jraby3]

I’m not comparing Muslim vs European rule. The point is that when world events happen, Jews aren’t safe.

Life wasn’t equal as a Jew in Iraq, and that was one of the best examples one could find. And it shouldn’t matter that Israel was formed - if Jews were safe there they should always be safe.

[shwouchk]

Putting aside your barrage of disinformation, conspiracy theories and plain lies, it wouldn’t really matter /even if/ jews lived peacefully as equals to muslims in the muslim world before the 20th century (which they absolutely did not).

The fact is, they were expelled from those countries. EVEN IF it was “safe” being an iraqi jew in 1850, it was not in 1950, and it is definitely not today. So what is your point?

[isr]

> Let’s apply that argument to eg mid 20th century Europe. Let me ask you this directly: are you denying the holocaust?

Oh, go to hell with that fake question. What I said was DIRECTLY about Jewish communities living in the Muslim world, for centuries. Any half-decent professor of history would agree with what I said. It's not even remotely controversial nor contested by any serious historian, Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

You're desperately clutching at straws, trying to imply that anyone here denied the centuries long EUROPEAN history of pogroms and expulsions, from Britain and Spain in the 14th to 15th centuries, to the repeated pogroms throughout Western, Central and Eastern Europe, culminating in the 20th century where much of Europe COLLABORATED with the Germans to butcher 8+ million people far away from any front lines, 6 million of whom were Jews.

Why are you so desperate to put your words in other people's mouth? Are YOU trying to deny the Holocaust? Hmm ...

[shwouchk]

My apologies, I thought you were simply mistaken rather than trolling.

I asked you a direct question that followed from your argument, where you proposed essentially a global jewish conspiracy, based on strawman arguments.

As an answer, I got an angry rant attacking me personally, citing an unknown authority (“Any half decent professor”) as your source in an attempt to bully and discredit me.

Much Appreciated.

[isr]

You discredited yourself. I didn't have to.

[monocasa]

I simply think they should be given the option. They should be welcome to choose not to take it as well.