I didn’t used to understand foreign involvement in wars, like the whole America-Vietnam shenanigans. But I can see why after watching this Israeli Palestine Conflict since birth.

But now it’s like watching two children fighting over who’s sandcastles can be built in the sandbox. And what do we do if children can’t learn to share? You take away everything and no one is happy.

So is that what this is going to come to? Do adults need to intervene to quell the infants?

181 points
*

About 70 years ago European leaders decided the best thing to do with the Jewish people was give them their own country…

So they picked the holy land of three main religions, kicked out everyone that had been living there for centuries and made it a religious ethnostate.

Surprisingly the people who lived there weren’t happy to be victims of an ethnic cleansing.

Picking virtually any other place on the globe and it probably would have worked itself out by now.

Cynics think that was intentionally. It’s the perfect lightning rod for attacks against “the west” and the hostility leads to plenty of proxy wars while avoiding actual war in Europe again after WW2

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71 points

It started even earlier, after the ottoman empire fell/dissolved, British and French diplomats basically drew lines on a map Scramble for Africa style and created new countries out of nothing.

That created tons of tension already.

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54 points

Yeah, they broke up Africe with no regard to how many distinct cultures there was.

They looked at that giant ancient landmass and legitimately went “they’re all Black, it doesn’t matter”.

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20 points

The area has been a hotbed for 5000 years. The west didn’t help, at any point, but conflict in the middle east is as old as history itself.

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47 points

There’s also a belief among some Christians in the US (including many political leaders) that a Jewish state was necessary for the second coming of Jesus to occur. Why they’re in a hurry, I don’t know.

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33 points

As one who was raised Evangelical Christian for the majority of my childhood by a devout and Republican parent, I’m pretty sure it’s just a death cult.

They live their whole lives only preparing to die.

They forsake and forego a lot of random stuff in favor of rewards after death.

And if they think it’ll get them any bonus, they don’t care if they take everyone else with them, hence the Republican Evangelical politicians generally trying to supply the ingredients for the battle of Armageddon to happen.

Tldr; I think it’s greed typical of those who would fully knowledgeably choose to be a Republican combined with the beliefs of an Evangelical trying to cash in on rewards asap, in the way a Republican typically does.

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1 point

Good analysis. I guess it’s deep in the conservative ‘F everyone else’ mindset.

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4 points

There has been conflict there for centuries. It was predominantly Jewish people 1500 years earlier when they were forced out. One of the main reasons it was selected was because it was not heavily populated and that at one time it was a Jewish region before they were invaded. The history goes back millenniums.

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-28 points

Theyve been fighting for more than 70 years. Its fun to blame Europeans, but its not their fault.

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45 points

It actually started with WW1 when Britain promised both Jews and Palestinians their own state if they overthrew the Ottomans.

Before that, Ottoman rule was oppressive to both groups relatively equally for a few hundred years.

WW2 and the whole holocaust thing just turned it from a small problem into a big problem, as millions of European Jews sought a safe haven outside of Europe, leading to the creation of a religious ethnostate in 1948.

So yeah, Europeans definitely are to blame, but Arabs and Palestinians aren’t innocent either. They rejected a perfectly adequate solution by the UN in 1947.

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6 points

They rejected a perfectly adequate solution by the UN in 1947.

I mean… adequate to who?

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3 points

At what point did the responsibility switch?

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-4 points

I don’t think they ever did, its always been their own fault.

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84 points

This is a really patronising take.

Imagine if your country was ‘donated’ to a whole other group of people, they took over, murdered people, took your home, tortured your grandparents, you’re going to be mad. It’s not ‘childish’, it’s reality.

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41 points

The whole Levant area has seen so many blood-soaked conquests that any claim of ‘proper’ or ‘original’ owners is wilfully and maliciously ignorant. This is also the case for pretty much every bit of solid ground. Your desire to return things to “how they were” is just you picking your fave point on a timeline of history.

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33 points

Not what I said in the slightest. Current residents were and still are being displaced.

Take my own house as an example, who lived here originally? Probably some celts. Who lived here before me? Fuck knows, but they left and it tranferred to me.

If someone decided to donate my house to someone else would I be mad? Fuck yes.

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1 point

So Hamas is killing Israelis who live there right now and trying to steal their houses. They should be mad as fuck and retaliate. No?

Or are you suggesting they have not lived there long enough?

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-1 points

The celts were actually just so good at genocide that they fully displaced the people before them in most places they live now…

Trying to find the “original owners” of anything is stupid as history doesn’t go back that far, so as you say we just need to look at current residents

Issue is, currently Jews are being displaced from their homes to Israel and Palestinians are being displaced by them, so there’s underlying issues that need to be solved first

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4 points
*

Importantly mostly the people stayed after those conquests though. They were given Greek influence, then Christianized by the Roman empire and held the major Christian center of Antioch, then they were culturally Arabized by Muslim conquests. The main caveats to that rule were the Roman Jewish deportations. Largely, the DNA of the ancient peasants and the current inhabitants is the same.

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-1 points

Palestine was never a country…

The entire levant was part of the Ottoman Empire.

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5 points

You are really missing the point here

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70 points

You are speaking from an incredible place of privilege. You’re nation had one of the most successful expansionist genocides in history. The reason there is still conflict in that region is because Israel’s expansionist genocide is WIP.

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16 points

That expansionist genocide you are referring to must be the indigenous peoples of North America, correct?

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4 points
12 points

Which is funny since the guy in the video was an Italian-American posing as an American native.

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3 points

I gotta be honest, if you ever want to make a point land with anyone, starting with “… privilege” is about one of the worst ways to do it. It’s just an insult: you have such a cushie life that you can’t conceive of whatever.

And then, given the opportunity, you should probably actually answer their question instead of simply condescending.

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1 point

Are you really tone policing me when OP is calling people children and infants? I’m also very privileged, I’m not trying to own OP, just trying to point out the origins of their beliefs. Their situation isn’t due to a lack of barbarism, it’s due to successful barbarism. It’s not even all in the past, the US commits atrocities every decade, and has its own border crisis.

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-11 points

They are correct in saying I’m privileged, being a middle class white American male is 100% an advantage in life. Doesn’t mean I can’t conceptualize feelings from a different viewpoint.

North America went from undeveloped to world leader in what, 300 years? Israel and Palestine have been habitated by humans more than 6000 years. Both equidistant from European hubs of industry and innovation.

So the fact it hasn’t developed into a world leading pair of nations is on the people.

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8 points

Israel and Palestine have been habitated by humans more than 6000 years.

So the fact it hasn’t developed into a world leading pair of nations is on the people.

Dumbest shit I’ve ever read. What do you think about Africa, oh enlightened adult? Africa’s been inhabited for over 100,000 years. Is their lack of development “on the people” too?

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7 points

Please educate yourself, you’re embarrassing yourself and your people.

The US is just as propagandized as Russia and China and it shows.

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49 points

There are 3 outs to this conflict: Israel absorbs Palestine (and probably does a genocide), Palestine absorbs Israel (and probably does a genocide), or they start to be friends and live together.

Context matters a bit on this : Jews have been harassed for litteral millenia. After ww2 were they were harassed even more than before, they were given their original land from were they were chased millenia ago. You can argue it’s partly their fault for keeping their culture and religion eventhough they’re all over the world, but I think one should be free to live its life regardless of its religion.

Fast forward to today: Israel became as racist and intolerant as everyone gave them through history, so out 3 is quite not likely. Palestinians are not really better on this, because they’ve been chased from their homes to begin with and war took its toll, and it’s now decades of apartheid to fuel hatred and resentment.

Was it for them only, Palestine would be erased and Muslims genocided or deported in the neighboring countries. But both the UN and the neighbor Muslim states are very much hostile to Israel and several wars happened so that it would be the Palestinian who would genocide and deport the Jews. But they lost, partly because Israel is supported by the USA.

Now the USA will support Israel forever. I guess they like to have an outpost in the area. So Israel won’t be deleted in the foreseeable future. But UN and the USA (oddly) don’t want to see Palestine erased. Which lead to parents and kids situation.

In brief, Israel and Palestine would gladly fight to the death (I guess Palestine hope for an escalation with the neighbouring countries). But UN doesn’t want that (because the US want to be seen as the good guys, and no one wants the US to gain more ground than what they have with Israel). And there we are: the kids hate eachother but the parents don’t want anyone to win, because each parent has a favourite child.

The deadly loop of apartheid => terrorism => apartheid needs to end, but no one wants it.

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49 points
*

Because conservative religious people are insane, and that region involves three different and conflicting religions.

If suddenly you snapped your fingers and the entire region/world became irreligious, peace would exist there within a generation or so.

That’s not going to happen, so it’s going to continue to be a clusterfuck for as long as any large groups of people believe a magical being in the sky has destined the state of the region to be a given thing without compromise.

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21 points
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If suddenly you snapped your fingers and the entire region/world became irreligious, peace would exist there within a generation or so.

This is unlikely. The grievances between the various ethnic groups in the region are older than the Abrahamic religions, and older than the historical records that we have (see my other post). Individual people may have short memories, but cultures have very long memories. If you took the religion away, the groups would still mistrust and hate each other - the fighting has been going on since at least the Bronze Age.

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26 points

Literally every region on earth has cultural histories of atrocities that have been moved beyond in the sake of peace and cohabitation.

You’d need to make a case for why this particular region would be atypical enough to be the exception, and outside of continued belief in opposing religious claims, I don’t see any that would merit such a status.

Do Jews or Russians and Germans currently live in peace with each other in Germany? Are the Japanese in the US secretly planning terrorist attacks on everyone else for the internment camps of WW2? Do American tourists to Vietnam need to worry about being kidnapped and beheaded by the children of people who suffered war crimes?

It’s the religions, not the history.

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4 points

I think the cycle is something like this Assholes want power over others > they invent religion, which conveniently gives them power > stupid people, content being told what to do accept religious bullshit > said stupid people push religion on their children > new crop of credulous people is raised > assholes want power over said idiots >… Religion… > stupid people, content being told what to do accept religious bullshit…

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9 points

It’s a bit more complicated than that, as typically religion developed initially as an adaptive social evolution.

For example, early attempts at transitioning to agriculture failed because of a lack of sanitary practices, so disease ran rampant. Much later on when the transition happened again, it was around societies that had developed ideas around the importance of burying the dead, or burning the leftover parts of butchered meats “for the gods.”

What you see more is evidence of alterations to religions in order to protect authoritarianism.

A good example of this is Deuteronomy 21:1-9.

The foundational ritual is one where when there was an unknown murder, the elders of the closest town needed to sacrifice one of its cows. From a sociological standpoint, this created a communal shared cost on unsolved murders occurring.

But notice what happens in 21:5.

Literally in the middle of the elders standing in the water breaking the neck of the cow, the priests - sons of Levi - show up to remind everyone that they are the ones chosen to perform rituals and pronounce judgement. And then in the very next line we’re back to the elders and the cow in the water.

This line was probably a later addition to an earlier elder-driven ritual following a social shift to a priesthood based on ancestry controlling the religion.

There’s a ton of things like this.

So religious practices developed from causes ranging from OCD to social evolution, and then those practices eventually get reworked to support the authorities, and then the continued survival of those religions tend to reinforce authoritarianism even after the original authorities are long dead.

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