Understanding the Israel-Palestine conflict

[Galraedia]

Around 586 B.C. Jews were forcibly removed from their homes during the diasporas (dispersion) by the Roman empire and Rome renamed the land of Judea to Palestine. Invading Arabs conquered the land from the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantines) in A.D. 638 and attracted Arab settlers. Waves of invasions and changes of control followed, including rule by the non-Arab empires of the Seljuks, Mamelukes and European crusaders, before becoming part of the Ottoman Empire from 1517 until 1918 when Britain took control over Palestine after World War I.

At the turn of the 20th century, a movement called Zionism started that called for the creation of a Jewish nation in Palestine. Before Israel's creation, Palestine willingly accepted some 700,000 Jewish refugees escaping World War I and the Holocaust. After WWII the UN decided to partition Palestine and give 56% of it to the Jews so they could create their own nation. Palestine did not vote for the creation of Israel. Instead Israel's creation was imposed on Palestine by the United Nations. Now imagine that tomorrow the United Nations decided half of your country would go to another nation of people -- while you have no say in the matter.

On May 14, 1948 David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. This led to the Palestinian war of 1948 and the deaths of 20,000 Palestinians and several thousand Arab soldiers, while Israel lost around 4,000 soldiers and 2,000 civilians. During this time, Zionists expanded their territory into Palestinian territory and began committing massacres against unarmed Palestinian civilians. One such massacre is the Deir Yassin Massacre on April 9, 1948, in which defenseless Palestinian civilians were tortured and their bodies mutilated before they were killed. Women and children were raped, babies were butchered and pregnant women were bayoneted. Ethnic cleansing was one of the declared aims of the massacre, with villages and homes being burned completely to the ground to make sure the Palestinians had no home they could return to. The majority of the Palestinians fled or were kicked off of their land and forced to become refugees in other middle eastern countries.

In 1950 Israel passed the Law Of Return, giving every Jew the right to automatically acquire citizenship. While the Law of Return is generous towards immigration of Jews from around the world, it discriminates against Palestinians who were actually born on the land and their descendants. And Israel has gone as far as preventing Palestinians from the occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip who married Israeli citizens to live in Israel.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has existed long before Hamas ever did and it won't end with Hamas either. If we call what Hamas is doing terrorism, then what Israel is doing is terrorism with a bigger budget with 80% of their attacks killing Palestinian civilians, 30% of those being children. You can't learn from your mistakes if you can't admit to ever making any. Israeli blood or Palestinian blood is still blood. The Palestinians have as much right to exist as the Israelis.

[oberliner]

1. Well that's certainly not a biased, one-sided telling of the story

I guess if one views the narrative that way it keeps everything nice and simple.

[BainsBane]

2. This post left an impression on me

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025334487

So while this OP may be more one-sized that you like, I'm not sure it's at all inaccurate.

[oberliner]

3. It's definitely not all inaccurate

Mostly deceptive by omission and half-truths.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

4. So Arabs colonized the region and so have Jews

Individual Arabs and Jews have probably lived there continuously throughout recorded time, but kingdoms and governments of one ethnicity or another have come and gone. Our ancestors have probably all been invaders if you go far back enough in time. I hope one day we identify as humans first and foremost, not as Arabs, Jews, and other things. I hope we can reach an enlightenment where borders disappear, there is no more killing over a piece of land, and the planet belongs to all the people.

[TexasProgresive]

5. Your dates are wrong so your piece is suspect.

586 - 538 BC The Babylonian Exile : During the Babylonian Exile the Jews forged a national identity, and became known as "Jews" (Judahites) rather than Israelites. Synagogues were formed for teaching and worship. Many of the religious traditions and teachings of the Jews were now put into writing instead of being passed down by word of mouth. The Hebrew language developed into Aramaic and the "square script" was adopted for writing.

All dates, particularly the earlier ones, are approximate.
http://www.drshirley.org/hist/hist06.html

The Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD was the decisive event of the First Jewish–Roman War. The Roman army, led by the future Emperor Titus, with Tiberius Julius Alexander as his second-in-command, besieged and conquered the city of Jerusalem, which had been occupied by its Jewish defenders in 66 AD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_%2870%29

[Galraedia]

6. I think I was off by a few years.

The Jewish Diaspora actually began in the year 597 BC with the seige and fall of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. Known as the Babylonian Captivity, a significant portion of the population of Judea was deported to Babylonia. A second deportation began in 587 BC when the First Jewish Temple was destroyed. In approximately 582 BC, the Babylonian governor of Judea was assassinated and many Jews fled to Egypt and a third deportation most likely began. Many of those Jews never returned to Israel.

Source: http://jjprzy.envy.nu/testimonium/48-TheJewishDiaspora.htm

[The Magistrate]

7. Seriously Over-Simplified, Ma'am

To engage this sentence, first:

"Palestine willingly accepted some 700,000 Jewish refugees escaping World War I and the Holocaust."

Actually, Arabs in Palestine were protesting early Zionist immigration before the Great War; their protests, in fact, are considered one of the earliest expressions of Arab Nationalism. Shortly after the English took Palestine from the Ottomans, mob violence by Arabs against Jews became a routine feature of life, with major outbreaks in 1920, 1922, 1924, and 1929, just for starters. Armed Jewish bodies, many former members of a 'Jewish Legion' recruited in the Great War by England, arose, and the fighting became mutual. At one point, England began hiring Jews as police since they found Arabs would not act against fellow Arabs attacking Jews. In the mid-thirties, a major outbreak, the Arab Revolt, running from 1936 to 1939, commenced, aimed at both English rule and Jewish colonization. England, which had control of immigration, began to severely restrict Jewish immigration during the thirties, and continued this during and after WWII. And I would point out my summary above is brutally simplified, and could be expanded to wearying length.

And one more, while I still have a bit of spare time:

"On May 14, 1948 David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. This led to the Palestinian war of 1948...."

As should not be surprising, given the note above, fighting over the Partition was well under way long before Mr. Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel. Mob violence and sniping had commenced within days of the partition being voted in late November, 1947. By the time of the declaration of statehood, fighting between sizable bodies of armed men on both sides had been going on for months. The invasion by neighboring Arab states was simply an escalation of a conflict already in progress. Nor was it wholly aimed at Israel: the King of Trans-Jordan, Abdullah, sought first to extinguish any possibility the Arab Palestinian leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem, whom he hated, might emerge from the situation with control of any portion of Palestine, and he wanted Jerusalem, which the Partition assigned to neither side but held as an international city, and if possible a port on the coast, things he resented having been denied when placed in rule of Trans-Jordan in 1922. Again, this could be expanded to dizzying length, and is more in the nature of a trailer than even a primer account.....