I’m not aware of many people that think Israel is “innocent of aggression.”
But single accounts of the conflict need to be balanced by the view from the other side as well. If your only perspective of WWII came from a contemporary account written by the mayor of Dresden, Germany, you might not make valid conclusions about the nature of the war. Consider the following summary:
- WWII ends and a host of Jews are liberated from Nazi death camps. Liberated, not moved to new camps. What is the major characteristic of a free person compared to an imprisoned person? They can come and go as they please. Did the freed Jews want to go back to Germany, Poland, Austria and France? Uh, no. Can you blame them? There was one place on earth that held a common appeal for them (possibly two, but the USA was only taking a limited number and was rather far to sneak into).
- Zionism predated WWII, but was a fringe minority view in global Judaism. As noted in #1 above, the Holocaust made aspects of Zionism look like the only viable course of action for the survivors. The European powers TRIED to stop it from happening. Britain, especially tried to close the borders of Palestine, even going so far as to build CONCENTRATION CAMPS on Cyprus to house illegal immigrants caught trying to sneak into Palestine. Betcha didn’t learn THAT in history class. The noble Brits put former inmates of Nazi concentration camps right back into camps of their own (minus the gas chambers, mercifully).
- The Jewish immigrants to Palestine were NOT all of a mind. What massive group of desperate humans is? None. It is folly to characterize them as uniformly militant Zionists. The majority still wanted simple peaceful immigration into Palestine. They bought land legally and established Kibbutzes to house people and put them to work feeding themselves.
- But this was a big influx of foreigners. Guess what happens? Look no further than how Americans today react to Mexican illegals, whose numbers are proportionately far smaller the Jewish immigrants to Palestine. The Palestinians already there before WWII reacted badly to the mass immigration, especially since there WAS a small, but problematic number of militant Zionists in the immigration wave (groups like Irgun and Stern Gang). In short, the Palestinians reacted like American rednecks on steroids: they terrorized the immigrants, attacked kibbutzes, murdered randoms Jews in the street. The militant Zionist groups were no better.
- To address the growing violence, the UN tried to partition Palestine into regions in an attempt to keep the sides apart, but when this failed, they decided to pull out when it became clear that the Jewish parts of the partition intended to declare independence. During the interim, the UN (mostly British troops on the ground) made it illegal to import weapons, but the Palestinians enlisted neighboring countries to amass armies on the borders for the purpose of slaughtering all the Jews upon the pullout of the UN. This clear intention of genocide pushed even peacenik Jews into the arms of the Zionists and they frankly pulled off a Joshua style miracle of scraping together enough guns and ammo to fight off the combined arab armies long enough for them to begin fighting among themselves.
- It is an utter MYTH to assert that the Israelies largely forced the Palestinians out of their homes and land. What really happened in most cases is that just before the UN pulled out, the neighboring Arab armies suggested that Palestinian civilians evacuate so that the Arab armies could kill everything that moved when the UN was gone. Many Palestinians complied and when the Arab armies lost the first conflict, the new nation of Israel decided NOT to allow those evacuees to return after the battle. They asserted that by leaving the scene of the upcoming battle, the Palestinians had aided and abbetted the invading armies in their genocidal goals. Thus, by collaborating they had ceded their property as spoils of war. Palestinians who did NOT evacuate or collaborate did NOT lose their property and even became eligible for Israeli citizenship. I assert that if America ever survives a near annihilation like that we won’t be any more merciful to those who cheered our tormetors. Probably less (remember 9/11?)
Like all wars, there was horror and atrocity committed by both sides. But any serious investigation of the situation looking at facts and accounts from both sides will lead to the conclusion that the Jews in the late 1940’s had little other option but to fight or be slaughtered, while the leadership of the Palestinians CHOSE hatred, fear and attempts to achieve “peace” through domination and genocide.
This COULD have been a peaceful transition whereby Palestinians made good money off Jewish migrants desperate to buy land. Said Palestinians with their new wealth could have made great neighbors or could have chosen to emigrate to (at the time) prosperous Lebanon, or Jordan or Syria. But instead they listened to the fallen angels of human nature and chose xenophobia over peaceful coexistence. In the process, they gave Zionist militants credibility and made the task for Jewish leaders seeking a peacful settlement transition impossible.
I don’t deny Zionist atrocities nor the existence of whack Jewish/Zionist militant extremists. But characterizing Israel as a nation of such people is like suggesting that all Americans are ignorant and violent monsters who kill Sikhs because of what happened in Milwaukee yesterday. Palestinians aren’t an evil mob either, obviously. But for some reason I don’t yet understand, they continue to be lead by the worst sorts of people, men interested in power, glory and victory, not peace for their people.
. It is rather disheartening or do people just not care about Palestinians and Muslims as they do Israelites and Jews? What I just don’t understand is why they don’t set up one democratic secular government with a constitution that protects religious freedom (I don’t mean at all to make this task easy it is monumentally hard but giving one side their state and ignoring the other as terrorists is worse), both sides seems to demand a religious state and sadly it seems the Holocaust and the evil that occurred have been butchered and used as a political tool for an Israeli state.
I guess I put mine, I am for both and anyone else who wants to visit there.