I can understand why Hezam is upset about that instagram post by one David Ovadia, purporting to be an IDF soldier who purposely shot at children and is proud of it. Now there's the map of "Greater Israel" floating around and Hezam, while just a page or two back you stated your support for the "destruction of Israel", and yet some map by your Israeli counterpart (if it even is an Israeli who concocted this. Could be an American Jew. Could be a Scotsman. Could be an Egyptian) has you up in arms.
I could collect and post tit-for-tat videos or stories for shock value. I mean Aziz Salha, his hands bathed in blood from the Ramallah lynching of young soldiers comes to mind. That's from 2000. If only I could read Arabic, imagine what shocking posts and maps I could turn up on views of this conflict when even you, a genuinely nice man and independent thinker wouldn't mind Israel being destroyed and is willing to say so in English. Some of them would be genuine, and others could be concocted and spread by religious Jewish zealots.
I prefer context, background and the big picture.
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The history of zionism in the 19th century and early 1900s is fascinating. I don't know about you guys, but my eyes glaze over when I see a forum post or even a single paragraph that's too long, so I can't type everything I want to type. (If only I could draw like
naha def I'd make a comic!).
At least twice, it has been stated in this thread that Jews came in and burned Arab orchards, and it is a common belief that the Jews mostly stole Palestinian land. I'm not saying my latest source is the end-all be-all, but at least he (Lozowick) is well versed on the other side of things and often quotes writer Edward Said, whom he calls "perhaps the most eloquent of Palestinian spokesmen."
Nowadays when we hear the word
settlements, we hear about the illegal ones in the news. Once upon a time, the goal of zionism was to create settlements in the traditional birthplace of the Jews, but for decades they did so without any hope of having a sovereign nation. They just wanted a homeland, a place of sanctuary far from Russian pogroms, Polish discrimination and Ukranian violence. This was ages before Hitler. Palestinians often complain that recent Jewish settlers are "not even from here, they're from Europe."* Well, yes. And guess why they left?
Did you know that Herzl, the father of zionism, once converted a mass of Jews to Christianity? He knew nothing about Jewish tradition or Judiasm! Did you know that initially the British offered the Jews land in Uganda? I believe it was the more religious Russians who insisted that Israel be in, well...Israel.
The Turks owned most of the land that Jews would eventually settle in, but they didn't want Jews to settle there, period. The British "had no objections, but it was up to the Jews to acquire the land on their own." They wanted consecutive tracts of land but the good stuff was taken and not for sale, so they did buy a lot of "malarial infested swampland." A lot of Jews died not from Arab attacks, but just by succumbing to disease or the light and heat of the desert, or by simply failing to "wrench a living from the soil."
As you can imagine, those who survived were some of the toughest & most determined people on the planet. Perhaps that's why even I find the ones I meet in person to be somewhat bristly and abrasive in conversation.
But there were Arab attacks and lots of them. In many places, the Palestinians decided early on to stop Jewish settlement by force. This included "ransacking homes, raping women and demolishing synagogues."
Jump to 1929 when mass violence was preceded by Arabs dropping stones and refuse from the Temple Mount onto Jews praying below, accompanies by malicious propaganda inciting
Muslims to protect their holy places from the Jews who were scheming to occupy (The Temple Mount) and desecrate it;
for good measure they threw in a description of the Jews as rapists and murderers of infants.
He goes on to say that unsuprisingly, thousands of Muslims responded to the call and proceeded to mass murder Jews.
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How do people get incited now? By modified maps, bloody youtube videos, instagram and Twitter. How much of this is news? How much of this is the big picture.
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Well, I've done it. I've composed a too-lengthy post albeit with spaces. : - )
Quotes are from Lozowick's 'Right to Exist' ('03). Paraphrasing and "I" is mine/me, & *the one quote from Palestinians is from TV, which I saw firsthand.
I see other posts have come in while I was typing. Ok, no more Lozowick excerpts today.
