To be annoyed nobody mentioned who started the war

[Normalized]

Recently on YouTube the Oxford Union Channel released a debate titled this house believes Israel never really wanted peace. I'm not going to go through the arguments back and forth as anyone can watch it, however what's really annoyed me is that's not a single debater, including on the Israel side, mentioned who actually started the war.

There was a lot of talk whether Israel did truly ever want peace or not, but nobody actually spoke of the fact that Israel never started any wars. It was the Arabs and Palestinians who started first the Civil War in 1947, then Israel's war of independence in 1948. I would think the onus for peace is on the party who actually started all the wars.

It's such a weird debate to pull up Israel for 'never truly wanting peace' while completely ignoring the role of the other side who actually started all the wars.

YANBU. Even the most recent war wasn't instigated by Israel. I feel Israel have acted extremely disproportionately in response to what Hamas did, but much of this may not have happened if the 7 October 2023 attacks hadn't taken place.

Your fears are completely valid. At the same time, the world is the way it is partly because we spent a great deal of time plundering and oppressing it. Nothing that has happened to you comes close to what others have experienced at the hands of the English. It's not a competition but we won't get far unless we acknowledge that everyone is, in some way, a victim. People become radicalised when there is systemic corruption and oppression.

Everyone is a victim, except English people presumably?

And why was it created?

You are wilfully ignoring or simply don't know the history of the mass slaughter of Jews on that land in the years before the creation. Which is why because of the pulling out of European soldiers there was no choice but to separate the land into two separate states. Yes there was other factors at play but ultimately what else were the international community and the Jews supposed to do? Just let the Jews in on the land get either tortured as had already happened in many villages and killed, forced to convert to Islam or forced to flee? If flee where too? European that had just had the holocaust and where most countries were still mistreating or barring Jewish refugees, where they didn't feel safe because they provably were not. Or the neighbouring Arab countries were they were slowly getting ethnically cleaned and were forced to live as second class citizens under Islam, paying extra taxes and having limits on where they can work or what they can own. Post war most countries would not take very many Jewish refugees from Europe and the were even less likely to take Middle Eastern Jews of colour. Once the soldiers were going to pull out something had to be done like it or not to try and protect both Arab and Jews on the land, the fact that the Arab countries decided to sacrifice the land and the Arab people living there to an endless war rather than peace is what you should be annoyed at, not the creation of Israel. I may not actually agree with the way the state was created but it did have to be created for the sake of millions of people then (and now judging by the jew hate happening openly in many countries these days).

They started it in 1947? What could possibly have happened then? Could they have been turfed from their homes? It’s amazing that you didn’t mention this OP, and shows very poor understanding of how they may view the situation differently from you.

It has been eye opening to me, a non-Jew to discover how little we are taught in the UK about what happened in the Middle East during and after WWII. The number of times I've had to tell people that many of the ME states saw what Hitler was doing in the 1940s and decided to turn on their Jewish population at the same time, and no one I've spoken to had any idea. Likewise the belief that all Israeli's ancestry originates from European Jews when actually the original state was set up for Middle Eastern Jewish refugees.

Are you incapable of comprehension? Read my previous posts. At the time of the UN vote not one Arab had lost their home. Yet they immediately started a civil war against Jews.

The loss of homes was a result of the war, not its cause.

Agreed. It’s ridiculous how people can twist the facts of what actually happened. It’s more crazy that no one is disagreeing with it! Although they may be scared of the consequences of doing so.

Wasn't it started by King Saul and his sidekick young David vs the Philistines? Obviously what with being commanded by the Lord God Almighty to take the land from the peoples who already lived there, they had to obey, but I can understand the people who weren't chosen by Almighty God being a bit miffed. That lovely fertile bit of land by the river has been contested throughout recorded history and is never going to be an independent state - as it has been for thousands of years, it will always be a semi-autonomous region under the prevailing hegemony of whatever the biggest global empire is at the time. Currently, that empire is the USA. No empire lasts for ever.

Who gives a shit?

'But he started it' doesn't fly when committing genocide.

Absolutely this. This is but a mere blip in time. We just happen to be living through this bit.

I hope youve told that to Hamas. Wanting the wipe out of Jews

I remember seeing an exhibit years ago about the years before the creation of Israel. One photo has always stayed in my head. It was of a Jewish village that had been attacked by Arabs. They had raped most the men and women, killed everyone they could. Then driven poles through some of the men. The photo showed two of the men with poles going from there mouth down their throats and coming out somewhere lower down. No idea if the men were dead before they did this or not.

Before Israel was made there was great unrest on the land already. Not just from the Arabs, Jews would retaliate and do horrible things too.

Apart from the whole Islamic Jews must live as dimmis (lesser people) and all that they was the Hitler influence on the Arabs during the war too. Hitler had his own news channel that he set up there. This was massive in properganda and brainwashing the Arabs into Jew hate even if they were fairly Jew friendly before. As you can see in Gaza from pre war photos they would often still fly nazi flags. Gaza also had two different shops called Hitler, one in Gaza city the other I can't remember the location. So can you imagine what was going to happen to the Jews the moment the British soldiers left if Israel wasn't created and supported by the international community then. Or maybe you just would prefer dead Jews and the land ethnic cleaned of Jews forever. I do think some people definitely would prefer that had happened, yet still think they are on the right side of history blah blah blah.

Surely the important thing is how we’re going to end it?

The number of slaves the English bought of Africans is nothing to the number enslaved by Muslims, and who continue to by enslaved by them to this day. The trade to the east outsized the trade to the west, predated it by millennia and outlasted it by hundreds of years. The word ‘slave’ comes from the Muslim enslavement of Slavs. The Islamic caliphates massacred tens of millions - far far outstripping anything in the British Empire.

You are so right about lack of knowledge on this subject. Most people seem to form an opinion from bias social media or news stories rather than finding balanced sources or having grown up conversations with people that have lived this stuff all their lives.

Also over half the current Jew population in Israel decend from Middle Eastern Jews.

I wondered how long that would take.

Supporting the Persian people to overthrown their colonial oppressors in Iran (who have currently murdered over 100,000 of them) would cut off the much of the money to Hamas and other terrorists.

Go and look at the debate - they do a cracking job.

Those protesters on Westminster Bridge chatting there support for Houthis because they sent missiles at Israel. The same Houthis that have regularly gone to Ethiopia and stolen people to sell in markets. The woman and girls to be workers, wifes or sex slaves. All those stupid idiots praising the Houthis and holding signs up with support for the vile cretins. The Islamic extremists must have been laughing their heads off at the western stupidity.

My Grandfather (involved in the Suez crisis with the Fleet Air Arm) always said this.

Its not the 1600s. And the sins of our ancestors are not ours!

He said it was the fault of Moses?