Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) called some of his colleagues’ quickness to blame Israel for the hospital blast in Gaza “disturbing” in a statement Wednesday.
“It’s truly disturbing that Members of Congress rushed to blame Israel for the hospital tragedy in Gaza,” Fetterman said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“A lie can get round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”
But the truth is that these two sides have been killing each other since before my parents were born and I’m too sick of all of it to give a damn. Nothing will stop either of them so maybe if they kill each other entirely we will finally have peace in The Holiest Place on Earth.
Oh wait, no, Christians will still get into fights there.
I mean, if you want to forget about specific nations, they’ve been keeping this grudge sharp …since what? Late bronze age to early iron?
Sure the State of Israel has only existed for 75 or so years, but they have a much, much longer history than that- and both Palestinians and Israelites have a very old claim to the land- and both are more less equally valid.
Islam wasn’t founded until 610 CE, which was almost 200 years after the fall of the Roman Empire. Definitely not the Bronze Age and at best the late Iron Age.
Also, between then and now, Europe was a far more dangerous place to be a Jew than the Middle East. Pogroms were common in the Middle Ages, while cities like Jerusalem and Baghdad were multicultural and tolerant. After the siege of Jerusalem during the first Crusade, Christians massacred the Jews living there along with the Muslims.
This conflict specifically started with the Sikes-Picot Agreement in which the western powers reneged on their deal to establish an Arab homeland. But the real conflict didn’t start until the UN’s Partition Plan, which gave most of the land to the Jewish minority.
So, no, I don’t think this goes back thousands of years. More like hundreds, with worst of the actual fighting in the last 76 years.
oh man. thank you very much for the sikes picot link. that is super interesting.
You have to consider the Tanzimat reforms in the waning Ottoman Empire, specifically the Land Code of 1857 and the Nationality Law of 1869. The Land Code misappropriated much of the tribal land in current day Israel/Palestine to Ottoman administrators, which was later brought under the control of Britain after WWI. Particularly after the Nationality Law, which granted citizenship rights irrespective of religion, the Jewish National Fund was able to purchase and settle that land. Under British rule, the settlement accelerated. It’s worth noting that there was massive migration to the Holy Land of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. During the late Ottoman period, 1850 to 1915, the Muslim population doubled (+300k), and the Jewish & Christian populations tripled (+26k and +54k respectively). By the British Mandatory period, the majority of the population in the Holy Land were immigrants.
But anyway, you’re right. Although there was always tension between Muslims and Dhimmis, the specifics of the contemporary conflict can’t be traced back much further than the late 1800s. Perhaps if the original negotiated Arab homeland consisting of the Arabian Peninsula, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon had been honored, the entire region would be much more stable today. Hard to say what would have happened to the Jews during WWII, though.
And, ah, who were the Palistinians before Islam?
Gaza was one of the Philistine city-states… you know. Early on, Canaanites- The people that Israelites tried genocide to “come into the promised land”… and who Solomon and David were at war.
The area has a very long, very ancient history… and that history is part of how we got to the partition plan and the Nakba and all that.
I don’t have any real answers for solving the violence. I truly wish I did.
Archaeology links the Philistines to the Mycenaean civilization due to similarities in their crafting. There’s a possibility the Philistines were of the Sea Peoples - Southern European invaders of Egypt, Canaan and Turkey - in the late Bronze Age.
Both of you respond by showing your own bias. Bomb damage assessments happen all the time. There is really nothing to indicate that an Israeli bomb was used. There is all sorts of evidence that point to a rocket failure. You can leave it at that without blaming one party or another for problems. But, denial of reality is the problem.
This bomb was Hamas. Other bombs are Israel. Both sides have killed children over lines in the sand. Fuck that.
This bomb was purportedly Islamic Jihad, not Hamas, but otherwise I don’t disagree with what you said.
Actually it was probably a Islamic Jihad missile. They are another gang in Gaza. Let’s put it this way…if you were disturbed when you thought Israel was to blame, yet you shrug off when Islamic Jihad is proven to have done it…they you just might need bias confirmation.
What if I think both sides are fucking assholes?
Then you almost join my club, however, there are two other certainties. 1. Terrorism is always wrong and the brutality of Hamas on Israel was way way over the line. 2. Since that is true, there is absolutely no way a war would not result and there is no way that ideological rhetoric is going to stop it.
Is property destruction allowed? Lots of people consider that terrorism but I’m not mad if someone, say, sinks an oligarch’s yacht as long as nobody gets hurt.
How do you feel about someone running a plane into a building is more salient
Remember Kids:
When the dominant force in a conflict commits violence against civilians it is due to the “fog of war” or seen as “unavoidable collateral damage”.
When the minority force in a conflict commits violence against civilians it is “terrorism” or “savagery”.
I’m not condoning the use of violence against civillians in any capacity. However, this is the way that the power brokers manipulate the emotions of the ignorant unwashed masses in their own societies to justify their own atrocities.
Some form of this language manipulation tactic has been utilized as a catalyzing force to support the genocide of indigenous populations throughout all of human history.
Actually the term Fog of War describes a basic misunderstanding of events in war.
War has rules and killing civilians is against the rules. Doing so to freighten living populations is terrorism.
Hope this helps.
Is it biased to say “I don’t know”? Because i don’t, and I don’t really think the specifics of whose at fault here really matters compared to what I do know:
that it’s fucked up just now, and this conflict has been brewing for a very long time.
Yeah.
*I don’t know but, it seems like a bunch of innocent people are suffering and the hospital may not be able to care for them anymore and we have still blocked any new aid from arriving" is the answer I want to have but people really do want to just jump to simple solutions and simple answers.
Welcome to humanity, pick a color and join your side and don’t care what it takes for yours to win.
Terry Pratchett?
Glad somebody recognized it :)