General Politics Thread

[dorlomin]

I think you probably fitted in well with the Foreign Office or whichever subsidiary department that did the dirty work back in 1947. I can see you coming up with a lot of self serving verbage for creating a country based on a 2,000 year old religious claim regardless of the impact of those already in the region.

The division was based on existing communities. The scale of human movement in 1944-1950 overwhelmed all of the international community. Easily more than 30 million displaced persons were on the move or in refugee camps. The UK had tried to block immigration by Jews into the area and this actively caused people to be exterminated by the Holocaust. The idea that there was some kind of a calm "plan" in the foreign office is nuts. About the only option the UK had other than recognising some kind of state would have been to expel Jews back to Germany, or deal with a civil war in a larger state had they all been handed over to Jordan. This at the same time Germany was having to absorb millions of displaced ethnic "Germans" anyway. 

 

The world in 1947 was chaos, the RAF and much of the UK armed services were in near open mutiny. Wars were breaking out across the world. And the USSR was imposing its governments across countries the UK and US had just sacrificed their peoples to try to free. 

[Ad Lib]

The Scottish analogy is terrible says the guy who compared the creation of Israel to the UN sending troops to Kosova. You really couldn't make it up.

I think you probably fitted in well with the Foreign Office or whichever subsidiary department that did the dirty work back in 1947. I can see you coming up with a lot of self serving verbage for creating a country based on a 2,000 year old religious claim regardless of the impact of those already in the region.

You're a moron.

I said it was no more an imperial act than that. Because the UN is not an instrument of imperialism. It is neither an empire nor does it enable the existence of any empire. As such, none of its acts, be they military interventions, declarations as to statehood and sovereignty, or even more generally any of its decisions, are "imperial".

It was not the Foreign Office that created or recognised the State of Israel. The British Government was extremely reluctant to see the formation of a Jewish majority state in Palestine because of the effect it would have on their relationship with Arab states, including those being decolonised in the aftermath of the Second World War. It was a significant concession that they even handed the question over to the UN for determination.

Like, you are failing to appreciate basic historical facts here. The UK did not partition the territory of the Mandate of Palestine into Israeli and Palestinian states. That's simply not what happened. They had attempted to prohibit and prevent mass migration from Eastern Europe's pogroms to the Mandate and literally went to war with the Jewish militias when they started securing territory in violation of the plans conceived in the White Paper in 1939 to create a united independent Palestine by 1949. The intention was to create merely self-governing zones for a relatively modest number of Jewish migrants in addition to those already settled there, and not to give them statehood.

Honestly you have absolutely no credibility here if you don't even know the most elementary of facts about how Israel became a state.

Edited May 1, 2016 by Ad Lib

[Savage Henry]

Does anyone actually believe this is a genuine case of anti semitism bubbling over in the labour party?

It's one of the clearest examples of a politically manufactured crisis, with the media very much in tow.

That in no way defends the words of anyone involved but this is a really underhand piece of political shenanigans.

Of course.

That said, Livingstone's words were dumb to the point of idiocy.

And there is a serious issue of anti-Semitism masquerading as right-on, left wing righteousness.

And of course, there is a serious issue of savage Zionist violence to which the right seem to be blind.

This isn't a left / right issue.

[HaikuHibee]

 

You're a moron.

 

... stuff ....

Honestly you have absolutely no credibility here if you don't even know the most elementary of facts about how Israel became a state.

 

Ad Lib,

 

From the man that has claimed Judaism has nothing to do with being Jewish, that the debate around whether Israel should be a/is a Jewish state or not is resolved, and the guy who has banded about 'anti-semite' like a Labour MP. 

 

There's a lot of interesting things about Israeli politics and Zionism. Then there is the role of the British in Israel.

 

All of this is irrelevant and the issue you are conspicuously avoiding is Israeli conduct in the West Bank which pisses off everyone on this thread. I suspect you know this and instead you want to find some fucking idiotic angle so you can argue and piously preach on individuals' use of the word 'Zionism' (which is such an incredibly fluid concept, it is impossible to know who or what is being referred to when it is used - Noam Chomsky was a Zionist ffs).

 

That makes for incredibly dull reading for everyone else.

Edited May 1, 2016 by HaikuHibee

[Ad Lib]

Ad Lib,

From the man that has claimed Judaism has nothing to do with being Jewish, that the debate around whether Israel should be a/is a Jewish state or not is resolved, and the guy who has banded about 'anti-semite' like a Labour MP.

At absolutely no point did I claim Judaism "has nothing to do with being Jewish". I merely said that being ethnically Jewish and being a follower of Judaism are not necessarily coextensive or contingent on one another.

The debate about whether Israel should be a state unquestionably is resolved. What kind of state it should be is a matter for the people of Israel.

There's a lot of interesting things about Israeli politics and Zionism. Then there is the role of the British in Israel.

All of this is fairly immaterial

It's not immaterial. It's utterly central to the basis on which the UN partitioned the Palestinian Mandate and the legitimacy of the claims to statehood of both peoples.

and the issue you are conspicuously avoiding is the Israeli conduct in the West Bank which pisses off everyone on this thread. I suspect you know this and instead you want to find some fucking idiotic angle so you can argue and piously preach on individuals' use of the word 'Zionism' (which is such an incredibly fluid concept, it is impossible to know who or what is being referred to when it is used - Noam Chomsky was a Zionist ffs).

Bollocks. I've unequivocally condemned the unlawful settlements in the West Bank and the disproportionate and reckless use of force by the IDF against civilians.

That makes for incredibly dull reading for everyone else.

Couldn't give a f**k mate.

[NotThePars]

Ashamed to out myself as someone who's watched The Big Bang Theory but that "move the Jewish people to America" thing was a joke on that show about a decade ago.

[HaikuHibee]

At absolutely no point did I claim Judaism "has nothing to do with being Jewish". I merely said that being ethnically Jewish and being a follower of Judaism are not necessarily coextensive or contingent on one another.

The debate about whether Israel should be a state unquestionably is resolved. What kind of state it should be is a matter for the people of Israel.

It's not immaterial. It's utterly central to the basis on which the UN partitioned the Palestinian Mandate and the legitimacy of the claims to statehood of both peoples.

 

 

I can't be arsed chasing down your comments. Needless to say, the way you describe this now is backtracking and bollocks as the argument shifted into one area to the next.

 

The 'UN Partition' is in tatters. It doesn't exist. There is zero chance of a two state solution because of Israeli policy in the West Bank. That's why your idiotic description of how an innocent, wee imperial British Empire bravely attempted to keep together a multicultural utopia in Israel is crass trolling and utterly pointless.

 

Bollocks. I've unequivocally condemned the unlawful settlements in the West Bank and the disproportionate and reckless use of force by the IDF against civilians.

 

You've "unequivocally condemned"? Jesus H. Christ, you're a fucking roaster. That's all (most) posters have a problem with, as well you know.

 

 

Couldn't give a f**k mate.

 

Who are you kidding?

Edited May 1, 2016 by HaikuHibee

[dorlomin]

That's why your idiotic description of how an innocent, wee imperial British Empire bravely attempted to keep together a multicultural utopia in Israel is crass trolling and utterly pointless.

You seem to be arguing with something that was not written. No one said it was a utopia nor Britain innocent. Just that the UK was against the idea of a Jewish state, tried to prevent it but was being overwhelmed by a world that was in chaos. It handed the problem to the UN, the UN, including the USSR set up the two state solution. 

 

A few people who are rather vocal on the issue seem to have a very limited and one sided grasp of events in the MENA region in the 30s and 40s. 

[welshbairn]

You seem to be arguing with something that was not written. No one said it was a utopia nor Britain innocent. Just that the UK was against the idea of a Jewish state, tried to prevent it but was being overwhelmed by a world that was in chaos. It handed the problem to the UN, the UN, including the USSR set up the two state solution. 

 

A few people who are rather vocal on the issue seem to have a very limited and one sided grasp of events in the MENA region in the 30s and 40s. 

 

Previously there was the Balfour Declaration of course that set the whole ball rolling:

 

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/balfour.html

[HaikuHibee]

Not only that but Britain itself took control swathes of the Middle East reneging on promises made to Arabs during the First World War. There's also the fact that Britain has been one of the most anti-semitic countries on the planet and banned immigration of Jews to the UK for centuries. 

 

Winston Churchill had a fairly negative view of Jewish people. Britain had its own plans for Palestine and cannot be said to have helped matters in the region at all.

Edited May 1, 2016 by HaikuHibee

[Ad Lib]

I can't be arsed chasing down your comments. Needless to say, the way you describe this now is backtracking and bollocks as the argument shifted into one area to the next.

"Oh shit rumbled that is in fact what Ad Lib said and HaikuHibbee was talking out of his arse."

The 'UN Partition' is in tatters. It doesn't exist. There is zero chance of a two state solution because of Israeli policy in the West Bank. That's why your idiotic description of how an innocent, wee imperial British Empire bravely attempted to keep together a multicultural utopia in Israel is crass trolling and utterly pointless.

I didn't say it wasn't in tatters you monumental clusterfuck. I merely pointed out that Granny Danger's claims, that the creation of Israel was a result of Western imperial action, or that it was a policy initiated by the British Foreign Office, are total fucking horseshit. It was a UN plan and the British had agitated so strongly against the creation of a "Jewish state" that they literally went to war with the Jewish paramilitary forces in the region and sought to prevent Eastern European Jews from migrating to the Mandate territories.

I am not applauding them for that. Far from it. They were among the most severe miscalculations and mistakes, even moral errors, of the British Government in foreign policy in the 20th century. Had they handed the territory over to the UN much earlier they could have implemented a peace plan before the Jewish paramilitaries grew to such strength and before the mass migration from the pogroms got out of control. The implementation of a two-state solution would have in those circumstances been far easier and would have in all likelihood have involved far less bloodshed.

I am simply pointing out that Granny Danger has repeatedly demonstrated he doesn't know the most basic of facts that give an informed, let alone balanced or neutral or impartial, chronology of how the State of Israel came into being and who advocated and opposed it.

You've "unequivocally condemned"? Jesus H. Christ, you're a fucking roaster. That's all (most) posters have a problem with, as well you know.

Except it clearly isn't. Several posters here have attempted to excuse antisemitism under the guise of faux narrowly confined criticism of the Israeli state. They have perpetuated historical fictions, peddled myths about the circumstances in which Israel came to exist, been apologists for the most thinly veiled of antisemitic smears by people like George Galloway and Ken Livingston. Several have defended as mere "criticism of Israel" the endorsement of a cartoon that literally advocates the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East in its entirety to expatriate them to the Mid West of the United States, half way around the planet. They have distorted the truth about the interaction between the Third Reich and Zionist groups in 1932-33 to pretend that Ken Livingston was "just stating facts" when he tried to imply that Hitler was a Zionist, when the reality was his regime was trying to find ways to expel Jews from Central and Eastern Europe and not to help Jews self-determine in Mandate territory.

[Ad Lib]

Previously there was the Balfour Declaration of course that set the whole ball rolling:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/balfour.html

Like this is the classic example of half truths.

The Balfour Declaration did not involve the establishing of a Jewish state, let alone the partition of Mandate territory. Like, read it. It was about the UK promising to lift some immigration controls so that a relatively modest number of Jews from Europe could set-up communities in the Mandate, subject to the rights of, mainly, Arabs in the area not being undermined in the process. It wasn't even close to advocating statehood and at best was taking baby steps towards multiple autonomous rule of different communities within a territory of the British empire. The closest (but imperfect) analogue I can think of in terms of the substance of the proposals in terms of self government is the failed statelets the UN drew up for Bosnia in the aftermath of the Slovenian and Croat independence movements.

It bears no resemblance to what the UN came up with and by no possible definition advocated the creation of Israel.

[HaikuHibee]

"Oh shit rumbled that is in fact what Ad Lib said and HaikuHibbee was talking out of his arse."

I didn't say it wasn't in tatters you monumental clusterfuck. I merely pointed out that Granny Danger's claims, that the creation of Israel was a result of Western imperial action, or that it was a policy initiated by the British Foreign Office, are total fucking horseshit. It was a UN plan and the British had agitated so strongly against the creation of a "Jewish state" that they literally went to war with the Jewish paramilitary forces in the region and sought to prevent Eastern European Jews from migrating to the Mandate territories.

I am not applauding them for that. Far from it. They were among the most severe miscalculations and mistakes, even moral errors, of the British Government in foreign policy in the 20th century. Had they handed the territory over to the UN much earlier they could have implemented a peace plan before the Jewish paramilitaries grew to such strength and before the mass migration from the pogroms got out of control. The implementation of a two-state solution would have in those circumstances been far easier and would have in all likelihood have involved far less bloodshed.

I am simply pointing out that Granny Danger has repeatedly demonstrated he doesn't know the most basic of facts that give an informed, let alone balanced or neutral or impartial, chronology of how the State of Israel came into being and who advocated and opposed it.

Except it clearly isn't. Several posters here have attempted to excuse antisemitism under the guise of faux narrowly confined criticism of the Israeli state. They have perpetuated historical fictions, peddled myths about the circumstances in which Israel came to exist, been apologists for the most thinly veiled of antisemitic smears by people like George Galloway and Ken Livingston. Several have defended as mere "criticism of Israel" the endorsement of a cartoon that literally advocates the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East in its entirety to expatriate them to the Mid West of the United States, half way around the planet. They have distorted the truth about the interaction between the Third Reich and Zionist groups in 1932-33 to pretend that Ken Livingston was "just stating facts" when he tried to imply that Hitler was a Zionist, when the reality was his regime was trying to find ways to expel Jews from Central and Eastern Europe and not to help Jews self-determine in Mandate territory.

 

Britain took control of the entire region, started wars and bombed countless villages across the Middle East who did not bend the knee. That's a 'miscalculation' is it? Classic. Lib Dems

 

To get back to the point, Ken Livingstone was an idiot. We don't need these long diatribes about a topic you know nothing about.

 

More to the point, where is your moral outrage at Lib Dems, Slabbers, and Tories who routinely accuse the SNP of being Third Reich fascists?

[HaikuHibee]

The Balfour Declaration did not involve the establishing of a Jewish state

 

 

Read the link from the "Jewish Virtual Library".

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Haiku - you are so far out it's embarrassing.

[Ad Lib]

Read the link from the "Jewish Virtual Library".

Like this is it. Verbatim:

His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

A national home is not a state. It was specifically a plan to resettle Jews in Palestine, which could in time itself become a state.

[welshbairn]

Like this is it. Verbatim:

A national home is not a state. It was specifically a plan to resettle Jews in Palestine, which could in time itself become a state.

 

An absurd bit of nit picking there. How exactly do you think the Zionists interpreted the letter?

Edited May 1, 2016 by welshbairn

[HaikuHibee]

An absurd bit of nit picking there. How exactly do you think the Zionists interpreted the letter?

 

We know exactly how they interpreted it. There's pictures of newspapers on Wikipedia. Apologists for the British Empire don't even try and claim it wasn't important in the formation in Israel (why the British made the declaration is another issue), only fucking fruit loops trolling would deny that.

 

In fact, all of this is still completely irrelevant to Labour internal politicking. The only reason we are having this fucking abortion of a 'debate' is because Ad Lib wants to hector everyone to death.

Edited May 1, 2016 by HaikuHibee

[Ad Lib]

An absurd bit of nit picking there. How exactly do you think the Zionists interpreted the letter?

They almost certainly interpreted it as progress towards their goal of statehood in much the same way as Alex Salmond saw the Scottish Parliament as progress towards statehood when he eventually swung behind it.

[Ad Lib]

We know exactly how they interpreted it. There's pictures of newspapers on Wikipedia. Apologists for the British Empire don't even try and claim it wasn't important in the formation in Israel (why the British made the declaration is another issue), only fucking fruit loops trolling would deny that.

Literally no one is "trying to claim it wasn't important in the formation of Israel" you catastrophic clustercunt.

In fact, all of this is still completely irrelevant to Labour internal politicking. The only reason we are having this fucking abortion of a 'debate' is because Ad Lib wants to hector everyone to death.

No it's because Granny Danger said stupid things and stupid things should be challenged. With facts.