africanspur
Full Member
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2010
- Messages
- 9,806
- Supports
- Tottenham Hotspur
Agree with pretty much all of this. Once upon a time there was a solution, but I see none now. To the bold, probably me too. There is some nuance there, but the way it was a product of colonialism and great power politics was just crap. I think if Israel were to comprehensively lose an actual war, you could see such a population transfer. And I don't see anyone accepting a Palestinian population transfer even if Israel commit atrocity after atrocity. I see no solution either.
I think what you see out of some posters is fear. I have Jewish friends, and they always face increased hate and violence after episodes like this, from Muslims. This pushes them to the right and the extreme fringes. Those and the ones that actually live in Israel, just trying to live their lives in fear of Hamas and terrorism. (Yes I know the Palestinians face the same fear, and obviously express the same antisemitism.) But my Muslim friends don't face this threat in the diaspora from the Jew; they vent their anger with little reply or acknowledgement for their empathy and pain, so they come here and also become more extreme.This is also where it becomes extremely difficult to distinguish between 'Israel' and 'Jew' - because by default any 'Jew' who isn't brazenly denouncing Israel, becomes Israel. I think this place is just emblematic of that really, the anger and frustration and feeling they are powerless and unjustness is happening.
I try not to blame these posters, and have time for most people other than the trolls. You can see the pain and emotion in some of these posters, and it's not invalid. I think the lies and false hope makes it worse though.
I agree about the fear aspect and would like to think my posting on this thread has never veered into talking about Jews in any way. However, a lot of the more vile comments are not from people who are Jewish (at least as far as I'm aware). In fact, some of the more reasonable comments on this thread over the past few years have come from Israeli Jews.
As I said, there are maybe 3 or so posters who cannot help but to come in and spew their vile rhetoric every time there is a flare up. It is what it is though.
It does go both ways though. I've got a Jewish friend here in the UK who has recently moved away from support of Israel. He was always a bit different though I guess. Used to wonder out loud how ridiculous it was that he, a British Jew who's family have been settled in the UK for centuries and who'd never set foot in the Middle East, has the right to step onto a plane tomorrow, fly to Israel and set up a life with infinitely more rights than a Palestinian in Gaza/ the West Bank/a refugee camp (and could potentially even displace those said Palestinians if he decided to live in a settlement).
Not necessarily the prevailing view though of course.