"Palestinians who wish to leave Gaza should be allowed to do so, and efforts should be made to find them a home."
Well, yes. But that doesn't sound like a very Trumpian position to me. Have you ever heard him say, "We ought to make efforts to find a new home for people who wish to leave their country because they live in danger and poverty and hopelessness." He says exactly the opposite pretty much every day. It was the main theme of his campaign. The only thing here is that someone convinced him there's an opportunity to make Trump Towers Gaza if he can just relocate a few dead-enders. There's nothing any deeper than that going through his mind.
Your sole example is from around eighty years ago. The fact is that - in today’s world - forcibly removing people en masse from their homes is considered a war crime, and it’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
Forcible removal is another word for ethnic cleansing. And they can only be relocated if Egypt accepts the plan, which it doesn’t, making it a fantasy. As for your statement about “they” please can you provide data that every single civilian in Gaza plans to constantly at every time try to cross over the border and murder Israelis.
From the perspective of the Egyptian government, there would be no pluses for it. Hamas claims to be part of the Muslim Brotherhood, which would like to overthrow the Egyptian government. It isn't going to allow millions of Hamas supporters including tens of thousands who are willing to use violence in support of their aims to migrate to Egypt. Al-Sisi is a brutal dictator but he isn't suicidal.
The same thing applies to Jordan. Palestinians have already tried to overthrow the monarchy once, and Hamas terrorists would certainly try to do it again.
What perplexes me is why Israelis or Israel's supporters would want to destabilize the two Arab countries that have actually made peace with Israel and potentially give mortal enemies far more ability to wage war against it. (Morocco, UAE, and Bahrain have never been at war with Israel.) The "Jordan is Palestine" argument is a variation of that.
They may need to decide if they are refugees or if that is their home and than would need to give up their "claims" to aid. I doubt they will elect to turn off their gold pipeline of billions of aid.
Also, There is a strong case to be made that "war crimes" which lead to peace are not war crimes, but are the purpose we have international law in the first place. To end wars. A war crime to end war is the ultimate goal of the UN and also literally how it was created, lest we not forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Would you trade that war crime for a world run by fascists and nazis?
The world is not a moral landscape; it is a chessboard.
Are you conveniently ignoring the Sudanese solution to modern warfare? Moving 50 miles down the coast is a much more modern way to do it. Maybe the Sudanese can take a lesson and not murder, rape and pillage 11M people. (I know, it’s not Jews, so who cares?😄)
….or maybe we wipe out 1.7M Gazans and you will express the same outrage you do for the Sudanese/Ruwanda massacres? Maybe they are the new modern warfare examples?
But isn’t forcing a people to stay locked in an area where there are no homes, no sanitation, dead bodies under rubble, infestations of rats and diseases also a war crime?
Is it better to let the people suffer by removing them or by leaving them to sicken and die or just keep up a never ending supply of fresh water and food.?When do they get to make the choice about what they want?
How about opening the Rafah gate, removing all obstacles to them leaving and let them choose?
Don’t you think the world has used them as pawns long enough? Kept them imprisoned long enough? They lived in a beautiful country once and it was called an open air prison. Now they live in a ruin and the world wants to keep there!
As Dave Rich said: "If Palestinians want to leave Gaza and live somewhere else, then as long as there are other countries willing to offer them residency or citizenship they should be able to go. The moment they are forced against their will to leave en masse, it becomes ethnic cleansing. I don't see how it can be anything else.
You might think that it won't happen, or that this is still a better option than all the other options (I don't hold that view, just to be clear). And it is often forgotten that many states around the world - including in Europe in relatively recent history - were created through acts of ethnic cleansing. But please, let's not pretend this proposal from Trump would be anything else."
I wonder if you stood against the “ethnic cleansing” of all the Jews from Gaza in 2005 to replace them with Palestinian Arabs?
But let them stay ienclosed if you are happier with that decision and they will probably be “ethnically cleansed” by disease, especially the poorest,the eldest, the weakest and the smallest.
Do yo agree with this article that it is legal to transfer people out of Gaza, or do you think that such an act is illegal?
Was it legal or illegal when citizens were forcibly displaced in 2006?
Would it be legal or illegal if it happened now?
I am not a legal expert and do not know the answer. Personally I think it was a massive mistake to withdraw from Gush Katif in 2006 and that directly lead to the Simchat Torah pogrom. But whether it was legal then or legal now I have no idea.
I wonder if Arab blogs are also engaged in soul searching right now as to whether what the Arab world has done the Jews can been morally justified. Just wondering.
In a nutshell - ethnic cleansing is a no no but if somebody attempts to ethnically cleanse you, you are in your rights to ethnically cleanse them. To some extent addresses the underlying issue the West has in dealing with Islamism and terror. The West (especially Judaism and Christianity) are being attacked by an ideology that explicitly aims to annihilate it by means no better than the Nazis. The West, bound by its moral standards, will not go further than jailing or eliminating those who commit acts of terror, which doesn't prevent acts of terror from happening, it just defines the price and this is a price that terrorists are willing to pay. This piece says that it is fair and maybe necessary for Western civilization to go outside of its regular moral standards when confronted by a threat that does not adhere to the same morality. Practically, since the Palestinians are committed to the brutal murder of every Jew and have committed acts demonstrating this goal, the state of Israel has no moral obligation to take extra care in avoiding civilian casualties and has every right to deport the entire society, i.e. create an even playing field and play by their rules.
after presenting this compelling argument you go on to negate this rational line of thinking and trumpet the standard idiocy: but how can we support such a "crazy" plan, i.e. the only plan that has a chance of saving our sons from fighting in Gaza in 5 or 10 years...... what will the world press say? Well, there are those who support trump who would likely say - to hell with the terrorists and their supporters. Those who celebrated 9/11 and 10/7 could go elsewhere and we owe them nothing). On the other hand there is the rest of the world who basically says: "from the river to the sea", i.e. the Jews deserve to die. There are only 2 sides these days. Have you not learned anything since October 7th? Why are you arguing that the Jews should not support an attempt at a peaceful future?
"ethnic cleansing is a no no but if somebody attempts to ethnically cleanse you, you are in your rights to ethnically cleanse them.."
good call!
Western liberals are so safe, prosperous and secular that they really can't contemplate the ideas of: kill or be killed and/or that some people refuse to exchange their faith and traditions for the blessings of democracy and consumer capitalism and that they have zero interest in becoming like us.
All Western liberals can do is cling to their sacred abstractions about laws, rights, international tribunals and their precedents etc because they have no ability or desire to confront the truth about Islamism and face the fact that Israel/Palestine is a religious dispute not a land dispute.
It is really the height of moral arrogance to expect other people to die or live daily with the threat of terrorism because of your supposed norms, beliefs and ideals. The Western conceptions of rights and obligations was made for sane liberals (in the most expansive sense) not bloodthirsty jihadists.
The enablers of the Palestinian cause are moral cowards hiding behind the pose of sentimental moralism.
My recollection is that "Western liberal secular" countries joined a global war against Islamic terrorism rather vigorously. You might remember it as "the global war on terror". But it's hardly surprising that problems far away are perceived less viscerally. How passionate are you about issues in Taiwan? As far as clinging to laws, right, and so on, I dearly hope we can continue to do that as best as possible. You should too. In a world where the strong are given free reign to destroy the weak, there won't be anywhere safe for anyone.
"As far as clinging to laws, right, and so on, I dearly hope we can continue to do that as best as possible."
I do too here in America, but I don't expect Israelis to die for them or in the name of other people's conceptions of "rights" or morality.
I don't think anyone should necessarily "destroy" the Palestinians, but just admit that the values and norms we consider sacred are not recognized as such by them.
Jihadists don't want a state or Netflix and Amazon, they want jihad, or in this case they want the destruction of the Jewish state.
I don't think any solutions are possible without facing reality with honesty and clarity.
I have friends who have had family members murdered by members of the (Marxist atheist) Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the bloodiest terror groups ever, a group that emphatically denies that this conflict has anything to do with religion.
All Marxists vehemently deny that Marxism is a religion (or proxy for it), and have always done so.
But if your ideology has a Messiah (Karl), a Promised Land (the dictatorship of the proletariat or some similar conception of "Justice"), sacred dogma, damned and saved, apostates and heretics and martyrs and blasphemy etc, not to mention is considered sacred enough to kill or die for, then it sure sounds religious.
Marxism is the great secular faith of the modern West and since the days of Baader-Meinhof the Palestinians have been considered one of its sacred victims, whose enemies must be destroyed for Justice to be achieved.
This is also why Leftism and Islamism mesh so well together—they have the same enemies and the same belief that murdering them is righteous and will bring about a better world.
Well of course Russia and Eastern Europe were Marxist from 1945ish to 1989ish, and also something can be a great faith and not officially control a country or a govt, similar to say Mormonism, which is an American religion but certainly not ever in any official sense.
Marxism is the opiate of the intellectuals and has been a secular faith for alienated middle-class college/suburban kids (and their profs) since the 60s, a sharper more intensely moral post-liberal post-Christianity for people who consider capitalism inherently evil and exploitive and liberalism too weak a tea to combat it.
I consider all these Popular Fronts and People's Parties and orgs like SJP and SDS as Marxist, filled with true believers with hearts on fire for Justice, as well as other splinters and offshoots like the New Left, Crit Theory and its Studies Depts, psotmodern Parisian Maosism, the modern SJW movement etc.
Marxism has a particular meaning. You can look it up. What you are calling Marxism is just "all the things that irritate me". The number of people in Western countries that are seriously discussing Marxism outside of History of Philosophy courses is probably about 2.
And you are wrong. The Spanish and French Popular Fronts were only partially Marxist, but Leon Blum was no Stalin. Admittedly the Spanish Popular Front quickly became Communist dominated shortly after Franco started the Civil War. The People's Party in the United States was strongly anti-Marxist; William Jennings Bryan was a Christian religious extremist. SDS was definitely Marxist, but SJP is definitely not Marxist. New Left was partly Marxists but had plenty of anarchists tool. Crit Theory has nothing to do with Marxism. Almost no Social Justice Warriors in the United States are Marxist because Marxist ideology simply is not a factor in the United States other than in the delusioned minds of the brainwashed far right.
You can't counter a hostile ideology effectively if you can't even characterize it accurately. You are stuck in the Cold War. Even Fidel Castro is dead.
Fight the Jew and Christian until they pay the jizia is the underlying motto/motif of the friendly phallustinians who are representing the 22 Arab countries who are representatives of the 57 Islamic countries.
You have a friend who taught you poorly and made you blind to Islam, thus I am identifying yet another Islamic deflectionist who refuses to address that Islam is not the religion of Peace as the Christian Bush lied to America about. Trump's 2017 speech to the Arab League might give you some perspective going forward
Palestine is one of the 22 countries that make up the League of Arab States. I am surprised that you recognize it as a country. The United States does not.
Paying the jizyah tax would appear to be a halachic requirement (Bava Kama 113a) if you live in a country that levies it. Paying it also exempts you from military service, although there are examples (Spain a thousand years ago, late in the Ottoman Empire) where Jews did serve in militaries for Muslim rulers.
In any case, you would have been better off in any Muslim country in the world than in most of Christian Europe had you been alive in the early 1940s. Unlike you, I am concerned about all violent Jew-haters.
The fellow who was released by Hamas today was a survivor of the farhud program in Baghdad in 1940 or so, not sure what you're talking about with peace and tranquility for Jews in Islamic countries especially considering 1929 and 36 in Palestine
There is no point in supporting a plan when the originator of the plan walks it back less than 24 hours later. That just happened. Jews who went all in to support the plan have been left out on a limb, embarrassed and exposed.
How do you tell when Trump is lying? When his lips are moving. He is a BAD man and should never be relied upon. He has been stabbing friends and allies in the back for decades and he has cheated on all three of his wives. And while he used to be a decent supporter of Israel, that ended about a year ago.
"The West (especially Judaism and Christianity) are being attacked by an ideology that explicitly aims to annihilate it by means no better than the Nazis."
You are correct, but remember also that the Nazis were a Western movement and the Nazis were supported by a LOT of Christians. The Fascist regimes in Croatia and France were practically arms of the Catholic Church, although the one in Italy was not.
I would add -we don't have to go back in time 80 years to identify the guilt of the catholic church. The Pope has called for an investigation into whether the war in Gaza constitutes genocide but when it comes to October 7th he calls for prayer..... more appallingly he does little to protect Christians in Africa butchered by the hundreds and thousands by muslim groups because it's not politically correct to speak out against Islam.
"These people are showing that they do not care about Palestinian lives and wishes, and are willing to sacrifice them for the Palestinian political cause."
The Palestinians are much more of a cause or an idea or a symbol than a flesh-and-blood people like the rest of us and they have been longstanding pawns, puppets and cudgels for various Islamist theocrats, Arab dictators and Western Leftists for generations now.
The purpose and meaning of the word "Palestinian" is the hatred for (and refusal to accept the existence of) the Jewish state and the desire to eradicate it, along with these people becoming a Platonic sacred victim for the guilt-besotted white liberals of the West, who are happy to trap them in refugee camps forever and feed them a steady diet of Jew hate, because you can't be a savior without a victim and you can't be a victim without a permanent grievance.
It is pointless to imagine them changing and pointless to imagine them pursuing the fantasy called the "2-state solution" because while the Israel/Palestinian dispute on its face seems to be about land it is really about religion. (They have been offered a state many times and refused.) There is a strand of Islamism that is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, no matter how many generations or how many dead children this takes, and this strand now goes by the word "Palestinian".
If I were King of the Israelites I would draw a hard border somewhere, build a 20-foot prison wall across it with barbed wire and armed guards, let the Palestinians know that any missiles will be met with a 10fold response, and try to forget about them. There will never be peace with them or any kind of "2-state solution"—how many times do people have to tell and show you who they are before you believe them?
I've almost started to vaguely suspect with just a little bit of my being that it's not really about concern for the Arabs there but it's about the Jews but I'm not sure yet 😂😜👌
The levels of retardation to avoid the reality that fight the Jews and Christian until they pay the jizia is an elemental foundational belief of the 57 Islamic countries in the 22 Arab countries, as you scroll through I've attached facts and no one cares because Jews
Originality is not these people's strong suit. As I explained here, the throughline is denial-- denial of the realities of Jewish life and civilization. All of this is in service of the big lie, which is that antisemitism is actually a Righteous Fight against Evil... because Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist. Antisemites set up a permission structure for this that changes with what's considered righteous in any given generation, demonstrating how Jews are The Problem because they don't accept whatever is "universal" this week, and if only Jews would stop being The Problem, utopia would take over. If it's a communist society, Jews are capitalists; if it's a capitalist society, Jews are communists. If it's a racist society, Jews are an inferior race. If it's an anti-racist society, Jews are racist. The "anti-Zionism" stuff isn't even new. It goes back to the Bolsheviks in 1918, 30 years before the state of Israel.
I tried to find a Muslim country today that levies the jizya tax and could not. The Taliban probably would, but there are apparently no non-Muslims there. So much for fundamental beliefs.
On occasion I can't get chat GPT to give results but this is what they do
Islamic State Warns Christians: Convert, Pay Tax, Leave Or Die
Kelly Phillips Erb
Forbes Staff
Kelly Phillips Erb is a Forbes senior writer who covers tax.
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Jul 19, 2014,11:29pm EDT
Updated Jul 21, 2014, 09:26am EDT
This article is more than 10 years old.
Christians in Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, were sent a message by the Islamic State (IS): convert to Islam, pay the jizya or leave. It appears that many are taking the new self-proclaimed Caliphate seriously.
IS, formerly ISIS, is not formally recognized as a state and is considered a rebel group. It is composed of Sunni insurgent groups and was thought to have significant ties to Al-Qaeda (although Al-Qaeda formally dissociated itself from IS in February). Known for violence against the Shia and Christians, Secretary of State John Kerry has described IS as “more extreme even than al Qaeda.”
IS moved into Mosul last month and made no secret of their plans to impose the tax. Yesterday, after Christian leaders didn’t attend a meeting called
I strongly disagree with you when you say it is a bad idea for isreal and jews to endorse trumps plans. In fact, I believe exactly the opposite. That it would be a bad idea for isreal and jews not to endorse the plan.
If Islamist can openly say they want to kill zionist and influence the world in that direction, then jewish people need to hit back in the public relations arena and make it acceptable to relocate a society bent on their destruction.
The idea is coming from Trump who has been the best ally Isreal has ever had. To not to endorse the plan would be a slap in the face and greatly risks changes in Trump policy.
"The idea is coming from Trump who has been the best ally Isreal has ever had. "
Not true. Last year he tried to kill Biden's Ukraine Israel Taiwan aid bill, and picked a Vice President and Secretary of State who voted against the aid. He did not support the decapitation of Hezbollah and supported Hezbollah's candidate for President of Lebanon, who lost to the anti-Hezbollah candidate Biden supported. Trump seemed expressed regret that Assad was driven from power. Trump's response to the US using its military assets to help to defend Israel against Iranian attacks was to pledge no more wars, an Old Left slogan from Trump's childhiod years.
The Russia Iran Syria Hezboĺlah Axis of Genocide is broken, possibly for good, and the policies that brought that about were opposed by Trump. Finally, he forced the cease fire agreement on Netanyahu. Maybe that was a good thing but it should never have been forced.
"To not to endorse the plan would be a slap in the face and greatly risks changes in Trump policy."
Most of the "plan" which was never a plan just ravings by a madman were walked back less than 24 hours later. Jews who embraced it have been left out to dry and are now open to accusations of supporting ethnic cleansing in violation of international law (even though, as Rabbi Slifkin points out, things are a bit more complex than
that).
But you are right about one thing. Trump is a mean and vengeful man who has often betrayed former friends and allies, attempting to destroy them. Netanyahu has to tread lightly and has to praise Trump no matter how badly the inquisitor twists the screws. I do not envy Netanyahu. Trump does not hate Jews but he only supports Israel (snd everything else he supports) as long as it is useful to him.
Nice try. No Cigar. The 4th Geneva Convention which makes what Trump is proposing illegal,was ratified in 1950. After, and partly because of, what's described here.
The current scheme to bring back the hostages and end the war inevitably means that Hamas will continue to rule. Any speculation otherwise mere secular messianism of the non-Trumpian variety. The current paradigm guarantees, if not gravely risks, more war and more insecurity for the people in Gaza.
It follows that 4th Geneva Convention applies:
"Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. "
You left out the rest of the paragraph. Quite significant...
"Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased."
Actually that's literally the definition of morality... principles of conduct society agrees upon. Almost every country in the world, including Israel, has agreed to these rules.
Readers can make of this what they want - but Fridtjof Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (I know - it is mostly meaningless, being that terrorists, mass murderers and tyrants have received it) for arranging the transfer of populations for Greece and Turkey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Greece_and_Turkey
Note also that Trump has repeatedly said (over the past 8 years, including this year) that he wants and deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
Lester Peason won the Nobel Peace Prize for screwing Israel at the behest of John Foster Dulles and Dwight Eisenhower. A decade later, the Six-Day War happened as the direct result of that. Pearson was by then the PM of Canada. Pearson had been one of the loudest supporters of the creation of the State of Israel. Do not assume that someone who had been a friend will remain a friend; Donald Trump is another such example.
If I have been testy with you in the past forgive me, there is nuance in your statements that I may have missed and elsewhere in substack there are people occasionally triggering me and requiring a different level of discourse. if I wasn't appreciate your nuance now.
Why did Eisenhower have such a shit fit over Suez, enough so that he threatened to crash the pound? The anglo-american alliance is interpretable through many lenses and I never understood the hard line
Good question about Eisenhower. I find it hard to believe that it was just Dulles brainwashing him. It was the worst US-UK split of the past 200 years.
I think if, two weeks ago, someone had said Israel wanted to purge millions of people and take their land, he would have been derided as an antisemite.
Qatar only has about 300,000 citizens. The remainder of its over three million people can never become citizens. The Emir knows that he is on thin enough ice as it is and that the Palestinians would certainly overthrow him.
That seems to have been forgotten. Assad is gone, Hezbollah is no longer in charge in Lebanon, Iran is badly weakened, but Hamas still rules Gaza with an iron fist.
"ethnic cleansing" is merely the terminology used today. Forget legal definitions. I'm deeply disappointed to see you making excuses for the idea of forcible mass relocation of people from their native region. If you excuse that, then I guess it's okay that our people were expelled again and again throughout history.
That's the term you are embracing and being used as a denigration of the idea, population transfers are normative throughout history. Why be triggered? 22 Arab countries and 57 Islamic countries and homogeneous societies do work best, and the reason they need to leave is the reason they needed to be killed in 1970 in Jordan and so on let them leave
Some of those 57 aren't very homogeneous. Nigeria barely has a Muslim majority and it has dozens of peoples with different languages. Ethiopia barely has a Christian majority (maybe) and it also has dozens of peoples with different languages. Eritrea, similarly, but with only about nine different peoples and languages. All are a mess today. Bosnia barely has a Muslim majority and we know about its horrible civil war (where the Muslims were not the war criminals).
The Muslims did Muslim stuff there to start things in addition to the Christians pushing back against the Muslim stuff now it's an artificial construct that has empowered the islamists but they keep it pretty subdued there compared to elsewhere agreed they are a mess everywhere
So presumably you have no complaint against the Romans. We killed some of them, they expelled us. Fair's fair. Also, expelling criminals is a bit different than expelling the ENTIRE nation in which the criminals are members. I find it kind of astonishing when I hear Jewish people advocating collective punishment. Haven't we been the victims of collective punishment long enough to understand its intrinsic injustice? Guess not.
The Roman's started it. We were merely defending our land in the bar kochva revolt. We never started up with other nations while we were in exile. They had no reason to mistreat us the way they did.
Hamas however is the government of gaza like the Nazis were the government of Germany. We were at war with the gazans (and Palestinians in general) for decades now, not just with their governmentor army. There is no war without civilian casualties and If they don't accept our sovereignty in the middle east they just need to go before they get to maim or kill any of our brothers or defile any more our daughters. Your blood should be boiling at the humiliation they put as through even during the hostage deal. Not just the soldiers. Rather the mobs of roaches who inhabit gaza. It's up to G-d to spare the individual innocents. When it comes to war however its all about the collective (מהר"ל on the war against שכם). If we can spare them without killing them all that's a mercy in and of itself.
If it's up to God to spare innocents, and humans should therefore feel free to apply unconstrained collective punishment, I don't know what claims you can ever have against anyone who has committed crimes against Jews or anyone else. Your only claims can be against God, who you have turned into a monster for abandoning millions of innocents to horrible deaths.
You actually don't see a difference between Nazi expulsions of Jews and expulsion of hostile Arabs? Really? How can you even begin to compare the two? The fact that we let out prisoners with Jewish blood on their hands is enough of a disgrace and injustice. The nations put their own interests first. It's about time we did the same.
"You actually don't see a difference between Nazi expulsions of Jews and expulsion of hostile Arabs? "
Let me edit that for you: "You actually don't see a difference between .... expulsions of .... and expulsion of hostile.... "
The key word is "hostile".
Again the 4th Geneva Convention provides exceptions that allow transfer when "the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand."
The word "awarded" is too strong. The Hashemites just marched in and took it without any opposition from anyone. There was no British presence, much less any will, to counter that.
"Egypt, a country from which a large minority of Palestinians emigrated within the last two centuries."
From 1517 to 1914, Egypt and "Palestine" were legally part of the same country, so "emigrate" isn't really a correct term until after tha period. Things got complicated in the 19th century, as Muhammad Ali Pasha took over Egypt in 1805 and his descendants continued to rule there after his death but the area remained legally part of the Ottoman Empire. Then in 1882 the UK occupied, but did not annex, Egypt. The UK never did annex Egypt but it broke its ties with the Ottoman Empire when they chose opposite sides during WW1 (a choice that proved fatal to the Ottoman Empire), and even to this day Egyptian citizenship is only given at birth to those who had an Egyptian ancestor as of 1914. That is why Yassir Arafat may his name be blotted out was never Egyptian even though he was born in Cairo. No country in the Middle East has birthright citizenship which is why we now have four generations of refugees who remain stateless. In almost every country in the Western Hemisphere, that can't happen. "Palestine" happened legally in 1924 when the British Mandate took effect.
"The word "awarded" is too strong. The Hashemites just marched in and took it without any opposition from anyone. There was no British presence, much less any will, to counter that."
I thought the Hashemites helped the British in WW1 or something and they gave the country we now call Jordan to them.
The British didn't "give" them what is now Jordan until after the Hashemites took it. The history and agreements were complicated, with the Brits making promises to everyone that were incompatible with each other. (Yes, the Balfour Declaration was one of those incompatible promises.) And when the Hashemites objected to the Brits breaking their word, the Brits abandoned the Hashemites in favor of the Saudis. Beware of a certain American leader with a history of acting like that.
"How could ‘forced deportation’ ever be achieved without extreme coercion, indeed violence? How, indeed, could deportation not be forced? How could people not resist? How could it not involve the destruction of a community, of the way of life that a group has enjoyed over a period of time? How could those who deported a group not intend this destruction? In what significant way is the forcible removal of a population from their homeland different from the destruction’ of a group? If the boundary between ‘cleansing’ and genocide is unreal, why police it?"
I think the kids say nowadays, FAFO. Don't start wars if you can't handle the consequences. Sucks to be them. Don't start a war, that is the lesson to be learned by Arabs. Arabs are not the best at learning this lesson, therefore, they will be forced into "Reeducation"
Slaveowners in South Carolina started a war with the United States of American in 1861.
In 1865 Sherman came marching through, destroying everything in sight. South Carolina took generations to recover. They deserved what they got but they got what they wanted -- a war.
Some of my direct ancestors were South Carolina Confederates.
Mine too! My father's ancestors served with the Union Army, and my mother's with the Confederate Army. One of my great great grandfathers served in an Ohio unit that was with Sherman for the entire Georgia/Carolinas campaign. The other great great grandfather who fought for the Union served in a Kentucky unit even though he was from a slaveowning family. They were both at the battle of Shiloh. The Kentucky ancestor didn't march with Sherman to the Sea but after Atlanta was captured went back to Kentucky to defend it against Hood's invasion. It turned out not to be necessary as Hood's army disintegrated at the Battles of Franklin and Nashville.
My ancestors were poor white Southerners who got drafted into the Confederate Army and died as canon fodder. The surviving family members were even poorer after the war. With that in mind, I do feel sorry for ordinary Palestinians. But the fact of the matter is that sometimes tyrannical regimes such as the CSA, Nazis, and Hamas can only be defeated through crushing defeats that destroys them once and for all to bring peace. Unfortunately, that means innocent civilians under their rule, as well as ordinary people who did back them, will suffer and sometimes lose land. Expelling the Palestinians to live in other Arab nations would completely crush all Palestinian aspirations and end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all. For those who find this idea horrific, what is the alternative? Decades more of this conflict? Unless the Palestinians are willing to live in peace with Israel, in the long term their expulsion from Gaza and the West Bank may become inevitable. And Israel is a strong nation with nuclear weapons. So the radical Islamist goal of eliminating Israel and committing genocide against the Jews is an unrealistic non-starter.
"Expelling the Palestinians to live in other Arab nations would completely crush all Palestinian aspirations"
No it wouldn't. Half of all Palestinian Arabs lost their homes in 1948. Remember also that most of our ancestors were murdered or exiled by the Romans, and the descendants of the few who remained were almost all murdered by the Crusaders. Aspirations remained.
"Expelling the Palestinians to live in other Arab nations would completely crush all Palestinian aspirations and end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all."
Like everyone else, I bristle when Israelis are compared to Nazis an so on, but do you hear yourself? What if we say it this way: "Expelling the Jews to live in other nations would completely crush all Jewish aspirations and end the Jewish-Greek/Roman/Arab conflict once and for all." And incidentally, how effective was that when it was tried? Maybe crushing people's national aspirations is easier said than done?
This did it m fact happen to the Jews in ancient times when they rebelled against the Roman Empire. The Jews then made the foolish choice to rebel against a far superior military force that had been willing to tolerate their culture and religion. The Palestinians had made a similar choice. If not expulsion, what other alternative do you propose? The question only other possible solutions I can think of that might result in peace is either disarming the entire Palestinian population such that the most dangerous weapons there allowed to have are bitter knives or pup them under the rule of an Arab power such as the Saudis, with the understanding that the Saudis are allowed to stomp out radical groups like Hamas by any means necessary. If we want a permanent peace, totalitarian groups such as Hamas have to be eradicated and dismantled like the Nazis were in 1945.
I suspect that were Donald Trump to offer two million US permanent resident visas to Gazans, Gaza would empty out rather quickly. But he does not have the legal authority to do anything of the kind.
He doesn't have legal authority? That's what's stopping him? After basing his whole campaign on expelling immigrants, you think he would bring two million Gazans to the US? Whatever you've been drinking today, I want some.
There are caps on the number of US permanent resident visas based on country of birth. No country can get more than 7 percent of the visas per year. That is a bit under 50,000 visas. This is grossly unfair to populous countries like China, India, and Mexico. Nativist bigots say "get in line" but the line can be decades long. There are some workarounds but that won't help the people of Gaza.
Until 1965 there had never been any quotas on immigration to the US from anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
"Palestinians who wish to leave Gaza should be allowed to do so, and efforts should be made to find them a home."
Well, yes. But that doesn't sound like a very Trumpian position to me. Have you ever heard him say, "We ought to make efforts to find a new home for people who wish to leave their country because they live in danger and poverty and hopelessness." He says exactly the opposite pretty much every day. It was the main theme of his campaign. The only thing here is that someone convinced him there's an opportunity to make Trump Towers Gaza if he can just relocate a few dead-enders. There's nothing any deeper than that going through his mind.
Your sole example is from around eighty years ago. The fact is that - in today’s world - forcibly removing people en masse from their homes is considered a war crime, and it’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
I'm not disputing what popular belief is today.
Then that means it isn’t a “widespread fallacy.”
Is this ethnic cleansing or forcible removal? They can be relocated 50 miles further south down the Sinai coast.
As they have vowed to continually repeat October 7th, what is worse in your morality?
-let them stay and see if one can find a reliable monitor?
-give the Bibas family weapons and go search for the 2 yr old?
- move them 50 miles down the coast?
"They can be relocated 50 miles further south down the Sinai coast."
Only if Egypt agrees. And they don't seem to be interested.
One can only hope they will see the wisdom of it.that will put distance between both populations.
Forcible removal is another word for ethnic cleansing. And they can only be relocated if Egypt accepts the plan, which it doesn’t, making it a fantasy. As for your statement about “they” please can you provide data that every single civilian in Gaza plans to constantly at every time try to cross over the border and murder Israelis.
From the perspective of the Egyptian government, there would be no pluses for it. Hamas claims to be part of the Muslim Brotherhood, which would like to overthrow the Egyptian government. It isn't going to allow millions of Hamas supporters including tens of thousands who are willing to use violence in support of their aims to migrate to Egypt. Al-Sisi is a brutal dictator but he isn't suicidal.
The same thing applies to Jordan. Palestinians have already tried to overthrow the monarchy once, and Hamas terrorists would certainly try to do it again.
What perplexes me is why Israelis or Israel's supporters would want to destabilize the two Arab countries that have actually made peace with Israel and potentially give mortal enemies far more ability to wage war against it. (Morocco, UAE, and Bahrain have never been at war with Israel.) The "Jordan is Palestine" argument is a variation of that.
They may need to decide if they are refugees or if that is their home and than would need to give up their "claims" to aid. I doubt they will elect to turn off their gold pipeline of billions of aid.
Also, There is a strong case to be made that "war crimes" which lead to peace are not war crimes, but are the purpose we have international law in the first place. To end wars. A war crime to end war is the ultimate goal of the UN and also literally how it was created, lest we not forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Would you trade that war crime for a world run by fascists and nazis?
The world is not a moral landscape; it is a chessboard.
Every tyrant promises that today's cruelty will lead to tomorrow's peace. (Just as soon as all the undesirables are cleared out of the way.)
Are you conveniently ignoring the Sudanese solution to modern warfare? Moving 50 miles down the coast is a much more modern way to do it. Maybe the Sudanese can take a lesson and not murder, rape and pillage 11M people. (I know, it’s not Jews, so who cares?😄)
….or maybe we wipe out 1.7M Gazans and you will express the same outrage you do for the Sudanese/Ruwanda massacres? Maybe they are the new modern warfare examples?
Are you replying to yourself, or am I not seeing someone?
I might have been on the wrong thread in this substack! I was replying to Alex Stein.
But isn’t forcing a people to stay locked in an area where there are no homes, no sanitation, dead bodies under rubble, infestations of rats and diseases also a war crime?
Is it better to let the people suffer by removing them or by leaving them to sicken and die or just keep up a never ending supply of fresh water and food.?When do they get to make the choice about what they want?
How about opening the Rafah gate, removing all obstacles to them leaving and let them choose?
Don’t you think the world has used them as pawns long enough? Kept them imprisoned long enough? They lived in a beautiful country once and it was called an open air prison. Now they live in a ruin and the world wants to keep there!
Where is the morality in that?
As Dave Rich said: "If Palestinians want to leave Gaza and live somewhere else, then as long as there are other countries willing to offer them residency or citizenship they should be able to go. The moment they are forced against their will to leave en masse, it becomes ethnic cleansing. I don't see how it can be anything else.
You might think that it won't happen, or that this is still a better option than all the other options (I don't hold that view, just to be clear). And it is often forgotten that many states around the world - including in Europe in relatively recent history - were created through acts of ethnic cleansing. But please, let's not pretend this proposal from Trump would be anything else."
I wonder if you stood against the “ethnic cleansing” of all the Jews from Gaza in 2005 to replace them with Palestinian Arabs?
But let them stay ienclosed if you are happier with that decision and they will probably be “ethnically cleansed” by disease, especially the poorest,the eldest, the weakest and the smallest.
Hi I didn't live in Israel then but you know who did - Prime Minister Netanyahu. And he voted for it. So perhaps you should take this up with him.
"as long as there are other countries willing to offer them residency or citizenship"
There are no such countries.
If you want your daughter to be r*ped you can voluntarily go to Gaza and convince them.
Let us know how it goes.
Did you actually read the article?
This is an article about how transferring the population of Gaza may be legal by international law. You response makes no sense.
Also, adding vulgar insults does not strengthen your argument, just gives the impression that you have a very limited vocabulary
I don't understand your point
Do yo agree with this article that it is legal to transfer people out of Gaza, or do you think that such an act is illegal?
Was it legal or illegal when citizens were forcibly displaced in 2006?
Would it be legal or illegal if it happened now?
I am not a legal expert and do not know the answer. Personally I think it was a massive mistake to withdraw from Gush Katif in 2006 and that directly lead to the Simchat Torah pogrom. But whether it was legal then or legal now I have no idea.
I wonder if Arab blogs are also engaged in soul searching right now as to whether what the Arab world has done the Jews can been morally justified. Just wondering.
Sane washing Trump's spiteful senile ravings has become a full time job for the US media.
Fascinating source - thank you for bringing it.
In a nutshell - ethnic cleansing is a no no but if somebody attempts to ethnically cleanse you, you are in your rights to ethnically cleanse them. To some extent addresses the underlying issue the West has in dealing with Islamism and terror. The West (especially Judaism and Christianity) are being attacked by an ideology that explicitly aims to annihilate it by means no better than the Nazis. The West, bound by its moral standards, will not go further than jailing or eliminating those who commit acts of terror, which doesn't prevent acts of terror from happening, it just defines the price and this is a price that terrorists are willing to pay. This piece says that it is fair and maybe necessary for Western civilization to go outside of its regular moral standards when confronted by a threat that does not adhere to the same morality. Practically, since the Palestinians are committed to the brutal murder of every Jew and have committed acts demonstrating this goal, the state of Israel has no moral obligation to take extra care in avoiding civilian casualties and has every right to deport the entire society, i.e. create an even playing field and play by their rules.
after presenting this compelling argument you go on to negate this rational line of thinking and trumpet the standard idiocy: but how can we support such a "crazy" plan, i.e. the only plan that has a chance of saving our sons from fighting in Gaza in 5 or 10 years...... what will the world press say? Well, there are those who support trump who would likely say - to hell with the terrorists and their supporters. Those who celebrated 9/11 and 10/7 could go elsewhere and we owe them nothing). On the other hand there is the rest of the world who basically says: "from the river to the sea", i.e. the Jews deserve to die. There are only 2 sides these days. Have you not learned anything since October 7th? Why are you arguing that the Jews should not support an attempt at a peaceful future?
"ethnic cleansing is a no no but if somebody attempts to ethnically cleanse you, you are in your rights to ethnically cleanse them.."
good call!
Western liberals are so safe, prosperous and secular that they really can't contemplate the ideas of: kill or be killed and/or that some people refuse to exchange their faith and traditions for the blessings of democracy and consumer capitalism and that they have zero interest in becoming like us.
All Western liberals can do is cling to their sacred abstractions about laws, rights, international tribunals and their precedents etc because they have no ability or desire to confront the truth about Islamism and face the fact that Israel/Palestine is a religious dispute not a land dispute.
It is really the height of moral arrogance to expect other people to die or live daily with the threat of terrorism because of your supposed norms, beliefs and ideals. The Western conceptions of rights and obligations was made for sane liberals (in the most expansive sense) not bloodthirsty jihadists.
The enablers of the Palestinian cause are moral cowards hiding behind the pose of sentimental moralism.
My recollection is that "Western liberal secular" countries joined a global war against Islamic terrorism rather vigorously. You might remember it as "the global war on terror". But it's hardly surprising that problems far away are perceived less viscerally. How passionate are you about issues in Taiwan? As far as clinging to laws, right, and so on, I dearly hope we can continue to do that as best as possible. You should too. In a world where the strong are given free reign to destroy the weak, there won't be anywhere safe for anyone.
"As far as clinging to laws, right, and so on, I dearly hope we can continue to do that as best as possible."
I do too here in America, but I don't expect Israelis to die for them or in the name of other people's conceptions of "rights" or morality.
I don't think anyone should necessarily "destroy" the Palestinians, but just admit that the values and norms we consider sacred are not recognized as such by them.
Jihadists don't want a state or Netflix and Amazon, they want jihad, or in this case they want the destruction of the Jewish state.
I don't think any solutions are possible without facing reality with honesty and clarity.
It is only western liberal secular values that will allow weaker countries like Ukraine and Taiwan. That applies to Israel too.
"will allow" ??
sorry is unclear
"Israel/Palestine is a religious dispute"
I have friends who have had family members murdered by members of the (Marxist atheist) Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the bloodiest terror groups ever, a group that emphatically denies that this conflict has anything to do with religion.
All Marxists vehemently deny that Marxism is a religion (or proxy for it), and have always done so.
But if your ideology has a Messiah (Karl), a Promised Land (the dictatorship of the proletariat or some similar conception of "Justice"), sacred dogma, damned and saved, apostates and heretics and martyrs and blasphemy etc, not to mention is considered sacred enough to kill or die for, then it sure sounds religious.
Marxism is the great secular faith of the modern West and since the days of Baader-Meinhof the Palestinians have been considered one of its sacred victims, whose enemies must be destroyed for Justice to be achieved.
This is also why Leftism and Islamism mesh so well together—they have the same enemies and the same belief that murdering them is righteous and will bring about a better world.
"Marxism is the great secular faith of the modern West "
How so? What great modern Western countries are Marxist?
Well of course Russia and Eastern Europe were Marxist from 1945ish to 1989ish, and also something can be a great faith and not officially control a country or a govt, similar to say Mormonism, which is an American religion but certainly not ever in any official sense.
Marxism is the opiate of the intellectuals and has been a secular faith for alienated middle-class college/suburban kids (and their profs) since the 60s, a sharper more intensely moral post-liberal post-Christianity for people who consider capitalism inherently evil and exploitive and liberalism too weak a tea to combat it.
I consider all these Popular Fronts and People's Parties and orgs like SJP and SDS as Marxist, filled with true believers with hearts on fire for Justice, as well as other splinters and offshoots like the New Left, Crit Theory and its Studies Depts, psotmodern Parisian Maosism, the modern SJW movement etc.
All these represent a great secular faith.
Marxism has a particular meaning. You can look it up. What you are calling Marxism is just "all the things that irritate me". The number of people in Western countries that are seriously discussing Marxism outside of History of Philosophy courses is probably about 2.
You don't understand Marxism.
"I consider"
And you are wrong. The Spanish and French Popular Fronts were only partially Marxist, but Leon Blum was no Stalin. Admittedly the Spanish Popular Front quickly became Communist dominated shortly after Franco started the Civil War. The People's Party in the United States was strongly anti-Marxist; William Jennings Bryan was a Christian religious extremist. SDS was definitely Marxist, but SJP is definitely not Marxist. New Left was partly Marxists but had plenty of anarchists tool. Crit Theory has nothing to do with Marxism. Almost no Social Justice Warriors in the United States are Marxist because Marxist ideology simply is not a factor in the United States other than in the delusioned minds of the brainwashed far right.
You can't counter a hostile ideology effectively if you can't even characterize it accurately. You are stuck in the Cold War. Even Fidel Castro is dead.
None.
Fight the Jew and Christian until they pay the jizia is the underlying motto/motif of the friendly phallustinians who are representing the 22 Arab countries who are representatives of the 57 Islamic countries.
You have a friend who taught you poorly and made you blind to Islam, thus I am identifying yet another Islamic deflectionist who refuses to address that Islam is not the religion of Peace as the Christian Bush lied to America about. Trump's 2017 speech to the Arab League might give you some perspective going forward
Palestine is one of the 22 countries that make up the League of Arab States. I am surprised that you recognize it as a country. The United States does not.
Paying the jizyah tax would appear to be a halachic requirement (Bava Kama 113a) if you live in a country that levies it. Paying it also exempts you from military service, although there are examples (Spain a thousand years ago, late in the Ottoman Empire) where Jews did serve in militaries for Muslim rulers.
In any case, you would have been better off in any Muslim country in the world than in most of Christian Europe had you been alive in the early 1940s. Unlike you, I am concerned about all violent Jew-haters.
The fellow who was released by Hamas today was a survivor of the farhud program in Baghdad in 1940 or so, not sure what you're talking about with peace and tranquility for Jews in Islamic countries especially considering 1929 and 36 in Palestine
'how can we support such a "crazy" plan'
There is no point in supporting a plan when the originator of the plan walks it back less than 24 hours later. That just happened. Jews who went all in to support the plan have been left out on a limb, embarrassed and exposed.
How do you tell when Trump is lying? When his lips are moving. He is a BAD man and should never be relied upon. He has been stabbing friends and allies in the back for decades and he has cheated on all three of his wives. And while he used to be a decent supporter of Israel, that ended about a year ago.
But he didn't walk it back
"The West (especially Judaism and Christianity) are being attacked by an ideology that explicitly aims to annihilate it by means no better than the Nazis."
You are correct, but remember also that the Nazis were a Western movement and the Nazis were supported by a LOT of Christians. The Fascist regimes in Croatia and France were practically arms of the Catholic Church, although the one in Italy was not.
The Mufti of Jerusalem had a role in the final solution so were the Nazis really so western?
100% -
I would add -we don't have to go back in time 80 years to identify the guilt of the catholic church. The Pope has called for an investigation into whether the war in Gaza constitutes genocide but when it comes to October 7th he calls for prayer..... more appallingly he does little to protect Christians in Africa butchered by the hundreds and thousands by muslim groups because it's not politically correct to speak out against Islam.
"These people are showing that they do not care about Palestinian lives and wishes, and are willing to sacrifice them for the Palestinian political cause."
The Palestinians are much more of a cause or an idea or a symbol than a flesh-and-blood people like the rest of us and they have been longstanding pawns, puppets and cudgels for various Islamist theocrats, Arab dictators and Western Leftists for generations now.
The purpose and meaning of the word "Palestinian" is the hatred for (and refusal to accept the existence of) the Jewish state and the desire to eradicate it, along with these people becoming a Platonic sacred victim for the guilt-besotted white liberals of the West, who are happy to trap them in refugee camps forever and feed them a steady diet of Jew hate, because you can't be a savior without a victim and you can't be a victim without a permanent grievance.
It is pointless to imagine them changing and pointless to imagine them pursuing the fantasy called the "2-state solution" because while the Israel/Palestinian dispute on its face seems to be about land it is really about religion. (They have been offered a state many times and refused.) There is a strand of Islamism that is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, no matter how many generations or how many dead children this takes, and this strand now goes by the word "Palestinian".
If I were King of the Israelites I would draw a hard border somewhere, build a 20-foot prison wall across it with barbed wire and armed guards, let the Palestinians know that any missiles will be met with a 10fold response, and try to forget about them. There will never be peace with them or any kind of "2-state solution"—how many times do people have to tell and show you who they are before you believe them?
I've almost started to vaguely suspect with just a little bit of my being that it's not really about concern for the Arabs there but it's about the Jews but I'm not sure yet 😂😜👌
The levels of retardation to avoid the reality that fight the Jews and Christian until they pay the jizia is an elemental foundational belief of the 57 Islamic countries in the 22 Arab countries, as you scroll through I've attached facts and no one cares because Jews
Originality is not these people's strong suit. As I explained here, the throughline is denial-- denial of the realities of Jewish life and civilization. All of this is in service of the big lie, which is that antisemitism is actually a Righteous Fight against Evil... because Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist. Antisemites set up a permission structure for this that changes with what's considered righteous in any given generation, demonstrating how Jews are The Problem because they don't accept whatever is "universal" this week, and if only Jews would stop being The Problem, utopia would take over. If it's a communist society, Jews are capitalists; if it's a capitalist society, Jews are communists. If it's a racist society, Jews are an inferior race. If it's an anti-racist society, Jews are racist. The "anti-Zionism" stuff isn't even new. It goes back to the Bolsheviks in 1918, 30 years before the state of Israel.
This stuff is really really old. Man it's boring.
I tried to find a Muslim country today that levies the jizya tax and could not. The Taliban probably would, but there are apparently no non-Muslims there. So much for fundamental beliefs.
On occasion I can't get chat GPT to give results but this is what they do
Islamic State Warns Christians: Convert, Pay Tax, Leave Or Die
Kelly Phillips Erb
Forbes Staff
Kelly Phillips Erb is a Forbes senior writer who covers tax.
Follow
Jul 19, 2014,11:29pm EDT
Updated Jul 21, 2014, 09:26am EDT
This article is more than 10 years old.
Christians in Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, were sent a message by the Islamic State (IS): convert to Islam, pay the jizya or leave. It appears that many are taking the new self-proclaimed Caliphate seriously.
IS, formerly ISIS, is not formally recognized as a state and is considered a rebel group. It is composed of Sunni insurgent groups and was thought to have significant ties to Al-Qaeda (although Al-Qaeda formally dissociated itself from IS in February). Known for violence against the Shia and Christians, Secretary of State John Kerry has described IS as “more extreme even than al Qaeda.”
IS moved into Mosul last month and made no secret of their plans to impose the tax. Yesterday, after Christian leaders didn’t attend a meeting called
I've seen Muslims defending it in YouTube comment sections
It's how taxes are levied against none Islamic citizens
I strongly disagree with you when you say it is a bad idea for isreal and jews to endorse trumps plans. In fact, I believe exactly the opposite. That it would be a bad idea for isreal and jews not to endorse the plan.
If Islamist can openly say they want to kill zionist and influence the world in that direction, then jewish people need to hit back in the public relations arena and make it acceptable to relocate a society bent on their destruction.
The idea is coming from Trump who has been the best ally Isreal has ever had. To not to endorse the plan would be a slap in the face and greatly risks changes in Trump policy.
"The idea is coming from Trump who has been the best ally Isreal has ever had. "
Not true. Last year he tried to kill Biden's Ukraine Israel Taiwan aid bill, and picked a Vice President and Secretary of State who voted against the aid. He did not support the decapitation of Hezbollah and supported Hezbollah's candidate for President of Lebanon, who lost to the anti-Hezbollah candidate Biden supported. Trump seemed expressed regret that Assad was driven from power. Trump's response to the US using its military assets to help to defend Israel against Iranian attacks was to pledge no more wars, an Old Left slogan from Trump's childhiod years.
The Russia Iran Syria Hezboĺlah Axis of Genocide is broken, possibly for good, and the policies that brought that about were opposed by Trump. Finally, he forced the cease fire agreement on Netanyahu. Maybe that was a good thing but it should never have been forced.
"To not to endorse the plan would be a slap in the face and greatly risks changes in Trump policy."
Most of the "plan" which was never a plan just ravings by a madman were walked back less than 24 hours later. Jews who embraced it have been left out to dry and are now open to accusations of supporting ethnic cleansing in violation of international law (even though, as Rabbi Slifkin points out, things are a bit more complex than
that).
But you are right about one thing. Trump is a mean and vengeful man who has often betrayed former friends and allies, attempting to destroy them. Netanyahu has to tread lightly and has to praise Trump no matter how badly the inquisitor twists the screws. I do not envy Netanyahu. Trump does not hate Jews but he only supports Israel (snd everything else he supports) as long as it is useful to him.
Nice try. No Cigar. The 4th Geneva Convention which makes what Trump is proposing illegal,was ratified in 1950. After, and partly because of, what's described here.
The 4th Geneva Convention also makes all the Israeli Settlements in Judea and Samaria illegal.
The current scheme to bring back the hostages and end the war inevitably means that Hamas will continue to rule. Any speculation otherwise mere secular messianism of the non-Trumpian variety. The current paradigm guarantees, if not gravely risks, more war and more insecurity for the people in Gaza.
It follows that 4th Geneva Convention applies:
"Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. "
You left out the rest of the paragraph. Quite significant...
"Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased."
I posted the entire text of the relevant article in another comment.
Do you feel that because it is illegal according to the Geneva Convention that it is then by definition not moral?
I'm not so quick to equate the two
Actually that's literally the definition of morality... principles of conduct society agrees upon. Almost every country in the world, including Israel, has agreed to these rules.
Foolish post. The more talk about the possibility of this resettlement, the more likelihood of it happening.
The world needs to be reconditioned to accepting this as reality.
Bashing this proposal as just banter, is harmful and minimizes the prospect of it's implementation.
The more talk about it, the more legitimacy it receives.
Readers can make of this what they want - but Fridtjof Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (I know - it is mostly meaningless, being that terrorists, mass murderers and tyrants have received it) for arranging the transfer of populations for Greece and Turkey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Greece_and_Turkey
Note also that Trump has repeatedly said (over the past 8 years, including this year) that he wants and deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
Lester Peason won the Nobel Peace Prize for screwing Israel at the behest of John Foster Dulles and Dwight Eisenhower. A decade later, the Six-Day War happened as the direct result of that. Pearson was by then the PM of Canada. Pearson had been one of the loudest supporters of the creation of the State of Israel. Do not assume that someone who had been a friend will remain a friend; Donald Trump is another such example.
If I have been testy with you in the past forgive me, there is nuance in your statements that I may have missed and elsewhere in substack there are people occasionally triggering me and requiring a different level of discourse. if I wasn't appreciate your nuance now.
Why did Eisenhower have such a shit fit over Suez, enough so that he threatened to crash the pound? The anglo-american alliance is interpretable through many lenses and I never understood the hard line
Forgiven.
Good question about Eisenhower. I find it hard to believe that it was just Dulles brainwashing him. It was the worst US-UK split of the past 200 years.
It threw me for a loop learning it, if Israel hadn't demanded documentation they would have been fully left alone
I think if, two weeks ago, someone had said Israel wanted to purge millions of people and take their land, he would have been derided as an antisemite.
Who's talking about taking the land?
The idiot Trump now says he wants Gaza to become part of the United States.
Israel certainly isn’t going to leave that land empty if it follows your dream of purging millions of people from it.
Most of Israel would be very happy for it to be resettled by Palestinians who want to live peacefully and productively alongside Israel.
Your article says you also want to purge Palestinians who don’t want to be purged.
I have a much simpler proposal: Gaza should only be rebuilt once Hamas surrenders and disarms.
Which is being addressed by them leaving and becoming qataristinians 👌
Qatar only has about 300,000 citizens. The remainder of its over three million people can never become citizens. The Emir knows that he is on thin enough ice as it is and that the Palestinians would certainly overthrow him.
He'll employ them as slave labor and no one will complain
Their time has come and gone
That seems to have been forgotten. Assad is gone, Hezbollah is no longer in charge in Lebanon, Iran is badly weakened, but Hamas still rules Gaza with an iron fist.
"ethnic cleansing" is merely the terminology used today. Forget legal definitions. I'm deeply disappointed to see you making excuses for the idea of forcible mass relocation of people from their native region. If you excuse that, then I guess it's okay that our people were expelled again and again throughout history.
If you're okay with Hamas strongholds in Jenin being bombed, does that mean it was okay for the Jews of Vilna to be gassed?
That's the term you are embracing and being used as a denigration of the idea, population transfers are normative throughout history. Why be triggered? 22 Arab countries and 57 Islamic countries and homogeneous societies do work best, and the reason they need to leave is the reason they needed to be killed in 1970 in Jordan and so on let them leave
splain me bro 🤷
Some of those 57 aren't very homogeneous. Nigeria barely has a Muslim majority and it has dozens of peoples with different languages. Ethiopia barely has a Christian majority (maybe) and it also has dozens of peoples with different languages. Eritrea, similarly, but with only about nine different peoples and languages. All are a mess today. Bosnia barely has a Muslim majority and we know about its horrible civil war (where the Muslims were not the war criminals).
https://youtu.be/6R70LdNQkvw?si=oinkb3evKRtr96o_
Did you watch the 2017 speech that Trump gave to the Arab league? It's truly a game changer and I know you are a realist but it's a turning point
The Muslims did Muslim stuff there to start things in addition to the Christians pushing back against the Muslim stuff now it's an artificial construct that has empowered the islamists but they keep it pretty subdued there compared to elsewhere agreed they are a mess everywhere
There's a major difference. If we had massacred them than our expulsion would be totally understandable.
So presumably you have no complaint against the Romans. We killed some of them, they expelled us. Fair's fair. Also, expelling criminals is a bit different than expelling the ENTIRE nation in which the criminals are members. I find it kind of astonishing when I hear Jewish people advocating collective punishment. Haven't we been the victims of collective punishment long enough to understand its intrinsic injustice? Guess not.
Remember that the reasons the Romans were there in the first place was that Jews invited them in.
The Roman's started it. We were merely defending our land in the bar kochva revolt. We never started up with other nations while we were in exile. They had no reason to mistreat us the way they did.
Hamas however is the government of gaza like the Nazis were the government of Germany. We were at war with the gazans (and Palestinians in general) for decades now, not just with their governmentor army. There is no war without civilian casualties and If they don't accept our sovereignty in the middle east they just need to go before they get to maim or kill any of our brothers or defile any more our daughters. Your blood should be boiling at the humiliation they put as through even during the hostage deal. Not just the soldiers. Rather the mobs of roaches who inhabit gaza. It's up to G-d to spare the individual innocents. When it comes to war however its all about the collective (מהר"ל on the war against שכם). If we can spare them without killing them all that's a mercy in and of itself.
If it's up to God to spare innocents, and humans should therefore feel free to apply unconstrained collective punishment, I don't know what claims you can ever have against anyone who has committed crimes against Jews or anyone else. Your only claims can be against God, who you have turned into a monster for abandoning millions of innocents to horrible deaths.
You actually don't see a difference between Nazi expulsions of Jews and expulsion of hostile Arabs? Really? How can you even begin to compare the two? The fact that we let out prisoners with Jewish blood on their hands is enough of a disgrace and injustice. The nations put their own interests first. It's about time we did the same.
I see punishing innocent people as intrinsically unjust.
So you’d like to be like the knights Templar who in battle said. Kill everyone…God knows his own…
"You actually don't see a difference between Nazi expulsions of Jews and expulsion of hostile Arabs? "
Let me edit that for you: "You actually don't see a difference between .... expulsions of .... and expulsion of hostile.... "
The key word is "hostile".
Again the 4th Geneva Convention provides exceptions that allow transfer when "the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand."
Among the people who supported the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia were Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Edvard Benes.
"awarded to the Hashemites of Arabia"
The word "awarded" is too strong. The Hashemites just marched in and took it without any opposition from anyone. There was no British presence, much less any will, to counter that.
"Egypt, a country from which a large minority of Palestinians emigrated within the last two centuries."
From 1517 to 1914, Egypt and "Palestine" were legally part of the same country, so "emigrate" isn't really a correct term until after tha period. Things got complicated in the 19th century, as Muhammad Ali Pasha took over Egypt in 1805 and his descendants continued to rule there after his death but the area remained legally part of the Ottoman Empire. Then in 1882 the UK occupied, but did not annex, Egypt. The UK never did annex Egypt but it broke its ties with the Ottoman Empire when they chose opposite sides during WW1 (a choice that proved fatal to the Ottoman Empire), and even to this day Egyptian citizenship is only given at birth to those who had an Egyptian ancestor as of 1914. That is why Yassir Arafat may his name be blotted out was never Egyptian even though he was born in Cairo. No country in the Middle East has birthright citizenship which is why we now have four generations of refugees who remain stateless. In almost every country in the Western Hemisphere, that can't happen. "Palestine" happened legally in 1924 when the British Mandate took effect.
"The word "awarded" is too strong. The Hashemites just marched in and took it without any opposition from anyone. There was no British presence, much less any will, to counter that."
I thought the Hashemites helped the British in WW1 or something and they gave the country we now call Jordan to them.
The British didn't "give" them what is now Jordan until after the Hashemites took it. The history and agreements were complicated, with the Brits making promises to everyone that were incompatible with each other. (Yes, the Balfour Declaration was one of those incompatible promises.) And when the Hashemites objected to the Brits breaking their word, the Brits abandoned the Hashemites in favor of the Saudis. Beware of a certain American leader with a history of acting like that.
"How could ‘forced deportation’ ever be achieved without extreme coercion, indeed violence? How, indeed, could deportation not be forced? How could people not resist? How could it not involve the destruction of a community, of the way of life that a group has enjoyed over a period of time? How could those who deported a group not intend this destruction? In what significant way is the forcible removal of a population from their homeland different from the destruction’ of a group? If the boundary between ‘cleansing’ and genocide is unreal, why police it?"
Shaw, Martin, "What is Genocide".
I think the kids say nowadays, FAFO. Don't start wars if you can't handle the consequences. Sucks to be them. Don't start a war, that is the lesson to be learned by Arabs. Arabs are not the best at learning this lesson, therefore, they will be forced into "Reeducation"
Slaveowners in South Carolina started a war with the United States of American in 1861.
In 1865 Sherman came marching through, destroying everything in sight. South Carolina took generations to recover. They deserved what they got but they got what they wanted -- a war.
Some of my direct ancestors were South Carolina Confederates.
Some of my ancestors marched with Sherman. Start a war, pay the consequences.
Mine too! My father's ancestors served with the Union Army, and my mother's with the Confederate Army. One of my great great grandfathers served in an Ohio unit that was with Sherman for the entire Georgia/Carolinas campaign. The other great great grandfather who fought for the Union served in a Kentucky unit even though he was from a slaveowning family. They were both at the battle of Shiloh. The Kentucky ancestor didn't march with Sherman to the Sea but after Atlanta was captured went back to Kentucky to defend it against Hood's invasion. It turned out not to be necessary as Hood's army disintegrated at the Battles of Franklin and Nashville.
My ancestors were poor white Southerners who got drafted into the Confederate Army and died as canon fodder. The surviving family members were even poorer after the war. With that in mind, I do feel sorry for ordinary Palestinians. But the fact of the matter is that sometimes tyrannical regimes such as the CSA, Nazis, and Hamas can only be defeated through crushing defeats that destroys them once and for all to bring peace. Unfortunately, that means innocent civilians under their rule, as well as ordinary people who did back them, will suffer and sometimes lose land. Expelling the Palestinians to live in other Arab nations would completely crush all Palestinian aspirations and end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all. For those who find this idea horrific, what is the alternative? Decades more of this conflict? Unless the Palestinians are willing to live in peace with Israel, in the long term their expulsion from Gaza and the West Bank may become inevitable. And Israel is a strong nation with nuclear weapons. So the radical Islamist goal of eliminating Israel and committing genocide against the Jews is an unrealistic non-starter.
"Expelling the Palestinians to live in other Arab nations would completely crush all Palestinian aspirations"
No it wouldn't. Half of all Palestinian Arabs lost their homes in 1948. Remember also that most of our ancestors were murdered or exiled by the Romans, and the descendants of the few who remained were almost all murdered by the Crusaders. Aspirations remained.
"Expelling the Palestinians to live in other Arab nations would completely crush all Palestinian aspirations and end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all."
Like everyone else, I bristle when Israelis are compared to Nazis an so on, but do you hear yourself? What if we say it this way: "Expelling the Jews to live in other nations would completely crush all Jewish aspirations and end the Jewish-Greek/Roman/Arab conflict once and for all." And incidentally, how effective was that when it was tried? Maybe crushing people's national aspirations is easier said than done?
This did it m fact happen to the Jews in ancient times when they rebelled against the Roman Empire. The Jews then made the foolish choice to rebel against a far superior military force that had been willing to tolerate their culture and religion. The Palestinians had made a similar choice. If not expulsion, what other alternative do you propose? The question only other possible solutions I can think of that might result in peace is either disarming the entire Palestinian population such that the most dangerous weapons there allowed to have are bitter knives or pup them under the rule of an Arab power such as the Saudis, with the understanding that the Saudis are allowed to stomp out radical groups like Hamas by any means necessary. If we want a permanent peace, totalitarian groups such as Hamas have to be eradicated and dismantled like the Nazis were in 1945.
I suspect that were Donald Trump to offer two million US permanent resident visas to Gazans, Gaza would empty out rather quickly. But he does not have the legal authority to do anything of the kind.
He doesn't have legal authority? That's what's stopping him? After basing his whole campaign on expelling immigrants, you think he would bring two million Gazans to the US? Whatever you've been drinking today, I want some.
You wrote "immigrant" but you meant to say "migrant felon invaders"
The felon is Trump and the current wave of migrants are in the US legally.
There are caps on the number of US permanent resident visas based on country of birth. No country can get more than 7 percent of the visas per year. That is a bit under 50,000 visas. This is grossly unfair to populous countries like China, India, and Mexico. Nativist bigots say "get in line" but the line can be decades long. There are some workarounds but that won't help the people of Gaza.
Until 1965 there had never been any quotas on immigration to the US from anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/if-indians-and-pakistanis-can-relocate-why-cant-gazans-refugees-displacement-palestinians-39d7678c?mod=opinion_recentauth_pos1&mod=opinion_recentauth_pos_1