We backed Israel during the Cold War because of the ground assets the newly formed Jewish state had in the USSR. The United States sent in more than 300 agents, parachuted in after intensive training in the Russian language and culture. Not one was ever herd from again.
Israel, with a history of Jewish presence in the USSR, proved an invaluable asset. It was Mossad, not the CIA, that came up with Khrushev's denunciation of Stalin in 1955. How many other tidbits Mossad came up with is unknown, but I'll bet it was a fair number.
But Israel's use as an intelligence asset faded with the end of the Cold War. And, during it's history, has provoked the Arab world with land grabs like Suez, also in 1955.
the Jewish population of Palestine before the Balfour Declaration was less than 600,0000. By the early 1949s, it was three million. The threw Palestinians off the land and threw them out of the country enmass.
Early Zionists groups like the Eregun and Stern Gang were terrorist organizations that killed UN diplomates trying to parse the warfare between the Arabs and Jews, bombed the King David Hotel and slaughtered 270 old men, women and children at Dir Yassen. It can be said that Israel was the first modern nation founded by terrorism by a minority who wanted land that had been occupied for centuries by people of other religions. With international help, they convinced the UN that the western bank of the Jordan River should be given to a Jewish State. Palestinian Arabs boycotted the UN effort and therefor gave up their only chance to present their case to the body that eventually divided the land.
Israel has taken the West Bank andpopulated with Zionists who won't give it back. The "two-state" solution is a sham that will never happen.
What I can't quite seem to get through to my Jewish friends is that the creation of Israel by the western powers wasn't a gift-it was a method of achieving the exodus of Jews from Europe and the United States. Rather than a gesture of good will, it was a gesture designed to get the Jews out of Britain, the US and France. We are now paying for that act of anti-Semitism by the western powers. Lord Balfour had the interests of the Jews in heart, but the rest of England didn't-it was illegal to be jewish in England until relatively recently (16th Century.) Anti-Semitism is written into the English language-Dickens and Shakspeare both wrote carictures of Jews into their works.
Israel isn't anything like the US. Much of their civil court system is in the hands of the Orthodox Jewish rabbis. Anyone from any nation who can prove that their mother was Jewish can obtain citizenship upon landing in Israel. It is a land designed for one group-the Jews-and it regularly denies the same rights to those who are not.
the man we bought out house from was a Pioneer of israel, a secular jew who fought in WWII and fought in Israel 1948-49. He said there were villages they bombed (he was a navigators and radioman on a C-47 set up asa bomber) simply for being arab villages. He said the kids who rolled the bombs out of the airplane's doors were young men-15-17 years old, who had grown up in the German camps-he said they were crazy kids who took all kinds of risks and who would no turn back to going back to Europe.
I understand that idea, that the Jews, kicked around for centuries, wanted a place to call home. But why were they given land that belonged to someone who didn't persecute them until Zionist immigration became an issue in the early 1900s.? During the golden days of Arab-Jewish relations, during the 17th and 18th Centuries, Jews often found refuge from the Spanish Inquisition and other pogems in Europe through Arab states in North Africa. Until the past 50 years, these countries had vibrant Jewish quarters where Jews lived, in terms relative to the rest of the population, general safety.
jonhatfield wrote:
Israel is the nation in the Middle East with government and practice like ours. That is the reason we back the security status of Israel.
It is my understanding that the population in Israeli lands have been in considerable part Jewish all along...not the total dispossession of Palestinians we tend to think of. Not sure of the population proportions involved before the civil war that led to the Jewish state. I think that is understood in the Middle East and one reason for the Israel-Egyptian detente.
Hopefully the two state arrangement that should have been agreed to long ago will be negotiated soon. It's in everyone's interests. To achieve this Israel will have to stop developing the Palestinian lands on the borders, but we might understand the situation as similar to when we were developing the Indian wilderness lands...nothing so aggressive & inevitable as modern civilization moving into new undeveloped frontiers.
While on subject of Middle East, negotiated end of Iran nuclear armament preferable to war but we should be clear with ourselves and the Iranians that if negotiations fail or they cheat we will send in drone attack after drone attack on all nuclear and military targets. If Europe, the Russians and Chinese are on board on Iranian nuclear control, as it is their interest to be, attack probably will be unnecessary. With Syria Europe and Russia have reason to impose peace in the ongoing religious war there. Iraq will move along in self-government if peace negotiations in the Middle East are successful. It is in our interest to push negotiations toward settlements so the middle east can get on in its move away from feudalism and toward self-government.
Israel is the nation in the Middle East with gover... (
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