naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
The reason the British didn’t go full vae victis on the Jews is that they didn’t consider themselves to have conquered Zionists. Many British elites (including Churchill) were open Zionists and considered Jewish rule preferable to Arab rule. The UK also had a large Jewish elite, most notably several branches of the Rothschild family, who were (and are) well integrated into the public life of the ruling class, and who spent fifty or more years lobbying for Israel’s existence (and are in fact the primary reason Israel exists). Israel exists because Jews proved themselves useful to the ruling class of the world’s largest and most powerful empire (and indeed funded imperial expansion, cf Cecil Rhodes etc) in the decades in which that empire decided the fate of their ancestral homeland.
If the Gulf Arabs wanted to replicate that success with the Palestinians, they could try bribing America with $500bn of oil money (or just oil) to drop all support from Israel unless they agree to ‘48 borders or whatever. That might or might not work, but in either case, they don’t care enough about people in Gaza and the West Bank to try.
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Notes -
The reason the British didn’t go full vae victis on the Jews is that they didn’t consider themselves to have conquered Zionists. Many British elites (including Churchill) were open Zionists and considered Jewish rule preferable to Arab rule. The UK also had a large Jewish elite, most notably several branches of the Rothschild family, who were (and are) well integrated into the public life of the ruling class, and who spent fifty or more years lobbying for Israel’s existence (and are in fact the primary reason Israel exists). Israel exists because Jews proved themselves useful to the ruling class of the world’s largest and most powerful empire (and indeed funded imperial expansion, cf Cecil Rhodes etc) in the decades in which that empire decided the fate of their ancestral homeland.
If the Gulf Arabs wanted to replicate that success with the Palestinians, they could try bribing America with $500bn of oil money (or just oil) to drop all support from Israel unless they agree to ‘48 borders or whatever. That might or might not work, but in either case, they don’t care enough about people in Gaza and the West Bank to try.
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