This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Dalek Kan Noladti: YOU ALL SUCK. Nobody is using this wiki as a gorram propaganda platform. Anyone can list whatever the hell they like under subjective tropes (one goddamn Israeli music video under Music of Awesome is propaganda? Seriously?), and the tropes noted on this page are explicitly stated to be INCREDIBLY SUBJECTIVE, with Your Mileage Varying. Can we all get over ourselves and just document tropes seen in media rather than trying to push our historical point of view on the wiki? And don't go thinking I don't have a historical point of view on this stuff; this is me lecturing civilly before the Edit Wars start. You shouldn't have to agree with art to appreciate it.
- This troper insists that he does not want to start a Flame war over this. However, I feel I must object on a mere technicality: the trope should have its title changed into "The War over Palestine" or "The Israelo Palestinian Conflict". This is is simply because, currently, there isn't a single Arab country which does not actively collaborate with Israel (much to the declared shame of the inhabitants of said countries). On the other hand, practically the whole of the Muslim community (more than a fifth of Humanity) sympathises with Palestine, not to speak about all the people in the rest of the world who believe Israel has Jumped Off The Slippery Slope beyond the Moral Event Horizon with the winter holiday's "surgical" attack on Gaza. So This troper believes that, although this title was (more or less) correct around the days of Nasser, it is no longer so.
- Also, This troper would think it would be appropriate if either Israel supporters stopped abusing This Wiki as a platform for their propaganda in such pages as Crowning Music Of Awesome and Crowning Moments of Awesome. Those ARE subjective tropes, but one thing is to admire the bloodbath in a work of fiction when done with style, and a very different one is doing so with Real Life, which can be quite a callous thing to do. The acts of Vlad Tepes, Count Dracula the Impaler, may be seen as heroic by Hungarians and Rumanians, but from a Turk's point of view, it's cruel, squicky, bloody manslaughter. Taken to the extreme, such an attitude might lead into praising the acts of modern day serial killers because of the massive body count they could accumulate before being caught. Or even some idiot praising how "badass" the 9/11 "stunts" were (there IS a depressively, albeit rapidly diminishing, number of people who look at it thet way and see in Bin Laden "a diamond, one of too few men who stand for freedom(??), decency(???) and integrity (surely you mean integrISM?)". In order to avoid the proliferation of such Cartman-esque behaviours, I believe a certain restraint is to be recommended to the tropers. Phrases such as "The motherf**er who will stop Israel is not born yet!", no matter how true they might be, are still bad taste, and might ignite flame wars if not handled carefully. On the side, my compliments to the one who wrote the content of this trope page: it waps it in a very neat and very neutral way. Good work.
- Good for you, Anonymous Troper. This Troper - Xander77 would like to applaud you for confirming his opinion that people who spout of such opinions tend fo suffer from Critical Research Failure, not in the least because they subconsciously realize their own beliefs could not be held had they bothered to do any research. At the moment there are two (!) Arab countries that have a peace treaty with Israel. One, Egypt, is a major center of arms,training and manpower for Gaza strip militants. Not to mention semi state-sponsored anti-semitic conspiracy theories, publishing, and conferences. Ditto, only more so as far as most other Arab countries. Does Lebanon cooperate with Israel? Syria? Iraq, now or a few years ago? Iran, which is an Arab country in all relevant senses of the word except the ethnic? There would be no "Israelo-Palestinian" conflict without the support of the conflict (no, not of the Palestinian people, of the conflict. Support for the Palestinian people would mean, for one thing, that the conditions to which Palestinians are subjected in countries that "support them" are better than the conditions they are subjected to in Israel) by most Arab countries. Jumped the Slippery Slope into Moral Horizon in the winter holiday's "surgical strike"? Critical research failure, or did you only start following the conflict two year ago and don't have the time to browse wikipedia? On another note, you may note that this wiki also sports a lot of Crowning etc for Russia, Greece, France, etc in WWII. The reason why these moments are Crowning is not the body count, but the fact these countries fought against powers that may comfortably be categorized as Ultimate Evil, desparately, heroically, and ultimately successfuly, surviving while their opponents collapsed. I'm certain there are certain Germans that are uncomfortable with said moments of their countries shame and defeat are celebraed. I wonder what that says about them. Finally, "insists that he doesn't want to want to start a flame war over this"? Ha. That's cute.
- Let us stramline our argumants. No rethorical questions. No irony. No implicit meaning. If we are not straightforward, this discussion can esaily degenerate into a rain of isults instead of what it should be.
- The Egyptian Government did collaborate with Israel by participating in the blockade of Gaza. This is undeniable.
- The Lebanese Government adopts a favourable stance towards Israel, even if it could be only "lip service". That is one of the reasons why they have an armed cold war against Hezbollah.
- Very broadly speaking it could definitely be said that all gouvernemts of arab countries adopt a stance that could be called "neutral" towards israel. On the other hand, the people who consitute the countries themselves are less than happy with their neighbhours. Some of them want that country to cease existing, some of them would prefer one, laic, state instead that would have plestinians and iraelis with the same degree of citizenry, and some simply wish the conflict would reach a pacific conclusion so that normality could be reestablished, even if it would be with the elimination of the palestinian problem ("get rid of them anyway you want, but do not send them in my back yard").
- The proponents of the first option can not be expected to take themselves seriously: Israel being a nuclear power, and ready for the "Samson Option" (basically, nuking everything) should that scenario take place, their words are just hate babbling.
- The proponents of the second option are also quite hopeless: it would take some extraordinary turn of events to make a signifcant enough number of Israelis give up the idea of a Jewish State In The Promised Land, and accept to be "just" a huge minority in a Laic state. In other words: not gonna hapen either.
- The proponents of the third option would like to think they are the most realistic, but aren't. If it could be done, it would have been done already. But Israel keeps a number of arab citizens (who are not allowed the same rights as Jewish citizens, Or So I Heard) allows palestinians who are under the "Palestinian Authority" to come work in its territory. This is percieved from the exterior as the expression of the necessity of Israel for people to give the lowest work to, who should not be jewish if it can be avoided. (By the way, I Have also Heard that there is a rather strict social separation between "ashkenaz" and "sefarad" jews, the latter being handed the lowest jobs, and the former being more commonly in administrative and power positions). As for their expulsion (or escape, depending on who you ask), it has created many problems with the host countries: many times, Arab gouvernments, armies and parties have taken part in their extermination. Not all arabs were unhappy with this.
- As for Iran. These guys hate being called arabs. They despise the arabs as desert-dwelling barbarians, and see themselves as the heirs of a great civilization (don't ask them about "300"). Cultural posing. The closest thing I can imagine to calling an iranian, the Aryan race by definition, an arab, is calling a scotsman or an irishman "english". And they do fund Hezbollah. And one of their leaders does speak of Erasing Israel from the Map. And, if you care to do some research, you will find out that, even as their "revoltuion" had just taken place, their leaders were still ready to continue having business and exchanging goods with Israel. And that they have been again. And french ex-President Jacques Chirac had put it once: "What would be the point of them launching nukes at Israel? They know that their missiles would have spent less than ten seconds in the atmosphere before Teheran was flattened". Anyways, they will never be allowed such nukes.
- And now it turns out that the common Iranians really don't like their fanatic government all that much anyway, with riots and protests verging on the point of revolution over an election openly fixed by the theocracy. As a matter of history, Persians and Jews don't really have the kind of problems with each other than Arabs and Jews have had. In fact, they've often been declared friends and Iran still houses the largest non-Israeli Jewish population in the Middle East for precisely this reason.
So where is the conflict? Who is it with? All in all, you could say that it is not between Israel and its neighbouring states. Rather, it is between Israel and the palestinians and part of the lebanese. So it's not against arab countries, but it is agains people that are considered to be arabs. So I guess the title was right, and the discussion was rather pointless.
P.S: Thank you for helping me sort it out. Also, I am sorry if I said any lies in my first entry: I have grown up in an envronments in which many statements about israel were considered the absolute truth. Which I refused to believe. Then I grew up and investigated on my own. And was shocked to find out that a lot of it was true. And went on to believe all of it was true. And am slowly growing up to say things with measurement, until I can go there and find out by myself. That is why I wholeheartedly thank anyone who decides, in good faith, to spend actual time correcting me. However, I am also aware I am not the only victim of propaganda. Which makes discussions difficult. But should such discussions be avoided entirely?
- As for the Germans: in all fairness, they "are" said to have shown fanatically great courage in their actual fights. Also, it was them against nearly the entire World. And it is true their leaders have Jumped The Slippery Slope when they took their racism to its logical extreme, eliminating as many Jews and Rrom as they could (and let us not talk about their political opponents). Yet it is also true that such racism existed in all countries with a colonial empire, and that black people in the USA, just to say an example, were treated like scum. Actually, the Nazi were having success in the USA. Which, politically speaking, wasn't such a country of freedom as it pretended to be (I am talking about the comunism witch hunts).
That is why I strongly advocate that "all" politically polarizing events should be avoided in the Crowning Moments section. Individual martial feats by soldiers of any faction should be okay, I guess: those were wars after all, soldiers "have" to kill each other.
Silent Hunter: I hardly call refusing diplomatic recognition and not allowing people with that country's stamps in their passports into your country "neutral".
Xander77: In no particular order: 1. Shades of TLDR. Pardon me if I miss some of your points - you wrote a lot, formatted it in an odd manner and produced a shambling pile of points rather than a single sustained argument.
2. No offense, but we can continue this discussion in Arabic or whatever your native tongue is. If you'd rather not do so, run some of your sentences past native English speakers. As it stands, I'd really rather not try to figure out what " But it is to be expected that the people living near Israel will feel uncomfortable with that neighbour. I mean, they have "your country from the Nile to the Euphrates" written on a wall in their parliament, and do NOT draw a frontier to their country on their MAPS. People just "assume" they want to conquer as much as they can." means. I'm not sure who the "they" in each case may be, what exactly is supposed to be written on the Knesset's wall and what borders remain unmarked on which maps.
3. You've just ever so blithely brushed aside people who have unrealistic expectations of conflict resolution as inconsequential. Apply the same standards to the utter impossibility of Israel expanding its borders further.
4. "Mizrahi" Jews are supposedly Israel's black people (not sure what that makes Israel's actual black people). I've been told there's a certain amount of discrimination against them, much as there is against USSR Jews, blacks, Sudanese and Asians/Fillipinos. For your reference, the previous President of Israel (before he was charged with sexual harassment and replaced with an old Polish guy) was Mizrahi, a portion of the parliament members that is greater than the Mizrahi portion of the population is Mizrahi and the Professor in whose class I'm writing this are Mizrahi. Compare and contrast with Black arabs and/or Jews in Arab countries.
5. More Jews have been kicked out of Arab countries into Israel in 1948 than Arabs fled/were chased out of Israel. Even though Israel is much smaller than the Arab countries declaring their love for their Palestinian brothers, Israel doesn't have a Jewish refugee problem going back to 1948, much less an expotentially growing one. I wonder why that is the case.
6. No, training, funding, arming and directing militant powers to fight a certain country doesn't count as being "Neutral" towards it.
7. A few common Arab statements about Israel: Israelis form the secret cabal that controls the USA. Israeli bake Mazas with the blood of non-Jewish babies. Israeli soldiers mass-rape Arab women. Israeli soldiers arrange bound Arab children on the ground and run them over with tanks before/after feeding them to the dogs. Israel is currently conducting a genocidal campaign against the Palestinians (and doing such a good job of genociding them that the population increase amongst Palestinains is amongst the greatest in the Second world).
So. Which of the above did you find to be true?
8. Tell me which rights Arab CITIZENS of Israel (not Palestinian refugees) were denied, as you "heard"?
9 I don't figure "After I provoked them, Israeli troups have conquered half my country within a few days, but backed off after USA and the USSR demanded them to" is a CMOA, but I guess Arabs don't have that many to choose from.
This article looks like what your average Israeli would consider fair, neutral, and accurate. Unfortunately, their education is more than a little biased, and reality is far messier.
Israel was founded by a bunch of Jewish nationalist immigrants who emigrated to Palestine with the intention of turning it into a Jewish state, often fleeing persecution in Europe. They bought up large chunks of land using funding from rich Jewish bankers
. The existing Arab residents were actually reasonably friendly, right up till the point where it became clear the British colonialist rulers were going to go along with the whole "Jewish state" thing. (Bear in mind that Jews were a tiny minority there prior to the mass immigration, and still a minority even then.) At this point, the race riots started and Jews began being killed. The British forces put these down violently, but with their limited forces had difficulty doing so.
The Jewish community responded by setting up its own security force, the Haganah. This was a huge, well-trained and well-armed paramilitary operation - basically a kind of non-state army. Much of their training was done by the British forces in Palestine. However, officially they didn't lauch attacks on Arabs, at least at first - which resulted in the formation of the Jewish terrorist groups Irgun and the Stern gang. (Yes, terrorists - as in, gunning down random Arabs and planting bombs in cafes, buses and markets terrorists.)
Britain ended up dealing with this by capping immigration before the whole mess boiled over. Unfortunately, when the Nazis came to power, many Jews needed somewhere to flee, and European countries were less than welcoming. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, and in the Jewish groups Irgun and the Stern Gang successfully using terrorism to drive out the British rulers. (Haganah did briefly help Britain deal with Irgun, but ended up joining them in attacking and overthrowing the British rulers.)
Then Britain left, Israel declared independence, and the shit really hit the fan. The Jews hated the Arabs, the Arabs hated the Jews, and they both tried to drive each other out of the country. Of course, since the Jewish side had an army trained and armed by the British, and had been preparing for this, they won impressively. Even the intervention of the surrounding Arab states merely slowed them down, mainly because said states hadn't established decent armies yet. This is generally presented as a miraculous victory against all odds.
Oh, and what's one of the first things they did? Seized the land and property of Arabs who'd fled (or in many cases been driven out by Jewish forces).
About half the other wars were started by Israel, by the way. Exactly which half is somewhat disputed. (All the other stuff I've written here is relatively undisputed facts. When you put it down like this, it's kind of startling though.)
"This article looks like what your average Israeli would consider fair, neutral, and accurate. Unfortunately, their education is more than a little biased, and reality is far messier."
Bullshit. That's the history being taught in my school/high school/uni. Except for the minority/right to this land/antagonistic relationship with the British part.
This article doesn't contradict anything you just wrote - it doesn't actually have any history in it beyond the barest facts. Which is reasonable, since any delving into the facts of the matter tends to devolve into flame wars.
Edit - It'sa me, Xander77. And you'll find that the losers' history is much more at odds with your own.
Strangely, the 90's are mentioned as being one of the most peaceful periods in the conflict. Ask any Israeli or Palestinian, and I'm sure they'll tell you the exact opposite. It was pretty bloody on both sides, rivaling the 80's easily. This should be changed.
