* Palestine hasn't been a sovereign state for more than 75 years and the international community has done great harm by supporting this expectation. Palestinian claims for a right of return have no validity. Claims that people who have never lived in Israel proper (which is the case for most Palestinians in Gaza) are refugees aren't valid either. Conquest is a legitimate basis for sovereignty.
* In the same way, the international community has done great harm by refusing to recognize the People's Republic of China's claim to Taiwan and by not pressuring Taiwan to drop its claims to the mainland.
* The current conflict is fundamentally the fault of the Hamas leadership in Gaza supported by Iran.
* The military actions of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, Iranian backed militias in Iraq and Syria, and Iran, purported directed at Israel are all completely unjustified. The U.S. and Israel should formally declare war on all of them, exterminating completely all of the soldiers and political leaders behind all of Iran's proxies and destroying Iran's military capabilities and nuclear efforts of all kinds completely.
* Gaza claims that 32,000 lives of its 2.3 million people have been lost, it should count itself lucky that the number is so small. Everything that it has suffered, it has brought on itself, with broad popular support. It should have unconditionally surrendered. Instead, even now, most Gazans support the decision to launch the October 7 attack, and still is pushing for Palestinian sovereignty, and still wants to exterminate Israel. They tried, over and over again. They lost. It's over. The Middle East will be at war forever until the world acknowledges once and for all that the Palestinians lost.
* Gaza cannot support 2.3 million people anymore in any sustainable way due to destroyed homes and infrastructure. Something like half of the population needs to be relocated somewhere. And, about the same proportion of Gazans would like to leave. The international community should stop questioning the fact that most Gazans need to be relocated, i.e. exiled, basically permanently, and should start recruiting countries to receive exiled Gazans. Exile is really the only solution that is humane and viable. If the Islamic world really cares about the people suffering in Gaza, it should offer to take them in with open arms.
* Cease fires, efforts to reinstate local home rule, and so on, are only aggravating the suffering.
* The Palestinians of the West Bank should be given a choice: be ceded to Jordan or be exiled with the people of Gaza. They chose Hamas to lead their home rule too, and as such, they should not be eligible for further local home rule.
10 comments:
these are all far right talking points
do you think your fellow Oberlin liberal classmates would agree with your list ?
If the Democratic Party were to go pro-Palestinian like would you switch to Republican Party and Christian Zionism?
* Gaza claims that 32,000 lives of its 2.3 million people have been lost, it should count itself lucky that the number is so small. Everything that it has suffered, it has brought on itself, with broad popular support.
do you believe Black Lives Matter?
what about decades of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian civilian casualties and settlers ?
"If the Democratic Party were to go pro-Palestinian like would you switch to Republican Party and Christian Zionism?"
Never.
"do you believe Black Lives Matter?"
Yes.
"what about decades of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian civilian casualties and settlers?"
What about decades of Palestinians engaging in war with Israel and waging terrorist attacks upon it? Certainly, Hamas has been at war with Israel, actively shooting rockets and trying to kill Israelis since it first took power. Someone you are at war with owes you virtually nothing.
There has been some Israeli misconduct over the years. But this has been on Hamas since it gained control and has had an active policy of exterminating all Israelis. Complaining about "genocide" is less credible when the person complaining has a many decades old policy of committing genocide if given the chance, and tried to do just that (in a move that was a dismal failure) less than seven months earlier.
"do you think your fellow Oberlin liberal classmates would agree with your list?"
Don't know. Don't care. I strongly suspect that they would be divided on the issue. Obies aren't known for reaching consensus on important current political issues.
My goal is to evaluate issues with the facts that I am aware of. My values usually lead to conclusions shared by most liberals based upon those facts, but that isn't always the case.
"these are all far right talking points"
Not really. Israeli-Palestinian issues don't follow neat left-right political lines. Also, the practical necessity of a mass migration of Gazans is a fait accompli, whether it was a good idea on the part of Israel to create that situation or not. There is no feasible way for 2.3 million people to live in a viable way in Gaza at this time.
"do you believe Black Lives Matter?"
While my primary answer is "yes". The life of anyone who is carrying an operable firearm doesn't matter relative to people who are not carrying a firearm, no matter who you are.
If conquest is a legitimate basis of sovereignty, would that make a hypothetical pan-Islamic destruction of a decayed, incoherently radicalized Israeli state in a hypothetical future where America ceases to support them acceptable? Would this post-facto justify Chinese absorption and cleansing of Vietnam and other SEAsian countries where ethnic Chinese are a large and powerful minority? Why support Ukrainian aspirations to retake the Donbass? These areas have been ethnically Russian for decades. Should we not get over it? This proposal of yours opens a lot of doors, particularly to unilateral aggression, as what constitutes the founding of the Israeli state itself.
"If conquest is a legitimate basis of sovereignty, would that make a hypothetical pan-Islamic destruction of a decayed, incoherently radicalized Israeli state in a hypothetical future where America ceases to support them acceptable?"
Because that Israeli state would exist in name only.
"Would this post-facto justify Chinese absorption and cleansing of Vietnam and other SEAsian countries where ethnic Chinese are a large and powerful minority?"
Conquest justifies sovereignty only once it is a fait accompli. This doesn't mean that it is justifiable grounds to make war, and one could and perhaps should oppose that war. But, if the war is lost, then the winner of sovereign. This exact thing did happen in parts of Southeast Asia in Thailand. The Thai people originated in Guangxi in China but relocated to Vietnam ca. 700 CE. In about 800 CE a Tai chief named Simhanavati drove out the native Wa people and founded the city of Chiang Saen in Thailand. From around 1040 CE to 1100 CE, after losing battles with Chinese forces, the Thai people fled Vietnam and came to conquer most of what is now Thailand, at the expense of its current residents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Thailand
It happened again in the mid-20th century when China fought proxy wars with Western powers during the Cold War over much of mainland SE Asia, turning Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam into puppet states in its sphere of influence, something that has now been largely conceded.
There was a population exchange of 1.6 million people between Turkey and Greece in 1923, with some remaining Greek communities expelled from Turkey in the expulsion of Istanbul Greeks (Turkish: 1964 Rum Tehciri or 1964 Rum Sürgünü) in 1964–1965. These were both much better outcomes than the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916 in Turkey.
"Why support Ukrainian aspirations to retake the Donbass? These areas have been ethnically Russian for decades. Should we not get over it?"
Because the fighting to decide who will control it isn't over. Donbass was removed from Ukrainian government control only 10 years ago, and several of those years have involved active warfare which is ongoing. If Russia retains control for long after active warfare is over, we should get over it.
The issue of an area being ethnically Russian for decades is a question of nationalism and self-determination, and not a question of sovereignty and conquest. From at least midway through the Soviet era until 2014, Donbass was unquestionably part of Ukraine's territory, and once Ukraine gained independence, it was part of Ukraine's sovereign territory.
In the long run, I doubt that Ukraine will ever fully restore its pre-2014 boundaries. If there is a cease fire in Ukraine in say, 2027, at a time when Ukraine has not regained all of its pre-2014 boundaries, and that cease fire holds for two or three decades or so, then yes, Ukraine should give up and get over it.
"the international community has done great harm by refusing to recognize the People's Republic of China's claim to Taiwan and by not pressuring Taiwan to drop its claims to the mainland"
This is ironic because China says it will invade if Taiwan becomes openly separatist, i.e. ceases to describe itself as an alternative government of the whole of China.
Are you positing an alternative diplomatic history in which, once the CCP conquered the mainland, the other powers would have cut off all ties with the Nationalist government in Taiwan?
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