If Israel cannot coexist with its neighbours then why plant it in this particular area of the world in the first place? Why not take part of Germany, the country which actually slaughtered millions of jews. Why do the Arabs have to pay the price of something they're not responsible for?
Imagine the opposite: an Arab group was planted to occupy part of Europe, occasionally gets into wars with its neighbours, and builds one of the largest weapons arsenals in the world, including nukes. How would Europeans feel about that?
That is a completely different argument. I am responding to the people arguing Israel is an outlier/evil because it is an ethno state, should return to arbitrary borders, etc. I am pointing out all the people that say colonial European borders have cause an unstable middle east because they were drawn without consideration of ethnic/cultural tensions. Those people should then support that it is logical for Israel to want intentional borders/internal ethnic/cultural cohesion and that desire/structure is not immoral.
What a wonderful idea: "This part of the world is unstable with unsustainable ethnic tension due to the arbitrary borders created by colonizers. Let's ethnically cleanse part of this area and give to jews and put arbitrary borders around it. That will definitely not have consequences."
“Fight against those who do not believe in Allāh or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allāh and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth [i.e., Islām] from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.“
Notice the four characteristics mentioned here (all of them must be satisfied):
- do not believe in Allāh or in the Last Day
- do not consider unlawful what Allāh and His Messenger have made unlawful
- do not adopt the religion of truth (doesn't necessarily mean Islam, since true Christianity and Judaism believe in one God)
- from those who were given the Scripture. That includes Muslims themselves by the way, since they were given a scripture. Elsewhere in the Quran when it refers to Christians and Jews it says "People of the scripture". In other areas it mentions "Those who were given the scripture", which includes Muslims.
What it essentially says: if you do not follow the law of the land, whether you are a Christian, Jew, or a Muslim, there are consequences. Every nation has laws, and if you break those laws you will be prosecuted. In this case it says those will have to pay a "fine".
I don't know Arabic, but I read the English differently. I see "fight against those who X, and those who B, and those who C" as different groups, all of whom one is supposed to fight against.
I find it quite hard to read this passage like you do and see this as evidence of equality of treatment between Muslims and non-Muslims. Even the translator interprets 'religion of truth' to mean Islam.
Plus I think in general you're ignoring the pretty hostile tone of this passage. The jizyah is explicitly intended to be a humiliation ("humbling"). I was skeptical, but I think this passages is strong evidence that the jizyah was intended to "discriminate and oppress" non-Muslims.
As apologetics what he's saying is complete nonsense. The jizyah has been interpreted by every islamic society as a tax on non muslims, not a fine for those who break the law. You could argue that the passage doesn't actually say that the purpose of jizyah is to humiliate people (humbling is different) or that islamic societies in practice didn't (typically) use it as a means of ridicule, but saying that actually it was just a fine is utter make believe.
Terrorists specifically target civilian or government targets to make a statement or a demand. Those Iraqis were targeting American soldiers. The term doesn't apply here, no matter how badly the occupier wants to impose it on those defending their country.
These where clan militias fighting for a headstanrt in the proxxy civil war to come. There is no iraq. Its a iranian proxxy with a sunni province and a basically split of kurdish region. That "nation" never existed except in western maps and heads. Those "freedom fighters" where the basis for isis and the iranian militias. None where patriots, just in it for the family wearing the state as skinsuit. They thoroughly disproved all neoliberal cultural ideals about universal nneeds and wants.
If we follow your logic, then I'd argue that similarly, there's no countries in the world. In particular, there's no United States, it's land colonized by Europeans who came to that land and slaughtered its indigenous people and claimed it for themselves.
The western culture forms meta families. We ostracize the sexual others like everyone else, but they form a nation wide "meta" family that connects everyone to everyone, allowing for the traditional clan family to flap open and dissappear with only nuclear families remaining. Oh and they form a ruling caste with working institutions. Western societies are one huge artifical clan.
In the 1950s, computers were starting to go mainstream and everyone panicked that they'll lose their job due to "automation". Some jobs were lost for sure, but so many other jobs were created that computers "demanded".
The same thing happened in the late 50s / early 60s when high-level programming languages and compilers started to appear. Almost all software at that time was hand-written assembly. Compilers took a decade to reach the same quality (sometimes even better) of hand-written assembly. Programmers adapted and started thinking at a higher level of abstraction.
Another example is virtual memory. Up until the late 1960s most software used manual physical memory management techniques (mainly overlays) to decide which part of the program should reside in memory at certain points of time. Everyone was skeptical and thought that virtual memory would be less optimal than manually-designed overlays. There was a lot of research in that area during the time to prove that virtual memory can have the same or even better performance than hand-rolled approaches.
The point is: AI may well be disruptive to the way we develop software, but we're still in a transition phase where trust in AI output is very shaky. It's impressive, but it hasn't established itself yet as an abstraction we can trust and build on without thinking about what it's producing. It will take time, and humans will always have more work to do no matter how technology advances.
The whole movie is worth a watch. It was made by Teddy Katz, an Israeli student whose 1990s thesis on the massacre was discredited after legal action by veterans, largely baseless push-back against the thesis which was well researched and strongly supported by primary evidence. The movie is called "Tantura" and was released in 2022. IF you're not an AV person, the wiki on the tantura massacre is worth a read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantura_massacre
You're using the term "terrorist" to describe people indigenous to the land that Israel stole. If you use logic, that makes Israel that terrorist group since they used violence to kick Palestinians out of their land and homes, not the other way around.
Lookup the Jewish terrorist groups Irgu, Lehi, and Haganah. Lookup the assassination of Lord Moyne by Lehi and the 1946 Irgun bombing of the King David Hotel. The leaders of these terrorist groups eventually became Prime Ministers of Israel.
While you're at it, lookup the attack by the Israeli military on the USS Liberty that killed 34 Americans.
Hezbollah isn't in Israel, so any argument about what happened in Israel is irrelevant. And by far the primary cause of Palestinians leaving was Arab countries telling them to get out of the way of the coming invasion. And, well, when you refuse to agree to lay down arms is it really surprising you're not allowed back in?
King David Hotel? You mean British military HQ? Who received and ignored the warning about the bomb?
USS Liberty--ever consider how hard it is to identify ships from the air in a combat situation? Israel knew the ship claimed to be American, but they thought that was a ruse.
> USS Liberty--ever consider how hard it is to identify ships from the air in a combat situation? Israel knew the ship claimed to be American, but they thought that was a ruse.
Everybody outside of the IDF PR department has accepted that Israel deliberately targeted USS Liberty.
The “misidentification” story was utterly unbelievable at the time, and remains so now. There are endless statements from top US national security officials directly calling the Israelis liars.
What is interesting is how governments and controlled media flip and reverse terms (in a 1984 kind of way), along with avoiding accountability, to suit their purposes. Even when it is very obvious that actions are morally wrong, war crimes, or even genocide.
It's got to the point where it's like someone outrageously punching you in the face, then pretending they didn't or were the victims, when there is a response.
Exactly. As Bassem Youssef once put it: "Palestine is like a fish bowl. It's a lot of fish, it's condensed. Israel is like the person over that bowl, crashing the bowl, killing the fish, taking any fish they want. ...[talks about how Israel takes Palestinan hostages all the time]... At a certain point, Israel is just hovering over that fish bowl. At some moment, a fish, crazy enough, suicidal enough, will jump from the bowl, through the air, bite the pinkie of Israel. And Israel would be like: Oh my god! That bitch bit my pinkie and my hand was not even in the bowl."
Let's remember that this is not an isolated incident, it's a repeated pattern of the IDF intentionally targeting and killing civilians and aid workers:
- Flour massacre
- World Central Kitchen drone strike
- Gaza aid distribution massacres
- Rafah paramedics massacre
And many others. Each one of these alone is a war crime. But unfortunately the west is happy to look the other way. Had it been the other way around, we'd never hear the end of it.
I think we as a people have to keep working to weaken and replace religious identity with belief in a private god. Belief in a divine power must not leave one's home, and must not extend into the public sphere where it can lead to divisions. This is where polytheistic religions win because they allow for a private god while being entirely compatible with someone else's private god. If I can look at a person's clothing or hairstyle and guess their religion, it means the tenet of privacy is violated, and division is sowed.
Fwiw, ancient Egyptian religion in the Levant region was polytheistic. So many ancient religions were polytheistic, thereby more flexible, decentralized, and pluralistic. Monotheism in contrast is largely inflexible and risks breeding conflict in the name of religion.
As for the adherents of Yahweh, i.e. now called Judaism, they have been using violence to displace other forms of the polytheistic Canaanite religion for three thousand years. What is happening now is just more of the same. Even two thousand years ago, the Jews pressured the Romans to crucify Christ. The point is that there is zero tolerance among monotheists for innate religious diversity.
An analogy for monotheism is everyone worshipping the dollar, whereas polytheism is whereby people have more choice, even multiple choices.
Believe it or not, jews and christians were practicing their religion freely and were protected during the Islamic golden age. What we're seeing today is extremists (in any religion) rising to position of power (or taking up arms), thus skewing the view that this is how all followers of that religion believe. It's much more nuanced than that. Most people are peaceful and happy to coexist as long as they're respected and their rights are not violated. Take that away and extremisim will rise.
what does it tell you that the jews who were accomodated from the start by muslims in lands stretching from maghreb to transoxiana are now fighting muslims like muslims were their enemy since day 1? the jews who the muslims took in after the christians kicked out are now pushing for christian armies to fight their wars for them in muslim lands? i would say christians are the most innocent, christianity is the real religion of peace, although christians themselves are a mixed bag, muslims are par for the course, it is a religion of conquest, but it tends to conquer fair and square as is normal throughout history, while jews are the least innocent, parasitizing and betraying the nations.
For the record, when it comes to modern-day Muslims and Jews, both of their respective religions are bottom-scrapers when it comes to religious tolerance and plurality, both internally and externally. It is in their engineering itself that all other gods are bad. This is in stark contrast with polytheistic and indigenous religions, both ancient and current, that welcome other gods or spirits, and are centered more toward following an overlapping set of moral principles.
In the Quran it says "You have your way, and I have my Way" (or roughly "You have your religion, and I have my religion"). It also says "There shall be no compulsion in the religion". Islam doesn't want to force itself upon those who do not believe in the One God. It just calls people to believe if they choose to do so.
Wouldn't it be nice if that were actually true!? Maybe it was true once upon a time, but is it still true? People routinely get killed in Islamic countries for not adhering to Islam. Terrorists seek out "unbelievers" and execute them. Even among those adhering to it, they keep killing each other for having differences in the nature of their beliefs.
Acting in a way (by a minority, some of which are in power) that is clearly against the teachings of the religion doesn't mean it's false. It's the other way around: it makes their actions a sin. If you take a wider look you'll see that the majority are trying to adhere to the true teachings, which when implemented on a large scale you get what is known as the Golden age of Islam: a period of over 1000 years of prosperity, compassion, and advances in almost every aspect of life, some of which is still benefiting all humanity until today.
Legally safeguarded tolerance goes a long way. When legal protection and enforcement of minority rights perishes, the bigger groups will next find themselves fighting each other.
It was horrific waking up every day there for a while and reading about how the IDF had, yet again, waited for starving Palestinians to line up at places they speculated would have humanitarian aid and opened fire on the whole crowd.
The idea that people think this is some kind of holy war is something beyond nauseating.
Imagine the opposite: an Arab group was planted to occupy part of Europe, occasionally gets into wars with its neighbours, and builds one of the largest weapons arsenals in the world, including nukes. How would Europeans feel about that?
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