Israel/Palestine

A poster downthread said there were attacks the other way at the start of it.

And while the Mufti was a bastard and deserves to be perpetually sauteed in whatever Hell is has ended up in, it was NOT all the Palestinians fault and you can't assume that every Palestinian who joined in the fighting(a lot of them didn't)was motivated by bigotry. Some were(as have been a lot on the what became the pro-Israeli side)but a lot were and are driven simply by fear of getting dispossessed as the new state expanded(Ben-Gurion had often talked out of both sides of his mouth on the territorial question, promising some on his right that he would eventually take more). Rank-and-file Palestinians, who never had a say in any of this(the Mufti didn't really care about rank-and-file people of any sort)were naturally scared about what their fate might be in a process in which they had not been allowed to express their wishes.

The Palestinians are not and have never been the successors to the Nazis. It is a territorial issue and they'd have had the same response if any other group of people had showed up from Europe acting like it was THEIR land and nobody else's. Israel's existence is justified(like the existence of the United States)but in both cases much happened in the creation of those states that was unjustified and which needs to be addressed.

And as I've said before, even if you were right that the Palestinian side was driven by nothing at all but bigotry, how is keeping them collectively immiserated, how is perpetuating the Occupation for decades without end, how is taking more and more of their land in the name of what you would have to admit is a completely indefensible West Bank settlement project EVER going to change their attitudes towards Israel and Israelis for the better? You can't crush people into tolerance, and it isn't possible to end this conflict with an absolute Israeli military victory and an unconditional Palestinian surrender(just as it isn't possible to end it with the reverse scenario-Israel isn't ever going to be wiped off the map, no matter what).

Nobody who wasn't born when the Mufti lived is to blame for the Mufti or those who allied themselves with him, and it isn't reasonable to expect the Palestinian side to say "ok, you guys were totally right, we were totally wrong, and nothing we did should ever have happened...so please kick us in the teeth one more time and then leave us with crumbs", which seems to be what you expect them to do.

Both sides are implicated in the suffering. Nobody can claim moral superiority or exclusive victimhood.