Quote:
Originally Posted by MoonlitSunshine
I have to say, up until today I was firmly on the side of the palestinians: they had been evicted from their land and treated like crap since the Israelis "Returned" to Israel, but having talked the whole thing through with a friend from Israel today, and having heard his side of things, I feel quite stupid for having thought that for so long.
To be honest, it now seems to me that both sides are reacting to the other: it's impossible to tell who "started" it, seeing as the whole thing didn't erupt at once: Yes, israel seized some land from the palestinians, but in many other cases Israelis legally bought the land fairly, and they were still attacked and harassed by the "poor defenceless" Palestinians. the whole place is a mess, and both sides are reacting to violence with more violence. What would you do if you felt that your land was being taken from you?
On the other hand, what would you do if raving madmen were threatening to fire rockets and blow up your families? it's not an easy thing to sit down and talk calmly about.
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Jesus where have you been? Israel is untouchable in America and they're not exactly an obscure and unimportant country. I can understand feeling sympathetic for the civilians but treating it like Israel is more hated than Palestine on the national stage is ignorant. I think you're being far too sympathetic towards Israel. The violence there is completely self-perpetuating and while I have no doubt that there were attacks that weren't presupposed by another attack I also have no doubt that that can be said of both sides. No one is more right or more wrong in this conflict.
On the subject of ignorant...Proggy you know you're stuff on this but after World War II you're treating it like the Jews had nowhere to go and Israel had a bunch of empty land. That's not true. Palestine lost half its land to the UN and then Israel turns around and occupied even more then just that half. 750,000 people were kicked out in 1948. Palestinians have roots in Israel too and unlike the Jews at that time they didn't have anywhere else to go. They could've made new lives in America or any other countries. They were even offered unpopulated land in Uganda. I believe the situation was handed horribly initially by the UN (on pretty much every front) but unfortunately we can't go back and deal with the situation differently.
Basically what I'm trying to say is the middle east is a clusterfu
ck and the blame lies everywhere and if you go into who started what, who was victimized, who did badly you'll end up pointing your fingers in every single direction.