This sweeping history starts back in 1799 with Napoleon
November 25, 2023 9:21 AM Subscribe
Al-Nakba A four part video series on the Palestinian ‘catastrophe’ of 1948 that led to dispossession and conflict that still endures. Scroll down for the videos (4X 45 min) First aired in 2008.
If you're like me and cannot pay attention to videos, try reading Ten Myths about Israel and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, both by Ilan Pappe. I'm enjoying the books a lot. Thanks for posting the videos though.
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 5:22 PM on November 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 5:22 PM on November 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
Given that I had only ever heard one side of this story, hearing it from the other side hardly strikes me as malicious propaganda.
posted by ob1quixote at 7:56 PM on November 25, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 7:56 PM on November 25, 2023 [5 favorites]
Mod note: One removed; labeling the piece as "propaganda" in the first comment. Allow people to read and discuss without the entire discussion being highjacked from the beginning.
posted by taz (staff) at 10:12 PM on November 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 10:12 PM on November 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
I am planning to watch all the videos, but I have to say it's a big ask for people to commit 3 hours before commenting... it is very dense and there is a lot to go through.
Am midway through the first video. They begin with the Jewish National Fund purchase of 10,000 dunams (roughly 10 square km) of land in 1910 in Marj Bin Amer in northern Palestine. It had dire consequences - over 60,000 Palestinians in the area were forced to leave. They describe it as a systematic plan for the Zionists to evict the Palestinians from their lands.
---
My comments -
The documentary doesn't refer to it by name, but this certainly refers to the Sursock Purchases and its aftermath.
The Ottoman Empire officially forbid the sale of land in Palestine to the Jews. However, in 1872 they did sell 400,000 dunams (roughly 400 square km) in Marj ibn Amir to the Sursocks, a powerful, aristocratic Greek Orthodox Christian family based in Beirut.
The Sursock family fell into financial difficulties and attempted to sell small portions of it to willing Jewish buyers represented by the Jewish National Fund - the incident the documentary refers to (but doesn't name explicitly) seems to be the the sale of the village of al-Fula - the quantum of land (10,000 dunams) and date (1910) match. The Jewish National Fund purchased the land and wanted vacant possession, and the Palestinian peasants refused to leave. Their reasoning was that the Sursocks were vacant landlords (who had never lived there), and had "sold" land that was not rightfully theirs to sell to the Zionists. The protests became known as the al-Fula incident.
I think the documentary is conflating two different things - it's not possible for 10 square km to support 60,000 farmers, so perhaps they're saying this was the beginning a series of land sales that eventually resulted in 60,000 farmers being evicted. al-Fula was recorded to have 300 inhabitants in 1887 and today has only 1299 inhabitants. In any case, it's too early in the timeline for that - the Ottoman Empire generally forbid land sales to the Jews, and it was only once the Ottoman Empire ceded the territory to the British in 1920 that the land sales from the Sursocks accelerated.
To understand some context behind this we need to go back to the 1958 Ottoman Land Reform. It was attempt by the Ottoman Empire to modernize land ownership - for the hundreds of years before that, land ownership was regulated by people living on the land according to their own customs and traditions, and treated as a communal resource. It was founded on traditional land practices and included categories of land cited in Islamic law, and was aimed at rationalizing land regulation and improving tax collection.
However, many people in outlying states like Palestine refused to register themselves as the owners of their lands, because
1. Landowners were subject to military service in the Ottoman Empire and often drafted to fight in the war in Russia
2. It would subject them to taxation, registration and regulation by the Ottoman Empire
Rather than registering themselves as land owners, they preferred the land be registered in the names of local Ottoman administrators (who had would be unable to evade the draft anyway) or merchants from other locales who would be difficult to pull up for a draft since they didn't live in Palestine. They would live there as tenants instead.
So we have a confluence of several factors - the unwillingness of the Palestinians to register official claims to their lands they lived on, which led to the Ottoman Empire recognizing official land ownership divorced from the facts on the ground, which led to the sale of that land to the Sursocks, and finally to the Jews, who purchased the land and demanded vacant possession.
The Jews would say they purchased the land "fair and square" while the Palestinians say the land was "unfairly stolen from under them" and you can see how they're both right and wrong at the same time.
The Sursocks were a more benevolent landlord, and by some accounts significantly invested in and improved the land (the region was was in decline at the time they took over) but they ended up in financial difficulty and had to sell. Even today the question of tenant rights once the land is sold differs by jurisdiction, but in general, if you want to buy a house to live in, 99.99% of the time you get vacant possession and don't have to think twice about it.
posted by xdvesper at 11:42 PM on November 25, 2023 [21 favorites]
Am midway through the first video. They begin with the Jewish National Fund purchase of 10,000 dunams (roughly 10 square km) of land in 1910 in Marj Bin Amer in northern Palestine. It had dire consequences - over 60,000 Palestinians in the area were forced to leave. They describe it as a systematic plan for the Zionists to evict the Palestinians from their lands.
---
My comments -
The documentary doesn't refer to it by name, but this certainly refers to the Sursock Purchases and its aftermath.
The Ottoman Empire officially forbid the sale of land in Palestine to the Jews. However, in 1872 they did sell 400,000 dunams (roughly 400 square km) in Marj ibn Amir to the Sursocks, a powerful, aristocratic Greek Orthodox Christian family based in Beirut.
The Sursock family fell into financial difficulties and attempted to sell small portions of it to willing Jewish buyers represented by the Jewish National Fund - the incident the documentary refers to (but doesn't name explicitly) seems to be the the sale of the village of al-Fula - the quantum of land (10,000 dunams) and date (1910) match. The Jewish National Fund purchased the land and wanted vacant possession, and the Palestinian peasants refused to leave. Their reasoning was that the Sursocks were vacant landlords (who had never lived there), and had "sold" land that was not rightfully theirs to sell to the Zionists. The protests became known as the al-Fula incident.
I think the documentary is conflating two different things - it's not possible for 10 square km to support 60,000 farmers, so perhaps they're saying this was the beginning a series of land sales that eventually resulted in 60,000 farmers being evicted. al-Fula was recorded to have 300 inhabitants in 1887 and today has only 1299 inhabitants. In any case, it's too early in the timeline for that - the Ottoman Empire generally forbid land sales to the Jews, and it was only once the Ottoman Empire ceded the territory to the British in 1920 that the land sales from the Sursocks accelerated.
To understand some context behind this we need to go back to the 1958 Ottoman Land Reform. It was attempt by the Ottoman Empire to modernize land ownership - for the hundreds of years before that, land ownership was regulated by people living on the land according to their own customs and traditions, and treated as a communal resource. It was founded on traditional land practices and included categories of land cited in Islamic law, and was aimed at rationalizing land regulation and improving tax collection.
However, many people in outlying states like Palestine refused to register themselves as the owners of their lands, because
1. Landowners were subject to military service in the Ottoman Empire and often drafted to fight in the war in Russia
2. It would subject them to taxation, registration and regulation by the Ottoman Empire
Rather than registering themselves as land owners, they preferred the land be registered in the names of local Ottoman administrators (who had would be unable to evade the draft anyway) or merchants from other locales who would be difficult to pull up for a draft since they didn't live in Palestine. They would live there as tenants instead.
So we have a confluence of several factors - the unwillingness of the Palestinians to register official claims to their lands they lived on, which led to the Ottoman Empire recognizing official land ownership divorced from the facts on the ground, which led to the sale of that land to the Sursocks, and finally to the Jews, who purchased the land and demanded vacant possession.
The Jews would say they purchased the land "fair and square" while the Palestinians say the land was "unfairly stolen from under them" and you can see how they're both right and wrong at the same time.
The Sursocks were a more benevolent landlord, and by some accounts significantly invested in and improved the land (the region was was in decline at the time they took over) but they ended up in financial difficulty and had to sell. Even today the question of tenant rights once the land is sold differs by jurisdiction, but in general, if you want to buy a house to live in, 99.99% of the time you get vacant possession and don't have to think twice about it.
posted by xdvesper at 11:42 PM on November 25, 2023 [21 favorites]
Also in general, as a little person, once somebody with an army decides they own your place, you're fucked.
Here's John Oliver setting a tone that I hope we can all live up to for the rest of this thread.
posted by flabdablet at 1:21 AM on November 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Here's John Oliver setting a tone that I hope we can all live up to for the rest of this thread.
posted by flabdablet at 1:21 AM on November 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I also came here to talk about Ottoman land laws but I see xdvesper has already covered it.
A bit of caution with specific wording from that wikipedia article, it quotes extensively from a translation of the laws done for the British and while it is correct and a good explanation (for someone who comes into it knowing English law) it therefore imports early 20th century English land law terms which descend from Normal law and some of the terms should therefore be treated as descriptive rather than exact i.e. when something is called "fee simple freehold" that may not mean exactly the same as something that literally is "fee simple freehold".
A few additional points:
1) We almost never study the history of the late Ottoman empire and the Tanzimat / reform period in Europe. If anything, we talk briefly about the Byzantines (probably as part of a discussion of the end of the Western Roman empire), maybe about the crusades but probably not in much detail which leads to people completely misunderstanding the period, and then in WWI the Ottoman empire just disintegrates, something something Gallipoli and that's it. It's just a black box.
Considering that most of the Middle East was part of the Ottoman Empire for many centuries, you simply cannot understand the region without studying this period. Looking at a few decades of British and French administration of essentially an Ottoman system they temporarily managed is not going back far enough and few things grate my gears more than a history of the Palestinians and Israelis that starts in 1918. You'll understand nothing that way. This is also true of Lebanese, Syrian, and less obviously but also of Greek history.
Without really understanding Ottoman history, nothing makes sense. Especially if you artificially and ahistorically separate Europe and (at least) the rest of the Mediterranean basin. Why was an Albanian running Egypt? What on earth is a Circassian and why are they popping up all over the place? Why was the whole Turkish coast Greek and why isn't it now? All a mystery without studying Ottoman history. (and really Eastern Roman history as well TBH but I'm biased pro-history).
2) The land reforms and other reforms also triggered a civil war in Lebanon in the 1800s. Arguably that civil war has never been decisively resolved to this day. Lebanon can't even conduct a census because the results would be too explosive. Also a revolt in Albania and other places. The Ottoman empire went downhill and the reforms didn't work, there wasn't enough political juice in the tank, what Ibn Khaldun called عصبيّة (ʿaSabiyya) to hold it together through this kind of nation building reform. Probably because there wasn't an Ottoman "nation" in the nation state sense, just a very large number of subjects of various kinds who didn't have religions, language, or much in the way of identity in common to carry them through the messy centralising trauma of forging a state.
3) The larger trend that led to the creation of modern Turkey is a consequence of this. In order to effectively create a unified state on at least part of its historical territory - and note that there are plausible historical counterfactuals where the state of Turkey just doesn't exist in a remotely recognisable form - the horrible logic of ethno-state creation needed to remove one way or another non-Turks from the equation. The whole panoply of late Ottoman genocides, the Armenians most notably but also the Assyrians, the Pontic Greeks, the ongoing suppression of Kurdish identity, the Thrace pogroms, anyway you get the picture it was horrific.
4) In parallel, there were expulsions and killings of Muslims from countries as they broke free of the Ottoman empire, particularly in Greece where almost a million people went each way as part of violent "population exchange" i.e. a mutual genocide to call it what it was but also in Bulgaria and elsewhere. This lasted until... well today in parts of former Yugoslavia. Everything from the current standoff about license plates (yes it is dumb but also really important) to the Kosova war to Srebrenica is part of the long slow unwinding of the Ottoman world into something else.
5) There were also / continue to be conflicts over national identity and ethnic / religious / linguistic identity that are intra-Muslim all across former Ottoman territory.
6) The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians today, should be understood as part of this history. While each conflict is different and there is a danger in drawing too many parallels, you should at least draw the most regionally appropriate and structurally analogous parallels. The dissolution of the Ottoman empire created analogous situations all over the place because the end of a centralising empire creates a space for nation states but unlike empires, nation states need an identity to match. Who is the nation that will run the state? Before the possibility arises, competition between groups is immediate and practical: we both want a particular piece of land maybe but the remedy is non-political, it is to approach the state power (inherently remote) as a supplicant or a subtle threat to public order and the career of a bureaucrat. Once the idea of a nation state takes hold, conflict inevitably becomes contention over the identity of the state.
7) Israelis and Palestinians want their struggle to be sui generis to us the way it is to them. It's fine and normal that the particularities of their specific history are important to them, but the rest of the world is entitled to see events within a larger pattern and that pattern of imperial dissolution is one that is repeated across the Ottoman world: Periods of rising tension during the later imperial period, imperial collapse, civil war (with / without external aid as may be the case), mutual population expulsions (I used the word transfer once above because it is often used but I think it is too repellently sterile for me to use routinely), borders following lines of military control, and finally a peace of sorts. If you think this conflict is insoluble - note that most of the others mentioned above are now purely historical. Let's wrap this one up and then we can stop adding appendices to the book of Ottoman history.
posted by atrazine at 2:29 PM on November 26, 2023 [23 favorites]
A bit of caution with specific wording from that wikipedia article, it quotes extensively from a translation of the laws done for the British and while it is correct and a good explanation (for someone who comes into it knowing English law) it therefore imports early 20th century English land law terms which descend from Normal law and some of the terms should therefore be treated as descriptive rather than exact i.e. when something is called "fee simple freehold" that may not mean exactly the same as something that literally is "fee simple freehold".
A few additional points:
1) We almost never study the history of the late Ottoman empire and the Tanzimat / reform period in Europe. If anything, we talk briefly about the Byzantines (probably as part of a discussion of the end of the Western Roman empire), maybe about the crusades but probably not in much detail which leads to people completely misunderstanding the period, and then in WWI the Ottoman empire just disintegrates, something something Gallipoli and that's it. It's just a black box.
Considering that most of the Middle East was part of the Ottoman Empire for many centuries, you simply cannot understand the region without studying this period. Looking at a few decades of British and French administration of essentially an Ottoman system they temporarily managed is not going back far enough and few things grate my gears more than a history of the Palestinians and Israelis that starts in 1918. You'll understand nothing that way. This is also true of Lebanese, Syrian, and less obviously but also of Greek history.
Without really understanding Ottoman history, nothing makes sense. Especially if you artificially and ahistorically separate Europe and (at least) the rest of the Mediterranean basin. Why was an Albanian running Egypt? What on earth is a Circassian and why are they popping up all over the place? Why was the whole Turkish coast Greek and why isn't it now? All a mystery without studying Ottoman history. (and really Eastern Roman history as well TBH but I'm biased pro-history).
2) The land reforms and other reforms also triggered a civil war in Lebanon in the 1800s. Arguably that civil war has never been decisively resolved to this day. Lebanon can't even conduct a census because the results would be too explosive. Also a revolt in Albania and other places. The Ottoman empire went downhill and the reforms didn't work, there wasn't enough political juice in the tank, what Ibn Khaldun called عصبيّة (ʿaSabiyya) to hold it together through this kind of nation building reform. Probably because there wasn't an Ottoman "nation" in the nation state sense, just a very large number of subjects of various kinds who didn't have religions, language, or much in the way of identity in common to carry them through the messy centralising trauma of forging a state.
3) The larger trend that led to the creation of modern Turkey is a consequence of this. In order to effectively create a unified state on at least part of its historical territory - and note that there are plausible historical counterfactuals where the state of Turkey just doesn't exist in a remotely recognisable form - the horrible logic of ethno-state creation needed to remove one way or another non-Turks from the equation. The whole panoply of late Ottoman genocides, the Armenians most notably but also the Assyrians, the Pontic Greeks, the ongoing suppression of Kurdish identity, the Thrace pogroms, anyway you get the picture it was horrific.
4) In parallel, there were expulsions and killings of Muslims from countries as they broke free of the Ottoman empire, particularly in Greece where almost a million people went each way as part of violent "population exchange" i.e. a mutual genocide to call it what it was but also in Bulgaria and elsewhere. This lasted until... well today in parts of former Yugoslavia. Everything from the current standoff about license plates (yes it is dumb but also really important) to the Kosova war to Srebrenica is part of the long slow unwinding of the Ottoman world into something else.
5) There were also / continue to be conflicts over national identity and ethnic / religious / linguistic identity that are intra-Muslim all across former Ottoman territory.
6) The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians today, should be understood as part of this history. While each conflict is different and there is a danger in drawing too many parallels, you should at least draw the most regionally appropriate and structurally analogous parallels. The dissolution of the Ottoman empire created analogous situations all over the place because the end of a centralising empire creates a space for nation states but unlike empires, nation states need an identity to match. Who is the nation that will run the state? Before the possibility arises, competition between groups is immediate and practical: we both want a particular piece of land maybe but the remedy is non-political, it is to approach the state power (inherently remote) as a supplicant or a subtle threat to public order and the career of a bureaucrat. Once the idea of a nation state takes hold, conflict inevitably becomes contention over the identity of the state.
7) Israelis and Palestinians want their struggle to be sui generis to us the way it is to them. It's fine and normal that the particularities of their specific history are important to them, but the rest of the world is entitled to see events within a larger pattern and that pattern of imperial dissolution is one that is repeated across the Ottoman world: Periods of rising tension during the later imperial period, imperial collapse, civil war (with / without external aid as may be the case), mutual population expulsions (I used the word transfer once above because it is often used but I think it is too repellently sterile for me to use routinely), borders following lines of military control, and finally a peace of sorts. If you think this conflict is insoluble - note that most of the others mentioned above are now purely historical. Let's wrap this one up and then we can stop adding appendices to the book of Ottoman history.
posted by atrazine at 2:29 PM on November 26, 2023 [23 favorites]
I think it is important to acknowledge that Al Jazeera is a problematic source for this conflict. That doesn’t mean they are pure propaganda but their presentation of history is going to have biases that should be obvious.
At the same time most of the history you will read on this conflict has biases. I’m not sure there are any truest objective histories of this conflict.
I think the roots of this conflict are not in France and Napoleon; but instead in the rise of nationalism and nation states in Europe and the former Ottoman Empire. These nationalism movements all shared a lot of ideas and the tendency to separate the Arabs from other nationlist movements like the Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, etc ignores the reality that there are thousands of years of shared history around these Mediterranean cultures. The separation of North Africa, Anatolia and the Levant as “not Europe/not European” is kind of racist if you consider how much shared history we have going back to Roman times. All those Ancient Greek works that fueled the renaissance / enlightenment came to us through Muslim philosophers like Averros / Ibn Rushd.
Nationalist thinkers from Germany to Arabia all exchanged ideas and strategies. Among those strategies was the othering of ethnic minorities and all these places had Jewish communities. Antisemitism started in Eastern Europe but spread throughout the various movements. The claim that it was not present in the Muslim world is not entirely true — it took a bit longer to spread to those regions but by the early 1900s it was endemic. Zionism was a reaction to the rise of nationalism and antisemitism throughout the whole Mediterranean region. The migration of Jews to Israel was the result of ethnic cleansing. The majority of Israel’s population traces its ancestry to North Africa and the Middle East.
posted by interogative mood at 3:57 PM on November 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
At the same time most of the history you will read on this conflict has biases. I’m not sure there are any truest objective histories of this conflict.
I think the roots of this conflict are not in France and Napoleon; but instead in the rise of nationalism and nation states in Europe and the former Ottoman Empire. These nationalism movements all shared a lot of ideas and the tendency to separate the Arabs from other nationlist movements like the Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, etc ignores the reality that there are thousands of years of shared history around these Mediterranean cultures. The separation of North Africa, Anatolia and the Levant as “not Europe/not European” is kind of racist if you consider how much shared history we have going back to Roman times. All those Ancient Greek works that fueled the renaissance / enlightenment came to us through Muslim philosophers like Averros / Ibn Rushd.
Nationalist thinkers from Germany to Arabia all exchanged ideas and strategies. Among those strategies was the othering of ethnic minorities and all these places had Jewish communities. Antisemitism started in Eastern Europe but spread throughout the various movements. The claim that it was not present in the Muslim world is not entirely true — it took a bit longer to spread to those regions but by the early 1900s it was endemic. Zionism was a reaction to the rise of nationalism and antisemitism throughout the whole Mediterranean region. The migration of Jews to Israel was the result of ethnic cleansing. The majority of Israel’s population traces its ancestry to North Africa and the Middle East.
posted by interogative mood at 3:57 PM on November 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm just glad that all at once, a decisive number of people here in the West started refusing to believe that Israel is the rightful owner of most of the land. If there's anything that comes out of the horror of the current conflict, it's that no longer, even among people who get all their news from the American corporate media, is it impossible to criticize Israel's occupation and apartheid. Now if we can only get all those people to understand that "from the river to the sea" is a call for genocide.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:23 PM on November 26, 2023
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:23 PM on November 26, 2023
@atrazine Thanks for a really great post, I'm convinced (that I should find out more).
The follow on question... what is a good introductory book on the Ottoman empire for the general reader?
posted by lovelyzoo at 1:28 AM on November 27, 2023
The follow on question... what is a good introductory book on the Ottoman empire for the general reader?
posted by lovelyzoo at 1:28 AM on November 27, 2023
understand that "from the river to the sea" is a call for genocide
That's categorically not true (I know Elon Musk thinks it is but that's hardly a ringing endorsement of anything).
posted by Lanark at 2:02 AM on November 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
That's categorically not true (I know Elon Musk thinks it is but that's hardly a ringing endorsement of anything).
posted by Lanark at 2:02 AM on November 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think it is important to acknowledge that Al Jazeera is a problematic source for this conflict. That doesn’t mean they are pure propaganda but their presentation of history is going to have biases that should be obvious.
I think it's probably better to just note that there are no sources available which do not have a particular point of view.
I think the best books on the Ottoman empire are: Osman's Dream generally, Quateret for the late period, and I know that Inalcik's The Ottoman Empire is highly regarded for the height of the empire.
I'm just glad that all at once, a decisive number of people here in the West started refusing to believe that Israel is the rightful owner of most of the land.
I would like them to take the next step and understand that all states are arbitrary, there's no such thing as the rightful owner of any land, but we're probably stuck with the nation state for now so we'd better stumble through and try not to hurt too many people too often. I don't think a partial enlightenment that realises this of only one state and that draws wild analogies between that state and completely different situations in the Americas and Australia while not even considering the much more direct ones in Lebanon right next door is a particularly valuable or helpful realisation since it just replaces one cognitive distortion with another.
posted by atrazine at 11:49 AM on November 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think it's probably better to just note that there are no sources available which do not have a particular point of view.
I think the best books on the Ottoman empire are: Osman's Dream generally, Quateret for the late period, and I know that Inalcik's The Ottoman Empire is highly regarded for the height of the empire.
I'm just glad that all at once, a decisive number of people here in the West started refusing to believe that Israel is the rightful owner of most of the land.
I would like them to take the next step and understand that all states are arbitrary, there's no such thing as the rightful owner of any land, but we're probably stuck with the nation state for now so we'd better stumble through and try not to hurt too many people too often. I don't think a partial enlightenment that realises this of only one state and that draws wild analogies between that state and completely different situations in the Americas and Australia while not even considering the much more direct ones in Lebanon right next door is a particularly valuable or helpful realisation since it just replaces one cognitive distortion with another.
posted by atrazine at 11:49 AM on November 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
The slogan "From the River to the Sea" is sometimes a call for genocide/ removal of the Jews and sometimes it isn't. It originated with Irgun and Jabotinsky (the ideological ancestor of Netanyahu / Likud) who wanted to establish Greater Israel free of Arabs from the River to the Sea. The opposition will attempt to graft meaning onto popular slogans as a way to undermine a movement. For example "Black Lives Matter" was used unambiguously by the BLM movement as a call to point out that we have not been valuing Black Lives equally with White or Blue lives, critics attempted to spin it into a racists statement that only Black Lives Matter. However in the case of "From the River to the Sea" the meaning is ambiguous because groups like Hamas use it to mean genocide. The fact that speakers have a plausible deniability because of the ambiguous meaning of the phrase brings to mind a number of racist dogwhistles like "states rights".
posted by interogative mood at 2:18 PM on November 27, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 2:18 PM on November 27, 2023
It originated with Irgun and Jabotinsky (the ideological ancestor of Netanyahu / Likud) who wanted to establish Greater Israel free of Arabs from the River to the Sea.
Historically, then, it is a call to genocide or at the very least ethnic cleansing, and has been used in exactly that way by the exact kind of asshole who considers genocide acceptable when performed in the pursuit of some "greater good".
I don't believe that most of the people currently chanting for peace and freedom from the river to the sea are using it in that way. I think that most such people would instantly agree that if anybody wants driving into the sea, it's not Jews and it's not Palestinian Arabs, it's murderous assholes who presume to act in our names.
posted by flabdablet at 10:47 PM on November 27, 2023
Historically, then, it is a call to genocide or at the very least ethnic cleansing, and has been used in exactly that way by the exact kind of asshole who considers genocide acceptable when performed in the pursuit of some "greater good".
I don't believe that most of the people currently chanting for peace and freedom from the river to the sea are using it in that way. I think that most such people would instantly agree that if anybody wants driving into the sea, it's not Jews and it's not Palestinian Arabs, it's murderous assholes who presume to act in our names.
posted by flabdablet at 10:47 PM on November 27, 2023
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from the article.
Napoleon had a knack for multiple self-serving interests that appear to be altruistic to people he controlled and yet another battle to his enemy.
it's not so much the reasoning and historical value of the proclamation it's the authenticity of the proclamation in that it may be a forgery.
posted by clavdivs at 3:21 PM on November 25, 2023 [2 favorites]