seems like the ‘safe’ public opinion is ‘we stand behind israel’ and the left opinion is palestinian support
i don’t live there i don’t have any particular interest or fascination with the region i don’t understand any of this pls don’t yell at me
seems like the ‘safe’ public opinion is ‘we stand behind israel’ and the left opinion is palestinian support
i don’t live there i don’t have any particular interest or fascination with the region i don’t understand any of this pls don’t yell at me
How long do you have? Here’s the very brief summary, and full disclaimer, I don’t have dog in this race.
Jerusalem is an important place for both Jews and Muslims.
They’ve been fighting over this space for two millenia. The Roman’s had it for a long time (Christian), the Ottomans had it for a long time (Islamic).
After WW1 and the Ottomans were defeated, it passed onto the Turkish (Islamic).
After WW2, with Britain now in control of it (Palestine) and with the surviving Jews now displaced worldwide with no country to live, the U.N decided to give Jews a new home and call this new place the State of Israel. They put Israel right in the middle of Palestine, which no Islamic nation could object to because they were all defeated in war.
Since then, Jews call Israel their home country. Surrounding Islamic countries don’t recognise Israel and want the Jews to leave.
Islamic nations including Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Syria have all gone to war with Israel (the 6-day War) to kick the Jews out. They’ve all lost because Israel is militarily backed by world powers. Israel is now a military powerhouse and have full control of the region.
Israel allow Muslim Palestinians small areas to live in the area, namely Gaza and the West Bank, but they’re not particularity nice to the Muslims living there. This is the Palestinian/Israeli war that’s been going on for almost a century.
This space is now two main religions crammed into a very small space. Both claim that it’s their ancestral land. Islamic nations don’t recognise Israel as a country. Most of the rest of the world does.
Israel has become a defensive fortress with nukes, and is surrounded by five countries that hate it. No Islamic nation is strong enough to beat Israel. Skirmishes and shit fighting continues. Sometimes it gets serious. This week it got really serious.
This fight will probably go on forever because of the religious significance of Jerusalem which neither the Israelis or Palestinians will ever give up claim to.
So who’s right and who’s wrong? Probably neither. Probably both. Probably humans are just shit.
EDIT: I know there’s lots of missing parts here but honestly, the full story would be a semester of university worth of info. I tried to keep this ultra-digestible, without bias or conspiracy or finger pointing.
Thank you below for the corrections.
The only thing I’d add is “not particularity nice to the Muslims living there” is putting it mildly.
Because there’s always tension, Israel takes its security very seriously. Unlike most countries, who put a token effort into security most of the time, Israel really is an armed fortress. That makes it very easy for someone with an itchy trigger finger to shoot someone who didnt deserve shooting. Even with the best will in the world, it would happen from time to time.
That, of course, makes the Palestinians very angry. An angry population poses more of a threat, and is more likely to do something genuinely aggressive. The Israeli security is thus tightened further, and their soldiers get even itchier trigger fingers and around and around we go.
It doesn’t take long before everyone involved has a personal grudge for one reason or another, and things can get really vicious.
Turkey never fought in ww2. Turkey was already after ww1 completely stripped of territory in the Levant. There also was no league of nations after ww2 anymore, but the UN was founded. No Arabic nations were defeated in ww2. Some of 4. happened after ww1 not 2. The creation of Israel was heavily objected by the neighboring Arabic nations, see 6-Day-War.
Ahh, fair. I got some WW1 and WW2 details mixed up. I’ll edit so I’m not feeding false info.
It’s been on and off and off and off and off and off and off and off and off and on again.
It’s kinda like if the Italians showed up en masse in England, claiming that they have a right to the place, because the romans once held that area.
The Jews weren’t the first people in Israel either, not even in biblical times.
Thank you for recognizing that this stuff is not going on for a century or two, not even for centuries, but for millenia. The conflicts in the mesopotamian area are probably the oldest in the world. Reducing it to what happened after or shortly before WWII is like telling the history of the world/the universe starting from when homo sapiens came into place.
Trying to figure out who this land belongs to seems futile. How many great grandfather generations do you have to go back to make this part of soil “yours”? Is 10 enough? 15? 20? Imagine your family lived in this part of the region since 1000 AD just for someone to come and say they’ve been here since 900 AD so you are technically a foreign invader and don’t belong there. Give back your house.
I sometimes wonder if they go back further than the religions the conflict is supposedly based on. I mean, tribal conflicts have always been a thing, right?
Very comprehensive write up, but i think something a lot of answers miss out on is…well, who was there before the romans? The romans called the area Judaea…land of the Jews. Before the Romans the Seleucid Empire had to deal with several uprisings led by…the Jews (the maccabean revolt). Its not enirely accurate id say to say the jews just materialised in the region in the 1950s…
Just a quick correction here. Judaea is actually named after Judah, son of Jacob.
The word ‘Jew’ comes from the place name Judaea, not the other way around.
Ooh i didnt know that TIL
There’s a lot right and a lot wrong in this