Jack Ross writes:
Leaving all moral and ethical considerations aside, what Herzl proposed in 1897, that all of the world's then-20 million Jews settle in a historic Palestine then populated by 1 million Arabs, while practically absurd, was theoretically viable, as it conformed to the 20:1 ratio which was constant in the settling of the American frontier.
While it is undoubtedly deplorable that such violence was visited upon 2-4 million Native Americans by 80-100 million Caucasians, all told over the course of the 19th century, the sheer numbers made the ultimate outcome inevitable--even in the event that there had been greater justice to the Natives.
The Zionist case could not be more different, as the series of maps showing the shift in proportions of Jewish-owned land since the end of the Mandate make clear. The Zionists have always had to by hook and crook barely hold on to their viability, from their cynical support of partition only so they could buy some time for the Nakba to their clamor in the 80s and 90s for fresh Soviet blood to hold on for another generation.
NOONE was always there.
But, it is a truth that ALL Europeans in North America live on land that was conquered and stolen, and successfully rationalize it.
Good point, Jack. Another analogy, involving the other end of the demographic seesaw, is former apartheid South Africa. There, whites were outnumbered by blacks about five to one.
To bolster their own team, they offered Coloured and Asian parliaments to two other minority groups, while partitioning blacks into rural bantustans which never achieved international recognition. By this legerdemain, the demographic scales were tipped closer to one-to-one.
Nevertheless, it didn't work. Despite the offer of plush work assignments to visiting Europeans, the all-important white immigration did not increase, and even fell short of emigration some years.
If you want to monitor Israel's vital signs for the approaching end, just compare Jewish immigration to Jewish emigration. With most Israelis having family elsewhere in the world, the outflow will turn into a torrent just before Israel-as-we-know-it is replaced with a one-person, one-vote unified state. Bring it, Lordy …
Ah the great Jack Ross speaks. The world shudders.
"…the outflow will turn into a torrent just before Israel-as-we-know-it is replaced with a one-person, one-vote unified state. Bring it, Lordy …"
then what happens to all of our israel bonds??
Bad analogy. The US avoided the mire of Israel and South Africa by adopting a policy of assimilation towards the inhabitants of conquered or newly acquired territories.
As nation-buiding goes, I think the US record is quite good. Putting states together is always ugly, but if you care about keeping people from stealing things, like land, you must have a state capable of enforcing laws equally.
Israel would have saved itself a lot of grief if it had followed the US model.
Good Analogy Jack. And to expand it consider this:
The US government constantly made treaties with the displaced native americans—which the waves of settlers and their financial backers—hence the gov't itself, failed to honor.
Nowadays, as Israel's major backer, the US is virtually the sole source of Israel's ability to expand or even hold on. We give them a market to export to, allowed them to finance their nukes (after a nasty fight with Kennedy), let them consort with a powerful lobby here (no other country has such prerogative), and let's not revisit the massive aid package.
But those Palestinians are really something. They refuse to die by smallpox. They can't assimilate into Israeli culture. Their reservations are immobile, and populations are growing. They may not have casinos, but they've got tunnels. No arrows, only rockets. *THEY* seem to be the ones in the grip of manifest destiny. So maybe the analogy only goes so far.
Its bad on two fronts: Its a logical fallacy, and the analog is very weak on account of disease
Tu Quoque
Plus, 90 to 95 percent of the Native Americans inhabitants died very rapidly from smallpox.
As is mentioned in 1491:
Smallpox was only the first epidemic. Typhus (probably) in 1546, influenza and smallpox together in 1558, smallpox again in 1589, diphtheria in 1614, measles in 1618—all ravaged the remains of Incan culture. Dobyns was the first social scientist to piece together this awful picture, and he naturally rushed his findings into print. Hardly anyone paid attention. But Dobyns was already working on a second, related question: If all those people died, how many had been living there to begin with? Before Columbus, Dobyns calculated, the Western Hemisphere held ninety to 112 million people. Another way of saying this is that in 1491 more people lived in the Americas than in Europe.Not only does the analog suffer from very poor weakness and intense incongruencies, but it is, at its heart, a logical fallacy.
They may not have casinos
They had casinos. They lost them during the Intifada
Html bold fix
maybe
grrr
grrr…umph
Aaaarrrgh
bold
maybe unbold
Occupation policies keeps increasing
The danger of outbreaks of infection diseases among the civilian population in Gaza keeps intensifying, particularly in the densely-populated cities and refugee camps. The Israeli occupation policy-makers knew this would happen and have done virtually nothing to prevent it.
Is this a new version of giving native Americans blankets?
Is this a new version of giving native Americans blankets?
—
The first instance of this was with the French and Indian war, hundreds of years after disease inadvertently claimed its victims.
Jack Ross, watch the use of analogy and be careful that it isn't so divergent next time.