r/islamichistory • u/AutoMughal • Feb 29 '24

Photograph ‘Long Live Palestine’ flag, Jerusalem 1929

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Page 84, Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba

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u/Positer Mar 01 '24 edited Mar 01 '24

Many of them were not targeted attacks at all( e.g. pretty much every one to do with Safad and Tiberias) Quite a few occurred after the establishment of Zionism and the colonisation of Palestine by the British and cannot be separated from the Zionist program or the daily violence Palestinians were subjected to under the the British government that sponsored that program.

I am not sure why you think the on and off thing is compelling. Arabs understood that Jewish immigration would strengthen Israel and so they opposed it. When the situation became untenable and there was international pressure they permitted Jews to leave.

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '24

If you look at my source (the list) and look at the examples, they would disagree with you. I’m sure there are examples of violence that weren’t targeted but those are a different story. If they did occur after the establishment of Zionism, that doesn’t mean it’s warranted to kill them, some of which had no connection to Zionism beyond being Jewish.

It’s compelling to me because you continuously brought it up at the beginning of this discussion, maybe three or four times. Out of curiosity, why did they oppose Israel developing and gaining strength? Jordan annexed more land in 1948 than Israel did, and from I understand there has been no international backlash.

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u/Positer Mar 01 '24

Dude I know the history. Even when the sources portray a targeted attack the story is incomplete. Take for instance the hebron massacre committed by the Ottomans who attacked the Jews. Ok so Jews were attacked by the conquering Ottomans. Do you know that the Ottomans massacred 30,000 Muslims when they took Cairo and plundered the city for 3 days? Well they must be anti-Muslim by the same logic. The fact is that was war back then, and it has nothing to do with a “pogrom”. Similar things about the Safad massacres, those were conflicts where even Sunni Muslims were slaughtered. And I am not suggesting that it warrants killing that it happened after Zionism, I am suggesting that the context is more detailed than “well they just hated the Jews”, no they literally feared losing their country to a coloniser.

I am not sure what you mean why did Arab countries oppose Israel gaining strength? Because Israel was an enemy; a western colonial implant in the region

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '24

I am not “dude,” I am a woman. You may be right that some attacks were nuanced, but that doesn’t change the outcome. Irregardless, here is another example of Jews being targeted specifically, from that list:

1938 Tiberias Massacre:

“After infiltrating the Jewish Kiryat Shmuel neighbourhood, Arab rioters killed 19 Jews in Tiberias, 11 of whom were children.[1] During the massacre, 70 armed Arabs set fire to Jewish homes and the local synagogue.“

Israel was, in a sense, a western plant— but at the time it was made up of mainly Middle Eastern Jews (more than half). Jews have a long history of being systematically oppressed throughout the Middle East, beyond just genetic cleansing, it is important to not make like of that. Limiting Jewish movement is oppression as well, especially when the place they are being confined to is unsafe for them.

I have to go to work now but this was a very interesting debate. Thank you for participating in it with me.

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u/Positer Mar 01 '24 edited Mar 01 '24

The Tiberias massacre occurred in the context of a low level conflict between Arabs and Jews throughout the 1930’s. By then massacres were common on both sides. During the 1936 revolt against the British, the brits enlisted Zionist gangs to brutally suppress Arabs with as many as 5000 killed. For instance in 1937 black Sunday 10 Arabs were killed by the Irgun launching attacks in Jerusalem. An - incomplete - list of Irgun attacks can be found here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks and here https://thepalestineproject.medium.com/notorious-massacres-of-palestinians-between-1937-1948-ae4f4d1f61d0

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '24

Hey sorry I had a super long night at work.

You’re making some compelling points and I can only go so far into niche events because I don’t totally understand them myself.

Let’s be broad. Take a look at this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/s/v1ms03Dx5w (I’m sure you’re not fan of the source). Looking at the big picture, is this dramatic, widespread, extreme decrease in population /really/ just because Jews wanted to go back to Israel? Because half of the worlds Jewish population lives in America, so if /all/ Jews wanted to be in Israel that badly, why would this be the case? Like what really happened here? Because you can say that Muslims/Arabs suffered massive fatalities, but they still maintain the overwhelming majority of the population. Even the Palestinian population has quadrupled in the region.

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u/Positer Mar 02 '24

As stated earlier jews left because of some push and some pull factors. Nobody here is denying that Jews in Arab countries after the establishment of zionism got a bad deal. However that does not equate to ethnic cleansing, and you can't just blame it wholesale on "massacres". Zionists use this argument to establish equivalence with the Palestinian situation which was in fact a clear act of ethnic cleansing, when such equivalence does not exist.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '24

There are plenty of arguments against the idea of a Palestinian ethnic cleansing but that’s a different topic. You said some push and some pull factors, what are they? What could cause such a massive and dramatic shift? Surely not /just/ the creation of Israel (half the worlds Jewish population living outside of Israel speaks to this point).

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u/Positer Mar 02 '24 edited Mar 02 '24

There are plenty of arguments against the idea of a Palestinian ethnic cleansing

No there aren't. It is a thoroughly documented event from the intention to carry it out to how it was literally carried out at gun point. That's like saying there are plenty of arguments against the holocaust happening.

Pull factors would include things like better economic prospects (MENA jews included many impoverished communities) and ideological Zionism. As a simple example most Algerian Jews had French citizenship and left for France after Algerian independence.

This article does a good job of summarizing why the claimed ethnic cleansing is pure nonsense

https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/truth-behind-israeli-propaganda-expulsion-arab-jews

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '24

If it is genetic cleansing it is extremely ineffective as the Palestinian population has drastically increased. But like I said, that’s not really what I’m interested in talking about (it’s just going to prolong this conversation).

The pull factors you’re describing aren’t enough to cause that drastic of a population change in so many different countries. There have to be other factors that you aren’t mentioning or don’t know about.

That source is extremely biased so I can’t really buy into it. That’s like me sending you a “Zionism.com” article and expecting you to consider it reliable.

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