Jordan was never considered Palestine, ever. The British Mandate of Palestine was only what was west of the Jordan river. East of that was called Transjordan and was semi-autonomous, being ruled by the Hashemite tribe (current rulers of Jordan).
This is flat out wrong. Transjordan only came into being once the British gave Jordan to the Hashemites. The Hashemites come from what is now Saudi Arabia, not Jordan. They lost a war to the Saudis. In order to keep the peace, the British then cut the mandate of Palestine into two parts and called the eastern part "Transjordan". The British occupation of the Southern part of what was Ottoman Syria commenced in 1917. Transjordan was claimed by the Hashemites in 1920. The Hashemites were not recognized as the officail independent government until 1946.
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Originally Posted by _Q_
1967 being a war of self defence? Please. A pre-emptive strike can hardly ever be called a war of self defence. The Arabs were not ready for war and thus lost in 6 days.
So when all the arab armies moved their entire air forces and land armies to Israel's borders, that wasn't considered an act of aggression? This happened despite the fact Egypt was at war with Yemen at the time. The reason Israel won that war so decisively is that all of the arab air forces were in one place on their border. They were easily able to wipe them out and then they claimed total air supremacy. If the air forces had been spread out, as you would expect in a force that was not about to invade their neighbours, the Israelis would never have been able to wipe them out.
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Originally Posted by _Q_
To the third video, it wasn't 500,000 Palestinian refugees. It was 700,000. That's the internationally recognized number. Secondly, the Jews became refugees because of the creation of Israel. The Palestinians became refugees also because of the creation of Israel. Seems as though the creation of Israel kind of disturbed the order of the region, does it not?
You can't blame Israel for the arabs nations expelling the Jews. The Jews became refugees because the arab nations chose to expel them. Many Jews also chose to leave on their own. They'd been suffering from hundreds and hundreds of years of oppression and brutality at the hands of various muslim rulers.
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This is flat out wrong. Transjordan only came into being once the British gave Jordan to the Hashemites. The Hashemites come from what is now Saudi Arabia, not Jordan. They lost a war to the Saudis. In order to keep the peace, the British then cut the mandate of Palestine into two parts and called the eastern part "Transjordan". The British occupation of the Southern part of what was Ottoman Syria commenced in 1917. Transjordan was claimed by the Hashemites in 1920. The Hashemites were not recognized as the officail independent government until 1946.
Transjordan was created as you said in 1920. Three years after the British mandate of the region (what was known as OETA south). That's a full 28 years before the creation of Israel. British Mandate of Palestine was only what is current day Israel, West Bank and Gaza.
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Originally Posted by blankall
So when all the arab armies moved their entire air forces and land armies to Israel's borders, that wasn't considered an act of aggression? This happened despite the fact Egypt was at war with Yemen at the time. The reason Israel won that war so decisively is that all of the arab air forces were in one place on their border. They were easily able to wipe them out and then they claimed total air supremacy. If the air forces had been spread out, as you would expect in a force that was not about to invade their neighbours, the Israelis would never have been able to wipe them out.
Sure. I'll concede that the Arabs were ready for war. But calling it an act of self defence by Israel is far from the truth. They prepared for the war as much as Egypt, Jordan and Syria did. If anything, both sides knew this war was coming.
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Originally Posted by blankall
You can't blame Israel for the arabs nations expelling the Jews. The Jews became refugees because the arab nations chose to expel them. Many Jews also chose to leave on their own. They'd been suffering from hundreds and hundreds of years of oppression and brutality at the hands of various muslim rulers.
Yes I can. Israel was created, Jews were expelled. Those were the events. Simple as that. Before Israel was created, Jews lived in Arab countries, afterwards, most left.
Sure. I'll concede that the Arabs were ready for war. But calling it an act of self defence by Israel is far from the truth. They prepared for the war as much as Egypt, Jordan and Syria did. If anything, both sides knew this war was coming.
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Lets see, the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq was about 465,000 men 2800 tanks, 800 aircraft, about 2000 pieces of artillary and over 3000 apc's against Israel's entire army which had maybe 264,000 (probably a third of that were actual combat arms) less then a third of the tanks less then a quarter of the aircraft and very little in the way of long range artillary.
They were facing an enemy amassed on their borders with the classic more then 3-1 odds in their favor on multiple fronts.
If they would have done a static defense inside of Israel and waited for the Arabs to come they would have been crushed under the sheer number of arab troops.
They had penatrated the Egyptian leadership and knew that the attacks were coming and when so of course they preemtively attacked to get the initiative in a war that they would have lost otherwise.
They were facing a side that openly declared that they wanted to exterminate Isreal and its Jewish population.
Your point makes no sense, of course a country in a ocean of hostile nations is going to prepare for war. Of course a country facing a army with a huge advantage in all weapons platforms isn't going to wait until those forces cross the border and take the initiative.
Your first time explaining this was very dishonest, your second time was goofy.
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Transjordan was created as you said in 1920. Three years after the British mandate of the region (what was known as OETA south). That's a full 28 years before the creation of Israel. British Mandate of Palestine was only what is current day Israel, West Bank and Gaza.
No. It was known as the British Mandate for Palestine or the Mandate for Palestine. When the Mandate was officially recongized by the League of Nations in 1922, there were seperate areas called "Palestine" and "Transjordan" within the "Madate of Palestine". However, the Sykes-Picot agreement referred to the entire area as "Palestine". Even after 1922, Transjordan remained a state within the "British Mandate of Palestine", and, as previously stated, did not gain independence until the 1940s. I think the confusion here is caused by the fact that the Mandate of Palestine, was eventually split into several parts before being disolved entirely. It was possible to have a mandate which included a quasi-independent kingdom within it.
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Originally Posted by _Q_
Sure. I'll concede that the Arabs were ready for war. But calling it an act of self defence by Israel is far from the truth. They prepared for the war as much as Egypt, Jordan and Syria did. If anything, both sides knew this war was coming.
You don't bring your entire army to the borders of another nation unless you plan to invade. There was most certainly tension between the nations, and war could have broken out at any time. It was the act mobilizing armies and bringing them to the Israel border that directly led to military conflict.
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Originally Posted by _Q_
Yes I can. Israel was created, Jews were expelled. Those were the events. Simple as that. Before Israel was created, Jews lived in Arab countries, afterwards, most left.
Firstly, the Jewish expulsions had started prior to the creation of Israel. Secondly, blaming further expulsions on Israel is ridiculous. It's like saying, a black kid hit me. Then I go around hitting all the smaller black kids. Now me attacking the smaller kids, is the fault of the one that hit me. I'm sorry, people take responsibility for their own actions. Israel did not hold a gun to the heads of the arabs leaders and force them to strip their Jewish populations of basic rights. They did so because they were bigots. Ironically enough, these refugees now make up the majority of the Jewish population of Israel. Israel would not exist without these expulsions.
You don't bring your entire army to the borders of another nation unless you plan to invade. There was most certainly tension between the nations, and war could have broken out at any time. It was the act mobilizing armies and bringing them to the Israel border that directly led to military conflict.
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If you read the history of the 1967 war, its where the Mossad cemented its reputation as the best intelligence agency on the planet. They had the Egyptian and Syrian government penetrated to the highest letter, they knew the dates of the invasion, they knew the go codes for the Egyptian and Jordainian military. They knew about Operation Khalid which laid out the Arab armies time lines into Israel.
They had captured war plans from Jordan.
They knew the invasion was coming, and they knew that they couldn't fight a defensive war against the combined might of the Arab armies.
While the military was incredibly bold and took the initiative and never gave it up, if you look at the war as a total, the Arab's lost because they lost the intelligence battle badly.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
If you read the history of the 1967 war, its where the Mossad cemented its reputation as the best intelligence agency on the planet. They had the Egyptian and Syrian government penetrated to the highest letter, they knew the dates of the invasion, they knew the go codes for the Egyptian and Jordainian military. They knew about Operation Khalid which laid out the Arab armies time lines into Israel.
They had captured war plans from Jordan.
They knew the invasion was coming, and they knew that they couldn't fight a defensive war against the combined might of the Arab armies.
While the military was incredibly bold and took the initiative and never gave it up, if you look at the war as a total, the Arab's lost because they lost the intelligence battle badly.
I don't disagree at all.
The issue was whether or not the Israelis actions could be consdiered defensive despite the fact they made the first strike. By the time the pre-emptive strike had come, Egypt had almost all of their soldiers in the Sinai, despite the fact they were still fighting a war with Yemen. Syria, Jordan, and Iraq had also amassed large forces on the Israeli borders. A week prior to the Israeli strike, Jordan had called up reservists and Iraq had moved its own troops into Jordan. These are simply not the actions of nations who are taking a defensive stance.
I don't see anything in the rules of war or international warfare that says a nation has to wait until they've been attacked and are potentially overwhelmed. In other words, a pre-emptive atack can most certainly be declared defensive, if the other side has taken obvious steps towards an invasion.
The issue was whether or not the Israelis actions could be consdiered defensive despite the fact they made the first strike. By the time the pre-emptive strike had come, Egypt had almost all of their soldiers in the Sinai, despite the fact they were still fighting a war with Yemen. Syria, Jordan, and Iraq had also amassed large forces on the Israeli borders. A week prior to the Israeli strike, Jordan had called up reservists and Iraq had moved its own troops into Jordan. These are simply not the actions of nations who are taking a defensive stance.
I don't see anything in the rules of war or international warfare that says a nation has to wait until they've been attacked and are potentially overwhelmed. In other words, a pre-emptive atack can most certainly be declared defensive, if the other side has taken obvious steps towards an invasion.
In this case the only option that ISrael had was a pre-emtive strike that knocked the Arab armies off balance, and gave Israel the initiative.
To fight a defensive war in that case would have been the end of Israel.
It was a mistake that almost lead to a disaster in the 1973 war when Israel decided to throw away their pre-emptive strike capability and was sent reeling before regrouping and smashing a badly lead Arab army.
I would class the 1967 actions as the only defense that Israel could have won with.
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The issue was whether or not the Israelis actions could be consdiered defensive despite the fact they made the first strike. By the time the pre-emptive strike had come, Egypt had almost all of their soldiers in the Sinai, despite the fact they were still fighting a war with Yemen. Syria, Jordan, and Iraq had also amassed large forces on the Israeli borders. A week prior to the Israeli strike, Jordan had called up reservists and Iraq had moved its own troops into Jordan. These are simply not the actions of nations who are taking a defensive stance.
I don't see anything in the rules of war or international warfare that says a nation has to wait until they've been attacked and are potentially overwhelmed. In other words, a pre-emptive atack can most certainly be declared defensive, if the other side has taken obvious steps towards an invasion.
Let me put it this way. Say you get info that your next door neighbour has plans to come over to your house and murder you. You decide to strike first and go over to his house and kill him when he's not expecting it. Then you decide to set up shop in his living room just so his children "don't get any ideas". Was that an act of self defence? No, you attacked first. Was it justified? Sure. But calling it an act of self defence is misleading. Is staying in the living room helping the situation? Probably not, those kids probably hate you too now.
I'm just not a fan of Israel constantly playing the victim card. Man up and say it as it is. "We pre-emptively attacked the surrounding Arab countries because they planned on exterminating us". It was a war that both sides prepared for and Israel won because they knew it was coming and prepared accordingly.
Firstly, the Jewish expulsions had started prior to the creation of Israel. Secondly, blaming further expulsions on Israel is ridiculous. It's like saying, a black kid hit me. Then I go around hitting all the smaller black kids. Now me attacking the smaller kids, is the fault of the one that hit me. I'm sorry, people take responsibility for their own actions. Israel did not hold a gun to the heads of the arabs leaders and force them to strip their Jewish populations of basic rights. They did so because they were bigots. Ironically enough, these refugees now make up the majority of the Jewish population of Israel. Israel would not exist without these expulsions.
The vast majority of the expulsions occured after the UN vote in 1947. You also can't in the same argument say that all Jews can't be held accountable for the actions of a few Zionists and then argue that the expulsion of Palestinians is justified because their Arab brothers decided to expel some Jews. What Iraq, Syria, Egypt, etc. did with their Jewish population is not the Palestinian's problem.
Let me put it this way. Say you get info that your next door neighbour has plans to come over to your house and murder you. You decide to strike first and go over to his house and kill him when he's not expecting it. Then you decide to set up shop in his living room just so his children "don't get any ideas". Was that an act of self defence? No, you attacked first. Was it justified? Sure. But calling it an act of self defence is misleading. Is staying in the living room helping the situation? Probably not, those kids probably hate you too now.
I'm just not a fan of Israel constantly playing the victim card. Man up and say it as it is. "We pre-emptively attacked the surrounding Arab countries because they planned on exterminating us". It was a war that both sides prepared for and Israel won because they knew it was coming and prepared accordingly.
So instead you should sit in your house as 10 of your neighbours come into your house from different directions and slaughter your wife, kids and pets and then move into your house.
And the neighbourhood police are willing to turn a blind eye on this.
And yes, after the activities of the Arab states in 48 and after that, of course Israel is going to take a buffer zone, it would be stupid not to.
The Israeli actions were the only reasonable ones, and based on the situation facing them by a aggressive alliance of enemies that were going to fight not a war of conquest but a war of annihalation, Israel's actions were not only the only one that they could take, but the only moral one that they could take in defense of their people.
If the Arab states had been allowed to set up and site their artillary, and effectively push their armored spear heads into Israel and keep the initiative the history that we would be reading today would be about the extermination of Israel and the death of their civillians in mass numbers.
The Arab states had done nothing to show that they could be trusted.
The Arab states had a more then 3-1 advantage in combined arms and about a 5-1 advantage in long range tube artillary.
Israel wouldn't have stood a chance if they had tried to defend in their own borders.
I'm not getting your poiitn as it makes no sense. From a military standpoint defense is always based around offense, the french learned that lesson the hard way as did other nations facing the German Blitzkrieg.
The Israeli's also knew that the Arab states officer corps had been lavishly trained in Soviet doctrine which involves a combined arms kitchen sink high speed attak designed to hit everywhere at one, and you can do that with a maassive advantage in tanks and arty and aircraft.
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Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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The vast majority of the expulsions occured after the UN vote in 1947. You also can't in the same argument say that all Jews can't be held accountable for the actions of a few Zionists and then argue that the expulsion of Palestinians is justified because their Arab brothers decided to expel some Jews. What Iraq, Syria, Egypt, etc. did with their Jewish population is not the Palestinian's problem.
Your oversimplifying and leaving out details. A Palestinian refugee is defiend as anyone who had been in what is now Israel for 2 years or any of their descendants. Meanwhile you also have rapid expansion of the Palestinian arab population between 1850 and 1949, which cannot be explained by natural growth alone. In other words, Arabs are immigrating into ISrael from other parts of the Ottoman Empire as ecnomic conditions improve.
Also, no one is saying the Palestinians and Jews who were expelled for anything are in the right or wrong. Both are victims. People are pointing out the difference in the way the Arabs and the Israelis have dealt with the refugee problem. The Israelis gave full citizenship to their refugees. The arab nations denied Palestinians all rights in order to keep them as refugees and pawns.
Take Yasser Arafat example. He has a grandmother who is Egyptian. He was born and raised in Egypt. Prior to 1949, arabs moved freely between Egypt and what is now Israel as it was all one country. After 1949, they create special rules about who is a refugee. That means that since Arafat has some ancestors who had been in Israel for more than 2 years, he is now denied the right to citenzenship anywhere else in the arab world. It's not his fault, but it's not entirely Israel's either.
And yes, the Palestinians themselves do take some responsibility. They fought alongside the arab armies, whose goal was to expel all Jews from Israel. They participated in riots and pogroms directed at their Jewish neighbours. There are recorded instances of Palestinians leaving their homes, so that when invading armies came through, they could indiscriminantly kill everyone without harming arabs.
What we have here is more in line with a "population swap". The kind of swap that has happened in virtually every nation founding throughout history. It's not as simple as Jews through arabs out of their land. Given the long history of conflict, Israel has a right to defensible borders.
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^^ Maybe it's just semantics, but it's still not self defence. Every war can be construed as self defence if this was the case.
No....when an invading army is about to atack and you attack first, that's entirely different from attacking the other side unprovoked. The mobilazation of the army is an act of aggression.
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Let me put it this way. Say you get info that your next door neighbour has plans to come over to your house and murder you. You decide to strike first and go over to his house and kill him when he's not expecting it. Then you decide to set up shop in his living room just so his children "don't get any ideas". Was that an act of self defence? No, you attacked first. Was it justified? Sure. But calling it an act of self defence is misleading. Is staying in the living room helping the situation? Probably not, those kids probably hate you too now.
I'm just not a fan of Israel constantly playing the victim card. Man up and say it as it is. "We pre-emptively attacked the surrounding Arab countries because they planned on exterminating us". It was a war that both sides prepared for and Israel won because they knew it was coming and prepared accordingly.
If I found out my neighbour had bought the weapons, drawn the plans, and got together with my other neighbours to kill my family, you'd better believe I'd be justified in attacking first. And it would most certainly be considered an act of self-defence.
Furthermore, I would most definitely set up shop in their living room. I'd set up shop anywhere that increased my chances of defending future attack.
^^ Maybe it's just semantics, but it's still not self defence. Every war can be construed as self defence if this was the case.
No its not semantics at all, it was a situation where at least 3 armies of conquest were sitting on the borders of Israel with war plans a jump off time table and war shots loaded.
Not every war has that as a precursor.
The Arab states were already stoked up to go to war, they were innocent lambs waiting to be slaughtered.
It was entirely self defense by Israel and the only way that they could possibly defend their nation.
Again if they had stayed in their borders and waited for the Arab armies to attack from three borders they would have been crushed under and Israel would not exist today.
In order to defend their nation they had to knock their foe who massivewly outnumbered them off balance and take the initiative.
There was no question that the attack was coming.
You have a very naive viewpoint in this case.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
If I found out my neighbour had bought the weapons, drawn the plans, and got together with my other neighbours to kill my family, you'd better believe I'd be justified in attacking first. And it would most certainly be considered an act of self-defence.
Furthermore, I would most definitely set up shop in their living room. I'd set up shop anywhere that increased my chances of defending future attack.
On top of that you know that the police aren't going to come or are silently on side with your neighbours. on top of this, it isn't the first time that your neighbour has decided to exterminate your family, they tired it before and you were fortunate to come out alive, so you know what your neighbour is capable of and what they want to do to your family.
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Your oversimplifying and leaving out details. A Palestinian refugee is defiend as anyone who had been in what is now Israel for 2 years or any of their descendants. Meanwhile you also have rapid expansion of the Palestinian arab population between 1850 and 1949, which cannot be explained by natural growth alone. In other words, Arabs are immigrating into ISrael from other parts of the Ottoman Empire as ecnomic conditions improve..
I would hardly call the population expansion rapid.
here is every reason to believe that consequential immigration of Arabs into and within Palestine occurred during the Ottoman and British mandatory periods. Among the most compelling arguments in support of such immigration is the universally acknowledged and practiced linkage between regional economic disparities and migratory impulses. The precise magnitude of Arab immigration into and within Palestine is, as Bachi noted, unknown. Lack of completeness in Ottoman registration lists and British Mandatory censuses, and the immeasurable illegal, unreported, and undetected immigration during both periods make any estimate a bold venture into creative analysis. In most cases, those venturing into the realm of Palestinian demography—or other demographic analyses based on very crude data—acknowledge its limitations and the tentativeness of the conclusions that may be drawn.[38]
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"[B]etween 1800 and 1914, the Muslim population had a yearly average increase of an order of magnitude of roughly 6-7 per thousand. This can be compared to the very crude estimate of about 4 per thousand for the "less developed countries" of the world (in Asia, Africa, and Latin America) between 1800 and 1910. It is possible that some part of the growth of the Muslim population was due to immigration. However, it seems likely that the dominant determinant of this modest growth was the beginning of some natural increase."[40]
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From analyses of rates of increase of the Muslim population of the three Palestinian sanjaks, one can say with certainty that Muslim immigration after the 1870s was small. Had there been a large group of Muslim immigrants their numbers would have caused an unusual increase in the population and this would have appeared in the calculated rate of increase from one registration list to another... Such an increase would have been easily noticed; it was not there.[42]
The argument that Arab immigration somehow made up a large part of the Palestinian Arab population is thus statistically untenable. The vast majority of the Palestinian Arabs resident in 1947 were the sons and daughters of Arabs who were living in Palestine before modern Jewish immigration began. There is no reason to believe that they were not the sons and daughters of Arabs who had been in Palestine for many centuries.[43]
So your idea that the vast majority of Palestinians were Arab immigrants is at best inconclusive and and worst a flat out lie. Just because Arafat had an Egyptian Grandmother it doesn't mean that every Palestinian is like him.
If I found out my neighbour had bought the weapons, drawn the plans, and got together with my other neighbours to kill my family, you'd better believe I'd be justified in attacking first. And it would most certainly be considered an act of self-defence.
Furthermore, I would most definitely set up shop in their living room. I'd set up shop anywhere that increased my chances of defending future attack.
Notwithstanding the robotic judgment call* that is pivotal for the proposition in your first paragraph, your overall stance necessarily prescribes escalation. It's a ratchet that can't be released.
* No group of human beings is rational enough to properly navigate the evidence retrieval and decision-making process that you're describing.
