New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 157
One of the most contentious issues in the modern world, raging now for at least a century, is the issue of the legality of Jewish settlement and statehood in Israel. There are strong arguments on both sides of this difficult issue, but there’s a narrow question involved as well: Did the Jews move to the region legally (or are they illegal settler-colonialists)? In the effort to put some clarifying information about this issue into the world, host James Lindsay uses this episode of New Discourses Bullets to discuss a summary of the key points immediately surrounding the question. Join him to understand more about this difficult issue.
Additional episodes of New Discourses Bullets can be found here.
Subscribe to New Discourses Bullets on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, YouTube, Rumble, Odysee or by RSS.
2 comments
Omitted is Gurion & his fellow zionists poisoning wells to make it easier to take over towns.
James only mentioned this once, and I think it should be made clear: The Ottoman Empire was Turkic, not “Arab,” and had subdued many areas in the regions properly thought of as Arab.
The Arabs who (for instance) T.E. Lawrence worked with during WW1 were perfectly willing to fight against the Turks (who had allied themselves with the Germans).
Europe was in Arabia (or you could say the Middle East) we can assume because of oil. Lawrence had visited the region before the war as a student of archaeology. So there were other European interests in the region. But oil (the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was founded in 1909) must have been the major strategic interest.
Many years previously, however, the whole region had been invaded and subdued by Islamic “Arabs.” The cultural subtleties here are unknown to me. But after Muhammad, the Islamic armies moved very quickly in the Middle East, as well as beyond it, and had most of the region under the control of various Caliphates.
For the purposes of modern history we can say that the “real” Arabs were from Arabia, and that is where Muhammad was from, and thus Islam. But I can’t say that all the subsequent “Islamic” governments were Arab.
It might be noted that Lawrence was not in favor of the broad “mandate” that put European countries in control of much of the Middle East. He thought of the Saudi Arabs as legitimate allies who deserved their prior territories returned to them. Again, we can assume that Europe’s strategic interest was oil, and very little else. There was Christian/Judaic tradition, but I don’t know to what extent that played an important role.
I personally think that it was wrong for Europe to attempt to re-invade the Middle East and that it should have been left to the Arabs, Turks and Persians. But that does not necessarily mean that it would be in any less tumult than it is today. Islamic concepts of governance are quite antiquated, from a European perspective.
To take European “law” as the guiding standard for the Middle East seems incorrect to me. But the place overall is a legal swamp, governed for centuries by which army can win in battle. And I think that remains the most solid criterion for what is “right” in the Middle East. It is a fight to the death; that is the way of Islam and of its original people.