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Hamas/Israel conflict: news and discussion

Apologies if this has already been noted, but on Radio 4's "Sunday Programme" they played an excerpt from Benjamin Netanyahu launching the counter attack with a biiblical verse, 1 Samuel 15 2 (in Hebrew): 2 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. BBC Radio 4 - Sunday, Use of scripture in war rhetoric & Church of England same-sex blessings

According to R4 the dog whistle here is the next verse, which would have mightily excited Netanyahu's ultra right camp folliwers:
3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

If you like Samuel you'll love the psalms. Psalm 2 could be Israeli foreign policy right now (in fact it probably is).

Reading from the bible isn't going anywhere good in this situation though, eschatologists and end-times messianic types of every faith must be loving this shit.
 
Article in Guardian about schools not teaching about the history of the Middle East or about the Israel/ Palestine conflict.

This despite its a live issue for schoolchildren. As one teacher says this is more relevant to them than Henry the 8th and his wives.

One points out that part of reason its not taught is that teachers themselves were not taught it.

They mention two organisations who produce class materials. Very much of the liberal sort- lets look for peaceful alternatives.

One of the problems for the history of the Israel / Palestine , like the British Empire, is that sources have been kept under lock and key or been "lost"

Ilan Pappe and the New Israel historians had the luck to work when Israel records were more open to academics. These have been made more difficult to access now.

The other problem is that of "memoricide". N Masalha , the historian, says Palestinian history is actively sidelined.


Its typical of this country to shy away from actual history. Hoping some kind of watered down view will take its place. And all else fails just don't teach it.

Its no surprise to me that children don't like school. I didn't.
 
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Article in Guardian about schools not teaching about the history of the Middle East or about the Israel/ Palestine conflict.

This despite its a live issue for schoolchildren. As one teacher says this is more relevant to them than Henry the 8th and his wives.

One points out that part of reason its not taught is that teachers themselves were not taught it.

They mention two organisations who produce class materials. Very much of the liberal sort- lets look for peaceful alternatives.

One of the problems for the history of the Israel / Palestine , like the British Empire, is that sources have been kept under lock and key or been "lost"

Ilan Pappe and the New Israel historians had the luck to work when Israel records were more open to academics. These have been made more difficult to access now.

The other problem is that of "memoricide". N Masalha , the historian, says Palestinian history is actively sidelined.


Its typical of this country to shy away from actual history. Hoping some kind of watered down view will take its place. And all else fails just don't teach it.

Its no surprise to me that children don't like school. I didn't.

The problem is that history is treated as just another subject, so there will never be enough time to teach this or many other topics that kids need to know. In an ideal world it would be the framework around which every other subject was taught.
 
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Your going on ignore.

I think your trolling this thread and are being disingenuous when asked for your motives.

If I don't like a thread I put it on ignore or don't post on it.


I just think you are a bit dim. I've answered your questions several times. As to Larry, he is also not one of the brightest, which is probably why he finds it so difficult to actually ignore me.
 
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Article in Guardian about schools not teaching about the history of the Middle East or about the Israel/ Palestine conflict.

This despite its a live issue for schoolchildren. As one teacher says this is more relevant to them than Henry the 8th and his wives.

One points out that part of reason its not taught is that teachers themselves were not taught it.

They mention two organisations who produce class materials. Very much of the liberal sort- lets look for peaceful alternatives.

One of the problems for the history of the Israel / Palestine , like the British Empire, is that sources have been kept under lock and key or been "lost"

Ilan Pappe and the New Israel historians had the luck to work when Israel records were more open to academics. These have been made more difficult to access now.

The other problem is that of "memoricide". N Masalha , the historian, says Palestinian history is actively sidelined.


Its typical of this country to shy away from actual history. Hoping some kind of watered down view will take its place. And all else fails just don't teach it.

Its no surprise to me that children don't like school. I didn't.

It's gonna be hard to present an accurate history of Israel and Palestine that doesn't make Israel look bad.

Although nobody complains about bias when the Nazis or the slave trade or South African apartheid are presented as unambiguously bad. Well, nobody except racist loons anyway.
 
There was a similar issue with Russia/Ukraine in schools as well. Most kids knew less than nothing about that part of the world.
 
The problem is that history is treated as just another subject, so there will never be enough time to teach this or many other topics that kids need to know. In an ideal world it would be the framework around which every other subject was taught.
Spot on.
 
.


I just think you are a bit dim. I've answered your questions several times. As to Larry, who is also not one of the brightest, which is probably why he finds it so difficult to actually ignore me.
Considering the amount of utter rubbish you’ve posted, you really aren’t in any position to call anyone dim, Mr Pot.
 
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If you like Samuel you'll love the psalms. Psalm 2 could be Israeli foreign policy right now (in fact it probably is).

Reading from the bible isn't going anywhere good in this situation though, eschatologists and end-times messianic types of every faith must be loving this shit.
I used to read Genesis under the bedsheets as a youth. All this "and he went in unto" stuff - King James managed double meanings better than Round the Horne.
On the matter of serious consequences I didn't realise until last week that there are two Sodom stories in the Bible
From a Christian website (Bible.org):

The Relationship Between Genesis 19 and Judges 19

It is almost impossible for the reader of this text to miss its connection to the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19.1 In both texts, the sin of homosexuality and its judgment is a primary theme. In both accounts, the wicked men of the city wish to rape the male guest of an outsider who is sojourning in their city. Likewise, in both accounts the host offers his daughter(s)2 to the men of the city in place of his guest. There is no doubt that the author is informing the reader that Israel has now stooped to the moral level of the Canaanites.3

The moral I would have exptected the Israelis to ponder is this from Genesis chapter 18:
Abraham stood yet before the Lord.
23 And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?
24 Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?
25 That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
26 And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
27 And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes:
28 Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it.
29 And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty's sake.
30 And he said unto him, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there.
31 And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty's sake.
32 And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake.
33 And the Lord went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place.

We all know what happened next but how about Judges 19?
This extraordinary piece of text, is the Biblical equivalent of a video nasty and tells the story of the Levite's concubine
In summary a traveller comes to town, night falls and the traveller and his concubine are struck on the street with nowhere to stay.
An old farm labourer takes them in - but the men of the town come banging on the door demanding the young man be brought out so they can "know" him.
Instead the man offers the crowds his concubine - with obvious results.
In the morning the poor woman is on the point of death through this mass rape the Levite cuts her up into 12 pieces - one piece for each tribe of Israel.
"And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day"
The end.

I don't think scripture is a good guide to living - any more than Grimm's Fairy Tales or Jason and the Argonauts.
 
Is there a context behind this? Do they belong to a particular sect? Are they calling for something particular?
It looks like the same mix that we have had here. So Haredi Jews who are anti-Zionist and long-standing Palestinian supporters are out in numbers. They turned out here in the UK as well carrying exactly the same banners, but didn't bring their children. And then you'll have a mix of secular Jews who support the Palestinians for the reasons the man interviewed gave. Again, a good smattering of those here in the UK, including Jewish Voice for Labour plus a bunch of unaligned individuals.

Broadly, they will be calling for exactly the same things that everyone else on the march is calling for. Ceasefire, justice for Palestinians, stop killing babies. That sort of thing.
 
I used to read Genesis under the bedsheets as a youth. All this "and he went in unto" stuff - King James managed double meanings better than Round the Horne.
On the matter of serious consequences I didn't realise until last week that there are two Sodom stories in the Bible
From a Christian website (Bible.org):

The Relationship Between Genesis 19 and Judges 19

It is almost impossible for the reader of this text to miss its connection to the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19.1 In both texts, the sin of homosexuality and its judgment is a primary theme. In both accounts, the wicked men of the city wish to rape the male guest of an outsider who is sojourning in their city. Likewise, in both accounts the host offers his daughter(s)2 to the men of the city in place of his guest. There is no doubt that the author is informing the reader that Israel has now stooped to the moral level of the Canaanites.3

The moral I would have exptected the Israelis to ponder is this from Genesis chapter 18:
Abraham stood yet before the Lord.
23 And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?
24 Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?
25 That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
26 And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
27 And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes:
28 Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it.
29 And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty's sake.
30 And he said unto him, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there.
31 And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty's sake.
32 And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake.
33 And the Lord went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place.

We all know what happened next but how about Judges 19?
This extraordinary piece of text, is the Biblical equivalent of a video nasty and tells the story of the Levite's concubine
In summary a traveller comes to town, night falls and the traveller and his concubine are struck on the street with nowhere to stay.
An old farm labourer takes them in - but the men of the town come banging on the door demanding the young man be brought out so they can "know" him.
Instead the man offers the crowds his concubine - with obvious results.
In the morning the poor woman is on the point of death through this mass rape the Levite cuts her up into 12 pieces - one piece for each tribe of Israel.
"And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day"
The end.

I don't think scripture is a good guide to living - any more than Grimm's Fairy Tales or Jason and the Argonauts.
Blimey.
 
It looks like the same mix that we have had here. So Haredi Jews who are anti-Zionist and long-standing Palestinian supporters are out in numbers. They turned out here in the UK as well carrying exactly the same banners, but didn't bring their children. And then you'll have a mix of secular Jews who support the Palestinians for the reasons the man interviewed gave. Again, a good smattering of those here in the UK, including Jewish Voice for Labour plus a bunch of unaligned individuals.

Broadly, they will be calling for exactly the same things that everyone else on the march is calling for. Ceasefire, justice for Palestinians, stop killing babies. That sort of thing.
Thanks..
 
If you like Samuel you'll love the psalms. Psalm 2 could be Israeli foreign policy right now (in fact it probably is).

Reading from the bible isn't going anywhere good in this situation though, eschatologists and end-times messianic types of every faith must be loving this shit.
Psalm 2 - did you mean this? Seems very general as opposed to Samuel I quoted above which incited genocide.
Possibly you might be thinking of the last verse of Psalm 137 - which I suspect Boney M omitted

137 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
4 How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
7 Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
8 O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
 
Naming the victims and mapping the massacre of 7th October.

It's taken me a few days to get around to reading this. And I think it is important to understand the scale and brutality of the the 7th October attack. Just calling it a terrorist attack doesn't do justice to how big it was, the area affected, the amount of people murdered. The innocents killed do deserve to be remembered. And what a huge attack, how many Israelis were killed and kidnapped does need to be remembered as we look on in horror at Israel's response. Hamas must've known what to expect in response.

But as I read on, with Hamas committing this atrocity, Hamas terrorists committing that atrocity, terrorists committing another atrocity, a concern crept in. The way the events are written up develops a certain narrative about the attack. Who are these faceless terrorists that keep committing these atrocities, that keep getting neutralized or killed by heroic IDF soldiers? They appear like Indians in a 50s cowboy film, they're heroically gunned down like Nazis in a 60s war comic, they seem to jump out of nowhere like the xenomorphs in Aliens. They're motiveless monsters, nameless killing machines. They're just 'Hamas terrorists'.

Was everyone who attacked Israel on 7th October a Hamas terrorist? Were Islamic Jihad and other groups not involved? How did they get there? What were their aims? None of this is considered. And why should it be on a memorial site to those Israelis killed in the attack? We can't really expect the 1500 'Hamas terrorists' killed to have a red dot on the map, with where they were killed and where you can click to read a brief biography of how as a child they watched their parents blown apart by IDF bombs and grew up with their minds full of hatred and revenge.

But it does matter that this account is so one-sided considering the Israeli government response to the attack, it feeds into the Israeli government's attempt to dehumanise the 'Hamas terrorists' as they go about killing them and any innocent Palestinian, UN worker or Israeli hostage who happens to be in the way.

The whole Israeli-Palestine conflict is built on two one-sided accounts that pay no attention to each other: Jews fleeing a genocidal Europe after more than a millennium of oppression to seek somewhere they can be safe vs Palestinians ethnically cleansed from their land and brutalised in the enclaves the Israelis suffer them to live in. The only solution is to bring these two narratives together, solve the contradictions and allow Jews and Palestinians to live side by side in peace. This memorial site makes no attempt at this. In giving such a one-sided view it can only stoke anger, anger which in the current circumstances is being used by the Israeli government to attempt to justify its war crimes in Gaza.
 
Psalm 2 - did you mean this? Seems very general as opposed to Samuel I quoted above which incited genocide.
Possibly you might be thinking of the last verse of Psalm 137.

No, I meant psalm 2. But as I said I think it's really unhelpful to relate these (any really, but especially these) current events to scripture and I'm not going to dwell on it.
 
I don't think scripture is a good guide to living - any more than Grimm's Fairy Tales or Jason and the Argonauts.

Divorced of context and selectively quoted (as it tends to be), I agree. However there is a lot of value in it, and (as people who have attended Sunday Mass since the day after the Hamas attack might know) it can be particularly, almost shockingly, relevant.
 
From Oct 29 but still relevant:

I want to see Hamas’s leaders come out from their tunnels under hospitals and look their people, and the world’s media, in the eye and tell everyone why they thought it was such a great idea to mutilate and kidnap Israeli children and grandmothers and trigger this terrible blowback on the children and grandmothers of their Gaza neighbors — not to mention their own.

 
This quite general accepted idea that there are two equal sides to this conflict. Both of which are one sided needs to be questioned.

1. Anti semitism is a European problem. The Palestinian people should never have been expected to deal with it.

2. European Jews , understandably wanting to escape pogroms etc, favourite place to emigrate to was USA. Not Palestine.

3. Zionism pre dated holocaust. Pre Hitler many Jews in Europe were supporters of groups like the Bund. Not Zionism. In fact many Jews were not keen on Zionism. As felt European nations should accept Jews in Europe. That Zionism encouraged idea that Jewish people should not live in European nations.

4. Just started reading book on history of IDF. The writers parent were survivors of the Holocaust. After war they managed to get into Israel. It was not his father's first choice of places to go. When he got there he was obliged to join up to fight.He didn't want to and writer felt a lot of people of his parents generation were uncomfortable about surviving Holocaust going to Israel/ Palestine and being expected to clear out Palestinians to make themselves a home. Many of the Holocaust survivors ended up in areas cleared of Palestinians.

5. This isn't a conflict where two sides have equal right to claim this land.
 
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It's taken me a few days to get around to reading this. And I think it is important to understand the scale and brutality of the the 7th October attack. Just calling it a terrorist attack doesn't do justice to how big it was, the area affected, the amount of people murdered. The innocents killed do deserve to be remembered. And what a huge attack, how many Israelis were killed and kidnapped does need to be remembered as we look on in horror at Israel's response. Hamas must've known what to expect in response.

But as I read on, with Hamas committing this atrocity, Hamas terrorists committing that atrocity, terrorists committing another atrocity, a concern crept in. The way the events are written up develops a certain narrative about the attack. Who are these faceless terrorists that keep committing these atrocities, that keep getting neutralized or killed by heroic IDF soldiers? They appear like Indians in a 50s cowboy film, they're heroically gunned down like Nazis in a 60s war comic, they seem to jump out of nowhere like the xenomorphs in Aliens. They're motiveless monsters, nameless killing machines. They're just 'Hamas terrorists'.

Was everyone who attacked Israel on 7th October a Hamas terrorist? Were Islamic Jihad and other groups not involved? How did they get there? What were their aims? None of this is considered. And why should it be on a memorial site to those Israelis killed in the attack? We can't really expect the 1500 'Hamas terrorists' killed to have a red dot on the map, with where they were killed and where you can click to read a brief biography of how as a child they watched their parents blown apart by IDF bombs and grew up with their minds full of hatred and revenge.

But it does matter that this account is so one-sided considering the Israeli government response to the attack, it feeds into the Israeli government's attempt to dehumanise the 'Hamas terrorists' as they go about killing them and any innocent Palestinian, UN worker or Israeli hostage who happens to be in the way.

The whole Israeli-Palestine conflict is built on two one-sided accounts that pay no attention to each other: Jews fleeing a genocidal Europe after more than a millennium of oppression to seek somewhere they can be safe vs Palestinians ethnically cleansed from their land and brutalised in the enclaves the Israelis suffer them to live in. The only solution is to bring these two narratives together, solve the contradictions and allow Jews and Palestinians to live side by side in peace. This memorial site makes no attempt at this. In giving such a one-sided view it can only stoke anger, anger which in the current circumstances is being used by the Israeli government to attempt to justify its war crimes in Gaza.
We had the word 'but' earlier in the thread (as in 'this horror happened on the 7th October... but). As simply a way of posting on this thread, I've agonised about that word, when to use it, whether to use it etc. Needless to say, posting on a discussion board a world away from the conflict, my/our formulations around the word but are not that important. But we are posting, so, well, there is a need to think about how to discuss the horrors of the 7th and the horrors that have gone before and after. All that is a way of, I think, saying I agree that we have to keep a 3 dimensional view of what the attackers were trying to achieve and the way they saw the attack fitting into any kind of Palestinian struggle. But then how do you make any analytical point at the moment where numerous families are burying their dead on each side (or not even managing that in Gaza)? And maybe that's what it is about horrors like this: you need to be human, you need to acknowledge the pain and the horror, but you need to analyse. The attacks of the 7th were vile and the pain caused was beyond comprehension + the mass murder carried out against Gaza, which manages to even outstrip that horror. We are currently seeing the very worst of the Israeli state and Zionism and Hamas are parasitic Islamists (sort of), worsening the situation of the Palestinian people.

That's a long stream of consciousness, a snapshot of the contradictions I feel when saying anything on this conflict. That's why I feel the only starting point (or perhaps solid ground) is the history, post 1948 particularly, which gives you all you need to frame this conflict. The Nakba, the settlers, the ethnic cleansing, the role of the US and the west, the control of material resources, yes, all that. And also the pain that Israel has suffered in that period. None of that excuses an attack on music festivals, nor should it deaden us to the grief of Israeli parents.... but. Not an excuse, 'but' its how we got here. :(
 
From Oct 29 but still relevant:



India has an intellectual backdrop of pacifism, not just a legacy of MH Gandhi but also going through the Buddhist/Jain side of their culture.
As people have pointed out the current post 1948 culture of Israel is smiting - and many seem to find this backed up in scripture.
Couldn't find your quote on 29th Oct. It was clearly apt, but never going to happen. Nor does that justify attacking and killing thousands of innocent people.
 
It's gonna be hard to present an accurate history of Israel and Palestine that doesn't make Israel look bad.

Although nobody complains about bias when the Nazis or the slave trade or South African apartheid are presented as unambiguously bad. Well, nobody except racist loons anyway.

I think this is spot on. And an unsaid reason schools avoid it.

History of this has changed radically over last thirty years.

Like changes in how British Empire is seen historically

Pre this present violence I decided to read up more on Israel/ Palestine as it came up a lot with argument about anti semitism and Labour party.

Reading Israeli and Palestinian historian I can't see how one can teach the origins of this conflict and the level of violence associated with it without seeing the expulsion of Palestinians in 48 was true, that the Balfour declaration ignored the reality of the majority population and that Palestinians have been subject to oppressive conditions in Occupied territories. The list could go on.

Despite the occasional violence on Palestinian side the losers over past 75 years have been Palestinians.

That the "international community" has neglected the plight of Palestine.

I see David Lammy saying in Observer today that not enough attention has been paid to Palestinians. And it's all going to change with Starmer. Whatever.

So it actually wouldn't be difficult to teach history of this conflict. Given that there is a lot of material available.

Like teaching about the British empire the problem isn't the lack of academic historical books. It's the unpalatable truths they point to.
 
We had the word 'but' earlier in the thread (as in 'this horror happened on the 7th October... but). As simply a way of posting on this thread, I've agonised about that word, when to use it, whether to use it etc. Needless to say, posting on a discussion board a world away from the conflict, my/our formulations around the word but are not that important. But we are posting, so, well, there is a need to think about how to discuss the horrors of the 7th and the horrors that have gone before and after. All that is a way of, I think, saying I agree that we have to keep a 3 dimensional view of what the attackers were trying to achieve and the way they saw the attack fitting into any kind of Palestinian struggle. But then how do you make any analytical point at the moment where numerous families are burying their dead on each side (or not even managing that in Gaza)? And maybe that's what it is about horrors like this: you need to be human, you need to acknowledge the pain and the horror, but you need to analyse. The attacks of the 7th were vile and the pain caused was beyond comprehension + the mass murder carried out against Gaza, which manages to even outstrip that horror. We are currently seeing the very worst of the Israeli state and Zionism and Hamas are parasitic Islamists (sort of), worsening the situation of the Palestinian people.

That's a long stream of consciousness, a snapshot of the contradictions I feel when saying anything on this conflict. That's why I feel the only starting point (or perhaps solid ground) is the history, post 1948 particularly, which gives you all you need to frame this conflict. The Nakba, the settlers, the ethnic cleansing, the role of the US and the west, the control of material resources, yes, all that. And also the pain that Israel has suffered in that period. None of that excuses an attack on music festivals, nor should it deaden us to the grief of Israeli parents.... but. Not an excuse, 'but' its how we got here. :(

The one thing Zionists and Palestinians agree on is that Zionism was not a response to the Holocaust. This is a European gentile myth.
 
Article in Guardian about schools not teaching about the history of the Middle East or about the Israel/ Palestine conflict.

Nothing I say here dismisses what you and others have said. But I would like to name an exception, and it is the only reason I enjoyed going to secondary school.

Schools, teachers, choose syllabuses some times. I did the best History O level ever. I have only ever met one person (possibly on here?) who knows what I'm talking about because they did it too.

Our teacher chose something like 'The Southern Joint Universities Matriculation Board'. He'd obviously researched it. In my O level we had a choice of 2 of 3 subjects to study (on top of the obligatory history of medicine which is still on all GCSE papers to this day, 50 years on). The subjects were:

The Irish Question
The rise of Communist China
The Middle-East Conflict.

We did the first two. But the third was available, if only on some obscure examination board hardly anyone had heard of.

I loved it. I had a brilliant teacher who let me bang on about the IRA as long as I provided sources. He taught me a lot. I just assumed he was a leftie.

Fast forward a couple of years. I find he's standing for a Councillor seat. For the Conservative Party.

Mind blown, to this day actually. I cannot deny he was a brilliant teacher.

And Palestine was on the syllabus.
 
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