In the short (5.5 minutes) video above, an articulate, objective, unpretentious podcaster explains the origins of the possibly endless Israel-Palestinian conflict in terms even “The Squad” should be able to understand (but won’t). He doesn’t even have to go into more recent events, like the Palestinian reliance on terrorism for the last 50 years, or point out that Israel took over Gaza after it successfully defended itself against a coordinated, unprovoked attack, the second, by surrounding Arab nations, or dwell on the fact (there’s that word again) that the group still refuses to accept the legitimacy of the nation of Israel and is pledged to wipe it from the map.
It is a quick, accurate (if simplified) history lesson that should be mandatory viewing for all of the young, unethical (incompetent, unfair, irresponsible…) bigots and fools cheering on Hamas at colleges and universities. As for the alleged American “intellectuals” who are posting pictures of the Hamas paragliders with machine guns as an image of liberation, I’m not sure what can help them re-enter reality…or decency.
Ethics Alarms 
This guy is very good. His analysis of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is generally spot on, and when he makes a mistake he admits it.
The only thing missing from this diplomatic history is mention of the repeated attempts by Israel, its Western backers, and other Arab states to compromise with the Palestinians in attempts to reach some kind of equilibrium. To paraphrase someone more clever than me, “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
It’s easy to know this will never end. Hamas *cannot* compromise – it is in their mission statement to destroy Israel. And the Palestinians keep voting for pro-Hamas leaderhship.
Until the Palestinians oust Hamas…this will never end.
That’s pretty good, understanding that the guy had limited time, but there is still further back to go from World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman empire, which foolishly decided to side with the Central Powers. The Ottoman empire took over from the previous Arab rulers, many of whom have been weakened or destroyed by the Mongol invasion, which had finally been stopped in Egypt (I wish there was time to talk about that now).
The previous Arab rulers had taken over from the Byzantine empire because they just happened to explode out of the Arabian peninsula with the fire of jihad when the byzantines were weak from battling the Persians and their best leader was too sick to get out of bed. The Byzantines had taken over from the Romans when the empire split in two, and the Romans had first created the province of Palestine when they crushed the independent Jewish nation in the first century A.D. Actually, it was more like semi-independent, since the Romans had worked their way in by promising protection for the Jews from the Seleucid Greeks who had tried to forbid the practice of Jewish culture and sparked the revolt of The Maccabees. I guess the joke was on the Hebrews eventually, because the same empire that said it was going to protect them from those who wanted to erase them wound up erasing them itself and deliberately trying to erase all traces of their existence from the face of the earth.
The Jews neither forgot nor forgave, and until about 10 years ago there was a monument in Rome to the conqueror of Jerusalem under which no Jew could pass on pain of being declared no longer a Jew. The monument still stands, but the prohibition was apparently lifted, since it didn’t make much sense to continue an animosity that was now two millennia old and the parties to which were long dead.
Previous to that, the Jews had been displaced at least twice. What is not known generally, or perhaps just not remembered generally, is that the Jewish State actually split into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah sometime before all of this. The Kingdom of Israel, which consisted of all the tribes except for the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, were captured and taken away by the Assyrian empire. They vanished through intermarriage and so forth, hence the 10 lost tribes of Israel that you sometimes hear mentioned.
The kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar sometime later. After Nebuchadnezzar died, however, his son Belshazzar ruled ineffectively, and was eventually himself conquered by Darius the Mede, and later Cyrus the Persian. For whatever reason, Cyrus decided to allow the Jews to return to Judea. Prior to that things get kind of murky and we really don’t know how much of the biblical account of how Israel came to be is legend and how much is true.
There is archaeological evidence for a lot of the Kings of Israel mentioned in the Bible but there is no archaeological evidence of the prophets nor of The Exodus.
According to the Bible and some of the literature surrounding it, Israel, first known as the land of Canaan, was not even intended for the Hebrews. It was originally intended for the children of Ham, Noah’s second son, supposedly the ancestor of the black people, but it was taken from them when he, or in some accounts his son, saw Noah drunk and naked within his tent, and gossiped about it rather than doing something about it. When they heard the gossip, Noah’s other two sons, Shem (ancestor of the Semites) and Japeth (ancestor of the Europeans), took a robe and walked backwards (seeing a parent naked was a major taboo) to cover their father until he sobered up.
Noah cursed Ham for his actions, and that is why later God made the covenant with Abraham, a sheik from what is now Iraq, to give him and his descendants the land for eternity, or at least the length of their good behavior.
As far as some Jewish folks are concerned, if you try to take Israel from them, you not only continue the cycle of abuse perpetrated on them by others throughout history but you go against a covenant made between man and God, and that’s something you just don’t do.
And they will never give up Jerusalem.
The Jews spread out across Europe where they lived largely in harmony with Christians and other peoples until the time of the Crusades when Peter the Hermit rallied a rabble of untrained civilians to fight the Turks alongside the soldiers the Byzantine Emperor at Constantinople requested. This rabble created more problems than they were worth, attacking Muslims, Jews and other Christians along the way. The Byzantine Emperor sent them to the other side of the river to keep them away from Constantinople while an army of Crusading soldiers and Muslims fought the Turks.
Unfortunately, bigotry against the Jews spread in Europe taking many different forms depending on the time and place in which they lived. Restrictions ranged from limits on education and what they could do for a living to outright pogroms when things were going badly, such as during the Black Death.
Christians were forbidden from usury so the Florentine families used Jews as financial advisors and bankers in order to get around it. Business and Merchandising being among the few occupations some areas permitted Jews to have, some Jewish families became very proficient which had the effect that then caused people to accuse Jews of having an inordinate influence over finance, even on a global scale.
Jews fled from the most violent areas of Europe to places more amenable to them, but – even then – there were outbreaks of violence here and there, as well as restrictions and deportations, such as in pre-Inquisition Spain. The Inquisition itself is well chronicled.
We all know what happened during World War II. Jews from Germany and Poland (as well as Hungary, Romania, Russia and other Eastern European countries) had a hard time fleeing to safe places. Most countries rejected them due to the global economic depression of the ’30s, not willing to accept large numbers of impoverished peoples with no one to vouch for their support. And there were some influenced by anti-semitism.
Moving to Palestine was problematic. Palestine had been handed to the British as a mandate after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The British were keen to keep the Muslims in Palestine calm and limited emigration there from Europe. It should also be noted that Muslims from Albania and Bulgaria joined the Waffen-SS in the latter part of the war for…reasons.
The war did not end problems for Jews. Read “Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II” by Keith Lowe. Jews that returned to their homes in Eastern Europe, particularly, found themselves with depleted health, no resources, homeless (their homes having been destroyed or confiscated by the authorities and given to others) and anti-semitic violence. Some Jews who had survived the concentration camps ended up being murdered by those who had been their neighbors. A notable massacre took place in Kielce, Poland in 1946 after a young boy claimed to have been kidnapped by Jews. His story had many holes in it but the authorities were unable to stop the murder of 42 Jews that resulted. Or, perhaps, they were unwilling.
In that atmosphere, any Jews living in war-torn countries surrounded by people that had tried to murder them could not be blamed for wanting out. I’m sure Helen Thomas would agree had she been a victim herself.
Some of them came to the United States, to the UK, to Scandinavia, to South America and some went to Palestine.
Those that helped re-form the nation of Israel have experienced hostility from their neighbors ever since. Their opponents have not hidden their decades-long intent to destroy Israel.
We may quibble with how Israel has chosen to handle the problem here and there, but they are a targeted people who have decided they are never going to be victims again.
One of the familiar refrains thrown at the Jews by Holocaust deniers (I just watched the movie “Denial” a few weeks ago and finished Deborah Lipstadt’s book about the Irving Libel Trial – “History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier”) is how most of them didn’t flee or fight back, conveniently ignoring those who did or tried to do so, and let themselves be led like lambs to the slaughter. Those same people condemn Israel for defending itself today and fighting back against those who want them dead.
I shared your article on Usenet newsgroups.
https://groups.google.com/g/Talk.Politics.Guns/c/Hubz58JtRFM
This is one more time when all the self-exiled leftists would be great for spinning pretzels in defense of the indefensible.
https://ricochet.com/podcast/federalist-radio-hour/david-harsanyi-on-the-history-of-modern-israel/
This is an *excellent* discussion on the topic. With a bit more depth. The key concept among dozens of great blurbs is this:
Civilized societies will make mistakes from time to time and those mistakes should be confronted and rectified, but in the competition between civilization and barbarism, I will *always* back the civilized society.