Reply #173: A good place to start is a superb history book that was a [View All]

[Misskittycat]

New York Times bestseller. It is "A Peace To End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East" by David Fromkin. It's currently available new or used on Amazon.

The title is a play on the slogan used during the WWI to optimistically describe that war: "a war to end all wars." Obviously, it did no such thing. Also, the peace treaty ending WWI inadvertently sowed the seeds for continued conflict all over the Middle East and beyond.

Even for non-history buffs, this is a surprisingly interesting read.

I read Tinoire's posts 105 and 113 as defining a position. For example, post 105 reads in part: "...Anyone supporting injustice in Palestine, suports injustice everywhere and they're no friends of the antiwar movement. To hell with them...." And then in post 113: "...Nothing is splintering at all. The Progressive movement for justice all over the world is currently solidifying and telling people who need 1001 exceptions to justice to get out of the way. There are NO exceptions to justice be they in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan or Latin America...."

I don't support "injustice in "Palestine." I'm very pleased about the Gaza withdrawal today. But phrases like this are overbroad and simplistic, and suggest to me that the writer believes Palestinians are entirely or mostly innocent victims in this horrible mess. They are not. There is more than enough blame to go around.

Both sides have legitimate, overlapping claims -- over a period dating back to ancient times -- to this very tiny land mass. That's why the 1948 U.N. Partition Plan was a good compromise that should have been accepted by both sides, not just by the Israelis. Instead, the Arabs waged a 3-year war until they were defeated. Israel accepted the 1948 Partition Plan boundaries in 1948 and then again in 1951 when Israel was militarily victorious over the Arabs. From 1948 through 1967, there was a de facto Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, but this opportunity was entirely squandered by the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors. In June, 1967, six Arab nations again attacked Israel, vowing to destroy it entirely. Again they lost, and the tragic occupation (mishandled by both sides)ensued. Much of this pre-1967 part of the story is ignored now by lefty history revisionists.

I'm a lefty, I'm a Progressive, I marched against the Vietname war decades ago. I have a right to define my own understanding of the anti-war movement, and exactly what it encompasses and why. I don't have to "get out of the way" because I have a more nuanced view of the I/P mess.

I hope this respectfully clears up my position for you. The history of the Middle East is, as I said, "incredibly complicated" and I can't begin to address all of it here and now, and don't plan to address it any further because I have to get back to work.