Should the Jewish state have been created in part of Germany after WW II?

[Herman Munster]

I'm not that familiar with the history, was this given serious consideration? Cause if they had simply created the country of Palestine with Arabs and Jews who were already living there and a jewish state in parts of Germany, would that have averted 60 years of war and hate?

[JerseygirlCT]

1. Why would that change anything?

Do you think people wouldn't have been moved around to accomodate that?

Do you think the people they'd be surrounded with would be excited by the prospect?

Remember these were the very people who stood by as the Nazis attempted to completely exterminate the Jews. Could you really blame any Jew for wanting to get the hell away from Germany? Or Poland or Austria, or you name it?

It's a very complicated history, the Jews in the Middle East. It goes very far back. There really is no easy answer to your questions.

Except that it's not really a question worth worrying about now.

Israel exists. Israel will continue to exist. The real question is how to find peace, and an important starting point for that is the acceptance of Israel's existence by the rest of the world, particularly its neighbors.

[smacky44]

47. I believe that Ralph Bunche tried to get a state for Palestine established

at the same time or shortly after the state of Israel was established but he was ignored on this point.

[rzemanfl]

2. My son asked me a similar question the other night. This goes

all the way back to biblical times, giving the Jews the Black Forest or Prussia would not have cut it.

[Yupster]

43. And besides

Russia and oland had already split Prussia. To give it to the Jewish survivors, we'd have to steal it from the Russians and Poles who stole it from the Germans.

[dorktv]

3. Not really. Even after the truth of the Holocaust was reveiled people

were still hating on the Jews...read of a story about some people returning to Poland and being killed simply because they were Jewish.

And the effort to create a homeland for the Jews started back in the 1800s so this was a long time coming.

[aikoaiko]

4. Sometimes I wish we said, here, live here in South FLorida and wait for

your Messiah to bring you back to the land of milk and honey.

[catmother]

15. i don't know how to interpret that statement. there certainly are

lots of jews in south florida.

[aikoaiko]

59. Its really more a reference to how some orthodox jews did not support

the artificial manufacture of Israel and preferred to wait for the Messiah to lead them back as, I am told, it is written.

South Florida is just my touch since there seems to be a cultural preference for it anyway among American jews.

[oberliner]

5. Now THAT's what I call a flame bait post! nt

[StellaBlue]

6. When are we going to give the survivors of the "New World" holocaust...

their ancestral lands, promised to them by their gods thousands of years ago, back?

This is insanity. The whole thing. People thinking they're "chosen", people thinking "god" made some kind of "covenant" with them and that they have a "promised land", people giving already-inhabited land to rival people to assuage their consciences after they stood by and let a genocide occur, continuing to kill innocent people over it 50 years later... all insanity.

[malaise]

8. Bingo

No wonder atheists think all religions are madness. The joke is that men wrote all the texts that drive them to kill.

[jonnyblitz]

24. outstanding post!!

:applause: :thumbsup:

[StellaBlue]

25. Thanks

I figured the only response I'd get was to be called anti-Semitic :eyes:

[jonnyblitz]

26. nobody hears them when they start schreeching that anymore

they cried wolf one too many times.

[cali]

65. Bullshit , Jonny

you know it. And I know you know it. Over the last week the antisemitic posts have dwindled- though I saw a whopper whisked away yesterday. You confirmed seeing some of the more vile posts on my thread, and now you're acting like all the bigoted remarks are simply made up. Shame on you.

[bananarepublican]

66. You are not an anti-semite by asking a thought provoking question...

I'm not 100% sure of the validity of my questions which follow...

Did not Isreal come into being via a United Nations resolution? If so, how many subsequent resolutions has Israel defied?

What's behind the above question is a strong feeling that Isreal's conduct and America's support of it reeks of hypocrisy.

[cali]

64. Are you actually suggesting

that most jews think of themselves as 'the chosen people'? Because not a single jew that I've ever met does. The founding of Israel has practically nothing to do with that myth. Jews sought a homeland to escape millenia of persecution, and being expelled from one country after another. And the zionist movement far pre-dates WWII and it attendent genocide. Honestly, try doing some research.

[Lurking Dem]

71. "Chosen" does not mean superior.

I really wish people would get a clue.

[DavidDvorkin]

7. The Zionist movement and Jewish settlements in Palestine

Began long before the Holocaust -- indeed, long before the Nazi party. Read up on Theodore Herzl. (See here: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Herzl.html)

The focus on Palestine as the location for the proposed Jewish state was part of the movement from the beginning.

[mediaman007]

9. I think it should have been in Montana! or maybe Kansas!

Those cowboys would show you a little Hamas!

[NNadir]

10. I, for one, think that would have been an appropriate action.

It had no impetus for great power manipulation though. I'm not sure that the great powers gave as much of a shit about the Holocaust as they like to represent. When World War II was over, it was about the spoils and the Russian/US confrontation. Except for a few giants like George Marshall and Eleanor Roosevelt, few people were concerned with justice or the establishment of a lasting peace.

The State of Isreal, the history of the matter notwithstanding, exists, though, and it best for the purposes of peace for everyone to acknowledge that fact. I'm not fond of Isreal's actions with respect to the Palestinians at all. I think their behavior is disgraceful and unjust. That said, I think people play historical events way too much. In the Serbian affair of recent times, there were people killing other people over events from the 13th century for crying out loud!

Most Isrealis alive today had little to do with the founding of Isreal. Their country is their place of birth. Therefore shelling Isreal because of the events of the 1940's is questionable, but then again war is always questionable.

I think that in the 1940's however, people should have considered how Americans might feel if the Algonquins arrived from a diaspora that had been oppressed. Suppose the Algonquins announced that totems have to be on the flag and that medicine men would have a serious role in determining the law of the land.

Many Arab families had been there for thousands of years in Palestine and had nothing to do with the oppression of the Jews.

I thought a beautiful book, acknowledging the nature of Mideastern history, was James Michener's excellent work The Source, which I read as a teenager. I wish everyone could read it, would read it. In it, the modern day character who is descended from the earliest Jews is an Arab. I think this is probably more the case than anyone knows. I cannot understand for the life of me how people kill their brothers and sisters in blind rage.

Personally I always favor secular states, secular law, and I do not acknowledge rights of birth of any kind. I am at a loss about this horrible Mideastern mess. I cannot know what to do or what to think. All that is open for me is to weep. My view is that everyone is wrong and no one is right. I wish I knew the way to peace, but I despise all the warriors.

[azurnoir]

11. There was already a Jewish State

being built in Palestine, the process had been ongoing for about 60 years, the Hebrew language had been reformed to be used as a modern language rather then only for prayer. Refugees from the camps were already heading to Palestine and well to make a Jewish state in Germany would have been a slap in the face to the Jewish people.

[catmother]

19. i remember seeing a movie and there were jews living there

during WWII.

[rockymountaindem]

23. A couple of links for you:

The Jewish Brigade which fought for Britain during the war:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Brigade

And Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who sided with the Nazis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husayni

[tocqueville]

36. and all the revisionist zionists that did the contrary

The national-messianist movement, called Lehi and nicknamed the "Stern Gang" by the British, was led by Avraham "Yair" Stern. Lehi was founded by Stern in 1940 as an offshoot from Irgun, and was initially named Irgun Zvai Leumi be-Yisrael (National Military Organization in Israel or NMO). The group openly described itself as terrorist. Following Stern's death in 1942—killed under disputed circumstances by British police—and the arrest of many of its members, the group went into eclipse until it was reformed as "Lehi" under a triumvirate of Israel Eldad, Natan Yellin-Mor, and Yitzhak Shamir. Shamir became the Prime Minister of Israel forty years later. Lehi was guided by spiritual and philosophical leaders Abba Achimeir and Uri Zvi Greenberg.

NMO—and, to a lesser extent, Lehi— were influenced by the romantic nationalism of Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian fascism, and the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche. Its goal was to establish a corporatist and religious society. The movement's activities were independent of any diaspora leadership, but were backed by several figures in the diaspora.

While the Irgun stopped its activities against the British during World War II, Lehi continued guerrilla warfare against the British authorities. It considered the British rule of Mandatory Palestine to be an illegal occupation, and concentrated its attacks mainly against British targets (unlike the other underground movements, which were also involved in fighting against Arab paramilitary groups).

In 1940 and 1941, NMO proposed intervening in World War II on the side of Nazi Germany<1> to attain their help in expelling Britain from Mandate Palestine and to offer their assistance in "evacuating" the Jews of Europe arguing that "common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO." Late in 1940, the NMO representative Naftali Lubenchik was sent to Beirut where he met the German official Werner Otto von Hentig and delivered a letter from NMO offering to "actively take part in the war on Germany's side" in return for German support for "the establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich". Von Hentig forwarded the letter to the German embassy in Ankara, but there is no record of any official response. Lehi tried to establish contact with the Germans again in December 1941, also apparently without success.

Lehi prisoners captured by the British generally refused to present a defence when brought to trial in British courts. They would only read out statements in which they declared that the court, representing an occupying force, had no jurisdiction over them. For the same reason, Lehi prisoners refused to plead for amnesty, even when it was clear that this would have them spared from the death penalty. In one case two Lehi men killed themselves in prison to deprive the British of the ability to hang them.

Tensions between the Irgun and Lehi simmered until the two groups forged an alliance during the Israeli War of Independence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_Zionism

[catmother]

51. holy fucking shit. i'm speechless.

[Yupster]

45. I think there were

already 500,000 Jews in Palestine during WWII. I think it would be hard to convince them to move to Germany right after the Holocaust.

[catmother]

52. i wasn't the one who suggested they move to germany. it

was the OP

[EFerrari]

67. They were heading to Palestine and being turned away in droves. n/t

[Lurking Dem]

72. Hebron

was actually the oldest continuous Jewish city in the world. Until it was ethnically cleansed.

[Redstone]

12. Oh, sure. Let's let the rest of the world decide where the Jews should

live, instead of them deciding for themselves.

After all, they're only Jews.

Redstone

[Critters2]

17. Right! God gave 'em that land!

Just forgot to tell the Palestinians.

[Redstone]

22. ...Land in which they had been living for a LONG time.

Redstone

[Critters2]

27. Land from which they had been dispersed since 130 CE

And other people had been living on.

By your argument, the Native Americans have a claim to your front yard. Start packing!

[Redstone]

31. Uh, I happen to BE a "native american." I'm not packing anytime soon.

Redstone

[Critters2]

32. How fortunate for you

that you were not born Palestinian. Or Lebanese.

[Redstone]

34. Or a Chadian. Or Congolese. Or Or Hutu. Or Bengali. Or Tamil.

Your point was, again...?

Redstone

[Critters2]

39. My point was that no one--not even God's chosen people--

has the right to steal land from its inhabitants.

[Redstone]

40. If you feel that way, then why are you, as a white American, here?

Redstone

[Critters2]

42. My Menominee ancestors want me to stay

Thanks for asking.

[Redstone]

44. So we stay. And the white folks have to go back to where they came from,

even if they've never been there.

And that solves what?

Redstone

[Critters2]

46. Israel being given carte blanche to take land and bomb Lebanon

solves what?

[Redstone]

49. Hezbollah being given carte blanche to fire rockets into Israel

solves what?

Redstone

[Critters2]

50. I keep bringing this up, but the pro-Israel types don't respond

Proportionality.


From Torah:

Exodus 21:23-25

If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

[catmother]

57. well i'm pro-israel but i'm not jewish or any religion so i don't

pay attention to what's in the Torah, bible, koran, etc.

i just see people who have been trying to live in peace and others will not let them.

[cigsandcoffee]

60. Well, what kill ratio would suit you?

If the Israelis can only fight a war of attrition, they will lose. People who want them gone from the Middle East - and who appear willing to die for it - outnumber them by a vast margin.

[catmother]

13. if i were a jew i would want to get as far away from germany as

possible.

there's anti-semitism everywhere and it's beginning to rear it's ugly head much more lately.

[davidwparker]

14. No.

[rockymountaindem]

16. No, for many reasons

Not least of which was the US and Britain's desire to create a strong, unified W. Germany to resist the advance of Communism. Creating a new country on German territory would have, at the very least, undermined Germany territorial integrity and weakened Germany as an ally of the US and Britain. Not to mention there would likely have been a huge outcry from the German population.

Of course, the Jews would not have accepted a homeland there anyway.

[Critters2]

18. Like the huge outcry from the Palestinians?

And that doesn't count why? Because they're not European?

[rockymountaindem]

20. Because they weren't under threat from the Communists at that time

That's really all that mattered to a lot of people. Furthermore, several leaders of the Arab leadership (such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) had openly sided with the fascists in WWII and had pretty much blown any international credibility they had.

Besides, all the Zionist efforts toward building a homeland for over 60 years, and indeed the longing of nearly two millenia, had been directed toward modern-day Israel. Why settle for less when Israel seemed so close at hand?

[Cleita]

21. Most countries didn't want to take in the refugee Jews because

they were anti-semitic including ours. There was a movie about it. A ship of refugee Jews was turned away from port to port including our country. (Don't remember the name of the movie.) So the western powers concocted this plan to create Israel so that these unwanted people would have a place to go. They weren't concerned at all about all the Arabs who would be displaced and culture clash.

What they should have done in Europe was return those who survived Hitler to their former lives and given them as much of their property back as they could find and some assistance to reintegrate back into Germany, Poland and all the other countries they were run out of. Most of the German Jews always considered themselves German until they were told they weren't even though they were born there for generations.

To tell the truth I feel that way sometimes about the USA because I'm hispanic like I really don't belong here although I am a citizen from birth.

[StellaBlue]

29. Remember,

WASPs are the minority. And have been for some time.

Fuck em. You do belong here.

[Redstone]

33. The movie was "Exodus." Maybe some people here should watch it.

Redstone

[Cleita]

37. Exodus is an excellent movie about this, although the movie

I was thinking of was in black and white and had Shelley Winters in it (no it wasn't the "Poisedon Adventure"). However, you really have to read the book "Exodus" by Leon Uris to get the full flavor.

As for the movie the casting of Paul Newman as Ari, the British soldier, whom didn't look like the stereotype of a Jew was pretty good.

[Redstone]

38. Oh, I did read the book. I've never seen a movie based on a book without

having read the book first. Sometimes that results in disappointment, but I do it anyway.

Redstone

[catmother]

56. yeah. remember the part where the guy said he could spot a

jew right away and ari said "i think i have something in my eye -- could you look and see?"

[catmother]

54. you beat me to it. i posted it too. rented it a few months ago to

try to refresh my memory.

[catmother]

53. i think the move was "exodus".

[rucky]

28. The lesson I learned from the Holocaust:

Any nation that's formed around a single ethnicity is a bad idea.

[VelmaD]

30. add religion to the mix...

and it only gets worse

[KharmaTrain]

35. My Grandmother Escaped Eastern Europe

It wasn't just Nazi Germany, it was every regime in that part of the world...Soviet/Russians (Communism made no difference), Romania, Hungary, Poland and so on had an inbred system of anti-semetism. Jews lived in segregated towns in an area known as "The Shtetl" (or Pale) for hundreds of years as second class citizens. My grandmother was born in such a town and came to this country (as cheap labor) in 1910...but before she did, she endured years of her village being attacked by Russian cossacks and soldiers and Polish police. The Germans actually seemed like a more reasonable people in those days. But that was nearly 25 years and one world war away from Hitler and even darker days that those of my family who decided to remain behind encountered. My grandmother attempted to keep in touch with her uncles and cousins throughout the 20's and 30's, but when the Nazis came in in 1939, the letters abruptly stopped. In the late 60's, my mother went to Paris and then to Warsaw in the early 70s to see if she could locate any trace of several dozen names of family members her mother had given her...not a single one could be located. Now would you want to stay in that kind of world?

I'd suggest a bit of Jewish history that could assist you in getting a better perspective on not only the significance of a Jewish homeland, but why Israel in specific became that homeland. Initially the British offered Hertzl a state in Uganda...and imagine how well that would have gone over when Idi Amin rose to power in the early 70s.

One of the greatest themes in Judaism is the "disapora"...or the forceable expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem and what would be considered modern-day Israel in 70AD. For centuries Jews attempted to assimilate in Christian areas and endured discrimination and worse. The word "Ghetto" comes from the area specificially set aside for Jews in Rome. Israel was the hope of self-determination...not to live under regimes where you could live where you wanted to, work where you wanted to and marry who you wanted to. Pretty basic things, eh? Not for Jews in Europe for most of the past two millenium.

If there was any part of the world Jews were welcome, it was the Arab countries who were taught in the Koran that the "Jews were God's chosen people" and the two religions lived peacefully and thrived until the 20th Century. If there were people that the Jews could have co-existed with and had more of a positive common history, it would have been the Arabs.

Some thing that Israel was created all of a sudden in 1948 and that the land was turned sideways and all the Arab/Palestinians were dumped out. That's far from the truth. Jews had managed to remain in that region...albeit in small numbers...and began immigrating from Europe in larger numbers at the invitation of the Turkish government. There's a lot of misunderstanding of Judaism as it's a complex history and intertwined with many stereotypes and a complicated relationship with the christians.

Peace...

[Cleita]

41. As far as Jews and Arabs getting along together, they did

through the Middle Ages in Arab countries and preserved much of the knowledge that was lost in the Dark Ages. In Moorish Spain, before the Christians got an itch up their collective asses to route them out, the Jewish scholars were patronized by the Moorish Caliphs and were far ahead of their European counterparts in mathematics, medicine, chemistry and other sciences. I have no doubt once the Israelis and Arabs get rid of the extreme right wings of their nations, just like we have to, that Israelis and Arabs will get along just fine.

It's time for other nations to stop meddling too.

[KharmaTrain]

48. Same Was The Case In Iran, Egypt and even Iraq

Thank you for posting that.

There were substantial Jewish communities within the Arab world prior to 1948 where Jews enjoyed far greater freedoms under the Ottoman Turks and other Arab regimes than they did in Christian Europe.

Yes, hopefully a day will come where the common bonds of the two people/faiths can co-exist again.

Cheers...

[Cleita]

55. Before my husband retired we lived in a neighborhood in

Santa Monica that had ever changing ethnicities. We were there for years through mixed Mexican, Black and White, then it became Yuppie, also of all races but mostly white (who has the money?) and then it became mostly Hispanic again and a few years before we left So. Cal for good, Persians started coming in and buying property, businesses and moving in, but these Persians were Jewish and bought out a Christian school two blocks from where I lived to start a community center and synagogue for the neighborhood. The Christians were fundies and I guess they ran out of white children and had to move on.

We probably would have never left except DH wanted to travel but the neighborhood changed and even the few Jewish Americans left there had to adapt. The Persians dedicated their new community center with a sheep sacrifice, which freaked out the few white people left in the neighborhood including the Jews. However, once all the cultural differences were settled, everyone became friends.

I don't know why I'm telling this story but it's really about the fact that most people can get along together if they try.

[catmother]

58. well i'm originally from new york so i know what you're talking

about. our neighborhood was predominantly jewish, but then we started to get a mix of everyone. the russian jews came, cubans, afghans, just about everyone. we didn't have any problems.

and new york city itself is such a mix -- almost all of the cab drivers are arab. i took a lot of limos paid for by my company and it was rare to get a driver who spoke english. i remember one limo driver put mid eastern music on and asked me if i liked it. i did.

so yes, cleita you are right, people can get along. we just have to accept each other's differences and actually celebrate them. i think it's nice to learn about other cultures.

[EFerrari]

68. And that's what I meant the other day abo;ut the relative history

of the Christians, Jews and Muslims.

The relations between the Jewish people and their Arab neighbors have been subject to horrendous exploitation. As soon as Israel became a state, some money interest was finding a way to leverage it.

Sometimes, I really, really don't like people.

[Bear down under]

61. "The two religions lived peacefully...

.... until the 20th century..."

Yes, exactly -- and a friend who lived many years in Pakistan (about the time I was spending a fair chunk of my childhood in India) reminded me the other day that Muslims and Hindus lived in harmony in India for centuries. The violence there only really began after Partition in 1947, when nationalism was added to the possible causes of conflict.

And she made a pertinent comment, that Partition was more a sop to British vanity than anything else -- these people can't live in harmony without us there to keep them under control, so to prevent the "inevitable" civil war we'll separate them into two nation-sized ghettoes.

It reminded me eerily of the way the Western powers set up the state of Israel at the same time -- in what was effectively a partition of Palestine -- and with the current American rhetoric justifying their continuing presence in Iraq.

[EFerrari]

70. There is that element of paternalism, of course, but there was

a very strong and determined movement there in place that was fighting for a Jewish state. So no, your friend is wrong, imho. Partition was not mostly a sop to British vanity. It was the result of a good deal of work by the Jewish community.

[Warren DeMontague]

62. Here's an excellent movie on the subject you should watch:

It's obviously just one take on it, but it may contain some historical information you weren't aware of.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119561

[Freedom_Aflaim]

63. Doesnt really matter

Israel was created after WW II and thats that. Cant undo the past.

The people in that region need to learn to accept reality and stop using it as an excuse to kill each other.

[Vidar]

69. We can't rewrite history. Leave it alone.

[Lurking Dem]

73. These type of threads

always make me feel like my Sephardim brethren are the bastard child of Judaism.

Some 850,000 were "displaced" from Arab majority lands in 1948. They should have gone to Germany?

[Lithos]

74. Locking per I/P guidelines

Not based on a recent news or op-ed article.

Lithos
DU Moderator