War is tragic and unlike plagues, pandemics, earthquakes, wildfires, floods, and volcanic eruptions, war is the specific result of human action.
True.
War is an un-natural disaster.
Disagree. Chimpanzees also go to war. It is in our nature, and therefore natural.
When you make an argument, one of the things that is important is where you choose to begin.
I think a substantive point is more important but this is an aesthetic choice.
The flaw in this is of course that the argument starts without assessing what led to the events of that date.
All historical arguments have this flaw unless you intend to start at the beginning of known history.
Yet whilst I deplore the brutal nature of what happened, one has to ask if the Palestinians have a just cause.
This assumes one can engage in war "justly" but go on...
Around 1900 the Palestinians accounted for 94% of the population of the region. In the wake of the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century (the late 1800s) there was a rise in Jewish migration to the area.
How did those Jewish migrants acquire land? Did they buy plots from the British?
*Hint* - yes they did.
Lord Balfour (whose painting was slashed recently at Cambridge University) was responsible for some duplicitous dealing with Lawrence of Arabia and King Faisal which led to the Balfour Declaration marking Britain's commitment to the establishment of a Jewish State without regard to the people who were living there.
This is an odd characterization.
Between the British and French....a lot of nations were created but sure...they didn't ask this particular group of locals for input.
The practice of ignoring the Palestinian people's existence has continued apace,
That's an odd way to consider all the fighting and violence.
Ignoring.
including the 1948 establishment of the Jewish State, and the 1967
(link here) which quite simply fails to mention the Palestinians at all. So if you start the argument there, you may well reach a different conclusion, logically and correctly.
That's not an argument from logic, and it's not exactly correct. Lots of that land was bought up by Jewish immigrants who paid the British. If there's something wrong with Jewish immigrants buying land from British owners....feel free to spell it out.
Also, while I can appreciate the very one-sided picture you're trying to paint....let's not ignore the European leaders who didn't ignore the Palestinians....
No doubt that the grand Mufti would have been horrified to learn of the holocaust and these two pranksters were just bonding over their shared hatred of Jews.
Anyway...
Ultimately you have to start somewhere. If you start with the children of Noah, and specifically Shem, you might conclude that this is a family argument where the children don't want to play nicely and share things as nice children ought properly to do.
War.
Genesis 17:8 is another place to begin "And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God." and many argue that this makes Israel's case
Or the fact that a lot of the land was bought from the British....
UN Resolution 181 was the first proposal for an Arab state (Palestine) in the region....and was rather swiftly rejected by the Arabs in the disputed area in the late 40s if I'm not mistaken.
That led to a little fight called the 1st Arab/Israeli War.
At the close of that conflict...the neighboring and in many cases distant Arab nations decided to persecute and exile most of their Jewish populations....which also dramatically increased the population of early Israel.
This war may well be won or lost on the streets of Washington and Tel Aviv. The problem is, as I noted on observer remarking the other day, the world has moved from a post-war world to a pre-war world, and I regard that as a matter of great concern.
I don't know that I'd ever regard a period as a "post war world" but that's a matter of perspective....
I think the only argument I can consider worth having during this conflict is "what is the best outcome for the Palestinian people?"
When I consider the condition of those Palestinians within Palestine and those outside of Palestine....I'm inclined to believe that a mass exodus and abandonment of the idea of a Palestinian state is arguably the best possible future for the youngest Palestinians. This war ended back in the 60s. Everything since then has been in denial of that fact.
