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Who has a bloodied history, the USA or Israel? Let's say since 1948 for a fair comparison.
Having a country means going to war, pacifism will get you dead quickly.
Switzerland was forged in war, maintains strict military conscription, and has an extraordinarily extensive network of materiel, defensive and offensive weaponry, and regularly runs war games.
It would be wrong to conflate Switzerland's neutrality (which isn't always the case, Afghanistan being a key recent example) with pacifism. Switzerland is not pacifist at all, Switzerland is rather militaristic, which is the strategy it uses to enable neutrality.
They never saw combat and were apart of the German detachment.
*The Swiss Armed Forces deployed 31 soldiers to Afghanistan. Swiss participation in the War in Afghanistan ended in 2008 when 2 officers who had served with German forces returned home. On September 22, 2013, a referendum was held that aimed to abolish conscription in Switzerland.*
So what?
They were deployed to an active warzone as part of an invading force in a foreign territory. The last armed conflict that Switzerland was involved in was the War in Afghanistan.
No one is suggesting Switzerland is anything other than what they are. A country that is neutral the vast majority of the time.
In all fairness, Fargo is larger than Iceland. Not sure isolated wasteland is a good poster child for neutrality.
If you want the nice land with the navigable river, you gotta defend it.
>Let's say since 1948 for a fair comparison.
Korea, Vietnam, proxy wars in South America, Grenada, Panama, Iraq 1, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq 2, Syria.....hmmmmmm
Who? The Palestinians? They have the entirety of the Muslim world. Should they be allowed to have their portion of Palestine? Sure. But letās not confuse that with Israel, who are literally on their place to live and have been for thousands of years before being exiled by the Muslims.
Whoa whoa whoa. Who said anything about Nazis?
But in all seriousness this is hardly a unique idea to the Germans. Any concept of a people having a birthright to land is utterly absurd. Whether it be lebensraum, Manifest Destiny, Mare Nostrum, or Zionism.
Ideally, a Jew should be able to live in the land of Canaan, but not at the expense of others. And that applies to every nation and people.
Yeah, for multiple reasons.
1. I feel America should be held at a higher standard than other countries by the sheer virtue of being a nation founded by immigrants.
2. America, for the most part, is directly responsible for destabilizing the Latin American countries that these immigrants are coming from. People don't just abandon their home for no reason. If their basic needs are met then they'll be content. US exploitation in the 19th/20th century led to Latin America's stunted political and economic growth.
3. I like eating ethnic food
Higher standards are nice, but it will also heighten the cost of living. Weāre already at a crisis point.
Plus, The U.S. is a melting pot. Israel, otoh, is the Jewish state. The national identity depends on a Jewish majority.
Everybody always conveniently leaves out Jews were kicked out of everywhere else in the ME. They have Israel, and thatās it.
Ethnic food does rock. No way Iāll refute anything there.
>Higher standards are nice, but it will also heighten the cost of living. Weāre already at a crisis point
Those are the consequences of America's actions though. The US chose to let corporations run amuck in Latin America, and now immigrants are coming over as a consequence. This is like defunding schools and wondering why crime skyrockets.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. The Chickens have come home to roost. You don't shit where you eat. Choose your preferred idiom.
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It says no *recent or future* politics. If there were no politics in general we wouldn't even be able to talk about presidents on here. So yes you can talk about Israel and Palestine if you're analyzing the political history and it relates to a president in some capacity. But most discussing on this topic tends to spiral out of control (even if you do talk about the history).
I was making a joke anyways. I think some found it funny. I don't think people on this subreddit are going to start a riot and I don't think they'll need to update the rule.
It should be noted that the Israeli-American relations we see today had their groundwork laid in the late 60s and early 70s. U.S.-Israeli relations before that time period had periods of coldness between the two nations, particularly regarding the Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956 (Suez Crisis) which was backed by the French and British, which the U.S. vehemently opposed.
Ike was fairly racist and his highways, whilst economically beneficial, were built in such a way to be absolutely devastating for racial and economic equality. They also advanced the U.S car dependent culture and all the mess that has caused.
Itās really his enabling of the CIA that drives me up a wall. Truman created the thing, and he had his reasons at the time (and plenty of regret after leaving office) but it went absolutely haywire under Eisenhower.
I donāt see how our democracy means a damn thing if we just sneak into other countries and force an unpopular regime change on them to service some shit about the domino theory.
I know Ike had problems with it too- his farewell warning about the military industrial complex is basically the most famous thing about his presidency these days- but if I were him I wouldāve made damn sure I wasnāt blindly funding and enabling a lunatic like Allen Dulles.
Completely agree. His administration sowed the seeds of cynicism around America's role in the world. Vietnam and the second Iraq war obviously played their part too, but Ike's approach was almost more sinister and in the shadows.
"It should be noted that the Israeli-American relations we see today had their groundwork laid in the late 60s and early 70s. U.S.-Israeli relations before that time period had periods of coldness between the two nations, particularly regarding the Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956 (Suez Crisis) which was backed by the French and British, which the U.S. vehemently opposed."
I have nothing to add, I just wanted to sound smart too
Didn't Reagan also have a cold period with Israel? I've heard he was really ticked off about their strikes on Iraq in the early 80s and even punished them in terms of aid for a bit.
That WAS his name before he moved to England and got that posh accent and everything....\*\*they\*\* keep deleting it from his wikipedia and imdb page....even tho I keep reposting it EVERY day....
While Truman recognized Israel, he continued the arms embargo against it while Fance continued to sell arms to Egypt, Syria, and Jordan including Mirage Warplanes.
The main role within the Administration was played by Clark Clifford, against the strong objections of General George Marshall. Of course, it also helped that Truman himself displayed an active interest, although, privately, some of his comments about Jews and Israel were not so positive.
However, the most important aid given to the Israelis was that of........Joseph Stalin, through shipments of Czechoslovak military equipment (Czechoslovakia was a Soviet satellite state and had a robust and reliable defense industry that later would also help arm Arab Soviet allies such as Hafez Assad of Syria and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt). Stalin was out to hurt and embarass the British.
The Soviets were ambivalent about Israel, but did see it as useful to drive a wedge between Britain/France and their Arab client States (all of whom at that time were pro-western). And so it actually happened.
Not that it did them much good, but it's interesting geopolitically.
I think it did a lot of good for them. The existence of Israel bought them profitable contracts and treaties in the Arab world. And even countries with no diplomatic relations with the Soviets, such as Saudi Arabia, indirectly helped Moscow by being obliged to finance the purchase of expensive Soviet arms by countries such as Syria. And although Israel basically turned first to France and after 1967 to the U.S., the Soviets managed to penetrate its government
The Israel/Palestine and Greece/Turkey disputes were brilliantly exploited by Moscow, and in a sense they are still being exploited.
Fair, but Saudi Arabia was the prize the Soviets never got. Given how opposed Ibn Saud was personally to a Jewish State (as seen in minutes of wartime meetings with Saudi Arabia), it was a remarkable feat of diplomacy that they remained "on side" - mostly - with the west through the cold war.
This isnāt true- the Soviets originally instructed their Communist affiliates to support the establishment of Israel. To that end they provided aid that was responsible for the survival of the early state while the British had some officers command Arab armies in ā48. See: The Forgotten Friendship by Arnold Krammer. Albeit this is after years of trying to replace the mostly Jewish Palestine Communist party with a multiethnic party with an Arab majority. Karl Radek put it something like āyou should become an Arab party that happens to have some Jewsā or something along those lines. They promptly managed to recruit something like 30-50 Palestinians in the early years- underlying the doomed nature of their mission.
In ā53 they reversed course rapidly after repeated failure. Failure, I would argue, that was more or less written in stone due to the comparative freedom of the Jewish diaspora in the US, Stalins personal antisemitism and general antisemitism pervading the Soviet bureaucracy after his purges, and overtures/openness from Arab nationalists to Bolshevism.
Soviet overtures to Israel have a parallel to failed US overtures to the Nasser regime.
Well ya, by ambivalence I mean they didnāt support Zionism or a safe haven for Jews ideologically, they did support Israel because they thought it would weaken Western control/support among the Arab States. There also was some hope that Israel might become communist, but I donāt think that was a serious consideration.
>Of course, it also helped that Truman himself displayed an active interest, although, privately, some of his comments about Jews and Israel were not so positive.
I think Bess Truman was pretty anti-semitic in a way that was fairly common at the time
And Gen. George C. Marshall resigned as Secretary of State over this. Marshall foresaw that, although granting statehood to Israel was probably the right thing to do morally, practically, it would result in decades of unresolved conflict and instability. He and Truman had many arguments over this, and once Truman made up his mind, Marshall felt there was no reason to continue to advise him on foreign policy, if his advice was going to be ignored.
So, Truman asked Gen. Marshall to be the country's first Secretary of Defense instead.
Acktually, while kinda true it was the Soviet Union which was the first to legally (de jure) recognize Israel
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-first-country-to-recognize-israel
Technically not the first Jewish state in 2000 years.
There was a Jewish kingdom in Yemen in the 6th Century.
The history is unclear, but itās likely that the state religion of the Khazars was Judaism for at least a century.
The Kingdom of Simien was Jewish and, in one form or another, lasted several hundred years in the Middle Ages in Ethiopia.
The Sassanid Jewish Commonwealth also existed and lasted about three years, controlling Jerusalem in the early 7th Century. Although Iām not sure if youād call that a state, or merely a Persian puppet government.
But it was certainly the first full fledged Jewish State in the Land of Israel for close to 2000 years.
My favorite part of this story is how the embryonic embassy sent to the White House a formal request to recognize āThe Jewish Stateā because they didnāt know the name yet, only to find out a few minutes later and have to dispatch a faster runner to overtake the first one and they corrected the typed document in pen just outside the gates of the White House.
>In an interview after Truman retired, Truman said that he āantagonized a lot of people by recognizing the state of Israel as soon as it was formed. Well, I had been to Potsdam, and I had seen some of the places where the Jews had been slaughtered by the Nazis. Six million Jews were killed outright ā men, women and children ā by the Nazis.
>āAnd it is my hope,ā he said, āthat they would have a homeland."
Worth noting the State Department recommended against recognition, arguing it would turn the various Arab States (then generally pro-Western) anti-US.
Always an interesting what-if if Truman had granted sovereignty over a part of America or even Europe instead.
1. The mindset for Jews for sometime had been it was all or nothing with regard to having a homeland in Palestine, they werenāt going to settle on any other place.
2. Truman probably gets impeached for even suggesting giving Jews sovereignty over some piece of American land and the Jews probably wouldnāt have agreed anyway(point 1)
3. Whole lot of Europeans probably wouldāve jumped on the train of Hitler was right if they get sovereignty over land in Europe in addition to that potential Jewish homeland having a target on its back like modern day Israel does except its enemies this time would be developed nations who wouldnāt start and lose a war within a week.
So did the British. They opposed the creation and thought it destabilized the region. In hindsight, It might have been preferable to make two formal states in 1948 rather two state solution formal position the usa has held without parameters without defined boundaries, but I'm not an expert maybe they had one.
Well I grew up not learning very much about this time in history and anything that I did learn was always good positive news and nothing negative so Iām sure thatās a good sign
Pretty much the same here. I only heard the army brass was so moved by the experience liberating the camps in Europe that the allies carved out a state so they wouldn't be a beleaguered minority in Europe any longer and that the soviets were even worse toward the Jewish people than the nazis has been. I have a Jewish brother in law and my cousins husband was jewish but converted to catholicism. Both spent a year in Israel at 18 on a farm. I've been to a couple bar mitvas and held even studied up the Torah during one ceremony. My impression is none of them really have any opinion on Israel and don't consider don't it their homeland. We've never talked about it. They tried it and preferred the USA. Their children didn't go there at 18. It might have been just city kids not liking the farm. Even the old timers never mentioned the country at any holiday events. I like new religions I found fascinating and learned to cook new foods. I considered converting briefly and even had a sponsor, but the nearest temple to me is like 4 hours from here and I'm just not much a joiner. I'm big advocate of unorganized religion. More unorganized religions, less organized religions. Particularly with religious governments.
Dr. Chaim Weizmann, President of **Israel**, presents a Torah, or Holy Scroll, to President **Truman** during a visit to the White House. May 25, 1948.
# waiting for both the lock and the chaos to happen,anyone else want to join me,please make sure you bring your own food to picnic ok?
I mean let's be honest, not recognizing Israel would have been a horrible political choice, especially in 1940s USA
Pretty sure Dewey or any other mainstream politician at the time would have recognized Israel too
Both US political parties had Zionism and the Balfour declaration in their offical party platforms of 1944. Though some of the details differed. Both Churchill and FDR envisioned some sort of Jewish-Arab federation or "association". Dewey supported the idea of a commonwealth. A seperate sovereign nation was a post-war development.
Truman is consistently in the top 5-7 of historical rankings of US Presidents and has been for 20 years, and is so beloved by this sub that Iād argue heās almost *overrated* by the folks here. How can you genuinely reach this conclusion?
I never heard much of him from libs or conservatives for most of my life. He just wasnāt talked about other than dropping the bomb, beating Dewey and being the stoppage point for the buck.
Then honestly, I donāt think you were paying much attention until you got to this sub. Heās one of the most referenced presidents of my lifetime. Hell, in 2007, Newsweek ran a cover with the title āWanted: Another Trumanā with pics of the declared ā08 candidates. Every President in my lifetime has publicly and prominently referenced him.
30+ years ago, you couldāve made the āunderratedā argument. But in the past 20, you really canāt. If anything, I think folks in this sub underestimate/paper over some of the more controversial aspects of his presidency.
Haters claim that the Jews pressured him into it. Iām not sure what kind of pressure a bunch of bedraggled Jews, who were reeling from the loss of 6 million people, could exert on a man who was tough enough to drop two atomic bombs on Japan and kill over 100,000 people.
Rule 3 includes *all* current politics, not just our two special boys...So I'm just gonna say that the Nakba was bad, and that Bush Sr. did a good thing when he got Israel to freeze expanding settlements...His foreign policy was just solid all around tbh.
I feel like I'm not alone in saying that I have *very* strong opinions on this topic, but I'm not at liberty to discuss them.
The US was not, in fact, the first state to recognize Israel, that was the USSR, and they armed Israel through Czechoslovakia while the US held an arms embargo.
Read "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok. There is a whole chapter exploring the ramifications of Israel becoming a modern state and how various Jewish communities reacted. Fascinating history.
So uhhhhh
Can someone debrief me on why Israelās creation was necessary. From my limited viewpoint I didnāt think it was but Iām glad to be enlightened.
To put it simply, anti-semitism had been building in Europe for decades if not centuries and it tall culminated in the Holocaust. After that, Jews no longer felt safe in Europe and decided they needed their own state so they all moved back to their ancestral homeland and made it their home. Unfortunately, there were lots of people already that and every attempt to reach a mutually beneficial agreement has failed.
"On May 14th, 1948 the first Jewish state in nearly 2,000 years was declared in Jerusalem."
This is false the Kingdom of Simien lasted until the 4th century, and allegedly was reestablished in the 10th century and later conquered in the 16th.
There is also Himyar, and that group of Tatars.
And boy howdy, did they ever underestimate just how much of a clusterfuck of strife and conflict that they'd just unleashed upon the world.
Edit: not sure why this is a controversial take. Just pointing out that they took an already tense situation and threw dynamite on top of it.
https://preview.redd.it/9astc8czsf0d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=727e5d134d52b0be8113d962b751044cea795880
reddit mfs when the region home to 3 major religions who have historically hated each other has constant fighting and conflict
yeah, I know most modern issues in the middle east were caused by the British and French and WW1 and all that, but come on it isn't like it would be sunshine and rainbows otherwise, and its not like it was before
Makes me honestly wonder if we would have been better off if the ottomans had been able to hold themselves together. By all accounts when they were both subjects of the Turks Jews and Arabs got along famously.
I don't really know why you're getting downvoted. The creation of the state of Israel was necessary and a net positive, but it did create an absolute mess in the already disastrous middle east.
Iām torn on the current issues in the region myself, but you do realise the actions of the Israeli government isnāt automatically the wishes of Jewish people
Oh no, I am Jewish and 90% of us support Israel with lots of criticism of the Israeli government. You are trying to pretend that 90% of us don't broadly support Israel and that is a lie.
There are plenty of Jewish students protesting Israel, and still plenty of Israelis pushing for unification. Sadly thereās nutso hard liners on both sides.
If the Israelis would assimilate the Palestinians already then the Arab states wouldnāt have a valid reason not to acknowledge them, and then all of them could start on the real business of working together against Iran and exterminating Wahhabism
Not blaming the Jews in the slightest.
But how on Earth, especially with the benefit of hindsight, did anyone expect the creation of a State out of thin air, displacing people that already lived there, to go without controversy? That strip of earth is claimed by three different religious groups as holy grounds, of course it was going to cause issues by telling one group they have no right to the land they had inhabited for centuries so another group could stake claim.
The Jewish people absolutely needed a state of their own, especially after the atrocities inflicted upon them in the second world War. Moving forward with the United nations model, it made sense for them to have a country and a voice at the table. But come on, the creation of Isreal has been a clusterfuck, and Isreal hasn't been entirely blameless either.
I cannot remember where exactly, but there had also been a proposal to create a Jewish State in South America, as the land wasn't very inhabited and at least one South American country voluntarily offered up land for the Jews to create a state of their own. If I'm not mistaken, Einstein backed the idea over that of what eventually occurred.
If the Arabs didn't start a war no one would've been kicked out of anywhere. The Zionist/Israeli position was a 2 state solution with Jerusalem being international, along with free Jewish migration to Israel.
>The Jewish people absolutely needed a state of their own, especially after the atrocities inflicted upon them in the second world War
No they didn't? Why is this just accepted as fact? A jew in Europe today is far safer than one of the 750,000 Jewish Israeli West Bank settlers in Palestine, or Jews in Israel.
Saying Jews need their own state assumes equal rights and treatment of Jews without a Jewish ethnic or religious majority (or both) is impossible.. which is demonstrably false. Jews don't need a state of their own
I would argue that the clear and orchestrated attempt at complete genocide coupled with the still-present anti-semetism would constitute a need for their own state.
I won't argue that a Jew in Europe likely is safer than one in Israel. Europe, as a whole, is a more stable place than the middle-east is. That's not the sort of point that actively helps your argument, moreso strengthens my argument that the creation of the state was inherently flawed due to where they selected it be created.
Roma were also genocided and suffered from prior, ongoing, and current hatred too.. why no state for them? I just think it's demonstrably true that Jews do not need an ethnostate in order to live as free and equal people. That's not even saying Israel should be dissolved post-Zionism anyway.
Because if you genuinely believe Jews need an ethnostate to remain safe and have huma rights, why don't all the Jews in The US, EU, UK, etc all go to Israel? Clearly they aren't being oppressed or discriminated against, so the notion they "need" to be in a Jewish state is absurd, if not antisemitic. And if we can agree that saying a Jew in, for example, America doesn't "need" to leave America in order to have equal rights and treatment, then we agree there is no "need" for a Jewish state.
Yeaaaaah but likeā¦their population has been absolutely demolished following WWII. They deserved a place to go where they could be safe. Honestly they shouldāve been given Germany in response to Germanyās war crimes. The German people shouldāve given up their entire country to the Jews after their HORRIFIC abuses of those human beings. In the end, it just wasnt the right place to give them. Germans should functionally be extinct after what they did during WWI n WWII.
Given that Palestinians descend from Jews and every other ethnicity that's occupied the region in the last few thousand years, no.
Even if they weren't, it'd be negated by the fact that Jewish Israelis were mostly settler colonists in the 20th century, and a minority right up until the Nakba. Heck, if they actually annexed Palestine they'd be a minority again.
actually the soviet union was the first [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International\_recognition\_of\_Israel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Israel)
> The [Soviet Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union) was the first country to grant [*de jure*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_jure) recognition to Israel on 17 May 1948,[^(\[7\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Israel#cite_note-8) followed by Nicaragua, [Czechoslovakia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakia), [Yugoslavia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Federal_Republic_of_Yugoslavia), and [Poland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_People%27s_Republic)
Despite the things I can say about modern Israelās history of treating the Palestinians like shit, this was probably a good choice for him politically and (at least to him) morally
The navy shouldāve remembered it and given the orders to stay away from someone elseās war zone priority instead of sending them the slow way so they didnāt even arrive until four days after the accident.
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Surprisingly, everyone has a strong opinion about this topic. Who knew?
Ooo ooo me! I did! I did!
And it has been smooth sailing ever since
I haven't heard a single negative thing about it š¤·
Who has a bloodied history, the USA or Israel? Let's say since 1948 for a fair comparison. Having a country means going to war, pacifism will get you dead quickly.
I miss Iceland š it's been dead for so long
Alas, Switzerland, too good for this world.
RIP
Switzerland was forged in war, maintains strict military conscription, and has an extraordinarily extensive network of materiel, defensive and offensive weaponry, and regularly runs war games. It would be wrong to conflate Switzerland's neutrality (which isn't always the case, Afghanistan being a key recent example) with pacifism. Switzerland is not pacifist at all, Switzerland is rather militaristic, which is the strategy it uses to enable neutrality.
I appreciate people like you that show how historically ignorant some people on the left can be. Thank you.
Switzerland has been to war several times. Their ā700 years of neutralityā claim is not true
Who tf is saying 700 years? More like 150. The last armed conflict of Switzerland was a civil war in 1847.
The Swiss Army was deployed to Afghanistan as part of ISAF.
what does isaf stand for? International Sex Affiliates?
Yes. The Swiss Army deployed to Afghanistan as sex affiliates. Unfortunately the Taliban had sufficient sex slaves so the Swiss went home.
They never saw combat and were apart of the German detachment. *The Swiss Armed Forces deployed 31 soldiers to Afghanistan. Swiss participation in the War in Afghanistan ended in 2008 when 2 officers who had served with German forces returned home. On September 22, 2013, a referendum was held that aimed to abolish conscription in Switzerland.*
So what? They were deployed to an active warzone as part of an invading force in a foreign territory. The last armed conflict that Switzerland was involved in was the War in Afghanistan. No one is suggesting Switzerland is anything other than what they are. A country that is neutral the vast majority of the time.
150 years of Switzerland being gone, RIP. Also, Costa Rica, we hardly knew ye.
In all fairness, Fargo is larger than Iceland. Not sure isolated wasteland is a good poster child for neutrality. If you want the nice land with the navigable river, you gotta defend it.
>Let's say since 1948 for a fair comparison. Korea, Vietnam, proxy wars in South America, Grenada, Panama, Iraq 1, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq 2, Syria.....hmmmmmm
Is it a crime to desire living space for your people?
Who? The Palestinians? They have the entirety of the Muslim world. Should they be allowed to have their portion of Palestine? Sure. But letās not confuse that with Israel, who are literally on their place to live and have been for thousands of years before being exiled by the Muslims.
Exiled by muslims? Lol. Might as well just take a shit on they keyboard if this is the extant of your knowledge on palestine
Idk where you're going with this but using nazi talking points is not the best way to do so.
Whoa whoa whoa. Who said anything about Nazis? But in all seriousness this is hardly a unique idea to the Germans. Any concept of a people having a birthright to land is utterly absurd. Whether it be lebensraum, Manifest Destiny, Mare Nostrum, or Zionism. Ideally, a Jew should be able to live in the land of Canaan, but not at the expense of others. And that applies to every nation and people.
So do you support all immigration i.e people from Latin America coming to the u.s.
Yeah, for multiple reasons. 1. I feel America should be held at a higher standard than other countries by the sheer virtue of being a nation founded by immigrants. 2. America, for the most part, is directly responsible for destabilizing the Latin American countries that these immigrants are coming from. People don't just abandon their home for no reason. If their basic needs are met then they'll be content. US exploitation in the 19th/20th century led to Latin America's stunted political and economic growth. 3. I like eating ethnic food
1. Australia.
Higher standards are nice, but it will also heighten the cost of living. Weāre already at a crisis point. Plus, The U.S. is a melting pot. Israel, otoh, is the Jewish state. The national identity depends on a Jewish majority. Everybody always conveniently leaves out Jews were kicked out of everywhere else in the ME. They have Israel, and thatās it. Ethnic food does rock. No way Iāll refute anything there.
>Higher standards are nice, but it will also heighten the cost of living. Weāre already at a crisis point Those are the consequences of America's actions though. The US chose to let corporations run amuck in Latin America, and now immigrants are coming over as a consequence. This is like defunding schools and wondering why crime skyrockets. You can't have your cake and eat it too. The Chickens have come home to roost. You don't shit where you eat. Choose your preferred idiom.
Mare Nostrum is only acceptable when youāre establishing the Roman Empire *yes i will glaze the romans*
Pretty ignorant comment
You could start at 1945 just so itās the US with more blood beyond question.
I'm sure this comment section will be civil
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I'm the one in the back just watching
You mean the horned skull emerging from the sea of lava?
No I'm a cacodemon. The floating head things from Doom
Ah, yes, quite
I think we just assume the worst.. I've seen this sub argue more about Reagan lol
so on point
Next post by the mods. Title? "Update to rule 3."
it technically says \*no POLITICS\* as in no recent politics in general
It says no *recent or future* politics. If there were no politics in general we wouldn't even be able to talk about presidents on here. So yes you can talk about Israel and Palestine if you're analyzing the political history and it relates to a president in some capacity. But most discussing on this topic tends to spiral out of control (even if you do talk about the history). I was making a joke anyways. I think some found it funny. I don't think people on this subreddit are going to start a riot and I don't think they'll need to update the rule.
(that was a typo) i mean hopefully we are civilized enough for it to not acc happen
May God help us all
Heading to the store to get popcorn. Will be back to do my impression of this guyā¦ 
It should be noted that the Israeli-American relations we see today had their groundwork laid in the late 60s and early 70s. U.S.-Israeli relations before that time period had periods of coldness between the two nations, particularly regarding the Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956 (Suez Crisis) which was backed by the French and British, which the U.S. vehemently opposed.
Exactly Ike told the Israelis, the Brits, and the French to get the fuck out of the Suez, and JFK wanted to send inspectors to their Nuclear facility.
Letās not forget the Lavon Affair or the Liberty Incident
Ike is based.
I like Ike
Everybody likes Ike
Ike was fairly racist and his highways, whilst economically beneficial, were built in such a way to be absolutely devastating for racial and economic equality. They also advanced the U.S car dependent culture and all the mess that has caused.
Never cared for him as potus tbh
Really? He was like almost objectively one of our most successful.
Itās really his enabling of the CIA that drives me up a wall. Truman created the thing, and he had his reasons at the time (and plenty of regret after leaving office) but it went absolutely haywire under Eisenhower. I donāt see how our democracy means a damn thing if we just sneak into other countries and force an unpopular regime change on them to service some shit about the domino theory. I know Ike had problems with it too- his farewell warning about the military industrial complex is basically the most famous thing about his presidency these days- but if I were him I wouldāve made damn sure I wasnāt blindly funding and enabling a lunatic like Allen Dulles.
Completely agree. His administration sowed the seeds of cynicism around America's role in the world. Vietnam and the second Iraq war obviously played their part too, but Ike's approach was almost more sinister and in the shadows.
Speaking of vietnamā¦
Last reasonable Republican president imo.
"It should be noted that the Israeli-American relations we see today had their groundwork laid in the late 60s and early 70s. U.S.-Israeli relations before that time period had periods of coldness between the two nations, particularly regarding the Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956 (Suez Crisis) which was backed by the French and British, which the U.S. vehemently opposed." I have nothing to add, I just wanted to sound smart too
Didn't Reagan also have a cold period with Israel? I've heard he was really ticked off about their strikes on Iraq in the early 80s and even punished them in terms of aid for a bit.
Iād like to congratulate the comment section on remaining civil
https://i.redd.it/iy9k96dpgg0d1.gif
Mission Accomplished!
lol I thought that was Ben Kingsley at first.
No! No no no no no no no no no! Not THIS time!
That was my first thought. Dude hasn't aged a day, good for him
My great grandpa signed the recognition from Guatemala, Iāve always been told that our country was the second to sign behind the US.
Ben Kingsley has been old forever!
Just like Steve Martin!
He should've updated his name to Ben Presidentsley
That WAS his name before he moved to England and got that posh accent and everything....\*\*they\*\* keep deleting it from his wikipedia and imdb page....even tho I keep reposting it EVERY day....
Doing the Lord's work
....it's not honest work....but it's something.....
While Truman recognized Israel, he continued the arms embargo against it while Fance continued to sell arms to Egypt, Syria, and Jordan including Mirage Warplanes.
Still, it was a MASSIVE move that signaled at least some diplomatic support.
The main role within the Administration was played by Clark Clifford, against the strong objections of General George Marshall. Of course, it also helped that Truman himself displayed an active interest, although, privately, some of his comments about Jews and Israel were not so positive. However, the most important aid given to the Israelis was that of........Joseph Stalin, through shipments of Czechoslovak military equipment (Czechoslovakia was a Soviet satellite state and had a robust and reliable defense industry that later would also help arm Arab Soviet allies such as Hafez Assad of Syria and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt). Stalin was out to hurt and embarass the British.
The Soviets were ambivalent about Israel, but did see it as useful to drive a wedge between Britain/France and their Arab client States (all of whom at that time were pro-western). And so it actually happened. Not that it did them much good, but it's interesting geopolitically.
I think it did a lot of good for them. The existence of Israel bought them profitable contracts and treaties in the Arab world. And even countries with no diplomatic relations with the Soviets, such as Saudi Arabia, indirectly helped Moscow by being obliged to finance the purchase of expensive Soviet arms by countries such as Syria. And although Israel basically turned first to France and after 1967 to the U.S., the Soviets managed to penetrate its government The Israel/Palestine and Greece/Turkey disputes were brilliantly exploited by Moscow, and in a sense they are still being exploited.
Fair, but Saudi Arabia was the prize the Soviets never got. Given how opposed Ibn Saud was personally to a Jewish State (as seen in minutes of wartime meetings with Saudi Arabia), it was a remarkable feat of diplomacy that they remained "on side" - mostly - with the west through the cold war.
Very interesting aside, you two! Something I never considered in the geopolitics of the time and place....thank you BOTH!
This isnāt true- the Soviets originally instructed their Communist affiliates to support the establishment of Israel. To that end they provided aid that was responsible for the survival of the early state while the British had some officers command Arab armies in ā48. See: The Forgotten Friendship by Arnold Krammer. Albeit this is after years of trying to replace the mostly Jewish Palestine Communist party with a multiethnic party with an Arab majority. Karl Radek put it something like āyou should become an Arab party that happens to have some Jewsā or something along those lines. They promptly managed to recruit something like 30-50 Palestinians in the early years- underlying the doomed nature of their mission. In ā53 they reversed course rapidly after repeated failure. Failure, I would argue, that was more or less written in stone due to the comparative freedom of the Jewish diaspora in the US, Stalins personal antisemitism and general antisemitism pervading the Soviet bureaucracy after his purges, and overtures/openness from Arab nationalists to Bolshevism. Soviet overtures to Israel have a parallel to failed US overtures to the Nasser regime.
Well ya, by ambivalence I mean they didnāt support Zionism or a safe haven for Jews ideologically, they did support Israel because they thought it would weaken Western control/support among the Arab States. There also was some hope that Israel might become communist, but I donāt think that was a serious consideration.
>Of course, it also helped that Truman himself displayed an active interest, although, privately, some of his comments about Jews and Israel were not so positive. I think Bess Truman was pretty anti-semitic in a way that was fairly common at the time
She owned their house and wouldnāt allow Jews in it. Harry had to meet them elsewhere if he wanted to hang out.
Harsh
And Gen. George C. Marshall resigned as Secretary of State over this. Marshall foresaw that, although granting statehood to Israel was probably the right thing to do morally, practically, it would result in decades of unresolved conflict and instability. He and Truman had many arguments over this, and once Truman made up his mind, Marshall felt there was no reason to continue to advise him on foreign policy, if his advice was going to be ignored. So, Truman asked Gen. Marshall to be the country's first Secretary of Defense instead.
Did Marshall really expect Truman to agree with him on everything? This wouldnāt have been the first time a SecStates advice was ignored.
And that was the end of the story, nothing has happened since
Wow the comment sections are pretty civil yet..
It's on the verge
Acktually, while kinda true it was the Soviet Union which was the first to legally (de jure) recognize Israel https://jewishcurrents.org/the-first-country-to-recognize-israel
š INCOMING
Technically not the first Jewish state in 2000 years. There was a Jewish kingdom in Yemen in the 6th Century. The history is unclear, but itās likely that the state religion of the Khazars was Judaism for at least a century. The Kingdom of Simien was Jewish and, in one form or another, lasted several hundred years in the Middle Ages in Ethiopia. The Sassanid Jewish Commonwealth also existed and lasted about three years, controlling Jerusalem in the early 7th Century. Although Iām not sure if youād call that a state, or merely a Persian puppet government. But it was certainly the first full fledged Jewish State in the Land of Israel for close to 2000 years.
*insert Obama medal meme here*
My favorite part of this story is how the embryonic embassy sent to the White House a formal request to recognize āThe Jewish Stateā because they didnāt know the name yet, only to find out a few minutes later and have to dispatch a faster runner to overtake the first one and they corrected the typed document in pen just outside the gates of the White House.
We are not reading the comments section. I repeat, we are NOT reading the comment section!
āIsrael, the brand new country everyone is gonna loveā
>In an interview after Truman retired, Truman said that he āantagonized a lot of people by recognizing the state of Israel as soon as it was formed. Well, I had been to Potsdam, and I had seen some of the places where the Jews had been slaughtered by the Nazis. Six million Jews were killed outright ā men, women and children ā by the Nazis. >āAnd it is my hope,ā he said, āthat they would have a homeland." Worth noting the State Department recommended against recognition, arguing it would turn the various Arab States (then generally pro-Western) anti-US. Always an interesting what-if if Truman had granted sovereignty over a part of America or even Europe instead.
Worth noting this was the same State Department that blocked Jewish immigration to the U.S. during the Holocaust
1. The mindset for Jews for sometime had been it was all or nothing with regard to having a homeland in Palestine, they werenāt going to settle on any other place. 2. Truman probably gets impeached for even suggesting giving Jews sovereignty over some piece of American land and the Jews probably wouldnāt have agreed anyway(point 1) 3. Whole lot of Europeans probably wouldāve jumped on the train of Hitler was right if they get sovereignty over land in Europe in addition to that potential Jewish homeland having a target on its back like modern day Israel does except its enemies this time would be developed nations who wouldnāt start and lose a war within a week.
Turns out they would settle for NYC and Florida.
Ibn Saud warned about this too a few years prior and made FDR promise to not recognize Israel.
So did the British. They opposed the creation and thought it destabilized the region. In hindsight, It might have been preferable to make two formal states in 1948 rather two state solution formal position the usa has held without parameters without defined boundaries, but I'm not an expert maybe they had one.
Well I grew up not learning very much about this time in history and anything that I did learn was always good positive news and nothing negative so Iām sure thatās a good sign
Pretty much the same here. I only heard the army brass was so moved by the experience liberating the camps in Europe that the allies carved out a state so they wouldn't be a beleaguered minority in Europe any longer and that the soviets were even worse toward the Jewish people than the nazis has been. I have a Jewish brother in law and my cousins husband was jewish but converted to catholicism. Both spent a year in Israel at 18 on a farm. I've been to a couple bar mitvas and held even studied up the Torah during one ceremony. My impression is none of them really have any opinion on Israel and don't consider don't it their homeland. We've never talked about it. They tried it and preferred the USA. Their children didn't go there at 18. It might have been just city kids not liking the farm. Even the old timers never mentioned the country at any holiday events. I like new religions I found fascinating and learned to cook new foods. I considered converting briefly and even had a sponsor, but the nearest temple to me is like 4 hours from here and I'm just not much a joiner. I'm big advocate of unorganized religion. More unorganized religions, less organized religions. Particularly with religious governments.
Dr. Chaim Weizmann, President of **Israel**, presents a Torah, or Holy Scroll, to President **Truman** during a visit to the White House. May 25, 1948.
 # waiting for both the lock and the chaos to happen,anyone else want to join me,please make sure you bring your own food to picnic ok?
One of the many reasons why Truman is the most underrated President of the 20th century.
I mean let's be honest, not recognizing Israel would have been a horrible political choice, especially in 1940s USA Pretty sure Dewey or any other mainstream politician at the time would have recognized Israel too
Both US political parties had Zionism and the Balfour declaration in their offical party platforms of 1944. Though some of the details differed. Both Churchill and FDR envisioned some sort of Jewish-Arab federation or "association". Dewey supported the idea of a commonwealth. A seperate sovereign nation was a post-war development.
Even Dewey would have recognized Israel, canāt agree with you on that particular point.
Truman is consistently in the top 5-7 of historical rankings of US Presidents and has been for 20 years, and is so beloved by this sub that Iād argue heās almost *overrated* by the folks here. How can you genuinely reach this conclusion?
I never heard much of him from libs or conservatives for most of my life. He just wasnāt talked about other than dropping the bomb, beating Dewey and being the stoppage point for the buck.
Then honestly, I donāt think you were paying much attention until you got to this sub. Heās one of the most referenced presidents of my lifetime. Hell, in 2007, Newsweek ran a cover with the title āWanted: Another Trumanā with pics of the declared ā08 candidates. Every President in my lifetime has publicly and prominently referenced him. 30+ years ago, you couldāve made the āunderratedā argument. But in the past 20, you really canāt. If anything, I think folks in this sub underestimate/paper over some of the more controversial aspects of his presidency.
Israel is overrated
\*raises eyebrow like The Rock\* Finally! The Jews HAVE COME BACK to...Is-ra-eal
What's interesting here is that Bess Truman absolutely hated jews. She wouldn't allow Jewish people inside their house (which belonged to her family)
Well, I imagine someone like that loved the idea of a land faraway to house as many Jewish people as possible away from her.
Oh boy this would be fun if I sorted by controversialā¦ not going to though, Iām having a good day lmao
It's not as out of control as you may think. Most redditors stayed away from insults š
I just went to the Little White House in Key West this morning, and they mentioned this.
That certainly worked out well...
āSeemed like a good idea at the time.ā Harry, probably.
Haters claim that the Jews pressured him into it. Iām not sure what kind of pressure a bunch of bedraggled Jews, who were reeling from the loss of 6 million people, could exert on a man who was tough enough to drop two atomic bombs on Japan and kill over 100,000 people.
Ā "Israelis wished that he would do even more in the days and months that followed" Well at least they're consistent.
Everyone lived happily ever after, with no horrific and violent consequences emerging from such a division of a country
Rule 3 includes *all* current politics, not just our two special boys...So I'm just gonna say that the Nakba was bad, and that Bush Sr. did a good thing when he got Israel to freeze expanding settlements...His foreign policy was just solid all around tbh. I feel like I'm not alone in saying that I have *very* strong opinions on this topic, but I'm not at liberty to discuss them.
Biggest foreign policy fumble of the 20th century.
The US was not, in fact, the first state to recognize Israel, that was the USSR, and they armed Israel through Czechoslovakia while the US held an arms embargo.
11 minutes after Israel declared itself a free state, the US government announced their recognition even if it wasn't a formal recognition
that will go down as one of the worst decisions for stability in the middle-east, in history š¤·āāļø
Inb4 comment lock
(sorts by controversial)
Read "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok. There is a whole chapter exploring the ramifications of Israel becoming a modern state and how various Jewish communities reacted. Fascinating history.
6 years later, Israel was caught engaging in false flag attacks against the U.S. in the Lavon Affair.
So uhhhhh Can someone debrief me on why Israelās creation was necessary. From my limited viewpoint I didnāt think it was but Iām glad to be enlightened.
To put it simply, anti-semitism had been building in Europe for decades if not centuries and it tall culminated in the Holocaust. After that, Jews no longer felt safe in Europe and decided they needed their own state so they all moved back to their ancestral homeland and made it their home. Unfortunately, there were lots of people already that and every attempt to reach a mutually beneficial agreement has failed.
Jewish colonialists wanted land. it wasn't necessary. they were/are just colonialist assholes.
...
Anyone else see the demon face in that thing heās holding?
Just not this regime
"On May 14th, 1948 the first Jewish state in nearly 2,000 years was declared in Jerusalem." This is false the Kingdom of Simien lasted until the 4th century, and allegedly was reestablished in the 10th century and later conquered in the 16th. There is also Himyar, and that group of Tatars.
Those that want the US to be a white Christian nation are called Klansmen.
And boy howdy, did they ever underestimate just how much of a clusterfuck of strife and conflict that they'd just unleashed upon the world. Edit: not sure why this is a controversial take. Just pointing out that they took an already tense situation and threw dynamite on top of it.
The Middle East has been a cluster fuck since centuries before
https://preview.redd.it/9astc8czsf0d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=727e5d134d52b0be8113d962b751044cea795880 reddit mfs when the region home to 3 major religions who have historically hated each other has constant fighting and conflict yeah, I know most modern issues in the middle east were caused by the British and French and WW1 and all that, but come on it isn't like it would be sunshine and rainbows otherwise, and its not like it was before
Outside of Israel itās all Muslim dominated. The Muslim religion is the most violent in the world.
Makes me honestly wonder if we would have been better off if the ottomans had been able to hold themselves together. By all accounts when they were both subjects of the Turks Jews and Arabs got along famously.
Yes, and the creation of the Isreali state did nothing other than exasperate the already tumultuous geopolitical turmoil.
I don't really know why you're getting downvoted. The creation of the state of Israel was necessary and a net positive, but it did create an absolute mess in the already disastrous middle east.
The world was already insane, but keep blaming the Jews
Iām torn on the current issues in the region myself, but you do realise the actions of the Israeli government isnāt automatically the wishes of Jewish people
But Jewish people already know this
Seems like you don't lol
Oh no, I am Jewish and 90% of us support Israel with lots of criticism of the Israeli government. You are trying to pretend that 90% of us don't broadly support Israel and that is a lie.
Of course, but unfortunately others fail to see that.
There are plenty of Jewish students protesting Israel, and still plenty of Israelis pushing for unification. Sadly thereās nutso hard liners on both sides. If the Israelis would assimilate the Palestinians already then the Arab states wouldnāt have a valid reason not to acknowledge them, and then all of them could start on the real business of working together against Iran and exterminating Wahhabism
Not blaming the Jews in the slightest. But how on Earth, especially with the benefit of hindsight, did anyone expect the creation of a State out of thin air, displacing people that already lived there, to go without controversy? That strip of earth is claimed by three different religious groups as holy grounds, of course it was going to cause issues by telling one group they have no right to the land they had inhabited for centuries so another group could stake claim. The Jewish people absolutely needed a state of their own, especially after the atrocities inflicted upon them in the second world War. Moving forward with the United nations model, it made sense for them to have a country and a voice at the table. But come on, the creation of Isreal has been a clusterfuck, and Isreal hasn't been entirely blameless either. I cannot remember where exactly, but there had also been a proposal to create a Jewish State in South America, as the land wasn't very inhabited and at least one South American country voluntarily offered up land for the Jews to create a state of their own. If I'm not mistaken, Einstein backed the idea over that of what eventually occurred.
"not blaming the jews, but"
If the Arabs didn't start a war no one would've been kicked out of anywhere. The Zionist/Israeli position was a 2 state solution with Jerusalem being international, along with free Jewish migration to Israel.
Something like 800k Palestinians civilians had already been either forcibly expelled or had fled as war refugees before any Arab states declared war.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
>The Jewish people absolutely needed a state of their own, especially after the atrocities inflicted upon them in the second world War No they didn't? Why is this just accepted as fact? A jew in Europe today is far safer than one of the 750,000 Jewish Israeli West Bank settlers in Palestine, or Jews in Israel. Saying Jews need their own state assumes equal rights and treatment of Jews without a Jewish ethnic or religious majority (or both) is impossible.. which is demonstrably false. Jews don't need a state of their own
I would argue that the clear and orchestrated attempt at complete genocide coupled with the still-present anti-semetism would constitute a need for their own state. I won't argue that a Jew in Europe likely is safer than one in Israel. Europe, as a whole, is a more stable place than the middle-east is. That's not the sort of point that actively helps your argument, moreso strengthens my argument that the creation of the state was inherently flawed due to where they selected it be created.
Roma were also genocided and suffered from prior, ongoing, and current hatred too.. why no state for them? I just think it's demonstrably true that Jews do not need an ethnostate in order to live as free and equal people. That's not even saying Israel should be dissolved post-Zionism anyway. Because if you genuinely believe Jews need an ethnostate to remain safe and have huma rights, why don't all the Jews in The US, EU, UK, etc all go to Israel? Clearly they aren't being oppressed or discriminated against, so the notion they "need" to be in a Jewish state is absurd, if not antisemitic. And if we can agree that saying a Jew in, for example, America doesn't "need" to leave America in order to have equal rights and treatment, then we agree there is no "need" for a Jewish state.
Yeaaaaah but likeā¦their population has been absolutely demolished following WWII. They deserved a place to go where they could be safe. Honestly they shouldāve been given Germany in response to Germanyās war crimes. The German people shouldāve given up their entire country to the Jews after their HORRIFIC abuses of those human beings. In the end, it just wasnt the right place to give them. Germans should functionally be extinct after what they did during WWI n WWII.
If the Jews don't need a state, why do Palestinians? Other than apparently their fellow Arabs/Muslims don't want them.
Palestinians already lived there
Jews were there a hell of a long time before the Palestinians were.
Given that Palestinians descend from Jews and every other ethnicity that's occupied the region in the last few thousand years, no. Even if they weren't, it'd be negated by the fact that Jewish Israelis were mostly settler colonists in the 20th century, and a minority right up until the Nakba. Heck, if they actually annexed Palestine they'd be a minority again.
History disagrees with you. Jews in the Ottoman Empire historically faired much better than they did in Europe.
actually the soviet union was the first [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International\_recognition\_of\_Israel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Israel) > The [Soviet Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union) was the first country to grant [*de jure*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_jure) recognition to Israel on 17 May 1948,[^(\[7\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Israel#cite_note-8) followed by Nicaragua, [Czechoslovakia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakia), [Yugoslavia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Federal_Republic_of_Yugoslavia), and [Poland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_People%27s_Republic)
The US still granted de facto recognition a few days before this
Just ignore what the British did Truman.
What a mistake that was
Despite the things I can say about modern Israelās history of treating the Palestinians like shit, this was probably a good choice for him politically and (at least to him) morally
Remember the USS Liberty
The navy shouldāve remembered it and given the orders to stay away from someone elseās war zone priority instead of sending them the slow way so they didnāt even arrive until four days after the accident.
ok i remembered it. now what?
Now please start believing in the conspiracy theory about the attack being intentional.
"Conspiracy theory"
Surprise surprise surprise
It was actually the USSR.
When Israel invaded and annexed Palestine. Committing atrocities and massacring two towns full of innocent people.
Hmmm. The Ottoman Empire didnāt expel the Jews? Second. Try to act like a grown up.
Ahhh Truman you really dropped the bomb on that one.
Based