Sir Keir Starmer poised to ditch pledge on free university

There was no such thing as an Israeli before 1948.....there were only Palestinian Jews who formed a minority of the total population of Palestine amongst a far greater number of Palestinian Arabs. Until the 1890s the Jewish population of the then Ottoman province of Palestine were only a tiny minority. They had the same rights as Christians and other minorities. Only after the Young Turk revolution in 1909 did the Ottoman Empire become more overtly Turkish nationalist and non Turks begin to suffer increasingly harsh discrimination and in some cases persecution, the worst example being the Armenian genocide  during the First World War. The Jewish community at the time though starting to grow in numbers remained too small for the Ottoman Turks to worry about all that much.

The main reason of course that Jewish numbers were starting to increase was the emergence of the ideology of Zionism in the 1890s. The idea of a Jewish homeland ordained by God that could evoke the glories and sense of statehood of biblical times with Jews living in a homeland of their own all looked particularly attractive to many Jews suffering persecution in the lands in which they were living, in those days the worst persecution being in the Tsarist Empire and other parts of Eastern Europe. But still for a long term Jewish emigration to America, BritaIn and elsewhere  far outstripped emigration to Palestine.

In World War 1 the British ultimately contributed to the roots of the future Arab Israeli conflict. With it's top priority being to fight and win the First World War Britain sought to curry favour with Jewish communities around the world, especially in the USA where some of the wealthier ones especially were influential politically. Hence the Balfour Declaration of 1917 promising the Jews a national home in Palestine, albeit supposedly without disadvantaging the Arab majority already there. Yet at the same time eager to win the military support of the Arabs in revolts against the Turks, the UK made vague promises leading the Arabs to believe they were fighting for an Arab state that would include the entire Middle East including Palestine. All this was going to prove an impossible square to circle and lay at the root of the future conflict or at least greatly embittering it with the Arabs feeling betrayed, whilst some of the Jews themselves felt driven to acts of terrorism against the British in the end.

Continuing persecution of the Jews in eastern Europe - and after 1933 in Germany - ensured a steady flow of Jewish emigrants into Palestine, which began to increase as Nazi persecution intensified. At this stage the Jews were in no sense stealing land but were buying it legally from Arab landlords, often using funds provided by more wealthy Jews of the Diaspora. The increasing Jewish numbers began to anger a majority of the the Arabs, aware as they were of the Balfour Declaration and feeling that Palestine had been promised to them. Even as a minority of the Arabs were quite happy to take  the Jewish money. Ultimately this led to Arab uprisings and communal strife between Jews and Arabs, to which the British - controlling Palestine since the defeat of the Turks - responded by attempting to restrict Jewish emigration into the area just as the Nazi persecution was heading in murderous directions. This of course angered the Jews, the extremists amongst them seeing Britain increasingly as an enemy from this point on.

World War 2 and the horrors of the holocaust transformed the situation. Inevitably there was worldwide sympathy for the Jews which for a long time overwhelmed any sympathy there might have been for the Arabs. And it led to a mass of Jewish survivors desperate to get out of Europe to Palestine. The British tried to restrict this but were overwhelmed, though the attempt angered the Jews still further, and there began terrorist outrages against the British by people who were later prominent in right wing Israeli politics. The British, in severe economic difficulties and increasingly viewed as the bad guys decided to get out and hand the whole thing over to the United Nations. They came up with a partition plan which the Jews accepted but the Arabs rejected. The Arabs saw the Jews as emigrants from outside taking over the area, which in essence many of them were. So they planned to destroy any Jewish state at the very beginning to preserve Palestine for the Arab majority. Many Arabs viewed the Jews in historical terms as modern day crusaders backed by the west.

As the last British left, Israel declared it's existence. Only from this point does it make sense to talk of Israeli Jews and Arabs. The surrounding Arab nations immediately invaded Palestine but failed to destroy Israel in what was the first Arab Israeli War. During the course of the war the Jews expelled many thousands of Arabs by force and replaced them with Jewish emigrants. And wilful massacres of Arabs by Jewish extremists - most notoriously at Deir Yassin - resulted in hundreds of thousands fleeing for their lives. The Jews never let them back. Instead they formed the basis of a Palestinian refugee community, nurturing desires for revenge and a breeding ground for anti-Jewish terrorism. This war was the first time that Jews stole Arab lands as opposed to buying them fairly and squarely. 

Arab hostility to the Jewish state was for a long time unremitting. Not until the latter 1970s did one of them - Egypt - bury the hatchet, and it's leader, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated for that. In the first Arab Israeli War the Jews expanded their territory but the Arabs gained control of the West Bank which was annexed by Jordan to become part of the state of Transjordan, and the Gaza strip ruled by Egypt. Terrorists shielded by the surrounding Arab states made frequent attacks on Israeli targets and people. Egypt lost the Gaza strip and for a time the Sinai Peninsular in 1956 in the second Arab Israeli War known in the UK as the Suez crisis. Sinai was taken again by the Israelis in 1967 and handed back to Egypt as part of the peace settlement with Sadat. 


Thus far for the most part the Jews were more sinned against than sinning. But in the Six Day War of 1967 Israel comprehensively defeated the Arabs, seizing, amongst other areas, the whole of the West Bank. It has been oppressively occupied ever since. It is notable that as Israeli politics has moved rightwards, notably since the election of the first Likud government in 1977 with former terrorists prominent in it, Israel has become much more intransigent. The notion that the West Bank was part of Israel by right, and that the Arabs who lived there were a problem in the way of that began to take hold. The land thefts began, Jewish settlements taking ever more Arab land, with many of the settler community openly hostile to the Arabs around them, with their kids throwing stones at them and so on. Jewish snipers seem able to shoot to kill both indiscriminately and with impunity.

This all fuels more Arab hatred and is the motive force behind Arab terrorism. And it is why there is so much support for this amongst Palestinian Arabs. They see it as hitting back against a hostile oppressor. Of course, many of the Arabs there, fuelled by hate, are no doubt staunch antisemites. But many Israeli Jews there are themselves staunch haters of the Arabs. Racism, fuelled by decades of animosity, hostility, violence, and oppression exists on both sides. But Starmer does not believe that widespread Israeli racism exists. The Israeli Jews are always the victims, never the perpetrators. When in fact bigotry and malice exists on both sides.

So the 12 tribes of Israel didn't exist in 1800 BC, srb?
Where did you get that long post from. Was it copied and pasted from elsewhere?

Meanwhile - Starmer strikes again..

The 'many improvements' were usually through PFI contracts which is a good way to get things done when you want it done but a poor way for following governments who have to service those costs. I am not sure how true the £300 cost to change a light bulb is but it is illustrative of how the contracts were set up. My ex father in law was a maintenance man at a local hospital and although the cost of keeping him there was always an issue he could change a light bulb for ten minutes of his time and for 10p

Nothing in my post was untrue. And there was no Israeli state before 1948 unless you go back more than 2000 years.

If you really want me to take it apart, I will. I skip read it.

Feel free, but a long tit for tat on this subject would derail the thread, so if you really want to try and warp the truth into something else to which I might have to respond when I have the time, might I suggest a new thread? Alternatively, we can just move on and save that one for a history forum somewhere.