Hitler, the Nazis and World War Two etc etc

[Errata]

But at that time, and in that place, the land was not perceived as belonging to the Palestinians..

It was ex-Ottoman Empire land, divided between France and Britain as League of Nations mandates post WWI.

Phil

Not only was it not perceived to belong to the Palestinians, it did not in fact belong to the Palestinians. They have never been self -governing. They're due certainly, but any land given to them will be land that isn't theirs. Technically. The land didn't belong to the Jews either, although in theory a claim could be made from pre Roman times, but that's a seriously weak claim. But the land is theirs now.

Out of all of the kluge countries slapped together after WWI and WWII, I think my favorite disaster is Iraq. I mean, talk about not paying a bit of attention to the ethnic and religious realities of the region. That was just pitiful. I'm not sure that everyone wasn't better off under the Ottoman Empire. Well, probably the Kurds weren't, but their situation isn't that great currently.

[Phil H]

But at that time, and in that place, the land was not perceived as belonging to the Palestinians..

It was ex-Ottoman Empire land, divided between France and Britain as League of Nations mandates post WWI.

There were agreements like the Sykes-Picot agreement even before the war ended drawing lines on paper (rather like the mason-Dixon line in the US).

Lawrence of Arabia had strong views on the post war settlement. Jordan and Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria were all carved out of the area in the 1920s and after.

So in 1945 and after, the UN - taking over from the League - thought nothing of further sub-dividing the area to create Israel.

It was also a time when new nations were being created a lot (many of them utterly artificial) - Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia after WWI, the defacto division of Germany in 1945: because former empires had broken up.

Like it or not, that was the way the world worked then.

Phil

[Robert]

Well of course, whatever guilt the Allies might have felt about the Jews, and whether or not the Allies were guilty of anything, one cannot expiate one's sins by giving away land that isn't yours. So any involvement of the Allies in the creation of the state of Israel has zero moral worth. By the same token, if I feel guilty about the starving people of the world, it will be impertinent for me to give the starving someone else's money.

[Errata]

Actually, I think Britain's role in the creation of Israel - a subject on which I am almost completely ignorant - must have been pretty divided.

On the one hand, it was based on the Balfour Declaration, but on the other the Zionist commandos had been killing British troops in Israel (still a British mandate) including many casualties in the King David Hotel incident.


Phil

Oh Jeez... the Balfour Declaration. What a can of worms. A vague little statement. But complicated by the fact that the territory had already been promised to the Arabs three years earlier, and a year later to the Syrians. So there was certainly no pressure to adhere to the Balfour Declaration, and if they had intended to adhere to it, why promise it to the Syrians a year later?

To be fair however, there was a basic ideological split between between the Palestinian Jews, and the activities of the Irgun (the Jewish terrorist organization) were often roundly condemned by the Jewish leadership. Which may have given the British some sense that the Irgun was a splinter organization, and not sanctioned by the majority of Jews. Which is certainly debatable. Anti-Irgun sentiments certainly did not prevent Israel from electing one of the Irguni leaders as Prime Minister. (Menachem Begin).

[Phil H]

Actually, I think Britain's role in the creation of Israel - a subject on which I am almost completely ignorant - must have been pretty divided.

On the one hand, it was based on the Balfour Declaration, but on the other the Zionist commandos had been killing British troops in Israel (still a British mandate) including many casualties in the King David Hotel incident.

I think we must have been eager to get out on one level, and much sympathy seems to have been directed to the pro-British Arabs (Jordan and Iraq - still a kingdom then).

Yet by 1956 Britain was conspiring WITh the Israelis and French against Nasser.

It's a complex world.

Phil

[Roy Corduroy]

Anti Americanism has always been with us

Jason, Anti Americanism is with us here in America.

Now that I know the birth of Israel was all America's (and Britain's) "fault." Because we felt so "guilty." But yeah, that's it. Don't blame the Israelis for anything. Blame America. Everybody does. We do it ourselves. We're just one big guilty angst-ridden sucka. So yeah, just bring it on in bucketloads.

Roy

[jason_c]

I would dispute this 'growing anti-Americanism' in the UK.

Well, my perception is different.

Post the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, I both sense and dicoverin conversations, a much increased cynicism about the US, its culture and values and a feeling that the UK should not be "America's poodle", that very much draws on that.

This is in direct contrast to the views I have found through most of my life.

My discussions arise from a wide range of contacts with all manner of people, and are not mine (I am broadly and strongly pro-US).

The regime was perceived as particularly unlikeable, and I would say lost much of the UK sympathy post 9/11. Obama was initially greeted almost as a messiah here, but again is now seen much less positively.

Happy to expand on this,

Phil

Anti Americanism has always been with us, though it may have increased.

I'd agree with your points above but also add one thing. We are allowed to be anti American, both in polite company and the media. Im not sure we're allowed to be as anti Muslim, anti German or anti French today(i think were still allowed to call the French smelly, but not cowards).

[Phil H]

On post-war "guilt", I think there was a widespread shock in the west at what had been done by a European culture, and many things changed as a result.

Anti-semitism, at least in its overt, pre-War forms disappeared from civil society. Read the pre-war diaries and other accounts of the period and you will find a casual anti-Jewish attitude among much of the British upper classes (not only Moseley supporters either) and from personal experience among ordinary people too.

For instance in the 50s/60s my grandmother (born around 1887) would often refer to certain entertainers as "Jewboy" - it was not meant maliciously, or to denigrate, just a matter of fact (to her). It was part of the conventions of her upbringing and youth. I do not recall any remnant of that view being passed on to me at home or school.

I think this was a guilt resulting from the scale of the Holocaust and the numbers who died; the awful manner of their murder; the fact that it had gone on relatively unknown to the public (at least) and a recognition that "somehow" it related to pre-war attitudes, and to the reluctance to take in Jewish refugees from the fascist states.

I think it also relates to an immense sympathy for the circumstances of the Jews that resulted in widespread support for the creation of the state of israel and for something like five decades, a reluctance to criticse Israel's policies too strongly.

My surprise is that that assumption of an unspoken, tacit but real western support for Israel is not almost visibly eroding. Is that the result of what Israel has done, its perceived role in Middle Eastern tensions, or has sympathy simply transferred to the Palestinians?

It does sometimes seem now as if Israel is guilty of many of the same sort of "crimes" (not by any means all or in such an extreme way) as the fascist states. Is that also a process of time - or has the influx of Russian emigre Jews introduced a strain of policy based on experience under a totalitarian state (the former USSR)?

Phil

[Adam Went]

Just on a brief side note, have we all seen the "ODESSA File" film or, more importantly, read the book by Frederick Forsyth?

Was reminded of it by the current discussions regarding Israel as a state and conflicts with Egypt, etc....the book is largely set in that sort of time period and, though it's largely fictional, does include some interesting passages from around that time. Mentions of the important figures of the day as well such as the iconic David Ben-Gurion....

Aside from the fact that it's a great read in its own right....

Cheers,
Adam.

[Errata]

LOL!!! Without wishing to get into any debate over the very different notions of the "afterlife" held by the various demoninations of Jews, Christians and Muslims etc. I have always found this one of interest ever since I saw it performed live, as a surprise 18th Birthday present, way back in 1987!!! Did I say 1987??? Err... I meant to say 1997... yes, thats it, back in 1997... no really it was... I swear... oh damn it!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeFG0dGi6Vo&feature=related

Best wishes,
Zodiac.

Single greatest piece of standup of all time. There is also a Fringe Festival one-act thats been around awhile about a woman who dies in a car crash and accidentally ends up in Valhalla instead of Heaven, and there's a court case with Odin and Jesus as dueling lawyers to decide where she should spend her afterlife. Also very funny.

[Zodiac]

If there is a form of Hell in the afterworld, I would like to think of poor Maurice Joly stuck there apologizing to Jewish visitors constantly for the misuse of his attack on Napoleon III in the 1860s.

LOL!!! Without wishing to get into any debate over the very different notions of the "afterlife" held by the various demoninations of Jews, Christians and Muslims etc. I have always found this one of interest ever since I saw it performed live, as a surprise 18th Birthday present, way back in 1987!!! Did I say 1987??? Err... I meant to say 1997... yes, thats it, back in 1997... no really it was... I swear... oh damn it!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeFG0dGi6Vo&feature=related

Best wishes,
Zodiac.

[Errata]

How someone can take our victory over the Nazis, and the creation of the state of Israel, and turn it into an American guilt trip boggles my mind.

Roy

Not an American guilt trip, an Allied guilt trip. Which was more than just the US. And it was not guilt over the Holocaust. It was guilt over not taking in the hundreds of thousands of refugees who could not, or did not want to return home. Zionism and emigration to the Holy Land had been taking place since the mid 19th century. But the resettling was not bringing them any closer to recognized statehood. That took World War II. It took a large amount of homeless Jews that were being turned away from the US, Britain, forced out of Russia, Poland, Hungary, etc. It took Jews being taken from Nazi concentration camps and put into British internment camps (even a few American ones, like Ft. Oswego)because they refused to go home to a place that did not keep them safe, or would no longer keep them safe. The policies were bad. And Truman did a good job with fixing our Displaced Persons policy, but not in time to prevent some pretty awful decisions. The St. Louis springs to mind. Did the US feel guilty? Certainly some of the UN staff did, although whether or not that guilt affected the vote, no one can say. Should they have? A little for the immigration policy. Though to be fair, it was not solely Allied guilt that led to the formation of Israel. Jews and Palestinians blowing up the British had an impact. The irony of that whole situation is pretty evident. Certainly Britain HAD to give up the territory, but they had an established relationship with the Palestinians, and there was no reason for them to create a Jewish state there. So it boils down to guilt over the Jews, or spite for the Palestinians, and I'm betting it was a little of both.

As for the Allies not making the camps a priority? Well, they didn't. Or else the guys liberating camps after the death of Hitler would not have been surprised by their existence. Since Maidanek had been liberated a good 6 months earlier, and was not even the first camp found. And camps had been found in Belgium, and were known to exist is France, the Netherlands, and Germany. So there was a colossal failure in communication. Would it have mattered? Maybe not. I can see the argument both ways for that.

[Robert]

Re the lack of effective opposition to the Nazis inside Germany : what Hitler did in 1933 was to completely take over civil society. In other words, people will only act if they can act together. Without the backing of, e.g. trade unions, or political parties, no one wants to stick his head up in case his is the only head sticking up and it gets shot off.

Re the camps etc, I think it was AJP Taylor who said that in WW1, everyone believed that the Germans were raping nuns etc when in general they weren't, whereas in WW2 when the Germans were doing such things, nobody would believe it. It's hard to say how much the Allies knew. I have a book somewhere about some Jews in Warsaw trying to get the message out. I'll see if I can find it.

[Roy Corduroy]

Cancel my Guilt Trip

I suggested that the Holocaust AND the Allies unwillingness to allow Jews to immigrate was responsible for the formation of Israel. Allies feel awful about the Holocaust, and are very nervous about a Jewish influx into their own countries, give them their own country, problem solved. Guilt assuaged.

What Guilt? There is no guilt for the allies. None. Nothing to assauge. We defeated the Nazis. The word guilt has no part in the discussion of the Allies and the Jews. That is some kind of revisionist thought that has been made up since.

The formation of Israel had been in progress for decades, with steadily increasing imigration. Your version of the creation of Israel, springing out of some kind of guilt and refusal for Jews to imigrate to the west is misguided at the least. Are you saying Zionism didn't exist? That there was no movement going back decades? The emergence of Israel as a state coincided with independence movements all over the globe after the war. Are you confusing Israel with colonialism? I really don't get your point at all. But again, the word guilt has nothing to do with it as far as the western allies are concerned. How you get that word guilt in there is beyond me. Sympathy yes, guilt, no.

The Allies have no responsibility for the Holocaust, though I think everyone could agree that things might have been different had they made the liberation of camps a priority

I am in total disagreement.

We were fighting a global, two-front war, Euroupe and the Pacific, and decided early on to give priority to the European Theater. So it isn't like we were shorting the effort there. In the invasion of occupied Euroupe, if we were guilty of anything it was over-optimism, projecting we would defeat Germany by Christmas. No way. Instead, from D-Day June 6, 1944 in France it was eight and a half months before we crossed the Rhine on March 23 1945. And then we went only as far as the Elbe River, where we met the Russians, and by agreement, stopped. The war ended soon after, on May 8. In the short time we fought our way across western Germany we liberated camps as fast as we could. The vast killings fields and death camps in the east were entirely beyond our zone.

How someone can take our victory over the Nazis, and the creation of the state of Israel, and turn it into an American guilt trip boggles my mind.

Roy

[Errata]

So I would ask this question - was the creation of the state of israel, in hindsight, a wise or sensible decision. While problems would have replaced those we know today, would world peace, and certainly the Middle east, have been better off without Israel exisiting? (I'm assuming that Jews would have gone on living safely in individual countries.)

Well Israel is certainly a tangle, but in the end, we aren't just talking about Israel. Was it a wise and sensible decision? In the end it doesn't matter. Regardless of whether or not the UN had ever voted for independence, Israel has won it many times over. Something akin to Henry VII's ascension to the English throne. "De jure belli et de jure Lancastriae". Primarily throught right of conquest, and a little bit by virtue of Lancastrian blood. Israel is primarily a country because no one has ever managed to take it away from them, and lord knows they've tried, and a little bit because the UN says so.

But without Israel, the British Mandate territories would have had to be divided another way. The entire area could have made into Jordan, But that would have made them huge, and I'm pretty sure Egypt wouldn't stand for that. They could have created Jordan and divided the rest between Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, but whoever got the coast would get the wealth, and again I don't think Egypt would have let that go. They could have created Palestine for Palestinians, but then the Palestinians would be in no better shape, because they would be ruled completely by the Arabs who had been living in the area.

Clearly the region does not think well of Jews as a rule. But they also don't think well of Palestinians, Jordanians, the Lebanese, and the Copts. I think the only acceptable solution for Egypt has been to control that territory, whoever technically holds the keys. At least Israel is strong enough to hold their own, where most of the other groups would not have been able to stand.

Did the UN do anyone any favors? No. But it was a little bit no win, and while it hasn't turned out great, I think it has turned out for the best of a bad bunch of scenarios.