It all began with a tweet.
In October 2023, weeks after Israel began bombing Gaza, the writer Omar El Akkad shared a video showing a destroyed city street in Gaza.
El Akkad wrote, “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” The tweet went viral.
El Akkad, who was born in Egypt and grew up in Qatar and Canada, now lives in Lake Oswego. His previous novels, American War and What Strange Paradise, received significant critical acclaim. The New York Times called America War, “a disturbing parable about the ruinous consequences of war on ordinary civilians,” and BBC named it one of the 100 most influential novels of all time. What Strange Paradise won the 2021 Giller Prize, an Oregon Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize.
Now, what began within the constraints of 280 characters has become a blazing and feral work of nonfiction. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is El Akkad is at his most exacting. The book is the story of El Akkad’s immigration to the West, his lessons in hypocrisy working as a staff reporter for a paper in Canada and reporting on some of the biggest conflicts of the past two decades, and an evisceration of the entire concept of empire.
In advance of the book’s publication on February 25 and an appearance by El Akkad at Seattle Public Library – Central Library, we spoke with the author about his new work, the performative aspect of caring, and the pressure to forget.
I put off reading your book for as long as possible because I was scared of how distressing I might find it, but when I ended up reading it, it did not feel distressing. It actually felt relieving. To have the hypocrisy called out so clearly. Was there relief in writing this book, and getting to talk directly about this thing everyone is pretending isn’t happening?
I don’t know that I’ve felt anything like relief in the last year and a half. I’ve seen too many images of children slaughtered, entire families wiped out, the worst things human beings can do to one another, done over and over again. What I feel, overwhelmingly, I think, is shame. I’m the one who killed those kids. My tax dollars paid for it. How did it come to be that I and so many people I share this society with have become so well-versed in looking away from horror?
You have said that your first novel, American War, was an allegory for Israel and Palestine, but the reception discussed it solely as a book about America and American politics. Is that misconception part of what motivated you to write this book?
I’ve come to terms with that chasm between the American War I wrote and the American War most people on this side of the planet read. Ironically, I’m now braced for the likelihood that an opposite chasm will come to define this book: It’s going to be received as a book primarily about Palestine, but Palestinians can tell their own stories (and have been telling their own stories, even if so many in the West refuse to listen). In my mind, this book is very much about here, about the empire.
What is the experience of writing a book that is so timely about a moment that will soon be erased from public memory?
I don’t know if I’ve written an important book, or even a good one, but what drove me through the writing process was the expectation (as has certainly been the case in previous atrocities, most recently the horror of the war on terror years) that soon we will be told that this was all very long ago, and we need to just move on.
The next few years, I think, will be defined by a kind of mass exhaustion—not only with respect to the slaughter of Palestinians, but what is about to happen and in some cases has been happening to migrants, trans folks, anyone the prevailing systems of power were never intended to serve. If only as a kind of psychological self-defense, we will all be tempted to just forget any of this ever happened. It’s understandable, and yet we need to do everything in our power to fight against it.
The ceasefire of January 2025 seems to be the perfect performative opportunity for US politicians. Is this really the heart of what you mean by One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This? That this is all just performative?
I think the underlying commonality between capitalism and colonialism is an endless appetite for taking. The most tangible things are taken first: the land, the resources, the lives of those who oppose the taking of the land, and the resources. But there are other kinds of taking that come later, and one of the very last is the taking of narrative. Empires are very good at the performance of shame and contrition once all the horror is over, but this too is a kind of theft. It’s the taking of someone’s very real grief and saying, well after it’s too late to do anything meaningful about it, that this grief is mine now, too. It’s land acknowledgments after the land is taken, memoirs from Gulf War veterans about how sad it made them to kill all those Brown people. We’ve seen it all before, and long after the bones of thousands of dead Palestinians are pulled out from under the rubble, we’ll see it again.
In the last chapter, you seem to be pulled toward two conclusions—that we may come to acknowledge what we did in Gaza and even come to regret it, or we may just forget about it. But isn’t there a third option: that this is who we actually are? That the polite liberal stance just collapses under the weight of this hypocrisy and that Trumpism isn’t the peak of some reaction to it, but merely the beginning of a new era of Imperial America? As I write this, we just nominated a Secretary of Defense who once chanted “Kill all Muslims.” Maybe this is America without the hypocrisy.
I think you might be right. But I should say, as much as the last 15 months have caused me to lose any shred of respect for or faith in the vast majority of the West’s political, academic, cultural, and corporate institutions, I’ve also been deeply inspired by what so many individuals have done in the face of this nightmare. I’ve watched college kids put their whole futures on the line for justice; I’ve watched people chain themselves to the gates of weapons manufacturers, shipworkers’ unions refuse to load missiles onto the boats.
So yes, maybe this is exactly what we are, or maybe it’s just what we’ve allowed ourselves to become, and if that’s the case, maybe we can allow ourselves to become something better than this.
Omar El Akkad will discuss his book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This with Ijeoma Oluo at Seattle Public Library – Central Library, Thursday, February 27.
This story was originally published by our sister paper, Portland Mercury.
@47: Look, you’re obviously going to read into my lack of response anything you want. I didn’t ask for a citation because if you don’t provide one, then any reader can simply ignore your quote. Your expansive reading of my literal silence is a bit like saying you could not have gone jaywalking, because the riot police didn’t abandon their mob-control efforts long enough to write you a ticket.
“…versus hard core Zionist Goldman [sic] and esteemed historian Benny Morris.”
That’s called the “argument from authority,” and it’s actually a logical fallacy, not a valid method of determining authenticity. Your trail of citation goes from Morris to Goldmann, and no further. It does not extend back to Ben-Gurion. Furthermore, even wikipedia could have given you the link to Goldmann’s 1978 recounting of his alleged 1956 conversation with Ben-Gurion, which happened at three o’clock in the morning with no other persons present. (https://archive.org/details/jewishparadox0000gold/page/99/mode/1up?q=%22Why+should+the+Arabs+make+peace%3F%22) You’re seriously claiming Goldmann recorded the entire thing accurately, after more than two decades?
And even if he did, Ben-Gurion seems to be playing “devil’s advocate” against Goldmann’s optimism, stating the (unnamed) Arab leaders’ objections in the strongest possible terms. You’ve hung an awful lot on your personal interpretation of a twenty-year-old account of a conversation in the wee hours, with a man who was no longer alive to give his version.
“…Your unsubstantiated assertions…”
As I clearly told you, Ben-Gurion’s quote about treating Arab Israelis identically to Jewish Israelis was from the same wikipedia article I had cited, with URL. Please learn to read.
“The Palestinian Jews (~5% of population in ~1900)…”
Again with your wet, sloppy kiss upon the Ottoman Imperialist boot. If you accept the Ottoman Empire’s anti-Jewish policies in Palestine as valid, then you must also accept the British Empire’s somewhat-less-anti-Jewish policies in Palestine as valid. If you accept any Empire’s policy in Palestine as valid, then you cannot claim to favor local control of Palestine by any local group. Unless, of course, you’re simply in favor of anti-Jewish policies, in which case thumpus is correct about you.
Letter from David Ben-Gurion to his son Amos, written 5 October 1937
Obtained from the Ben-Gurion Archives in Hebrew, and translated into English
by the Institute of Palestine Studies, Beirut
[…]
“Of course the partition of the country gives me no pleasure. But the country that they [the Royal (Peel) Commission] are partitioning is not in our actual possession; it is in the possession of the Arabs and the English. What is in our actual possession is a small portion, less than what they [the Peel Commission] are proposing for a Jewish state. If I were an Arab I would have been very indignant. But in this proposed partition we will get more than what we already have, though of course much less than we merit and desire. The question is: would we obtain more without partition? If things were to remain as they are [emphasis in original], would this satisfy our feelings? What we really want is not that the land remain whole and unified. What we want is that the whole and unified land be Jewish [emphasis original]. A unified Eretz Israeli would be no source of satisfaction for me–if it were Arab.
From our standpoint, the status quo is deadly poison. We want to change the status quo [emphasis original]. But how can this change come about? How can this land become ours? The decisive question is: Does the establishment of a Jewish state [in only part of Palestine] advance or retard the conversion of this country into a Jewish country?[..]
We shall organize an advanced defense force—a superior army which I have no doubt will be one of the best armies in the world. At that point I am confident that we would not fail in settling in the remaining parts of the country, through agreement and understanding with our Arab neighbors, or through some other means. […]
But if we are compelled to use force – not in order to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev or Transjordan, but in order to guarantee our right to settle there – our force will enable us to do so.[..]
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2013/04/06/the-ben-gurion-letter/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Ben-Gurion_letter
@49: “People who only have a historical and intellectual connection to a land through very distant ancestors (more than 40 generations distant) do not have greater right to that land than the people who have actually lived there continuously for more than 60 generations.”
Ha ha, the Jewish claim to Israel is not based on “historical and intellectual connection some 60 generations distant.” You’re imagining the Jews vanished from Israel and then reappeared out of nowhere centuries later. Unfortunately for you, that’s not what happened. The Jews never left. They were always there. Sometimes few, sometimes many, always subjugated and oppressed by one empire or another, but always there, every single day for 3,000 years. That’s the source of the Jewish claim to Israel. 😃
The Jewish claim is a national claim, not an individual one. So long as any Jews remain in Israel to keep alive the national claim, every Jew on the planet shares a portion of the claim. That’s nationality for ya, bruh! 😁 That’s indigenous, unceded land! 😂
@52: Ben-Gurion recognized that the Jewish claim to Israel is far larger than what the British and other imperialist powers would ever allow the Jews, but he was willing to accept two states, one Arab and one Jewish, as a matter of practical necessity, even though he didn’t like it. In other words, he took the peace deal that the Arabs should have taken from day one. Ben-Gurion even correctly anticipated the Arabs would try to annihilate the Jews, and the Jews would have to kick their asses, lol!
These quotes you’re digging up (assuming we can trust you not to rely on fabricated quotes again, lol) succeed only in making Ben-Gurion look like a fair, pragmatic peace-maker. The Arabs would be well served to find a Ben-Gurion of their own someday rather than the Yahya Sinwars and Hassan Nasrallahs that they got instead! 😛
@46
and yet
when xina
and I outted
You @the Merc
https://www.portlandmercury.com/i-anonymous/2023/01/13/46296713/youll-still-be-there/comments/1
you fled away like a
recently-beheaded
chicken seldom if
Ever to return
but
why did
you have ez
access to your
comments scrubbed?
https://www.portlandmercury.com/users/37046509/babsjohnson
you
Don’t
gotta an-
swer — I’d
do the Same
if I were you and
I thank gawd I am not.
I ‘spose
I just outed
my as-yet-Un-
requited Desire* for
this brave, Fierce, Amazing
woman, but I can Live with that
https://duckduckgo.com/? q=bonnie+raitt+i+can%27t+make+you+love+me+youtube&atb=v314-1&t=chromentp&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DnW9Cu6GYqxo
*not to mention my
utter Lack of womanizing skills
I’m fucking Decades outta Practice.
in Other, Real
fake news:
& speaking of Nazis,
grammatical &
otherwise:
Nazi
Knocked
Out Cold by
Mean Capitol Hill Sticker
In a viral video that’s already been shared over a million times in its first 24 hours, a Nazi agitator is seen harassing people on Seattle’s Capitol Hill until a mean anti-fascist sticker positively KO’s his ass in the middle of the sidewalk.
“I went to all the trouble of finding parking on the Hill so I could exercise my first amendment right to threaten and intimidate strangers with my second amendment right,” whined recently pardoned Nazi Darren Miller, who asked to remain anonymous.
“I had no idea there would be stickers on every trash can, lamp post, and bike rack telling me, the all American Nazi next door, to fuck off and die. It really makes a guy feel unwelcome and extremely concussed.”
Paramedics on the scene say this incident is not unique.
“Last week a billionaire saw a ‘Deny, Defend, Depose’ sticker and spontaneously combusted,” said EMT Omar Duale. “The stickers create a kind of force field that turns hurt feelings into hurt people but somehow it only works on bigots, blowhards, and bastards.
I’ve had calls to help ICE and SPOG, landlords and oligarchs, and one tourist who fell off a Lime Scooter – I think that last one was unrelated, but he was wearing a red hat so I can’t be sure.”
Activists say blanketing the city in aggressive stickers is the second-best form of resistance after writing snarky satire articles for moderately circulated fake news websites.
Oodleses:
https://theneedling.com/2024/12/20/nazi-knocked-out-cold-by-mean-capitol-hill-sticker/
@30 Jewish terrorists invaded the Palestinian village and killed everyone living there, along with raping many of the women. You must have known absolutely nothing about this event if you needed me to explicitly draw the analogy.
@53 there have been some number of Christians in Palestine for thousands of years, are Christians entitled to launch another Crusade to reclaim their Holy Land? Maybe if they caused enough damage the UN would even purport to award them a portion of the territory.
@55: Ha ha ha, the world really is a tangle of conspiracies for you people! 😂😂😂
@57: Christianity is not a nation. Next. 🤣
insidiously inherently
intellectually
Dishonest
wormming
one’s way thru
this Planet’s gotta
be an horrific way to go
small Wonder
you gotta take it
out on derr Schlogg
deepest
Condolences.
@54: “In other words, he took the peace deal that the Arabs should have taken from day one. Ben-Gurion even correctly anticipated the Arabs would try to annihilate the Jews, and the Jews would have to kick their asses, lol!”
Ever since, the learning has not been strong in the Palestinian side. Last year’s student demonstrations featured physical attacks upon Jewish students at UCLA, demanding they renounce Israel; student demonstrators were finally thrown off the Columbia University campus after chanting, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Arab.” Seattle’s pro-Palestinian anniversary commemoration of 10/7 had a speaker lavishly praising Hamas’ genocidal attack on Israel as the true and correct path froward. (What, again, is the popular definition of insanity?)
@57: Yes, it was part of a series of terrorist acts by both sides, in their ongoing terrorist struggle. 10/7 started a new phase of the conflict, one which has seen Israel make significant gains against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Again, why do you think these events were similar?
“The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan [now the West bank]: one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.”
Ben-Gurion speech in 1937, accepting a British proposal for partition of Palestine which created a potential Jewish majority state, as quoted in New Outlook (April 1977)
“We shall organize an advanced defense force—a superior army which I have no doubt will be one of the best armies in the world. At that point I am confident that we would not fail in settling in the remaining parts of the country, through agreement and understanding with our Arab neighbors, or through some other means. […]
But if we are compelled to use force – not in order to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev or Transjordan, but in order to guarantee our right to settle there – our force will enable us to do so.[..]”
Ben-Gurion letter
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2013/04/06/the-ben-gurion-letter/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Ben-Gurion_letter
@59 wow who are you to say whether they have a national identity or just a religious one you anti-Christian bigot
@62 Jewish terrorists whose explicit goal is to violently reclaim the territory invade a village and cause mayhem and murder. Yes, how is that possibly similar to what Hamas did on 10/7? Mystery of mysteries! Unless of course you are NOT irrationally and unswervingly partisan to Israel in which case it’s incredibly obvious.
thanking you OODLES
“avergebob”
thirteen12
barth
and All the
antifas everywhere
@65
AIPAC
spoken
Here: daily!
@58: That was bizarre, even by Kristo’s standards! He seems to have believed that either the IA author, or the commenter “Babs Johnson,” was me, even though I’ve rarely read the Mercury, and have never commented there. Longtime Stranger commenter xina was posting under another nym there as well, attacking the “Babs” commenter, who Kristo’ then claims here @54 was you, not me. WTF?!?
And then, being Kristo’, he seems to believe this is all proof of, um, something nefarious about you. Weird.
@65: “wow who are you to say whether [Christians] have a national identity”
lol, Christianity is a universal religion, so not having a national identity is kind of their whole brand! 🤣
The term of art for it in Christian theology is the “Great Commission,” the charge to evangelize all nations of the earth. Book of Mark, Book of Luke, Book of Matthew, and Book of Acts. In fact, Paul of Tarsus was sent running for his life by angry mobs on more than one occasion specifically BECAUSE he proselytized among foreign nations! 🤣
My dude, I’m beginning to think you might not know very much about nationality, religion, OR the history of the Middle East. Might want to read up on those topics before you jump into these Israel threads, ha ha!
@68: And not just me, but also AIPAC! Or, as he sometimes call it, the “Jewish lobby!” 😂 It’s no surprise that a dedicated conspiracy theorist has ended up mired in antisemitism, it’s where conspiracy theories inevitably lead. 😁
@69 no I’m just mocking you but you’re too dumb to realize it
@68
the
Tell was
the Tone
and
you Haven’t
been back. Score!
[apologies to You
xina for bringing
that one back
to Life}
@71: lol, well you’re the guy who once called Hamas’s videotaped beheading of a wounded hostage an act of Palestinian self-defense. 🤣 I definitely wouldn’t put it past you to believe in Christian national identity, especially since you’re so mixed up when it comes to Jewish national identity. 😂😂😂 I’m glad to hear you’re smarter than your comments, ha ha! 😘
my
Gawd
but these
trolls’re Hungry.
doesn’t
AIPAC
EVER
feed
em?
@72: I’ve never commented at the Portland Mercury, let alone posted an IA there. Until today, I’d never even read a comment there.
I’m guessing thumpus’ dinging of you for commenting there struck a nerve, and you’re risibly f(l)ailing to come up with a snappy comeback. Good luck with that, but any attempt to claim my involvement in anything at the Mercury will fail, for lack of my participation there.
(If you want to get critical of a commenter there, then ask why xina used a different nym there than she does here. You easily and correctly recognized it was her, so it’s not like she could possibly have fooled anyone else, either.)
@75: Kristofarian: “Everything is AIPAC bots! AIPAC bots under my skin! aaaaaah!” 😂😂😂
@73 “you’re the guy who once called Hamas’s videotaped beheading of a wounded hostage an act of Palestinian self-defense”
Another example.
@77: lol, progressive knows he stepped in it. 😛
Sorry but your “just joking” defense isn’t a defense. What’s the difference between a guy who tells racist jokes and a guy who says racist things that aren’t jokes? No difference, my dude! 😘
@65: “Jewish terrorists whose explicit goal is to violently reclaim the territory invade a village and cause mayhem and murder. Yes, how is that possibly similar to what Hamas did on 10/7?”
That’s what I’m asking. The purpose of the Deir Yassin massacre was to have that place under control of the Palestinian Jewish forces when the Mandate expired. Hamas wasn’t trying to take control of the stretch of Negev they attacked; they fled into the supposed safety of Gaza immediately after their massacre. (If Hamas had actually been trying to take control of that stretch of desert, that would have been far better: the IDF would have likely have mopped Hamas up in several days at most, and the number of civilian casualties would likely have been far lower than from the extended conflict in Gaza.)
“Unless of course you are NOT irrationally and unswervingly partisan to Israel in which case it’s incredibly obvious.”
Both the Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs used terror tactics to effect what we would now call ethnic cleansing of Palestine, in preparation for controlling as much of Palestine as possible when the Mandate expired. I’m not exactly sure how noting that makes anyone “…irrationally and unswervingly partisan to Israel…” but I guess you’ve got to go with the only thing you have.
Meanwhile, those of us who’d hoped standards of human behavior might have improved somewhat in the past 75 years can take your comparison as your admission you do not share our hope.
“… those of us
who’d hoped standards
of human behavior might have
improved somewhat in the past 75 years… “
says
the person
who promoted
Israel’s genocidal
War on the subjects
of the world’s Largest
open-air prison for the
last seventeen months or so
right here on these very pages
yeah
ain’t it
a Shame.
when this little ‘War’
on Palestine is over
Everyone will have
Always been
Against
it.
which
sounds
remarkably
like Omar El Akkad ‘s
book, “One Day, Everyone
Will Have Always Been Against This”
by Omar El Akkad.
fucking
Bingo
Omar.
looks
like our
Wormtongue’s
Already practicing.
nyt:
Israel
Halts Aid
to Gaza and
Proposes a New
Framework for an End to the War
Israel has called for Hamas to accept a temporary extension of the existing cease-fire deal, and to release more hostages.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/world/europe/israel-aid-gaza-cease-fire-proposal.html
with the djt
fully in charge
war crimes’ll be
as commonplace
as breakfast. Will you
prefer the
Massacre or the
Famine cum Starvation
with your IRS Bill, Mr. Creosote?
but, Good News! Thedjt’s
gonna Fire a third of the
governmental work-
force & then raise
Taxes with his
Trumpftarrifs
on the poor
& working
classes~!
chaos’s
comin.’
thnx
wormmy
u too🔨ing🛴.
“We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population? ‘Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said ‘ Drive them out! ‘ “
Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.
“after the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine “
— Ben Gurion, p.22 “The Birth of Israel, 1987” Simha Flapan.
On the 6th of February 1948, during a Mapai Party Council, Ben-Gurion responded to a remark from a member of the audience that “we have no land there” [in the hills and mountains west of Jerusalem] by saying: “The war will give us the land. The concepts of “ours” and “not ours” are peace concepts, only, and in war they lose their whole meaning”
(Ben-Gurion, War Diary, Vol. 1, entry dated 6 February 1948. p.211)
Ben-Gurion speaking to the Zionist Actions Committee on 6 April, Ben-Gurion declared: “We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area….I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of the Arab population.”
[Ben-Gurion, Behilahem Yisrael, Tel Aviv, Mapai Press, 1952, pp. 86-87]
@80: If you don’t like thirteen12’s explicit comparison between terror tactics of 75 years ago and terror tactics of today, then just say so.
But you should take that to him.
@81: The statements made by pro-Palestinian protestors over the past year-plus strongly indicate there will never come a day when they will always have been against 10/7.
(BTW, was your @44 “…the nature of the October 7th assault,” an attempt to whitewash genocide? Please do tell.)
@79 “The purpose of the Deir Yassin massacre was to have that place under control of the Palestinian Jewish forces when the Mandate expired. Hamas wasn’t trying to take control of the stretch of Negev they attacked”
Wait, you think trying to steal someone’s land makes it BETTER?! Everything’s starting to make more sense now
@85: If Hamas had been trying to occupy the Negev (or, at least, the portion of it closest to the Gaza Strip), then the result would likely have been a far shorter war, with far less civilian bloodshed. You’re free to argue that point as you wish. So far, you have chosen not to do so.
By our modern terms, the founders of modern-day Israel would be called terrorists. If the Palestinian Arabs had accepted the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, then the founders of the Arab State (or whatever we would call it today) would, by our modern standards, be called terrorists. As your comparison to 10/7 shows, if an independent Palestinian state is formed anytime soon (as I hope it will be), then we will call the founders of that state terrorists. (What was the burning of Atlanta, and Sherman’s March to the Sea, if not terrorism on a vast scale?)
You don’t make peace with your friends. You don’t always sit down to negotiate peace with the type of persons you’d want. But “a shaky peace beats a steady war,” each and every time. Even if you have to make peace with current, or future, terrorists.
@86 “By our modern terms, the founders of modern-day Israel would be called terrorists.”
By the terms of the day as well. But, having acquired the land for their state via terrorism, how can they complain if Hamas turns their own tactics back on them?
@87: “having acquired the land for their state via terrorism”
If by terrorism, you mean United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, then you’re correct! 😂 As a matter of fact, that same resolution guaranteed land for the Palestinian state as well. Sovereignty for all peoples, including the Arabs, just as Ben-Gurion and the early Zionists called for! 😃
But then, of course, the Arabs tragically pissed it away by declaring war on Israel. Then they kept stomping on that same rake over and over again ever since! 😂
All the above Ben-Gurion quotes make clear that:
a) Zionist settlers always intended to colonize the whole of Palestine after building a state and an army within the UN green line. They also knew that settling greater Palestine would involve war.
b) Zionists settlers were aware that building a Jewish state within the Green line and colonizing Palestine would necessitate ethnic cleansing (euphemistically called ‘transfer’) because they knew the resident population would never willingly give up their land
Palestinians knew the above so it has to be factored in their reasons for refusing the 1947 partition so all attempts at demonizing them as being irrational warmongers by our resident genocide apologists are incorrect.
@89: The quotes make clear the following:
A) Israel is the native homeland of all Jews. Not just a portion of Israel but all of it.
B) The Arabs claim the same land as theirs.
C) The two sides are going to have to share, even though sharing means the Jews will end up with less of their native homeland than they deserve.
D) Regardless of what the Jews do, the Arabs are going to try to wipe out the Jews, so the Jews will have to fight.
E) War will probably hurt the Arabs more than the Jews, but the Arabs will try it anyway. The Jews will probably increase their territory as a result.
Each of these statements turned out to be 100 percent true. 😃
The Arabs are in desperate need of their own Ben-Gurion: a tough, pragmatic peacemaker who is willing to share the land but also willing to fight if threatened. Instead, the Arabs ended up with a parade of incompetents and fanatics who would rather die than split the pie with their enemies. Where, oh where, is the Arab Ben-Gurion, the world wonders? 😃
@88 UN resolution 181 never planned for the ethnic cleansing of most Arabs out of the Jewish state. During the 1948 Nakba and according to Zionists plans, Jewish settlers terrorized Palestinian Arabs off their land and never allowed them to return. Your partisan account of history is nothing more than noxious propaganda.
@89 “The quotes make clear the following”
No, they don’t. You are confusing your propaganda with historical facts.
As I said, the quotes show that Jewish settlers always intended to colonize the entirety of Palestine and they knew they would forcefully chase Palestinians off their land to do so. Only a fool would have agreed to a deal that was only the first step toward total colonization of Palestinian land by Jewish settlers
@91: The Arabs made a big, big mistake in starting a war of extermination against the Jews in 1948. They should have chosen peace in 1948. They should still choose peace today. They have got to quit stepping on that rake! 😂
@93 case a) Palestinians accept 1947 partition, and eventually end up with Immigrant Jews colonizing all of Palestine since it is what they wanted all along as seen in Ben-Gurion’s quotes
case b) Palestinians refuse 1947 partition, and eventually end up with Immigrant Jews colonizing all of Palestine since it is what they wanted all along as seen in Ben-Gurion’s quotes
where’s the big mistake, jackass?
If the UN declared that half the US, including all of Washington, would henceforth be a sovereign Chinese territory would all you continually talking about Resolution 181 dutifully pack up and move to North Dakota to make way for the new Chinese owners of your homes? Why should the UN have had ultimate decision making authority over who owned Palestine, especially when many voting nations were bribed or threatened by the pro-Zionist US? And if the UN announced tomorrow that all the Jews had to vacate would you agree that was a legitimate demand, and any Jews who stayed made a “big mistake” and deserve to be annihilated?
@94: In your Case A, the Arabs would command a sovereign state in which they are the ones to decide who gets to immigrate and who doesn’t. Just as promised in the Ben-Gurion quotes! “Shoulder to shoulder for our common good, for the peace and progress of sovereign equals.” 😛
In your Case B, the Arabs would bungle their own war and lose their land, their sovereignty, and in too many cases their lives. Also as promised in the Ben-Gurion quotes! “The war will give us the land. The concepts of ‘ours’ and ‘not ours’ are peace concepts, only, and in war they lose their whole meaning.” 😛
See the difference? Case A peace and sovereignty versus Case B war and subjugation? Holy smokes, take Case A! You gotta take Case A every time! It’s so much the better choice! Case A all the way, ha ha ha!
Even today, even in the time of Hamas, it is still not too late for peace and sovereignty in Palestine. But they gotta want it. And it will mean sharing land which each party thinks should be theirs alone, which is hard for everyone … just as promised in the Ben-Gurion quotes! 😙
Now, as for which of us is a … [checks Bob’s post @94] … a “Jackass,” well I’m afraid the biggest jackass might be you. 😁 So, neener-neener to you too, I guess? 🤣
@95: lol, Washington is not the indigenous homeland of the Chinese nation. Is this another of your jokes, or are you genuinely confused on that particular point? Either way, next! 🤣
@97 you’re getting into the weeds, is the UN the ultimate and final authority over who has sovereign claim to territory or not?
@95: “… especially when many voting nations were bribed or threatened by the pro-Zionist US?”
Per the Protocols, natch’?
Good luck in supporting your conspiracy theory. At least Kristo’ and ‘Bob will love whatever you invent.
@96: Overlay a map of the UN’s Partition Plan for Palestine upon today’s actual map of the region, and you can see how well the Plan would have worked. International status for Jerusalem, and more land for the Arabs than they’re ever likely get in any deal now. But (as the anti-Israeli side here always refuses to admit) the Arabs’ gamble on taking all of the land by force means they’ll have to settle for less than what UN Res’ 181 intended for them to have. (Why, it’s almost like there’s a lesson in there somewhere…)