With all due respect, while Muslim Arabs were the majority and most influential amongst Arab forces, including the Palestinians, there were plenty, plenty of Arab Christians that fought against Isreal. Acting like the whole conflict can simply be simpler down from the beginning as "Muslims vs Jews & Christians" is not only utterly inaccurate but utterly unhelpful.
Would there be a mass genocide against Israelis if Israel lost the 1948 War?
- Thread starter THE KINGFISH
- Start date
Gigi Gold
Banned
I didn't. As i mentioned, my point was about things like flags etc. of a 1948 Palestinian state would have Islamic symbols etc.
It might well indeed.
It is just very important to emphasize that the Israeli war of independence was not at all anything like a war wages by religious minorities versus Muslim states. Non-Jewish and non-Muslim populations like the notable Christian population allied not with the Zionist settlers who (best case) thought that the locals would be quiet and go away of their own will, but the Muslims. The Christians knew who their allies were.
Gigi Gold
Banned
I do have my doubts as to the fate of the Palestinian Christians (and other Palestinian minorities) after a 1948 victory but that's because I remember how the Islamists under Khomeini used the secularists and leftists in their "broad front" in Iran against the Shah but once the 1979 revolution succeeded...
It is worth noting that a pan-religious coalition is rather different from an explicitly confessional one or an ethnically exclusive one.
Put it another way: How could Palestinian Christians have fared worse, if Israel was defeated and they were not mostly displaced?
Quite, while the interwar status quo still had legs. In a TL where the Arab states are not defeated by Israel but triumph militarily, it is difficult to see radical Arab nationalism to get in earlier, to say nothing about anti-Christian Islamic radicalism.
Just as the Druze, Circassians and Muslim Bedouins allied with the Jews
Ben Gurion made quite clear he planned to tear it up at the earliest opportunity. It was also blatantly stacked in their favor.
So no the partition plan was not a serious effort
You’re kind of missing the point; Ben Gurion was planning to break partition entirely regardless of what the Arab side did.
No the point is everyone Arab and Israeli thought of it as a zero sum game and the fact that the Arab / Palestinian group overestimated themselves and lost does not make them sympathetic figures in any way.
The Palestinians were being expelled BEFORE the invasion (about 95% fled because they were either directly kicked out or were scared the Israeli paramilitaries would slaughter them), and even those who were cooperating get expelled. It’s also been argued that things like Deir Yassin pressured the Arab governments to get involved.
So no the Palestinians do deserve sympathy. They were indigenous, they had a claim and they were expelled purely to ensure a Jewish majority.
So no the Palestinians do deserve sympathy. They were indigenous, they had a claim and they were expelled purely to ensure a Jewish majority.
Interesting answers here everyone.
Assuming a worse case scenario for the Israelis - how would that affect the larger Cold War. Would America’s position be hurt by lacking one of their strongest allies? Or would the Soviets not have an easy sway over the Arab nations of the Middle East?
Assuming a worse case scenario for the Israelis - how would that affect the larger Cold War. Would America’s position be hurt by lacking one of their strongest allies? Or would the Soviets not have an easy sway over the Arab nations of the Middle East?
The assumption that the Arab/Muslim leaders would care about Western opinion enough to spare the Jews is projection. The concept of world opinion is a construction of late 20th century media. Information did not travel that fast. Furthermore it projects late 20th century/early 21st century Western cultural attitudes towards treatment of prisoners, minorities, and genocide onto a group with significantly different attitudes. It was not that long ago from 1948 that we had the Armenian genocide, Turkmen genocides and the Farhud with nary a critique from contemporary Arab sources ( at least none that I can find). Given the indigenous contempt for dhimmi Jews paired with imported Nazi and Czarist Jew hatred why is it so hard to imagine that the Arab leadership would not balk at slaughtering the Jews again. They hired ex- Nazis as officers and Pasha Glubb. Not exactly the kind of people who will be merciful to the Jews. Given the US state departments dismay at Truman's decision to recognize the Israelis, I can imagine many would look the other way with an I told you so thrown in during a massacre. The British FO already hated the Zionists so no succor there. And Stalin the less said the better.
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Also, even today what is called world opinion/international community or the like really only includes "the West", Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and sometimes Singapore.
It took only five pages for people actually trying to answer the question to get drowned out by people having a flame war over Israel-Palestine.
Great work everyone.
Great work everyone.
America doesn't really lose any Cold War military clout with Israel's fall. Britain is a far more valuable military partner to them than Israel.