Why isn't the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians referred to as Civil War?

For exactly the same reason the expropriation of our own land from its native residents was not a civil war. The proper word (and everybody knows it) is of course THEFT.

It is not Civil; it is between two separate countries with the same land mass.

@stanleybmanly There are Palestinian Israelis in Israel. I’ve posted NAS videos several times on fluther, he is Palestinian and an Israeli. Many Palestinians in East Jerusalem declined to take citizenship.

And there are Native American citizens whose relatives occupied the land on which my house now sits and probably yours as well. I haven’t bothered to research the original bill of sale transferring the property to the white folks. How about you?

Because it makes more sense to describe the “conflict” (propaganda term) in more accurate ways, like an apartheid state where Israel is involved in ethnic cleansing and war crimes. “Civil war” seems very misleading.

@stanleybmanly Are you talking to me? That’s the very reason I have never been a Zionist, I don’t feel the Jews deserve Israel because they were there first, or some sort of religious reason. They get Israel because the UN voted on it. Whether the UN should have done it is up for argument.

@JLeslie I was indeed talking to you and agree with your take on the situation. But we should reflect on what is implied in that U N sanctioned transfer of sovereignty to Israel. In the main, it proves to us that as recently as 1948, it was not understood that the theft of land from its occupants might not be the “kosher” thing to do. Now in view of the very history of the Jews, there should be no people on this planet more reluctant to participate in such behavior, and to their credit, a sizable minority of the Israeli citizenry is fully cognizant of what it means to “colonize” a place through eviction and suppression of its residents. And if that weren’t bad enough, their own painfully recent history places the Jews in what must be the greatest of ironies in the history of the world. For it is now the Jews who must face the prospect of solidifying and strengthening their nation through deliberate subjugation and marginalization of a people within living and vivid memory of the Holocaust. And unlike our own natives, the Palestinians are neither wasting away nor settling down in their “reservations”. So what’s to be done about the Palestinians? I suppose there is always “a final solution”.

@stanleybmanly Give me a fucking break. Final solution?! Choose a different phrase. The Israelis warn the Palestinians when they are going to bomb. They treat Palestinians in their hospitals. The ultra-orthodox keep building settlements, because they are religious fanatics. Many of them are like our WS here, but the entire country is not like that. The Palestinians can freely leave Gaza, Israel is not trying to eliminate Arabs from the earth.

The Palestinians were offered citizenship and refused (many of them did). What if they had become citizens and been happy to live in a democracy with great education and great medical care, and embraced their new country? What would the dynamic have been? There might still have been some bigotry, but I think it would have been a different situation. In fact, the cities having trouble now usually have Arabs, Jews, and Christians getting along. Do you judge all Americans based on the Jan 6th attack on our Capitol? Or, on Chauvin and riots in Minneapolis? We have systemic racism, but we also have a lot of people who truly want equality for all. You can’t just watch the news. The news reports the worst, and the news is often biased and going for ratings unfortunately.

I have always thought it totally sucks for the Arabs who were living on the land that is now Israel that suddenly the UN draws a new border and they are in a new country, but Israel is a democracy and has more gender equality than Arab countries, but maybe attitude matters a little. The Mexicans on Texas land became Americans when we won that land. I think Mexicans in Texas today are happy to be American even with the recent upsurge in racism here.

The Native Americans in America can live as equal, free, Americans. We were horrible to Native Americans, completely horrible, but present day if they choose they can go to college for free at many universities, they still get money from our federal government. I’d be all for reserving even more land for them. One has to ask why are they having a tough time present day on their reservations? They are not confined to the reservation, no one is bombing them, they are full and equal citizens of the USA. Maybe in some parts of the country they are met with bigotry, but not anywhere I have lived. A friend of mine grew up in New Mexico, she is blonde and very fair skin, and was one of a handful of “pale faces” in her school growing up, and if anything she was sometimes harassed as a minority.

A bad history sucks, it ruins the future. In America the remnants of slavery and Jim Crow make the South a different place than the North present day. Not that the North is perfect. The history of how we treated Native Americans still affects that population. Immoral acts create ongoing problems into the future, it’s difficult to break the cycle.

I still say the Jews probably should have been given half of Germany, and the holy lands in Israel be governed as a neutral state specifically to preserve the history. Also, I would have liked to give them at least part of a US state and give them more entry than we did.

Because there’s nothing civil about it!

They are not both part of the same sovereign.