Comments by "Bruce Tucker" (@brucetucker4847) on "Did the British Start the Israel-Palestine Conflict? - History Documentary" video.

The Crusades were a relatively brief interval of counterattack against the much larger tide of 1100 years of unending Muslim assaults on Christian (along with all other non-Muslims) countries. The people endlessly whinging about the Crusades never want to talk about how the Levant, North Africa, Iberia, Asia Minor, and the Balkans became Muslim-ruled to begin with. And then let's talk about India...
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@RoryT1000 " in fact the position of the Palestinians, whether it was the PLO in the 90's or Hamas since 2006, that Israel should abide by the UN resolution 242 of 1967." That is a falsehood. Or rather, a deliberately incomplete truth. Hamas has never recognized Israel's right to exist within the 1967 or any other borders. In fact what led to the break between Hamas and the PLO/PA was the latter's negotiating for a two-state solution. Hamas wanting Israel to retreat to the 1967 borders in only a first step in campaign that ends with the end of Israel and the massacre or expulsion of all Jews from the region. It's in their charter (along with a call for "global intifada," which means terrorism against all Jews everywhere in the world). That is what "from the river to the sea" means, and anyone who imagines otherwise is either hopelessly deluded or maliciously deceptive. My money's on the latter, btw.
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@RoryT1000 There is no legal definition of "apartheid state" so that depends on how you choose to define it. However, Arab (Christian or Muslim) citizens of Israel enjoy every right that Jewish citizens have, so it seems somewhat absurd to compare it to South Africa where that was not the case. If Israel permanently annexed Gaza and the West Bank without granting the residents of those areas citizenship and equal rights, the term would be more appropriate. However, that has not happened yet and is not likely to happen in the foreseeable future. Would you consider Egypt, for example, to be an apartheid state based on the widespread violations of civil rights of non-Muslims there? Why do they get a pass? Or any other government in the Muslim world, which universally treats non-Muslims as second-class citizens? Yes, the assault on Gaza is justified. No other nation on the planet would or should be expected to just tolerate what Hamas did on October 7. The residents of Gaza should be allowed to govern themselves. However, that can't happen as long as any such government intends to use the country as a base for attacks on Israel. The Palestinians have to choose between peace and war. Thus far they have always chosen war. Now they've gotten themselves another one. If they don't like how it's unfolding, they should consider that before launching more terrorist attacks. We don't need to guess at the intentions of Hamas, they have made it abundantly clear that their intention is to murder Jews in Israel and everywhere else on the planet. Genocide is the entire raison d'etre of Hamas. That may not be the desire of everyone supporting the Palestinian cause, just as the Holocaust was not the desire of everyone fighting on Germany's side during WW2. However, you need to be careful whose side you're taking in such situations.
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@spartacus-olsson What was the source of the Ottoman Empire's legal right to rule those lands? What is the source of Turkey's legal right to rule Eastern Thrace, Trabzon, or its share of Kurdistan?
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@spartacus-olsson Why are the Crusades relevant? They ended more than 400 years before Zionism came along, and I'm not aware of much evidence that they played much role in anyone's thinking until the relatively modern (1990s?) notion of a clash of civilizations came along. One thing I wish your presentation spent more time on was the nature of and state of affairs within the Ottoman Empire, which shared a religious identity with most of its Asian subjects but otherwise was a colonial empire not too different from the British, French, or Russian ones. As I've said in other comments, trade of one foreign imperial ruler for another was hardly a novel concept in 1919 in the former Ottoman Empire or anywhere else, it was the norm for much of the world since the 15th century or so. The right of national self-determination was the novel and untried idea.
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@RoryT1000 Also, that was four questions. 🙂
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@spartacus-olsson So naked force and right of conquest become something else solely due to the passage of time? How long would the British have had to keep control of Palestine before they had the established and upheld regional control of legislation and administration? And why did this not give the British a legal right to control Ireland, which had been under English rule longer than the Levant was under Ottoman rule? Why do the Ottomans get a pass for doing the exact same thing Britain and France were doing? And what happened to the established and upheld regional control of legislation and administration of Germany in Upper Silesia or Kaliningrad? Should the Soviet-imported inhabitants of these regions be expelled so they can be returned to their former owners? If you want to say that right of conquest is obsolete today in favor of human rights of whoever currently inhabits the land, I'd agree, but that change was a novel and far from universally accepted notion in 1917 - in fact, I'd argue that the aftermath of WW1 was one of the earliest times anyone attempted to put the principle into practice. And you still have the question of why Palestinians who left Israel in 1948-49 have rights that Germans expelled from Eastern Europe around the same time don't have. If we say the Germans lost those rights when they lost the war, can't Israelis say the same about the Palestinians?
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@spartacus-olsson Who built those camps and forced the Palestinians to remain in them? And why is no one held to account for that? Or for Gaza's western border and the West Bank's eastern border remaining closed?
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@sidschukowv6677 "both should be connected as humanity would demand." Why exactly does humanity demand this? Does it likewise demand that Alaska and the contiguous United States should be joined? Look out Vancouver, here come the Yanks! Humanity demands it! And wouldn't connecting Gaza and the West Bank then create a disconnected Israel that humanity would then have to demand being reunified? How do we resolve that dilemma? Aside from doing away with Israel entirely, of course. For that matter, why does humanity demand a unified and sovereign Palestine but not Kurdistan? Or Tibet?
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@sidschukowv6677 "Palestinians fighting for their rights" A lot of the problem is that supporters like you seem to have a very difficult time distinguishing between fighting for one's rights on the one hand and massacring and gang-raping civilians on the other. The actions of Hamas on October 7 rival anything the Dirlewanger Brigade did in Eastern Europe in WW2. That is why people compare them to Nazis. It's not the cause they're fighting for, it's the horrific atrocities they commit in its name. And the comments of some far-right Israelis that also rise to the level of advocating genocide don't change that. But no one is defending them here. If anyone here advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from what they call "Judah and Samaria" I'm pretty sure Sparty would come down on them just as hard.
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@BonsaiBlacksmith Whose bias do you regard as "unbiased"?
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@flashgordon6670 Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character and Manson purportedly wanted to set off a race war.
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