This is a great podcast. It has left me wondering about the parallels between the situation Israel finds itself in now and the situation France found itself in Algeria. Hamas using FLN tactics to brutally terrorise then cash in on public opinion when the inevitable overreaction falls on them. Where France retaliated their way out of worl…
This is a great podcast. It has left me wondering about the parallels between the situation Israel finds itself in now and the situation France found itself in Algeria. Hamas using FLN tactics to brutally terrorise then cash in on public opinion when the inevitable overreaction falls on them. Where France retaliated their way out of worldwide support leaving them with two options- go hardcore hard or go home. The French flinched at the destruction they would have to inflict and eventually had to concede and leave Algeria. Are Israel at that same point now? Has Israel decided a political accommodation with the Palestinians will never succeed no matter what, ruling out all other options to replace going hard? Has Israel studied the France in Algeria and taken the alternative route, not flinched, said fuck it let’s see where this takes us? If they are truly on the ‘going hard’ path, I fear this may be the end of Gaza as a Palestinian territory.
I think it was Ibrahim Al-wazir l, founding member of Fatah, who was very inspired and borrowed strategies from the Algerian War of independence, so you could be spot on. However, without knowing much about that war, the Algerians lost around one million people over several years; that doesn’t sound very “flinchy” of the French! Public opinion did turn against them though, and in this age of social media, that is happening much faster for the Israelis.
To expand on Darryl's point in the Unraveling, the French had a France to go back to. The Israeli's have no other place to retreat to. Of course, individual Israeli's may retreat to, say, New York (Darryl made that point somewhere...?), the nation as a whole can't just walk away. The various waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, at least until the mid-twentieth century, were all based on them fleeing oppression somewhere else, both pre and post Holocaust.
Quite a few Rich American Jews have taken up the remaining beautiful old houses in Western Jerusalem belonging to Palestinians, and many American Jews have houses in the illegal settlements of West Bank. They don’t have to leave Israel, they just have to leave the areas that are not recognised by international Law (East Jerusalem and the West Bank) and areas of the Negev closer to the Gaza Strip.
This is a great podcast. It has left me wondering about the parallels between the situation Israel finds itself in now and the situation France found itself in Algeria. Hamas using FLN tactics to brutally terrorise then cash in on public opinion when the inevitable overreaction falls on them. Where France retaliated their way out of worldwide support leaving them with two options- go hardcore hard or go home. The French flinched at the destruction they would have to inflict and eventually had to concede and leave Algeria. Are Israel at that same point now? Has Israel decided a political accommodation with the Palestinians will never succeed no matter what, ruling out all other options to replace going hard? Has Israel studied the France in Algeria and taken the alternative route, not flinched, said fuck it let’s see where this takes us? If they are truly on the ‘going hard’ path, I fear this may be the end of Gaza as a Palestinian territory.
I think it was Ibrahim Al-wazir l, founding member of Fatah, who was very inspired and borrowed strategies from the Algerian War of independence, so you could be spot on. However, without knowing much about that war, the Algerians lost around one million people over several years; that doesn’t sound very “flinchy” of the French! Public opinion did turn against them though, and in this age of social media, that is happening much faster for the Israelis.
To expand on Darryl's point in the Unraveling, the French had a France to go back to. The Israeli's have no other place to retreat to. Of course, individual Israeli's may retreat to, say, New York (Darryl made that point somewhere...?), the nation as a whole can't just walk away. The various waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, at least until the mid-twentieth century, were all based on them fleeing oppression somewhere else, both pre and post Holocaust.
Quite a few Rich American Jews have taken up the remaining beautiful old houses in Western Jerusalem belonging to Palestinians, and many American Jews have houses in the illegal settlements of West Bank. They don’t have to leave Israel, they just have to leave the areas that are not recognised by international Law (East Jerusalem and the West Bank) and areas of the Negev closer to the Gaza Strip.
No they don’t have to leave.