Ken Livingstone - Please Can Someone Explain

[hellywelly4]

I don't understand this anti Semitic furore and wonder if someone could really explain it in words of one syllable for me. Nothing nasty, please, just the basics.

[hellywelly4]

Thank you everyone. I have been fascinated by everyone's replies and the different opinions. I have been watching Simon Sebag Montefiore's series about Jerusalem. It's been a disputed place since it began, I think. Although I am a practising Christian, I do get extremely sad that religion has caused so much hatred in the world, and that so many millions have been killed in the name of one religion or another. It makes me wonder if there will ever be peace in that area. I'm still not too clear why KL was called A/S for what he said, but there are better brains than mine out there who obviously thought he was. He does court controversy! Anyway, thank you all. Shall we end this thread on a peaceful note, please?

[Svejk]

That'll be a first, hellywelly. ;o)

[naomi24]

Hellywelly, that’s a very interesting programme. Have you been to Jerusalem? A fascinating but very strange place.

[Gromit]

Naomi,

Hilter was not a card carrying zionist, but he supported German zionists in their desire to relocate to Palestine. His motives for supporting and collaborating with zionists are questionable, but the Haavara document is proof that the Nazi German Government were actively encouraging Jews to go to Palestine which is really what a description of a zionist is.

[Gromit]

Hellywelly,
The Ken Livingstone suspension is not about anti semtism, it is about infighting in the Labour Party. Anti semtism was this weeks bone, next week they will be fighting over a different one.

[naomi24]

Gromit, //the Haavara document is proof that the Nazi German Government were actively encouraging Jews to go to Palestine which is really what a description of a zionist is. //

No, that isn't what a Zionist is. This from Wiki: //Zionism is a nationalist and political movement of Jews and Jewish culture that supports the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel//

Neither the Nazis nor Hitler supported that.

[bazwillrun]

" I'm still not too clear why KL was called A/S for what he said"

because most people know exactly what his game is, hes using anti-israel comments as cover for his anti-semetic views that he knows he cant really say in public...

[sevenOP]

I don't think 'we' are meant to understand, as the innuendo is the message.

[DTCwordfan]

Baz is right....to put it simply, KL was saying "Efff off you curly-bearded non-Muslims, so-called third religion of his Nibs, God, and go and live anywhere that they will accept you - Iowa or Kansas being an alternative to Pennsylvania for the Mennonites and Amish and the rest - why didn't you all buqqqer off to Patagonia when we offered you that, and leave your lands to my beloved Palis and Hezbollah, even ISILs and the rest. By the way, do you have some crude that I can make my percentage on - or I will take it on arms?"

[naomi24]

DTC, have you been at the cooking sherry?

[Togo]

The Kings of Judah were the monarchs who ruled over the ancient Kingdom of Judah. According to the biblical account, this kingdom was founded after the death of Saul, when the Tribe of Judah elevated David to rule over it. After seven years, David became king of a reunited Kingdom of Israel. However, in about 930 BC the united kingdom split, with ten of the twelve Tribes of Israel rejecting Solomon's son Rehoboam as their king. The Tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained loyal to Rehoboam, and reformed the Kingdom of Judah, while the other entity continuing to be called the Kingdom of Israel, or just Israel.
The capital of the Kingdom of Judah was Jerusalem.

I think there may have been an Israel before 1948.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_of_Judah

[naomi24]

Togo, I'm not sure of the point you're trying to make in posting that^.

[Khandro]

The Jews returned to their originally God-given land and with hard work turned the desert into a viable state, something the Palestinian muslim arabs have never been able to do.

[Psybbo]

One word IDIOT

[naomi24]

Khandro, what does that have to do with anything?

[Hypognosis]

@HellyWelly

//I do get extremely sad that religion has caused so much hatred in the world, and that so many millions have been killed in the name of one religion or another. //

Given that, in theory, religious believers can worship their god from wherever they happen to be, then the fighting in the Levant is merely a land dispute.

It has been dressed up as being about religion because there is extreme attachment to the Temple mount, by both sides. The Jewish people cannot be planted in some other part of the world because you cant physically move the mountain, so they can have it in their midst, too.

//
It makes me wonder if there will ever be peace in that area.
//

It was lost by conquest but I need to read up which century it fell and whether expansionist eastern tribes took it prior to the spread of Islam or whether that arrived later. Depending on the sequence it may be that simple land-grabs preceded the superimposition of the grand mosque on the Temple Mount.

This is, incidentally, what religions do. Most Christian churches were built over the top of pagan sites, to stop them being used.

Lastly, although the allies never won at Gallipoli, The Ottoman Empire still fell at the end of WWI. I need to re-read why that occurred but, in any event, Palestine was handed over to the British and French without anything as conspicuous as a military conquest of the area. The Palestinians no doubt felt cheated, even back then. Our handover, to Israel was merely rubbing salt into the wound.

[Gromit]

The Ottoman Empire was breaking up prior to World War I . The Ottoman's joined the war hoping to get territory back, but insteadthey lost more, the Arabs and the Balkans revolted. Defeat in the War crushed the Government and a new independent state, Turkey emerged which could not afford an Empire. The British and French carved up the Ottoman Empire, the British gaining Palestine.

Prior to the British taking Palestine, it was relatively peaceful even though it was populated by Jewish and Arab Palestinians. But things got messy toward the outbreak of the second world war with Arabs seeking to take the area from the British. The peoples became divided. After the war, the newly formed UN were tadked with solving the conflict. They recommended partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab areas. It did not recommend a Jewish State. Bankrupted by the war, and under attack by Jewish terrorists, the British were in a hurry to wash their hands of the place, and went with the partition idea. Zionists soon took statehood for their half of the partition, and a huge influx of European Jews populated the Former Palestinian lands. The Arabs were never happy with all that, and in successive attacks on Israel, they lost most of the Arab Palestinian terrotory to Israel.

[Hypognosis]

Thanks, Gromit.

Those who watched The Big Questions , today, will have heard the extraordinary phrase "won territories in defensive wars".

With no sense of irony, I might add.