I wrote a whole big thing about this, but I'll just save you the time. Here it is in bullet points (but still long) with a TL;DR:

1. Britain conquering Palestine was a sine qua non for the creation of the state of Israel. With the Balfour Declaration, the British had committed to creating a Jewish homeland before they even had conquered the land from the Ottomans. (Of course, Zionist Jews had already immigrated to Palestine during the Ottoman period, starting in the 1880s, and some Jews had already been living there before that.)

2. The British Mandate was passed by the League of Nations and enshrined in international law Britain's commitment to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. (The mandatory government, managed by the British, existed from 1923 until 1948, and its termination, called for by the 47 Partition Plan, was the occasion of Israel's declaration of independence).

3. The migration story is a little more complicated than you say. At first (that is, in the early days of the Mandate), it was actually the Zionists who capped Jewish immigration to Palestine because they didn't want to harm the (segregated) Jewish economy in Palestine by flooding it with workers it couldn't sustain. As a rule of thumb, the British gave preferential treatment to the Zionists over the Arabs until violence in mandatory Palestine made the pro-Zionist position too costly over the course of the 30s, when it gradually shifted to a more pro-Arab posture. It wasn't until 1939 that Britain really clamped down on Jewish immigration in a big way, after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had been a big violent mess for about a decade.

4. During the clampdown on violence during the Arab Revolt that started in 1936, the British expelled many Arab notables and with them much of the nascent infrastructure of the Palestinian national movement. This also made it much easier for Israel to win the 1947-49 War, especially during its first phase, when it was a low intensity civil war (that is, before nations of the Arab League invaded, the war was only a battle between Jews and Arabs living in Palestine).

5. After WWII, the British effectively handed the whole conflict over to the US because they were sick of dealing with it and it had required so many resources for so long. The passing of the baton had to do with a controversy over the fate of 100,000 Jewish refugees after Holocaust (nobody wanted them), and it became an international issue, which ultimately led to them being sent to Palestine and the UN partition plan in 1947. (Which is pretty close to the partition plan advocated by the United States and which is called the two state solution. Even if the borders are quite different, the principle is that partition is the best way to solve the conflict between the two peoples.)

TL;DR: the support of the international community over several decades was a condition without which Israel wouldn't exist, even if it's also true that Israel was created, in some cases, despite the objections of the international community, especially England. (This actually goes back to Theodor Herzl's initial strategy outlined in the 1890s, which had been to create an international consensus among dignitaries and heads of state in Europe that creating a Jewish state was the best solution to the problem of antisemitism in Europe.)

Just to be clear, there's a difference between the widespread, popular understanding of the history, and the actual history, and what I suggested before hinges on that difference.

There's a widespread perception that the international community -- and especially Europe -- created Israel out of whole cloth as a kind of compensation for the Holocaust. That idea isn't born out by the historical record (even if it is inspired by the DP controversy), but many people hold opinions about history that have little basis in fact, and still lead them to mobilize around political issues (to be clear, i'm not suggesting anyone here thinks that, or even that a majority/plurality. Only a non-trivial, critical mass of people). This perception -- which greatly exaggerates the role of the international community in creating Israel -- is more decisive in mobilizing political activity than the actual history.

Another similar belief that encourages some Americans to criticize Israel is the idea that the country is a kind of Western outpost of American imperialism in the Middle East which America can dictate policy to without contest because of the support it gives to Israel (meaning, the US is responsible for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so criticism of Israel is really criticism of America). This also encourages some criticism of Israel in Europe, where there is anti-Americanism and Israel is seen as nothing but an extension of American foreign policy.

Aside from that, point taken about South Africa. I agree that reasonable people across the world can come together because they're outraged by an injustice that is an unfortunate vestige of 19th/20th century European imperialism. With none of this am I suggesting that anyone who criticizes Israel is in the grips of some delusion based merely on false impressions. A reasonable person can certainly look at the situation and conclude that Jewish and Palestinian nationalism create more problems than they solve.

Another reason why concern about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so widespread is because people who don't live there have a personal stake in the issue, by virtue of the lands' association with the three great monotheistic religions. Evangelical Christians in, I don't know, Arkansas, feel as if they have a personal stake in it, as do Muslims in Bangaldesh or Malaysia, or wherever else.

I see. But isn't taking your ideas and applying them to actual concepts important to judge the validity of the idea? I find abstract reasoning to be fine, but it always begets the question of whether that reasoning reflects reality.



Maybe, in some cases, we need to sacrifice attention to X. I think it's not that ridiculous. For instance, we can stop writing apologia for billionaires. They don't need sympathy.



Again, I find your reasoning sensible in the abstract - but does this reflect reality? The test of this sort of logical reasoning is to apply it to real world scenarios and see if it holds up. And as you pointed out, there's mountains of suffering that does get ignored. I think it's totally uncontroversial that we have limited attention spans and ignore most of the suffering.



Agreed, the goal should be to fix the problems, but the thing is, in America, many problems aren't getting fixed. And I don't think that's the fault of the people competing for attention, the responsibility falls on our lawmakers who are insensitive and don't care about their issues.

Attention seeking is probably a symptom of this. Which is I guess my complaint, I see the ways in which what you're saying is accurate, but I think much of the time you've attacked a symptom, rather than a cause, of political issues.



I mean - maybe you're right, maybe most people today are Tumblr-tier when it comes to social justice. That hasn't been my (admittingly rather limited) experience. I do agree there are often illegitimate complaints going around, but I'm more concerned about where the legitimate complaints are.

Honestly, yeah, we should pay more attention to all of those things. I think the issue with Israel is basically what Jon`C said though, we basically hold Israel to a higher standard of conduct because it's a liberalized, western government. But on the grand scale what's happening is not nearly as bad as other conflicts, yes.



I think they probably do, and I think they probably should receive more attention, yeah.

White and African American are also abstractions. To talk about members of those groups as if every member of each group shares the exact same experiences is to talk in abstractions. I'm actually trying to make this more concrete. Just imagine: what if this happened to you.



Competition over attention is Jerry Springer-style reality talk show arguing dressed up to look like politics. It gets nobody anywhere. Our political discourse is failing us because we don't talk about how policy can be used to improve peoples lives or what trade offs are involved in policy. Our legislators might feel compelled to address these issues if our political discourse were substantive and concerned with policy instead of being a big carnival.

What if what happened to me? I'm not sure what this is supposed to get at.



This is too extreme a statement. No, it's not just Jerry Springer, no, it's not pointless. I don't think it's an extreme statement to say drawing attention to important issues is a good thing. It's clearly not the solution, but it matters.

That's also not how our legislators work. They don't ignore suffering because they get called privileged. They ignore suffering because they have no incentive to care. They're instead incentivized by money to produce policies which continue the suffering.

If politicians were forced to actually hear these people, you just might be able to get a response. Which is the point.

You do realize, I hope, that the same criticisms you're making could apply fairly well to things like the civil rights movement in the 1960's.

I mean, I'd sure hope that I know this by now, because you've made this claim repeatedly (by the way, it's also guilt by association).

Whatever happens to X. I'm suggesting you consider what it's like to be someone who doesn't enjoy privileged victim status and whom you're saying it's fine if they're collateral damage, because it serves the benefit of those who do enjoy that status.

Or it becomes the basis for populism, cf. Donald Trump.

Having totally not read all that, I find it interesting nevertheless how much these kind of touchy discussions seem to rest upon what hypotheticals either side permits of the other. It's like we're in court.

Objection, your honor!

Not guilt by association, but it should point out that the reasoning might not be the strongest.

Not all populism is bad.

Are you sure you'd call yourself center left? It sounds like you're basically a conservative, who doesn't like Republicans.

Why?

Seems you don't like populism

Depends what you mean by populism.

I'd hope that disdain for certain forms of populism doesn't exclude someone from being considered somewhere on the left these days.

He's putting you through a purity test. That's what all this lawyering is about. The single most defining characteristic of the left is that super opinionated people agree that they have the definitive way of thinking about the world.

The left needs to do this because their form of purity test is based on competition to show who is smarter. Whereas the right competes on how drastic they can get away with pretending to be, even if it makes them sound super dumb.

No, that's fine, I just wasn't sure what you meant by that comment.

I'm pretty sure it's a generational thing.

I wouldn't call it a purity test, being anti-populist is fine, I mean I don't agree with it, there are really good arguments against it. It's just about classifying what people believe.

I think I'm someone who doesn't assume that conservatives are arguing in bad faith and who tries pretty hard to understand why conservative opinions are reasonable and why they appeal to conservatives. I think a lot of left-of-center people interpret that as contrarianism.

Just saw this. no, it totally is guilt by association. I don't know why you'd keep bringing this up, except to suggest that I'm moving beyond he boundaries of what you would consider acceptable beliefs. That seems like the only thing this could really mean, because as an historical fact, it seems dubious, unless you're talking at a high level of generality.

I mean, it's not like I'm an uncritical supporter of identity politics, victim type stuff. I think that it's a common liberal trend to overemphasize identity politics and underemphasize class politics, and I think there's bad ideology underlying that. On the other hand, I don't think it's fair to react too far in the opposite direction, and try to downplay the role of identity in experiencing culture to the point of pure individualism. Here I think it's best to be somewhere in between. I don't think it's controversial or radical to sit there, and frankly I don't pay much attention to the people radically for or against identity politics.

I also think that people overemphasize identity politics. The left does talk about it too much, and the right gets too hysterical about it. I think if more people actually just read stuff about it, and thought about it, and found an appropriate place for it in thought, we could move past it, instead of people forwarding the metaphorical political emails.

I guess in a way I'm advocating one of Zizek's real points: he advocates think, don't act. His argument is that the constant pressure we feel to always be "doing something" about problems is one that secretly allows people to control the ideological narrative, and with our problems being so complex we really need more than ever to sit back and think about where humanity is, where the future is going and how we're going to handle it.

I was also really turned onto this by listening to Rick Roderick. He spoke once in his lectures on existentialism about cynicism. It's easy to be a cynic. Because cynicism is easy. If you see a complicated problem, it's easy to give a cynical one-off, pretend the problem is too ****ty to deal with, and forget about it. It requires no courage and no effort. What does require effort is putting in the time to analyze and think about complex issues enough to come to real conclusions. Your own conclusions, that you stand by and defend. And I think he's correct about that.

Oh, the thing to read is the very first post on this page (the one I wrote with the TLDR). That was a complete indulgence that didn't push the conversation forward at all, but it's very informative!

Eversor always struck me as an actual big-L Liberal (i.e. the valley in that stupid graph). Not exactly sure where this comment comes from.

I'll reply to this in depth later, I have a bit to say on why I hold that impression of conservatism.

I disagree strongly with identity politics when its deliberate (or undeliberate) goal isn't to destroy racial hierarchy but turn it upside down. Unfortunately, that's most of the identity politics I've seen (hence, the progressive stack that RJ mentioned). I'm fairly convinced that race is a category that is created and maintained by racists, and intense racial awareness doesn't undermine racism (which is the view of people with strong identity politics leanings), but actually intensifies it.

We never talk about ethnicity anymore!

FWIW, I presume what Reid's talking about is much more nuanced (and less stupid, to say the least) than the progressive stack. I admitted that I brought it up as a joke. I mean, as long as he's not trying to deplatform you, lol.

Identity politics (on both sides) is an intentional distraction to keep people from talking about economics.

This is not meant as satire, but in my mind, race is very much a social construct.

Yes, there are tribes and ethnic groups (edit: meaning, things we can talk about objectively and dispassionately about, like in anthropology), which are all very fascinating. But the idea of race is pretty much always a tribal one (edit: in the sense of "us vs. them"). Then again, we're just haranguing over terminology, since I suspect that people get dragged into using the word race when they don't mean to think about things tribally (edit: as in, such a polarized way).

Although, come to think of it, even when it's in a positive light, do we ever hear the words 'black' or 'white' uttered when not thinking in a loosely tribal way? I actually can't think of anything, unless we're talking about something extremely scientific such as heart disease in a purely clinical context.

I really think that's right. What's the best way to distract from the power that the richest wield than to have white women and black men arguing over who is more oppressed by white men? Massive waste of time and energy.

Juxtapose against BLM members ****ting all over Bernie Sanders for suggesting that black problems are mostly economic problems, and throwing in behind a pro-oligarch identity politics candidate. It’s a pretty sharp and grotesque decline in the quality of discourse, and indeed the understanding of human plight, from the original Civil Rights movement - a decline that tracks perfectly with the expansion of this identity politics thing in academia.

Sorry for the whitesplaining.

Hopefully that's not what we're doing here though!

Wasn't it King's socialist views that really made the FBI stalk, harass, and threaten him?

[quote=Federal Bureau of Investigations]
No person can overcome the facts, no even a fraud like yourself. Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure. You will find yourself and in all your dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk exposed on the record for all time.... Listen to yourself, you filthy, abnormal animal. You are on the record.

King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.
[/quote]

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-and-dangers-unchecked-surveillance

Race is a certain kind of hierarchy. I think of racial divisions as categories that distinguishes people according to the power of the racial group they belong to compared to other racial groups. Or, in other words, in the hierarchy of racial groups. In the American context, it made sense during parts of the 19th century to call Irishness a race, because being Irish meant that you belonged in a certain place in the hierachy of races. Of course, because race is socially constructed, as you say, the designations that define races and mark people as belonging to a certain race can change. Many of the racial distinctions that used to exist in the states have collapsed into a more generic one called whiteness.

I'm skeptical. Most of my time is probably wasted here.

Except for the time it took me to write that first post about Israel during the mandate period woweezowee!!!

So in other words, arguing over race is a competition in which both sides lose, while those who realize it's a distraction are laughing all the way to the bank.

And it doesn't even seem to be a conspiracy necessarily either, because for whatever reason people seem inclined to do it anyway. I know Jon`C said it came out of academia, and if you look back like 150 pages in this thread I posted a video from the `90s where Richard Rorty expressed his dislike of identity politics, but on some level people seem to like talking about it.

I guess, after all, there's probably no easier form of cheap satisfaction than to feel good about yourself by virtue of being member of a group for which the only requirement in joining was being born.

But is that really what this thread is about? I can't even say.

Anybody interested in actually doing something about these problems has to be a socialist. Capitalism invests economic authority in the hereditary elite, who are members of the majority in-group for historical reasons. Communism invests economic authority in the political elite, who are members of the majority in-group for political reasons. The purpose of socialism is to reduce authority overall and with it the power to exploit others.