Reply to Bill Maher explains the Middle East to Gen Z: Can anyone really dispute the facts?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele]Bill Maher is inaccurate in many instances in that video. He makes even basic mistakes. Here are a few:

1) He says that calling Jews "colonizers" is like calling Native Americans "colonizers". Consider your reaction if Native Americans from the South West began taking over Manhattan, creating a new country, and forcing its current residents into exile. Wouldn't you consider them "colonizers"? While it is true that some Jews remained permanently in what is now Israel, the Zionist movement was led by European Jews. At its conception, the Zionist movement was not in agreement about where a Jewish state should be located. Had a Jewish state been established in Uganda, an idea that was actually accepted by the World Jewish Congress in 1903, you would more readily recognize it to as colonization.

2) Maher claims that for 2,000 years nobody was interested in Palestine. This shows complete ignorance. What does Maher think the Crusades were about? Crusaders from Western Europe fought Persians and Kurds from today's Iran (among others) and Maher thinks this demonstrates a lack of interest. During the Ottoman Empire, there were thriving cities and towns in Palestine. Many radical supporters of Israel, including Maher apparently, would have you believe that Palestine was an empty land. That is a rewriting of history that misrepresents the deep ties that Palestinians have to their homeland.

3) Maher suggests that Zionism was a reaction to the Holocaust and that Jews became interested in a Jewish homeland after World War II. In fact, Jews had started emigrating from Europe to Palestine as early as 1882, the time of the First Aliyah. The movement gained momentum prior to World War I. Again, Maher is ignorant of basic history.

4) Maher refers to the killing of 600 protesters in Iran. That, of course, is a terrible thing that I condemn. But it pales in comparison to the number of protesters that has Israel killed. I am not talking about about those killed by Israel in fighting, but the killing of unarmed protesters. By the way, that number includes several Americans just in the last few months.

5) Maher commits a popular and common fallacy of equating opposition to Israel's killing of civilians as support for Hamas or Hezbollah. Pro-Israel individuals routinely say that they oppose Netanyahu but support Israel. That is considered a very acceptable position. Yet, when others say that they support the Palestinian people but oppose Hamas, they are labeled as supporters of terrorism. Those who, like Maher, engage in this sort of demagoguery are not serious and should not be considered serious. The should be considered as the propagandists that they are.

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Jeff,

Points 1, 2, and 3 don’t reflect historical facts - and this is exactly what Maher was pointing out.

1. Do you recognize the fact that Jews in Europe arrived in Europe either at the hands of Roman invaders in Judea who captured and enslaved them and in some cases brought their slaves back to Europe and/or Jews fled the Levant because they were being terrorized by Ottoman and then later, and more violently, by Islamic invaders? Jews are native to Israel - they are indigenous to the land - and were forced from it violently. The Jewish diaspora is a result of Jews being forced out of that homeland not because the average middle eastern Jew was yearning for what is now Poland or Germany.

Despite the forced diaspora - which continued through the 20th century as Arab Islamist powers increasingly oppressed Jews all over the Middle East and even conspired with the Nazis in WWII, Jews never left Israel and as a community have been resilient enough to sustain a presence. There were over 600,000 Jews in Israel in 1946.

This is quite different than the strawman you pose of Native Americans from the Southwest retaking Manhattan.

And to this point, Uganda is not equivalent to Israel and that would have been colonialism because, unlike Israel, Jews have no historic connection to Uganda. That’s ultimately why Israel was identified as a Jewish state versus Uganda. Again, Jews are indigenous to Israel, not colonizers.

2. Also, why do you assert that “nobody was interested in Palestine” for 2,000 years.  Jews have always been connected to that region - they never left that region. Religiously and in terms of historic connections, Jews have always been “interested” in that area of the Levant. Observant Jews have prayed in the direction of Jerusalem for millennia, it’s integral to Jewish identity. The line from the Passover Sedar - “next year in Jerusalem” is linked back to the 5th Century BCE. Jews have always been interested in Israel.

3. You reference Jews returning to Israel pre WWI …. You do realize that antisemitism in Russia and Eastern Europe surged at this time, right?

You make it seem like Jews woke up in mid-1800s and said, hey, let’s go to Israel. That’s not factual and seems ignorant of historic facts.

Lastly, denial of Jewish indigenous roots in the Middle East and specifically Israel has been part of Arab Islamist propaganda for the 50 years. This propaganda also attempts to wipe out the historical connection of Christians and other religious groups to those lands. It’s not factual - it’s propaganda - and again, part of what Maher was highlighting in his piece.

Not going to even get into 4 and 5 because the false equivalence of the one Jewish state in the world trying to defend itself from Iranian terrorist proxies and the resulting war post 10/7 and the terrorist / repressive regimes that are the Iranian regime and its spinoffs of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis is not worth debating. Again, not reflective of fact, which was Maher’s point to begin with. 
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