Britain and their drawing of lines in the sand is absolutely responsible for plenty of the shittiness we see around us in the world today. Total coward power move by Britain to try and weasel out of all of the trouble their colonialism has caused.
Without the Balfour declaration we would not have had the Zionist colonial settling of mandatory Palestine. The local Arabs fought for their freedom from the Ottoman empire during WW2 and were double crossed by the British who wanted the land for themselves and a little bit for the French for some reason. The British know more than anyone how the process of colonialism works being the best in the world at it. They were also aware how viciously settler colonials tend to treat the native people when settling a new land, they just didn’t care because they had their own greedy motivations.
Britain had a huge part to play in stoking tensions between the local Palestinian communities and the newly arrived settler Jews using their time honoured “divide and conquer” strategy.
Britain and their colonial fuckery is a huge part of the Israel story.
If we zoom out and look at the bigger picture, Israel would not exist as it does today without Britain’s steadfast backing.
The empire’s successor (America) has provided similarly unwavering support.
Throughout most of my lifetime I have watched Western countries (mostly vassals of the US) turn a blind eye to genocide in Gaza.
More recently the double standards have become most apparent with the war in Ukraine. Western nations took the diplomatic approach of wagging their finger at nations maintaining relations with Russia while asking “have you thought what this will do to your credibility?”
All while giving their full throated support to Israel for most of the past 50 years and before that. Any thought to how that affects your credibility?
These are the double standards that slowly rot away the foundations of civilization.
Imperialism bad if it’s being done to me, ok if we are doing it to someone else. Surely we can be more sophisticated than that.
“Some lines” - what a dismissive way to put it. A British child rapist (Louis Mountbatten, great uncle of present day child rapist former prince Andrew) haphazardly drew a border in South Asia which led to the largest forced migration in human history and two million deaths. The idea that lines don’t mean anything speaks to an abysmal state of history education. There are libraries of work commenting on how the lines drawn by colonial powers in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia contribute to ongoing conflicts in these regions.
To be fair, they were doing it when those lines were drawn (in a different location, because they expanded their territory through war) too. The lines just gave them legitimacy. They started colonizing before the lines were made, and we’re in conflict fighting the locals then. It obviously wasn’t the scale it is today, but the whole project is propagated through conflict.
You’re right though legitimacy is everything when it comes to how we preceive who lives where. One has to wonder how legitimacy slowly becomes tacit approval for genocide though.
Blaming Israel’s current shittiness on some lines we drew in the sand 70 odd years ago is a bit weak mate.
We aren’t telling them to torture kids or bomb civilians, they’re doing that all on their own.
Britain and their drawing of lines in the sand is absolutely responsible for plenty of the shittiness we see around us in the world today. Total coward power move by Britain to try and weasel out of all of the trouble their colonialism has caused.
Without the Balfour declaration we would not have had the Zionist colonial settling of mandatory Palestine. The local Arabs fought for their freedom from the Ottoman empire during WW2 and were double crossed by the British who wanted the land for themselves and a little bit for the French for some reason. The British know more than anyone how the process of colonialism works being the best in the world at it. They were also aware how viciously settler colonials tend to treat the native people when settling a new land, they just didn’t care because they had their own greedy motivations.
Britain had a huge part to play in stoking tensions between the local Palestinian communities and the newly arrived settler Jews using their time honoured “divide and conquer” strategy.
Britain and their colonial fuckery is a huge part of the Israel story.
If we zoom out and look at the bigger picture, Israel would not exist as it does today without Britain’s steadfast backing.
The empire’s successor (America) has provided similarly unwavering support.
Throughout most of my lifetime I have watched Western countries (mostly vassals of the US) turn a blind eye to genocide in Gaza.
More recently the double standards have become most apparent with the war in Ukraine. Western nations took the diplomatic approach of wagging their finger at nations maintaining relations with Russia while asking “have you thought what this will do to your credibility?”
All while giving their full throated support to Israel for most of the past 50 years and before that. Any thought to how that affects your credibility?
These are the double standards that slowly rot away the foundations of civilization.
Imperialism bad if it’s being done to me, ok if we are doing it to someone else. Surely we can be more sophisticated than that.
“Some lines” - what a dismissive way to put it. A British child rapist (Louis Mountbatten, great uncle of present day child rapist former prince Andrew) haphazardly drew a border in South Asia which led to the largest forced migration in human history and two million deaths. The idea that lines don’t mean anything speaks to an abysmal state of history education. There are libraries of work commenting on how the lines drawn by colonial powers in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia contribute to ongoing conflicts in these regions.
no, they are doing it with our governments help.
America is not only not telling them no, we’re selling them the weapons to do it with
I agree, except we are talking about the UK
To be fair, they were doing it when those lines were drawn (in a different location, because they expanded their territory through war) too. The lines just gave them legitimacy. They started colonizing before the lines were made, and we’re in conflict fighting the locals then. It obviously wasn’t the scale it is today, but the whole project is propagated through conflict.
You’re right though legitimacy is everything when it comes to how we preceive who lives where. One has to wonder how legitimacy slowly becomes tacit approval for genocide though.