this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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The historical context is Western settler-colonialism.
That's a fair take, put yourself in that timeframe. WW2 just ended, you're one of the world leaders and you learned all about the "final solution".
what do you do? how do you prevent another genocide of the Jews?
Give them sanctuary with protected status in your own country rather than driving other people out of some other country.
Bit of an idealistic answer but I like it.
Points for consideration, there were a handful of ships full of Jews during WW2 seeking asylum. It's widely believed that world leaders knew of or suspected that the Holocaust was murdering Jews around the time those boats were rejected for asylum.
Additionally, even after people knew the details of the Holocaust people still didn't really like Jews.
how would you account for those points?
also thank you for engaging with me on this. I'm genuinely enjoying our conversation!
Everything you're saying really just supports the fact that the nations of the time were handling the situation in a wildly immoral way, and the creation of Israel as an ethnostate was part and parcel of that immorality, and remains highly consequential to this date.
There's no point asking me as an individual how I would personally have solved the crisis if I could travel back in time, because one person can't unilaterally force a nation to do anything without being a dictator, and people don't become dictators without doing horrible things.
What matters is recognizing that the Israel of today came to exist out of two factors:
Now we're stuck dealing with the consequences of our idiot racist ancestors. Let's just try our best to not be overtly idiotic or racist ourselves (racist, for example, by turning a blind eye to the genocide happening to Palestinians, as if they're not even human beings, or idiotic by thinking that there's any justification for Israel's insanely disproportionate use of force).
Just to be clear, I'm not accusing you specifically of being racist or idiotic, I'm just describing my general position on things.
It won't solve the problems of today but sometimes it can be interesting to see what people of today think for problems and crisises of yesterday. I was in model UN and that was a fairly frequent conference idea.
I also enjoy talking to people because it's easy for us to say "that's a colonialist action" and even though it's true the question becomes (for me) 'alright how could we have done better' and discussing that thought experiment
and I appreciate the call-out, I definitely didn't assume you were calling me one.
Maybe for a better question we ask "what could I have done as Winston Churchill or (I think it was) Truman." While they were singular people they did give the diplomats their marching orders when it came to the peace resolutions.
These people were influential but did not have unilateral power. In their position I would have tried to establish refuge for Jewish people and grant them protective status. Then because of how racist and dumb society was, I would have lost my political position and my influence.
Mmm that's a pretty fair point. Even back then being the President that ended a war only got you so much political good will in the States. Not sure how it worked for Churchill.
I kinda wonder what if any good solutions there were for this. Doing the moral thing but losing your job doing it and potentially seeing the work you did undone by your successor would suck hella bad.
Well thank you for indulging my questions this has been really fun chatting with you!
Churchill lost re-election because he made a really tone-deaf radio address on Labour's plans for socialized medicine, national insurance, and nationalisation of utilities and critical industries (all of which the overwhelming majority of the country wanted), basically calling them communism, said it would require a "gestapo" to implement, and he wouldn't stand for it.
Clement Atlee more or less thanked him for that speech the next day, and assumed the Prime Minister role after the Tories were absolutely trounced in the 1945 election.
Atlee lasted 6 years. Labour ran the show with a huge majority for a full five year term, then got an unworkably small majority of 5 seats in 1950. Snap election was called in 1951, and Conservatives retook the majority, despite Labour getting 48.8% of the vote, and Conservatives only getting 48.0%.
...Funny how that keeps happening.
Churchill resumed the role of Prime Minister until he retired in 1955.
Why did they still lose, was it like a gerrymandering thing?
It wasn't (maybe still isn't?) a strictly proportional representation system, so the urban areas get slightly fewer members per vote. More equal than the Electoral College, but still imbalanced in favor of the rural areas where wealthy people have huge estates that have been handed down for generations.
Nifty!
Thank you for the history lesson I actually had no idea that's how that all went down.
Zionism did not start with WW2. Nor the migration of jews to Mandatory Palestine.
I'm aware of this fact. thanks.