Was the 1948 War Justified or Ethnic Cleansing？ ｜ A Critical Compass Clip
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
139.0099
Summary
In this episode, we discuss the history of the political and cultural zionism of the modern state of Israel and its impact on the modern world. We discuss the role of the state as a political entity, its role as a nation-state, and the role it played in the crimes of its predecessor, the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Transcript
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a lot of the legitimacy came from the ideas behind it uh the political zionism and the way that
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it's i must give him credit like to unify that identity and like to keep that identity going and
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to propagate these ideas throughout the national sphere like the international sphere um that that's
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that shows like quite a lot of tenacity from them and it's impressive that they're able to
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able to get these ideas out um it does come at the cost of we were talking about so the the cultural
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and practical zionism i think has been a little bit more muted over the years that the ideas of
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like well the legitimacy comes from establishing yourself and working and building relationships
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i think it's turned more into more the assertion aspect of like well we deserve this land and or
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we fought for this land and or it's like this is we we should be granted this land because we are owed
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because that that's more of a heavy heavy handedness rather than a historical
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um fact of them being on the land for multiple hundreds of years
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well and and as well i feel like a more convincing case rather than you know this is a this is a
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country that was granted sovereign rights and etc i think a more convincing argument would be
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uh they did they did weather not only weather but they did actually win two wars uh from a conglomerate
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of arab nations against them and they came out victorious so in another you know in any other place in the
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world land is won and lost through war so i don't know what do you think about that
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um i would say in this case it's because you had established settlements and you still had
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individuals and you didn't have like a it wasn't as much of a united front in the way of it's not like
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you had the nation of palestine and you didn't have an established war you had
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it was less defined that way so the war ended up just affecting the property rights of a lot of
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individuals so that that's that's where it seems a little bit different than like two nations fighting
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about the imaginary line on the map this was like an interwoven shared area and that seems i think
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that's where you get more into the language where people will call this ethnic cleansing of like
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one group wanting to change the demographic split of an area that is shared and you could you could
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find other examples in um in africa or even examples of uh um in eastern europe yeah it's this is something
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that's come up before but i i think when you have intermixed populations this is a little bit more
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than two sovereign states trying to establish their borders well yes and and as is the case with with i
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would say um probably pretty uncontroversially most wars in history it is the common person the average
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person that suffers the most and has and has truly the least stake in it and more often than not it's uh
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it's the the battle of um two ideologies maybe maybe represented by rather actually a small percentage of
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of both populations yeah you can kind of narrow it down to you have the elites and you have
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their ideologies being fought out by just the common people and the most difficult part is that
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any idea of justice now is a lost cause because both groups will define justice as something that's
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unattainable without massive harm to the other group and as you get more perceived harm you get more
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radicalization on both sides so you'll get more radicalized um you'll you get hamas now um which is
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seems like it's basically a hindrance to any any two state state solutions going to be hindered by
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the more radical elements in hamas because um in the international community they'll say well they can't
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govern themselves because look at the look they're a loose cannon they can't even like look at these
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radicals they they have no no place on the international stage because their conduct and then
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as you get radical elements on one side you get radical elements on the other with this more
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kind of tunnel vision idea of what an israeli state should be so you have some more balanced zionists
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some of the more practical some of the more cultural and then you have the hardcore political
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that really have a vision for what that area should look like and i think the more radical one side gets
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the more radical another and i think this is what perpetuates these these atrocities but we can always
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dive dive into it a little bit more into in our other episodes