Patriotism in Germany after a Nazi Past?

I would argue that in general people are people. Even though they consider themselves to be good and just, people can and will do terrible things if the conditions are right. I don’t know if you have studied psychology, you might have heard of the Milgram experiment. If you haven’t look up Wikipedia, you might find it interesting.
Once again I don’t disagree that the Germans did what you said they did. I agree it was bad. Still the Nazis at the time believed to be acceptable, and justified.It is however far from a unique act in the history of mankind, or even other animals like chimpanzees. Nazi like genocide etc is fairly common in history, especially the in recent times of the 20th.
Like poverty, conflict is something you can try to manage, but its not something that will be solved permanently. That also means you don’t stop trying to make the world a better place if you can, despite the negatives of human nature.

If you read the history of the third reich, you discover that evil ideologies can come to power in any country.

Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.

I would argue that the Nazis didn’t believe they were right as much as they believed they would win, making the question of being right or wrong irrelevant.

If they truly believed they were right they wouldn’t have needed to send prison camp soldiers to asylums. People don’t blindly follow orders because they believe them to be right but because it allows them to not be burdened with the question of right and wrong.

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I understand from some source, it may have been a speaker on a campus station, that the Palestinian Arabs were simple goat herders and didn’t really grasp the full implications of the creation of Israel. If they were not in the United Nations, then maybe they weren’t politically developed enough?

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Interestingly, Austria hasn’t had a similar admission of guilt and a catharsis regarding it Nazi past, having successfully branded itself as “the first victim of Nazism” in the immediate postwar years.

Unfortunately, this sidestepping of history is never more visible than today.

Seems like that would be a plausible take on how the Palestinians were viewed at the time, by 1st world countries

The Palestinians were despised more by their Arab comrades then by 1st world coutries. Otherwise, the Palestinians would have been welcomed refugees by their Arab neighbors who would have fought with them tooth and nail to provide for a Palestinian state. Instead they fund a proxy war to be fought by Palestinians just to aggravate Israel, but in no way support them for their own sake.
The irony is that Israel is probably the Palestinians best friend, but they hate Jews so much they cut off their own noses to spite their faces.
Palestinians only need to renounce violence against Israel and recognize their right to exist and the problem would be over. But they are constantly lied to by their Arab neighbors, in order to destabilize Israel, doing the bidding of hostile neighbors while getting nothing in return, save for more shitty weapons by which to maintain a fruitless proxy war. It serves the Arabs and requires nothing of them.

Peace could have been achieved long ago. Bullshit from the Arab world mixed with extreme hatred of Jews keep the Palestinians where everybody wants them. Out of sight and an Israeli antagonist.

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Outstanding post, Pat.

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Thank you, @Mufasa. That means alot to me.

Actually, no one cared about Palestinians pre-1948, if they were on someone’s radar it was mostly as poor olive farmers. The moment they became “refugees” they started being shunned and hated - it’s amazing how intra-Muslim solidarity goes out of the window the second there’s an actual need. Of course, Palestinians in Jordan didn’t help themselves with their hare-brained schemes to take over the country.

Just curious how would that work out? They’d still be living in a myriad of overcrowded bantustans bisected by settlements and settlement/military roads. No viable economy - do you seriously think that Israel, who until very recently obsessed over the perceived “demographic threat” from Israeli Arabs (not Palestinians) would welcome them in any shape or form? Thais and Eritreans have filled the low-skilled jobs in Israel proper previously held by Palestinian day laborers.

This is the reason Arab neighbors ensured that Palestinians reamain hemmed up in Gaza and later West Bank - keeping them angry and poor.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck - it’s a bantustan, don’t sugarcoat it.

Saying that “if only…and all problems would be over” is a gross underestimation of the problem that has only horrible solutions.

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Your comment incorporates some commonly-held, but false, beliefs.

First, the British Mandate of Palestine (which is pretty much Israel) was majority Jewish long before the state of Israel was recreated. In fact, if you look at the flag from when it was part of the Ottoman Empire (and then British), the flag for the area was the Star of David.

And, no, it was not particularly conquered by the Brits. The Ottoman Empire just fell apart and the English and French stepped in to this backwater to keep it from fully turning into a disaster.

The Balfour Declaration, BTW, was after WWI (which was pretty much the closing act for the Ottomans). It proposed a Jewish and Arab homeland, with the Jewish land being markedly larger than what exists today.

Second, there was very little “stealing” of land. Almost all of the state of Israel was purchased from its owners in Turkey (again, then the Ottoman Empire) starting int he 1800s. Some of the supposed “Arab” areas were just recently conquered by Arabs. For example, in 1928, the Muslim Arabs committed a pogrom in East Jerusalem, killing or driving out the Jewish residents (and, to a lesser extent, the Nazarines). This is how “Arab East Jerusalem” became Arab.

Also, most Israelis did not immigrate from Europe. Most Israeli Jews are either from the immediate area (especially Jerusalem) or were ethnically cleansed from Iran, Egypt, Iraq, etc. Bit rich to expel a people from neighboring lands and then calling them “invaders” in the land to where you expelled them.

And, no, the UN didn’t create Israel. We fought a rather nasty, but limited, war of Independence from England, til they gave up, having recently had their fill of war The UN recognized what had happened. English football fans are still pissed about it.

Finally, there are a lot of Arab Israelis; about 20% of the population. They are the highest educated, highest wealth, and highest happiness group of Arabs in the world. In fact, Nazarine Arabs (who themselves are being currently “cleansed” from the Muslim-Arab occupied areas of Judea and Samaria) are the richest and most educated group in Israel, period. They are (in general, we have our SJW like the USA) normal, patriotic, Israelis like anyone else.

The fact is that the “Palestinians” (not to be confused with Israeli Arabs) are simply bigots and didn’t want to live in a land where Jews would be their equals. They liked the old system where Jews (and Nazarines) paid the jizya tax and were lesser citizens you could rape, rob, and kill with impunity.

Well, we don’t like that, any more than you would.

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Hey JB, Its always interesting to hear details directly from the area.
I don’t think I said Israel was conquered by the Brits. I know they were given the role of managing Palestine after WW1.
I was also aware that most jews at the time were from the area. I was referring more about the Jewish diaspora from Europe after WW2, wishing to return to their spiritual homeland.
Its definitely a complicated issue with both sides thinking they have legitimate claims for one reason or another, and it doesn’t look like its going to be solved any time soon.
Can’t have been very good growing up in an environment where you are under the threat of being blown up all the time. Much respect for the IDF.

That’s not different than anything I said. What I am iliterating to is that a peaceful Palestinian state has and was possible by accepting 2 very simple demands. Accept Israel’s right to exist and renounce violence.
Tremendous promises were given to the Palestinians should they meet these simple demands.
And Israel has invested more into Palestinian security than any Arab country. But the Palestinians refuse, promising rivers of Jewish blood running down the streets rather than living in peace.
They don’t want peace, they want dead Jews,in as much volume as possible peace be damned. That’s the plain truth. History shows this over and over.

And you know I am right. Even if I don’t have all the intricate details down to a ‘T’.

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It is in fact the most legal country ever created or recreated in history. It was not conquered but given by legal mandate…
And forgive my religious admonitions, but it was predicted thousands of years ago.

Look at the map I’ve posted with all those mutually separated green areas and explain how a “Palestinian state” is viable. IDF has no intention of relinquishing control of the last natural defensive barrier before the coastline that is the river Jordan.

So in other words, it’s a bantustan, plain and simple.

Bantustans within the borders of South Africa were classified as “self-governing” or “independent”. In theory, self-governing Bantustans had control over many aspects of their internal functioning but were not yet sovereign nations. Independent Bantustans (Transkei, Bophutatswana, Venda and Ciskei; also known as the TBVC states) were intended to be fully sovereign. In reality, they had no economic infrastructure worth mentioning and with few exceptions encompassed swaths of disconnected territory. This meant all the Bantustans were little more than puppet states controlled by South Africa.

However, the homelands were only kept afloat by massive subsidies from the South African government; for instance, by 1985 in Transkei, 85% of the homeland’s income came from direct transfer payments from Pretoria. The Bantustans’ governments were invariably corrupt and little wealth trickled down to the local populations, who were forced to seek employment as “guest workers” in South Africa proper.

Sound familiar?

The Palestinian problem is largely of their own making - they (and other Arabs) rolled the dice in 1948 and lost. But let’s not trivialize how fucked up they are and how fucked up their choices are.

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Yes and no. They still sit on the finest beach on the Mediterranean Sea, with great weather, and great location. They are literally driving distance between the two greatest tourist attractions in the world – Jerusalem and the wonders of Egypt. They could set up some nice, private, banks. And casinos.

Monaco, which is far smaller, became exceedingly rich with far less raw material.

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The choice to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist would go a long way to unfucking up much of their issues.

You’re describing Lebanon.

50+ banks, playground for the rich Arabs and the fascinating mixture of affluence, glamour and shadiness with a lot of charm…

Do you seriously think that in some utopian scenario Gaza could compete with Beirut and its environs? Admittedly, I’ve only seen Gaza from afar and the place looks like a shithole and I’m not sure why anybody would want to visit, expect the do-gooder NGO types…What about the West Bank?

Also, Shiites have historically had more relaxed attitudes towards usury than Sunnites, coupled with the influence of Greeks, Maronites and Armenians, not to mention Jews…

Once again, the city state of Beirut that is called Lebanon.

Once again, how would that work in practice?

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Yes, in a way. But go full Cancun, instead of Lebanon. Aim for the common folk. Have drunk Englishmen show up on E99 (Euro) flights. Put in a race track and a soccer field. Topless beach or two.

They’d be rolling in the money.

Do I think this will ever happen, given the proclivities of the residents?

Nope. They can’t even tolerate a water park.

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The way it works now where Arabs and Jews live peacefully together, just on a larger scale. Certainly, there will continue to be pockets of hatred. But if the other is the majority, the minority is easier to deal with.

This sea-change make take blood. It took the U.S. a Civil War to get rid of slavery, but we did it. And we are one States, United.