At first this post was about the British Mandate of Palestine and how Israel was created out of it after the second world war. But I decided that with all the various problems and opinions flying around, that it’s probably wrong to talk about Palestine and Israel at all.
In this region, historically, you have victims oppressing other victims. You have “white savior” syndrome in the manner of The Crusades (which I haven’t read a lot about, but which I have rudimentary understanding that it was Christians, circa 1100, starting wars to “take back” the land from the Moslems.) (not a spelling mistake). Even today, and I know some of these people, you have Evangelical Christians who are trying to get Jews to return to Israel in order to speed up the return of Christ.
But from 1921 — roughly — the entire area after World War I was designated as various mandates and administered by 3 European countries: England, France and Belgium. There were 16 mandates in all, and I don’t know the reason for them except that the world was still in the process of drawing the great big map. That’s still going on, for example, in Ukraine which is attempting to keep itself free and separate from the maw of Russia; and South Sudan, which I think is the most recent country to be created.
The Ottoman empire (also known as the Turkish empire) lasted until the end of the first world war and it extended throughout this territory, all the way down the west coast of Saudi Arabia. After WWI, the victors (England, France and Belgium and maybe the United States, although I don’t know for sure), created 5 mandates out of this region, one of which was never realized (The Mesopotamian mandate which instead became Iraq, a British Mandate.) The one that everyone is fighting over is the Palestine mandate.
Every writer, artist and poet knew, after the fighting of World War I stopped, that the issues had not been resolved. Everyone rushed into World War I thinking that it was time to get it over and settled. But it settled nothing at all. And 21 years later Hitler began it all again. It’s interesting to note that at one time, Hitler and his henchmen came up with a plan to deport all Jews to Palestine and Syria, but weren’t able to because of logistics. It wasn’t much later that they formalized their plan to murder all Jews in German-conquered Europe as well as neutral territories like Portugal, Switzerland and Spain.
In any event, it was in recognition of the fact that this horrific crime had been committed against the Jewish people (or the “race” of Jews, as Germany incorrectly called them) that Israel was formed from part of the mandate of Palestine and Britain gave up control. From here, I’ll say no more.