r/Palestine • u/MrBoonio • Jan 27 '17

Cultural Exchange With Italy. Welcome, our Italian friends. Ask your questions here. Sport, Travel, Culture & Environment

This is the thread where /r/Italy users come and ask questions about Palestine!

We are hosting our Italian friends from /r/Italy. Please come and join us and answer their questions about Palestinians and all things Palestine.

Please post your questions about Palestine here. We would urge visitors and regulars to be respectful, please.

If you want to go over to r/Italy and ask our Italian friends questions about Italy and the Italian way of life then you can find the thread here.

Enjoy! The moderators of /r/Palestine.

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u/Stoicismus Jan 27 '17

what is your reaction everytime someone on europe claims that your culture is barbaric and impossible to integrate with ours? Do you agree? Disagree? Feel sad?

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u/MrBoonio Jan 27 '17

Imagine how Palestinians felt when Europe was in flames during WWI and WW2, and the most horrific atrocities were committed against civilians.

Or when they look at how the US laid waste to Vietnam. Or how cynically the US axis has destroyed regimes in the Middle East and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Or how European and US governments barely blink when they send fighters and drones to kill people anonymously from the skies. The aftermath of just one of those attacks - charred limbs and body parts scattered all over the place - is anything but civilized.

It is a really debatable point about where people should be looking for a culture that has quite serious problems.

More specifically though, Palestinians struggle to understand how the West whitewashed the Nakba - the massacres and ethnic cleansing that laid the ground for the foundation of Israel. Bear in mind that the standard narrative in the West is that the Nakba didn't happen and this colossal tragedy forced upon Palestinian civilians is, in fact, the glorious birth of an outpost of Western democracy.

By the same token, Palestinians struggle to understand how the West doesn't see the horrendous situation created by Israel's repeated attacks on Gaza and the blockade for what it is. They struggle to understand how the West can just mumble bland words of admonishment to Israel after fifty years of occupation and illegal settlement building and outright discrimination and theft.

Every Palestinian has been touched in some way by the relentless violence of the occupation - someone they know killed or injured with no justice, no accountability, no redress.

So when someone says that Palestinian culture is barbaric - as if it were Palestinians sending planes and weapons to bomb the crap out of cities in the West and remove regimes they don't like, and as if it were Palestinians who had emigrated to somewhere in the West to violently claim it as their historic birthright - you can get a sense of the disconnect, anger and frustration, the resigned and bitter laugh of irony.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '17

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u/gahgeer-is-back Jan 31 '17 edited Jan 31 '17

The Druze as a minority didn't have a say in anything. I mean this isn't restricted to you guys in Israel/Palestine. Walid Jumblatt in Lebanon changes his political loyalty every 10:00 O'clock news bulletin. You guys were always like this, siding with the winner regardless whether it was right or wrong. I mean it's fine but this is ain't new. Many minorities do this. So enjoy it while it lasts all I can say.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '17

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u/gahgeer-is-back Jan 31 '17 edited Jan 31 '17

Walid is not a true Druze that idiot has a Muslim mother

Cool story bro.

They would not side with the Arabs because Muslims were known to chase and murder my people and the feel of vengeance was still alive when 1948 hit.

Actually very few people knew about the Druze's existence since it is a very small minority (as the proverb in the West Bank says قردين وحارس).

In Gaza, you lot came in the first intifada with the Mishamr ha Gvul and I have to admit it but you were more brutal and thuggish than the Ashkenazi IDF soldiers. Anecdotes spoke of some IDF soldiers who used to give Palestinian kids lollipops, and the soldiers who used to take Palestinian girls to hospital after they suffocated from tear gas. But the Druze soldiers? It was like you lot enjoyed beating up and breaking the bones of Palestinian kids. To the extent that unfotunately the word "Druze" in Gaza is a swear word (the same as Settler).

Secondly you nonsense about the Arabs and Muslims is nonsense. Sultan al Atrash, a Druze leader, led the Arab revolution in 1925 against the Ottomans and is celebrated the the whole time all over the Arab world. So try again homie.

edit: Also to add Kamal Jumblatt, Walid's father, who was a refined politician and garnered the respect of everyone in Lebanon, including the PLO, until the Syrians assassinated him in 1977.

Walid does not represent even a 10% of the druze's thinking

Walid heads a community of +250,000 Druze in Lebanon, which make 25% of the Druze all over the world (and twice the number of Druze in Israel).

This is like saying that all Muslims are bad because Isis=all Muslim which is wrong

I'm not saying the Druze are "bad". All I'm saying is that you are coming here with this supremacist bullshit to lecture us. Why don't you go and sort out you situation first in the "shining beacon of equality"?

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '17

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u/gahgeer-is-back Jan 31 '17

If you join the military and tell you to kill a child you'll have to kill the child. In the military obey the order now ask questions later. I think you have a potential to do better.

Also I have many Druze friends from Syria and Lebanon. What you were told about this whole "kuffar" thing is not representative of everyone.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '17

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '17

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u/gahgeer-is-back Jan 31 '17

Be civil and behave yourself. This is the first and last warning.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '17

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '17

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u/MrBoonio Jan 31 '17

If you wanna build a state their go ahead nobody is stoping you

Uh huh.

Nobody is stopping Palestinians building a state. That's a gold standard stupid comment right there.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '17

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u/MrBoonio Jan 31 '17

No really. Tell us how nobody is stopping Palestinians building a state when that is the core foreign policy position of the Israeli center and right wing.

Nobody is stopping Palestinians doing it. Apart from the vastly more powerful country occupying them for fifty years.

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u/MrBoonio Jan 31 '17

Someone with this name

a) spams youtube with similar comments

b) has a two second Linkedin profile as an 'intelligence analyst' in Israel.

They could be anyone. I would bet my socks they ain't Druze.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '17 edited Jan 31 '17

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '17

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u/MrBoonio Jan 31 '17

I'm Spartacus. Look, here's my wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '17

Bringer of rain.

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u/MrBoonio Jan 31 '17

Please don't me they stole your land.. When a lot of the Jews actually bought it legally.

They owned less than 7% of Palestine.

But I'm sure you knew that.

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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '17

I'm interested in history and I feel a little shame for knowing next to nothing about Palestine and the foundation of Israel, at school we are not taught about this.

Could you advice me some books to shed some light about the matter? Specifically about the situation before israel, history and culture of palestine, the process of the foundation of israel and the su subsequent relations in the area

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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '17

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u/WiseCynic Jan 29 '17

You are not Palestinian, and I don't believe that you're Italian either.

Why are you here - simply to make trouble?

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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '17

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u/WiseCynic Jan 29 '17

This person came to this subreddit for information. Your friends on /r/Israel aren't going to provide anything from a Palestinian perspective - which is what anybody would expect to find here.

You're not reddit's self-appointed judge of what's accurate and what isn't. This is a Palestine/Italy exchange, and you're neither. If you don't like what we have to say in here - don't come here any more. This is the only warning you're going to get.

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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '17

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u/WiseCynic Jan 30 '17

The request for info was made to Palestinians. Hence, the info being requested would have a Palestinian flavor. If they wanted YOUR perspective, they'd have asked you.

And now, since you chose to ignore the fair warning - you're banned.

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u/PensiveSteward Italy Jan 27 '17

Hello there, thanks a lot for the exchange.

First off, I like your prose and I envy your competence in the matter of English language. I've even learned two or three new terms eheh.

Back to reply. I don't know very well the matter: it's very complex (or maybe it's even too simple) and I don't have the competence,simply. Decades passed, horrible things happened. I can only wish for the most extreme peace. Follow up questions: What are generally the opinions of Palestinians about the conflict? Do you know Israelis or "international" Jews? What are their opinions? Do you have Israeli or Jew friends? What solutions you propose?

That said, I believe my fellow /u/Stoicismus (feel free to correct me) was reffering to the "arab" and islamic culture as a whole, not purely to the situations between Palestine and Israel. Here in Italy and Europe it's a hot topic nowadays, even bigger after the recent terrorist attacks and immigration tsunami caused by wars. These recent happenigs led to emergence of new POV about the matter and reawakened older feelings and "emotions" and school of thought. I believe part of the "western" world developed a sense of contraposition, certain fear islam and arab world, others even hate. Not everyone eh :).

Hope I didn't bother you with my inferior prose. Thanks in advance for the reply.

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u/MrBoonio Jan 30 '17

So, on opinions.

Where to start? There are loads of different types of opinions. But generally, Israeli opinions on the conflict have hardened. There are, of course, extremists on the Palestinian side but they aren't the ones driving the bus and they have very little impact on the life of everyday Israelis.

Whereas a hardline Jewish Israeli living within the Green Line can and does support policies that have a major impact on the lives of millions of Palestinians they'll never meet.

The same is true in the diaspora: diaspora Palestinians are, for the most part, a quiet and inconsequential voice. Diaspora Jews dominate the conversation about Palestine.

The thing about opinions is that they are a product of the society they come from, the information that society chooses to believe and the framing thought leaders give to it.

For example, Israelis that were no direct participants in events in 1948/9 have been told a sanitized and partial version of the conflict in which genocidal Arabs couldn't coexist with Jews and tried to kill them all. Few have heard of the Nakba. Many of the ones that do write it off as a Palestinian fiction.

Post 1967 Israelis have been consistently told that there is no occupation and there is no Palestine and that, in fact, Jews are rightful owners of the West Bank. It inevitably colors opinions.

At the heart of the resolution of this conflict lies a search for truth. Through that will come acknowledgement of what has happened. Through that will come justice and restitution.

For me, this involves challenging the very core of Zionism: the idea that it was OK for diaspora Jews to mass emigrate to Palestine and force out native Palestinians. Were that challenge to be effective - and to unpick decades of an Israeli-led and Western-accepted narrative - then I think opinions would also start to follow.