Well i haven't took much intrest in history until recently. I have a few questions that i hope someone can answer. these questions are serious ones.

1. Why are the Palistians and Jewish people fighting currently?

2. Why did Japan get involved in WWII?(i mean what were their reasons and why did they invaded China?)

3. Why was one of Russia's former presidents(i can't remember his name) commit a hate crime against certain ethnic people in some countries??

4. Why did Canada deny so many Jewish rights to come to Canada(ex. the St. Louis ship event)?

[ 04-12-2002, 06:32 PM: Message edited by: janie_eva02 ]

Well, the answers to your questions are long and complicated. I'll have a go at providing some background to #1 and #4, and I hope other people will fill in more detail.

#1 Among *some* Jews there had been a long-standing desire to return to Palestine, from which most of the Jewish population had been dispersed following a determined revolt against Roman rule in AD70. At various times from about 1590(?) onwards a *handful* of Jews had purchased land there and settled (or resettled) there. (At that time most of the Middle East was part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, which didn't have any particular problem about Jews, though Christians were often treated badly - or in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the Empire started to crumble, even worse.

The desire to settle (or resettle) in Palestine gained particular impetus in the closing decades of the 19th century, especially in those countries where Jews were persecuted at that time, notably Russia and Russian Poland. The campaign to establish a Jewish state came to be known as Zionism. (Sorry, yet another -ism).

During WW1, the Ottoman Empire was one of the Central Powers - that is, fought on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary ... Most of the fighting against the Ottoman Empire was conducted by troops from the British Empire (and also by Greece). In 1917, the British Government issued the Balfour Declaration', which promised the Jews a 'national' home in Palestine after the end of the war. Palestine (covering the present territory of Israel, the West Bank and parts of Jordan), together with various other parts of the Ottoman Empire were administered by Britain as Leauge of Nations Mandates, but for most practical purposes were a part of the British Empire after 1918.

When the Balfour Declaration was issued, no-one could possibly have foreseen the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust, and it was wrongly assumed that the number of Jews actually wanting to
(re)settle in Palestine would be small, and that problems with the Arab population would be manageable. *On the whole* relations between Jews and Arabs were initially not bad ... It was, above all, the rise of Nazism that gave the issue of the Jewish national home a new urgency. For many Jews going to Palestine was not simply a matter of fulilling some desire, ambition or dream, or even of getting away from discrimination but suddenly became a matter of
survival - which is something much more urgent ...
In the late 1930s the British government, keen to avoid an unmanageable conflict in its Mandate, kept the number of Jews admitted very low. However, they still ended up antagonizing many of the Arabs in Palestine (and some further afield) and so ended up with the worst of all worlds.

Almost immediately after WW2, conflict between Arabs, Jews and Britons erupted into a wholly unmanageable situation and in 1948, Britain withdrew, leaving behind a nominally partioned Palestine and *war* between the Palestinian Arabs and the Jews in Palestine. Despite periodic periods of relative stability, the borders between the Israel and (Arab) Palestine have been unstable and fought over ever since 1948.

There are two other points that must be mentioned.

1. Until 1980(?) no Arab country recognized the state of Israel, and there was much talk of 'pushing the Israelis' into the sea' and so forth.

2. By the end of WW2 the Holocaust had become part of Israeli and Jewish history. The Jews knew that they couldn't *rely* on others to help them if they were threatened with genocide: they had to fight for themselves or risk perishing. (I've put this somewhat simplistically, but it should at least be clear). Perhaps most importantly, for some Jews, Israel/Palestine took on a new significance.

Arguably, 'Europe' tried to salve its guilty conscience about the Jews *at the expense of the Arabs*.

[ 04-12-2002, 09:23 PM: Message edited by: bloomsby ]

As for #4, reasons included:

1. Rigid immigration policies.

2. Very high unemployment (e.g. in the US and Canada) and high unemployment (e.g. in Britain) in the 1930s. Politicians feared accusations of exacerbating domestic unemployment, by 'flooding the country with cheap foreign labour' and so forth.

3. Fear of being 'swamped' by refugees. (What was the population of Canada in the 1930s?)

4. Anti-Semitism.

5. Possibly also public ignorance of what was actually happening in Germany and/or indifference.

As for the exact 'mix' of reasons, it surely varied somewhat from one country to another.

Btw, the systematic extermination of the Jews by the Nazis started in 1941. In 1933-37 it *was* known, at least by foreign governments, that in Germany the Jews were being persecuted, but it was *not* obvious this persecution would culminate in genocide. It's easy to be wise after the event. (Please see the thread on 'Writing History Backwads'). Moreover, there is considerable debate as to when genocide was adopted as a policy by the Nazi regime. See Ian Kershaw, 'The Nazi Dictatorship' for a discussion of this. This said, however, the record of the US, Britain and the Dominions in accepting refugees from Nazi persecution isn't good.

[ 04-13-2002, 06:01 AM: Message edited by: bloomsby ]