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Comment by flandish | Hacker News Reader

1916/17 - Sykes-Picot agreement and Balfour Declaration was pushed by England/the west to split the middle east up. Even though there were already nations there. Thus creating a “home for Zionists”.

The 40’s was the standard “zionists get israel for real this time” after England got its butt kicked by the very same folks it helped in the teens.

But that’s irrelevant to the point that nothing, ever, makes a genocide ok. Stop pretending it’s not just because the fascist and gaslighting zionists claim it’s “not a genocide we promise.”

England did a genocide on the Irish. Zionists are doing on in the Palestinians. There have been plenty of US backed ones over the years too.

Any nation state who says “they’re not doing a genocide” .. totally is.

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Sykes-Picot didn't have much to do with Zionism at all, but it does undermine many of the arguments about the artificiality of Israel as a state, because it establishes that (maybe excepting Egypt) all of Israel's neighbors, none of which have been subjected to decades of campaigning and state-level military incursion, have identically European provenance.

Depending on what you mean by the word "nation", there were not in fact "already nations there". Sykes-Picot partitioned the Ottoman Empire in the Levant. What there was, historically, prior to Sykes-Picot, was the administration of provinces under the Ottoman Sultan.

I am sure the people who had lived there were just fine with europeans dividing up land, huh? Doesn’t help oil was discovered recently …

I mean, look at what happened to France in Vietnam. They were “happily” appreciated while pretending they knew what was best for the people that lived there already.

Y’all will do anything to pretend it’s “ok” for white people to tell folks what to do with their land. Ottoman empire or not.

Bottom line is: Zion != Israel. Zionism is making the call in today’s era and that call is to genocide.

It is wrong.

I don't know what any of this is trying to say. You brought up Sykes-Picot as if it was a part of Zionism; it is not, and, moreover, it is the reason there is a Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon today. You implied that Sykes-Picot displaced nation states that previously existed; I don't believe that's true, that's not how the Ottoman Empire functioned.

If you're asking me for a long thread about why British, French, and Russian colonialism in MENA was good, sorry, I don't have that for you. But somehow, it only ever seems to be Israel we're talking about when we discuss this stuff. Israel is no less legitimate than its neighbors, some of which have in the last 5-10 years laid a much stronger claim to the word "genocide" as well.

I would suggest maybe you not lead with Sykes-Picot next time you try to formulate this argument.

You conveniently ignored the “Balfour” part of my comments, too. They were contemporary actions by the British who had no business, at all, to do what they did. “Ends and means” and all of that.

You'll note that I responded to your point about Sykes-Picot, and suggested maybe you stop trying to name-drop Sykes-Picot to make the point you're trying to make, and left it at that.

Right. But you’ll notice they happened contemporary to each other by the same actor.

That’s kind of important.

Still doesn’t justify Zionists doing a fucking genocide against people who have been overrun by the same zionists given “power” by … that nation doing the sykes-picot and balfour thing.

Stop pretending these are separate events.

Not only are they separate events, but the first one you cited undercuts your argument.

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