“I would like Egypt to take people,” Trump said. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say: ‘You know, it’s over.'”
“I would love for you to take on more, ‘cause I am looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.”
“It is literally a demolition site right now, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there,” he said.
“So, I would rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
This sentiment is really common among the general American public, I’ve had this very talk with co-workers before. To them, it’s a simple, logical solution that wraps everything up in a neat bow. How to I explain to them the fundamental unfairness of it, and that this “solution” is precisely what Palestinians and their Arab neighbors have been violently opposed to since the foundation of Israel?
Say that Ukrainians should do the same, then accuse them of being racist when they don’t think white people should have to leave their country.
Except Russia doesn’t demand that Ukrainians leave. IIRC, Ukrainian government complained last year about Russia giving citizenship to anyone with Ukrainian citizenship.
Okay but actually though I think I do apply this to Ukraine. Give all Ukrainians both Russian and EU citizenship, pro EU Ukrainians have the right to leave if don’t like a Russia-friendly Ukraine.
The most generous answer I can give for why Americans think that, since I’ve been sympathetic to it myself, is that Americans have no concept of connection to land.
If you told me today that I have to move states, or move to Canada or Mexico, or else my family will likely be murdered and our house burned to the ground, I wouldn’t even hesitate.
I’d be upset obviously, I like where I live and don’t particularly want to be forced out of it. But I’ve lived here for a year, I lived in other states for most of my life, moved cities within those states multiple times, and none of those places were where my ancestors further back than my grandparents had ever lived.
The idea of “This land is where my family has lived for thousands of years, I will risk death to not leave it” is not a familiar concept to Americans. Honestly I find it confusing on both sides, I can’t imagine killing or dying over something that feels as meaningless to me as land. “Who cares just live somewhere else” is an argument with some weight, although I apply it more to the Israelis obviously.
Is it the consequences of settler colonialism? Yes, but I don’t even think because it’s like, imposing settler values, but because it’s created a group of people completely disconnected from any sort of homeland. I grew up in a place I had no strong connection to where the environment itself is hostile to my existence because my ancestors evolved to live on a cold rainy island where you see the sun like twice a year and then they put me in the tropics where the sun stung my skin.
This is not to justify anything obviously just to try and explain why Americans don’t seem to think of relocation as that big of a deal as long as it ends the conflict.
Also as a side comment most Israeli settlers look similar to me complexion-wise and I can’t fathom why they would be willing to do all this for that land.
I feel similar about Israel as I feel about Florida. Like, setting aside the morality of mass murder for a second, you’re gonna do all that horrific work for this place??? The place where you can’t go outside half the year because the sun feels like knives?
You did mass murder to steal The Land That Gives You Skin Cancer. Like, I genuinely cannot fathom what would possess someone to be part of that project. You left Brooklyn for this?
You underestimate the strength of Property-Brain
You tell the average USAan that something belongs to them and that someone else has it and they will punch, bite and scratch to take it
Hell, look at the Southwest, it’s literal desert and not only did we take it, we ship water in to grow grass to play golf
One of the biggest shows on TV right now is all about keeping land
Fuck, one of the spin-offs of that show is literally called Landman
Manifest Destiny is literally burned into our minds
What show are you talking about?
believe they’re talking about Yellowstone, directed by Taylor Sheridan. His whole directorial output since Yellowstone, including two prequels, Landman, maybe Tulsa King as well, center around private property struggles and “expanding the frontier”.
yellowstone
Considering how strong immigration was in affecting the last election though, you think they’d understand why making a million immigrants would be hated by both the people who want to leave and the nearby countries who would have to accept them.
You give them too much credit. Typical USians do not reflect on these things whatsoever, most only consider how things affect them personally. Such a strong culture of individualism does not breed empathy.
Hell, it even leaves many of them incapable of requesting or accepting help from others who are willing and even offering to help.
No. Someone was trying to explain to me why Israel was the righteous. They used the hesitancy of neigbouring Arab States to take refugees to justify the violence. “They dont even take care of their own”. I think it had a kind of human shield inflection.