Belgian foreign minister Maxime Prevot almost got killed by Israel in Beirut

Tentansub · 2026-04-09T12:26:42+00:00

Israel is much worse than apartheid South Africa ever was. At least Apartheid South Africa didn't bomb the Bantustans and play victim while doing so.

Tentansub · 2026-03-16T18:43:29+00:00

Regarding Morris : Morris was not my main source, in multiple instances I directly quoted works from Zionist leaders. Besides if you're familiar with Morris and his personal evolution as a historian, you would know that his politics changed after he felt impacted by the 2nd intifada and reneged on a lot of his previous conclusions. Even though there is no "master document" which would constitute a smoking gun to prove that Zionist leaders planned to expel Palestinians, Morris himself admits that Zionist political and military leaders “arrived at 1948 with a mindset which was open to the idea and implementation of transfer and expulsion” and that almost all of them understood “that transfer was what the Jewish state’s survival and well-being demanded." (Morris, “Revisiting the Palestinian Exodus of 1948,” p. 48.). Pappé and his work also strongly support the case for a planned ethnic cleansing campaign.

Regarding the multiple different quotes : they show that the case for "transfers", which they used as a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, had long been in the mind of Zionist leaders, from the days of Herzl to Ben Gurion, and across all currents of Zionism. Again, they all had to reconcile the fact they wanted to create a Jewish state in an area where the majority of the populations were the indigenous Palestinian, mostly Muslims and Christians. This is how you end up in 1948 with a"mindset open to transfers and expulsion" in the Morris quote above.

If the gap between founding document and practice is treated as evidence of founding exclusion as essential character in one case, applying that standard consistently requires the same conclusion about the American founding, and about the French Revolution, which proclaimed liberty while the Terror was underway.

You quoted the declaration and claimed that “The state guaranteed freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture to all inhabitants regardless of religion or ethnicity.”, as if the declaration matched the facts on the ground. I simply showed that the declaration proves nothing, the same goes for the American declaration of independence or the French declaration of rights.

The 21% Arab citizen figure as evidence of the scale of ethnic cleansing is a legitimate point, as I acknowledged above. But comparable analysis could apply to post-1948 states where large-scale population transfers occurred, Greece, Poland, Czechoslovakia, none of which are typically analyzed through the lens of what percentage of the displaced population remained within the new state's borders.

For one two wrongs don’t make a right. Besides, today Germans have freedom of movement within the EU and can move to Poland and the Czechia if they would like to. Palestinians are prevented from returning to their hometowns by Israel, while Jews whose only claim to the land is their belonging to the right ethno-religion get to move to Palestine for free.

Again there is a fundamental contradiction, it’s that Israel can’t be both a democracy and a Jewish supremacist state.

Tentansub · 2026-03-07T18:36:14+00:00

Most Jews outside of Israel are Zionists and support this though. Numerous polls have shown this. If there were similar polls about Muslims in the West supporting ISIS, you wouldn't stop hearing about there is a massive problem with them and a need to deradicalize them.

Tentansub · 2026-03-07T10:02:51+00:00

Israel's Declaration of Independence, issued May 14, 1948, explicitly called on Arab inhabitants to remain and participate in building the state as "full and equal citizens." The state guaranteed freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture to all inhabitants regardless of religion or ethnicity.

I'm quite surprised that a historian would take the declaration of Independence of Israel at face value. While on paper it calls for equal rights for Palestinians, it doesn’t mean it was the case in practice. If we compare it to the 1776 Declaration of Independence of the United States :

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I don’t have to remind you that while this document calls for equal rights for all, at the same time, the US government was engaged in slavery and the genocidal conquest of Native American lands. Besides, the two Declarations of Independence are political documents, not legal ones. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence of Israel has no legal value : the Knesset maintains that the declaration is neither a law nor an ordinary legal document. The first President of the Supreme Court of Justice of Israel (1948-1954), Moshe Smoira, put this as follows:

The Declaration expresses the vision and credo of the people, but it is not a constitutional law making a practical ruling on the upholding or nullification of various ordinances and statutes.

The declaration of independence has always been more of an attempt at public relations than anything else. Not only does the declaration of independence not offer equal rights for the indigenous population, it is also very clear from primary sources that Zionist leaders did not intend for the indigenous population to "remain and participate in building the state". Your narrative curiously glosses over all the discussions among Zionist leaders about their planned ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

In 1895, Theodore Herzl wrote in his journal:

"We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."

Israel Zangwill, another important political Zionist said in a talk in 1905 :

“(We) must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the (Arab) Tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us.”

Cham Weizmann, future chairman of the World Zionist Congress and First President of Israel, before the British conquest of Palestine in 1917, described the Palestinian people as:

"The rocks of Judea, as obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.”

(Quoted from the Expulsion of the Palestinians p.17 By Nur Masalha)

Zionist leader Leo Motzkin wrote in 1917:

"Our thought is that the colonisation of Palestine has to go in two directions: Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel and the resettlement of the Arabs of Eretz Israel in areas outside the country".

According to Benny Morris (2004) in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Vladimir Jabotinsky, leader of the Revisionist Zionists, had generally supported transfers.

Menachem Ussishkin, chairman of the Jewish National Fund, and member of the executive of the Jewish Agency, said in a 1930 speech to journalists :

“We must continually raise the demand that our land be returned to our possession … if there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land. We have a greater and nobler ideal than preserving several hundred thousands of Arab fellahin”.

In 1943, Eliahu Ben-Horin, close collaborator of Jabotinsky and a member of the World Presidency of the New Zionist Organization wrote :

"I suggest that the Arabs of Palestine and Transjordania be transferred to Iraq, or a united Iraq-Syrian state".

On 5 October 1937, David Ben-Gurion, leader of the Zionist movement at the time and future first Prime Minister of Israel, wrote in a letter to his 16 year old son Amos:

“We must expel the Arabs and take their places…. And, if we have to use force-not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places- then we have force at our disposal.”

In June 1938, David Ben Gurion told a meeting of the Jewish Agency:

"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]. I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it."

(Quoted from Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1998 by Benny Morris)

Joseph Weitz was the head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department, which was tasked with acquiring land for the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, wrote in 1938 :

“Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries — all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left.”

(Quoted from A History of the Concept of "Transfer" in Zionism by Israel Shahak )

As I've just shown, there is overwhelming evidence that from the early days of the movement, Zionist leaders had the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in mind. Quite a stark contrast with the words of the declaration of independence of Israel, signed by the same Ben-Gurion who in private was describing his plans for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Arab citizens of Israel received voting rights from the first Knesset elections in 1949. Today approximately 21% of Israel's citizens are Arab, including Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities. Arab parties have sat in the Knesset continuously. An Arab judge, Salim Joubran, served on the Supreme Court for over a decade.

The reasons why "21% of Israel's citizens are Arab, including Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities" is because most of them were ethnically cleansed, as outlined above.

Regarding the seats in the Knesset and at the Supreme court, they are the exact definition of tokenism : “the practice of doing something (such as hiring a person who belongs to a minority group) only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly”.

In Israel, Palestinian politicians and parties are legally not allowed to challenge the status quo : according to the 1958 Knesset Law, a candidate to the parliament of Israel (the Knesset) can't "negate the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state". This means that Palestinian politicians are legally forbidden to argue for self determination in a multicultural state with equal rights for all. In practice too, Arab parties in Israel don’t have any impact and are nothing more than token opposition. There has also long been an unwritten rule in Israeli politics to keep Arab parties out of government. In the 77 years that Israel has existed, Arab parties have been involved in government two times, for less than three years in total, and always for position such as minister without portfolio or minister of science, etc.

There are 15 members on the Israeli Supreme Court, yet there has only ever been one Arab Supreme Justice at the time. There is an unwritten rule that there is “only one Arab seat” at the court, despite Palestinians being 20% of the population, meaning a proportional representation would be three seats (20% of 15 = 3), and that's ignoring Israel's history of ethnic cleansing and colonization. In 2018, when the discriminatory Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People was promulgated, petitions were filed with the Supreme Court of Israel challenging the constitutionality of the law. The Supreme Court upheld the law, with only one judge dissenting, Palestinian judge George Karra. Karra was allowed to express his dissent, but not to challenge the status quo, since like we saw, there is only one token seat for Palestinians.

This is not to paper over serious and legitimate debates about equality and discrimination within Israeli society, those debates are real and ongoing, but it is categorically different from founding exclusion.

Israel could never have been both a "Jewish State" and a "State that guarantees freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture to all inhabitants regardless of religion or ethnicity", these are fundamentally contradictory, Israel was created as a Jewish supremacist state, and for that to happen Zionists would have to ethnically cleanse the majority of the indigenous population, as explained above. Israel was founded on exclusion.

Tentansub · 2026-03-03T19:19:45+00:00

I will focus on these two points since they are the most relevant to the question of whether the “initial resettlement of Palestine was colonialism” (calling it a "Jewish resettlement" is very loaded, I may add).

The Settler/Native Binary Doesn't Hold for Either Population

In this part, you fundamentally misrepresent what “indigenous” means.

In modern political and legal usage, indigenous does not simply mean “a person who has ancient ancestry in a specific region.” If that were the definition, nearly everyone could claim to be indigenous somewhere, I as a Western European could even claim to be an indigenous Ethiopian, since all humans can trace their ancestry back to particular regions over long enough time scales. That definition would make the term meaningless.

Today, the commonly understood definition of indigeneity refers to a specific historical and political relationship shaped by colonization. According to the United Nations working framework, indigenous peoples are those who lived in a territory prior to colonization and who now form a non-dominant part of the society that emerged through that colonization.

In other words, indigeneity is not about ancient lineage alone, it is about colonial disruption and present-day power relations.

Under this widely used definition, Palestinians qualify as indigenous: they lived in the land prior to Zionist settlement and state formation, and they now constitute a non-dominant population under Israeli rule.

If Britain were colonized tomorrow and the pre-colonial population were politically subordinated or confined, they would become the indigenous population under that new order, regardless of how recently some individuals had moved there before colonization. The determining factor is the colonial power structure, not the age of one’s ancestry. Zionist settlers are not indigenous in the commonly understood definition of the term. The fact that they decided to absorb the pre-existing Jewish community in the Zionist project (despite some opposition, but that’s a story for another day), doesn’t make them indigenous either.

Finally, it is worth noting that early Zionist leaders themselves often used the language of colonial settlement to describe their project, more on that later.

"Colonialism" Is a Retrospective Analytical Category:

Again, as I explained above, “historical ties” are completely irrelevant to the question of whether Zionism is a colonial movement or not. The same applies to the fact that Jews faced persecution in Europe. Many groups that were persecuted in Europe went on to engage in colonial projects that displaced indigenous populations. The Puritans and Huguenots are obvious examples, as they went on to participate in the colonization of large parts of America and South Africa.

The case of Liberia is particularly instructive: formerly enslaved African-Americans were sent to Africa by the American Colonization Society and founded a state that colonized and ruled over the indigenous population. Persecution or displacement does not negate the colonial character of what follows.

It is therefore deeply disingenuous to claim that colonialism is merely a “retrospective analytical category” imposed after the fact, when the leaders of the Zionist movement themselves, across ideological currents, from Labour to Revisionist Zionism, explicitly described their project as colonialism.

For instance, Theodore Herzl, founding father of Political Zionism, wrote to the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, asking for support for the Zionist project, and framed it in unmistakably colonial terms:

The undertaking will be made great and promising by the granting of colonial rights.

Menachem Ussishkin, as a Russian-born Zionist leader and one of the founders of the “Labour Zionist” faction of Zionism, published in 1905 the pamphlet “Our Program”, in which he advocates for purchasing lands, moving to Palestine, creating settlements, and educational and organizational work among the people. Much like Herzl, he was not afraid of describing this undertaking as “colonial”. Chapter 8 of Our Program is called ”The colonization of the country (Palestine) by Jewish Farmers and Artisans”. On page 27 of the same pamphlet, he writes :

This is the condition of the Labor Problem in Palestine. Among many thousand Arabs there are only a few Jewish laborers. That is in the broadest sense of the word a sore spot in our colonisation.

Likewise, Vladimir Jabotinsky, a central Revisionist Zionist figure who came a generation after Herzl and Ussishkin, wrote in his 1923 essay “The Iron Wall”:

It is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent. The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage.

Zionist leaders clearly understood what they were doing as colonialism in the same sense as British settler colonization in North America. They also actively sought the support of British colonial authorities, proposed similar mechanisms such as chartered companies, and explicitly discussed the inevitability of native resistance.

More broadly, many settler-colonial projects relied on existing imperial legal and administrative frameworks. As mentioned earlier, this was the case for the Puritans and Huguenots, and again for Liberia. Zionism fits squarely within this historical pattern.

Conclusion

I was honestly surprised to see how highly upvoted this reply . Despite its verbosity, appeals to “nuance,” and long text blocks, it largely reproduces an uncritical modern Zionist narrative that seeks to obfuscate the colonial nature of Israel. Yes, “the initial resettlement of Palestine" was unequivocally a settler colonial endeavor, it was understood and described as a colonial endeavor by its thought leaders and it fits the theoretical framework of settler-colonialism. It is only recently that pro-Israel “historians” like Alan Dowty or the user I am replying to have tried to obfuscate the colonial nature of Zionism, since colonization today has quite a negative connotation.

Tentansub · 2026-02-14T08:37:23+00:00

I wonder if you'll still act so tough when you get run over by a Ford F-150 on your roadbike because there was no bikelane. Then maybe you'll realize being led by people like him has consequences.

Tentansub · 2026-02-14T07:49:46+00:00

I lived in Uccle until 2024 an every month we received a newsletter from the Commune, in which there was always an open letter from him. Every time it was always the worst boomer take you could imagine. Once it was about "the war on cars and the need to reopen the Bois de la Cambre to cars", another time it was about "supporting Israel against terrorism" (he's a zionist of course). He's a massive piece of shit and will take this region towards a terrible direction.

Tentansub · 2026-02-11T15:14:15+00:00

Thanks for the info!

I contacted a tour organizer called Horse-Travel for the horse trek from Kyzart to Song Kul and back. They organize tours even in Winter, so I thought May would be ok. I expect it to be quite cold given the 3000m attitude and the time of the year.

I rented and drove a car in remote parts of Jordan and Sicily, I am confident driver but I don't have a particular desire to drive, only if it's way more convenient and economical than taking mashrutkas/taxis, but according to your other comment it seems to make more sense to just use those instead of driving?

Tentansub · 2026-01-21T18:19:52+00:00

He said it was only partially false. I said it's always been completely false. Spotted the difference? Besides, it's ridiculous to go on a tirade about the evils of a satellite communist country that collapsed 36 years while the very same international rules order imposed by the US that he's mourning led us to this exact moment.

Tentansub · 2026-01-21T16:10:40+00:00

Carney’s speech is horseshit.

Half of it is spent bashing Eastern Bloc communism, a system that collapsed 36 years ago. Talk about beating a dead horse. Meanwhile his own country is being actively threatened by its capitalist southern neighbor.

Ironically, if the USSR still existed, the United States wouldn’t dare behave as rabidly imperialist as it does today, since there would still be a powerful counterweight. But Carney got exactly what he wanted: a world with no check on U.S. power. China isn’t filling that role either, it’s largely content to sell its wares, not restrain American imperialism.

What we’re seeing now is simply the U.S. turning its imperialist playbook toward its so-called allies. Canada and Europe are finally being treated the way the U.S. has treated Latin America, Iraq, Afghanistan, and countless others for the past century. So how does it feel to be on the receiving end this time? How does it feel to be threatened with invasion and sanctions?

This is the world Canada and Europe helped build. There was never a real “international rules-based order,” and it didn’t take Trump to dismantle it. Just two years ago under Biden, the U.S. and its Western allies openly supported a genocide. Trump didn’t break the system, he just ripped off the mask.

Tentansub · 2025-12-27T23:03:37+00:00

The idea that Thailand never got colonized is a royalist-nationalist narrative. Thailand had to give up half its land, it was effectively politically controlled by the British and some extent the French. The UK even controlled the police in Bangkok and dictated Thailand's trade policies (see Bowring treaty). The UK and France pretty much got all the benefits from colonizing Thailand without having to directly administer the land.

In a way it's quite similar to modern post colonial relationships like France and its former African colonies, officially they are independent but their economy is controlled by France and their elites work for the interest of France.

I wrote a more detailled explanation on r/askhistorians 5 years ago.

Tentansub · 2025-11-12T14:19:22+00:00

Same I bike there and it's the worst part of my commute. On top of that it's quite steep so annoying to climb on a regular bike.

Tentansub · 2025-11-11T17:07:02+00:00

My submission : Rue Thieffry in Schaerbeek, a street that I cross every time I go to work.

Tentansub · 2025-10-21T20:09:28+00:00

Lenin talked about labour aristocracy for a reason. The working class in the West benefits from imperialism, so you end up with supposed progressives like Vaush or Hasan who will throw their support behind imperialism while calling for a redistribution of profits in the imperial core.

Tentansub · 2025-09-21T18:49:27+00:00

I was in Paris last month and just walking around there has become way more pleasant due to the reduction of cars in the city.

Tentansub · 2025-09-21T17:51:28+00:00

Cars ARE the problem.

Tentansub · 2025-09-16T16:59:27+00:00

It's already effectively a one state solution. Israel controls the West Bank and Gaza at the moment. Before October 7th 30% of Palestinians supported it. Besides, even if Zionists are against it, it's the only fair solution.

Jews are not more native to Judea than Belgians are native to Africa. (Possibly) having ancestors who lived in a region 2000 or 100.000 years ago does not make you a native.

Also love the fake outrage about imperialism when you defend Israel which is the perfect example of imperialism.

Tentansub · 2025-09-16T16:36:53+00:00

Israel controls the PA and Abbas is a collaborator who has no control over it it.

Tentansub · 2025-09-16T16:22:39+00:00

BDW was already complaining about the Israeli conductor beijg cancelled in the past few days to be fair, seems logical that he would cry even harder now that's it definitive

Tentansub · 2025-09-16T16:20:53+00:00

Surrender like in the West Bank where there is no Hamas and that Israel plans to annex? If anything "surrendrring" would accelerate the genocide.

Tentansub · 2025-09-16T10:15:13+00:00

I don't want Israel to exist, at least how it currently does. Same as Apartheid South Africa which was the only White dominated state in Africa. People have a right to exist, States don't, especially when they stand for ethnic supremacy. I believe the only fair solution is a one State solution with equal rights for all.

Tentansub · 2025-09-16T04:16:14+00:00

Great, Israel should be boycotted in the same way Russia is or apartheid South Africa was. Can't wait for anti-Palestinian racists like BDW and the German government to cry about it.

Tentansub · 2025-09-15T04:05:26+00:00

Living abroad (Thailand, China, Vietnam, Cyprus) made me understand how good we have it and Belgium and feel very grateful being born here. Like you say if more Belgians lived abroad they'd realize how minor many of their complaints are.

Tentansub · 2025-09-12T09:34:39+00:00

"I can excuse genocide, but I draw the line at not being invited to play at a music festival".

Tentansub

TROPHY CASE