alt Hacker NewsIt was not and never was a good idea. The US and Europe need to stay out of the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine, and let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years until each and every single time Europeans and Americans entered militarily causing chaos and havoc.
Was it 100% peaceful prior to the Crusades? Of course not. But not anymore so than anywhere else in the world. Did it become a mess once they arrived? Yes, and they slaughtered everyone, including Christians, when they came, let alone Jews and Muslims and everyone else that wasn't them.
So, we need to stop pretending like the US and European colonizing entities do any kind of good wherever they go. It's just about enriching the elites through military contracts while subverting any peoples' attempts to have autonomy for themselves.
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You must be joking re: peaceful before US and Europe. The first crusade was in 1099 for those who don't know the details. We had the Byzantine-Arab wars, Fatimid civil wars, Turkish invasions... Ofcourse we had the whole spread of Islam "by sword". Don't forget it was the Roman invasion of the region in 63 BCE that resulted in the mass murder and expulsion of Jewish people from Israel after the Bar Kokhba Revolt...
Are you talking about the Ottoman Empire? Pretty violent.
Anyways, I can't cover the history of the region in an HN comment...
Why would we go halfway around the world to create conflict when we could just make money somewhere where there is already conflict? Seems like a lot of extra work, no?
>let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years
That's an extremely historically ignorant take. Turkey alone genocided 2-3 million Christians in the 20th century (Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks), well before Israel existed.
> let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years
What. Like actually, what? Bronze Age geopolitics weren't peaceful. The Romans and Parthians made going after each other, including through proxy wars, a sport. We even get a Jewish client state to the Romans in Judea [1].
The Levant is a fertile stretch with maritime access directly to the west of where human civilisation was born; one could argue it's one of the first pieces of land that's been constantly fought over over the entirety of human history.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodian_kingdom