"Seamless, you mean?"
I made a typo. Sue me.
Sorry, it's a reflex, if not an outright compulsion ^^"
Comes with being the son of two teachers, the nephew of two other teachers, the cousin of a fifth one and the brother-in-law of one last teacher ^^"
"though why someone concerned with healthcare or education would vote for right-wingers and/or religious parties is beyond me"
It goes back to the history of Zionism. The parties of the left are overwhelmingly secular and harbor much antagonism towards the religious, traditional Orthodox as well as charedi. The charedi present a huge burden in terms of their state-supported education system and healthcare, yet they contribute very little to the economy. Many traditional Orthodox - the charedi have their own parties - see themselves on the religious side of this divide and therefore support parties that prefer to keep the position of religion as it is.
OK. In France, our history means that public education and secularism are strongly linked, and public school teachers as a group lean toward the left.
But wait a second, I thought that these charedi leeches sent their spawns to religious schools, to keep them indoctrinated and isolated? Are you telling me that the Israeli state is paying for religious schools? Religious schools that perpetuate the lifestyle of a bunch of self-righteous parasites who -if I remember correctly- pretty much make being a millstone for the country an article of faith, which more is? o_0
"and its major export is headaches."
I can see that that might be true if you are not a close follower of the major economies of the Middle East, but Israel's economy has done pretty well in recent years and has avoided the overheating that we've seen in Turkey.
I was just trying to be facetious/to say that usually the only news about Israel I hear are related to the conflict. ^^"
To be honest, I must confess that economy is a subject that tends to leave me staring blankly or snoring and that nowadays I tend to be very out of touch with the news, except for what I hear about through FSTDT.
I am not entirely convinced that one can lay the blame for Hamas and Fatah's differences down to the Israelis. After all, such conflicts have taken place between Arab nationalists and Muslim Brotherhood franchises in a number of other Arab countries where there are virtually no Jews. The Palestinians do not have a hive mind either.
True, true, though I do suspect that the lack of progress of the peace talks (for which Israel has its share of responsibility) contributed to weaken/discredit Fatah among Palestinian, which in turn bolstered the Hamas fundies.
"you've read way too much into my previous comment."
It wasn't your previous comment; it was, for the most part, the comments at the top of your posting.
My original post, I mean ^^"
"it is understandable for people to feel threatened and pissed off when their little country suddenly finds itself at the business end of a major migratory movement which brutally upsets the demographic"
Indeed; but it seems strange when the same thing happened to the Poles - not to mention the Finns, Germans and Hungarians - at pretty much the same time, nobody but the nationalities concerned seems much interested.
I must admit that I wasn't aware of mass migrations toward these countries during the first half of the 20th century (unless you count the Wehrmacht or the Red Army for Poland and maybe Finland. I know pretty much nothing about Finland and its history ^^") When exactly did it happen, where did these migrants come from, and what were they fleeing? (war? The 1927 crisis?)
When you say that nobody but the nationalities concerned seems much interested, do you mean back then or now? If the former, I'd guess that several factors probably contributed to making Jewish migrations more conspicuous than other migrations of the time: a bunch of half-starved wretches trying to escape poverty by moving from one foreign country to the next foreign country? Not exactly rare, particularly after the 1927 crisis. Plus, if you acknowledge their existence, they might be tempted to think that perhaps they'd be welcome in YOUR country, and that just would not do, now would it? Much better to just ignore them as long as they don't darken our door, old chap. [/removes monocle]
A Jewish migration, now, on the other hand, that was much more noteworthy: these were, after all, the people most of Christendom had spent nearly two millenia religiously hating and persecuting, their destination held a religious importance for the three big monotheist religions, and it wasn't just an economic migration, there was an ideology involved. Add to that the fact that there were Jew -and thus probably Zionists- in all European countries and the fact that Jewish lobbies were badgering the government of Great Britain, a major Western power, to open Palestine to Jewish immigration, and how could people not be interested?
If you mean nowaday, well, migrations that were not a particularly big deal 2/3 or 3/4 of a century ago are unlikely to interest most people except for the occasional historian or genealogist. On the other hand, between the Holocaust and a central role in the conflicts in the Middle East, Israel is pretty much impossible to ignore, and that's before you factor in the accusations of human rights violations or the obsession for the country displayed by the Rapture cultists.
"and economic situation of the country"
The economy massively expanded and improved from the 1930s to 1948. And this you think is a subject for blame?
As I was saying in the part about gentrification, I thought that the Jewish immigrants were richer than the average Palestinian and drove up the price of land (and the cost of life), which would have negatively impacted the Palestinians, or at least their self-image (to elaborate, many people feel that if the number of people richer than them in the area rises, their comparative wealth drops,and so does their status, even if their absolute wealth stays constant or even increases: they are not objectively poorer, but they feel poorer, which can lead to frustration, bitterness and misplaced resentment). Apparently, my starting postulate was wrong. If they managed to improve the economy, good for them.
"particularly when at least a faction within these immigrants clearly states that they consider it their God-given right to turn the country into a state for their ethno-religious group."
As I pointed out, at the time the vast majority of immigrants thought nothing of the kind. The modern movement of religious settlers only emerged in the late 1970s.
Strike the "God-given" part, then, but as I said above, the main thing that would cause tensions would be coming with the idea that the country belongs to them, not the exact reason they used to justify that belief.
"Zionism had been around since the 1880s, after all"
And by 1948, those people had parents and grandparents who were born in Palestine.
Some of those people, yes. OTOH, there were also lots of new immigrants arriving (and yes, I understand that many of them didn't see any other viable solution)
And a couple of Arab origin whose parents and grandparents were born in Marseille, are they still immigrants?
In France, you mean? As far as I'm concerned, no, only their great-grandparents were immigrants, if they've been born and raised in France that couple, their parents and their grandparents were French. And while I'm a bit fuzzy on whether the law of the time would have automatically considered the grandparents to be French at birth if the immigrant great-grandparents had not yet gained the French nationality, I expect that sometime between then and the current generation the matter of naturalisation would have been solved.
That said, there are some among the people of Arab origin in France who identify as Algerian, Tunisian, Moroccan, etc and loudly spit on France. Usually they have both nationalities. I suspect that they're a minority, but as often with angry minorities they are a noisy one, and the Front National just loooooves to point them as a "reason" why all French Arabs should be put on a boat and sent "back where they come from." >_<
4) Tens of thousands of Jews were killed in pogroms in Poland, Austria, Hungary, Romania and elsewhere after World War II when they tried to return to their home towns. The US was prepared to take 100,000 of Europe's Jewish refugees. The war-battered rest of the world offered temporary shelter; in the Netherlands, that often meant sharing accommodation with arrested SS troops.
Eep! I knew that Jews who attempted to go back home in Eastern Europe were met with hostility and even violence (I think there were a couple of examples in Maus), but I didn't know it was on that scale!
If we replace the word "runaway" with the word "large-scale," I would have no problem
OK, so we are on the same page, it was just a matter of terminology ^^
However, this has also been true of a number of other countries within living memory, the most obvious being the sheikhdoms of the Gulf, some of whom now have populations which are mostly non-Arab, as well as countries like Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Luxembourg, all of which were well-populated beforehand.
Of course, but, once again, there is the little difference that in these examples, the immigrants came for economic reasons and didn't bring a political agenda with them.
