China : Tibet :: Israel : Palestine, they are analogous in many ways. The human rights groups talk about the problems, we recognize it is bad, the weaker ethnic community suffers and is oppressed, the more powerful ethnic group makes slow but steady progress in exerting its wishes, and no real changes are effected by the international community.
Isn't that the nature of almost every conflict with an ethnic context? If there's no clear weaker and stronger you usually end up with two independent states.
The way Tibet was Incorporated into China, the nature of the Tibetan resistance, the way China governs Tibet, the reason China wants Tibet, the reason China represses Tibetans are all very very different from what's happening in Judea and Samaria. The Israeli Arab conflict is perhaps the most unique of all time.
The better analogies perhaps are some of the separatist leaning Russian Republics or India's Jammu and Kashmir
No, it's perfectly meaningful to talk about Israel/Palestine - and by extension the US - when criticizing actions by China. Otherwise you end up with the same narrative you get in pretty much every media outlet in the world; whatever the US does is good, no terrorism or support for murderous dictators there (cough south america..cuba...saudi arabia..iran...iraq...indonesia etc etc etc ), and whatever China does is bad.
China and Tibet is more like what would have happened if the Arab Legion and the other Arab powers weren't so blindingly incompetent in 1947.
There's a long, long history of China controlling Tibet, back at least to the Tang dynasty. The ChiComs are nastier about it than most of the previous Chinese governments, but that's what you get when you refute the old mandate of heaven/chakravartin mashup of political legitimacy espoused by the old empire for ... what justification do the ChiComs give for their political legitimacy? Having the biggest boot and the willingness to murder millions and imprison more, I suppose.
> what justification do the ChiComs give for their political legitimacy?
Well, it's right there in art. I of their own Constitution, I think: "The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants."
It might have its problems (will the country forever have "workers" and "peasants"? Does the working class include peasants? Who does a democratic dictatorship actually dictate to? etc etc) but it's still better than divine mandate, tbh, which might explain why it's not been toppled yet.
Or the Pacific islands or South China Sea (where things are going bad fast). Even calling Tibet part of China is interesting. Ukraine is Russian now by that logic.
Chinese govenment's justification in Tibet is mainly legalistic, as follows: Tibet was a part of the Qing Empire. Qing handled over all administrative power peacefully to Republic of China. People's Republic of China overthrow Republic of China, therefore inherits all of its administrative rights. Of course, the later part is muddier because officially the civil war is not over.
On the ground, for the people, the real justification are different. It used to be the liberation of common Tibetan people from a regressive serfdom and a brutal theocracy, not unlike the communists' justification for themselves elsewhere in China. Similarly, after Deng, the justification is more about improving people's economic status and living conditions.
Discouraging. Demolishing Larung Gar was likely on China's to-do list, but was probably moved-up in response to Obama's meet with the Dali Lama last week. China's real motivation in Tibet is water, arable land and secondarily eliminating a religious threat to central party rule. Everything else is pretense. Israel's motivation in Palestine is its own security from universally acknowledged threats it faces from its neighbors. There is no longer any occupation, no Israeli sovereign claim over Palestinian sovereign territory, and there are no resources to grab and no pretenses needed for Israel to justify its actions. A better comparison would be Russia in Crimea, where under the pretense of protecting a pro-Russia minority, Putin makes a grab to control oil and natural gas resources in the area which Ukraine previously sought to exploit.
A lot of what you said is just not true. Israel takes a lot of West Bank water. And while the illegal jewish settlements might not be a sovereign claim by Israel. Israel isn't doing anything to stop them.
It's used as a cheap source of labour by many Israeli companies too. And while not occupied in the classical sense, everything's going in or out is controlled. The airspace is controlled, the place is heavily monitored and the populace are under no illusions as to has the power.
So some rockets and mortars were smuggled in? Let's ban most civilian use of road and kill the economy. At least that's what the Wikipedia article on the west bank says. It's compared to Apartheid South Africa for good reason.
Yes, and Nevada and California make the same complaint of Colorado. Cities and states inland of the US Great Lakes make the same complaint. Water rights are disputed globally, and that doesn't make Palestine the equivalent of Tibet. In Gaza (and Sinai), Israel gave up its settlements. In the West Bank there is one disputed formal settlement, and several nutcase Israeli squatter camps under dispute. The reality is that both the PA and Israel gain from the dispute in and around the West Bank because it appeases and gives fodder to hardliners on both side. No comparison to Tibet there, sorry.
> Nevada and California make the same complaint of Colorado
I hope this is supposed to be a joke. There is the small difference that citizens of Nevada, California and Colorado elect their representatives in the Congress and other institutions where the decisions on how to share the resources are made.
While Israel just takes what it wants by force, and the West Bank Palestinians have no say in it.
No joke. The 2008 Great Lakes protection compac provides the Great Lakes States authority over the water and neighboring states have no say in it. The Colorado river compac deal similarly with Mexico and several states. And, just like the Great Lakes and Colorado do supply water outside their boundaries, Israel's water authority does so for the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, Israel is working with Gaza on a desalinization plant. Water conversation is not an Israel-Palestine issue ... its a global issue. The bottom line is that Tibet != Palestine and China != Israel.
The Great Lakes compact was presented in the US Senate, passed through the House of Representatives, and was signed by the POTUS. All these are democratic organs that all the US citizens contribute to elect, meaning that all the states had a say in it. Palestinians don't have a say in what Israel does with their water, resources, economy and land.
> Isn't that the nature of almost every conflict with an ethnic context? If there's no clear weaker and stronger you usually end up with two independent states.
Your statement is sort of weird in the above. It presupposes that subjugation of a weaker ethnic group by a more powerful ethnic group is acceptable -- that is how these conflicts are resolved. It is counter to the idea of universal human rights that arose because of the the atrocities that arose because of the ethnic issues in WW2. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_human_rights#After_...
Your point of view, the powerful ethnic groups win and the weak lose and that is how the world works, justifies slavery, South African apartheid, and many other situations where one ethnic group is more powerful and wishes to impose its wishes on the less powerful. That is an allowable perspective, but that is antithesis to universal human rights.
1. Stronger vs Weaker is a common pattern in such conflicts.
2. Tibet vs China :: Palestine/Arab states vs Israel differ in almost every other feature.
3. There's places in the world that better mimic the Tibetan situation.
4. Hence the analogy isn't very good.
Yes China is doing it much better. No press, full military control, reincarnation is literally banned (this means the next spirtiual/political leader is decided by the communist leadership), followed by the settling of mainlanders in Tibet. These settlers in turn disdain and look down on the Tibetans and their existence.
All of it doesn't matter. Nobody's willing to fight for Tibet, or for Atheists, or ... Fight, as in "fight, kill and die", credibly, against the dictatorship that rules China, against, well let's be honest here : against most Muslims, and I'm sure there will be occasionally some slight effort required against a Christian too.
Looking at a map of 1950's, finding China, and looking at China now will make anyone scared.
We need generalisations to make sense of the world around us, but they always come at a cost of accuracy. Sometimes, the loss of accuracy is so great that the generalization does more harm than good. I think trying to equate the causes and possible solutions of this situation with the Israel-Palestine situation is one such example.
Yep. Human brains are made to see faces in clouds - and patterns everywhere. Because its the only way for that little brain to function. In reality nothing is the same unless it's identical (not a copy - but the exact same thing, maybe seen from different angles or at different times). We like our clever analogies, and they serve a purpose, but even when making them it's best to be aware that it's a product of our brain and to always be ready to question if it actually serves the intended purpose. Even if you can use a specific analogy in one context doesn't mean it's useful in another one. I think it's okay to make such analogies - as long as everybody including the person making them is aware of the shortcomings and that being able to make one is a very, very low threshold, given that it comes from brains that see animals and human faces in floating water vapor.
This gets back to what I say in my original post, slow and steady achievement of the stronger ethnic groups goals over a period of decades in the face of ineffective resistance by the weaker ethnic group.
You are advocating non-violent means, I think that is great. The main way to channel your energies into non-violent means of ending the situation in Israel-Palestine is to support the BDS movement. You can find out more here: https://bdsmovement.net/ It is based on the similar non-violent campaign against South Africa apartheid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinvestment_from_South_Afric...
Be warned those that the BDS movement is under attack though because it is viewed as a bigger threat to Israel's occupation than terrorism. Israel actually bars the top non-violent pro-Palestinian activist from leaving Israel recently as the BDS movement has had too much success.
BDS doesn't lead to peace — it's prclaiming a different kind of war. So far, it affected PA residents more, than israelis, stripping their sources of income and creating additional barriers between people, helping otherification. It aids the same culture of hate and intolerance that created the conflict in the first place and now helps keeping the palestinian opressors, from PA to Hamas, in power — and if you want peace in the region, they're exactly whom you should be rallying against.
The conflict wasn't created by a culture of hate and intolerance, as you'd like to believe. The conflict was created by millions of people immigrating to a land that didn't belong to them and then declaring a sovereign independent nation over it- something that would lead to a conflict in any part of the world (try this in the US).
Israel doesn't want peace in the region - it wants its opponents rendered harmless in order to keep whatever has already grabbed and possibly keep grabbing more. It's just shameless.
If it's a choice between your human rights and someone else's life — obviously.
Also, "fight back in a wrong way" is a very curious way to label brutal attacks targeting civilians that go on non-stop for the last hundred years — long before any of alleged grievances that you would be "fighting back" against even began.
>attacks targeting civilians that go on non-stop for the last hundred years
Those go on non-stop from BOTH sides.
And statistically the side you seem to be siding with has caused 100 times the casualties --doing those "brutal attacks targeting civilians" with full military force, not ad-hoc weaponry (plus they have amassed all this land areas they didn't use to have). Or is that just a minor detail?
> If it's a choice between your human rights and someone else's life — obviously.
So if I unjustly imprison you, and the only way for you to escape is by killing me, will you willingly stay imprisoned forever? It's an... admirable stance, although so unpopular that you'll likely find not even Gandhi on your side.
(honestly, historical trivia is relatively irrelevant to the whole Israel/Palestine debate, which has great moral issues to argue -- if your people suffered apartheid and holocaust, are you justified in doing the same to others "in self-defence"? How long does it take for populations to forego ethnic grievances and land claims? Will nations ever renounce ultimate sovereignty to the UN? etc etc)
It was not an analogy, it was an hypothetical situation. If my human rights end where loss of life on your side begins, then according to that stated belief, the situation I mentioned is morally acceptable, is it not?
Except you don't know what will ever lead to "less net violence", nor do you have a way to quantify net violence beyond bodycount -- and I don't think you want that.
Let's talk seriously. Israel withdrew from Sinai and dismantled a few settlements in in the Gaza strip. It didn't relinquish its full control over Gaza's borders, air space and maritime space (which means, in fact, on the whole Gaza economy) such that Gaza is still considered by the UN an occupied territory.
In the meanwhile, Israel keeps expanding its illegal colonies in a foreign territory, the West Bank, contravening to the international law. It also unilaterally annexed the whole city of Jerusalem, also contrary to international law. And it unilaterally annexed the Golan Heights, demolishing over a hundred Syrian villages and giving the land to Israeli settlers, also against the international law (as was recently reaffirmed by the UN Security Council).
As of 2016, 750000 Israelis, about 10% of the whole population of Israel, lives in illegally occupied territories. This number has been steadily growing for the past 60 years.
Let me clarify the concept if these numbers seem a bit abstract. Israel is stealing houses and fields and destroying villages and driving out native populations, by economic and military oppression, in a quest for lebensraum for its own population. This is completely unacceptable by any modern western standard.
Israel and Palestine seems a bit more complex to me. They are trying to find a solution for two groups of people with very different cultural standards for how to live life to cohabit a small bit of land. Tibet is a pimple on a pimple in size compared to the rest of China.
And the solution was recruiting Tibetan from their homeland to U.S. and get them trained by CIA, send them back for fighting? It sounds so similar with what ISIS is doing.
And Obama criticizes Israel sometimes by stating that the murder of thousands of civilians or the expansion of illegal settlements are "unneccesary" or "not helpful to peace" too, but it's just window dressing and not to be taken seriously. Certainly it makes no difference to the outcome whatsoever, and never will.
That would definitely be an interesting experiment. I suspect prices would rise slightly and we'd find out just how dependent we really are.
After a week or two there would be a joint statement of the leaders of the Western World that they have unanimously decided to support the Chinese action, in fact they'll come to help to cart rubble personally.
I'm not sure I follow your reasoning... are you implying that trade with China is more important for the entire western world than international trade with the all the west is to China?
I could certainly see leaders in certain countries such as France who have been actively selling weaponry to China going "to help cart the rubble personally" but there's no way Obama or his next successor would do that.
Why not? Prices would rise marginally if at all. There'd be some supply issues for a while.
It was ok to sanction Iran, Iraq and South Africa and so on but not now in this globalised world? We put up with any old abuse from Israel and China because they're approved in some way?
I'm no diplomat, but there should be some consequences of significance.
Prices would rise significantly and it would create a very large black market. There would be supply issues for more than a decade. The US does half a trillion dollars worth of importing from China. Every major US retailer is designed around imports from China. Most of that is relatively low priced consumer goods. Where do you plan to buy decently priced microwaves, by the millions, that aren't made in China? That doesn't exist, it would take years to bring that production on-line. The same is true of television sets. Hell, just about anything you can name that is mass consumer oriented. The disruption to supply would destroy most US retailers instantly. Walmart and Amazon, both suddenly lacking 3/4 of their inventory, would go bankrupt in a matter of months. Walmart would have to fire upwards of two million low income workers that have no possible replacement jobs.
It would harm the bottom 50% in the US the most. That's enough reason to look at other options first.
I don't see the ramifications playing out remotely like that.
There'd be a diplomatic tit-for-tat leading up to sanctions, they wouldn't just be turned on at 00:00 tomorrow. So there'd be perhaps a year. Sanctions tend to start with specific items and scale up. So it's a process, with a timeline, over perhaps 2 - 10 years.
Plenty of time for significnt amounts of trade to move to india, Vietnam and the other developing economies.
China holds quite a bit of US currency, the risk of offensive use of this has been assessed by the US as not too severe, but 3.2 trillion is a lot.
It might be better used hurting US interests abroad rather than devaluing the $US.
By we are you referring to the US? The US has a lot of capability here. I'm not going to go into a long winded post going into this. I just wanted to point out that unfortunately this kind of hand washing taking place in your comment is very effective.
Yes but Cuba, Iran, Iraq, and Russia are not willing to supply US Companies with near indentured servants to make our stuff,then use the worthless paper they get for the stuff, to buy a different type of worthless paper that allows the US Government to build more war machines, and other things.
While it's sad and I'm tempted to cry human rights, try building anything like that in UK or probably most developed countries without planning permission and they'd be straight on you.
