My question is, why the world feels the need to take sides in this conflict rather than simply condemning the violence perpetrated by both sides.
Well imagine that the native Australian population, the Aboriginals decoded they wanted their land back and started murdering all the white folk and they killed the equivalent of about 5,000 people (adjusted for Australia’s population); mostly eldely and children. They restarted started a bombing campaign that threatened every inch of Australia. And they did this after ~60 years of similar actions on a smaller scale.
Would you and your countrymen submit to genocide for peace? Or would you fight back?
For you and I (USA), nations built on European Colonialism; it should be clear why that Colonialism was wrong but why it can’t be undone. Trying to correct past atrocities with a modern genocide isn’t acceptable and the last 20 years of Hamas’s rule in Gaza has shown that Genocide is all it will accept.
Well, since Hamas doesn’t represent all of Palestine, it doesn’t make sense to decimate the whole of Palestine. Sure, send in special forces that track down Hamas and kill them. But don’t carpet bomb civilian areas in the hopes you get the right people.
Also, you’re saying Israel has been doing this on a smaller scale. I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. Yes, many years “just” a few hundred Palestinians were killed by Israel. But a few times Israel already committed atrocities much worse than what Hamas did on October 7th. And that’s ignoring that Palestine already has half the population of Israel. And also ignoring all the other ways Israel has been oppressing them, like heavily regulating and limiting trade with other nations or preventing Palestine from having an army
Are you seriously trying to argue that Israel doing this to Palestine for the past half century should be ignored? Just because maybe the majority of years it was less deaths? Do you seriously not understand why Palestinians are fighting back? Or do you seriously believe that Palestinians are the aggressors here?
I am loathe to defend hamas, but the UN stats just don’t portray them as the aggressors.
If Australian aboriginals started terrorising the rest of us, of course we would use reasonable force to bring that to a stop. We would also be negotiating, and compromising. If we decided that peaceful solutions had been exhausted, I can assure you other countries wouldn’t be sending us billions of dollars worth of hardware with which to exterminate them.
For the first years of Australia’s colonization, there was militant Aboriginal resistance - of course, given their technological disadvantages, it was not successful and the indigenous population were slaughtered at every turn.
The most well-known and feared of the early insurrectionists - a Bidjigal man named Pemulwuy - is today celebrated by white Australian culture - one of Sydney’s suburbs is named for him. The British were somewhat less charitable in 1802, when he was finally captured, shot and beheaded after many years of fighting against their presence in early Sydney.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Yes colonists did some very bad things in Australia 200 years ago. Should we not strove to hold ourselves to a higher standard?
“Yes Israel is creating a humanitarian crisis, but we it’s fine to support their endeavours because we did some very bad things 200 years ago”.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, I didn’t say anything like that - go easy on those quote marks ;) - I’m just talking about Australian history, not the current events. I am cautious discussing history in this contentious thread because I’m really just interested in the discussion about indigenous Australians, who did resist occupation, to the extent they could. The colonial response to that became “The Frontier Wars”. Which was quasi-official genocide.
There are parallels in colonization throughout history, of course, which is presumably how this particular discussion came about, but today’s situation is obviously a vastly different time and place to early Australia and I’m not informed enough to opine on what’s happening now. I’m just here reading stuff on Lemmy.
Having said all this, indigenous Australians were living for thousands of years without any formalized state, political or military structure. No metal, wheels, writing or permanent dwellings. Had there been less difference in technology and logistical capabilities between aboriginal Australians and the British in the early 1800s, then Australia would probably look very different than it does today.
Sure. I actually don’t know that much about Australia’s colonisation other than what we were taught in school, which I can assure you doesn’t focus on the genocide part.
I’ve always found the “terra nullius” aspect of international law to be fascinating. James Cook is generally credited with Australia’s discovery, but the West Coast had been visited many times by the dutch, and my favorite description of Cook is that he was “just the guy that steered the boat for Joseph Banks”. Although they declared that there were no permanent settlements of any note, in the most recent decades this has been found to be false, in courts of law, many times over.
I am perhaps naively hopeful that the education curriculum has evolved since you were at school, although quite likely not. The genocide part is not a palatable discussion to most people and probably a little heavy for high school.
The British knew full-well what they were doing. The legal maneuvering necessary to dispossess the indigenous population is not unique to Australia’s colonial history - and the British had plenty of practice subjugating more aggressive native populations before they founded Sydney.
You’re quite right - the Dutch, and to a lesser extent the French were already aware of the Australian continent and must have made some contact with Aboriginal people. There were also informal outposts of whalers and seal-hunters that were probably established to some extent several years before British occupation.
There were many aboriginal people living on the continent when Cook and Banks dropped anchor in Sydney. The earliest accounts usually mention seeing smoke from campfires all along the coast. Most of the initial deaths were from disease. The British took smallpox cultures to Sydney with the first fleet in 1788 - within a year of their arrival in Sydney, disease killed between 50 and 90 percent of the indigenous population. Whether the British deliberately introduced smallpox to the aboriginal population is still debated, although I don’t know why else they would carry smallpox cultures on the first fleet - maybe they already knew how to vaccinate with it - but I would think you could get the cultures from an infected person were that the case. What other reason for carrying smallpox to Australia on the first fleet could there be, unless it was a biological weapon?
In Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) the resistance to the settlers moving in on aboriginal hunting grounds became so troublesome that the government set up a program to capture or exterminate all native people in 1830 - by which time the Aboriginal population had already been reduced by 90 percent since settlement - the remaining few thousand aboriginal people were extremely hostile to the encroaching settlements and they were raiding and burning houses, killing settlers.
As in all conflicts, there are nuances and factors that we can’t fully appreciate or empathize with from our current perspective, but what happened to the Aboriginal population during Australia’s settlement should be a cause for national introspection - this makes the referendum result last week seem so disappointing to those who would like to see a more open acknowledgement of the darker history of Australia’s founding - and greater efforts made to redress it.
Do you support Genociding the current European Australian population to return the land to the Aboriginals? Because that’s what Hamas and the majority of Palestinians want and have been working towards for decades.
A lot of land which has been occupied by Aboriginals has already been “returned” under a process known as native title claims. Its an ongoing process and yes I support this process.
That said, I’m sure you’re proposing the absurdity of somehow returning all of Australia, which is not possible and no one supports that.
Similarly, returning Israel’s land is not reasonably possible and no one would support that excepting radicalised Palestinians.
Your question is based on the flawed premise that one or other combatant is “right”. They’re both wrong.
That said, I’m sure you’re proposing the absurdity of somehow returning all of Australia, which is not possible and no one supports that.
Similarly, returning Israel’s land is not reasonably possible and no one would support that excepting radicalised Palestinians.
That’s precisely what Hamas is demanding in Israel. Hamas is the reigning government in Gaza and according to polling is not only popular but would win an open election in the West Bank.
I am loathe to defend hamas, but the UN stats just don’t portray them as the aggressors.
Mr Dog muffins, if the Aboriginals in Australia started a campaign of war against the white Austrailians, what makes you think the casualty numbers would be less skewed there?
If Australian aboriginals started terrorising the rest of us, of course we would use reasonable force to bring that to a stop. If we decided that peaceful solutions had been exhausted,
Well congrats now you’re doing the same thing Israel is doing. Peaceful solutions with Hamas have been exhausted.
I can assure you other countries wouldn’t be sending us billions of dollars worth of hardware with which to exterminate them.
How would you feel if we sent billions of dollars of Aid to the people trying to genocide you instead? What if we continued to commit billions in aid in the form of materials we knew were being used to create weapons to indiscriminately kill Australians. And then we condemned you for trying to stop that miltilitary aid?
The good news is, for countries like ours; we don’t have to pretend to sit up on our high horse like the Europeans do. We have complicated, often evil histories with our colonized populations. But as much as we can and should call out that history as evil, as genocide; we should also know that you can’t answer a genocide with genocide.
Those stats aren’t from war-time - this isn’t a spears vs guns situation. Sorry maye you’re welcome to criticise me all you like for Australia’s treatment of first nations people but your aboriginal metaphor is not analogous to the gaza conflict and isn’t helping illustrate your point.
The core of our disagreement is the level of force used in response.
Forgive me, but I’ve come to expect a “fucked around and found out” mode of diplomacy from the US. As in, hamas threw the first punch so theres a moral imperative to grind gaza into the dust.
I don’t see it that way. A few weeks ago there was a stale mate. Israel has adequate defences. Securing Israel with minimal loss of life ought to be the priority.
I’m happy to disagree in this regard, neither of us are going to change our positions.
Those stats aren’t from war-time - this isn’t a spears vs guns situation.
That’s objectively wrong. There were several active conflicts during that time period. With similar targeted bombing campaigns, in 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014 with several smaller skirmishes in between.
Well imagine that the native Australian population, the Aboriginals decoded they wanted their land back and started murdering all the white folk and they killed the equivalent of about 5,000 people (adjusted for Australia’s population); mostly eldely and children. They restarted started a bombing campaign that threatened every inch of Australia. And they did this after ~60 years of similar actions on a smaller scale.
Would you and your countrymen submit to genocide for peace? Or would you fight back?
For you and I (USA), nations built on European Colonialism; it should be clear why that Colonialism was wrong but why it can’t be undone. Trying to correct past atrocities with a modern genocide isn’t acceptable and the last 20 years of Hamas’s rule in Gaza has shown that Genocide is all it will accept.
Well, since Hamas doesn’t represent all of Palestine, it doesn’t make sense to decimate the whole of Palestine. Sure, send in special forces that track down Hamas and kill them. But don’t carpet bomb civilian areas in the hopes you get the right people.
Also, you’re saying Israel has been doing this on a smaller scale. I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. Yes, many years “just” a few hundred Palestinians were killed by Israel. But a few times Israel already committed atrocities much worse than what Hamas did on October 7th. And that’s ignoring that Palestine already has half the population of Israel. And also ignoring all the other ways Israel has been oppressing them, like heavily regulating and limiting trade with other nations or preventing Palestine from having an army
Are you seriously trying to argue that Israel doing this to Palestine for the past half century should be ignored? Just because maybe the majority of years it was less deaths? Do you seriously not understand why Palestinians are fighting back? Or do you seriously believe that Palestinians are the aggressors here?
They’re not decimating the whole of Palestine. They’re attacking the parts that Hamas rules.
There are Israelis who pour concrete mix into the water in the West Bank.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-07-30/ty-article-opinion/.premium/we-even-destroy-their-water-wells/00000189-a31f-d00f-a7db-b39f5f280000
That’s horrendous. And is part of the reason why violence in the West Bank hasn’t gotten the support for reprisals like violence from Gaza has.
So why is it that civilians keep dying then? Attacking the parts they rule makes it okay that civilians die?
That’s just not analogous though.
I am loathe to defend hamas, but the UN stats just don’t portray them as the aggressors.
If Australian aboriginals started terrorising the rest of us, of course we would use reasonable force to bring that to a stop. We would also be negotiating, and compromising. If we decided that peaceful solutions had been exhausted, I can assure you other countries wouldn’t be sending us billions of dollars worth of hardware with which to exterminate them.
For the first years of Australia’s colonization, there was militant Aboriginal resistance - of course, given their technological disadvantages, it was not successful and the indigenous population were slaughtered at every turn.
The most well-known and feared of the early insurrectionists - a Bidjigal man named Pemulwuy - is today celebrated by white Australian culture - one of Sydney’s suburbs is named for him. The British were somewhat less charitable in 1802, when he was finally captured, shot and beheaded after many years of fighting against their presence in early Sydney.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_frontier_wars
https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/pemulwuy
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Yes colonists did some very bad things in Australia 200 years ago. Should we not strove to hold ourselves to a higher standard?
“Yes Israel is creating a humanitarian crisis, but we it’s fine to support their endeavours because we did some very bad things 200 years ago”.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, I didn’t say anything like that - go easy on those quote marks ;) - I’m just talking about Australian history, not the current events. I am cautious discussing history in this contentious thread because I’m really just interested in the discussion about indigenous Australians, who did resist occupation, to the extent they could. The colonial response to that became “The Frontier Wars”. Which was quasi-official genocide.
There are parallels in colonization throughout history, of course, which is presumably how this particular discussion came about, but today’s situation is obviously a vastly different time and place to early Australia and I’m not informed enough to opine on what’s happening now. I’m just here reading stuff on Lemmy.
Having said all this, indigenous Australians were living for thousands of years without any formalized state, political or military structure. No metal, wheels, writing or permanent dwellings. Had there been less difference in technology and logistical capabilities between aboriginal Australians and the British in the early 1800s, then Australia would probably look very different than it does today.
Sure. I actually don’t know that much about Australia’s colonisation other than what we were taught in school, which I can assure you doesn’t focus on the genocide part.
I’ve always found the “terra nullius” aspect of international law to be fascinating. James Cook is generally credited with Australia’s discovery, but the West Coast had been visited many times by the dutch, and my favorite description of Cook is that he was “just the guy that steered the boat for Joseph Banks”. Although they declared that there were no permanent settlements of any note, in the most recent decades this has been found to be false, in courts of law, many times over.
I am perhaps naively hopeful that the education curriculum has evolved since you were at school, although quite likely not. The genocide part is not a palatable discussion to most people and probably a little heavy for high school.
The British knew full-well what they were doing. The legal maneuvering necessary to dispossess the indigenous population is not unique to Australia’s colonial history - and the British had plenty of practice subjugating more aggressive native populations before they founded Sydney.
You’re quite right - the Dutch, and to a lesser extent the French were already aware of the Australian continent and must have made some contact with Aboriginal people. There were also informal outposts of whalers and seal-hunters that were probably established to some extent several years before British occupation.
There were many aboriginal people living on the continent when Cook and Banks dropped anchor in Sydney. The earliest accounts usually mention seeing smoke from campfires all along the coast. Most of the initial deaths were from disease. The British took smallpox cultures to Sydney with the first fleet in 1788 - within a year of their arrival in Sydney, disease killed between 50 and 90 percent of the indigenous population. Whether the British deliberately introduced smallpox to the aboriginal population is still debated, although I don’t know why else they would carry smallpox cultures on the first fleet - maybe they already knew how to vaccinate with it - but I would think you could get the cultures from an infected person were that the case. What other reason for carrying smallpox to Australia on the first fleet could there be, unless it was a biological weapon?
https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/smallpox-epidemic
In Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) the resistance to the settlers moving in on aboriginal hunting grounds became so troublesome that the government set up a program to capture or exterminate all native people in 1830 - by which time the Aboriginal population had already been reduced by 90 percent since settlement - the remaining few thousand aboriginal people were extremely hostile to the encroaching settlements and they were raiding and burning houses, killing settlers.
https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/the-black-line
As in all conflicts, there are nuances and factors that we can’t fully appreciate or empathize with from our current perspective, but what happened to the Aboriginal population during Australia’s settlement should be a cause for national introspection - this makes the referendum result last week seem so disappointing to those who would like to see a more open acknowledgement of the darker history of Australia’s founding - and greater efforts made to redress it.
Do you support Genociding the current European Australian population to return the land to the Aboriginals? Because that’s what Hamas and the majority of Palestinians want and have been working towards for decades.
This is such a daft question.
A lot of land which has been occupied by Aboriginals has already been “returned” under a process known as native title claims. Its an ongoing process and yes I support this process.
That said, I’m sure you’re proposing the absurdity of somehow returning all of Australia, which is not possible and no one supports that.
Similarly, returning Israel’s land is not reasonably possible and no one would support that excepting radicalised Palestinians.
Your question is based on the flawed premise that one or other combatant is “right”. They’re both wrong.
That’s precisely what Hamas is demanding in Israel. Hamas is the reigning government in Gaza and according to polling is not only popular but would win an open election in the West Bank.
Mr Dog muffins, if the Aboriginals in Australia started a campaign of war against the white Austrailians, what makes you think the casualty numbers would be less skewed there?
Well congrats now you’re doing the same thing Israel is doing. Peaceful solutions with Hamas have been exhausted.
How would you feel if we sent billions of dollars of Aid to the people trying to genocide you instead? What if we continued to commit billions in aid in the form of materials we knew were being used to create weapons to indiscriminately kill Australians. And then we condemned you for trying to stop that miltilitary aid?
The good news is, for countries like ours; we don’t have to pretend to sit up on our high horse like the Europeans do. We have complicated, often evil histories with our colonized populations. But as much as we can and should call out that history as evil, as genocide; we should also know that you can’t answer a genocide with genocide.
Those stats aren’t from war-time - this isn’t a spears vs guns situation. Sorry maye you’re welcome to criticise me all you like for Australia’s treatment of first nations people but your aboriginal metaphor is not analogous to the gaza conflict and isn’t helping illustrate your point.
The core of our disagreement is the level of force used in response.
Forgive me, but I’ve come to expect a “fucked around and found out” mode of diplomacy from the US. As in, hamas threw the first punch so theres a moral imperative to grind gaza into the dust.
I don’t see it that way. A few weeks ago there was a stale mate. Israel has adequate defences. Securing Israel with minimal loss of life ought to be the priority.
I’m happy to disagree in this regard, neither of us are going to change our positions.
That’s objectively wrong. There were several active conflicts during that time period. With similar targeted bombing campaigns, in 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014 with several smaller skirmishes in between.