Was Churchill really any better than Hitler or Talaat Pasha?

robto · Jun 1, 2025

Yury said:
Arab migration shaped Palestinian society - The Ettinger Report.

This is definetily not a good source on the matter, giving that the author is very explicitly a pro-Zionist militant and activist.

The supposedly Arab migration to Palestine in the nineteen-hundreds has been so over-exagerated to the point of being just a pseudo-historical argument. That migration was not demographically impactful. It impacted certain port cities where working-class jobs were abundant, but they rarely impacted the majority Arab Palestinian population at the time - the fellaheen farmers and artisan town-dwellers. It was that group that were the biggest victims of the Nakba. As well as the Palestinian urban middle-class.

Ficino · Jun 1, 2025

By the way, even a very significant portion of anti-Zionist communist Jews confronted with the realities of the communist regimes to which they greatly contributed ended up by rediscovering their Jewish roots and making aliyah.

KipOju · Jun 1, 2025

robto said:
You failed to understand the premise of my point. As I repeat, reality on the settler-colonialism vs "classical" colonialism spectrum is always something in between. I never said that the case of Algeria is not a case of settler-colonialism; what I said is that the pendulum of French Algeria shifted more towards the "classical" type over the settler type by the very reason that the pied-noir only reached 13% of the total population of Algeria, and there was no massive displacement, and replacement of the previous inhabitants of the territory.
The "natives" not only continued to be the majority of the population, but they were also amply used as a labor resource for the colonial and settler elites. Therefore, the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized was more of an exploitation rather than replacement, whereas the settler population was numerically a minority that controlled the resources and used the previous inhabitants as a cheap labor force.

In an ideal type settler-colonial entity, the previous inhabitants a virtually erased, or become an impoverished minority, with the settlers and their descendants becoming the dominant majority. That's what happened in Israel-1948, and in Australia, or Canada. That didn't happen in French Algeria.

Well then it proves my point, the situation in Algeria was somewhat analogous to Israel before 1948, and if the French had applied their partition plan the situation might have been analogous.
The the partition plan was not applied by then because the French in the mainland cared little about the colonial project, and DeGaulle thought French people belonged to France. The pieds noirs surely thought differently tough, but all their efforts were proved to be unsuccessful.

The pied noirs might have been only 15% of the population, but Israelis were how many before the partition plan? 30% of the population in Palestine?
Both Jews and Pieds noirs lived mostly in cities, and the population was distributed unevenly. The pieds noirs were almost half of the population of the major cities, in some cases the majority.

KipOju · Jun 1, 2025

Ficino said:
No, it isn't, "the right to a nationality" is asserted as a human right, and that "no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality", while "International law stipulates that it is for each State to determine, by operation of domestic law, who are its citizens".

the state can not deprive you of your citizenship if you only have one nationality that is against international law.

The right to a nationality is a fundamental human right. It implies the right of each individual to acquire, change and retain a nationality. International law provides that the right of States to decide who their nationals are is not absolute and, in particular, States must comply with their human rights obligations concerning the granting and loss of nationality.

As a general rule, the 1961 Convention also prohibits the deprivation of nationality where it would leave a person stateless. There are very limited exceptions to this rule, including where nationality has been acquired though misrepresentation or fraud.

Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

A map of parties to the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Parties in dark green, countries which have signed but not ratified in light green, non-members in grey.

Ficino · Jun 1, 2025

KipOju said:
the state can not deprive you of your citizenship if you only have one nationality that is against international law.

View attachment 82495
A map of parties to the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Parties in dark green, countries which have signed but not ratified in light green, non-members in grey.

How does that contradict what I wrote? With all your right to a nationality, no state is obliged to grant you citizenship if you do not fulfill the conditions for citizenship laid down by the law of that state.

Yury · Jun 1, 2025

robto said:
This is definetily not a good source on the matter, giving that the author is very explicitly a pro-Zionist militant and activist.

The supposedly Arab migration to Palestine in the nineteen-hundreds has been so over-exagerated to the point of being just a pseudo-historical argument. That migration was not demographically impactful. It impacted certain port cities where working-class jobs were abundant, but they rarely impacted the majority Arab Palestinian population at the time - the fellaheen farmers and artisan town-dwellers. It was that group that were the biggest victims of the Nakba. As well as the Palestinian urban middle-class.

I can see your point and appreciate the references you found reliable.

KipOju · Jun 1, 2025

robto said:
And AFAIK, most countries do not have clauses that allow them to revoke citizenship of individuals,

Sources on that? There is nothing in international law that is against the right of of a state to revoke their citizenship, it's just regulated.
It can be done in heavy criminal cases. But it also is commonly done by some states who don''t accept dual citizenship, or sometimes if you got your citizenship through marriage it could be revoked in case of divorce.
For example china and Japan do not recognize dual citizenship, Switzerland can revoke the citizenship you aquire trough marriage in a divorce

robto said:
and the majority also don't allow you to renounce your nationality.

This seems to be more the exception than the rule.

robto said:
So yeah, most of the time, acquiring citizenship is a right, except if you are an immigrant with no "soil or blood" relation to the state. And most of the time, once you have it, it cannot be revoked.

Well a lot of states have strange laws. Just as an example:

If you become a Naturalized Mexican citizen (i.e. a foreign national who applies for and gets granted Mexican citizenship) and you subsequently reside outside of Mexico for 5 or more consecutive years, you legally lose your Mexican citizenship.

Mexican Citizenship: Becoming Naturalized in Mexico

If you’re in Mexico for the long-haul, you might choose to take your residency status to the next level: becoming a Naturalized Mexican citizen

www.mexperience.com

How is it a right if countries don't allow jus solis? Then it's only through naturalization.
There multiple cases of 3d or 4th generation immigrants that don't have the nationality of their home country because no jus solis, and they didn't want to go through naturalization, so they still have the nationality of their grenparaents.

KipOju · Jun 1, 2025

Ficino said:
How does that contradict what I wrote? With all your right to a nationality, no state is obliged to grant you citizenship if you do not fulfill the conditions for citizenship laid down by the law of that state.

a right to a nationality in the sense that it cannot freely revoked by the state if you only have one nationality. So right to not be stateless.

Yury · Jun 1, 2025

robto said:
And AFAIK, most countries do not have clauses that allow them to revoke citizenship of individuals,

The USSR practiced revocation of citizenship of famous dissident individuals, which was better than 25 years of hard labor. Non-famous dissident individuals still had to do hard labor, or involuntarily confined to psychiatric wards.

robto said:
and the majority also don't allow you to renounce your nationality.

I had to renounce my Soviet nationality upon emigration. For 3 years I was stateless until acquiring US citizenship.

Yury · Jun 1, 2025

Yury said:
Lehi and Irgun did not intentionally target British civilians and administrative and military infrastructure. They focused on the assassinations of British officials, so there was collateral damage, and they also engaged in violence against Palestinian Arab civilians, often as retaliation for attacks on Jews. Lehi primarily aimed at British officials, police, and military personnel, as well as Jews deemed "traitors". Other Zionist organizations objected to terrorist methods.

Correction of the typo. I meant to say "Lehi and Irgun did not intentionally target British civilians, they targeted British officials and administrative and military infrastructure."

Yury · Jun 1, 2025

KipOju said:
Well then it proves my point, the situation in Algeria was somewhat analogous to Israel before 1948, and if the French had applied their partition plan the situation might have been analogous.
The the partition plan was not applied by then because the French in the mainland cared little about the colonial project, and DeGaulle thought French people belonged to France.

That was the key difference with Israel. The statement "Israelis don't have another place to go" often attributed to Vietnamese leaders is a gist of that.

KipOju said:
The pied noirs might have been only 15% of the population, but Israelis were how many before the partition plan? 30% of the population in Palestine?

in 1948 Israeli Jewish population was 82.1% of the country.

robto · Jun 1, 2025

KipOju said:
Sources on that? There is nothing in international law that is against the right of of a state to revoke their citizenship, it's just regulated.

What I said has nothing to do with international law. Naturalization laws are not part of international law unless the individual is at risk of becoming stateless. You're mixing things up.

KipOju said:
This seems to be more the exception than the rule.

These are the countries that prohibit citizenship renunciation:

Source: Harbers & Steele (2023).

- Harbers, I., & Steele, A. (2023). Permanent Membership: The Prohibition of Citizenship Renunciation. International Migration Review, 58(2), 1017-1030

robto · Jun 1, 2025

KipOju said:
Well then it proves my point, the situation in Algeria was somewhat analogous to Israel before 1948, and if the French had applied their partition plan the situation might have been analogous.
The the partition plan was not applied by then because the French in the mainland cared little about the colonial project, and DeGaulle thought French people belonged to France. The pieds noirs surely thought differently tough, but all their efforts were proved to be unsuccessful.

The pied noirs might have been only 15% of the population, but Israelis were how many before the partition plan? 30% of the population in Palestine?
Both Jews and Pieds noirs lived mostly in cities, and the population was distributed unevenly. The pieds noirs were almost half of the population of the major cities, in some cases the majority.

There was a Nakba that ended up making Israel a country in which more than 80% of the population was Jewish (Slater 2021, pdf 96-7). Nothing of that sort happened in Algeria. Therefore, the former is a case of settler-colonialism close to the "ideal-type". French Algeria didn't go through a major replacement event; then, it's not close to the ideal type of settler-colonialism.
In Algeria, the native Muslim population remained resilient in its numbers throughout the colonial period. Therefore, the two cases are not analogous. The Nakba happened.

Even before the Nakba, the pattern of Zionist settlement in Mandatory Palestine resembled more a "pure" settler society when compared to French Algeria. Ever since the Zionist Labour took control over the Aliyah and the management of the Yishuv, settler communities were exclusivist in their residence and economic activity. Jews were supposed only to hire Jewish labor, make Jews work on the farms and in menial jobs, and not hire Arabs (Beinin 2023: 390-94).
In French Algeria, it was the exact opposite; the settlers completely depended on local labor for everything (Choi 2017: 202-3).

- Beinin, J. (2023). Socialism, Zionism, and Settler Colonialism in Israel/Palestine. In M. van der Linden (Eds.) The Cambridge History of Socialism - Volume II. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, England.

- Choi, S. (2017). French Algeria, 1830-1962. In E. Cavanagh and L. Veracini (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism (The Routledge History Handbooks). Routledge: Oxford, UK.

- Slater, J. (2021). Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020. Oxford University Press: New York, NY.

KipOju · Jun 1, 2025

robto said:
What I said has nothing to do with international law. Naturalization laws are not part of international law unless the individual is at risk of becoming stateless. You're mixing things up.

Well you said most countries don't have laws that allow. revocation of citizenship. International law is not against revocation, and for example a lot of countries don't recognize dual citizenship.

Multiple nationality allowed without restriction Multiple nationality restricted to specific cases

robto said:
These are the countries that prohibit citizenship renunciation:

A lot more countries than I thought but wouldn't exactly call that the majority.

KipOju · Jun 1, 2025

robto said:
There was a Nakba that ended up making Israel a country in which more than 80% of the population was Jewish (Slater 2021, pdf 96-7). Nothing of that sort happened in Algeria. Therefore, the former is a case of settler-colonialism close to the "ideal-type". French Algeria didn't go through a major replacement event; then, it's not close to the ideal type of settler-colonialism.
In Algeria, the native Muslim population remained resilient in its numbers throughout the colonial period. Therefore, the two cases are not analogous. The Nakba happened

Yeah. I know the whole point of this conversation was explaining why the Israeli got a partition while the French were evicted, in both cases of settler colonialism going on roughly at the same time, but ended with drastically different consequences.
I said that the fact israel was meant to be a local ethnostate played great part in it.

robto said:
Even before the Nakba, the pattern of Zionist settlement in Mandatory Palestine resembled more a "pure" settler society when compared to French Algeria. Ever since the Zionist Labour took control over the Aliyah and the management of the Yishuv, settler communities were exclusivist in their residence and economic activity. Jews were supposed only to hire Jewish labor, make Jews work on the farms and in menial jobs, and not hire Arabs (Beinin 2023: 390-94).
In French Algeria, it was the exact opposite; the settlers completely depended on local labor for everything (Choi 2017: 202-3).

I wonder how exactly this worked in practice since the Israeli population was overwhelmingly urban

KipOju · Jun 1, 2025

KipOju said:
Yeah. I know the whole point of this conversation was explaining why the Israeli got a partition while the French were evicted, in both cases of settler colonialism going on roughly at the same time, but ended with drastically different consequences.
I said that the fact israel was meant to be a local ethnostate played great part in it.

I wonder how exactly this worked in practice since the Israeli population was overwhelmingly urban

For example White south africans also stayed beacuse they didn't have a metropole

robto · Jun 1, 2025

KipOju said:
I wonder how exactly this worked in practice since the Israeli population was overwhelmingly urban

What do you mean? The Kibbutz farming communities were highly mechanized and used modern agricultural practices to achieve high food production, plus the food they acquired through international trade. Japanese population in the post-war years also achieved an 80% rate of urbanization, and it still worked for them...

And I don't understand how that exactly poses a problem regarding Jewish labor either. An urban population still needs a working class to execute menial jobs and blue-collar work, or to be servants. Jewish urban settlements used Jewish labor. In French Algeria, e.g., in Algiers, the pied-noir used the Arab Muslim population from the Casbah to work for them.
The Zionist experience in Mandatory Palestine, at least since the second Aliyah, was always closer to a theoretical "pure" settler society than French Algeria was throughout its colonial period. It was not just the outcome that was different, it was different from the get-go.

robto · Jun 1, 2025

KipOju said:
For example White south africans also stayed beacuse they didn't have a metropole

Ok...I don't understand how that exactly relates to any of my points, but okay...

KipOju · Jun 1, 2025

robto said:
What do you mean? The Kibbutz farming communities were highly mechanized and used modern agricultural practices to achieve high food production, plus the food they acquired through international trade. Japanese population in the post-war years also achieved an 80% rate of urbanization, and it still worked for them...

And I don't understand how that exactly poses a problem regarding Jewish labor either. An urban population still needs a working class to execute menial jobs and blue-collar work, or to be servants. Jewish urban settlements used Jewish labor. In French Algeria, e.g., in Algiers, the pied-noir used the Arab Muslim population from the Casbah to work for them.
The Zionist experience in Mandatory Palestine, at least since the second Aliyah, was always closer to a theoretical "pure" settler society than French Algeria was throughout its colonial period. It was not just the outcome that was different, it was different from the get-go.

Indeed apparently only 10% of the Zionist workforce was Arab.
61% of agricultural products were from the Arabs, the zionists were not independent in regard of agriculture. see

The Palestinian Peasant Economy Under the Mandate: A Story of Colonial Bungling

besides the algerians certainly were worse but just bysheer numbers Idoubt the majorityof the urban population directly relied on algerian workforce

robto said:
Ok...I don't understand how that exactly relates to any of my points, but okay...

It's just a basic point that even your linked source talks about it

The out- come was that white dominance did not prevail in numbers, and settlers were forced to depend on local labor. In that regard, Algeria came to resemble Southern Rhodesia and South Africa." But unlike South Africa or Southern Rhodesia, French Algeria remained intimately tied to an impe- rial metropole as an integral administrative unit that derived its legitimacy from the metropole.
Having failed to fully extinguish the Muslim population or secede as an independent settler state, the French in Algeria were dependent on the metropole's juridical, military, and political backing.

- Choi, S. (2017). French Algeria, 1830-1962. In E. Cavanagh and L. Veracini (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism (The Routledge History Handbooks). Routledge: Oxford, UK.

robto · Jun 2, 2025

KipOju said:
Idoubt the majorityof the urban population directly relied on algerian workforce

They did. According to van Leewuen & Maas (2022), "Most laborers working on the land and in the mines, docks, and factories were economically and politically marginalized indigenous Arabs and Berbers." (p. 230).

- van Leeuwen, M. H. D., & Maas, I. (2022). Social Mobility through Migration to the Colonies: The Case of Algeria. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 53(2): 225–265.

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