Arab-Israeli Conflict

Lately in class, we have been discussing the conflict over in the Middle East regarding Arabs and Jews. This conflict began in the 1840s, and it arose because Jews were trying to push Arabs off of land that they had settled on first. It was hard for Jews to do this because one of the Arab advantages was demography. For example, the Jewish population in Palestine did not exceed 5% in 1850. A key factor into this conflict is Zionism, which is Jewish nationalism. It is because of Zionism that the Jewish population in Palestine finally began to increase. It went from 5%-10%.This topic is particularly interesting to me because I have never learned very much about the conflict prior to this class.

I always learned about the Holocaust when millions of Jews were killed because of their religion; I always learned that many people sympathize with Jews after the Holocaust. However, once we began learning about the Arab-Israeli conflict, I began to realize that Jews have also killed millions of people that were Arab. It is interesting to see how some people sympathize with Jews and how people can also be against Jews because of their actions in this conflict.

Connections to Other Classes

I am taking a class called "Modern Ireland:1601-Present." I have recently began making connections between our class with Professor Metcalf and this class about Ireland. In nineteenth century Ireland and the years before it, the Irish were persecuted by the British because the Irish were Catholic and the British were Protestant. For years, Catholics in Ireland fought for their religious freedom and the right to hold positions in Parliament. To me, this is similar to the Ottoman Empire's struggles with the janissaries.

The British enforced laws in Ireland in the seventeenth century that shed them of basic rights, such as the right to bear arms and the right to hold positions in government. The British wanted the Irish to convert their religion and become Protestant. Similarly, the Ottoman Empire also wanted the janissaries to become more European. For example, they repeatedly changed their uniforms to look more like the French, and they adopted weapons that were as modern as the Europeans' weapons were.

Irish Catholics and the janissaries wanted to maintain their identity and not become assimilated to other European ways. Catholics in Ireland wanted to maintain their Catholic identity and be able to hold positions in Parliament without becoming Protestant. Similarly, the janissaries in the Ottoman Empire wanted to maintain their Turkish appearance and not take on a European appearance.