Comment by chimeracoder
2 years ago
> The underlying cultural memory is that of the Holocaust, and of thousands of years of oppression and pogroms before, where nobody would ever help the Jewish people if they were in danger. Thus the belief that the second the Jewish people became a political minority in Israel, they would be immediately and inevitably subject to ethnic cleansing and persecution by the government. Jewish supremacy is viewed as the only way for Jews to be safe in a world full of people who either hate them or don't care enough to help.
You're describing the reason that some Jews say they support the creation of an ethnostate. That's still an ethnostate, and treating Israel as synonymous with a Jewish ethnostate is the defining right-wing characteristic of Zionism.
It's important to note that what you're describing is not representative of the general opinion of Jews, either globally or in Israel. Many Jewish Holocaust survivors and their descendants oppose the creation of an ethnostate through ethnic cleansing.
It's weird to describe Israel as an "ethnostate" when it has a large population of Israeli Arabs who live there peacefully that nobody is trying to get rid of. If Palestine wants to live in peace, they can just stop attacking, yet all we seem to hear are calls for Israel to stop resisting.
And it's odd to worry about what's "right wing" while Hamas wants the creation of a new caliphate that constantly chants about how they'd like to remove all the Jews from the area between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. mirroring the ethnic cleansing done by many nearby Islamic states in the recent past.
But it is true that the average Israeli does not want to ethnically cleanse anyone, because if they did want that, Israel could have simply destroyed all of Palestine a long time ago.
What attacks are coming from the West Bank that Israel is resisting?
Quite a lot of shooting attacks since the start of 2023, for one. If you want go back further, there was involvement in the intifadas.
> Two decades on, Israel has sounded alarms over the growing number of gunmen in Jenin and their stockpiling of munitions. Israel says the camp is a hub for planning and preparing militant attacks as well as a safe haven for fighters funded by Hamas or the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad group.
> Israel also says more than 50 shooting attacks have been carried out by Jenin-area militants since the beginning of 2023 and that almost half the population is affiliated either with Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/why-is-israel-atta...