Comment by gravisultra

> Although if you're dead-set on racial essentialism and blood-and-soil nationalism

You're reading things OP didn't even write; and addressing a historical assertion with present-day facts.

OP posits that European settlers coming in during the Ottoman era (establishing Hebrew-only areas & businesses, only to later demand a Jewish State, in opposition to the local majority [0]) is what kickstarted the current conflict. It isn't a 1000 year old feud.

Mizrahis, save for Yemenis, migrated en masse after the conflict was irreversibly set in motion by Imperial Britain & various Arab states.

[0] https://www.pbs.org/video/1913-seeds-conflict-establishing-r...

> Ashkenazi Jews — that is, Jews who lived in Europe during the Diaspora — make up less than a third of Israeli Jews.

This isn't true, and the link you posted in support of it contradicts it in the third sentence. 'less than a third of Israeli Jews' excludes Jews who migrated to Israel from the Soviet Union, or from the post-Soviet Union countries. In fact around 20% of the population of Jewish people in Israel arrived during the wave of migration which happened in the 90s and early 2000s.

It's not about race, but it is about the invention of a country that relies on specific demographics to exist (majority Jewish) which necessitate keeping millions of people stateless yet under the full control of an elite ethnicity who actually have the votes and the control.

And no matter where Jewish people are from, they are that privileged ethnicity. The Arabs in Israel get token rights (but you and I both know if they were a demographic threat in Israel those rights would be revoked). And the Arabs in Palestine get no rights in Israel but are fully controlled and blockaded by Israel. That's the ultimate source of the conflict. It's not thousands of years old, and it is partly about race (if you consider Jewish a race, as the nation of Israel does).

Also, if you were a European Jew in the late 1940s after the fall of the Nazis, you were still faced with the prospect of living under the local governance of Nazi collaborators, continued pogroms [0] and antisemitism, and potentially Joseph Stalin's USSR. It's not like everything immediately went back to normal, either in real terms or psychological ones.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom

It's unsurprising that many wouldn't want to reintegrate with that society after what they experienced, even if they managed to avoid the camps (and especially if they didn't).

Yes and the reason many of the Mizrahi are in Israel and not in all the other places is the Zionists.

>mass expulsion of Jews who have no other home to go to.

What? They should just go back to Poland! /s

It was more about local residents becoming Arabs than Arabs migrating in large numbers. Palestinian Arabs are mostly descended from ancient Canaanites. More generally, the demographics around the Eastern Mediterranean have changed surprisingly little since the Bronze Age. Most conquerors just replaced or took over the old elites. Many people died in the process, and the survivors would often adopt a new culture, language, and/or religion.

Zionism is a colonial ideology created by Europeans in the late 1800s.

In 1872, less than 4% of Palestine was Jewish. It was 17% in 1931. 33% in 1948 when Israel was formed.

The vast vast majority of Jews in Israel now are Ashkenazi. Ashkenazis are from Khazaria and converted to Judaism between 740 and 920 AD. Even from this population, there is a bottleneck around 600 to 800 years ago where the population was down to 350 individuals [1].

By and large very very few Jews in Palestine/Israel are able to claim Levantine/Semitic genetic ancestry.

Many Palestinians and other Levantine people in Palestine who now practice Islam are far more likely have to have ancestors that were once Jewish that actually lived in historical kingdom of Israel prior to 70 AD when Titus and Vespasian crushed a revolt there.

The ancestors of these folks that today practice Islam in Palestine likely converted to Islam sometime after 637 AD when Arabs started to settle in Palestine.

It's pretty commonly accepted all over the world since basically forever that ownership is bequeathed from parents to children. This means that those who are Islamic today but whose genetic ancestors practiced Judaism in the past and lived in the historical kingdom of Israel have far greater claim to the land than folks who have no genetic ancestry to the Kingdom of Israel and instead have ancestry with no genetic relationship that converted to Judaism about 1105 to 1285 years ago.

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/ashkenazi-jews-descend-from-35...

Arab is not a race. Most Arabs never arrived from anywhere, they were locals who adopted (often violently, sometimes not) large parts of Arab culture for long enough to consider themselves Arabs.

The Arabians never had the resources or population to engage in settler colonialism you are thinking of. Even if they wanted to (and perhaps they did), they just couldn't go around replacing anyone. So from the start the conception of Arab is about peoples slowly becoming Arab, not being replaced by arriving Arabs, in large part.

They are one and the same people. Only through the lens of ethnocentric histories is any distinction made.

there are several flaws in your typical zionist argument:

1. jews as a minority have lived in the lands of Filistine and Jerusalem peacefully and coexisted just fine for millennia, before the zionist project.

2. the fact that small minority of jews lived there does not give an excuse to ethnically cleanse the local population of arabs.

3. the claim that modern european jews from Rhine and pale of settlement (AshkeNazi) have any connection to ancient Israelites from 2000+ years ago is laughable. Most genetic analysis proved that it is Palestinians, Jordanian Christians are native to the land, not european settlers from Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, Ukraine with last names like Mileikowsky (Bibi's actual name), Mabovitch (golda's name) etc.

4. Filistine and Jerusalem did not have a problem with antisemitism and jew hate, UNTIL european settlers showed up. Antisemitism is purely european concept imported into Middle East.

5. All studies have shown that Israel/zionism is a colonial settler project created by Brits to secure Suez Canal from the ottomans. Later it would become American "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the middle east to bomb and murder oil rich countries in the middle east

>The problem with the conflict is that both sides are right.

So true on a theoretical basis, and at the same time both sides are wrong for fighting on that same basis.

Leaving the only sensible participants those who are committed to complete non-violence for a few generations, no-one else could possibly have beneficial actionable input without making things worse.

>the empires that governed the land before '48 and how that affects consent

You have my upvote but I consider this a fairly weak argument from all sides.

After WWII there were only three kinds of people remaining on my home planet:

1. Those that won WWII.

2. Those that lost WWII.

3. Those that were saved by the ones that won WWII.

Everyone else was killed.

Sure, it's a fresh start, but pretty gloomy when you think about it.

The winners rightly would be expected to take the lead from that point on, drawing lines of co-operation highly focused on preventing any more worldwide conflict in any predictable way. Definitely for the foreseeable future at the time, and it has proven to work more effectively than any other peace initiative in human history. Relative to the overall threat.

Anyone who was saved by the winners of WWII and was not completely delighted with the outcome has certainly never had legitimate grounds for complaint considering the alternative. How quickly some people can forget.

Then again religious hatred and/or superstition can misguide some otherwise intelligent people from just about anywhere, and this is nothing new since cave men were all there was.

Of course it's been quite a while since prehistoric times, so too late now, nothing that happened before WWII will ever be a reason for further conflict ever. They'd have to be a complete moron.

Looks like the world had settled into its most peaceful time by about 1950.

Realistically the only major war that remained was a cold one after that, and regardless of whether you were unappreciatively saved by the winners of WWII, or happened to be disgruntled losers, the only way to change it was to start WWIII. At one time everybody knew that.

Which "everyone" also knew would take one hell of a suicidal maniac, but if it happened it would probably be dealt with along the lines of how Kamikaze tactics were proven to be overcome when the scale reached world-threatening proportions.

It was already the 20th century with worldwide communication and everything, and the century was only halfway along. Naturally with such a worldwide war brought to conclusion without complete destruction everywhere, previous conflict up until that time had been made as equally prehistoric as in 19,500 BC ever since.

How could people forget so easily? Who would possibly be suicidal enough to let that kind of bloodthirsty hatred rule again?

> some land was made available to the Native Americans to build their own sovereign nation, you would be against that ?

You know that would have been great. But who are the native Americans in your example? Majority of Zionists that established Israel and their groups arrived by ships from Europe. Wouldn't that more resemble England and Spain colonization expeditions in your example? Weird.. like the story almost matches exactly to the how colonies were established

Such an ironic example to give voluntarily.

Let's take a look at the background of Israel's founding fathers and where did they came from:

- David Ben-Gurion - Poland

- Aharon Zisling - Belarus

- David Remez - Russia

- Pinchas Rosen - Germany

- Moshe Sharett - Ukraine

- Haim-Moshe Shapira - Belarus

- Yehuda Leib Maimon - Moldova

- Mordechai Bentov - Russia

- ...

Case in point, most weren't natives who lived there under "apartheid" but actually left Europe looking for a new land, backed by... England and the US (Sorry Spain, not this time).

If you're struggling to use the real events in history and have to resort to a "hypothesis", it's a sign something is off and you're twisting history a bit too much. At least make sure it's not ironic, next time.

No, that's mythology. Actual history is The Balfour Declaration:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration

And Nakba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba

> Doesn't the Torah count for something?

No, absolutely not.

If I try to use ancient religions to justify violently forcing a claim to your house and land, then you're entirely within your right to defend yourself by any means necessary. That's not a thing any more. This might help you understand: [0]

And, many Jewish people decry Zionism as a perversion.

0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np3qp21N4qI

You completely left out the Nakba. Which you would have to to even attempt to make this point.

> The Arabs invite all the nations around them to attack the Jews with them.

I assume you're talking about the "Arab Invasion" of 1948? So, that would be after the Nakba started. In fact, Deir Yassin occured only a month before Israel was founded.

You're very obviously leaving out facts not in an attempt to be succinct but to obscure the actual history.

> The Jews abide by the plan, declare Israel when the British mandate ends.

There is a lot to say about this part, but just one point: the plan included the establishment of a Palestinian state which Israel has blocked since its inception. So no, they did not abide by the plan. The plan has never been implemented.

>Muslims, Christians and Jews all lived in Palestine during the Ottoman era. Jews discovered Europe was pretty hostile, Zionism was born. Many move to Palestine, buy land and settle down.

It's wrong to reduce Zionism as solely a reaction to european hostility, such narrative simplifies the origins of Zionism by framing it purely as a reaction to European anti-Semitism, ignoring other cultural, religious, and political factors. Zionism also emerged from a broader context of national self-determination movements in Europe. Those European Zionists were also quite racist and did describe the native population of Palestine with the hebrew N-word "kushim" which had to be ethnically cleansed:

"Neither Zangwill nor Weizmann intended these demographic assessments in a literal fashion. They did not mean that there were no people in Palestine, but that there were no people worth considering within the framework of the notions of European supremacy that then held sway. In this connection, a comment by Weizmann to Arthur Ruppin, the head of the colonization department of the Jewish Agency, is particularly revealing. When asked by Ruppin about the Palestinian Arabs, Weizmann replied: "The British told us that there are there some hundred thousands negroes [Kushim] and for those there is no value.” quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.

>The Ottomans lose WWI, lose Palestine to the British.

Palestine was occupied by the British, which even the Zionists themselves classified as such. That's why Zionists also bombed the King-David Hotel full of British officers whom they regarded as occupiers of Palestine: https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...

>The British Empire started fracturing, they realised they couldn't hold it together, they decide they'll leave Palestine and create a plan to partition it.

That's is just historic revisionism, the British left due to "the sophistication of Zionist terrorists" -https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...

> The Jews abide by the plan, declare Israel when the British mandate ends. The Arabs invite all the nations around them to attack the Jews with them.

That is brazen zionist propaganda that reframes the zionist colonial project as some poor damsel in distress that was just innocently trying to take over Palestine when the natives just tried to attack the poor jews for no reason. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy56Q1a0Flc]

David Ben-Gurion has also recorded in his writings that the partition was just a starting point and that they would ultimately expand anyway. Most explicitly, he states: "My assumption (which is why I am a fervent proponent of a state, even though it is now linked to partition) is that a Jewish state on only part of the land is not the end but the beginning." -https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2013/04/06/the-ben-gurio...

>Then, when all the Arab states fought Israel again, Jordan loses the west bank, Egypt loses Gaza and all of Sinai (!!). Israel gave Sinai back for peace, eventually both Egypt and Jordan renounced their claim on Gaza and the West Bank. And that's how we ended up here, more or less.

Again a reductive and zionist summary that is ahistoric and misleading. A more detailed and substantiated account is provided here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy56Q1a0Flc

>Now, as for the colonialism part, Jews have always lived in the area.

After the initial Crusader conquest, many Jews who survived the massacres either fled or were expelled. In 1187, Saladin, the Muslim leader of the Ayyubid dynasty, recaptured Jerusalem. He allowed Jews and Muslims to return to the city. This marked a significant restoration of the Jewish community in Jerusalem and other parts of the Holy Land. Either way, your narrative tries to deny that Zionism is a colonial project but that attempt is in vain, since there is simply too much evidence for that. Zionists also made no secret that it was a colonial project until colonialism became a bad word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Jewish_Colonization_...

> And the Jews who did move to Israel after it's establishment, largely moved there as a result of persecution by Arabs

Another blatant attempt at rewriting of history that omits crucial parts to paint a false narrative. While there was a portion of hostility towards jews as a reaction to the crimes committed by jews in Palestine the main driver were a multitude of reasons such as:

Organized efforts, such as Aliyah Bet, focused on helping Jews immigrate to Israel, often in defiance of British immigration restrictions during the Mandate period.

Zionist organizations conducted educational campaigns to foster a sense of identity and urgency about moving to Israel, emphasizing the need for a national homeland.

In countries like Iraq and Yemen, Zionist emissaries used social and economic pressures to encourage Jews to leave for Israel. This included highlighting the dangers of staying in increasingly hostile environments and emphasizing the opportunities in Israel.

In Iraq, a series of false-flag bombings targeted Jewish sites. Researchers and historians have proven that these attacks were false flag operations carried out by Zionist agents to create a sense of urgency and fear, prompting Jews to emigrate.

The infamous "Lavon Affair" in 1954 involved a failed Israeli covert operation intending to destabilize Egypt by planting bombs in Egyptian, American, and British-owned targets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair

Operations like "Magic Carpet" (Yemen) and "Ezra and Nehemiah" (Iraq) were launched to bring Jewish communities to Israel. These operations were often portrayed as rescue missions from adverse conditions while the real reason was that they were needed to help with the colonization of Palestine.

>persecution by Arabs

Finally, the zionist attempt to rewrite history regarding the relationship of Muslims with Jews is also dishonest and deceptive. Anyone with basic education in history will see through it:

"David Wasserstein (Vanderbilt University),”How Islam Saved the Jews”

By the early seventh century Judaism was in crisis. In the Mediterranean basin it was battered by legal, social, and religious pressure, weak in numbers and culturally almost non-existent. It was also largely cut off from the Jewry of the Persian empire, in Babylon, present-day Iraq. The future seemed clear: extinction in the west, decline to obscurity in the east. Salvation came from Arabia. Islam conquered the entire Persian empire and most of the Mediterranean world. Uniting virtually all the world’s Jews in a single state, it gave them legal and religious respectability, economic and social freedoms, and linguistic and cultural conditions that made possible a major renaissance of Judaism and the Jews. The significance of Islam for Jewry has been interpreted very variously since the middle ages and is a source of controversy to this day."

https://middleeast.stanford.edu/events/david-wasserstein-how...

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