Credit Andy Singer 2024
The situation isn’t comparable. The majority of Jews in Israel are not European (or from anywhere else), they’re native Israeli and they trace their roots to Israel back for millennia.
The problem is not that Israelis want to live there. They have a right to live there. The problem is that they’re depriving Palestinians of their right to live there instead of seeking peaceful coexistence.
Pretty sure modern Israel was founded by western powers as a place to send Jews after WWII.
Wdym sources? You want me to post links 100 year old documents pertaining to British Occupation of Palestine and subsequent League of Nations and later U.N. resolutions to move more Jewish people into Palestine? You need written accounts of the May 13th 1948 withdrawal of British Troops and May 14th establishment of Israel as the first “Jewish State” in 2,000 years?
How about a source on POTUS Truman publicly acknowledging Israel 11 minutes after it was founded. “Some advisors felt that creating a Jewish state was the only proper response to the holocaust and would benefit American interests” according to TrumanLibrary.gov
Why should I have to waste time educating your ass that can’t perform basic web searches?
Zionism is a settler colonialism project that was able to really start with the support of British Imperialism. Zionism as a political movement started with Theodore Herzl in the 1880s as a ‘modern’ way to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ of Europe.
Adi Callai, an Israeli, does a great analysis of how Antisemitism has been weaponized by Zionism during its history.
Since at least the 1860’s, Europe was increasingly antisemitic and hostile to Jewish people. Zionism was explicitly a Setter Colonialist movement and the native Palestinians were not considered People but Savages by the Europeans. While Zionist Colonization began before it, the Balfor Declaration is when Britain gave it’s backing of the movement in order to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ while also creating a Colony in the newly conquered Middle East after WWI in order to exhibit military force in the region and extract natural resources.
That’s when Zionist immigration started to pick up, out of necessity for most as Europe became more hostile and antisemitic. That continued into and during WWII, European countries and even the US refused to expand immigration quotas for Jewish people seeking asylum. The idea that the creation of Israel is a reparation for Jewish people is an after-the-fact justification. While most Jewish immigrants had no choice and just wanted a place to live in peace, it was the Zionist Leadership that developed and implemented the forced transfer, ethnic cleansing, of the native population, Palestinians. Without any Occupation, Apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, there would not be any Palestinian resistance to it.
Herzl himself explicitly considered Zionism a Settler Colonialist project, Setter Colonialism is always violent. The difficulty in creating a democratic Jewish state in an area inhabited by people who are not Jewish, is that enough Palestinian people need to be ‘Transferred’ to have a demographic majority that is Jewish. Ben-Gurion explicitly rejected Secular Bi-national state solutions in favor of partition.
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Zionism’s aims in Palestine, its deeply-held conviction that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and the idea of Palestine’s “civilizational barrenness" or “emptiness” against the background of European imperialist ideologies all converged in the logical conclusion that the native population should make way for thenewcomers.
The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. Indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat.
An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem ”-the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land" and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.
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10 myths of Israel by Ilan Pappe, summerized and full book
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Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate.
Ethnic Cleansing
Good Books on the History
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Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha
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The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
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A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
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The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
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The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
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The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
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The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
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The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
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10 Myths of Israel - Ilan Pappe (summery)
Arab counties shipped Jews to Palestine after they decided to kick them out of their own countries.
Where are the Jews supposed to go?
Little thought expiriment for you: maybe segregating an entire class of people into one secluded corner of the world is fucking stupid? Maybe taking something that requires the murder of thousands or millions isn’t worth the price?
Well, except Europeans never lived in America before Columbus, but Jews did live in Palestine/ Middle East
The Jewish settlers didn’t live in Palestine, they lived in Europe and then moved to Palestine to steal the land. They’re white.
Just because one ancestor a dozen generations ago lived somewhere doesn’t mean you have a right to evict the actual people living on that land.
I don’t agree on wording in the first paragraph, but do agree with the second paragraph.
What now? Evicting all 8 millions of Israeli to make Hamas happy?
How about ending apartheid and making a multiethnic, multi-religious democratic state from the river to the sea? Israelis can become Palestinian, they don’t need to leave.
Palestinians didn’t live in Palestine during that time, either. they migrated when everyone else did.
A ton of them just converted from Judaism. This idea that Arabs flooded into Palestine after kicking all the Jews out is racist revisionist history.
That thinking is like believing you have the right to expel the people that lives in the house your grandmother lived on but left when she got married. But now the house is yours because “here lived my family”.
Yeah, but then add a dozen or more generations. Not your grandma, your many times removed ancestor from before the printing press or some shit.
Which hardly matters when people are taking the homes of people living there currently and killing them. What difference does it make if some of someone’s ancestors centuries ago lived in that general part of the world?
You could justify European colonialism in Africa under similar logic, on the grounds that since humans evolved there before spreading out to the rest of the world, all Europeans have ancestors that lived on that continent at some point in the past and would merely be “reclaiming” it.
Although wouldn’t kicking the Jews out of Palestine be doing exactly the same thing all over again?
I don’t know if I’ve seen anyone arguing for that. Even the people wanting to get rid of the state of Israel aren’t usually wanting to remove the people. Prior to Israel forming, Jews and Muslims lived together in relative peace and harmony. They still do in many places.
The issue comes when one group is told that the land belongs to them specifically, or that the other group is inferior or evil. I don’t think removing Israel is a solution at this point, but it does need to fundamentally change. I don’t see a possibility for an ethno-state to not create these ideas. It needs to just become a state, not a state for jews specifically.
Although wouldn’t kicking the Jews
Why do you conflate Jewishness with Israel?
Yes, I don’t think Israel should be destroyed, for the record, there’s been enough time since it’s founding that people have been born and grown up there without having a say in it’s founding after all. But the Palestinians need to be full citizens of some state or another, a proper state with international recognition, sovereignty and the capacity to defend itself against Israel in the future to the extent that is reasonably possible. In theory that could be an Isreal that didn’t discriminate against them, but as far as current tensions stand, that seems very unlikely to be stable without one group or the other seeking to disenfranchise the other or worse, so they should have their own state, or states potentially depending on how one decides to handle the issue of the west bank and gaza not being geographically connected.
Yep. That’s why I personally think it’s dumb to try and argue for the dissolution of Israel at this point. It’s too late. All you can do at this point is damage control and to try and find an equitable solution to the Israel-Palestine problem that gives both groups the ability to self-govern.
It’d be like kicking all the Russians out of former USSR countries, or Chinese out of Tibet, or white people out of the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Israel should be held accountable for what they’ve done to the Palestinians, but I also don’t think you can reasonably expect for everyone in Israel to pack up and leave at this point.
Jewish people lived next to muslim people in arab countries for a very long time but then ww2 happened and the dumbass americans decided that doing what the nazis wanted to do originally is a good idea so they just kinda said that the european jews should move to this random desert where a lot of middle eastern jews live. You wouldnt deport all the south american, african, asian, etc christians to europe just because of their religion.
Jews did live in Palestine/ Middle East
Look up the history of the Beta Israelis / Ethiopian Jews and their treatment in the reconstituted state of Israel.
Compare that to the treatment of Afrikaner Israeli converts emigrating from South Africa and Russian/Ukrainian Jews fleeing violence in the current Russo-Ukraine War.
You’ll notice one of the groups was targeted for mandatory sterilization and it wasn’t the white folks.
Some did, but the whole point of Israel was a place for European countries to send their Jewish populations.
People who even if they were also ethnically Semitic, were descended from people who voluntarily left the area generations ago.
They could have immigrated there, instead European governments just declared it was theirs now.
Like, imagine if every American with Irish heritage were granted birthright citizenship there and the people who never left are shoved down into an ever shrinking slice of land. That’s what’s happening
were descended from people who voluntarily left the area generations ago
There have been forced deportations from that area for millenia. They’re talked about in the Bible and the Romans did it.
Weird then how the majority of Palestinians are a genetically unbroken set of lineages from before the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Some deportations from very specific areas happened, like from Jerusalem to the West Bank during Roman rule.
Now imagine a civil war happens in the US and the only places spared are the Indian reservations. And when the war ends, with the army, the air force, the national guard, … all destroyed, the Indians start spreading their territory bombing the remnants of the US, with some help from Russia or China or…
Will you find the Indians have the right to carpet bomb NY or Dallas because they lived there 2 or 3 centuries ago?
I think at this stage we can just call manifest destiny “Americanism.”
Stay in school, friend. This was done countless times well before America became a nation.
Palestinians aren’t natives. they migrated at the same time as everyone else, 1 million people in 10 years.
Yep, it was the only habitable parcel of land in the world with zero inhabitants until 1832. Jewish people and Palestinians both saw this weird chunk of land and realized they could just move there since no one else was there.
that’s exactly what happened… 1 million Arabs migrated in less than 10 years. whatever population was there before them was completely out numbered by the Arabs. the migration was 30x the increase seen at the same time the “baby boomers” were booming. that’s 30x population count, not 30x the percentage.
As someone who’s been referred to on here as a “Christian fundamentalist”, I struggle to see the theological justification for either of these events. Although I probably don’t have much to say in regards to these Jews as it’s a different religion, but I don’t understand why some Christians are obsessed with Israel and specifically these Jews having it.
why some Christians are obsessed with Israel
I’d say that Zionism is a Christian idea, but that would be false. It’s a “western” idea that orginated among English upper-class Christians that was utterly antisemitic - the idea that Jewish people will always be an “other” in the white, oops, I meant to say “western,” world and essentially “must go back where they came from.”
Right-wing Jewish people picked up this idea from there. Zionism has never been an exclusively “Jewish” thing and it has always been fundamentally antisemitic - that’s why you can even see neo-nazis singing Israel’s praises.
That’s very interesting - I never thought of it as being anti-semetic, but it makes a bit of sense. As a Christian and from a theological standpoint, I don’t see how a bunch of people descended from the ones who rejected Jesus forming a new country which they call “Israel” should be interpreted as being the same as the Biblical Israel. For all they care, they see us as heretics. Why should we see them as different from the likes of Muslims, cultural (but not) christians, atheists, etc. (Also before you think I’m saying we should hate these groups, I’m not, I actually kind of mean the opposite). I believe the temple’s destruction in AD 70 and the construction of the Dome on the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque 600 year’s later is an intentional thing about the old covenant being gone. I just don’t see why “christian zionism” is even a thing when the Bible is interpreted as a whole.
Because the Christian apocalypse requires the foundation of Israel. The Christian side is basically participating in an apocalypse cult, whether they realize it or not.
I speculate that the reason the GOP is so supportive of Trump is because they believe he’s the literal Antichrist and they think that getting him reelected will bring about the end of days. I don’t have the link on me (though someone else might), but I remember reading an article by a Christian scholar or something about how Trump nailed every possible prophecy about the Antichrist that he could, either in a literal or metaphorical sense, during his presidency. Now, I personally thought some of them were stretching it, but it was still a bit freaky and made me consider the possibility that the GOP actually believes something like that.
The funny/sad part is that if they truly are correct (I highly doubt it, but ehhh…), then that means they’ll be fucked alongside Trump due to their support of him. As far as I can remember, the Bible doesn’t give amnesty to the Antichrist’s supporters just because they believed they were “helping god”; if anything I think I remember the Bible saying the opposite (don’t try and force God’s hand or you’ll eventually face his wrath).
(No, I’m not a Christian, but I still find it fascinating and mildly concerning)
That is deep. I think bringing about the Antichrist is just… Absolutely wrong.
