It's a popular western myth that Israel consists mostly of Europeans. In fact, a majority of Israeli Jewish people are Mizrahim, all of them of middle eastern origin, and themselves victims of a series of counter-Nakbas that took place during and in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war. Yemen, for instance, was once a center of middle eastern Judaism, but the Yemenite Jewish community fled pogroms there en masse.
(For that matter: Jewish people in Europe also fled pogroms, even after World War 2; by way of example, 40 Jewish people were beaten to death with iron pipes in Kielce after a child and his father spread a blood libel story.)
One reason Jewish people get prickly about rhetorical attempts to illegitimize the entire existence of Israel (the "river to the sea" stuff) is that all of the surrounding countries have comparable legitimacy. Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, all drawn up by European powers. Jewish supporters of Israel notice that it only seems to be the Jewish people whose residency is so questioned, and not, say, the Alawites who run Syria.
> It's a popular western myth that Israel consists mostly of Europeans.
I wasn't even aware of that myth so I wonder how popular it really is. Israel consists of original inhabitants of the extended region around present day Israel, population expansion and immigration (about 3 million immigrants). The part that is most visible to Europeans though is the fraction of the latter that stems from Europe because of continuous family ties between Jewish people living here and their family in Israel.
> In fact, a majority of Israeli Jewish people are Mizrahim, all of them of middle eastern origin, and themselves victims of a series of counter-Nakbas that took place during and in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war. Yemen, for instance, was once a center of middle eastern Judaism, but the Yemenite Jewish community fled pogroms there en masse.
Exactly.
> (For that matter: Jewish people in Europe also fled pogroms, even after World War 2; by way of example, 40 Jewish people were beaten to death with iron pipes in Kielce after a child and his father spread a blood libel story.)
Poland is - to this day - quite antisemitic, a shockingly large percentage of the population would qualify for that label. There are big variations depending on which region of Poland you are looking at but overall the picture is quite horrible. I blame the clergy for some of this.
> One reason Jewish people get prickly about rhetorical attempts to illegitimize the entire existence of Israel (the "river to the sea" stuff) is that all of the surrounding countries have comparable legitimacy.
Yes, and that's why the whole region has been an almost eternal source of conflict. The only reasons the West appears to be even remotely interested are oil and Israel, and maybe the latter because of the former.
That myth is the essence of the "settler colonialism" charge levied against Israel, which is not really about the (vile) expropriation of property from Palestinians in the West Bank --- the "settlements", which virtually everyone, including the Israeli public, opposes, but rather based on a notion of Israeli Jewish people as white occupiers oppressing brown people. It's the kernel of "from the river to the sea", that there is (1) a precise moment in (relatively recent) history that establishes who the legitimate residents are, and (2) that moment establishes that Jewish Israelis are illegitimate foreign interlopers.
You'll often literally hear opponents of Israel use the term "European settler colonialism", which lays the misapprehension bare.
I have never heard that term used. Universally, here, in conversations and in the news settlers only refer to the current affairs issues, as in Israeli settlers staking claims in the West Bank.
I don't have an idiosyncratic take on this most recent conflict. I'm a white blue state liberal, my views on that situation are predictable. But Israel being a European colonialist enterprise is false, or, at least if it's true, it's true of every other state in the region, and to an extent insufficient to explain much of anything happening. Most Israeli citizens and most Israeli Jewish people are not of European origin, and a great many of them were quite literally forced to relocate to Israel.
(For that matter: Jewish people in Europe also fled pogroms, even after World War 2; by way of example, 40 Jewish people were beaten to death with iron pipes in Kielce after a child and his father spread a blood libel story.)
One reason Jewish people get prickly about rhetorical attempts to illegitimize the entire existence of Israel (the "river to the sea" stuff) is that all of the surrounding countries have comparable legitimacy. Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, all drawn up by European powers. Jewish supporters of Israel notice that it only seems to be the Jewish people whose residency is so questioned, and not, say, the Alawites who run Syria.