It seems pretty hard to square this with the rhetoric and actions of Palestinian leadership, especially Hamas.

Like if this was their goal, why are they so opposed to a two state solution? It seems like they could easily have had this if they wanted it. Instead their leaders became obsessed with revenge against a militarily supperior force, and the results lead to the present day.

[To be clear, there have also been plenty of missed opportunities for peace on the israeli side as well, but it seems at least the israeli side has at various points in time made good faith attempts at finding peace, even if it ultimately went no where]

Regardless, at some point it doesn't really matter how popular leadership is, only that, whether rightly or wrongly, they are in a position to give orders and have those orders obeyed.

Israel exists because the West wanted a seat of military power in the Middle East. Just like America exists because various European powers wanted to exploit the Americas, until American leadership wanted to stop cutting them a slice. Just like Peurto Rico is directly under America's authority yet remains entirely unrepresented in it's government. Colonies all, of various justifications.

We exist in a world built by colonialism, by exploitation, who's foundations are lousy with the bones of cultures we dominated, some to extinction.

The idea that Jews needed a nation of their own after the Holocaust was debated at the time and remains so to this day, especially since the nation that was created is now engaged in it's own genocide. However there was no reason at all Israel HAD to be in the Middle East, apart from the fact that none of the colonial powers that worked to create it felt the urge to carve away their own land from themselves, and felt quite comfortable taking it from a bunch of nations who had zero say in the process.

I don't know if a Jewish state was needed or not, I'm not educated enough on the subject to have an opinion, but I know it was far from a consensus, and irrespective of how you want to slice that particular issue, the fact remains the powers that be at the time who were responsible for Israel's creation did not do it on land that was there's to give, but instead on other's. And said other's have had pretty understandable tension with Israel ever since.

I think this is mixing up time periods. This doesn't make sense in the context of the 1940's/early 1950s.

Later on, sure. USA wanted a military base to counter soviets becoming buddy buddy with several of the Arab countries... typical cold war stuff. But i don't think that is historically accurate in the immediate post-war period. If for no other reason than at that point in time Israel would make a shitty military base.

Your tensions with Israel might indeed be understandable, meaning the prevalence of such animosity isn't really something new. In that regard I indeed believe that Israel needs to exist.

I also disagree that this was a plot by the west. Of course some pretty smart political moves enabled the foundation of Israel. But that was a special interest group. There were strategic considerations by nations involved, but there is much more to it.

If you want to get rid of your bad conscience of your colonial part, pointing your fingers at Israel surely is the wrong thing to do.

That said, my education strongly tells me that there is indeed something reflecting fascism coming alive and I don't look at Israel here.

The self reflection about innocents being harmed is something that you can see exclusively in Israel with very few exceptions. That is not an indignation of Palestinian children that have constantly exposed to severe propaganda, but at least have the decency to not blame Israel for that.

The parent comment also was wrong with his analysis of Israel being a result of western powers wanting some form of outpost. This is just bad history.

I don't think people outside Israel think that Israelis are engaged in self reflection. That aspect isn't something that's reported on. There are some Israelis that don't care about innocents in Gaza, and it's easy to just pick up that story if it furthers the reality that you believe in. Reality isn't one, or two, or one hundred stories. It is a continuum.

Israel being a "western colonial enterprise" is not an analysis. It is a talking point. I've seen it hundreds if not thousands of times in online discourse on this topic. It's something that has been pushed for some time (a decade or two?) in various circles. The history of Israel can be studied superficially in one semester in University. To really understand the period and all the nuances, and the related historical processes, get a PhD. There are good lectures on YouTube by historians and good resources on the Internet that give you a taste but you need to put in time.

It's also about the semantics, what exactly do these terms mean, a common theme in the information war arena is to use words in unusual ways or to redefine them in a way more convenient to your cause.

I'd say the connection of Israeli Jews to the land is stronger than the connection of most citizens of most countries to their land. To descibe that as "tenuous" is at best unfair.

[EDIT: erased a bit of not so nice retort]

Israel's right wing isn't very different than right wing parties in other parts of the western world. I'm not a fan of Israel's extreme right but conflating the violence between Israelis and Palestinians with either the rise of fascism or South Africa is just again yield to propaganda. The various governments of the Palestinians, the PA or the Hamas, make the Israeli right wing look centric. Put aside the various labels that are intended to dehumanize the Israelis, after Israel tried in earnest to make peace roughly around the proposed two state solution and was met by a wave of Hamas suicide bombers that impacted at some level every single Israeli, what do you think is an actual solution here?

You're also wrong on the Palestinians willing to move forward. They had plenty of chances. They absolutely do want domination. For the most part the story that land was unjustly stolen is factually wrong. Land was bought by Jews during Ottoman times legally. Palestinians never had a country so that couldn't have been stolen from them either. Palestinians were displaced during 1948, in a war Arabs started against the new state of Israel. Read Israel's declaration of independence to see how Israel would have preferred that play out. Palestinians, and the Arab countries, have inflicted plenty of harm on Jews in the middle east. Jews were ethnically cleansed from most Arab countries and more land was stolen from Jews in the middle east than the entire area of Israel. But sure, the topic of harm and reparations can be discussed once Palestinians decide to stop using violence to pursue their goals (of domination). This is not about reparations anyways.

This fairy tale you're telling yourself here is some westernized story that has nothing to do with the reality on the ground. Sorry if I'm sounding patronizing.

EDIT: and by the way we can totally reverse Canada and New Zealand for example? Let's use those as test cases for your anti-colonialism fix the world sentiment and see how it goes? Those guys have zero claim of any sorts to the land they're on. Israel at least has something.

>Plenty of right wing nazis everywhere in the world.

Yes plenty do. But not many examples where they are armed to the teeth, has a façade of democracy, has the liberty to label the other as human animals, and has practically a free hand in killing the other. Not many the so called neo nazis have that sort of institutionalised power. There are not many examples of this level of apartheid. Not many places where a settler could shoot and kill children and can get away with it.

"ברק אמר אמש ל"הארץ", כי דבריו לא היו בגדר פליטת פה. "למיטב זכרוני יצחק שמיר אמר דבר דומה. בן גוריון, כשנדרש לתאר את עוצמת השנאההערבית נגדנו אמר דבר דומה, וגם דיין אמר דבר דומה. ההתעסקות התקשורתית בעניין הזה היא מגוחכת. מה רצו שאומר? שאם הייתי צעיר פלשתינאי שהווייתו מינקותו היא הוויה פלשתינאית, הייתי הופך להיות מורה בכיתה ג' בבית ספר עממי?" מהליכוד נמסר בתגובה, כי ברק ירד מהפסים, וכי אינו מתאים עוד לייצג מפלגה ציונית במדינת ישראל. "בדבריו ברק מעודד פלשתינאים בגיל המתאים להצטרף לארגוני טרור"."

https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2011-11-16/ty-articl...

I need to find the actual interview if we want to be super precise. But either way, the way this is referred to in the Pro-Palestinian narrative that you're presenting here is incorrect.

Barak isn't saying that Palestinians have no other venue for rising against the "brutal oppression". He's just stating the fact that if he was a Palestinian, and grew up under that ideology, and was in the right age, he would probably be in those organization. He is not justifying that. The point I was making is that Israelis don't view Palestinians as inferior. They view them as wrong, brainwashed, driven by extreme ideologies, etc.

Israel is a democracy. It's not a "facade of democracy". It's not labelling all Palestinians as "human animals" though there were certainly a lot of heated statements and emotions after the Oct 7th attack on Israel. There is no Apartheid. It's armed to the teeth because its neighbours want to destroy it. Settlers in general can't shoot and kill children and get away with it though I do agree that there should be better law enforcement in the west bank (and ideally no settlers until its status is resolved). That's my perspective anyways which I think is well in line with the facts and reality.

You know, you wouldn't be invoking this defense if you weren't aware, deep down inside -- that it really is mostly forcibly expropriated land that the State of Israel currently sits on.

Imagine a defense lawyer making the following argument: "Your honor, my client would never have broken into that house, and stolen that woman's necklace. It goes against everything he was raised to believe in. BTW it was never hers to begin with, so it couldn't have been stolen from her anyway."

No Israeli that I know thinks that Palestinians are inferior.

And yet -- the State of Israel was founded on the belief that its claim to the land and resources was categorically more legitimate than that of the people who (by and large) had been living and thriving in the area continuously for thousands of years -- since before the establishment of the first Israelite settlements, in fact.

The trial analogy is also completely false. The appropriate adjustments to this story is that nobody broke into that house, you actually own the house and it's always been in your family, no necklace was stolen, but you're still put on trial for stealing a necklace that doesn't exist from your own house because you're Jewish.

Your last statement of "fact" is also not fact. It is simply not factually true that all the people that lived in the region have been living and thriving there for thousands of years since before the Israelites. Many Palestinians have immigrated to the area in fairly recent times. Many Gazans are from Egypt. There are probably some Palestinians who do trace back to the Israelites. In general much of the population of the Levant and the middle east in general, including the Israeli Jews from all over the place, goes way back but there's no specific historic continuity of Palestinians in Israel for the most part. There was plenty of population movement and immigration. This is well supported history with plenty of archaeological evidence.

I also think the characterization of Israel as being "founded on the belief that its claim to the land and resources was categorically more legitimate than" is also false. There was no comparison of legitimacy of various claims simply because there were no other claims at the time. Israel was definitely founded on the (factual) belief that it is the historic homeland of the Jewish people who feel a strong connection to it. What we see in practice is that a person of Italian heritage, living in California, taken by force from Mexico, with the aboriginal inhabitants confined to a reserve and all their resources literally stolen after they were genocided and ethnically cleansed, is telling Israeli Jews why their country, founded on their historical land, where they went as refugees in more recent times because they had nowhere to go to, is illegitimate. If we want to litigate every country's legitimacy going back 3000 years, sure, let's do that. Are you an immigrant in Canada? better start packing since you're going back to where your ancient ancestors used to live. This is ofcourse all total nonsense.

You're still put on trial ... because you're Jewish.

If what you mean here is the fact that the State of Israel is often subject to criticism for both for its founding ideology and the violent mechanisms of its creation (or its various attempts to expand its borders and resource claims through the present day) -- no, it's not simply because the people behind this project are of Jewish ancestry. You seem to believe axiomatically that this is in fact the case -- i.e. that all strong critiques in regard to the founding of the State of Israel or its modern policies are basically the Dreyfuss Affair all over again.

I do not share this axiom, so it is unlikely that we will have a productive discussion in regard the finer-grained historical topics.

However I'm not claiming all criticism on Israel is because "the people behind this project are of Jewish ancestry". But certainly antisemitism plays a role. It plays a role in Arab views on Israel and that in turn plays a huge role in the world's take. That's just one of the ways it plays out. There are other factors including geopolitics. I would go so far to say that the majority of criticism of Israel is not in good faith, but sure, not all of it is because there are Jews involved. But certainly that accounts for some portion.

> Imagine a defense lawyer making the following argument: "Your honor, my client would never have broken into that house, and stolen that woman's necklace. It goes against everything he was raised to believe in. BTW it was never hers to begin with, so it couldn't have been stolen from her anyway."

I was going after this analogy which feels completely wrong.

> all strong critiques in regard to the founding of the State of Israel or its modern policies are basically the Dreyfuss Affair all over again.

I disagree with this statement. There's no problem with any critique of Israel in general. Where it becomes a problem is when Israel is singled out. E.g. if there is no critique of the founding of Jordan, which was given as a gift by the British to the Hashemites for helping them during the Arab revolt, then I think this is a problem. Then there is "critique" and there is stuff that's not critique. But for people that are interested in reopening the question of how various countries were founded in general in the 18th, 19th, and 20th century, sure we can have this discussion and include Israel in it for sure. For people whose main focus is simply attacking Israel by any means possible, I think that's a problem. I'm totally with John Lennon "Imagine" on a purely romantic idealistic way, but then there's reality.

I still don't think the original statement I jumped in at ("Palestinians never had a country so that couldn't have been stolen from them") stands on its own, or helps explain the current situation.

Of course they had a country; and hence would not recognize domination by a foreign population -- unless imposed by overwhelming force. The original Zionists were keenly aware of this fact, which is why it has become one of guiding tenants in nearly major strategic decisions Israel has made since.

That can also be criticised. Although what is tend to get lost in these type of arguments is that, it is entirely different to give assistance in ruling a patch of land versus literally displacing people from their land and homes and imposing military control over them.