[jkkorn]

Think of judaism as ethnicity. You can be an atheist jew and be granted Israeli citizenship. Israel is the historic homeland of the jewish culture/people.

I'd liken it to something like Country X giving special immigration privileges if you have ancestry from country X.

They don't deny citizenship if you're palestinian, granted it's as difficult if you were trying to get citizenship coming from any other country

[whimsicalism]

I have a solid conception of judaism, I've lived in places with thriving jewish communities my entire life, and am sephardic-descended myself.

> it's as difficult if you were trying to get citizenship coming from any other country

Nope, it's more so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_and_Entry_into_Isr...

In general, I am opposed to ethnostates and granting nationality based on what bloodline you come from. I think it is ironic that there is a right of "return" for Jewish people, but no such right of return for people who were displaced during the Nakba.

[edanm]

(For context, I'm a Jewish Israeli)

I'll be honest - I'm also opposed to "ethnostates" in general, and would much prefer the world moved beyond looking at each other based on ethnicity.

But given the fact that Israel was kind of explicitly created because the world hasn't moved past looking at ethnicity, I'm not sure what my solution is. I'm an Israeli Jew - I know that if Israel wouldn't exist, my life would be far more dangerous. And that's not a hypothetical - a huge chunk of my family were murdered for no other reason than being Jewish. The only guarantee I have that this won't happen again is that there is a strong Jewish state.

Do I like that the world is like this? No! Not at all. But that's the way the world is. And considering that most other groups do have effectively their own countries, I don't see a reason that Jews shouldn't also have their own country.

(This is all talking about the concept of an "ethnostate" in specific, not getting into the question of whether Israel being founded in the location it is was wrong in the first place - the arguments above would work just as well if Israel had been founded anywhere else.)