[Newtonip]

It's a state founded on ethnic cleansing. People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves.

In late 1947, their militias begun a campaign of massacring and expelling Palestinians from mostly defenseless villages. These refuges pouring into neighboring Arab countries is what prompted the 1948 war. When the war ended, they murdered any civilians trying to return to their homes.

Gaza was originally a refugee camp created for receiving these expelled people.

The ethnic cleansing and denial of rights has continued ever since. The current Gaza war is not when the crimes against humanity started. Israel has been commiting crimes against humanity throughout its entire existence.

[JumpCrisscross]

> People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves

Including a sizeable Jewish minority.

The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region. But it’s a continuation of outsiders (in particular Westerners, though the Iranians also bought this settler-colonialist nonsense which led to their recent miscalculations) with no connection to the land drawing up broad moral claims for how the Middle East should be divided up.

[Newtonip]

> Including a sizeable Jewish minority.

There was a Jewish community in Palestine (mostly centered around Jerusalem) but they did not come up with the Zionist project. Actually, many were opposed and some of their descendants still do so to this day.

> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region

The (European) architects of the Zionist project literally called it colonialism.

"You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews … How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial." -Theodor Herzl

Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects when arguing the people living there would fight back against their colonizers and the need for numbers and strength to counter them.

[tdeck]

> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region.

"Outsiders" like the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association that funded Zionist settlement in Palestine? The problem with folks who try to claim that this is ahistorical is that contemporary Zionists talked all the time about colonizing Palestine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Jewish_Colonizatio...

[pphysch]

There's plenty of videos of orthodox Jewish people getting brutalized in public by Israeli government thugs. There are many Jewish voices that oppose the genocide. Please don't conflate Judaism with a violent project of political extremism, even though the latter uses the former cynically as a "human shield".

[volleyball]

In 1920 (the year when British took over Palestine from the Ottomans) the jewish population was less than 10% Jewish and represented less than 1% of global Jewry. By 1948, after the British flooded in Jewish migrants mainly from Europe and the Americas, the population became about ~65% + arab and 35+% Jewish. Zionism was always predicated on Ethnic cleansing from the start and the founders of zionists were always aware of that fact.

“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.” - Theodore Herzl , Father of Zionism in 1895.

"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]. I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." - David Ben Gurion, Father of Israel.

"the world has become accustomed to the idea of mass migrations and has become fond of them. … Hitler – as odious as he is to us – has given this idea a good name in the world." - Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Founder of Revisionist Zionism, 1940.

Zionism is textbook settler-colonialism. I dont see it worth even arguing the point.

[erikerikson]

> how the Middle East should be divided up

Given how every group claims it is a holy place, I'd expect each group would want it held in a state of peace, prosperity, and reverence for the benefits of creation. Instead they all seem bent on holding their holy lands in states of violence, discord, and waste.

You're not wrong that there is deep external interference but wouldn't holy peoples rise above any of that to do better from every side?

[cenamus]

Some people seem to have the idea that most of the people are European Jews, when in reality, it was more Arab jews, in large part due to the Nazis. The standardized language even reflects this, closet to the local pronounciation of hebrew than the "accents" in Europe. Or even Jiddish

[catlover76]

Having a sizeable minority of some kind does not really justify or excuse kicking out other ethnicities and religions to form a new state based on the primacy of that group. The mental gymnastics to think that expelling people living there while bringing in a population from Europe to displace them--literally to the point of having them move into homes vacated by Arabs who were expelled--is something other than a settler-colonialist is pretty astounding.

And the ambivalence and opposition of the Jews of Palestine to the Zionist project is fairly well-documented.

Rabbi Yakov Shapiro talks a lot about that, I think Gabor Mate does to some extent as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7POk0hVsgM

[dylan604]

> People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves.

Isn't that just history repeating itself? Even in the old testament, they had to clear the current inhabitants of their promised land after wander the desert for 40 years.

[throwaway48476]

Archeology suggests biblical Israel was actually a federation of tribes, some of which were enemies in early parts of the Bible. For example, the philistines which became one of the 12 tribes and also are the origin of the term Palestinian.

[avip]

Many states were "founded on ethnic cleansing". They are widely considered to posses a right of existence, and even expected to defend their citizens.

(excuse me for ignoring the history trolling)

[breakyerself]

A right to exist doesn't justify a million other things that are completely unacceptable about the Israeli state.

[Newtonip]

> Many states were "founded on ethnic cleansing".

So what? I don't get your point.

Israel has continuously been oppressing the Palestinians for almost 80 years. That is immoral. Israel is in the wrong.

> They are widely considered to posses a right of existence, and even expected to defend their citizens.

You are just jumping to a different topic. I said nothing about its right to exist.

[sillyfluke]

Really? Is this why the world does not recognize the north part of Cyprus despite Turkish Cypriots not butchering any Greeks south of the border since 1974, when they unilaterally declared independence?

Please name some other countries post-WW2 that were "founded by ethnic cleansing" and embraced by the international community and educate the rest of us. And please don't include previously warring peoples whose leaders agreed on a population exchange and imposed that mandatory trauma on their own people.

Palestine, Cyprus, and India had the unenviable luck of being long-term victims of a last gasp British empire's farewell divide-and-conquer gambit.

(and excuse me for ignoring the deflection trolling)

[blablabla123]

I don't think it's possible to understand the whole issue without taking into account how people fled into Israel, both because of genocide in Europe as well as prosecution in multi-ethnic yet predominantly Arab states. Germany being in an awkward position of being an economically dominant state but also having contributed to the whole misery. Also the US is far from neutral probably due to deeper ties that are just part of reality. You cannot undo the past but I don't think it's possible to unroll the whole problem without properly confronting it. The increasingly horrific escalations have obviously completely detached from any reason

[Bilal_io]

They fled into Palestine*, and later established the state of Israel. Saying they fled into Israel assumes there was an Israel to begin with, but there wasn't.

[kennywinker]

There were hundreds of Palestinians held by the IDF without charges on Oct 6th. What’s another word for “held without charges”? Yes it’s hostage.

There were 3 days of idf bombing in gaza in september 2023.

Bringing up “hostages” as a reason for anything is a lie, a distortion, and a laundering of genocide.

[alkyon]

Maybe because it happened 1000 years ago and there are people being killed in Gaza at this very moment?

[arp242]

The difference is that e.g. Māori or native Americans and whatnot are full citizens with full rights.

The "founded on ethnic cleansing" is not the most important bit from the previous post. It's the "ethnic cleansing and denial of rights has continued ever since" that's the most important bit.

[Newtonip]

> Facts is that most of the palestinians fled in the earlier phases of the war, and the very little instances of forced evacuation of the population where within the borders of Israel/Palestine, not out of the country.

People don't leave their homes voluntarily. They leave because of violence or fear of violence. The fact is there were Palestinians living all over the map at the "before" stage. Settlers came to form an ethno-state. The orders given to the Zionist militia commanders were literally "cleanse" this or that village. In the "after" stage, all these people are gone from most of the map and the ones trying to return to their homes are shot dead.

That is ethnic cleansing period. The goal was to create an ethno-state in a place where people already lived. These people have been getting confined to smaller and smaller areas ever since. And the oppression continues to this day.

> Regarding the "State founded on ethnic cleaning", in recent times this includes entire South America, parts of Africa, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

So what? What's your point?

[flkenosad]

Judaism isn't an ethnicity. And I would agree those states are founded on the same ideals. All should be abolished.

[pydry]

>they have ethnically cleansed the Jews like in Hebron

Have you been to Hebron? I'd highly encourage it because you will see literally the most vile state sponsored racists in the western world.

The ethnic cleansing is not as violent as the gazan genocide but it ought to make any person with a conscience sick to the stomach. You walk around looking up at the settlement guards (more of them than there are settlers) pointing guns at you from guard towers as the racist settlers living above literally throw trash down on the Palestinian untermensch living below them.

Every year they squeeze Palestinians who live and work there further and further out.

It's also the home of the venerated terrorist Baruch Goldstein (10% of Israelis consider him a hero because he shot up a mosque), his shrine and Itamir ben Gvir - the national security minister who idolized him.

After seeing that place I became convinced that if anywhere was going to commit a nazi style genocide it would be israel. 8 years later thats exactly what happened.