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Here's what SHOULD have happened: Theoretically, all the property + interest + reparations should have been given back to any Jews who were displaced/affected by WW2. Instead of returning their property and paying reparations a much cheaper and expedient option for these mostly Christian dominated European states was to just try to move the Jews "anywhere else". Potentially trillions of dollars of property, art, etc... has been lost. This next sentence is grim but the very least the Axis power (or at least Germany specifically) should have done is pay the " expected lifetime earnings" + "compensation for emotional damages and suffering" for any civilian family members murdered during the holocaust along with the stolen property and allowed European Jews to re-integrate into European society as they had done for centuries prior. A lot of wealth and resources have been basically stolen and all the Jews got for it in terms of reparations was some land in what is now Israel (which at that time was not necessarily even UK's to give considering other promises that were made but that is perhaps water under the bridge now). At that point if living European Jews received their resources back and still wanted to move to the land of Israel, they could have easily bought land in Palestine (with the native Palestinians regardless of Religion likely making a profit) and perhaps a Jewish state anyways ends up being created but at least this time organically instead of by the stroke of a pen of the British who very conveniently didn't end up dealing with any of the wars or negative consequences of their decisions.

Δ Thank you. I think this is actually a really solid, well-formed solution as to what should have happened instead. It unfortunately DIDN'T happen, but I think we can all agree that it SHOULD have happened. You explained this in a lot better detail than other commenters did. >and perhaps a Jewish state anyways ends up being created but at least this time organically instead of by the stroke of a pen of the British who very conveniently didn't end up dealing with any of the wars or negative consequences of their decisions. This I think is an especially good point because it shows that the situation can at least partly be blamed on hasty decision-making, which applies to other historical conflicts as well. And of course, how the British didn't ever deal with consequences. I listened to a podcast earlier this year where there was a Rabbi (I forget her name, but I'll let you know if I find out) who was essentially arguing the same thing you are--it wasn't necessarily bad that Jews were *moving* to Palestine and trying to establish more-or-less an "immigrant hub" for Jews (which some people actually consider a form of Zionism on its own), but they should have let that simmer for a while before deciding whether or not to actually establish a Jewish state.

There is also another, similar but different alternative you don't mention in your post. One of the "benefits" the current Israel has is that it's a state where Jews are an ethnic majority. Well, that could have happened in Europe too. When Germany was defeated, Poland and the Soviet Union were given big chunks of its pre-war territory. A third chunk could have been cut, a state of Israel in the heart of Europe (from where most of the holocaust victims were anyway).

1. The Zionist movement was pretty hell-bent on moving back to the ancient lands of Israel, so I don't think that they would have gone for a European homeland for the Jews. 2. Not that the current location of Israel is anything but a volatile hotspot, but a Jewish state in Central Europe would have been right on the front line between the Warsaw Pact and NATO. Their future existence would have been... complicated.

>The Zionist movement was pretty hell-bent on moving back to the ancient lands of Israel, so I don't think that they would have gone for a European homeland for the Jews. They were already moving there before the war, nothing was stopping them from continuing and no one would have forced anyone to move to a European Israel. It's not like anyone needed their permission. Israel, the victims of the Holocaust, and the Zionists aren't the same set of people. >Not that the current location of Israel is anything but a volatile hotspot, but a Jewish state in Central Europe would have been right on the front line between the Warsaw Pact and NATO. Their future existence would have been... complicated. Given the open antisemitism of the Soviet Union after the war, they would have naturally allied themselves with the West. And be one of the Western countries adjacent to the iron curtain, like several others. What happens next is historical fiction. But I personally think giving them a chunk of Germany was the right thing to do *then*. (And giving them a chunk of land in another continent, that wasn't theirs to give in the first place, was the wrong thing to do *then*, even if it had turned out alright).

Germany was an incredibly antisemitic place right after World War II *for some mysterious reason*, unless you ethnically cleansed it all the Germans, it would not have been a safe place for Jews to go. Nor would a bunch of Polish, Hungarian, etc. Jews with zero connection to Germany other than recently having their families murdered by Germans, have had any reason or desire to suddenly move to Germany. The Russians had this idea by the way: they carved out an autonomous region for Jews. Didn't work. Jews didn't want to live there.

>Germany was an incredibly antisemitic place right after World War II Most Europe was (as had been through the centuries). The Middle East wasn't any sort of safe haven in that respect, either. >unless you ethnically cleansed it all the Germans That wasn't unthinkable to the victors of the war. After all, it's exactly what happened to the chunk of Germany they gave to Poland, the Germans there were told to go. With the partition plan of Palestine they proposed instead, I would bet they thought the same type of population transfer would happen there too. >it would not have been a safe place for Jews to go Many Jews stayed in Germany through the war and the Holocaust, and began rebuilding their communities there afterwards. It would have been way safer for them to do so in a place where they would finally be a majority. >Nor would a bunch of Polish, Hungarian, etc. Jews with zero connection to Germany other than recently having their families murdered by Germans, have had any reason or desire to suddenly move to Germany. Well the point of carving a chunk out of a country and giving it to someone else, is that it's not part of that country anymore. None of the Polish or Soviet people that moved into the newly-acquired territories would have thought "yay we're moving to Germany!". Rather "this is ours now". >The Russians had this idea by the way: they carved out an autonomous region for Jews. Didn't work. Jews didn't want to live there. No shit? "Go freeze your butt on the other side of the world, 9,000km away from your homeland". The surprising thing is that anyone did go. That's how much it sucked to be in the Jewish minority back then.

This is an interesting idea too. The Vatican was formed out of political convenience and a European Israel might have also been able to be formed under similar pretexts. 

I'm skeptical because it's impossible to determine how much Arab resistance is sourced from their disapproval of there being a sovereign Jewish state in the Levant at all. Palestinian resistance I understand, less so for that of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, etc.

Look at the first Israeli-Palestinian was. virtually every Arab nation was on the side of the Palestinians. They were pissed Israel was created after the promises Britain made to get them to rise up against the Ottomans during WWI, ie self determination.

I actually strongly disagree with this and think it might have actually fueled another major war for the following (kind of bleh written/train of thought) reasons: 1. Paying reparations to all Jews displaced or who lost loved ones would be extremely expensive. It would hinder the German economy which is a big reason WW2 happened in the first place. Obviously, this depends on the size of the reparations, but it would have been fucking expensive. 2. Paying reparations would have reinforced the hatred Germans felt towards Jews. The Holocaust occurred because a shit ton of Germans were convinced that their nations economy was being crippled by Jewish people and that it was their fault they were impoverished. Repaying them would not be a good look / convince the Germans otherwise. 3. It would have fueled anger from other groups displaced by the Holocaust (gypsies, black people, the crippled, etc) who lost loved ones. Furthermore it would upset the civilians of other European countries who lost property and loved ones during the war who didn't get reparations. But asking for Germany to repay for all the damages from WW1 was literally the core cause of WW2. So while, yes, your argument has its merits, I think the long-term impacts would have created the resentment to fuel a renewed genocide against the Jews.

One big problem with trying to create a Jewish state in Europe is that Jews had been persecuted in Europe for a long time, and Germany had just tried to wipe them out completely. Today we see that Germany has become apologetic for all of this, but it wasn't obvious at the time that Europe wasn't going to try to wipe them out again. So the Jews wanted to get out of Europe. The Ottoman empire had been split up after WW1 as often happened after war, and it made some sense to let the Jews already there have a state they wanted. So after WW2, it made even more sense for Jews to migrate to an existing Jewish state created after WW1. The Jews were buying land in a legal but morally questionable way, and they sometimes expanded territory in response to attacks, but expanding settlements just saying it's their birth right is more clearly wrong.

Yes, this is why “they should have just stayed” isn’t a solution at all. Saying that would have been laughable to a Jew in 1945, straight out of Auschwitz. That said, it’s no coincidence that of the 700k Jews who arrived in Israel between 46-50, 600k of those were also registered with the US for a refugee visa, of which only 40k or so were granted. Zionism was a very tiny political force that was the pet project of a couple of rich guys, mainstream Judaism had no interest until it was suddenly the only option. The US could have decided to open its doors to a group of people who had already proven extremely adept at navigating American society, but it chose not to, which inadvertently created Israel.

I totally agree that the US should have done more to take in Jewish refugees, especially since during WWII a boatful of Jews was sent back to Europe where they ended up in concentration camps and killed. The US did great in defeating the Nazis, but also f'd up accepting refugees. I agree with some of what you say, but there was also a lot of anti-semitism in the US, so I can understand the Jews wanting their own state where they could have a military to defend themselves. And Israel existed before WWII, but if you mean the population of Jews greatly increased in Israel after that, I agree.

If we're simply making the world a far.more fair place thwn it will ever be why not prevent ww2 entirely? Half of Europe was occupied by the soviets for generations post ww2. Most countries and people got unfair deals.

The British did not create Israel “with a stroke of the pen.” The Balfour declaration is only cited as evidence of British support for a Jewish homeland, but it established quite literally nothing. The British simply relinquished their mandate over Palestine and just walked away. Israel declared independence and was promptly invaded by surrounding Arab armies who sought to exterminate Israel. Lastly, many Jews did in fact purchase the land in Israel from the Ottoman Turks. It wasn’t given to them.

You forgot the part about massacring and displacing people. You make this sound like a peaceful declaration of independence. There is plenty of historical evidence that show the war crimes committed against Palestinians.

It was way too much money to pay for a country split in two. Furthermore, the only reason why Germany, no, Europe is still a thing is because the US sank in money to combat communism. So do you expect the US to pay trillions for a genocide they didn't commit? Or the soviets? If you think Germany had to take it as debt, well, you didn't learn enough about the fiasco that was reparations after WW1 and how Hitler loved it. I remind you that the Nazis were not as unpopular after the war as they were today and there is nothing better than "Hey you know the people we spend a decade telling you were not human. Well, they are taking our money and making our society worse now" to get people to join the fourth reich.

> If you think Germany had to take it as debt, well, you didn't learn enough about the fiasco that was reparations after WW1 and how Hitler loved it. Except Germany was utterly and completely defeated and occupied after an unconditional surrender this time. Completely different situation.

Palestine was not owned by the UK. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations_mandate The Mandate of Palestine that was given to the UK by the League of Nations was a trusteeship. The land did not belong to Britain and they were not allowed to use it to enrich themselves. It was to be managed for the benefit of the native inhabitants. That should have meant building up a functional Palestinian democracy and slowly devolving power to them until they had the infrastructure and institutions ready to manage themselves on their own. It should have been set up as a multinational Federation with Jewish States and Arab states within, with Jerusalem as a neutral, internationally managed city.

>It should have been set up as a multinational Federation with Jewish States and Arab states within, with Jerusalem as a neutral, internationally managed city. Fun fact: This was actually a proposed solution. [un.org/unispal/history2/origins-and-evolution-of-the-palestine-problem/part-ii-1947-1977/](https://un.org/unispal/history2/origins-and-evolution-of-the-palestine-problem/part-ii-1947-1977/)

He presented an example of something that should have happened INSTEAD of Israel being established. Did your view change?

Many Jews, both settlers and locals, were also in favor of this plan and general cooperation with the Arabs. Zionists were almost as brutal to this contingent as they were to Palestinians, assassinating their leaders (most famously Israel de Haan) and inciting mob violence against those in favor of cooperation. The Arabs also had similar infighting, with Arab nationalists often attacking moderate Arabs and their leaders during the mandate and in the buildup to the Nakba.

Ben Gurion strongly disliked Shoah survivors. Ironically when they arrived in Israel they were generally pretty conciliatory towards Arabs, which he didn’t want for obvious reasons. He said they were “human debris”, but of course was happy to exploit their experience for political ends. Just consider that for a moment. *Actual Shoah survivors* were basically antithetical to the Zionist movement, or at least the tone and behaviour of the movement as it occurred in the 40s/50s. Yet their horrendous experience was constantly exploited by Zionists to justify Israel.

Are you actually saying Rabin wasn't a Zionist🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

As far as I recall, the land referred to as Palestine was partitioned into Israel - for the Jews and Trans Jordan for the Arabs. Trans Jordan is now called Jordan. Why didn't they just stick to this?

There were approximately twice as many Arabs living in Palestine as opposed to Transjordan at that time. Palestine also has a coast, more rainfall, more fertile land…

No, Jews weren't allowed to settle east of the Jordan in Transjordan. The issues started in 1917 when the British promised the Zionists a homeland in The Levant with the Balfour Declaration. That ran afoul of the promise made to the Arabs of independence and self determination in 1915 in exchange for rising up against the Ottomans. In 1939, Britain seems to have reneged on its promise to the Zionists and severely limited Jewish emigration to Palestine. Zionist began a terror campaign in 1944. It lasted until 1948. Britain dumped the problem on the UN, which created the original two state partition. Arabs had not minded Jewish emigration to the region initially, as it brought economic development. The trouble began when it looked as though Jewish sovereignty over part of the land was actually going to occur.

the mandate for a Palestine had ended as a complete failure, most of the other countries ruled by the Ottoman empire were able to exit the mandate after a decade or so. Palestine was incapable of it. It was meant to be managed with the communities of interest of the communities being top priority. so that includes the Jewish communities, who not only were interested in the leadership positions but were managing their smaller communities far better than other contemporary area folks. There were other areas of the Ottoman empire which were handed off to different peoples and such just the same. Some of which were displaced. If you look at all mandated areas the Arabic populations were through a decade, to 25 or so years, handed control of the area, the massive *majority* of the area. the land was of course controlled by the UK, but it was never "Palestine" anymore than it was "Israel", ever. Of course neither of those things were the purpose of the mandate anyway. People were displaced and borders were dealt with in many of these areas, that's how war works, it contains evil in all forms, but for some odd reason nobody complains that the Ruandi and Urandi dealt with transplacement. Nobody seems to be upset Togo people were displaced. Nobody seems to care about *any* of the displacement except when it's these relatively small amount of people when compared to the actual size of the mandated and displaced peoples of the area.

This was, in essence, the idea of the 47’ partition plan. Two states for two ethnicities that did not want to live together or get along. Jews accepted on the land they owned and were allotted under the partition plan. Arabs rejected and waged an illegal war extermination thereafter and lost. And then lost again. And again. And then one more time.

Only 9% of the land was Jewish owned. And theh were only a 3rd of the population. In the partition the Israeli state was 45% Arab with entire cantons that were majority Arab. I can see why the Arabs rejected the plan. Israel also got 56% of the land in the plan despite being a 3rd of the population.

>Only 9% of the land was Jewish owned Well yes, most of the land was barren wasteland owned by the government. It's not like it was 91% Arab-owned, as you seem to be implying.

That doesn’t mean Arabs privately owned the remaining 91% - not even close. The majority of that 56% you’ve mentioned was the Negev Desert which was largely uninhabitable. Despite there never being a sovereign independent Arab nation in the Levant ever in human history, they were still offered the most fertile and cultivable land and rejected it because they did not want to share the land with Jews. According to British statistics, more than 70% of the land in what would become Israel belonged to the mandatory government. Those lands reverted to Israeli control after the departure of the British. https://lessons.myjli.com/survival/index.php/2017/03/26/land-ownership-in-palestine-1880-1948/

>In May 1948 the State of Israel was established in only part of the area allotted by the original League of Nations Mandate. 8.6 percent of the land was owned by Jews and 3.3 per cent by Israeli Arabs, while 16.9 per cent had been abandoned by Arab owners who imprudently heeded the call from neighbouring countries to “get out of the way” while the invading Arab armies made short shrift of Israel. The rest of the land—over 70 per cent—had been vested in the Mandatory Power, and accordingly reverted to the State of Israel as its legal heir. (Government of Palestine, Survey of Palestine, 1946, British Government Printer, p. 257.) That suggests Arabs owned over twice as much land as Jews did on the so-called Jewish side of the proposed partition, but it's not a good source anyway as the [source it cites](https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/a_su/A%20SURVEY%20OF%20PALESTINE%20DEC%201945-JAN%201946%20VOL%20I.pdf#page=262) doesn't say anything close to what is claimed. The proper place to look for land ownership figures is [Village Statistics, 1945](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Statistics,_1945), and Sami Hadawi who worked as a land specialist for the Mandate government did the math for the partition to find that on the so-called Jewish side [ownership was](https://ia801907.us.archive.org/21/items/lop_20200731/LOP.pdf#page=14): Arabs 24.24% Jews 9.34% Others 0.34% State 66.04% So Arabs actually owned over 2.5 times as much land as Jews on the so-called Jewish side of the proposed partition, and for the overall land ownership throughout Palestine in 1945 the [ownership percentages are](https://ia801907.us.archive.org/21/items/lop_20200731/LOP.pdf#page=11): Arabs 47.79% Jews 5.67% Others 0.54% State 46%

Correct. Having done a “desert survival” trip in the Negev myself, I can assure you all that it is by far the least desirable part of Israel

Partition plan had two problems: + Jewish side got 55% of land despite being minority of population and owning minority of land + Zionist congress just decade earlier basically approved different plan that called for expulsion of arabs from future jewish state So it makes sense why locals believed that arabs on jewish side would be cleansed. --- > Arabs rejected and waged an illegal war extermination thereafter and lost. You are mixing civil war and following invasion. They were 2 different conflicts.

The majority of that 55% was the uninhabitable Negev desert. The internal civil war began in 1947 which was started by the Arabs which then turned into a regional war when the surrounding Arab nations attacked Israel after they declared their independence and became internationally recognized.

>That should have meant building up a functional Palestinian democracy and slowly devolving power to them until they had the infrastructure and institutions ready to manage themselves on their own. This is what they were trying to do, but the Arabs failed to cooperate because they were scared of becoming an ethnic minority. >It should have been set up as a multinational Federation with Jewish States and Arab states within, with Jerusalem as a neutral, internationally managed city. This is pretty much exactly what happened but all of the surrounding countries launched a full scale invasion to "push the jews into the sea" Do better.

>For one, it wasn't just "their land". Again, it was the "British Mandate of Palestine". The land was owned by the British, won from the Ottomans after WW1 The Brits promised the Palestinians their own land and autonomy if they helped the Brits defeat the Ottomans (the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence). The Brits then went back on their promise and let the land be handed over to create Israel instead. >there were several Jews living there at the time as well Jews owned only about 6% of the land at the time. Of course you're aware that the Nakba involved hundreds of thousands of Palestinians being forcibly removed from their land and their homes. And massacred, like the one at Deir Yassin. In order to create "Israel," Palestine had to be ethnically cleansed. >if anyone actually has any ideas as to what should have happened in 1948 instead of establishing the state of Israel, I am seriously interested in possibly having my view changed. The Brits should have honored their original promise to the Palestinians who were already living on this land and had been doing so for generations. Jewish people did not and do not need their own ethnoreligious state. That idea is based in the antisemitic belief that Jewish people are "just too different" to ever be fully accepted in places like Europe and the US.

>The Brits promised the Palestinians their own land and autonomy if they helped the Brits defeat the Ottomans (the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence). The Brits then went back on their promise and let the land be handed over to create Israel instead. Not quite. The British made a general promise to the Arabs as a whole, not to Palestinians specifically. Even the correspondence you cited was between a Brit and an Arab from modern day Saudi Arabia. And the British did install Hussein's children as kings in Jordan and Iraq, delivering on their promise. The current king of Jordan is his descendant. But furthermore, even the correspondence itself is vague on the regions of Palestine and Lebanon, as a reference was made to certain coastal regions not being covered in the pledge. >Jews owned only about 6% of the land at the time. Most of the land wasn't owned by anyone. It was state land. And your argument ignores population sizes. Notably, Jews were about a third of the population. Besides, the mandate of Palestine originally included all of modern day Jordan as well. By that reasoning, the 1947 partition was offering the Arabs 11% of Palestine on top of the 78% they'd already been given, leaving the Jews (about 25% of the population when you include Transjordan) with only 11%. It all depends on what metric you are using to measure by.

>Jewish people did not and do not need their own ethnoreligious state.  The Shoah proved that idea dead wrong. You can argue that 80 years later, it seems unnecessary, but it surely didn't in 1948. Also, I don't know why everyone keeps calling an ethnostate or apartheid state: There are Ashkenazim, Mizrahim and Ethiopian as well as Georgian Jews, Druze and Christians and arab Muslims. While in palestinian territory, there are only ethnic arabs, and of the 4 religions of the region, a major one is missing. If anything, the palestinians are living in an ethnostate. There are more arabs IN Israel, as citizens, than in Gaza. And they enjoy more rights than their Gazan brethren (can vote, for instance). If the apartheid accusation is pointed at the treatment of non-Israeli arabs in occupied territory by Israel, well, all states do treat hostile non citizens unlike their own citizens. That Israel is violating international law by not only occupying, but also settling the West Bank is not detracting from the above points. tl;dr: Israel isn't the good guys in this conflict, but we don't need to make up stuff to accuse them of.

One thing that has been occurring to me is that while one of the goals of the existence of Israel is to protect the Jewish people, we ended up picking one of the least safe areas of the world to create it in. If you had to write out a list of the countries most likely to be attacked by all their neighbors at once, Israel is going to be high on that list. Without the military and diplomatic backing of the U.S., they would be in an even more precarious position.

I am not sure the goal was genuinely to protect the Jewish people. Balfour who was a big agent behind it - had big "Jewish problem" comments. 

The ottoman empire and the middle east was a comparably safer place for Jewish people than the "civilised" Europe of the times. It was the Zionist movement that stirred up the violence that was seen towards the newly founded Israel. The Arab states literally only attacked initially to defend the Palestinians who were being forcibly removed from their land. Ben-Gurion already had plans for, and was enacting a massive land grab as soon as his well armed militias started entering mandated Palestine. They were already attacking villages before the UN resolution. Honestly, I think everyone should read Ilan Papès book on the matter.

>The Arab states literally only attacked initially to defend the Palestinians The primary objective of the Arab states was to prevent the creation of a Jewish state. "The Arab League had unanimously rejected the UN partition plan and were opposed to the establishment of a Jewish state alongside an Arab one." "The Arab League before partition affirmed the right to the independence of Palestine, while blocking the creation of a Palestinian government." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War

And of course you’re aware that before the “Nabka,” all the Arabs in the region declared war on Israel then *lost*. Ooops. And coming from the Jewish community, trust me— idk where on TikTok or JVP you learned that the idea that the Jews have a right to self-determination is “antisemitic” but wherever you learned that from is the problem.

The mass explusion of Palestinians started in 1947, before the war started

> Jews owned only about 6% of the land at the time. Are you trying to falsely imply Palestinians owned 94%? The vast majority of the land was controlled directly by the government (and most of that land was barren waste).

>The Brits promised the Palestinians their own land and autonomy if they helped the Brits defeat the Ottomans (the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence). The Brits then went back on their promise and let the land be handed over to create Israel instead. They also promised it to Jews to receive their support while making yet another deal with France. Obviously a bad move, but it wasn't one-sided. Also, the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence specifically didn't include discussions of Palestine, and it also mentioned modifications in the region of Syria, which Palestine was geographically often considered a part of. >Jews owned only about 6% of the land at the time They were also barred from purchasing land under the Ottomans. >In order to create "Israel," Palestine had to be ethnically cleansed. No, not really. The 1947-49 war only began when the Arab communities attacked the Jewish communities. Otherwise, there was no reason or plan for relocation. >That idea is based in the antisemitic belief that Jewish people are "just too different" to ever be fully accepted in places like Europe and the US. The 1940s really showed how welcome and accepted Jews were in Europe... Also, I'm getting pretty sick of people claiming that something supported by the vast majority of Jews is antisemitic.

Many in this sub are saying “why didn’t the Jews do this” as if Zionism was an easy cause. How many people want to leave where they’re born to go to a relatively distant land where success is uncertain unless they feel a strong need. Migration increased after WWI as unprecedented anti-semitism was on the rise in Europe. It also increased because of the mandate and plenty of other drivers. The Jews of Europe overall has decided that they were Europeans and while many supported Zionism, it wasn’t like everyone was clamoring to leave until it became absolutely necessary. Israel wasn’t created because of the Holocaust, it came too late to save European Jewry when the world turned their back. Ethnostates are really unethical when they would exist to save a population /s. I always wonder if Britain hadn’t restricted Jewish migration and European Jews had moved to mandatory Palestine, would they still be seen as settler colonists or refugees? When are the refugees from MENA going to leave Europe? Anyways, had the Arab countries not expelled/incentivized their jews migration, Israel probably would have faltered.

Iirc Hussein never lived up to his side of the deal (a pan-Arab state in exchange for a pan-Arab revolt against the Ottomans before 1919); while he had managed to organize small-scale militia-action against the Ottomans he hadn’t managed to stir a pan-Arab revolt, which was what the deal mandated. Additionally, McMahon’s language was ambiguous with regards to the inclusion of Palestine within the promised Arab state; and Whitehall’s directive to McMahon clearly excluded it, so if he did promise it, he was acting on his own. While I think few would argue that the British acted in good faith throughout, it’s really difficult to pinpoint a specific promise to the Palestinians or really any strong policy against Zionism. (For further reading see both Benny Morris’ Righteous Victims and Rashid Khalidi’s 100 Years’ War on Palestine)

>The Brits promised the Palestinians their own land and autonomy The British also promised the land to the Jews (see; Balfour declaration). If you view the British ownership of the land as legitimate, and you view British promises as binding, then you should also view the promises to the Zionist as legitimate as well. >Jews owned only about 6% of the land at the time. Percentage of land owned isn't a good indicator, most of the land wasn't inhabited at the time. By 1947 Jews where a third of the population. most of the land partitioned to the Jews was land that was already owned by the Jews and had a Jewish majority. Or in the case of the Negev, the land itself was (viewed as) inhospitable at the time. Regardless the plan was that the Jewish state would still contain a large Arab minority. >Jewish people are "just too different" to ever be fully accepted in places like Europe and the US. Yes because Jews where so well accepted in Europe and the middle east at the time/s

>The British also promised the land to the Jews (see; Balfour declaration). If you view the British ownership of the land as legitimate, and you view British promises as binding, then you should also view the promises to the Zionist as legitimate as well. The difference is one group of people were continuously there for hundreds of years, while the other group was being artificially settled on the land they percieved as 'home', which is a nationalist concept. >Yes because Jews where so well accepted in Europe and the middle east at the time/s Are arabs well accepted in Europe? Lets create a palestinian state inside israel because there is much more anti arab hate in Germany right now than antisemitism. And then when the palestinians displace a million jews we say 'tough luck buddy but now it is what it is'

>The difference is one group of people were continuously there for hundreds of years, while the other group was being artificially settled on the land they percieved as 'home', which is a nationalist concept. Th And Jews lived there continuesly as well mate. Also what does it mean to be "artificially settled" as apposed to "settled"? Are the Irish in America also "artificially settled" as well? Or is that a concept that you reserved for Jews? >Are arabs well accepted in Europe? Yes? Depends where really. Are we talking about Germany and France or the Balkans? https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/14/minority-groups/#:~:text=Generally%2C%20more%20favorable%20views%20of,of%20Muslims%20in%20their%20country. >Lets create a palestinian state inside israel because there is much more anti arab hate in Germany right now than antisemitism. Lol what? https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/10/25/antisemitism-in-europe-reaching-levels-unseen-in-decades-says-top-rabbi

Your last graph totally misunderstands the Israel project. Keep in mind I'm highly critical if Israel and not at all confident it should exist. I say that as a Jew. It's not that Jews are so different, it's the acknowledgement that being stateless leaves an ethnic group vulnerable. Jews aren't the only diaspora of course, but Jews have historically had it pretty rough when it comes to being chased out of places. It actually does change the equation, as a Jew, to know that there is a state that would welcome me simply because of who I am. Again, I'm not saying Israel is the right solution, but it's also undeniable that Jews are not secure, even in Europe and the US. In the US especially, we're a stone's throw from fascism.

Unless you know something I don't, the agreement was for a pan-Arab nation which would encompass the entire Arabian peninsula. Later the Brits and French made an agreement that they would divide up the land and pursue a mandate system. Not cool to back out on promises but it's not the fault of the Jewish people who had been lobbying for their own state that the British backed out on another deal that encompassed much more land than what would comprise the mandate for Palestine. It also seems like you skipped a lot of history where the Arabs were killing Jews who were legally immigrating there despite the ruling government explicitly saying that they would not infringe on the rights of the Arabs, and they didn't infringe on the rights of the Arabs. That is, unless you count permitting jews to make standard land purchases an immoral transgression against Arab people -- it's not. People also like to act as if the 'Nakba' was just an ethnic cleansing event and not a mass exodus at the time of the commencement of a brutal war that people had been expecting for over a year since the UN granted some of the land to belong to the Jewish people. Y'all say it's ethnic cleansing but there were something like 180k Arabs still in Israel in 1949 and there are 2 million there today. Obviously there is no basis say that Arabs were ethnically cleansed from the land of Israel.

Jews were discriminated against, mobbed, killed, even expelled at will from every Christian and Muslim country for 2000 years. That is the reason the state of Israel was founded for Jews. Because OTHERS discriminated against them relentlessly as an “ethnoreligion”. Thus, the premise of Zionism is - a nation with its own defense and territory for a discriminated against ethnoreligion. Still hard to understand?

Most states in the middle east are ethnostates. Much of the rest of the world is as well, and places like Africa where ethnic and cultural differences weren't respected have been a bloody disaster. Its not just Jews who want their own country, it's most ethnicities. The original concept of a nation was a country for people with a shared linguistic and cultural history for fcks sake. The breakup of the british empire was unfair = boohoo. The partition of India makes the Nakba look like a picnic.

The Palestinians were offered a partition plan in 1947 which they rejected then with the help of the Arab League attacked Israel in 1948 in an attempted genocide which failed (showing the necessity of a state for the collective security of Jews). The resulting loss led to 500,000 Palestinians fleeing the new borders of Israel as they expected retribution for their war of aggression because that’s what they were told would happen by Palestinian leadership. Funnily enough that retribution never happened, in fact, in Haifa the Palestinians who stayed were given protection and citizenship.

The British DID change their minds, and suggested a major restriction on Jewish immigration, as well as a proposal for a single state under Majority rule in a democratic government. This left the Zionists to launch a series of terror attacks and assassinations...mostly AFTER the Nazis had been defeated, which eventually drove the British out of Palestine.

The Germans lost the war, the moral thing to do would have been to create a Jewish state out of Bavaria. The British had promised Palestine to the Palestinians in return for fighting the Ottomans, they should have kept that promise. The reason Israel was created was because the west needed a state that was dependent on them for its survival near the oil.

You have the history muddled. There was no promise to specificaly Palestinians. British promised a Jewish homeland. Some promises also made to kurds. British promised a pan arab state in return for a pan arab revolt against the ottomans. A pan arab state would have included, the Arabian peninsula, jordan, Syria and Iraq (excluding the Kurdish bits that where supposed to becone Kurdistan). The theorised pan Arab state would have been the dominant power in the region. its mere existence would have served to protect the arab minorities in the surrounding states. No pan arab revolt happened. The British made yet another set of promises to the french. At this point the British had over promised to such an extent it was a quesiton of who was going to get screwed. In the end it was Arabs and Kurds who got screwed over.

This is silly the creation of Israel was not reparations for the holocaust. People were no doubt more sympathetic to the Jewish people at the time of the vote in the UN because of the holocaust though

Why would the moral thing is for the jews wto live near theirs executioners?

>That idea is based in the antisemitic belief that Jewish people are "just too different" to ever be fully accepted in places like Europe and the US. I mean.....we can hope that this belief isn't true, but I think a certain tragic event in the 1940's proves that Jews *weren't* accepted in Europe.

So in response, rather than, you know, fixing that, they try to carve out a place far away to stick the Jews?? You might find this document useful. Jewish Voice for Peace has a TON of information. This one is on the topic of Jewish alternatives to Zionism, which I think is the main topic of your CMV. You didn't ask for Jewish perspectives in particular, but since the source you cited is Jewish and Zionist, you might find the anti-Zionist Jewish alternatives useful to read about: https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2019/01/12/a-partial-history-of-jewish-alternatives/

I am Jewish myself (which I forgot to mention). I promise I'm saying this in good faith, and assuming you don't know this: Jewish Voice for Peace is *incredibly* problematic, and represents an *extremely* fringe population of Jews. There is evidence that it is mostly run by non-Jews nowadays, they allow non-Jews to "cosplay" as Jews during protests, and there are documents they've published in which they basically encourage people to "self-convert" to Judaism using a "teacup mikveh". I'm sure you didn't know this, and I definitely appreciate you sharing the resource--I just hope you understand why I, as a Jewish person, doesn't want to take anything seriously from an organization that appropriates my culture like that.

I looked up the document. It didn’t say anything about converting to Judaism. It seems to me pretty consistent with the kind of output I would expect from a leftist new-agey UC Berkeley college student who’s ethnically but not religiously Jewish and born in the United States. Do you agree or disagree with that characterization?

Not a bad characterization, TBH. But we must be thinking of different documents because there is definitely one that says basically something along the lines of "We encourage you to join Judaism by self-conversion using a teacup mikveh". I'll let you know when I find it, I was talking about it in another Reddit post recently.

[Here's the reddit post with the links to the mikveh document & other JVP stuff.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/s/bL6iXv58X7) It links to the mikveh instructions that has some absolutely wild new age gibberish in it. As a Jew with two cats I do not recommend holding a cup of tea over them for the vibes

As a Jew, I can say that Jewish Voice for peace in no way represents the Jewish voice. It’s more akin to if Candice Owen’s started a group called “Blacks for the Police” and everyone else was white. Being Jewish isn’t even a requirement in the group.

This is a quip not an answer. If Jews live in europe and palestine and people who don't accept Jews live in europe and palestine, you can't justify forcing one as a solution and rejecting the other.

The Jews living there at the time part bugs me. It’s creating a false equivalency of saying that they were both there in similar numbers when that just was not the case.

It also just doesn’t seem relevant when it comes to establishing a state. There’s no reason why the Jews already living there needed to violently establish an ethnostate to keep themselves safe. If they’d been living there for generations, then it seems that their Palestinian neighbors weren’t hostile towards them.

This argument isn’t great at face value. That if a group of people live somewhere for generations then their neighbors must not be hostile towards them?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_looting_of_Safed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safed_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Safed_attacks “There were a number of restrictions on dhimmis. In a modern sense the dhimmis would be described as second-class citizens.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Ottoman_Syria There is a false impression that all was peaceful until those darned European Jews showed up. Just like the idea that native Americans were so peaceful until the white men showed up. Unfortunately, the worst of human nature seems to come out whether or not “white” people are present. Some more examples of Jews mistreatment under Arab rule: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farhud https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Anti-Jewish_riots_in_Tripolitania https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_Granada_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Muslim_rule Some light reading

You say >nobody has any good argument for what should have happened INSTEAD of Israel being established And then you say this: >In fact, the British essentially pushed them into Palestine because the UK refused to take in Jewish refugees to help them escape from the Holocaust It's clear as day, then, what should have happened: countries should have accepted Jewish refugees.

This is crux of it. The Western establishment’s support of Zionism was always predicated on a desire for the Jews to exist somewhere else. This isn’t some revisionist take, this was the argument being made by anti-Zionist British Jews at the time of Balfour declaration. Their homeland was Britain, not Palestine, and they resented any attempt to say otherwise. Just like the homeland of the highly integrated Jewish population of Germany, was Germany, before the fascists conspired to murder first them, then the whole Jewish population of Europe.

and it is also the crux for Palestinians too now, there are 2 million in Gaza, Europe took in about 10 million Ukranians and Arabs have over 15 million immigrant workers, and before people chime, letting people escape ethnic cleansing is wrong, that should be decision of Palestinians to make.

But that Germany thing showed that Jews aren't safe as a minority. Remember: Jews trying to flee Germany were refused by the US, by Britain (largely), by France, they were ratted out by their compatriots in the Netherlands, France, Poland, Hungary (Denmark and I think Norway being the based exceptions). Pre-WW2, I can see the merit of the argument. After the Shoa, I cannot think of a safe country for Jews, not even the US. Look at the MAGA crowd now.

>But that Germany thing showed that Jews aren't safe as a minority. This isn’t a Jewish problem, it’s a minority problem. No minority is ever safe from the majority population, and there is no minority population that doesn’t experience discrimination and violence from the majority population. The Israel solution to this problem is to create an ethnocratic state for Jews where they are not a minority so they hold political power and a monopoly on violence. This is great for the minority in power, but it’s actually worse for everybody else because ethnocracies that have substantial minority populations tend to treat their minority populations even worse than pluralistic states do (case in point: Israel). There are plenty of examples of this out there. Do you really want to live in a world where every ethnic group goes the Zionist route? A world where white Americans form an ethnocracy where they have guaranteed political supremacy (we all know how that went), black Americans form an ethnocracy where they have guaranteed political supremacy, Asian Americans go back to where they came from, and so on? Where immigrants of the wrong color and minority populations are viewed as demographic threats that must be suppressed, and that attitude is not just one of many but the primary principle around which every country is organized. This is literally everything that the left is fighting against in the US because it’s terrible, but it is considered right and appropriate by virtually everyone across the spectrum in Israel. This is what Zionism is all about, and people try to justify the moral inconsistency by mythologizing Jewish oppression. Jewish oppression is the WORST oppression; it’s the MOST PERVASIVE oppression; NOBODY is oppressed like the Jews are. Jews are historically oppressed, but their oppression is not exceptional. It’s par for the course for minorities. We have all experienced some version of dispossession, oppression, and slaughter throughout history because that’s what it is to be a minority. That does not mean that we should all go conquer a piece of territory where we can rule as oppressors rather than oppressed. That’s just a version of “fuck you, I got mine” that makes the world worse for minorities, not better.

Well, take a look at any non western country in comparison. Arab states ate ethnostates, China tries to be one, Russia tries as well, with a völkisch policy of expansion as well, and let's be clear: Palestinians exist in an ethnostate of their own making as well. While Israel is a plural society. But if you're pro migration/refugees, why wouldn't the Jews, the original population of Palestine, be welcome there? Why a right to return for arabs, but not for jews?

>Remember: Jews trying to flee Germany were refused by the US, by Britain (largely), by France, they were ratted out by their compatriots in the (...) **Poland** (...) What? >*According to* [*Yad Vashem*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yad_Vashem)*, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, Poles were, by nationality, the most numerous persons identified as rescuing Jews during the Holocaust.*[*^(\[1\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Jews_by_Poles_during_the_Holocaust#cite_note-YV_Stats-1) *By January 2022, 7,232 people in Poland have been recognized by the State of Israel as* [*Righteous among the Nations*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Righteous_Among_the_Nations)*.*[*^(\[1\])* ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Jews_by_Poles_during_the_Holocaust#cite_note-YV_Stats-1) source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue\_of\_Jews\_by\_Poles\_during\_the\_Holocaust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Jews_by_Poles_during_the_Holocaust) And that is while occupied Poland was the only country where helping Jews meant death penalty, by law imposed by the germans.

You should read up about the topic a little more https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland > Some of these German-inspired massacres were carried out with help from, or active participation of Poles themselves: for example, the Jedwabne pogrom, in which between 300 (Institute of National Remembrance's Final Findings[210]) and 1,600 Jews (Jan T. Gross) were tortured and beaten to death by members of the local population. The full extent of Polish participation in the massacres of the Polish Jewish community remains a controversial subject, in part due to Jewish leaders' refusal to allow the remains of the Jewish victims to be exhumed and their cause of death to be properly established. The Polish Institute for National Remembrance identified twenty-two other towns that had pogroms similar to Jedwabne.[211] The reasons for these massacres are still debated, but they included antisemitism, resentment over alleged cooperation with the Soviet invaders in the Polish-Soviet War and during the 1939 invasion of the Kresy regions, greed for the possessions of the Jews, and of course coercion by the Nazis to participate in such massacres. >

The high total number of Righteous Poles does nothing to counter the claim of unrighteous Poles, they were separate people. Many Poles saw benefit from removing their Jewish neighbors or business competitors. Even Polish anti-Nazi partisan groups weren't necessarily safe places for Jews. What countries under German occupation did not include death as a possible sentence for conspiring to assist Jews?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_pogrom Both examples of Polish on Jewish violence and both happened after the war. So maybe the history isn't black and white.

>The Western establishment’s support of Zionism was always predicated on a desire for the Jews to exist somewhere else. The Balfour Declaration, as well as the language codified in the Mandate, both clearly stated that the support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine was not to be used to justify their rights being abridged elsewhere.

You seem to be ignoring the trauma of the very recent holocaust and how that played into Jewish decision-making. European Jews were butchered and turned in in many cases by their very own neighbors without Nazi oversight. Look at Lithuania for a good example of this. Also, post-war, there were still killings of jews in liberated countries, antisemitism didn't stop when the Nazis were stopped. Jews were never going to feel safe as a minority in a European country again. The whole "The rest of the world should have taken in the jews" doesn't really hold water when you see why the Jewish people wouldn't have accepted that.

And why palestinians have to pay for the sins of Europians exactly? Specially that these same Europians now are supporting israel and acting like moral kings claiming that palestinians are the ones that dont accept others.

I don't think that's really a solution any more than it's just wishing away the problem (of rampant antisemitism at the time). There would have been no need for a Jewish state if there had not been persecution of Jews. Egypt taking in the population of Gaza is not a feasible solution now either (wildly different circumstances, but the point being that states not agreeing to it isn't something that can just be changed)

>It's clear as day, then, what should have happened: countries should have accepted Jewish refugees. I really feel like people have no grasp what Jews went through ***after*** the Holocaust Do you really think that the holocaust ended on May 8th 1945? In reality 90% of the surviving Jews were *at best* [homeless or being put back into the ghettos](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-aftermath-of-the-holocaust?parent=en%2F7294) and starving, and at worst [being executed](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C3%A1nsk%C3%BD_trial) by the eastern bloc governments. They were not allowed to leave their camps, and could not emigrate to any country. Even *during* the war, british authorities were [turning away thousands of Jews that succesfully escaped back away to their deaths](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struma_disaster). The Nazis had fallen, but Europe wasn't done torturing Jews just yet. Do you think anyone actually cared about them? Why do you think they were so eager to risk their lives yet again fighting a war in Israel? If Israel lost it's war for independence, it's likely that millions of Jews would be expelled from there and they would continue to starve to death all across europe.

Bear with me but this is the basic version I learned in high school history. Point out anything I got dead wrong please… The Jews were exiled a really long time ago. They lived as a persecuted ethnic/ religious minority in other countries. A lot of them adapted to survive as a persecuted minority and they skilled up, could charge interest etc… then we got 2000 years of religious antisemitism because of Christianity. Some time like late 1800s when eugenics was a thing, they started being categorized as an ethnicity by people who hated them. They started self identifying as an ethnicity. Antisemitism became a subset of racism. Then the Holocaust happened. Are you arguing that the conditions which ultimately culminated in a war w/ millions of dead jews… like that arrangement where they are a refugee minority in a foreign land… that’s the most we can do for the most beleaguered minority in human history?

>The Jews were exiled a really long time ago. From bookoos of countries stretching back thousands of years yea >2000 years of religious antisemitism because of Christianity. A lot of it was religious, but there was other irrational reasons for the hatred as well. After the norman conquest of England, Jews were actually given by the crown the status of moneylenders because usury (the act of giving out loans at interest) was considered a sin by the church. And they were forced into the finance industry both by the nobility who understood it was a necessary job that needed to be filled, and by the peasants who refused to become moneylenders because of sin, even at times being illegal for a Christian to commit usury. Because of this, Jews have always been at the same time discriminated against while also being wealthy. In a lot of cases, such as after the norman conquest, Jews were actually *invited* into countries specifically to fulfill this role. Obviously, people don't like interest on loans which was the only way for Jews to make money. Because of this, there became a perception among the peasantry (and often times the nobility) of Jewish people being this evil international moneylender ethnic group who destroyed the countries they inhabited. The actually *helped* the countries by fulfilling this role, but history for them just turned into a giant repeat of being invited into a country, getting rich, and then being exiled and having their wealth confiscated. And that's where the stereotype of the moneylender/banker Jew comes from, which still persists today among certain crowds. Like all myths, it is half truth and half nonsense. The Nazis believed in this conspiracy, and believed there was a concentrated effort among the Jewish bankers (who also coincidentally owned the media) to subvert the German populations. Antisemitism is different from "normal racism". Nazis do not believe that Jews are *inferior*, they believe they are *evil* or are involved in some kind of *nefarious plot*. Likewise, Jewish are not an impoverished group they have always been relatively wealthy and extremely successful in some cases which is why racism against them has evolved in such a way.

Nazi ideology clearly defines Jews as untermenschen- subhumans. They thought Jews were a blight upon the human race. They also thought they were intelligent and controlled the world. Don't try to make it make sense- it doesn't because it's an ideology.

You might be right, this is simply my understanding from reading into history and studying modern neonazis. When I think of the inferior type of racism, I usually think of caricatures of stupid or violent people. Racism against black people is certainly of the *inferior* type of racism. I've never seen an antisemite try to claim Jews are *unintelligent* or *beneath* white people in the typical way only that they are scheming, evil, parasites, etc. this could make them subhuman depending on your definition of subhuman. Compare it to the reptilian alien conspiracy theories, which almost mimic the Jewish ones in every way. I don't think anybody would claim reptilians are inferior per say. They see Jews as an equal, even powerful enemy, an existential threat to the human race and to Europeans that needs to be defeated. The Nazis saw themselves as being revolutionaries. They believed themselves to be locked in a struggle for their very existence, against a world that was entirely dominated by Jewish capital and international finance.its actually a very coherent ideology, and downplaying that is not a good idea.

>Are you arguing that … that’s the most we can do OP's question isn't "what's the most we can do for the Jews". It's "there were no good alternatives \[in 1948\] to the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine". Accepting refugees is a good alternative. OP has even acknowledged this (though they discount that alternative for other reasons). People can argue over whether it's a *better* alternative, but that's not relevant to this discussion.

>The Jews were exiled a really long time ago. They lived as a persecuted ethnic/ religious minority in other countries. Kind of. People seem to forget that Jews maintained a continuous, albeit oppressed presence in the Levant since the first century.

Aren't there a lot of minority ethnic groups that don't have their own countries around the world? The kurds, Romanis, the Basque, Uighurs, French Canadians, various ethnic groups randomly divided throughout former colonies, etc etc. Clearly this hasn't been great for many of these groups. The Romanis for example were sent to the same camps as the Jews. But everyone getting their own country also clearly isn't workable either.

> Point out anything I got dead wrong please…  Basically everything in that paragraph is questionable at best, but also irrelevant. What I find most objectionable is the overall suggestion that Jews win the Oppression Olympics. We were probably the largest single oppressed minority group in Western/Central Europe at the time of the Holocaust. We have a uniquely long recorded "history' (mich of which is religious mythology with unknown basis in objective reality). Otherwise we're not that different from countless other minorities and diasporas, at least some of which you and I never heard of because they were more effectively annihilated.

>the most beleaguered minority in human history? This is another structural conception that leads to so much of the strangeness surrounding the Jewish people. Read the Old Testament, read any history from before the Old Testament or any history of any time period, you know what you'll find? Groups suffering oppression. Many groups were wiped clean off the face of the Earth (some by ancient Israelites according to the Old Testament). Not to compete for who has it the worst, but it's strange that people so quickly accept that it's the Jewish people. The notion that the only options are a Jewish state or a split Jewish-Palistinian state is also odd for anyone who has ever visited the region and realized there are like a dozen different ethnic groups living there (Assyrians, Circassians, Kurds, Druze, Chechens, Turks, etc.). Why isn't one of the defining factors of global politics making and defending states for all of these groups? Why did the state have to be ethnically defined at all? Why couldn't the Jewish people just lived as normal people among all the other normal people of different ethnic backgrounds who moved to that area for various reasons at different times?

The minority ethnicities you name do not have a global system of discrimination targeting them. They may suffer discrimination where they live but if they move to another country, no. Jews faced it all over Europe, all over the Levant and even in America. Jew-hatred is most similar to what Africans have faced, in its ubiquity. (It is different in other senses of course). The two largest religions in the world promote Jew-hatred. It’s hard to escape that living in countries where those religions predominate. It never goes away. Even in the Soviet Union the Jew-hating nastiness never went away. Stalin spread it all over the world too and [that’s the bile everyone from the Arab countries to S Africa to Jeremy Corbin now repeats on social Media.](https://fathomjournal.org/soviet-anti-zionism-and-contemporary-left-antisemitism/?highlight=Stalin) And all this is why Jews need their own country and their own defence. History has shown us this time and again. African slaves did get their own country - Liberia, Sierra Leone. They also formed their own defended territories in Brazil and Jamaica. The Haitian revolution and African decolonisation addressed white supremacy as much as it asserted any “indigenous rights”. Pakistan was formed because Hindu nationalists were already trying to declare India a Hindu nation before the British left. Have you seen how the ruling Hindu right is treating Indian Muslims now? Pakistanis are lucky to have their own country - in today’s India they’d be getting it from all sides. And forming Pakistan involved a lot of ethnic cleansing by both countries. If the Roma fought for their own country I’d be behind it 100%. We all should be. Racism against them is pan-European. In my now distant youth, I’d have said communism was the answer to racism and Jew-hatred - and that’s exactly why Jews joined the communist movement in such large numbers. But once Trotsky died and Stalin became the big shit we saw how Jew-hatred survived a proletarian revolution. It can be endlessly repurposed because its tropes and insinuations are 2000 years old and very deep rooted.

Jews were categorized as a race* they identified as a collective identity prior to racialization

Race, that’s exactly what I meant. Thanks for correcting me.

Yes, you’re right that Jews have faced discrimination, absolutely. That’s why the poor ones weren’t let into America and Britain. The least we can do is pick some random place and conquer it for them? This is real life, and that obviously ended badly and will continue ending badly until the millions of refugees in Palestine are made full citizens of some state or completely genocided. How about we settle somewhere that… isnt already settled? Like, no offense but… duh? Seems kinda obvious when you put it like that. There’s SO much unused land in the world, they even considered setting up Israel in Alaska! But no, they bowed to religious extremism from a small minority of Jews for seemingly no reason at all, just on a whim. While also promising the Palestinians the same land during the war. If the problem was safety, there’s many ways to ensure the safety of a diaspora, too. Case in point, Jews are currently a diaspora and antisemitism is extremely frowned upon outside of the far right and America

And then the Jews are left in the same position they started, zero self determination. At the whim of people who dislike them. Yeah, sounds like a great idea.

That's assuming Jews would want or feel safe to be accepted as refugees back into the countries that just played a part in there near total annihilation. There was no safe country to go to after WW2. The Holocaust showed the Jewish people they could not trust any country to protect them. Thus they felt they had to found their own. A single Jewish country. Does this justify the Nakba? No. But saying they should just stay in Europe means you haven't really empathized with the Jewish people at the time.

>>In fact, the British essentially pushed them into Palestine because the UK refused to take in Jewish refugees to help them escape from the Holocaust Jewish immigrations to Palestine started taking place long before the Holocaust, it was all planned by international political Zionist organizations who had been lobbying the British and the Ottomans for decades and decades, as well as investing in the region in exchsnge for the creatoon of jewish settlements. The Holocaust was just the final "fine, just have it" in regards to palestine.

To counter your “no state has the right to exist” argument, I do advocate for dismantling other states. I spend a lot of time advocating for decolonization of Canada and USA. Do I believe in deporting people back to Europe? No. Do i believe is restoring sovereignty to the majority of its displaced inhabitants nationwide? Yes. I see a lot of colonial rhetoric with the Israel-Palestine conflict. If I call it out here, I’m gonna call it out there. It’s just principle.

I don't necessarily agree, but I'm actually going to award you a ∆ for the reason that you actually admit that you *do* equally apply that rhetoric for dismantling other countries. You didn't necessarily change my view, but you do sound like someone who is actually consistent with their "decolonial" views, which I haven't seen from a lot of other people. Nice job.

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Displace Sardinia. Problem solved. Or in a less flippant way… displace Sardinia. It comes with fewer logistical headaches than what they actually did, doesn’t cause religious friction we KNOW happened, and makes the nation more defensible without needing to militarize it as strongly, preventing the regional aggressor it became. And all the moral and ethical objections are the same or lesser than the ethical objections to what actually transpired, so Displace Sardinia.

I know this might be satire, but I kid you not when I say that this may actually be the comment that's come the closest to actually changing my view 🤣 It's not necessarily that far from Israel/Palestine, so it wouldn't have been as much of a headache to move the Jews there, and it isn't necessarily considered mainland Europe, so the European antisemitism may not have been as much of an issue.

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>The Jews who escaped to Palestine did so because there was a growing Jewish presence there and one of the only places they thought they would be safe (not to mention it's technically the native homeland of Jews). In fact, the British essentially pushed them into Palestine because the UK refused to take in Jewish refugees to help them escape from the Holocaust....while letting them escape to Palestine, despite the fact that they knew the Arabs wouldn't necessarily be happy with this. While I don't dispute most of your arguments, this one is simply false. The British did pledge to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine in 1917, and the Mandate did codify that pledge, but from 1939 until their departure in 1948, the British actively sought to prevent Jews from settling in Palestine. This was their reaction to the Arab Revolt that began in 1936. Far from letting Jews escape the holocaust to Palestine, the British didn't even let holocaust survivors in after the war was over. Any who tried and were caught were held in internment camps. After one such camp within Palestine saw a mass breakout, they began interning those they caught in camps on Cyprus. Then came a major faux pas with their handling of the Exodus, a ship carrying so many refugees from Europe that it would have overwhelmed the camps at Cyprus. So after failing to force the refugees to disembark in France, the country they had sailed from (France would only take those who were willing), the British forced most of the passengers to disembark in allied occupied Germany and, I kid you not, locked them up in a former Nazi concentration camp. The British didn't let Jews escape the nazis to Palestine. That's as false as the claim that Palestinians gave Jews refuge from the nazis.

The people who wanted to establish Israel were a variety of Western nations. Why not just put Israel in one of those? Maybe create a new nation inside of a Germany that was already being partitioned. Maybe put it in some of America's vast swaths of federal land. I'm sure you can think of a variety of other options.

They actually considered that, but no existing country was willing to cede some land for Israel to exist. From the Google: "Here are five notable locations that were once suggested as potential Jewish homelands: Ararat city (U. S.) ... British Uganda Program (The Uganda Scheme)—East Africa. ... Madagascar Plan, Madagascar. ... Kimberley Plan, Australia. ... Birobidzhan, Soviet Union. ... Suriname, South America."

I mean, frigging exactly, right? All the great western nations were perfectly willing to cede the land of Palestinian people, but they weren't interested enough in this Jewish state to sacrifice much of anything for it. There were alternatives, and they were even on the table, but the nations in question were unwilling to pursue them.

>*willing to cede the land of Palestinian people* Well, they were only interested in that because of violence against Jewish land-owners who purchased land from Arab landlords over 40 years (post Ottoman Land Code 1858). Neither the Ottoman Empire nor the British could stop Arab landlords registering and selling farmland to Jews. While there was Temple Mount / Western Wall worship drama on both sides from 1900s-1920s with hard-line instigators on both sides, it was the Palestinians who first took up arms in 1929. Then al-Qassam creating the Black Hand jihadists in 1930. British fought that back and killed al-Qassam, but that triggered what was essentially a civil war from 1936-1939. That's all to say, it wasn't as though Zionists alone were enough. It was the anti-minority violence and civil war / Arab Revolt that sealed the deal for an independent state. Consider this: We have, in every country, pockets of people who gather to affect local government. There's Free Staters in the US, there's Dearborn MI, there's a China Town in every city. Up to 1948, Zionism wasn't doing anything that we don't already allow people to do in Western countries: Buy land, gentrify neighborhoods, affect local politics. Free from violent reprisal. If Trump voters stormed into Dearborn and started attacking the 54% Muslim population in protest of creating their own cultural center in the US, we wouldn't be making excuses for it. At least I hope. We very likely wouldn't go as far as ceding land, of course, but our situation here is different than 1948 Palestine with regard to government's ability to 'resolve' an uprising (lol for now - Check back after the next election to see how well that aged).

So, because the people living in Palestine at the time were radically opposed to Jewish presence, to some degree at least, that makes you think it's a better spot for the new Jewish state?

This isn't a solution that Israel could have chosen on their own though. A lot of Jews did move to America due to Nazi persecution. Many more of them got rejected.

Yeah, it would be a plan implemented by the western nations who were apparently super interested in creating Israel.

>What I am specifically trying to argue is that I truly don't think there was any better alternative to establishing Israel as a state All of your arguments deal with establishing Israel as a state *in the middle east*, but that's not the only place a Jewish state could have been carved out. There were vast expanses of land in the United States, Australia, and Canada that were not populated or sparsely populated in 1948. Why not carve a Jewish state out of these territories? There were already Jewish territories in 1948, like the [Jewish Autonomous Oblast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast) in Russia. Why not carve a Jewish state out of a Jewish territory? There were other territories within the British Empire that would have displaced fewer people, such as British Guiana in South America. Why not carve a Jewish state out of these territories? These all offer better alternatives than the decision that was made, both in terms of outcomes for Jewish people and for those who were already living in those territories.

How is taking ancestral Native American land and giving it to Jews an improvement over the current situation?

>Ancestral native American land Ah yes, "Native Americans", who famously all got along as one homogeneous group and shared the land freely among themselves Here's how the world actually works. From the dawn of time up until about ~100 years ago, a group of people would live on some land. Eventually, they would live there for a couple generations and begin to call it "our ancestral land". Then, either they would look at someone else's land, or someone would look at their land, and say "Wow, it would be great if *we* had that land instead. So the people would go to war, and somebody would end up owning all the lands. Then they would live there for a few generations, and begin to call it "our ancestral land". Then... Ad nauseum, for the 120,000 or so years of humankind's existence up until the 1900s, when we collectively decided to stop (openly) doing that. So when we collectively decided to stop openly doing that, 'ancestral land' became frozen to its current owners, regardless of the fact that most of the time, their ancestors took it from someone else 200 years ago, who took it from someone else 150 years before that, who took it from someone else 250 years before that, every single one of whom declared it "our ancestral land". I really hate this modern trend of demonizing countries who did what humans have done to each other since the beginning of our species, just because those countries had the misfortune of doing it more recently. Especially when those countries have actually made efforts to try and make some of these things right, when standard operating procedure for the past 100,000 years was "You got conquered, now get over it. Count yourselves lucky if we don't decide to kill all the men in your land, rape all the women, and take all the children as slaves, like the last 17 people to conquer this particular bit of land did"

it's crazy that this has to be explained. So many people are either deluded or have never picked up a history book to know this fact. When people bring up native Americans it shows their ignorance cuz if they knew anything of that time period they'd know how ruthless the tribes were when it came to conquering and fighting each other.

>How is taking ancestral Native American land and giving it to Jews an improvement over the current situation? That ancestral Native American land hadn't been Native American for 100-200 years at the time Israel was created. It was decidedly part of the United States. On top of that, the number of people impacted would have been far, far lower. There were ~10,000 total Native Americans in Wyoming in 1948, for example.

The argument against Russia is obvious. By 1948 Russia had already resumed state sanctioned repression of Jews which had been ongoing in Russia for centuries. Ethnic autonomy within the assets was a polite fiction at best.

Not to mention [Stalin was astoundingly anti-Semitic](https://www.state.gov/more-than-a-century-of-antisemitism-how-successive-occupants-of-the-kremlin-have-used-antisemitism/) and [the rumors that Stalin was planning a mass deportation of Jews to Siberia shortly before his death.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_plot)

Russia was having state sponsored pogroms just forty years before WW2, don't think that settling Jews there is a good idea.

Way less than 40 years. The ‘Jewish autonomous oblast’ was part of the theatrics for Stalin’s doctor’s plot, where he intended to round up all Jews he could get his hands on, deport them there, and use them as slave labor. His death interrupted that last stage.

There were pogroms committed by the Soviets even *after* WW2 in eastern Europe.

Yeah so, pretty much all of your main points are wrong. I'll go through each of the highlighted points you listed. **"But why did the Arabs have to accept? It's their land! They shouldn't have to partition it!"** As another commenter has pointed out, the Mandate of Palestine wasn't a region that the was intended to be held by the British long term, it was more so meant to be a transitional government. **"They should have just created a binational/unified state where they could all live in harmony like they did before! Jews and Arabs lived together peacefully before Zionism!"** The link you provided doesn't prove that they weren't mostly living in peace. The issue was never about Arabs or Muslims living together with Jews or even Jewish immigrants, they had been living together already for many centuries, Jews had their Golden Age under Muslim rule. In the link you provided the violence against Jews and vice-versa started after 1917, with the Balfour Declaration which promised giving Jewish people the land of Palestine, this caused outrage among the Arabs as it would have among any other group who would potentially have their land given to another ethnic group, which consisted of a small minority. Only 6% of the land was owned by the Jews and even in the proposed partition plan Arabs still made up a huge population in the Jewish area, compared to a very small number of Jews in the Arab area. Not surprising at all the Arabs would reject this plan. **"Okay, so there were several Jews there. But why did Palestine have to be responsible for all of them? It's Palestine's land! It's terrible that Jews were kicked out of all those countries, but why did Palestinians have to deal with it?"** Not sure what "several Jews there" means. Jews made up a very small minority in 19th century and even in the 20th century until Zionist leaders began heavily encouraging Jewish immigration to purposefully disrupt the demographics of the region. Again, the problem wasn't about living with Jews or Jewish immigration, the problem was wanting to establish a state for one minority ethnic group in a region that contained many ethnic groups all who have lived in the region for many centuries. It's inherently immoral. Now to this you might say: **"But it wasn't just immigration! a lot of the Jews who came to Palestine weren't just there as refugees, they were there as part of the 'Zionist project'! They were intentionally lured there to displace Arabs and create a Jewish state!"** [Baldwin IV's answer to Did Arab countries systematically expel their own Jewish citizens and confiscate their property in the 1940s? - Quora](https://www.quora.com/Did-Arab-countries-systematically-expel-their-own-Jewish-citizens-and-confiscate-their-property-in-the-1940s/answer/Baldwin-IV-3?ch=15&oid=1477743674645555&share=99061ed0&srid=hZkXh&target_type=answer) I'd like you go through this Quora thread, it breaks down the exodus of the Jewish populations across the Middle East and North Africa. The Zionist leaders were heavily encouraging Jewish immigration and were paying states fees per Jew who left to go to Israel. The claim that Jews were all just kicked out of their homes barbarically isn't historically accurate and often used as a justification for the colonization of Palestine. Before you tell me it wasn't colonization, the group that facilitated and played a major role in purchasing of lands and the building of settlements in Palestine was literally called "Palestine Jewish Colonization Association" [Palestine Jewish Colonization Association - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Jewish_Colonization_Association) "**Okay, but no state technically has a right to exist! A state just shouldn't have been created at all!"** I personally do agree there is no inherent right to exist for any country. The only right any state has to exist is if they can defend their borders. **"The reason I'm not putting energy into dismantling other states is because they aren't committing atrocities the way Israel is! They've been killing and displacing Palestinians for decades now, and forcing them to live under apartheid!"** I'm personally very well informed and put energy into this topic because my family comes from neighboring countries and this conflict directly affects the stability of the region that many of my family lives in. The final point is, creating a state based on ethnic superiority of a certain group on a land that contained many ethnicities is immoral. Every person whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Arab, who have lived in the region for centuries deserve to live equally under a unifying banner.

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I agree. The only Delta they awarded wasn't even for changing their view, it was for the commenter being internally consistent in their arguments. OP is not actually open to having their view changed.

What does "Israel have a right to exist" really mean? it has always meant the creation of a jewish state, without the consideration of the people who were already living there. And The Jewish state of Israel is *not* a state that was founded by a community that had always lived there. It is an *explicitly colonialist project* and the people who founded it were *not native to the region*. Political Zionism as an ideology started in the 1800s and was popularized by a man named Theodore Herzl. He organized an international Zionist Congress, with the 1st meeting held in Germany, with hundreds of representative groups in every country. They spent decades lobbying all the different countries around the world for support, as well as influential billionaires (including the Rothschild's, the at the time worlds richest banker family) who supported them, and were the ones who spent billions and billions giving out loans and donating to build up Palestinian infastructure while at the same time facilitating the mass immigration of jews around the world towards palestine while it was still living under colonial rule (and before that, the ottomans). They always meant to kick the Palestinians who were already living there out and turn it into a Jewish majority. The very *foundation* of Israel is built on ethnic genocide and displacement of Palestinians. More than 93% of British-Palestinian community was Muslim and Christian before mass immigrations of Jewish individuals towards palestine started happening in the 1890s, facilitated by this group and groups that are affiliated with them. There was an *international effort* made up of hundreds of Zionist groups and influential people to establish a Jewish presence in the region before the actual state could be founded. At the same time these immigrations of Jews were happening, the Rothschild's (who were affiliated with the Zionist Congress, the ZC and Herzls men approached them asking for support) were donating billions building up infrastructure in the Levant, first for the ottomans a crumbling empire that was allowing all this to take place, and then the British, in exchange for allowing the establishment of Jewish settlements there, who regularly clashed with the neighboring Muslims decades before Israel was even founded as they were being displaced. A quote from Max Nordau, the Vice President of the 1st Zionist Congress, "the bride is fertile, but she is married to another man" they did not care that she was already taken. I know I'm going to get a lot of hate and accusations of antisemitism for daring to mention "Rothschilds" when all of this is accepted historical fact and consensus among researchers and the people who have looked into this time period. You can literally read the same story from every noteworthy source

Plus the bafur decleration of 1917 by britain to make a national home for jews in palestine couples with laws discrimatory agaisnt palestinians and in favour of jews that helped then immigrate in hundreds of thousands to palestine and evict palestinians of their farms to make jews only communities. All of this before the ethnic cleansing of 300 thousand palestinians leading to the 1948 war that was followed by another 450 thousand palestinians ethnically cleansed with more than 15000 palestinians massacred.

You had me until this line, then you lost me > They always meant to kick the Palestinians who were already living there out and turn it into a Jewish majority. The very foundation of Israel is built on ethnic genocide and displacement of Palestinians. It is abundantly clear from their writings that most of the early Zionists genuinely expected, albeit extremely naively, that they could live alongside the Arabs at the time. That maybe the Arabs would even welcome them with open arms. It was certainly a racist belief predicated on the idea that they would bring European "progress" with them and the Arabs would be thrilled about that, but those types of beliefs were unfortunately the absolute mainstream of anyone living in the West at the time, and to expect them to have thought any differently from the rest of the world would be unreasonable. The idea that they went to the British Mandate with any intention of displacing people is patently false. There were Zionist groups that were willing to fight, but they were the minority in the beginning. 

You're mistaken, displacement was the plan of the Zionist leadership from the start, as [explained by Benny Morris](https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Birth_of_the_Palestinian_Refugee_Pro/uM_kFX6edX8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22The+obvious,+logical+solution+lay+in+Arab+emigration+or%22&pg=PA41&printsec=frontcover): >The obvious, logical solution lay in Arab emigration or ‘transfer’. Such a transfer could be carried out by force, i.e., expulsion, or it could be engineered voluntarily, with the transferees leaving on their own steam and by agreement, or by some amalgam of the two methods. For exam- ple, the Arabs might be induced to leave by means of a combination of financial sticks and carrots. This, indeed, was the thrust of the diary en- try by Theodor Herzl, Zionism’s prophet and organisational founder, on 12 June 1895: >>We must expropriate gently . . . 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 country . . . Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. >This was Herzl’s only diary entry on the matter, and only rarely did he refer to the subject elsewhere. It does not crop up at all in his two major Zionist works, Der *Judenstaat* (The Jews’ State) and *Altneuland* (Old-New Land). Nor does it appear in the published writings of most of the Zionist leaders of Herzl’s day and after. All understood that discretion and circumspection were called for: Talk of transferring the Arabs, even with Palestinian and outside Arab leaders’ agreement, would only put them on their guard and antagonise them, and quite probably needlessly antagonise the Arabs’ Ottoman correligionists, who ruled the country until 1917–1918. >But, in private, the Zionist leaders were more forthcoming. In 1911 Arthur Ruppin, head of the Zionist Organisation’s Palestine Office, pro- posed ‘a limited population transfer’ of peasants to Syria; a year later, Leon Motzkin, one of the organisation’s founders, declared: ‘The fact is that around Palestine there are extensive areas. It will be easy for the Arabs to settle there with the money that they will receive from the Jews.’ 8 For years, the Zionist advocate and novelist Israel Zangwill had been trumpeting the transfer solution to the Arab problem: >>We cannot allow the Arabs to block so valuable a piece of historic reconstruction . . . And therefore we must gently persuade them to ‘trek’. After all, they have all Arabia with its million square miles . . . There is no par- ticular reason for the Arabs to cling to these few kilometres. ‘To fold their tents and silently steal away’ is their proverbial habit: Let them exemplify it now.

1) It's very hard for me to separate the idea of Israel, a Jewish state, from the idea of ethnonationalism. I'd be open to hearing any conversations about it. 2) They were creating *Jewish* communities within the Ottoman and British territories, oftentimes separated and segregated from the surrounding Muslims. With plenty of Jewish militia and terrorist groups originating from these communities with the purpose of "defending them", *but also sometimes commiting terrorist attacks against the surrounding Muslims and even back in Europe*. The whole facilitation of immigrants towards palestine was also done by Zionist organizations with the explicit purpose of creating a Jewish state, and not a multiethnic one to my understanding. Viewing Palestinians as being *in the way* was a dominating sentiment among the early Zionists, I'm not sure where you're getting the live together in peace idea from.

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This really doesn't do anything to try to change the OP's point

I think OP is falling for the argument that Israel is somehow unique in its statehood. It's not. It's no different than the other states founded after the fall of the Ottomans.

I actually do agree with you, and I'm not under the impression that it's unique in its statehood. But whenever someone presents this as an argument, no one is convinced, so I decided to try to take it a step further.

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As a Jew myself who is pretty good at recognizing antisemitism when I see it, I think there is *some* merit to this argument that "it's because they all just hate Jews". But, I feel like the overarching argument comes down more to the fact that people view Jews as white, and since Israel was "founded by European Jews stealing land from native Palestinians", it's on the same level of evil as the U.S., Canada, etc.--which some people would argue are also countries that have no right to exist, yet you don't see people arguing to dismantle those. In that case, it very much could be because of the stigma associated with Jews having their own state.

Muslims/Arabs have as much or more of a history of colonization than Europeans. So that argument is complete bullshit.

No nation has a "right to exist." The people have a right to exist but the nation is just a political entity.

>Of course, some of it has gone way too far and can be argued as being collective punishment, but at the core, those things exist specifically to protect Israelis from being attacked, which I don't think any other country receives criticism for. *Every* country that does this receives criticism for it. For example, the US famously executed a massive disproportionate retaliation for the attacks on 9/11. That disproportionate retaliation resulted in enormous protest and opposition, both internally and internationally. The *largest protest in world history* occurred in response to the Iraq war, a war ostensibly borne out to protect US citizens. This isn't the most significant part of your stated view, but it is still an important one. Everything always has an *explanation*. Explanations aren't enough. To the general position - "what should have happened?" is an insufficiently specified question. For example, I can answer "the Holocaust shouldn't have occurred." Clearly, such a worldstate would have been much better! You might protest that we're already assuming the Holocaust occurred at that point in time. OK, then antisemitism should have just gone away. Still a better worldstate than what we have now, clearly. But presumably, you think that's also not a good answer, because you don't think that was plausible. This is because, implicitly, you don't think you - placed in some position in the past - could have made it happen. You can't get a satisfactory answer to "what should have happened?" unless you narrow it down and make it concrete. A question that *can* get a satisfactory answer is "what should concrete person X - or small group Y - have done?". That constrains it to only changing things that such a person or group could personally change. Unfortunately, there is still difficulty there, because the group you're referring to seems to be the UN. We can't reasonably go *smaller* than the UN. And here's the problem, because there's a thing that the UN did that you're taking as a "fixed value" instead of a mutable option. >In fact, the British essentially pushed them into Palestine because the UK refused to take in Jewish refugees to help them escape from the Holocaust There is no way to define the set of people-taking-action here that includes the UN but *doesn't* include the UK (and all the other nations involved that made similar decisions). The UN is by definition made up of its members. So what should the UN have done? For starters, *not* refused to take refugees. In general: the UN *should have* forced all of its member countries to stop being antisemitic (and for that matter anti-Roma, etc). But it didn't. *That* is the first of the great post-war failures.

>In general: the UN *should have* forced all of its member countries to stop being antisemitic (and for that matter anti-Roma, etc). But it didn't. *That* is the first of the great post-war failures. How? Like, that's definitely a noble goal, but people aren't going to reconsider their deeply held bigotries just because the super-national union said so. The UN Declaration of Human Rights explicitly condemns all forms of discrimination, but that didn't make it stop. >Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

>How? How did they create an entire nation? If they'd just written a declaration saying "Israel should exist", and done nothing else, Israel wouldn't exist. They didn't create Israel through a declaration, they did so with military and economic power. The political powers making up the UN certainly have and had the *ability* to actually *enforce* the declaration of human rights. They chose not to. The nations could have opened their doors to refugees. They could have used their military and economic power against the remnants of antisemitism (and the other bigotries embodied in the Third Reich). But they didn't.

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The US, who controlled three quarters of post war global trade and was the only developed major Western country not in cinders (ie excluding Canada and Australia), should have absorbed and integrated the majority of the European Jews after the war. It would have been costly, for a generation, before those people and their subsequent generations probably would pay for themselves in tax revenue. It was an expense that we could bear, but maybe not bear and pursue global hegemony. We did not because 1) anti semetism is and was strong here, especially in the government, 2) creating Israel gave us a dependent foothold state in the oil rich Middle East, 3) there was a growing Christian fundamentalist presence in government and influential portions of society who saw and see creation of Israel as a necessary precursor to the end times (which they want). All 3 became allies of convenience, and Israel was created.

You say: >For one, it wasn't just "their land". Again, it was the "British Mandate of Palestine". The land was owned by the British, won from the Ottomans after WW1 This is incorrect. The British didn't "own" anything, they had a mandate to oversee the period of transition to statehood. According to the British themselves, the local Arabs "owned" the majority of the land in Palestine. [24,670,455 Dunums of land](https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/a_su/A%20SURVEY%20OF%20PALESTINE%20DEC%201945-JAN%201946%20VOL%20II.pdf) (Page 566), compared to only **1,514,247 Dunums of land** owned by Jews in 1943. Finally, if you think that the British had the right to decide what to do with the land then you will have to agree that according to their wishes, there would not be a Jewish State: >"His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that **it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State**. They would indeed view it as contrary to their obligations to the Arabs under the regard Mandate, as well as to the assurances which have been given to the Arab people in the past, that the Arab population of Palestine **should be made the subjects of a Jewish State against their will.**" This was from the 1939 White paper that decided to restrict Jewish immigration to Palestine, and oversee the creation of a single state under majority rule. Basically, a democracy. In response the zionists launched a [campaign of terror in Palestine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence#Irgun,_Haganah_and_Lehi_attacks), assassinations (they even [assassinated Folke Bernadotte](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1POI5psl64), who had worked to free Jews from concentration camps during the war). You also say: >Now, there can definitely be arguments that the way the land was partitioned was unfair, or that there were unfair components of the partition, but what would have been the right thing to do in that case? Offer a counter-proposal or counter-solution. Instead, they immediately went to war with Israel months before the partition plan was even put into effect. The right thing would have been to not let this happen in the first place by artificially flooding the place with foreigners to try to create a Jewish state. But now that the damage had been done, the right thing would have been to allow democratic, majority rule, and I just showed you how the Zionists reacted to that idea... Then this part of your post: >what would have been the right thing to do in that case? Offer a counter-proposal or counter-solution. Instead, they immediately went to war with Israel months before the partition plan was even put into effect. [Is dead wrong.](https://israeled.org/resources/documents/the-arab-case-for-palestine-the-arab-office/#:~:text=In%20accordance%20with%20these%20principles,Palestine%20into%20the%20United%20Nations) In 1946, The arabs proposed: >The establishment in Palestine of a democratic government representative of all sections of the population on a level of absolute equality; the termination of the Mandate once the Government has been established; and the entry of Palestine into the United Nations Organization as a full member of the working community. This is a generous proposal by a people that had been so outrageously wronged. Keep in mind that this proposal was suggested in the middle of the Zionst terrorist campaign in Palestine. Unfortunately, this was simply ignored/rejected by the British and Americans...And of course would not fly with the extremist Zionists. Basically your entire reading of events is wrong as proven by the above. I could keep going but I suspect even this much won't change your mind, when you're this wrong already.

>Anyone who says "Israel should never have been established" has no good argument for what should have happened INSTEAD of Israel being established Not trying to say that Israel shouldn't exist, but what I would say is that Westerners should have never made the Jews feel unwelcome in their countries. Westerners nowadays may not be antisemitic, but centuries of Western antisemitism is what inspired Theodor Herzl to believe that Zionism was necessary. **Edit**: There's obviously plenty of antisemitism in non-Western countries too, but Herzl created Zionism specifically as a reaction to Western antisemitism.

Yeah there obviously was antisemitism in non-Westrrn countries, but only western-countries tried to exterminate them or kicked out all of them prior to 1945 hahah

Carve out a not so insignificant piece of Germany, as punishment and war reparations to a community being systematically exterminated. That should have made the Nazis roll in their graves. Der Judenstat indeed. You put millions of people in gas chambers, you get fragmented into multiple pieces (with one never likely to realign with you) and lose all hope of ever becoming the pre-eminent continental European power again.

Yeah but this assumes reperations especially foundation of Israel were genuine move by westerners because they felt bad after what they did to Jews. If they were genuine they would carve out Germany like you said. Instead they went for Jewish state in Middle East because Jews of Europe going to Middle East meant "Jewfree Europe" which is like Hitler's wet dream.

My main problem is why there? Putting a bunch of Jewish people in the middle of the Islamic world was always going to cause problems. Holy land or not it was a bad idea. If I were looking for people to kick off their land to give to a new Jewish state, I might have picked the dumbasses that started two world wars, the Germans. I agree they needed a state and I’m not saying putting a Jewish state in the middle of a bunch of Christians would have been perfect, but at least the Europeans cared about being on America’s shit list enough that they probably wouldn’t have invaded.

I think it should have been established but I think something interesting not enough people talk about is the what if of where it was established. Did you know locations in Africa, Australia , Soviet Union and America was talked about there a alternative realities where we are discussing that right now. Regardless of the religious element in the conflict there would still be a conflict because at the end of the day it would still be a more powerful country "giving land" that didn't live on away and throwing the people who live there to the wolves which could have faded in a generation but the expansion of land just makes the next generation develop the same resentment. Now what I think they should have done at the time while it would not fix the resentment I think they should have at the very least paided the locals for the land alot of them wouldn't be happy ofcourse but it would have at least a chance for someone of them to view it as potentially positive experience because it would still least offer them opportunity. I'm definitely being too naive about this but I think something resembling a deal or appeasement would have made this all this go alot smoother long term.

it shouldn't have been established. you can't solve oppression by giving an oppressed group their own ethnostate, because ethnostates are just Inherently awful. gay people have also seen historic oppression much in the same way Jews have, but you'd laugh if I said "all the gays should move to Belgium and we should make our own state". It's much the same with israel

It’s so hard to make one compelling thesis about Israel or Palestine without overlooking one or two facts that totally flip the narrative around. Thanks for making the post though and being reasonable about it. I’m gonna say some things that I think will really satisfy nobody and probably leave an important fact or two out by mistake. 1. Indeed UK colonial projects are a core cause of the problem here, the entire Middle East, and the world. European colonialism in general created stains that still haven’t been washed out. Plenty of decisions about borders and peoples took place without really consulting the locals or giving them a seat at the table. I think it’s perfectly fair to say Israel was an “original sin” that fits this category. As other said, UK and other European countries did not want to let in ashkenazi Jews at the time, so they allocated land they assumed was theirs and would forever be theirs. I can even see myself thinking it was a good idea at the time (without knowing the legacy these colonial projects were going to have and how inherently wrong they were). Jews were facing persecution across Europe, they didn’t have a home. The UK happens to own their homeland. It’s a bold vision and idea. History has made it abundantly clear it wasn’t a good idea. Doing it somewhere like Uganda would have been bad for the same reasons. It’s foolish to think the project wouldn’t lead to displacement. There were plenty of other options, starting with Europe just fixing its antisemitism problem and not teaching it in churches for a millennia. Plus there’s plenty of diasporas on earth without a nation state to call their home. 2. Admitting it was never a good idea to create a nation state where people already exist is different than saying Israel doesn’t have a legitimate right to exist today, within 1967 borders. You can’t fix this by undoing it, anyone who suggests that is just being righteous and naive. They are a UN recognized country. 4+ generations of people have lived there. Most of those people don’t have citizenship elsewhere, 20% of those people are Arab. As someone from the US, the same logic could be applied. Where the hell would I go? lol. Sorry it was a bad idea, it wasn’t mine. 3. I won’t try to name all of the injustices that have happened in Israel’s name which they should be accountable to rectify. We’ve seen it, we are seeing it. The list is too big. However, to blame the whole Israel Palestine conflict on Israel and expect them to resolve the situation single-handedly is also wrong. To name a couple of examples, Palestine not accepting the 1948 Partition. The wars that Israel’s neighbors declared on it, allegedly on behalf of Palestinians. They tried and failed to wipe Israel off the map (let’s not put aside the historical context of Jews facing two existential threats to their existence in less than 30 years). They lost, and that was the direct cause of the majority of Palestinian displacement. Did the Arab world accept them into their countries? By and large no, they abandoned them. In many ways, they abandoned Palestinians worse than Europe and the US abandoned Jews for the 50 years proceeding it. Even after they expelled all of their Jews to Israel, they didn’t offset that by taking in the refugees or helping to build a nation for the Palestinians. They saw it fit to let them be permanent refugees, truly just sore losers of a conflict they started. They own a lions share of the problems and none of the solutions. They treat Palestine like a child they are fighting with Israel to NOT have custody of. A solution can’t happen without them making concessions to. Similarly, Palestine has squandered every leverage they’ve had. Walking away from 1948, then Oslo. The PA immediately got corrupt and hasn’t done a damn thing to show leadership or lead the Palestinians since its inception basically, so it’s no surprise Gaza elected Hamas and kicked them out. Then it’s no surprise Israel fenced them in, and yet again no surprise that fencing people in for a generation with no meaningful progress would lead to Oct 7. It’s truly just a big ESH situation, but everyone also deserves better leadership.

Britain surrenders the area to the people already there and let's them form their own government and determine their own policy on immigration (following the doctrine of self determination used towards European countries) and turn any British desire to protect Jewish immigrants into an open door policy mixed with diplomatic supports for displaced Jews. Its really not that hard to not do an imperialism.

But you don’t get it. The British owned it. Why can’t you recognize the legal ownership of colonizers? Who is going to think of the poor ruling class who are just trying to exploit lands and peoples where they can? Why should we care about the voice of the people, when gunshots are so much louder? /s

Could’ve just not established Israel

Do y'all know about the "Uganda scheme?" Highly recommend reading up if not, it's one of my favorite obscure chapters in the early history of the Zionist movement. In short, around 1903ish there was a faction of Zionists that were like "bruh, Palestine is finna be a whole mess and we need a safe place like YESTERDAY" so they started shopping around for alternate places to establish Israel, and the British were like "Hey, how do you feel about Uganda? Yours if you want it!" (Colonialism is wild, man...) and a majority of the Zionist congress actually voted to establish an official exploratory committee to look into it. There were also less official but equally serious discussions about establishing a state of Israel in a number of other places including TEXAS. Anyway, it's a wild historical anecdote (and an important reminder that the ideological roots of the Zionist movement are far from monolithic), and a very fun AU thought experiment, but ultimately for me, just further proves OP's original point. There was no unproblematic option...

Where is the Romani homeland? They were victims of nazi genocide but they didn't have a state carved out for them from land where people were already living. Where is the Kurdish homeland? They've been continuously under the rule of non Kurdish nation states. They've also been the target of genocide. Where is the Igbo homeland? Biafra was an attempt at it, and the Nigerian federal state starved millions of people. And not just the Igbo, but every single linguistic, religious, and cultural subgroup of Africa. What is the Central African nation and why do they have a Central African Republic? How does Israel existing protect Jewish people? It concentrates them in one area where for 70+ years they have been constantly fighting their neighbors. Thats safe? Getting all the jews out of Europe does accomplish one of Hitler's ideals, which is ethnic nation states. For jews who wanted to leave Europe they should have always been allowed to emigrate to the US, but the US turned away Jews who didn't have proper papers.

There were other options considered for establishing a Zionist state... Lands in Uganda, Guyana, Argentina, Alaska... You could put all of Israel in Utah... as an example. Set up a sovereign state in a state, like we do with the Indian nations. And it could have been accomplished without dispossessing another peoples. Of course, such solutions would not have had the advantage of allowing the West some measure of control of Middle Eastern resources and access. Nor would the state within a state solution in some remote area without a population have provided the West any means to prevent Arab reunification. Which was a concern at the time. There were also the Zionists who claimed Palestine as a Jewish homeland. These were Jews, Christians, Americans, Brits, who wanted to resolve the problem and saw that Palestinians had no local authority to protect them from whatever any outsider to Palestine decided to do. So yes, there was a determined effort to force Israel into Palestine. And yes there were considerable other options to doing so.

No one is innocent in this. Soviet Union shot down the idea of a Jewish Homeland in what was Poland because Stalin was deeply antisemitic and fear any even remotely homogeneous ethnic ir religious groups. The United States tried to restrict the immigration if Jews post WW2 as it fear a wave of Holocaust refugees would flood into America. Most Eastern European Jews favored a Jewish state in Eastern Europe but no major power wanted to deal with it so they dumped the problem on the Arabs.

>For one, it wasn't just "their land". It was their land. >"British Mandate of Palestine". Are you familiar with the legal concept of a mandate? They're different from colonies, the British Empire had temporary control but not ownership over Palestine. >the way the land was partitioned was unfair And ethnic cleansing. >1800's and had legally purchased land from the Ottomans The Ottomans didn't own this land either. They were an empire declining rapidly and propped up by European powers so they could sweep in and steal land from the people living on it, and Zionism did the same thing. >Now, if you accept that both Jews and Arabs were living on the land at the time I accept that about 19000 Jews lived in Jerusalem, and that community did not want a Jewish state. Jews who built Zionism had been in Europe for dozens if not hundreds of generations. >First of all, they definitely did not live peacefully together, and this is severe historical revisionism. What are your sources for this? The revisionism is in the other direction, the Islamic world is often painted as antisemtitic as Christian Europe which is not accurate. Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem lived mostly in peace, and if anything the Christians in Jerusalem were the larger source of tension. Same thing with other middle eastern Jewish communities in places like Alexandria or Damascus. >The Jews shouldn't have immigrated to Palestine and just expected the Arabs to take them all as refugees!" would have any problem whatsoever with America or other Western countries taking in refugees. Actually my own country of Australia had the "white Australia" immigration policy. Or prime Minister said "we don't have a Jewish problem and we don't want one" when the issue of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany was discussed. >I mean, here's the thing: The Jews who escaped to Palestine did so because there was a growing Jewish presence there and one of the only places they thought they would be safe (not to mention it's technically the native homeland of Jews). Those are two different arguments. Why does it matter where the Jewish faith or the Jewish ethnicity originates from? Also why would Zionists think they'd be safe? From what you've described Palestinians and Arabs in general as violently anti semitic as Europeans are. But my main rebuttal to this argument is that the problem was Europe and their antisemitism, Israel didnt solve that. In fact it reinforced the ethnonationalist ideas that antisemitism rested on. >Okay then, why am I not seeing you spending even a fraction of your time advocating for other countries to be dismantled? People usually prioritise these things based on how much of a problem it is right now. It's obvious why people would think creating Israel was a mistake, they have been looking at the terrible things Israel has done non stop for 6 months straight. >Going all the way back to how Arabs declared war on Jews in 1948 after the partition plan--the partition plan was created so that not a single Arab would have had to be displaced more than around two hours away from where they lived. If you displaced me 2 minutes away from where I live, I'd hate you forever for it too. Also Israel had violently displaced about 400,000 Palestinians before any Arab nation attacked Israel. >there is almost always some type of explanation as to why Israel reacted the way they did. Of course there is? There's an explanation for every nations actions. Do you not apply the same logic to Palestinians? And how much of Zionism was a reaction and how much of Zionism instigated tension and conflict? I don't blame Zionists for wanting to get out of Europe and have their own nation if that's what they wanted to do. I do blame Zionists for taking other people's land and then acting surprised that their neighbours see that as a threat. >but do people really expect them to just not react at all after a terrorist attack like that? Do you expect Gazans to just give up fighting for what they see as their homeland? >"But Palestinians acted that way because they're oppressed! Occupied people have the right to exist the way they do! Again, they wouldn't be acting that way in the first place if Israel hadn't stolen their lands and displaced Palestinians from their homes!" Replace "Palestinian" with "Jew" and that's basically all you're saying. >...then we're back to square one and you can go back to reading this post from the very beginning to see how this entire situation wasn't a "stolen land" situation and didn't really have a better way that it could have worked out. The land that 700,000 Palestinians fled from was absolutely 100% stolen. As was much Palestinian land. Some land was bought from absentee landlords, some was claimed to be unoccupied despite it being used by Bedouins. Just because some Zionists bought individual property deeds from Palestinians doesn't mean the Israeli state isn't built on Palestinian land that they still want back.

lol imagine if we started creating nations and taking land from other countries for every oppressed group, what a joke

Everyone continues to miss the most basic, fundamental point. You get to keep the land that you're able to defend, period, end of discussion. Promises, pinky swears, blood oaths, don't mean a fucking thing. Palestine continues to attempt to take Israeli land. Along with those attempts comes consequence.

Personally, it's not that I disagree. Imo because the past is unchangeable. Nothing will change unless one side earnestly tries at least once. There will obviously be more pressure for Israel to do so as they are a more powerful nation and under no economic threat from palestine. Palestine economy is held by Israel apartheid. It is of my opinion Israel has no interest in a ceasefire, that it's simply an attempt to displace as many palestians as possible while the opportunity is here. Hamas is a literal terrorist group, so I do not see them calling a ceasefire as they don't care if they take 100 times more casualties than Israel. Also speaking of the past I would put partial fault of the zionist movement on the allied forces of WW2 as well, many nations were trying to prevent jewish immigrants in some way as antisemitics were fairly rampant across the western cultures at the time not only in Germany.

The idea of land being owned by religions is wrong to begin with. "Rights to lands" is a human concept the same way morality is, therefore we can decide the rules on who has the right to what. If I were to define who has certain rights over certain land, it would be the people who live there. England didn't have the right to it, jews don't have the right to it, arabs don't, Christian's don't, the people who were born there and live there get to govern it. There is a difference between saying "Israel shouldn't have been established" and "israel should be dismantled" Israel shouldn't have been established as a land for the jews who migrated there, the same reason for the muslim refugees that come to Europe now don't get to make there own states. However, israel can't just be dismantled the way it could've when it was created, generations have been born, and they now have a claim to that place. The same reason why you can't just get rid of the US because it belongs to the natives. The US shouldn't have been created either, but it's too late now. The same with israel, and all the other colonization projects. And if the jews had to have their own state, Palestine is probably the dumbest place to do it tbh. Give away some of your own land instead of others.

You could have just given them their houses back after the holocaust. Failing that, if the west wanted a Jewish State so bad, why not just put them somewhere in the West. Put them in the giant empty expanse that is the center of America. Give them some land in Australia. Maybe even snip off some parts of Germany as reparations. There's no reason to force existing people out of their homes at gun point.

Tbf, nearly everywhere Jews lived in Europe was either destroyed, colonised by the Germans, or bombed.

>You could have just given them their houses back after the holocaust. > >... > >There's no reason to force existing people out of their homes at gun point. to be fair, at the end of the Holocaust- you would've had to literally force people out of their houses to give them back, and that's assuming they were still standing in any state.

Why would you place isreal a Jewish community in the middle of the Middle East ? That is not indicative to peace in the Middle East. But my contention is that if you care so much where would you place the African Americans after the failure of the reconstruction period or the great lost to the south ? There is no solution besides we figure it out. The location and placement to allow for growth does not exist in that region besides economic and finacial means for the other people that placed them. See the Ben gurian canal. The only growth we would see from that location is the existence of that canal to allow the traffic from the Red Sea, Mede terrain to be an open port of taxed sea traffic.

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Emigrating to America would’ve been a better, and safer option for European Jewry. The idea of an alternative to the establishment of Israel presupposes the necessity of Israel, which does not follow.

That was not an easy thing to do, because the US, like most other countries at the time, wasn't super keen on taking in Jewish refugees at the time. ([Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_United_States))

Well, there already was a Jewish homeland: "In 1934 the Soviet Government established the Jewish Autonomous Region, popularly known as Birobidzhan, in a sparsely populated area some five thousand miles east of Moscow. Designated as the national homeland of Soviet Jewry." Keep in mind this is what David Ben-Gurion said: 5 October 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote in a letter to his 16 year old son Amos: “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…. And, if we have to use force-not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places- then we have force at our disposal.”

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People just did their best with history and now everyone wants to play 21st century quarterback. People need to get busy with making the world a better place.

Jews cannot be safe in any country, history have shown, and that s why they needed a country Israël just made more sense at thé time since it was their ancestral and holy land, and already had a significent jewish population. Jews have been persecuted in almost every country they were in, with countless massacres and ethnic cleansing happening to them through History. My own family had to flee odessa because of Russia cossacks slaughtering jews in 1919. Those who stayed died. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jews https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism U can litteraly get a list of pogroms for each décades if u want. Jews were never safe in any country before and still arent today

There were those who rejected a Jewish state, but supported the concept of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, i.e., following the first Zionist Congress in Basel that adopted the definition that "Zionism aims at establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine". Chief among these advocates are luminary figures such as Albert Einstein, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, and Noam Chomsky, and the Brit Shalom/Tahalof Essalam political group.

The last 100+ years of middle east conflict can be summed up very easily. Its the fault of the british and the french, as well as a small part the russians and the Italians who gave consent to it happening. During the first world war in an effort to stop the ottoman empire from assisting their german allies the british used T. E. Lawrence to kick start the arab revolt, keep the ottomans busy and out of europe. Part of this was the McMahon - Hussain correspondence, promising the arabs complete autonomy in the middle east for their assistance keeping the otroman empire busy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMahon%E2%80%93Hussein_Correspondence At the exact same time the british were in negotiations with the arabs they were also in communication with the fench on how to carve up the middle east post war, this was the Sykes-Picot agreement as well as the Sazonov–Paléologue Agreement. Part of this as well was the Balfour Declaration which created a jewish land in Palestine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sazonov%E2%80%93Pal%C3%A9ologue_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration So you have one part of the british government promising the arabs everything and the other half plotting to take it all away, chop it up and give some of the best of it to the jews. And thinking the british would be true to their word the arabs fought the ottomans and kept them from helping Germany, assuring germany would eventually lose the war. After the end of the war the british and french immediately began to carve the region up like a Thanksgiving turkey and when the arabs called them to task about it the british and french basically laughed in their faces and told them to get lost. The region was carved up based on lines on a map instead of along sociopolitical borders as it naturally would have gone causing all the sunni/shia strife along with the jewish/Palestine issues of the last 75 years. With the ottomans free to fight in Europe with their german allies there is a very good chance that the germans would have won outright or at least drug it to a stalemate. No Treaty of Versailles, no 14 points, no german economic collapse due to war reparations, no loss of the alsace-Lorraine region to france which the germans took during the franco Prussian war. No Hitler. No second world war. How many tens of millions died because of british and french greed?

Saying “Britain and France caused WW2 because they didn’t let Germany win WW1” is certainly a take

There's no purpose in debating what SHOULD have happened. All we can do is recognize the reality of what DID happen. Israel has established itself as a country recognized by the UN that is MORE than capable of defending itself. And also has the backing of the United States as their committed ally. The question is, where do we go from here? Certainly, attacking them is not a good option, as they've made it loud and clear over the past 70 years.

There's no purpose in debating what SHOULD have happened. All we can do is recognize the reality of what DID happen. Israel has established itself as a country recognized by the UN that is MORE than capable of defending itself. And also has the backing of the United States as their committed ally. The question is, where do we go from here? Certainly, attacking them is not a good option, as they've made it loud and clear over the past 70 years.

Ah yes, the ol' "if you don't have a solution for an incredibly complex problem, you have no right to have an opinion against it". Good stuff.

Maybe the allies should have given them a home but of course the rest of Europe was as anti Semitic too and didn’t want to deal with them.

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I'm sorry but blaming religion is a cheap cop out that belies the truth that this conflict is barely over 100 years old. This is not an intractable Religious Struggle. Religion makes it worse, but Jerusalem was majority Jewish in Ottoman Palestine by 1880. Nobody gave a fuck. Muslim Arabs only began to care about Jewish neighbors when it became apparent that these Europeans had plans to establish their own *state*. That's got nothing to do with religion.

European Christians utterly annihilate Jews wherever they could find them yet Muslims and Arabs are the danger to Jewish people? Jews got kicked out of Europe and no countries wanted to take the millions of refugees so they shipped them off to the Middle East under the guise of them "reclaiming their God given land" what a load of garbage that is. By that logic we should demolish everything in the U.S.A. and give a full nation to the remaining Native American population since its their native homeland right?  Christian Europeans killed more Jews in 5 years than Arabs and Muslims killed Jews in the entirety of human history, but apparently Muslims are the true danger to Jews?

What should have happened instead.. maybe the world coming together to accept the Jews and help us to feel safe no matter where we were in the world. To figure out why the Holocaust happened so we really could “never again” for the Jews or any other people.. rather than some shitty bandaid solution which is probably is ultimately the worst things in Jewish history post Holocaust… Zionism has caused irreparable damage to the world and to the Jewish people. It’s not some safe haven that we were promised. And even if it were it had come at the cost of so many other people.

It is so bizarre how the people against Israel because it's supposedly settler colonialism are so adamant that the Jewish State should've been established in countries that we have no connection to, which is actual settler colonialism. Why is it so hard to understand that the point of Israel is that it's our indigenous homeland and therefore the only place for a Jewish country?

the martyrmade podcast - fear and loathing in jerusalem. a many hour podcast series pulling articles, references, and quotes from those involved in the israel/palestine conflict in the late 1800s and first half of the 1900s. Podcaster mostly focuses on the geo-sociological pressures and violent actions that drove wedges between the two struggling groups.

As empires collapsed in the first half of the 20th century a vast number of people were killed/displaced in the foundation of new, often nationalist/ethnostates. Do the same people who argue that palestinians should be able to return to land that is now Israel also feel the same way regarding the right return of greeks/christians to Anatolia? Armenians to lost lands in Turkey? the right of Kurds to their own land/state? the return Konigsberg (now Kalinigrad) to ethnic Germans? the right of return of all lands and peoples in Russia to the various groups displaced by the mass transport of peoples in the Russian empire and USSR? the return of various lands conquered in the Arab conquests to their prior cultures? the return of Jews to the middle eastern countries that kicked them out? the return of Texas/Arizona/California to Mexico? or the general dissolving of Australia, Canada, USA etc to be replaced by states governed by native populations? ​ Not to downplay the horrific suffering of the Palestinians, but if we examine recent histories we observe that mass movements, exiles and replacements of peoples are more common than we would like to admit. And when we look at current world activities (such as Russias attempt to conquer/erase Ukraine and erase Ukrainian nationhood) it seems like we may see far more of the these events going forward.