It would be only just if the Palestinians would get their own state after this.
replies(6):
Just as most of the citizens of Iran are victims of an Islamic totalitarian government, just as many Germans were victims of the fascist dictatorship that took hold of their nation, most human beings living near the southeast bit of the Levantine Sea are victims of actions outside their control.
They're collectively paying the price for horrific violence on both sides of an ugly, tragic conflict that they have no power over.
Giving those victims some sovereignty and peace would not be "rewarding" extremists, it would be taking a tiny step towards sanity.
Undoing colonialism isn't colonialism.
and storming a music festival and houses to abduct completely innocent teenagers and even toddlers to use them for leverage?
Honestly?
The current situation is like somebody commits a murder. Then the community rounds up a posse and goes out to kill the murderer. Then kill the murder's family, their neighbors, the residents of the next neighborhood over, raze the neighborhoods and then take all the land for themselves.
Justice means penalizing the guilty parties, not everyone in their geographical/social group. Your definition of Justice is leaky.
Israelis hit back hard. But they haven't been the ones to declare war on peaceful neighbors.
It wasn't them who stood for thr München massacre or a number of plane hijackings in the 70ies.
It wasn't Israelis who blew up buses in Gaza.
Was it?
We must stop confusing powerful with evil and currently helpless with "innocent".
Look to Israel, the source of decades of suffering for everyone in the region, including its own citizens whom it exposes to retaliatory violence in response to the violence it delivers to its neighbors.
Or is it kind of logical that when you vote actual genocidal maniacs into power and cheer for them as they return from murder and rape, you hide the hostages they took and refuse to do anything to stop them, then maybe you aren't completely innocent?
It's important to note that these things never happened, and you're still repeating them years later. The only baby that died on 10/7 was a 10 month old hit by crossfire.
I have no idea of the third, and though I feel sure it's wrong judging by the rest of what you have said, I feel obligated to check. Try it.
A singular terrorist event is not the same as an multi-decade occupation, on-going theft of land, discrimination, annexation plans, and - not least - a 2 year long genocide of tens of thousands of civilians.
So, no, that isn't what Hamas did.
I expect those two categories to behave differently from one another. Do you?
In just the past two weeks Israel attacked a half dozen of its neighboring countries.
Israel itself is a belligerent Western colony that has been ethnically cleansing Palestine since the 1940s.
It is the obligation for an occupied people to resist their occupiers, and according to the UN that is up to and includes violent resistence. The entirety of Palestine has been increasingly under occupation since Israel's inception.
Countless UN resolutions highlight Israels belligerence time and again with only the US and its subservient states like Micronesia voting against the overwhelming voice of the whole rest of the world.
Israel is an evil apartheid genocial settler colonial state that has brought nothing but further war and bloodshed to the region, and nothing Zionists state can change that fact.
I think you omitted part of it.
The crimes of Hamas are well documented, not only by Israel who admittedly might have some bias, but also by several in the OSINT community before Hamas realized their mistake and started deleting.
You questioning it only tells us you don't know much about what happened.
> the argument would be to punish Hamas, and not run around shooting children in the head,
Exactly like we dealt with the nazis and not a single child was hurt, right?
Or maybe take "war 101" and "war 201" and learn a thing or two about both why the laws of war explicitly bans using civilians as shields and also explicitly point out that human shields can be ignored. (Yes, it does. Feel free to look it up, and as homework, consider why the laws of war points this out ao explicitly. Here is a link, I don't expect you to have tje laws of war bookmarked: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/arti...)
And that is also what we see.
When did IDF try to outdo the rape of Nanking?
When did Hamas follow the laws of war ever so slightly?
Not only collected by Israel but also by the wider OSINT community.
That is what I meant by completely innocent.
edit:
Also, any reason why you mention Ben Gvir but not the many Palestinian Arab leaders who says worse?
Any reason you don't mention the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who fill the street to protest its current government and the absolute lack of anyone who protests Hamas in the streets of Gaza?
Hope this helps.
There's been plenty of slander to try to say they're more arab, but they're essentially close cousins.
Which leads one to believe, perhaps a large amount of the jews in the region simply moved on with the times with the new religion taking hold.
Essentially Israel/Palestine is a fight between cousins, and one side's inlaws who never actually came from the region but converted elsewhere.
So converts vs converts. Do the local converts have a say over the foreign converts?
The idea that land rights can be derived from the bible or spans of 1000s of years is silly, but the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine going back to 1945 is within living memory.
Not withholding UN funds that Israel was tasked with distributing, right?
And it's pretty telling that you chose to say this to me and not the comment I replied to.
And how could you oppose both the occupation and annexation plans? Annexation is an end to occupation, no? I also think that the occupation has been going on for far too long, though I fault UNRWA and the PA for that as much as I fault Israel.
Are you aware that most of the Arabs of the Holy Land came around the same time period as the Jews? There were Arabs living here previously, of course, as were there living here Jews. Half a century before the British mandate, Jerusalem was already Jewish majority.
> where they've lived for thousands of years.
350 000 to 500 000 Germans died in allied bombing.
Did the Germans become the good guys when the German civilian death toll exceeded the UK death toll?
Or even just when US got involved since Germany hadn't attacked US civilians?
No?
> It's important to note that these things never happened
> most of which didn't happen
Lebanon’s - hezbollah has fired rockets into Israel on oct 8th 2023 Iraq - fired rockets in solidarity of Gaza Yemen - fired rockets in solidarity of Gaza Syria - fired rockets in solidarity of Gaza Iran - fired the largest array of ballistic missiles to Israel after Israel bombed an consulate in Syria where Hamas and hezbolla were congregating Qatar - that’s the only country that didn’t physically attack Israel, but they did finance Hamas for the past decade, and operate a global information war against Israel via Al Jazeera
[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/10/maps-israel-has-att...
The idea of a nation called Israel is the invention of Zionists in the 19th and 20th century.
The arrival of Zionist European Jews was a phenomonen of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Zionist Jews that came from Europe brought with them a supremecist ideology that, in their eyes, justified all forms of violence committed against the Muslim, Christian, and yes, Jewish Palestians that opposed their colonization.
I don't know what you're making or misrepresenting in your statememt about Jordan and Jerusalem, but Jews have always lived in Jerusalem since the Muslims first took control of it 1400 years ago when Umar ibn El-Khattab brought back in Jews who had been expelled by the Christian rulers prior to that.
Jews have always prospered under actual religious Muslim rule, whether in Palestine, Spain, Morocco, Iran, or otherwise. Zionism is what drove a rift between Muslims and Jews in past two centuries, as prior to this there never was one.
Arab Jews were living peacefully side by side in Palestine before the European Zionist colonizers started coming in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Syria is at war with Israel since decades.
Lebanon has been shooting rockets at Israel and preparing ground attacks. Yemen (or rather the Houtis) keep firing at Israel.
Are these the examples you want to show about Israel being bad?
Edit: Tunisia hasn't been attacked. The influencer convoy was attacked by their own flare and media claimed ot was a drone until every OSINT researchers pointed out it was a flare not a drone.
Israel has been the single most belligerent nation in the middle east, attacking and antagonizing their own so-called allies for its entire existence.
Israel is responsible for attacking the British (King David Hotel), the US (USS Liberty), all of its neighbors, and even others more distant (Tunisia). It in their nature to antagonize their neighbors because they WANT conflict. They occupy lands that once belonged to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. They aspire to occupy far greater regions. They are not interested in peace, only on expanding their borders. They continue to build settlements on what little land people still call Palestine. They are committing a recognized genocide in Gaza. Resisting and stopping this is not just a right, but a mandatory action according to the genocide convention.
If not for the US support of Israel, it could never act with such impunity.
Arab colonisation of the middle east and north africa is documented history.
> Arab Jews were living peacefully side by side in Palestine before the European Zionist colonizers started coming in the 19th and 20th centuries.
You can look up historical incidences of Arab violence against Jews at any time you like. Palestine was partitioned into Jordan/Arab state/Jewish state for this reason, much like India and Pakistan was.
Ohhh and Muslims didn’t treat Jews “peacefully”. They were second class citizens and often massacred. Read some history.
In fact, part of that pride is calling it an the Arab conquest, even though the colonizer - Salah AlDin - was a Kurd and not an Arab.
Palestine is not in Arabia but in the Levant, which was conquered by Arabs from the Byzantine Empire in the 7th c. as part of the Arab-Byzantine wars, and came under the Rashidun Caliphate, the first incarnation of the Arab Empire (which also conquered parts of Europe, BTW, not to mention that people in Morocco or Tunisia speak Arabic for pretty much the same reason people in Peru or Mexico speak Spanish). Warfare in the Levant obviously preceded the crusades by centuries and millenia, and included not only European conquests such as Greek and Roman, but also Persian and Arab conquests.
While it is true that modern Zionism originated in Europe, most Jews living in Israel have no European ancestry whatsoever. Most Jews in Israel have a recent ancestry in the Middle East and North Africa.
Even Ashkenazi Jews of a recent European ancestry (who are a minority in Israel) have genetics pointing to Middle Eastern ancestry. While it is hard to tie any group to ancient Jews, it isn't unlikely that Jews of all origins as well as Palestinian Arabs have ancient Jewish ancestry.
Just as European nationalism excluded Jews as Europeans, Arab nationalism excluded Jews as Arabs, and if there's any group that identifies as Jewish-Arab today, it is vanishingly small.
What Zionism is has not only changed considerably over time, but now, as in the past, there's great disagreement among those considering themselves Zionist on what it means. For example, as recently as a decade ago you could find a small but not negligible group of Israelis who identified as Zionsists yet were in favour of a single multi-national (or non-national) Jewish/Arab state, i.e. the same position was regarded as both Zionist and anti-Zionist by different people simultaneously. Today, many (perhaps even most) of those identifying as Zionists favour a two-state solution.
Israel brought nothing to the region? Let’s review.
Israel has the highest gdp by a great margin.
Israel is an important exporter of technology to the world, be it cyber tech, water tech, agriculture tech or defense tech.
Israel has the highest number of startups per capita in the world.
Israel has more Nobel laureates than the entire rest of the Middle East.
Last olymipcs Israel won more medal than the rest of the Middle East.
Palestines primary exports pretty much mounts to terrorism and sedition.
So yeah, Israel is an extremely successful country, saying otherwise is either ignorance, or malicious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanian_annexation_of_the_We...
"The Jordanians immediately expelled all the Jewish residents of East Jerusalem.[54] Mark Tessler cites John Oesterreicher as writing that during Jordanian rule, "34 out of the Old City's 35 synagogues were dynamited. Some were turned into stables, others into chicken coops.""
Which is why Palestinians should never get East Jerusalem as their capital, it's simply not theirs, not even in the nebulous way that the West Bank is.
This:
> Jews have always prospered under actual religious Muslim rule, whether in Palestine, Spain, Morocco, Iran, or otherwise. Zionism is what drove a rift between Muslims and Jews in past two centuries, as prior to this there never was one.
Is not true, as even a cursory view of the history will reveal endless massacres of Jews by Muslims.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cast_Thy_Bread https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_expulsion_from_L...
At no point in the plan for the partitioning of the Arab world was the safety or peace of peoples living there a consideration whatsoever. It was a convenient way to get the Jews out of Europe for the antisemites that lived there and to give the West a vassal colony to continue to serve its imperial purposes in the Middle East for destabilizing lest the Arabs otherwise unify.
Every other government in the Middle East with few exceptions are now, at this point, similarly vassalized and serve the same purpose, and any chance at deviation from that plan has been met with violence of an unsurpassed level with Israel serving as the foothold for that. The minor tribal violence you are alluding to, which was not targeted specifically at Jews, but part of general tribal spats that include Muslim on Muslim violence as well, pales in comparison to the technologized and politicized mass genocial violence in the Middle East that Israel has enabled and actively campaigned for (Iraq, Syria, Iran) for decades.
Don't tell me anything about the actions of the West or Israel in the Middle East aim for peace or reduction of violence. Jews were not spared from violence in Israel during its formation as well, with documented attacks against them in Iraq and Egypt to spur them to flee from the Arab countries to the "safety" of Israel. The Middle East was a much safer place for everyone, including Jews, before Israel was formed.
Also, you are lying about "endless massacres of Jews by Muslims". This is not, has never been, and continues to not be, true whatsoever.
Arabs and Muslims didn't even have antisemitism before Zionism existed. You can only look to times after Zionism with its supremeist ideology to find hostility from Arabs and Muslims specifically targeting Jews for being Jewish. It simply did not exist and they have coexisted for nearly the entirety of the history of Islam. Only when Europeans came down into the Middle East and they segmented and separated the society did this occur.
Avi Shlaim [0], an Israeli and also Arab Jew, talks extensively about the peaceful coexistence Muslims and Jews had for hundreds of years in the Middle East prior to Zionism.
Zionism tried to force a wedge between Arab Jews and Muslims that simply wasn't there beforehand.
All of what you said does nothing for the region as they continue to expand their own borders by stealing more and more land from their neighbors (they recently took MORE land from Syria as the new government took shape). Their achievements are marred by their vicious genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and increasingly genocidal behavior in the West Bank as well. Of course you'll economically prosper if you consider stealing and occupying a legitimate right of yours. They achieve all of this by bringing bloodshed and war to the region, which they call for from the US time and time again.
How many times has Bibi Netanyahu gone before Congress to pull the US into another war in the Middle East? The US foots the bill to weaken their neighbors so they stand out more. That's not an economic achievement to be proud of or boasting about.
They can have all the startups they want, but they have the worst human rights record of any country currently, with the largest number of condemnations in the UN of any other country but always vetoed by the US. When you don't have to worry about being judged the same as other countries, then you are free to develop your country without worry about petty things like human rights violations as long as Uncle Sam foots the security bill and sends over more contracts.
Israel and those who unconditionally support it are complicit in its genocide.
Palestine is a relatively recent term. Long before that, the ancestors of today’s Jews occupied this region. We’re talking about the literal Bronze Age. The land NEVER belonged to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, or Syria.
The modern state of Israel with its present borders were a creation of the Second World War. But if you go back in time to ~1000 BC, Jewish people occupied the entire region (much broader than just Israel), and they are the only surviving indigenous people of the region. This isn’t even controversial. Virtually all historians and scholars acknowledge this because there is literal physical evidence in the buildings at Temple Mount and elsewhere, which are all dated back to that time.
And yes, Muslims and Jews lived over 1000 years far more peacefully than any time before. Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestine was at peace under Muslim rule except for the Crusades which, surprise, came from Europe.
Or that after they got soundly defeated, Israel was nice enough to give back a lot of their lost territory.
I disagree. Your definition of justice inadvertently prevents justice. Holding Hamas accountable for the thousands of rocket attacks and the mass murder / mutilation / rape of October 7 means hunting down all of them, getting rid of their weapons, and freeing hostages. You can only do so with some degree of collateral damage since they’re hiding in civilian populations.
But also, “civilian” is debatable. It’s this same population that voted for Hamas despite their charter explicitly calling for religious genocide. It’s the same population that supports Hamas even after the mass murder / mutilation / rape of October 7, according to multiple polls. It’s the same population that has so many times turned a blind eye to the actions of Hamas.
> That it is a religious goal to have a nation of Israel is a new idea driven by Christian Zionists more than Jewish ones and the political, areligious Jewish Zionists enjoy their support and will play any role to achieve their own goals.
It is literally a religious goal of Hamas and the people who voted for them (Gazans) to destroy a religion (Judaism) and to commit genocide. It is literally in their charter. They voted for it. Meanwhile, the nation of Israel has a population that is over 20% Islamic Arab and they are thriving. The reality seems to me to be the opposite of what you’re stating here.
> Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestine was at peace under Muslim rule
It seems to me like you are pro colonization when the rules are Islamic and when the suppressed are Jewish. But not in the reverse? Israel is a democracy. Surely that is preferable to a religious supremacist rule?
> any chance at deviation from that plan has been met with violence of an unsurpassed level
Really? I thought it was because Arab leaders keep trying to destroy Israel. I think I got that impression from Arab leaders continuously saying they were going to destroy Israel, and 'the Jews' in the time between the writing of the Koran and the creation of the modern state (also still 'the jews' if you listen to Arab media).
Syria used to be Christian. Lebanon had a significant Christian population. Egypt was Egyptian and Iran was Zoroastrian. All fell after arab colonisation.
Taking both together, nothing you've said justifies what has taken place over the last 2 years.
And your comment on annexation as an end to occupation was truly bizarre, but ... unsurprising at this stage.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_Zionism#Political_Zio...
Regardless. I accept it's reasonable that sexualised violence took place. I accept the what happened on 7th Oct was a horrible terrorist act.
But, and apologies if this hurts, none of that, absolutely none of that, justifies what has taken place since.
There is no place in this world for genocide. Particularly from a country that preaches "never again".
Nothing you can say will change my opinion on that.
Israel has really fucked up. It destroyed Gaza, yes. But in so doing destroyed it's reputation and standing for at least a generation.
But, and apologies if this hurts, none of that, absolutely none of that, justifies what has taken place since.
There is no place in this world for genocide. Particularly from a country that preaches "never again".
Nothing you can say will change my opinion on that.
Israel has really fucked up. It destroyed Gaza, yes. But in so doing destroyed it's reputation and standing for at least a generation.
> There is no place in this world for genocide. Particularly from a country that preaches "never again". Nothing you can say will change my opinion on that.
I am showing you that the accusations of genocide against Israel are beyond ridiculous. They are manufactured to favour the side that 1) provides oil, and 2) is in idealogical conflict with the United States. Most countries of the world either need oil or are similarly in an idealogical conflict with the US.
Just for example, the United Nations report that slanders the Jewish State about committing genocide starts off with this prose: "On 7 October 2023, Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza, which included airstrikes and ground operations". Does that sound like a logical summary of that day's events?
Not just dishonest. But sickening, frankly.
It is also trivially simply to disprove “It was always Palestine”. It was made up by Romans. Again, much later than when Jewish people lived there.
Palestine was never a country before 1948, immediately prior to 1948 there was a British Mandate[0] with the name Palestine, but this mandate included land that would eventually turn into countries like Jordan(which just so happens to be a country with a Palestinian majority population). After 1948 and before 1967 the West Bank was annexed by Jordan and Gaza was occupied and administered by Egypt.
The idea of a nation called Palestine is arguably a more recent invention than the nation of Israel.
The Arabs that lived in what is now Palestine simply called themselves Arabs, the same way that Arabs in Israel call themselves Arabs. British Palestine and Ottoman Palestine were multi ethnic states.
Hopefully you have decades left in your life. One from now, I would be immensely grateful if you emailed me and let me know your perspective on your past-self's defense of genocide.
Obviously if the nazis and hamas had come out and surrendered we wouldn't have had to.
But sometimes one has to take out evil. Be it nazis in Berlin or Hamas in Gaza.
And it also serves as a lesson. A lesson certain countries might soon have to learn the hard way:
don't vote for evil, and if you did, don't be the ones who line the streets to cheer for them like Germans and Gazans did.
Like IAGS whose findings were widely reported until it turned out the biggest qualifications for its 500 expert members was that they had paid a $30 membership fee? And whose openly accessible member list included "Adolf Hitler"?
The emperor has no clothes and no amount of reports from the royal court of UN will change that:
It is plain for everyone to see and the emperors naked butt is disgusting.
It is also insulting to actual victims of actual genocides.
By your logic most of what happened in 1944 and 1945 when 350 000 to 500 000 German civilians died were probably injustice.
But in the real world we need to deal with the people who again and again attack their neighbors in vicious ways.
And we need to finish it.
It's the same people, on the same land, practicing the same religion, speaking the same language, with the same alphabet, with the same capital, with the same place names, with the same cities, with the same core texts, with the same national holidays.
But that's somehow nothing? At this point you'd have to actually work hard to figure out what's not the same.
Israel is an example of anti-colonialism, where the original inhabitants of the land were able to take it back from invaders.
Don't fool yourself, you are repeating antisemitic slurs. The Jews in Israel never left, and Zionisim is something like 2,000 years old (it's as old the Babylonian exile). Israel is as far from "colony state" as you can get - it's literally the opposite, it's an example of the native people getting their own land back.
When this is over, people like you should be forced to go to those graves and the destruction and be made to reflect and be educated.
Just like people are now sent to Auschwitz.
You're the flip side coin equivalent of Holocaust deniers. My condolences on where you've ended up in life. Bye.
The goal of the genetic stuff is to point this split out, not delineate races.
Sadly though, this conflict is full of racism. The Gazans are described as "Arabs" and therefore undeserving of the land. If it turns out the Gazans are not Arabs, but also locals to the region, then what does that mean?
They are not the same people. Modern day Palestinians share more ethnic heritage with the land's original inhabitants than European Zionist settlers.
The religion of the region has been different throughout time. Judaism is one religion of that region, and not the only nor even the first.
The language is not the same. Modern Hebrew that is spoken in Israel diverges significantly from the original Hebrew, which is more closely spoke by Yemeni Jews, for example.
Everything else is in your list is done by fiat, as even the the UN and the vast, vast majority of the world do not recognize Jerusalem as the capital.
Israel is the last major European colony and it's an anachronism that will go down in history as the final failed attempt at Western Imperialism.
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/12/headlines/israeli_for...
I guess to someone with your ideology collective punishment of Palestinians is normal day, but when the world sees it we are repulsed.
It focused on a Jewish home ... centred on gaining Jewish sovereignty ... and was opposed to mass migration until after sovereignty was granted
Definitions are only one part - apartheid is a description of what Israel has achieved, "Political Zionism" is a good candidate to describe the underlying ideology.
However you look at it, it is a catastrophe without a likely, of foreseeable, happy ending. Even the state of happiness the South Africans achieved looks elusive
It does not have to be that way. Jewish people could be secure in Israel and live in peace there, but the Israeli state seems unable and unwilling to make the compromises to bring it about.
"Justice the seed, peace the flower"
As to Zionism having an explicit ethnic meaning, that is obvious and non-surprising. Political Zionism was formed in Europe at a time of ethnic and national awakening (and as a result of centuries of oppression against Jews and other ethnicities), and further shaped in the time of national struggle against colonialism and multinational empires. At least until the sixties (if not the nineties), ethnonationalism of ethnic minorities was seen as a progressive position against conservative multi-ethnic/national empires. You can see traces of such "left-wing nationalism" not only in Israel (obviously, I'm not referring to its current ruling coalition), but also in Ireland and in Asia. Ideological (rather than pragmatic) support of a Palestinian state - which is just as "racialised" as a Jewish state - is also a form of that. If you want a "feel" for that in the US, think Malcolm X or the Back-to-Africa movement, and especially Marcus Garvey, who was expressly inspired by Zionism and Irish nationalism.
Of course, even as early as the 1920s and the rise of right-wing nationalism, many on the left recognised that left-wing, "emancipatory", nationalism can quickly turn into right-wing, oppressive, nationalism and warned against that when it came to Zionism as well as other national movements of the time. I think they ended up being proven right in almost every case (including the famous examples of Israel and India), but emancipatory nationalism did play an important historical role in decolonialism, and in the case of Israel, it also helped save the lives of many Jews fleeing the horrors of oppressive nationalism (mostly in Eurpoe, but later also in the Muslim world).
But imagine Black Nationalism had succeeded and become oppressive on a national level, how hard it would have been to talk simply about "Black Nationalism", and how it would have meant different and probably opposite things to different people.
I see your point but I think you are wrong
Political Zionism means the sort of Jewish state (a racial state) in a way that racists in England want an "English" state (which means "white")
A better example of what I think you mean is the role of Māori in New Zealand (Aotearoa).
It is a Māori country, Māori custom forms part of the basic law, but everybody in New Zealand has the same rights
Māori institutions exist, but they are for everybody. (I get services from one, I am not Māori)
In Israel "...only Jews have the right to self determination " https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Nat...
That is the problem
I understand the history, that the people who established Israel after WWII were brutalised survivors and they brought that brutality to bear in the process of state creation, but they remain racist genocidal thugs practicing apartheid
Then they (those thugs from the Israeli state) claim they represent all Jews. Makes it very hard for Jewish people everywhere who have any decency
For some who identify with it, yes, it means that and for others it means something completely different: a political entity that ensures a national home for Jews. In the early days of political Zionism, still in the age of empires, what they had in mind was some sort of autonomy within the Ottoman Empire.
> In Israel "...only Jews have the right to self determination "
Yes. In many countries (e.g., in America) no ethnic group has a stated right for self-determination. In the UK, it's accepted that Scotland may withdraw from the union and obtain self-determination through some process. But yeah, it's definitely a problem.
> that the people who established Israel after WWII were brutalised survivors and they brought that brutality to bear in the process of state creation, but they remain racist genocidal thugs practicing apartheid
I have no reason to believe that Israelis are any more or less statistically racist than people in other countries. The problem in Israel is not some old ideology that is largely anachronistic, but that the country has, indeed, established apartheid and that it's massacring Palestinians. The past experience of the minority of Israeli Jews with ancestry in Europe that escaped from the holocaust (BTW, those who established Israel got there long before WW2) or the majority with ancestry in the Middle East that escaped Arab nationalism is similarly irrelevant. Their crimes are just crimes.
The way I see it, there are two barbaric, bloodthirsty tribes living on that land, both currently led by illiberal, nationalistic, and increasingly religious-fundamentalist leaders, so while, as a leftist, I can obviously support neither leadership, Israel is guilty of apartheid and horrendous war crimes. I'm not optimistic. At this point my gut says that instead of fighting off British colonialism, they should have begged us to stay. The American colonies aren't doing so well, either.
And yes, I also hate how the Israeli government claims to represent all Jews. Going by the polls, they might not even represent a majority of Israeli Jews. But that's the new fascism. I'm mostly terrified of it making its way to the UK.
Not really. The European colonization of Latin America (and North America in general) was extremely bloody, and rooted in eradication and subjugation and erasure of the local culture. The native languages in the Americas are all but gone and been replaced with Spanish/Portugese/etc. We also saw what they did in the Levant, India, Africa, etc.
On the other hand, the Islamic (not Arab) conquests preserved the local culture. This is why Berber is still spoken in North Africa for example. And this is also why an extremely significant number of famous and prominent Islamic scholars came from Persia and the surrounding region (like Abu Hanifa, Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, and many more to list here). Not to mention countries further east like India and Indonesia as Islam spread. As a matter of fact, there are more non-Arab Muslims than Arab Muslims.
I attended a lecture by a Chinese Muslim who talked about the history of Islam in China - one amusing point he mentioned was how a local martial art was influenced by Wudhu' (Ablution) in Islam. This points to how there was an assimilation and acceptance between Islam and the locals, and was not an eradication.
We are seeing the genocidal calls by the israelis government officials (and polls show a majority of their population agree with them).
Under Islamic law, there is no suppression of minorities, especially People of the Book. They are free to practice and even rule by their own books and laws. Jewish historian shelomo dov goitein admits that Jews lived under the Islamic ruling better than they lived anywhere else in the world.
Of course, Arab colonialism (Arabisation), European colonialism - of both the settler and non-settler type - and Zionist settler-colonialism are all distinct phenomena, with some important similarities and some important differences. Even the violent struggle between settler-colonial forces and colonial forces are very different between, say, America and Israel.
What is happening in occupied Palestine today—witnessed by the world and actively enabled by certain Western powers—is a tragic chapter in human history. History will judge it with the same moral clarity and horror as the atrocities committed by a certain German regime during and around the WWII era. Already, we are seeing a growing awareness among Western civilians, who are beginning to recognize and challenge what their governments are supporting.
The Arab Empire's conquests are called both Muslim conquests or Arab conquests (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests).
> It’s worth remembering that the longest-lasting Caliphate was the Ottoman Caliphate. As I’ve noted, Islam transcends race and ethnicity.
Yes, but I was talking specifically about the Arab conquests that preceded the Ottoman Empire by centuries. The Arab conquests were in the 7th and 8th centuries. The First Crusade was in the 11th century. The Ottoman conquests were in the 14th century.
> Scholars have acknowledged that mistakes were made by some during these conquests, but such actions were contrary to the core teachings of Islam and have been openly recognized as such.
I'm not talking about religion but about history in response to a statement about the crusades having introduced warfare to the Middle East. Not only is that obviously not even remotely true, but the Arab Empire conquered and colonised the Levant, Maghreb, and Europe's Iberian Peninsula centuries before the crusades. All of this happened a long time ago, no one who was there is alive today, and I'm not trying to sit in judgment. This is just something that happened.
> History will judge it with the same moral clarity and horror as the atrocities committed by a certain German regime during and around the WWII era.
Not everything needs to be compared to the holocaust, nor, for that matter, to the atrocities in Syria this past decade that killed over half a million people and displaced almost 7 million. The atrocities in Palestine are bad enough without being "the same horror" as the killing of 80-90% of Eastern Europe's Jewish population. Nothing justifies mass killings, and each of those atrocities stands on its own.
If you look at the citation for the latter designation, you will see that it is a non-Muslim/non-Arab source. Never have I heard the term (الفتوحات العربية) in any proper source.
As far as I know "Arab conquests" is a modern phrasing used in English (orientalist historiography). It reflects the ethnic origin of the initial armies (mostly Arab tribes) but is not how pre-modern Muslim sources described them.
> Yes, but I was talking specifically about the Arab conquests that preceded the Ottoman Empire by centuries
If you mean the Rashidun, Umayyad, or Abbasid Caliphates, then those were not simply "Arabian" empires - they were Islamic. Non-Arab peoples were deeply involved at every stage. The unifying goal wasn't to spread Arab nationalism but the spread of Islam.
> Not only is that obviously not even remotely true, but the Arab Empire conquered and colonised the Levant, Maghreb, and Europe's Iberian Peninsula centuries before the crusades
They certainly conquered territory, yes. But the term "colonization" (especially with the European background involved) is very loaded, if not misleading. Unlike European colonialism, which involved stealing natural resources, dispossession, and often depopulation - Islamic conquests generally integrated local populations as I previously pointed out. Andalus was ruled by a combination of Arabs, Berbers, and large numbers of local converts. Likewise, in the Levant and Maghreb, indigenous societies weren't replaced or erased. They remained, adapted, and in many cases thrived under Islamic rule.
> Nothing justifies mass killings, and each of those atrocities stands on its own.
Agreed. But my point was that the Western-backed Israeli regime and WWII Germany share a disturbing structural resemblance: both are rooted in ethno-supremacist, ethnic-cleansing ideologies, and both commit mass killings against civilian populations. At least the nazis tried to hide their crimes; the israeli regime doesn’t even bother, and they boast about it (there are countless video interviews and confessions of israeli soliders that affirm this - several recent ones of israeli soldiers confessing their PTSD symptoms in court because of their crimes are very telling and distrurbing). The so-called "allies" hardly had clean hands either, their own history of indiscriminate mass killings during WWII (firebombing cities, nuclear attacks, colonial massacres) shows the same willingness to treat civilian life as expendable.
On a side note, what happened in Syria was a direct result of French colonial policy when they and Britain colonized the Levant, and israel is trying to follow the exact same play book in post-liberation Syria today. I won't get started on Lebanon either.
You will probably also like to know that the plans for a modern Israel started long before WW2 and Holocaust, and originally not because of persecution of Jews by Europeans in Europe but because of persecution of Jews by Arabs in the middle East.
Admit that 07th of October 2023 wasn't their greatest idea ever (their official position is that it is, but also just a taste of what is to come.)
Well, nationalism is a very modern concept, and things gets murky once we go further back. The very same could be said about applying the moniker "European" to the Roman Empire or even to the crusades. They were no more European than the Arab conquests were Arab.
> But the term "colonization" (especially with the European background involved) is very loaded, if not misleading.
That's true, but that would also apply to Israel and Zionism. There is no kind of European colonialism - of the settler or non-settler variety - that would cleanly apply. Even the Jews living in Europe who were the ancestors of a minority of Israeli Jews, created the Zionist movement because Jews were not considered European or Western by their environment.
The point is that in history, there are often important similarities and important differences, and we need to be careful when it comes to the extent of comparisons.
> both are rooted in ethno-supremacist, ethnic-cleansing ideologies, and both commit mass killings against civilian populations
Yes, and the same, of course, applies to Arab nationalism, which, at least in part, expressly allied itself with Nazi Germany.
There are many prisms of historical analysis. You can look at similarities or at differences; you can look in a specific era or across era. But if you apply different prisms to different groups and then compare them, it starts looking as less of an attempt of historical understanding and more as an attempt to use history carelessly to judge the politics of the present.
Palestinian refugees are defined differently by the UN vs essentially all other refugees.
Palestinian refugees fall under the UNRWA while normal refugees(i.e. refugees from essentially all other countries) fall under the UNHCR. The UNRWA definition is hereditary while the UNHCR definition is not. This hereditary definition is largely why the Palestinian refugee populations can increase over time in other countries so easily vs normal refugees.
There were multiple reason they(or their ancestors) left, there was plenty of violence when Israel was created but it wasn't like it was just one side attacking either. Regardless it's quite strange that someone is still considered a refugee despite potentially having never even been to the country they are supposedly a refugee from, especially since that doesn't happen for refugees from other countries(at least with how the UN defines refugee).
I'm not so sure about that. Are you referring to specific, minority individuals pushing what you are claiming, as opposed to a more systematic approach? And how much of what happened was a reaction to the zionist immigration from Europe?
The fact that by the time of WWII, most Arabs were Muslims - and such an ideology explicitly contradicts Islam. We also know that the movement was heavily in response to (the also misguided) Turkish national movement - Young Turks during the last days of the Ottoman Caliphate.
The Arab nationalist movements in Egypt and Syria were primarily anti-colonial and not really aligned with the Nazis. After WWII, Arab nationalism (e.g. Ba'thism) was shaped by opposition to western imperialism and zionism as opposed to any nazi connection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relations_between_Nazi_Germany...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_fascism
As to it being a reaction, be careful not to look at things from a perspective that sets out to pass a moral judgment on history. Virtually everything in history is a reaction to something else. Zionism was a reaction to antisemitism and part of a larger trend of national movements; even Nazism was, in a way, a reaction to Germany's defeat in WW1 and what ensued (and a minority ideology until they took control and then that didn't matter anymore) and so on and so on.
It's perfectly okay to say that certain actions in history were morally right, wrong, or complicated, but everyone involved in any of them felt their actions were justified by something they believed or had experienced. There are no good or bad nations. Virtually every society has done both good and terrible things at different points in time.