[sndman]

> EDIT: it struck me after writing all this. Perhaps this is the core of the contention: Israel is just so damn effective at everything it does.

Indeed, Israel is extremely effective. Especially in 1948. I find that there is a general lack of awareness of the history of Palestine and the indigenous people that lived there (and still live there) here in the US. The average American (in the US) is not aware that over 750,000 people were forced to leave their land in 1948.

My parents were among them. They were forced to leave with my 1 year old sister. Ask any older Palestinian. No one chose to leave in 1948. There was a clear understanding that the Haganah would kill them if they stayed.

Call it what you will but this is universally recognized as ethnic cleansing and dispossession of land and homes. It's simply settler colonialism (the number of settlements continue to grow every year).

This was well documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) among others. Most people simply hear news about violence, rockets, suicide bombers, etc. and do not understand the context. It's as if the Palestinians did not exist and the ethnic cleansing did not occur. There were over 500 small villages cleansed of inhabitants (see All That Remains by Walid Khalidi) and bulldozed over. Many now have settlers living nearby.

This is just history, not antisemitism.

[joelbluminator]

It was a bad civil war. Just like your parents felt they were risking death, the Jews felt the same. The Jews had a good reason to feel that, its not far fetched they were facing massacres if they lost. And expulsion for sure. Some Arab leaders made no effort to hide their wishes to eliminate the Jewish state. It became a bad zero sum game. Ilan Pappe is a known anti Zionis, which is fine, but I can cherry pick Historians who are more sympathetic to Zionism just as easily. Israel was actually not that effective in expelling Arabs as you probably well know around 20% never fled and eventually became citizens. They get more equality as Palestinians in Israel than they can ever dream of in any other Arab country.