[simiones]

All of your arguments are dancing around a very important fact: Israel was not founded on barren land, it was founded on a land where hundreds of thousands of Arabs had lived for many generations. It was founded by driving these Arabs out - initially with peaceful means, but very quickly through force of arms.

Not content with pushing most Arabs out of most of what used to be called Palestine, Israel then occupied the remaining lands where they fled and is trying to colonize more and more of that land, keeping it under their own control but refusing to even annex it.

If the Jews of the world had sought a sanctuary, a much more appropriate deal would have been to carve out a piece of defeated Germany to create a Jewish state, probably around a formerly Jewish-majority city. Instead of that, the search for a Jewish homeland was led by Jewish religious fundamentalists, that wanted to live in the land they believe God assigned to them. The vast majority of Jewish people were (and still are) much closer culturally to Europe than to the Arab world anyway, having been driven out of historic Israel some thousand years before that.

I will not mention the similar plight of the Roma people, who no one saw fit to give a country to after the Holocaust either.

[sndman]

>the search for a Jewish homeland was led by Jewish religious fundamentalists

Not initially. This myth of the Jewish homeland only took hold after the turn of the century.

The early Zionist movement was primarily ideological and not religious. In fact, the religious Jews dismissed Zionism as a form of secularization and modernization, while secular Jews feared that the new ideas would raise questions about the Jews’ loyalty to their own nation-states and would thus increase antisemitism[1].

When the Reformists first encountered Zionism, they rejected the idea of redefining Judaism as nationalism and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. However, their anti-Zionist stance shifted after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

After1904, the fixation on Palestine as the only territory in which Zionism could be implemented was reinforced by the growing power of Christian Zionism in Britain and in Europe. Evangelical archeologists who excavated “the Holy Land” welcomed the settlement of Jews as confirming their religious belief that the “Jewish return” would herald the unfolding of the divine promise for the end of time.

They felt, and still feel, that the return of the Jews was the precursor of the return of the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead. The Zionist project of colonizing Palestine was well served by this esoteric religious belief.

However, behind these religious visions lay classical anti-Semitic sentiments. For pushing Jewish communities in the direction of Palestine was not only a religious imperative; it also helped in the creation of a Europe without Jews.

It represented a double gain: getting rid of the Jews in Europe, and at the same time fulfilling the divine scheme in which the Second Coming was to be precipitated by the return of the Jews to Palestine (and their subsequent conversion to Christianity or their roasting in Hell should they refuse) [2].

[1] Ami Isserof, “Opposition of Reform Judaism to Zionism: A History,” August 12, 2005, at zionism-israel. com.

[2] Stephen Sizer, “The Road to Balfour: The History of Christian Zionism,” at balfourproject.org.

[weatherlite]

> If the Jews of the world had sought a sanctuary, a much more appropriate deal would have been to carve out a piece of defeated Germany to create a Jewish state

Of course this was never offered, and it would have been too late anyway - since 6 million Jews have already been slaughtered and since Jews where already very close to their own statehood in Palestine. Also - sounds pretty morbid to me to found the Jewish state near Berlin in 1947, I'm not sure all the Jewish refugees would have been super thrilled to go back to the old neighbors know what I mean?

> I will not mention the similar plight of the Roma people, who no one saw fit to give a country to after the Holocaust either

What are you arguing here. If Roma people want a country beacause they are persecuted they should get one. That's the right of self determination. I am assuming Roma people never pushed for this for whatever reason. Also, you start by saying you will not mention but then you do mention.

[simiones]

> Also - sounds pretty morbid to me to found the Jewish state near Berlin in 1947, I'm not sure all the Jewish refugees would have been super thrilled to go back to the old neighbors know what I mean?

And yet other victims of the holocaust did just that. The move to create a Jewish state in Palestine was primarily led by Jewish fundamentalists who wanted to return to their God-given promised land, it was not a necessity by any measure (as proved by other victims of the German Holocaust).

[weatherlite]

> The move to create a Jewish state in Palestine was primarily led by Jewish fundamentalists who wanted to return to their God-given promised land

Most founders of Zionism were secular/atheists. Theodor Hertzel, Jabotinsky, Weizmann. Most of them were definitely not fundamentalists of Judaism that's igonrance.

> it was not a necessity by any measure (as proved by other victims of the German Holocaust)

Nothing is a necessity. Jews could have indeed done nothing and not even try to escape the holocaust (most of them did just that in fact). I'm still not sure what point you're making. No nation is a necessity, life itself isn't a necessity.