| Let's not confuse Zionist ideology with Judaism. One is a peaceful religion whose followers understand commandment #8 (no stealing (e.g. land, property, etc.)). And the other is a Fascist (even Einstein called the Irgun massacre 240 people (of Deir Yassin) a Fascist act of Menachem Begin (see his NYT letter December 4, 1948)), apartheid, militarized, racist government. I think your main narrative is false and, after reading (at least) three major human rights reports (Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and B'Tselem) in the last 2 years, many now regard Israel as practicing apartheid in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. This wasn't (and isn't) a war of equals: I think if you read history carefully (Ilan Pappe, Benny Thomas, etc) this is an colonial settler occupying force inflicting apartheid on indigenous non-Jews. All Native people have a right to resist occupation and apartheid. See the Battle of Algiers recently? This is how occupied people resist their colonial overlords. At some point, one must stop calling any criticism of Israel human rights abuses antisemitism. There is indeed antisemitism but advocating for human rights of non-Jews in a "democratic" state is not antisemitic. In 1948, over 750,000 non-Jews were ethnically cleansed from their homes and villages. My parents left Haifa in May 1948 as the city was ethnically cleansed. They didn't leave voluntarily. The Haganah were rolling barrels full of explosives into Arab neighborhoods to terrorize the local residents. It was also a psychological terror campaign: what the Haganah called a "Jewish Whispering campaign". In other words, they advertised the Deir Yassin massacre over loudspeakers (in Arabic) to warn the non-Jews about what was going to happen to them if they stayed. See the Israeli assessment of "migration" from June 30, 1948 at https://www.haaretz.co.il/st/inter/Heng/1948.pdf. Over 500 villages were burned and/or bulldozed to prevent the return of those expelled. Over 300,000 non-Jews were expelled before Israel was declared a state (May 14, 1948). It was only after this initial wave of migration that the neighboring armies began conflict to prevent the further expulsion of Native non-Jews. After Israel's creation, another 400,000 Indigenous non-Jews were expelled from their towns and villages (From Migration of Eretz Yisrael Arabs between December 1, 1947 and June 1, 1948 url is above) "In reviewing the factors that affected migration, we list the factors that had a definitive effect on
population migration. Other factors, localized and smaller scale, are listed in the special reviews of
migration movement in each district. The factors, in order of importance, are:
1. Direct Jewish hostile actions against Arab communities.
2. Impact of our hostile actions against communities neighboring where migrants lived (here –
particularly – the fall of large neighboring communities).
3. Actions taken by the Dissidents [Irgun, Lehi].
4. Orders and directives issued by Arab institutions and gangs.
5. Jewish Whispering operations [psychological warfare] intended to drive Arabs to flee.
6. Evacuation ultimatums.
7. Fear of Jewish retaliation upon a major Arab attack on Jews.
8. The appearance of gangs and foreign fighters near the village.
9. Fear of an Arab invasion and its consequences (mostly near the borders).
10. Arab villages isolated within purely Jewish areas.
11. Various local factors and general fear of what was to come." So the non-Jews did not appear to leave voluntarily. When people flee for their lives (and are not allowed to return to their homes (because they have been destroyed), we call this ethnic cleansing. It's a crime against humanity. It isn't that complicated: Zionists want the land but there are people already living on it. What do you do with the non-Jews already there? Israel massacred some of them and drove the rest out to neighboring countries (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and into the West Bank and Gaza). The exiled are still there. Just visit a Palestinian refugee camp and you can meet them. And why are they angry? They want to return to their destroyed villages. They want their homes back. They want their possessions returned. |