[JumpCrisscross]

> People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves

Including a sizeable Jewish minority.

The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region. But it’s a continuation of outsiders (in particular Westerners, though the Iranians also bought this settler-colonialist nonsense which led to their recent miscalculations) with no connection to the land drawing up broad moral claims for how the Middle East should be divided up.

[Newtonip]

> Including a sizeable Jewish minority.

There was a Jewish community in Palestine (mostly centered around Jerusalem) but they did not come up with the Zionist project. Actually, many were opposed and some of their descendants still do so to this day.

> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region

The (European) architects of the Zionist project literally called it colonialism.

"You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews … How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial." -Theodor Herzl

Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects when arguing the people living there would fight back against their colonizers and the need for numbers and strength to counter them.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects

The Zionist Project is comparable to colonialism. That doesn’t make it settler-colonialism. (And Jabotinsky isn’t the final word on anything other than himself.)

[alfiedotwtf]

The whole notion of settling outside borders is marketing for annexation but has total support from Western Governments, yet those same governments are absolutely against the annexation of Ukraine.

… fuck I hate politics :(

[immibis]

There's a class of people who don't actually have moral principles but pretend to in order to justify selfishness. Their stated principles can turn on a dime because they don't actually believe them. Almost all politicians are in this group.

[slt2021]

[flagged]

[JumpCrisscross]

Sure. I can find terrible people opining on the case for a Palestinian state, too. That isn’t really an argument about what it is.

[tdeck]

> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region.

"Outsiders" like the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association that funded Zionist settlement in Palestine? The problem with folks who try to claim that this is ahistorical is that contemporary Zionists talked all the time about colonizing Palestine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Jewish_Colonizatio...

[pphysch]

There's plenty of videos of orthodox Jewish people getting brutalized in public by Israeli government thugs. There are many Jewish voices that oppose the genocide. Please don't conflate Judaism with a violent project of political extremism, even though the latter uses the former cynically as a "human shield".

[JumpCrisscross]

> Please don't conflate Judaism with a violent project of political extremism

I’m not. I’m arguing that one can oppose what’s happening in Gaza without careening into counterproductiveness and calling for the destruction of Israel.

[pphysch]

A state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere. In fact, it appears to be the opposite, based on historical fact. There are also Jewish communities that live peacefully with dignity in Iran.

[breppp]

> A state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere. In fact, it appears to be the opposite, based on historical fact

That's not my take from 2000 years of Jewish prosecution, in muslim countries or europe

[nathanlied]

There are Jewish communities within Iran, yes. But peacefully?

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/2025-06-27/ty-... (archive: https://archive.is/0qEg9)

One could blame this crackdown on Israel, sure. But that absolves the countries perpetuating persecution of Jews from their own share of responsibility in it. After all, when the American Government interned all those Japanese-Americans - did we blame Japan for it, or did we rightfully blame the American government?

I do not seek to defend Israel's actions against the Palestinian people, but to say that the Jews live "peacefully and with dignity" in places where they often are scapegoated, persecuted, and killed out of hand is not the way. Look at what happened to the Jewish populations of the region between the 40s and now, and you will see a grim picture of persecution, killings, and exodus.

[cultofmetatron]

nettanyahu has tried to bribe iranian jews to come to israel. they've chosen not to so I can't imagine its that bad for them there. additionally, iranian jews have positionsof power in government and mandated representation. it would be a very easy argument to make that iranian jews in iran are treated much better than non jewish palestinians have ever been treated in israel.

[breppp]

While most Iranian Jews left Iran and are currently in Israel, 200k compared to 9k left in Iran, so the numbers don't really support your statement

[ffin]

source?

[JumpCrisscross]

> state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere

Sort of irrelevant. The state of Israel exists. Israelis who call that land their home exist.

Those calling for the destruction of Israel are advocating for a holy war in the Levant. A war that would lead to hundreds of thousands if not millions of casualties.

[edanm]

> A state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere. In fact, it appears to be the opposite, based on historical fact.

Whatever else you think, this is some massive misunderstanding of history.

Historically, the lack of a state for Jews was one of the main reasons Jews experienced the Holocaust, which originated the term Genocide. Half of the Jewish population, making up (iirc) 90% of the population of Europe, died, because they had nowhere else to go.

And of the ones that survived, they still had nowhere else to go, no one wanted to take them in. The only place they could go, and what was agreed to worldwide, was to go to then-Palestine. Then, the hundreds of thousands of Jews "living peacefully" in Arab countries were ethnically cleansed from their countries, which they'd lived in for generations, and also largely had nowhere to go except Palestine.

[volleyball]

In 1920 (the year when British took over Palestine from the Ottomans) the jewish population was less than 10% Jewish and represented less than 1% of global Jewry. By 1948, after the British flooded in Jewish migrants mainly from Europe and the Americas, the population became about ~65% + arab and 35+% Jewish. Zionism was always predicated on Ethnic cleansing from the start and the founders of zionists were always aware of that fact.

“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 own country.” - Theodore Herzl , Father of Zionism in 1895.

"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]. I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." - David Ben Gurion, Father of Israel.

"the world has become accustomed to the idea of mass migrations and has become fond of them. … Hitler – as odious as he is to us – has given this idea a good name in the world." - Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Founder of Revisionist Zionism, 1940.

Zionism is textbook settler-colonialism. I dont see it worth even arguing the point.

[erikerikson]

> how the Middle East should be divided up

Given how every group claims it is a holy place, I'd expect each group would want it held in a state of peace, prosperity, and reverence for the benefits of creation. Instead they all seem bent on holding their holy lands in states of violence, discord, and waste.

You're not wrong that there is deep external interference but wouldn't holy peoples rise above any of that to do better from every side?

[cenamus]

Some people seem to have the idea that most of the people are European Jews, when in reality, it was more Arab jews, in large part due to the Nazis. The standardized language even reflects this, closet to the local pronounciation of hebrew than the "accents" in Europe. Or even Jiddish

[catlover76]

Having a sizeable minority of some kind does not really justify or excuse kicking out other ethnicities and religions to form a new state based on the primacy of that group. The mental gymnastics to think that expelling people living there while bringing in a population from Europe to displace them--literally to the point of having them move into homes vacated by Arabs who were expelled--is something other than a settler-colonialist is pretty astounding.

And the ambivalence and opposition of the Jews of Palestine to the Zionist project is fairly well-documented.

Rabbi Yakov Shapiro talks a lot about that, I think Gabor Mate does to some extent as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7POk0hVsgM