[Liron]

I often don't endorse the behavior of Israeli settlers. I'm responding to the question of what Israelis think about the news in general, a question to which I wanted to contribute the context of Israel's precarious existential security as a sovereign Jewish state.

[istjohn]

It's the "Jewish" in Jewish state that lies at the root of the conflict, isn't it? There aren't many options to maintain a dominant ethnic identity in a democracy when the land the nation was founded on was already inhabited by people who don't share in that identity. The only option is to either cede that ethnic identity or to engage in mass displacement and disenfranchisement.

It's exceedingly subtle the way ethno-nationalism gets smuggled into the phrase "as a sovereign Jewish state," but it is no less terrible and ugly than the ethno-nationalism in other parts of the world and eras in history.

[streptomycin]

There are currently about 40 countries that have a higher Muslim percentage than Israel's Jewish percentage. Many of them much higher. Many of them kicked out all their Jews in recent history.

[ohdeargodno]

Just as a confirmation, how many of those muslim countries are actively in the process of murdering, starving, dehumanising and destroying every single building the jews living in an open air prison ?

[streptomycin]

They all already completed that over the past 75 years, there aren't any Jews left in those countries anymore.

[fishingisfun]

they left willingly. Iran still has jews and a grand Rabbi. Many Jews moved to israel for economic reasons.

[tptacek]

They did not leave willingly.

[metalman]

When Hitler asked the King of Moroco to hand over all the jews living there , the King replied that there wrre only Morocans living in Moroco, and he wasn't handing any of them over. Also many muslims voluntered and fought the Nazi's from all over the world, as indivuals and as soldiers in colonial army's. As to jews bieng kicked out, no thats not true, and to this day there is an ongoing effort to get jews to emigrate out of the US or wherever in an attempt to bolster the demographics of there ethnostate......which is currently facing the largest out migration,ever.....

[lo_zamoyski]

What exactly is your argument here? Jews were kicked out of Muslim countries, therefore, Jews can treat Palestinians like subhumans?

[streptomycin]

My argument is that people seem to get very worked up when the Jews do something, but basically nobody cares about other similar or even worse things done by other people. I suspect this is most likely because of antisemitism (not that every anti-Israel person is an antisemite, but that the movement would not have become so prominent without a large core of dedicated antisemites).

[deadfoxygrandpa]

people in the west are getting "worked up" about it because our governments and our tax dollars are financing and facilitating these crimes! my government is not financing whatever iran is doing. i dont have any theoretical power over that. but my government, which is supposed to represent me, is a major actor in israel's crimes and i want my government to stop doing it

[echaozh]

What I don't really understand, as an outsider, aren't the arabs semitic too? Why doesn't the word antisemitism include the hatred toward the arabs?

[xg15]

Yeah, that's just whataboutism.

Edit: To elaborate, because there was another comment comparing this to Assad in Syria:

I think the difference is that Assad already belonged to the "enemy" is of the West (rightly so) and was immediately hit with sanctions.

What is special about Israel is that the government and, as it seems, large parts of the population, are displaying the same mentality - but unlike with Assad, no one is putting on the brakes here or threatening sanctions. On the contrary, our governments are protecting and enabling Israel in its behavior.

I think the aggression specifically towards Israel stems from the feeling of being on the wrong side this time.

[anon84873628]

It doesn't have to be antisemitism, but just a regular double standard.

Israel is modern invention by educated people who themselves have a long history of displacement and oppression. The bottom line is people expect them to "do better" compared to Syria, Myanmar, or China for that matter.

In that sense you could say it's actually racism towards all those other countries because the world just expects them to be violent, genocidal, and uncivilized anyway.

[fahhem]

Check your facts, most of those Jews left due to a) Israeli terrorism (bombing synagogues), b) Israeli policies (Magic Carpet), c) Israel-endorsed or Israel-caused racism that obviously wasn't there before because those populations were living there (including Palestine) peacefully for centuries.

[halflife]

Jews were kicked out of all the Arab nations they lived in, were persecuted in Europe, and you think that they shouldn’t get a sovereign country for themselves? Should the Kurds get one? Tibetans? Catalonias? Scottish?

[istjohn]

No one is entitled to displace people from their homes or deny people equal rights on the basis of their race, religion, or ethnicity for any reason. There is no exception for people seeking refuge from oppression.

Jews have and had the right to seek refuge from oppression. No one has the right to perpetuate oppression.

And no, I don't believe ethnonationalism is a panacea for anyone. The world would not be a better place if we could only subdivide into a multitude of homogenous little nations. I am grateful for the cultural diversity of my country. Countries like Japan that strive to protect their racial homogeneity will pay a steep cost.

[kjkjadksj]

There are two lines of logic that disrupt this reasoning. One is israel as an independent state hasn’t existed for thousands of years. The other is Jews do have refuge and safe harbors in the form of western countries. Plenty of Jews living quite comfortably with no threat of war protected by the largest military on the planet in west LA.

So really these people have no reason to be elevated among similarly displaced people who did have a sovereign nation within much more recent timelines, and they aren’t without safe harbor or communities in safer nations that guarantee their rights.

So if the state of Israel does not exist for the safety of Jewish people as logic has plainly laid out, why does it exist? Easy. Military foothold. This is a modern day crusader state. A beachhead. An airbase. A missile platform. A hidden nuclear arsenal. A prolific defense industry with very little red tape binding it. These are the true foundations of Israel today. Everything else is a fig leaf poorly hiding this when you apply rational logic to the emotional justifications that people use. And everything Israel does makes perfect rational sense in light of its true purpose.

[ohdeargodno]

>and you think that they shouldn’t get a sovereign country for themselves?

That's a really easy question: no.

Plenty of people don't have sovereign countries for themselves. Some of them persecuted, some of them integrated by force into other countries. Countries are not owed. They simply are. Tibet is being wholly integrated and controlled by China. Catalonia is somewhat asking for it, native americans are being relegated as second class citizens, and aboriginals in Australia are being left to die. Romanis do not have a country based around their culture.

Jews should absolutely be protected, in whichever country they are. That does not make the world owe them a country. Countries are not owed, they just are. As it stands, Israel is, but as a result of what they have done, not because it was owed to them.

[halflife]

Countries are not owed, they are either won, or given, in every instance of every county in history. Which is exactly how Israel came to be.

No one is questioning the existence of Bulgaria as a separate entity from turkey, when they declared independence after the Russo Turkish war.

[piva00]

> No one is questioning the existence of Bulgaria as a separate entity from turkey, when they declared independence after the Russo Turkish war.

We would be if they were actively exterminating Turks living in their territory simply because they aren't Bulgarians.

[halflife]

And where the Turks are actively trying to eradicate the entire Bulgarian people? Because that’s the Palestinians modus operandi

[TheOtherHobbes]

The Scottish have a nation called Scotland. It's not entirely sovereign - yet - but it's clearly heading in that direction, and it has already diverged significantly from England on many fundamental policies.

But even when it does become sovereign, I'm finding it hard to imagine that Scotland would annex Northumberland - which used to be Scotland in the distant past - and rape, murder, and starve the English people living there.

There is no excuse for the kind of barbarisms that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. Not ethnonationalism, not history, not the holocaust, not October 7.

And from an obvious common sense point of view, living in an embattled fortress territory is an eccentric definition of "safe."

It's an outbreak of collective psychopathy and deserves to be labelled as such. The people in charge are basically insane. Extremist ethnonationalism always is, whatever the nationality or background.

[arp242]

The Kurds, Tibetans, Catalonia, or Scottish don't need to ethnically cleanse the land to get their own nation. That's the difference. This is not hard to understand. Most people do not object to the concept of a Jewish state, they object to the ethnic cleansing.

[halflife]

So where can a Jewish state be established without removing the local population?

And regarding some history on the establishment of Israel, after the UN partition resolution the Arabs started a civil war, where Arabs fled from Jewish territories, and Jews fled from Arab territories (Bethlehem and Hebron for example). So you could say that 2 ethno states were established.

[rajup]

Native Americans?

[halflife]

Is there a movement for native Americans sovereignty?

[shkkmo]

I wouldn't call it a "movement" but rather a limited legal framework based on agreements.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_sovereignty_in_the_Unit...

[lawlessone]

There should be. But presumably its harder since most of them were killed.

Not sure how the colonization of America justifies other colonization's.

Unless you think everyone is owed a 1 free genocide pass?

[giardini]

lawlessone says: "...since most of them were killed.

Not sure how the colonization of America justifies other colonization's.

Unless you think everyone is owed a 1 free genocide pass?"

Most of them died from disease. Far more of them died from disease than died from say, hand to hand combat or warfare on the plains.

The American Indians were toast as soon as the first coughing European stepped ashore. The native Americans had no immunity to the stew of diseases that had been brewing in Europe and Asia for centuries, so the Indians simply died. Once an Indian had a disease (s)he could spread it to other indians (s)he met. The flame front of infection raged ahead of the white man across the continent. The "mountain men" encountered regions where entire societies were struck down: bodies everywhere, tools, lodging, structures left intact but virtually no one was around (and many the infected likely fled to more remote lands, worsening the spread).

One estimate is that 61 million people lived in the Americas prior to European contact. Between 1492 and 1600 about 50 million native Americans died of disease.

"Killed?" Yes but rarely intentionally. "Genocide?" No.

[halflife]

What are you talking about? the original commenter rejected the idea of a Jewish state because ethno states are bad. I made a counter claim. I’d be happy to live next to a Palestinian country, if it will recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and be a peaceful neighbor. Unfortunately, they reject the idea of 2 states, or they want 2 states where 1 is Palestinian, and the other is paletwith a Jewish minority.

[rafram]

"Precarious" strikes me as a misleading way to describe a nuclear-armed state (and the only nuclear-armed state in its region).

[tome]

Do you believe Israel's continued existence is assured?

[PontifexMinimus]

No, because of their own behaviour. Israel might well lose the support of the USA and Europe, and if that happened the continued existence of their state would be far from certain.

[ben_w]

Europe is certainly shifting.

I think the USA is unlikely to shift for as long as it's one single democratic nation, owing to internal political demographics. Same reasons it hasn't shifted on Cuba. But the USA keeps surprising me by failing to implode despite what all the politicians have been saying about each other, and by the anti-government language often used to justify gun ownership, so if I was in a position to influence Israel, I would be suggesting a diversification of international support.

[tome]

Do you think Israel is acting against its own survival?

[PontifexMinimus]

Clearly the Israeli government don't think that.

But many times in history governments have done dumb thnings that backfired.

[Der_Einzige]

Even without nukes it would be because the arabs in the region are bad at fighting.

But with nukes it for sure is because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option

[tome]

I suspect most Israelis think differently. Even if "the arabs in the region are bad at fighting" they still outnumber the Israeli population by something like 20 to 40 times, depending on how you count. About one Israeli was killed for every three Hamas fighters on Oct 7, and it's not an exact comparison for many reasons, but hopefully it provides some perspective.

EDIT: There are a couple of axes that helped me get a broader perspective:

1. Whether one supports Israel's continued existence 2. Whether one believes Israel's continued existence is guaranteed

Having started about midway between yes and no on 1, and at yes on 2, it was extremely enlightening to reinterpret my observations from the point of view of yes on 1 and no on 2. All Israeli behaviour that I had previously found incomprehensible finally made sense.

[ben_w]

> About one Israeli was killed for every three Hamas fighters on Oct 7, and it's not an exact comparison for many reasons, but hopefully it provides some perspective.

During a surprise attack.

The conflict that was started by Oct 7, according to Wikipedia, has seen 81,526+ dead on the Palestinian and associated side*, vs. 2,053 on the Israeli side.

That said, from the point of view of your edit: the ratio is irrelevant when someone's convinced they're facing an existential threat. Given Oct 7 was proportionally worse for Israel than 9/11 was for the USA, and the USA didn't seem to stop justifying everything through that lens for about a decade afterwards… it's going to suck for everyone that Israel thinks is so much as looking at them funny. (That isn't a joke even if it sounds like one: the people who see Israel as their home and their safe-space are collectively likely to be hyper-vigilant, to their own cost, in this kind of way, for a long time).

* With the footnote that '"Indirect" deaths may be multiple times higher' and 'In addition to direct deaths, armed conflicts result in indirect deaths "attributable to the conflict". Mortality due to indirect deaths could be due to a variety of causes, such as infectious diseases.[27] Indirect deaths range from three to fifteen times the number of direct deaths in recent conflicts.[28] In Gaza, estimated 51,000 natural deaths, natural death rate has gone up from 3.5/1000 to 22/1000 (late June 2024)[29]'

[tome]

> During a surprise attack.

Yes indeed, I'm talking about the surprise attack phase. (Israel has experienced a surprise attack before that has put its continued existence in question: the Yom Kippur war.) And in fact, looking at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_7_attacks

it seems as though the ratio was closer to 3:2.

In any case, Israel is surrounded by a hostile population of hundreds of millions (yes, still hostile despite the cold peace treaty it has with Egypt and the lukewarm one it has with Jordan), and it itself numbers about 10 million. So it is outnumbered by double figures to one.

I certainly don't see Israel's continued existence as guaranteed despite "nukes" and despite "American support" and despite having the "nth most powerful army in the world". And that point of view has helped me to understand the conflict like no other explanation.

[cherry_tree]

>often don't endorse

So you do not condemn the behavior of the illegal settlements?