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?
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You're skipping over the whole "manifest destiny" bit, where the remaining natives were systematically hunted down and destroyed. Trail of Tears ring any bells?
And note this was perpetrated by The United States, not the "American colonists". This was happening in the 1800s, a good 300 years after the initial disease front came through.
If the United States had respected the native populations the American West would look very different today. Compare with current Central and South America for example (which were certainly still victims of both disease and genocide, but it was less thorough due to differences in colonizers and geography).
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.
Are you talking about native Americans? Germans that used to live in Poland? Jews that used to live in Syria? Israelis that lived in Sinai before it was returned to Egypt? Mexicans that lived Texas? Australian aboriginals? Inuits in Canada? How about the one million afghans Iran just expelled?
If you’re not happy, that’s on you. Time moves on, you need to accept the existence of the Israeli state.
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.