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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

It's so disappointing to see a country and people founded in the ashes of a holocaust committing war crimes, doubly so against a relatively disenfranchised population (as opposed to some external antagonist in a more traditional interstate conflict).

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While the holocaust did give the Israeli project one last political boost, I think the creation of Israel was not because of it but despite it. The tragic loss of millions of potential citizens had a significant impact on the demographic feasibility of the country. Ben-Gurion himself says: "For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size."

I mean the Balfour declaration was in 1917. Herzl's "a land without a people for a people without a land" only makes sense if you read it through the eyes of a colonial European.

in reaction to the united nations partition plan ben-Gurion says: "The total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. Such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%"

a democratic and Jewish Israel was and still is impossible without the expulsion (ethnic cleansing*) of a major part of its Arab population. (regardless of the incompetence of the Arab leaders and their stupid war)

I would argue that this is not really unexpected from a country built on Deir Yassine, king David's bombing and the assassination of a UN negotiator. Acts committed by the Irgun, which was the political predecessor of Israel's right-wing Herut (or "Freedom") party, which led to today's Likud the current ruling party.

to clarify the asterisk near ethnic cleansing is because this is a highly debated topic and there is no consensus whether it happened. Expulsion, on the other hand, is undeniable.

for the first Ben-Gurion's quote check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion#Childhood_and...

for the second one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_...

Deir Yassine was in 1948 much closer than the holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre

King David Hotel bombing (1946) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

The UN negotiator I'm speaking of is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte

This is why I contreversly believe that it serves zero purpose to "never forget" the Holocaust or even 9/11. The victims of such tragedies are themselves commiting other tragedies (generally speaking).

Those are different things. The holocaust should never be forgotten because of the huge number of innocent lives that were lost in that monstrosity. It has zero relation with the current Israel government (which didn't even exist at that time), and remembering it should help to avoid history to repeat. Hopefully. The current attitude of Israel government against Palestine is a whole different thing; claiming that Israel today is de facto a rogue terrorist nation, wrt Palestine, should have zero relation on our feelings about the holocaust. The point is that they will always attempt to conveniently dismiss any criticism as antisemitic, while we're actually talking about Israel government, not people. In fact, I can at the same time deeply hate Israel government for what they do against Palestinians and cry every time I see the images from what those poor prisoners had to suffer in nazi lager camps during WWII. Two completely different things that are not mutually exclusive.

> emembering it should help to avoid history to repeat

That is precisely my point. It's evidently not helping.

Throughout history, the propaganda of victimhood has always been used to perpetuate horrors. Whether it is the nazis, whether it is the israelis/zionists, whether it is the american settlers, etc.

Almost always, victimhood is the justification of theft, attacks and brutality. What was the nazis justification for brutalizing jews and stealing their property in europe? The economic crisis post ww1. What is the israelis justification for brutalizing palestinians and stealing their land, the holocaust. What was our justification for extermination and stealing native land? Native massacres of settlers.

If you look at history, every oppressor claims to be the oppressed and uses it as justification to oppress. Doesn't matter if it is a democracy, monarchy, communist, fascist, etc. They all cry out "Ow" in pain as they smash another person in the face.

That's because every oppressor is oppressed. We try to segregate people into these two groups, but the fact is that every person is capable of oppression, and every society is guilty of it. The history of human civilization is a story of people who were oppressed that went on to oppress others to continue the cycle.

Our texts don't do a good job of documenting this -- they just designate all losers as oppressed and all victors as oppressors.

What I wonder is whether they are aware of it or do they operate under a sort of doublethink.

Doesn't someone realize that hey wait, what I am doing to them now is what others did to us/our ancestors. Shouldn't that stay your hand instead of justifying it.

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