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Comment by door101 | Hacker News Reader

> Theoretically, I guess, but it's really strange how the one tiny country in the whole world that has a Jewish-dominated society is so often a target for complete destruction.

Because it’s a colonial ethnostate, with massive support from the United States. Israel (the colonial ethnostate) should not exist. Palestine is not an ethnostate, it is the name for the multicultural, multi-ethnic state who rightfully controls the area occupied by Israel, before British colonialism and subsequent invasion and occupation of the territory.

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> colonial

A colony of what empire exactly? Jews were a group of massacred refugees.

> massive support from the United States

There is no massive support from the United States actually, at least not monetary. There is military help that is needed because Israel's enemies want to destroy it, still to this day. And it's not that big compared to Israel's gdp (4 billion to 400 gdp = 1%) and is completely meaningless to the U.S budget. The other support is vetoing U.N decisions that constantly target Israel. Which is needed for the same reason the military aid is needed.

> Israel (the colonial ethnostate) should not exist

Should the U.S exist? Last I checked California used to be part of Mexico - why isn't it being returned to it's rightful owners? How about West Europe? Maybe it should be dismantled and have all it's assets transferred to Africa? I've never heard anyone say stuff like that but when it comes to Israel sure let's destroy the evil ethno state.

The US doesn't have a law that says "you can immigrate and be a citizen but only if you are white"

Also, the US wasn't born out of a revolution against equal voting rights for people regardless of national origin, Israel, like Rhodesia at the time, was.

In both cases, minority groups rebelled against British attempts to impose majority-rule democracy, Israel has just succeeded more than Rhodesia did at the time.

I thought it was the UN that decided the country should be split into two states, where one would have a Jewish majority and the other would have an Arab majority. When did people rebel against imposing a majority-rule democracy?

Last time I checked Israel just changed the prime minister after having an election, while Palestine had its last election in 2006 and chose a party that literally killed its opponents.

I'm on my phone, so the history lesson is going to be pithy.

The Jewish insurgency in mandatory Palestine was prompted by British indications that it was going to create a multi-racial, democratic state in Palestine, as they did in many of their other colonies once they departed. I believe there was a policy white paper published but I don't recall the name.

After substantial British civilian/government worker deaths at the hands of insurgent bombs (ie. King David Hotel bombing), the British retreated and gave it to the UN, who did the partition.

> Palestine had its last election in 2006 and chose a party that literally killed its opponents.

I may be misremembering, but I believe a large reason elections haven't been held since then was because the party elected in 2006 was ejected in a coup by the party supported by the US and Israel.

So, 14 years since an election in Palestine, and Netanyahu has been prime minister for 14 years.

> The US doesn't have a law that says "you can immigrate and be a citizen but only if you are white"

Israel doesn't have that law either, there are black Jews and Indian Jews and white Jews as you probably know. Israel is an anomaly because of 2000 years of persecution that culminated in the holocaust. Maybe when there is no more any antisemitism (yeah, right) Israel will happily dismantle itself. Until that day it seems to me quite clear why Jews need a nation state.

Land in the US is slowly being returned to native American groups.

Yes, which is precisely the rationale for the State of Israel.

> Should the U.S exist? Last I checked California used to be part of Mexico - why isn't it being returned to it's rightful owners?

Yes, the U.S. is also a colonial state. Not all states owe their existence to colonialism and occupation, but the U.S. is definitely one of them. We committed a genocide on an unimaginable scale, and took all the line of the people whose territory this was rightfully theirs. Not a good example of states to emulate.

> How about West Europe? Maybe it should be dismantled and have all it's assets transferred to Africa?

Its colonial territories in Africa should have been, and were, transferred to Africa.

> Yes, the U.S. is also a colonial state

Who is actively calling for the dismantling of the United States? No one. But Israel is fair game.

> Its colonial territories in Africa should have been, and were, transferred to Africa.

How is that enough though when comparing with the much more minor "crimes" Israel did? Israel displaced 700000 people as part of a brutal civil war where it also suffered major casualties. Belgium, Germany, France and others destroyed millions of Africans and robbed their nations. How is it enough for them to simply retreat from their colonies? If you actively call out for Israel to be dismantled I would expect for Europe to at least give away 50% of it's wealth to the people it destroyed. That sounds somehow fair to me or at least morally consistent. If what happened 73 years ago in Palestine must not be forgiven I don't see why everybody else gets a pass.

> Who is actively calling for the dismantling of the United States? No one. But Israel is fair game.

Because we "won". There are almost no indigenous people left in the United States, because we killed nearly all of them and destroyed their culture and civilization. I hope that this does not happen to Palestinians. For those indigenous people that remain, I definitely support greatly expanded rights and territory.

> If you actively call out for Israel to be dismantled I would expect for Europe to at least give away 50% of it's wealth to the people it destroyed.

One could argue on the number and logistics, but I absolutely support stronger European reparations for the damage done by colonialism.

> For those indigenous people that remain, I definitely support greatly expanded rights and territory.

Huh? What expanded rights some tiny resorts? Give them everything back - it's theirs. Even if there are only 1 million of them left make a referendum and ask them if you are allowed to stay. Also California is Mexican! Boy we have a lot of fixing to do! But basically I can infer from what you're saying this isn't about morals at all but about how strong you are. The U.S is super strong so no one calls for it's destruction (at least not seriously). Israel is tiny and weak and surrounded by enemies that want to see it go down. That's what this is about.

It's not about taking example from the US, it's about how popular it is to say that Israel shouldn't exist while many other countries had a much worst history. Not many of the places people live in now were empty when their ancestors arrived there.

More importantly, I keep hearing about the Israeli colony and am a truly interested to know what empire my family are representing. As far as I heard they were massacred pretty much everywhere and came to Palestine with literally nothing, some being jailed in Cyprus by the Brits to prevent them from entering the country. No one told them about the big empire that was backing them up.

Its hard to criticise the US for past transgressions without also criticising Israel for presently doing the same thing.

Seeing how the actual Declaration of Independence promulgated by the actual would-be founders of Palestine states that "The State of Palestine shall be an Arab State and shall be an integral part of the Arab nation", I think you failed to clear your non-ethnostate theory with the relevant people.

This is off topic. And getting away from root article.

However Before Israel there was the British mandate. Before that Ottoman Empire.

The Palestinians in Gaza never controlled the land.

> The Palestinians in Gaza never controlled the land.

Doesn't that just mean “they were never powerful”? If they were living there, does it matter who was in power? English rule never stopped the Welsh being Welsh, or Wales from “belonging to” them. (I don't know how applicable this analogy is to this situation – probably not very, given there isn't a territorial dispute over who should have Wales.)

> Doesn't that just mean “they were never powerful”?

Not necessarily. It could also mean that the people living in Gaza today were not historically from Gaza but were from Egypt or elsewhere.

Good point. Do you know whether they were?

90% of what is touted as "Palestine" was always empty.

it’s a colonial ethnostate Palestine is not an ethnostate

That's a strange view on the situation. Let's say I give you a choice. 1. Be a practicing Jew living in Palestinian-controlled territory. 2. Be a practicing Muslim living in Israel.

I'd definitely choose 2, choosing 1 would be suicide.

who rightfully controls the area occupied by Israel

The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and occupy Israel?

>I'd definitely choose 2, choosing 1 would be suicide.

Isn't choice 1 called being a settler? As far as I know they make up 10% or so of the Jewish population in the region, a far cry from suicide.

> The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and occupy Israel?

My maternal ancestry is of the Bering Strait islander and First peoples. Does that make me an indigenous person for the entirety of Americas and thus give me the right to control and occupy the entirety of America and expel all the "recent" migrants? Because that's the equivalent of claiming a blond haired blue eyed German Ashkenazi with a couple of generations in New York is somehow indigenous to the area of historic Judea and thus has the right to expel a different tribe of Semitic people who have only been there for say what, a thousand years?

I'm no expert but doesn't the Torah directly say that the Jews took Canaan from the Canaanites as directed by Yahweh? Wouldn't that make Canaanites the actual indigenous people of that territory? So would Canaanites thus be accorded the right to control and occupy that territory using your logic?

> The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that territory.

No. Even according to their/our [1] own mythology, the indigenous people were the Canaanites.

[1] I am ethnically Jewish. My parents were both born in Israel (except that it was still Palestine at the time). I grew up speaking Hebrew. But I do not self-identify as a Jew and I am highly critical of the conduct of the state of Israel. It has quite clearly become an apartheid state, and think that is reprehensible. But I am also a descendant of Holocaust survivors, so I am mindful of the very real historical oppression of Jews, and the importance of Israel is pushing back against that oppression. It's a very thorny problem with very few unambiguous protagonists. But no matter how you slice it, promulgating falsehoods like that Jews are the indigenous people of Palestine is unhelpful.

> The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and occupy Israel?

This is a fictional narrative constructed to justify the state of Israel. It has no basis in historical fact -- there never existed a Jewish ethnostate in the territory known as Palestine, this is a modern construction. Regardless, I don't believe in ethnostates -- of any ethnicity, anywhere.

> The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and occupy Israel?

When? The region of Palestine was majority Muslim when Israel was founded. That your ancestors lived in a region doesn't give you any rights to it. If anyone has a birthright to a region, it's those who were born there and no one else.

Why would Israel's founding matter then?

What matters is who's being born there now, not where your grandparents were born

Sure.

If you believe "Israel should not exist", you have to account for what would happen if it didn't. What would happen to the Jews who live in the Hamas-controlled "multicultural, multi-ethnic state" that would inevitably replace it? We all know the answer: they'd be killed. That's why people who call for the non-existence of Israel (anti-Zionists) are considered anti-semitic. If you support a position that leads inevitably to the death or displacement of millions of Jews, you are an anti-semite.

I never said I support a genocidal Arab ethnostate, that's extremely offensive. I support no ethnostates, no colonialism, and no occupation in the region.

Ok, but what you fail to recognize, is that the best way to do what you want, is for there to be 2 separate, independent states, controlled by each of their respective population.

A single state solution is not going to have good consequences.

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