Comment by 47nil | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 47nil | Hacker News Reader

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Oh, you want history...

The "indigenous Arab" populations stole it from the Romans, who stole it from... Oh, the Jews!

But OK, I guess then the UK should be blamed from stealing the land from the Native Americans in the US and Canada, and Spain from Latin America... Oh, and BTW, before Israel was "created" as you said, Jordan didn't exist, so, wait, do you want Jordan to also stop existing? What about Tibet? Can we speak with Chinese at the same hatred level you speak of Israel? And also, please learn your history. When the partition happened in '48, the Palestinians got a bigger piece, and they decided NOT to take it and attack. Israel was ok with having a small state to grab the survivors of the nazi atrocities, but no... And then the Palestinians began attacking non-stop, so, after 100+ years of Palestinians attacking Jews, all coming from a specific area of the country, then, what would you do? Look at 1993, 1995, 1997. ALL territories were going to go to the Palestinian Authority, and the master terrorist Arafat declined. So, please don't. Israel return ALL of Gaza WITH infrastructure to support the population... And what happened? The asshole Hamas took over and subjugated their own people. How is that Israeli apartheid? I can go on and on. Yes, there are bad things on the Israeli side, I agree. But look at the numbers. I'm done trying to explain things to people that barely understand the conflict at all.

You bring up some interesting points: there are many human rights abuses in China and Russia. Tibet too. But these are not relevant to this discussion. And there is no such "right to exist" for countries. People have a right to self-determination. All people have this right. The reason Israelis bring up a "right to exist for Israel" is to seek confirmation for their historical narrative. This narrative is under attack and has been for the last 30 years (Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, etc.). It's hard to pretend Zionism is not a colonial settler project. It's getting harder every day. There was a strong, distinctive Arab-Palestinian identity and this was a dangerous threat to Zionism. In 1948, there was no longer an option to buy land gradually, bring in immigrants, and build a Jewish nation. This was a time for a different sort of action. Depopulation and dispossession.

But I digress.

The actual history, and this is the history of my family, is that the Haganah orchestrated a terror campaign in late 1947 and well into 1949 to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its Arab population. They did not discriminate between Christians, Muslims, or Jews. In Haifa, they rolled barrels full of explosives down the hilly roads. The Haganah also drove around the city in trucks with loudspeakers warning the residents in Arabic that they would be killed if they did not leave. They referenced the Deir Yassin massacre. Of course this worked. Haifa was emptied. This was repeated, although with different tactics, Jaffa, Lydda, and over 500 other smaller villages.

The simply fact was that a viable Israeli state was not possible with that many non-jews living there. Over 750,000 people were dispossessed of their land. Half the population was ethnically cleaned. This is a war crime. It's also immoral.

Depopulation, dispossession, and colonization are valuable tools in "state building". But in the case of South Africa, it didn't last.

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