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Turning this thread into a flamewar about Israel, of all things, was beyond vandalism and approaching arson.
I agree with sbilstein that its odor is nasty as well.
(Edit: it turns out you've been breaking the site guidelines a great deal. We have to ban accounts that post like this, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on, that would be good. Please especially don't use multiple accounts to break HN's rules with.)
Everyone’s views on their integration into German / Gentiles society were completely upended throughout those years. Einstein wasn’t always an ardent Zionist, he wasn’t always a pacifist, his lived experiences caused changes. Your question compresses 30 years of life, say 1925-1955, into a simple binary to try and drive some nasty conclusion.
> the Arab countries decided to wage war in Israel after the UN proposed the two state solution
- That doesn't make sense. Israel didn't exist until it was established.
- The Arabs didn't voluntarily leave their villages.
- And during 1947, the Arabs ejected from the Arab side of the UN partition line did not leave because they wanted to give more land to Israel or because of the Arab League intervention a year later in 1948.....They left because of ethnic cleansing by Jewish religious extremists.
> other founding figures in Zionism called for peace and integration in the Middle East.
To the contrary, Israeli leadership wanted all of Palestine and the UN plan was treated as a stepping stone toward Greater Israel.
The current Prime Minister of Israel Netanyahu also rejects a two state solution, insisting for decades that only Israeli sovereignty should be allowed between the Jordan River and the Sea.
These were terrorist thugs. They had an objective and they naturally used violence to achieve it. Whatever “religious” views they may or may not have had are secondary. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine was conducted by violent terrorists who wanted to create a country that they dominated.
We can discuss and debate whether their religious views follows from or causes the Zionist terrorism that has prevailed for the past century separately. It’s a valid discussion point but in the context of the ongoing genocide and ethnics cleansing all it does is muddy the waters for many people.
This itself is a very simplified summary. I strongly recommend "Fear and loathing in New Jerusalem" for a long, nuanced explanation of what happened there. Starting at the UN proposition is ignoring a lot of critical context.
I prefer starting at the Ottoman property laws, which were adopted by the British Mandate, by which the Jewish purchase of land was perfectly legal.
In the meantime, I would really appreciate a summary of why "it's legal therefore it's okay" is not a good answer. The Ottomans deliberately enacted liberal property laws to increase immigration, and thus tax collection, from the area. It was literally the stated goal of the government at the time.
One answer to this point in particular is that this wholesale liquidation of the land was made by rich landowners living far away, and cannot be treated as the Palestinians selling their own land away. The people actually living on the land had no say in this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_insurgency_in_Mandatory...
- They offered land to Zionists to further their imperialist goals
- The British enabled Jewish immigration to Palestine when it was clear that Zionists intended to take over the entire territory of Palestine
- The local Arab population wasn't stupid and they understood that Zionism was an organized political program driven in large part by Jewish religious extremists to take away their home
That only some Zionists resorted to terrorist bombing campaigns against the British is hardly "patiently waiting".
They were only there because of the British and still waged war against them, mirroring Israel's refusal to heed US admonitions against illegal land grabs in the West Bank despite absolute dependence on American protection.
It's a client state that feels it can write the rules, steal what it wants and bites the hand that feeds it.
I’m sorry, but the British mandate didn’t exist because of colonialism. It existed because it was at war with the Ottoman Empire during WWI and won territory. That is very different than colonialism even though it was a colonial power and that’s how it got its strength and military experience and might. The local Arab population hadn’t had sovereignty in many hundreds of years.
> They offered land to Zionists to further their imperialist goals
They offered the same land to both Zionists and local Arabs as a reward for helping overthrow the Ottoman Empire. Of course they kept it through the British Mandate cause the Brits are a crafty folk. As for actually honoring the agreement in 1948, a large part of legitimizing the state of Israel was because of what happened to Jews in WWII - atrocities no other people felt as deeply and the general populace was shocked into action when they learned what had been going on. Today’s Jewish population is still smaller than it was in 1939 for context. Half of all Jews worldwide are in Israel which I hope explains the emotional reaction of treating critiques and attacks on Israel as anti semitism (and of course that argument is weaponized for political purposes).
> That only some Zionists resorted to terrorist bombing campaigns against the British is hardly "patiently waiting".
By that line of reasoning, that only some Palestinians engage in terrorist attacks means that all Palestinians are guilty? For context, once the state of Israel was established the other groups were labeled terrorist organizations and were ordered to merge into the IDF. One group resisted and the IDF attacked it and defeated it. The same doesn’t seem to be happening with Hamas which despite being in power can barely even control other militant groups in the area. Is your suggestion to hand control over to Hamas? Cause you only have to look at what happened with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to understand what popular democracy looks like in the area (keep in mind Hamas was elected and then immediately abolished democracy).
So did the Arabs. Before revolting against the League of Nations mandate for British administration they were revolting against the Ottoman Empire - and fighting alongside the British (/French/Italian) Egyptian Expeditionary Force.
But all the discussion about who started it only serves to make it less likely that the situation will be resolved. (Or maybe we should punish the Ottoman Empire.)
I'm taking that to mean that you think their not being officially recognized as a state makes outside decisions about what land was and wasn't there's more valid.
But I would posit that the idea of statehood that this relies on is based on a Westphalian ideal that is in colonial in this case. The people of Palestine were a nation and they had land of their own. The lack of official recognition by western powers doesn't change that.
Did "the world" agree that there was a need for a Jewish state? It seems that many people disagreed both then and now.
Why did it have to be built where it was? Because there was a Jewish population there? What changed for the population of Jews to change from less than 5% to almost half within the preceding century?
But currently the left sees Jewish people as high status white people, using their status to get away with bloody murder. And you can't be racist agains white people...so the claim. The right is waiting for the rapture....and Israel will bring God back to earth ...or something crazy like that.
I personally think a practical approach needs to be taken.
If I accept stolen property which I know to be ill-gotten, then I am as responsible as the thief.
A Jewish state could've been established peacefully somewhere out in Utah instead (or joined the millions of American Jews prospering safely in their communities), but Palestinians had their land taken instead.
Why? Racism, plain and simple. Like the Native Americans, the Palestinians were treated as mere savages who could be dispossessed without consequence.
https://unwatch.org/un-general-assembly-condemns-israel-14-t....
“Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering.”
Einstein in his letter to Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, Nov. 25, 1929, AEA (Albert Einstein Archives) 33-411.
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It might have been naive of him to think and hope for European Jews to come to Palestine in peace and without war (that is not how history played out), but I don’t think he had bad intentions.
The territory assigned to Israel by the UN partition plan had a population that was 47% Palestinian. I wonder what was the thinking there- how did the UN envision the establishment of a Jewish state with almost 50% of non-Jewish citizens.
Do you for example know why Isreal built fenced borders in Gaza and West Bank?
In period between 2000-2005 over 700 Jewish civilians were killed in terrorist attacks coming from these territories.
Attacks basically stopped after the fences were built.
Its really worth reading Einsteins notes on Israel.
"“When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations build [sic] up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people.”" https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/albert-einstein-the-p...
Should echo in the ears of everyone that ignored Trudeau warning
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/israel-s-gaza-campaign-puts-...
Murderous totalitarian regimes do not work. They quickly turn into mafia states. At its not something you end up in accidentally, its very visible by people falling back onto tribalistic narratives they prefer over reality.
Looking back at Einsteins letter from 1948, its worth remembering, that Hannah Arendt co-wrote it while being a Zionist. Anyone actually interested in a future for Israel should think really hard if revisionist Zionism is a way to achieve that.