Comment by racional | Hacker News Reader

Comment by racional | Hacker News Reader

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The Nakba was (and still is) a Nakba because ...

The colonizers sought to impose an objectively unfair partition plan (granting them far more valuable territory and resources in proportion to their population at the time), with the muscular support of their European friends.

The Palestinians rejected this "proposal" outright of course, exactly as any self-respecting people would. Exactly as the Algerians rejected France's proposed "partition" of their historic homeland, and the Vietnamese (by and large) rejected America's proposed carve-out of theirs, etc (just to pick a few notable exactly from approximately the same time frame).

And yes, they made some poor choices of friends (as they readily acknowledge), and woefully miscalculated their own strengths and capabilities and so on. And then there are other factors you're carefully not mentioning, such as the expulsions and massacres already underway in Jaffa, Deir-Yassin and elsewhere before this supposedly entirely unprovoked and one-sided "attack".

But there's no reason to keep punishing the current population for these decisions, and exploiting this history (and the continuing indifference of both their so-called friends in the Arab world and the international community at large) for the sake of current and future land gains. Which is basically what the continuing (having of course never really ended) Nakba (that certain very notable public figures are proudly and openly hoping to officially upgrade to Nakba 2.0, in their own words -- do we need to name any names here?) is really about.

And whatever is happening in the ground today (and however much blame can justly attributed to both sides) -- there's nothing to be gained from nullifying history, or reducing it to such trite oversimplifications as in the parent comment.

Even before the existence of Israel there was an active arabic nationalism and Jews were discriminated against.

Israel is not a colonial power. The British split the land between Muslims and Jews.

The only problem is that some pushing for Arab nationalism couldn't stomach the existence of Israel or Jews in general. The land Israel was founded wasn't prosperous at all, on the contrary. Many years of cultivation made it the place it is today. I don't know what partition you reference as unfair here.

And that is true to today. If you look at the education of kids, you know who really has genocidal ambitions in this region and it isn't Israel.

> this supposedly entirely unprovoked and one-sided "attack"

Israel has the right to fight until the hostages are released.

The real "catastrophe" is the leadership of Palestinians, its teacher keeping the hatred against Jews alive. These are the perpetrators of the current conflict. Israels part is that itself has a problem with rising extremism. In this case it is a reaction to decades of conflict and hatred. That is no excuse but the same is doubly true for those that want to expel the Jews again and take their people hostage.

Looks like we disagree axiomatically about certain things.

But life is short, so I'll just respond to one particular item for now:

The only problem is that some pushing for Arab nationalism couldn't stomach the existence of Israel or Jews in general.

No, the "only problem" was a bunch of armed foreigners attempting to carve an ethnostate out of their ancestral territory. They could have been Greek, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Persian -- it wouldn't have mattered a bit. It was the usurpation of their land, their resources and their rights that took issue with, and rightly so.

So no, it wasn't "because antisemitism".

We do indeed disagree on premises. Arab nationalism was first founded in the 19th century and directed against Turks. Later it had other ambitions of course. And yes, the idea was the foundation of an ethnostate. Pretty much was you accuse Israel of being, while it simply is not true.

This narrative is ahistorical. The nationalism movements of the 19th century were all over the world, and against most empires, not just the Ottomans. So the new found Arab nationalism was new, just like Serbian or Greek nationalism was new, we also had a new found Irish nationalism and even Icelandic nationalism in the 19th century. Even zionism started as a 19th century ideology.

Nor was the nationalism movements of the 19th century necessary a call for an ethnostate. It was first and foremost a call against empires and for own governments over own nation states. When there were calls for ethno-demographic policies to maintain a supremacy of one ethnicity over others, those were aside policies which differed among proponents of nationalism. These policies were equally—if not more—prominent among empires, than nation states. Even among zionists, only a portion of the original 19th century zionists actually wanted to displace Palestinians (or other indigenous populations of wherever they would establish the jewish state) upon migration. That is only a portion of zionists wanted an ethnostate.

So no, nationalists of the 19th century—arabs, europeans, and others—did not necessarily want an ethnostate.

EDIT: That all said, it is a bit odd to excuse a very real and existing ethnostate, by citing a theoretical ethnostate which never actually existed and at best had very limited support among the public and rulers at the time.

It is neither a narrative nor ahistorical in contrast to your claims. A 10 minute walk through Israel would significantly deny your suggestion about it being an ethnostate.

That isn't some misinformation on your part, it is just a malicious lie.

A 10 minute walk through Israel ...

"But the dominant group in Israel has internal diversity; therefore it can't be the dominant group" -- is that the counterargument, here?

No, that would be contradiction. Do you try to imply that a country having a "dominant group" is something that would form an ethnostate?

Perhaps I lazily assumed the parent would refer to ethnicity when throwing the accusation of an ethnostate around? Which ethnicity would that refer to in your opinion? It should be possible to answer that question if the accusation is in any way substantial.

Some ethnicities (and religions for that matter) might have serious problems in the wider region. Many do flee to Israel for safety in that case. That is the reality here and I would say that this fact is pretty hard to dispute without pointing fingers at less fortunate circumstances that maybe lead to less tolerance than there is in Israel.

That a country having a "dominant group" is something that would form an ethnostate?

Of course the fact of one group being dominant is not sufficient; there need to be deeply structural (legal) mechanisms in place for that group to maintain its dominance, which has certainly been the case with Israel since its very founding.

You may consult the definitions in Wikipedia as to "ethnostate" and "ethnic group" for further detail if you wish.

Which ethnicity would that refer to in your opinion?

The one referred to in Sections 1, 5, 6 and 7 (and whose language is given preferential treatment in Section 4) of the Nation State Bill.

Related, Database of discriminatory laws in Israel:

https://www.adalah.org/en/law/index

Regarding the myth of a diverse legislator negating an ethnostate, this is easily disprooven by looking at the legislator of unambiguous ethnostates of history. Even Rhodesia had a way more diverse legislator than today’s Israel.

There is no article about an ethnostate but if you use the widest possible definition of ethnicity and this ethnicity forming a common state would be considered an ethnostate, I guess Israel would be an ethnostate too. As probably most if not all other countries in the world as well. What would your criticism of that be specifically?

Again, minorities often try to flee to Israel for different reasons, not the other way around. This is easy to observe.

Then Syria is an ethnostate as it is called the Syrian Arab Republic. Egypt is an ethnostate, as it is called the Arab Republic of Egypt. I believe the pattern is obvious?

I cannot shake the feeling that some might utter this criticism because in case of Israel it would likely be a Jewish majority nation. But the existence and political participation of non-Jews makes it clear that you try to use ethnostate differently.

I’m not an expert in Israeli law, but I’m sure quite a few laws in Israel meat the definition of ethno-state, which is practices and policies that favors shifting the demography in favor of a particular ethnic group. Wikipedia actually has a few examples of laws which meet the criteria[1], including the nation state law.

If we look at the practices it becomes very clear that Israel meats the criteria of being an ethnostate. The immigration policy prohibits a single ethnic group (Palestinian Arabs) from immigrating, while creating the conditions for that same ethnic group (as well as others, such as Bedouin) to emigrate. The conditions for emigration includes confiscating land, limiting mobility, etc. In the occupied territories these practices become abundantly clear, and we even have an ICJ case backing this narrative[2].

Ethno-states are actually quite rare in history, you need a pretty strong military or police to enforce demographic policies, and before industrialization most states didn’t have that. Ironically one can argue that Roman Judea would meat that critearia when they expelled all the Jews. Notably they didn’t have the same ethno-demographic policies in neighboring Galilee, hinting that this was an expensive policy which the Roman state deemed not worth the costs. After industrialization ethno-states become a much more viable option, but we still mostly see them as a single ethnic regions of empires, most commonly via settler colonialism, where the settler are the ethnic rulers. And even then the policies were usually short lived as local population pushed back.

Syria does not have practices and policies to shift the demography in favor of one ethnic group at the cost of another, and neither does Egypt. One can argue that Turkey does (against the Kurdish people) but this does not come anywhere close to the ethnic policies enacted by Israel today.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocracy#Israel

2: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186

Again, it is not the simple fact of a dominant majority that make a country an ethnostate; it is this plus legally codified structures of dominance. The article on the subject is under 'ethnocracy' not 'ethnostate':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocracy

There may be other countries in the region which satisfy this definition also, or fall on the spectrum; I do not single out Israel for criticism in this regard. The topic only came up in regard to the events 1947-1948, specifically the UNPPP -- and why the indigenous populace were not exactly celebrating this proposal or its likely consequences (which are of course now their day-to-day reality).

In regard to those consequences, specifically: the creation of an ethnostate on a large portion of their ancestral homeland; dominated by foreigners, and intrinsically and permanently hostile to their well-being and their right of self-determination.

Which they naturally opposed, as any self-respecting people would.

Please do not throw the accusations of malintent when the truth presents otherwise, by not just a 10 minute walk.

Here is an excerpt from the Judicial examination of the nature of Israeli state by it's own judges.

>At their center stands the right of every Jew to immigrate to the State of Israel, where the Jews will constitute a majority; Hebrew is the official and principal language of the State.

The state forces the nature of State, and it's principal language, on what was predominantly an Arab place, with settlers Speaking Yiddish, German, Polish and Russian. Moreover it gives a right to unchecked immigration to one ethnicity.

And it moves it's own population to occupied areas in West Bank, with freedom to carry and use assault weapons, and to Golan heights, etc in violation of humanitarian and legal aspects.

What has that to do with anything? I stay with that accusation as long as there are accusation of Israel being an ethnostate at least. With so many languages an ethnostate is seems even more unlikely, but that is another matter.

Fact is Israel is the country most friendly to any minority in the wider region and the adaptation or ignorance of facts here is quite telling.

Even if that is true—which I doubt[*]—it is completely irrelevant to the question of ethnostate. The question of ethnostate is if the country has practices and policies to control the demographics that favors the dominating ethnic group. A country could be very friendly to minorities but still control the demographics in favor of the dominant ethnicity. The immigration policy of Israel, the carving out of the West Bank, the policy of settlements in the West Bank, all work together in demonstrating that Israel does indeed have practices and policies to control the demographics to favor the dominant ethnic group.

Just a case in point, if we look at historic ethno-states, Apartheid South Africa had dozens of languages. But they still had a policy of carving out bantustans and deporting people into those bantustans, with the hope that the demographics in the remaining South Africa would favor the dominant racial group. Apartheid South Africa was an ethno-state.

That said, Israel obviously is not the most friendly to any minority in the wider region. Israel is currently engaging in an ongoing genocide against a particular minority, they are illegally occupying their territories, and—as the ICJ has just ruled—they are engaging in apartheid against this minority. When all this is evident, how can you say they are “friendly” towards that minority?

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*: There are millions of metrics to measure this, and you could surely point to the few which conveniently “proofs” your point. You’re not even doing that, so I highly doubt.

Since this is HN and threads are supposed to be more interesting as they get longer, I might mention the neither subtle nor important different between Apartheid and Ethnocracy. It is not an important difference because either is demonstrably bad and shouldn’t happen, neither is it subtle because one portrays to civil rights (as in denying civil rights to a minority) and the other is about demographics (as in controling the demography to favor a certain ethnic group).

The Jim Crow south in the pre civil rights era USA was an apartheid, as the legal framework denied civil rights to Black Americans. It was not however an ethno-state as there was no policy of controlling the demographics of Black Americans. The eugenics movement tried to change that, and if the Eugenics movement had been more successful it is highly likely that some of the states in the USA would have become ethno-states.

In Israel the practices and policies in the West Bank are apartheid, and policies of preventing immigration from occupied territories into Israel, and establishment of Jewish settlements inside the West Bank are behaviors of an ethno-state.

So just like Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa, Israel maintains both an apartheid and an ethnocracy.

> The land Israel was founded wasn't prosperous at all, on the contrary. Many years of cultivation made it the place it is today.

This belief demonstrates either a fundamental ignorance or a deep disrespect for this land and the people who have lived there for thousands of years. There was—and still is—a major olive industry. It is not a coincident that Israeli settler terrorist target and destroy olive plantations from Palestinians on the West Bank. Cities like Lyd and Gaza had a major tourist industry before 1948.

The land Israel was founded on wasn’t prosperous for the only reason that the people that had it and knew how to use it were kicked out of there, and replaced with people who didn’t (yet) know how to use it.

More to the point -- the land was plenty "prosperous" to the people who lived there. Whatever uses for that land that outsiders deem to be prosperous (for them) are completely irrelevant.

Gaza has been an an important port in the east mediterranean. As you would expect any shoreline in the mediterranean to have trade and cultural vibrancy. https://youtu.be/QUCeQt8zg5o?feature=shared

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