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Comment by cornercasechase | Hacker News Reader

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Sure, except Moses and the Jewish people were on the land around 1500 BC, and the Islamic religion didn't start until after 500 CE. So the Jewish people got there at least 2000 years earlier, so if we are doing the "who ethnically cleansed who" game, I think the Jewish people appear to be at most, reversing the previous ethnic cleansing? Or is there some kind of moral "expiry date" on ethnic cleansing?

This is a pretty heated thread, and I’m not trying to fan any flames: the Assyrians and Sumerians were there before that. It always seemed a bit arbitrary to me to claim land based on whose religion started first — although not quite as arbitrary as “my God said it’s mine, so there.” Plus I believe they claimed that Ashur promised the land to them.

I think we can all agree that the ancient Roman and Byzantine empires were not exactly gold standards in protecting human rights. However, the fact that something was done to the Jews thousands of years ago does not make it acceptable to do the same to another population today.

The birth of Islam did not cause a whole new race of people to spring from the ground, some of their ancestors lived in the region as well. And according to the Torah the Jewish people who came to that region with Moses during the exodus had to fight off the caananites and philistines before they could settle, so apparently itd been occupied for a while- not that I'd put too much stock in the ancient history thats come down to us, certainly not enough to enforce modern territorial claims

Ah so indiscriminate rocket attacks on civilians is OK if you like the reason for it. Heck of a stance to take.

Unfortunate typo. I assume you meant ethnically not ethically.

Thanks, fixed.

It's legible both ways.

There are two million Arabs and Muslims living as citizens of Israel.

They have more rights in Israel than they would in any Arab nation.

Gaza was handed back entirely to Palestinian rule in 2005. Everything Jewish was removed, even graves.

Violently expanding into Gaza?

You don't know even the most basic facts.

Israel left Gaza. It gave the Palestinians what they wanted. Their own area with no settlers. Israel forcefully removed all of its people from all of Gaza.

In exchange they immediately voted in a terrorist organization as their government and began to attack Israel over and over again.

Almost a million people are displaced in Gaza (violently) as we speak.

How is this violently expanding into Gaza?

That's like saying that during the us invasion of Iraq to replace the regime the US expanded into Iraq. It did not. The us didn't settle Iraq.

I stand by my statement that people here talk with authority without knowing even the most basic facts.

The US definitely violently expanded into Iraq. What Israel is doing is even more extreme.

Violently expanding into Gaza?

Yes, very violently, and on a massively greater scale than before. Just ask the country's National Security Minister:

Backing settlement, Ben Gvir says he’d be ‘very happy to live in Gaza’ after the war

If ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Palestinians leave the Strip, ‘we will be able to bring in more and more people,’ minister says

https://www.timesofisrael.com/backing-settlement-ben-gvir-sa...

There are like 20% Arabs among Israel citizens. The are about 20 (not %, just 20) Jews in Lebanon. Who's ethnically cleansing whom again?

Both Jews and Palestinian Arabs have legitimate claims against each other. The levels of barbarity in pursuing these claims is not even remotely comparable.

How is it ethnically cleansed if 20% of the Israeli population is native?

By native i assume you mean arab. Not to mention that the infant mortality rate dropped something like 90% after the state was founded and the arab population is still growing at a huge rate.

The percentage of native population used to be 100%, so I don't think pointing out the change in percentage really works in favor of your argument.

Not necessarily, this can happen with immigration alone. For example, French and English descendants used to form a much greater percentage of the Canadian population, yet they were not "ethnically cleansed".

Yes, a flood of immigration combined with systematically displacing the local population. See the Nakba and Settler movement.

Doesn’t it depend on the time scale?

If we are talking about pre-globalization many countries are no longer have a majority “native” population. (US, Japan, Taiwan, parts of Europe) and that is just the reality of human history.

I think we have to decide on a time when the back and fourth geocoding between groups is no longer acceptable. Most of the world thinks it’s around the end of ww2 and the start of globalization, but are you contending that it should be later, and the Arabs should take back Israel?

Arabs are not native to that area.

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