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Comment by caycep | Hacker News Reader

This is what puzzles me - ppl keep railing about being pro or anti Israel and it's overly simplistic and also not really accurately describing things. It's more pro/anti Likud or Kahanists, or really at heart a right vs left wing divide. There's still plenty of Labor or more progressive elements of the Israeli public who are against what Netanyahu and his political allies are doing.

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It's not a party - it's an ideology: zionism [1], for which there is widespread left and right support. It is almost like a 20th century manifest destiny [2], with largely the same inevitable outcome.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

I find this a strange take, and I hear it a lot from inhabitants of both the USA and Israel about their leadership.

For better or worse, Netanyahu represents the Israeli governement, which represents Israel. Similar with Trump and the USA, or Putin and Russia. Sorry for the people who don't agree with them, but that's an internal power struggle, and as an outsider it is normal to abstract that away. For all of us: Your country is doing what it does.

As a Belgian, I spit on my idiotic, nasty governements. Insert tiny violin, whatever Belgium does on the international forum, I'll still be tarred with it. Similarly, we talk about Germany's role in world war 2, even if only about 10% of them were associated with the NSDAP.

Every power struggle is always represented overly simplistic. Sorry for both the jews and Israëli's who don't agree with it, you're probably good people. This time I am lucky to sit at a very comfortable sideline, criticising your country. But the point stands: Israel is correctly described as officially committing a genocide, and hence it can't be described as the good side.

Israel was literally born out of political scheming to get assigned a portion of someone else's territory for an exclusive ethno-nationalistic state; then out of ethnically cleansing that territory. It was necessary to the project and planned in advanced.

You can be for the existence of a peaceful Israel that has entirely retreated within recognised borders and made amends for its past genocidal behaviour- but it's not what the current Israel is or, sadly, can ever be.

> There's still plenty of Labor or more progressive elements of the Israeli public who are against...

No. Not at all.

> Israel was literally born out of political scheming

Its more of a popular jewish movement that over 100 years changed the ethnic composition of the Palestine region from 1-2% in the 1840s up to 30% in the 1940s.

Political scheming is secondary and was born well after the 1840s.

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

  > changed the ethnic composition of the Palestine region from 1-2% in the 1840s up to 30% in the 1940s.

That was the Ottomans who made that change. After losing a war to Prussia, to collect more taxes in 1856 they openly encouraged migration of all peoples - Jews, Christians, Muslims alike - to the Levant area. By the 1870s Jerusalem was Jewish majority, half a century before the British Mandate era began and even before the First Aliyah.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerus...

I was referring to the well documented deals and shenanigans that were instrumental first to get the promise of support for an Israeli homeland, and then in the UN to get the partition plan approved.

Zionism itself is a product of 19th century nationalisms and of course of a (widespread at the time) colonial mindset.

Do you still think that today its a colonial project ?

Does Israel still encourage colonies in the west bank?

Have Israel and Palestine determined borders ? A ceasefire line is not a border after the ceasefire is broken and the front line moves

Do you really expect you can defend Israel with this kind of lawyering and be taken seriously? "Well akshually a ceasefire line...". For god's sake. Let's not even get into who has violated the supposed ceasefire first, or on the legality of settling your population outside of its line, violated or not (spoiler: illegal in any case). Settlements have been declared illegal many times during the decades, most recently this year by the ICJ, and Israel has known this perfectly well since the start.

Legality ends up following the de-facto reality. What's the future of the legality of Golan annexion ? With the new Syria, its soon going to become legal.

Jewish people coming back to live on its ancient homeland has no legal basis; It's their collective will which allowed its coming into existence (continuous immigration from other countries since the 1840s).

The legality of its existence wouldn't help it survive even one second.

> Do you still think that today its a colonial project ?

Thanks for answering your own question.

So all palestinian Arabs are autochtones and all palestininan Jews are colonists. How many generations to lose that status then ?

> Legality ends up following the de-facto reality.

Then what was the purpose of your previous objection about ceasefire lines? None. You just threw it there hoping to derail the argument with a pointless distraction, and now that it didn't work you are saying legality doesn't matter. This fundamental, shameless dishonesty is common to most defenders of Israel and frankly unsufferable.

I was asking why the post-1948 ceasefire lines are more legal than the post-1967 lines ? If you decide to go after the 1947 UN partition, keep the 1947 lines as the only legal border. If the 1948 war can redefine what's legal, then the 1967 war can do it as well.

I personally think the borders should be decided between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The only agreement to date between them has been the 1991 Oslo accords, with A, B and C zones. Further talks about definitive borders stopped with the Second Intifada in 2000.

Zionism is the belief that Jews have a right to their indigenous homeland. Your Western leftist ideology have twisted the definition to your own agenda.

And the Arab opposition movement that later became the Palestinian movement has ties to literal Nazis...

German and Bosnian WWII veterans, including a handful of former intelligence, Wehrmacht, and Waffen SS officers, were among the volunteers fighting for the Palestinian cause. Veterans of WWII Axis militaries were represented in the ranks of the ALA forces commanded by Fawzi al-Qawuqji (who had been awarded an officer's rank in the Wehrmacht during WWII) and in the Mufti's forces, commanded by Abd al-Qadir (who had fought with the Germans against the British in Iraq) and Salama (who trained in Germany as a commando during WWII and took part in a failed parachute mission into Palestine).

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

Husseini is still regarded by many as 'the George Washington' of the Palestinian people, and if the Palestinians were to get a state of their own, he would be honored in the way our founding father is.

In February 1943 the first of three divisions was formed of Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, who wore fezes decorated with SS runes and were led in their prayers by regimental imams notionally under the supervision of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.(Mohammed Amin al-Husseini from 1921–1937)

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Haj_Amin_al-Husseini

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