Comment by jedimind | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jedimind | Hacker News Reader

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That's a complete misreading of history and a dishonest attempt to deflect from the point by invoking a false equivalence.

First you claim the Zionist extremists were an "absolute minority." The Revisionist Zionism of the Irgun was never a fringe belief, it was a powerful and central pillar of the Zionist movement. And in the end, their ideology won. They weren't just "integrated", they took over.

Furthermore, the idea that they were "subdued" is laughable. You do not "subdue" a movement by absorbing its members into your army and then electing its terrorist commander as your Prime Minister. Menachem Begin was not defeated, he was promoted. The state didn't end the Irgun's terrorism, it nationalized it, making the Irgun's tactics and goals the official policy of the "state". Finally, your comparison to the Palestinians in the 1990s is a disgusting and intellectually bankrupt false equivalence. You are comparing an internal power struggle between factions of a ruthless colonizing power with the struggle of an occupied people living under a brutal military occupation. There is no parallel. It's a classic victim-blaming tactic designed to absolve the occupier of its responsibility and guilt https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...

That's completely incorrect by the way, most of Israel of that time was socialist (or communist) and supported the left wing parties behind Haganah and the Palmach. You can easily see it in the size of the political parties and relevant militant organizations.

Regarding my comparison, I think it's very valid. The Palestinians had a huge leadership problem which led them here. Among many things such as rejecting peace offers, most stem from bowing down to extremists, lying to their own people and never being able to have their own version of Altalena

The expected Zionist modus operandi, whitewash Zionist crimes, then blame the victim for responding.

Your "socialist" argument is a weak attempt to hide behind a political label. It doesn't matter what they called themselves. The "socialist"[1] Haganah and Palmach were the main engines of the Nakba. The distinction between them and the Irgun was a public relations strategy, a "good cop, bad cop" routine for the same unified colonial project of dispossessing Palestinians.

The Altalena was a colonizing force consolidating its monopoly on violence to better oppress and dispossess the Palestinians. You cannot compare that to a occupied population struggling under a foreign military boot. Palestinian "leadership problems" and disunity are a direct result of decades of Israeli assassinations, imprisonment, and engineered fragmentation.[2]

[1] 'The Dark History of "Left-Wing" Zionism' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehp9PZo4UR0

[2] https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...

I am merely stating a fact, the poster above tried to say that the Irgun had popular support, that is false. The population was socialist, that is a fact

While your representation of what happened in Altalena is so overly post-colonialist it almost reads like satire.

You keep failing to address my original argument, while trying to show any keyword I write is some part of a post-colonial masterplan straight out of the first paper of a humanities bachelor dorm room.

Don't you think Palestinians have a terrorist organization problem, currently? Do you think they can do something about it?

If Irgun and the Stern gang didn't have popular support it would have been trivial for the Haganah to disarm them at any point in the 1940's. Instead, the Haganah frequently cooperated with the irredentist groups. The "good cop, bad cop" analogy is exactly right. The groups were useful for handling sensitive tasks that jeopardized international Jewry's support for the Yishuv. Irgun coordinated the attack on Deir Yassin with Haganah liasons. After the fact, the Yishuv leadership denied that and wrung their hands. How could they have know that they would commit a massacre against civilians? What an unforeseen tragedy...

Haganah only cooperated with the Irgun for a short while during the Jewish Resistance Movement which fell apart shortly when the Irgun went too extreme for their tastes.

To understand more You might want to read about the Saison where the Haganah cooperated with the British authorities against the Lehi and Etzel which had hundreds of members arrested.

Regarding popular support, due to management of immigration by the Jewish Agency and the facts of life in Israel at the time, the population was overly Socialist as I mentioned before, which can be seen in the respective parties sizes, this meant the politically they were completely on the other side of the political map.

It was also common for mainstream opinion to describe the Etzel and Lehi as terrorists, as can be seen for example in the 1946 World Zionist Congress

That is patently false. Publicly, the Yishuv was against underground organizations. Privately, there was much cooperation and coordination.

For example, Haganah handed Deir Yassin as a target to Irgun because they knew their fighters were ill-equipped to take on well-defended objectives. Indeed, they almost failed to capture the village so the Palmach had to come and help them quell the Arab resistance. The humiliated fighters took a bloody revenge on the Arab villagers. Afterwards, the Yishuv feigned outrage over the terrorist groups barbarism.

Later that year, Lehi murdered Folke Bernadotte. The Yishuv, again, feigned outrage and had many members arrested:

"Subsequently, many Stern members were disarmed and arrested, but nobody was charged with the killings, and the case, which was barely investigated, was closed. Stern suspects were detained after the assassination, but they were not treated like other prisoners. As Time magazine reported, these prisoners at Jaffa made their own rules, ripped bars from the windows and tore down the steel doors connecting their cells: “The Sternists threw open the door of the jail, disarmed the guards, directed traffic in the square where a great crowd had gathered. Some prisoners strolled off to the beach for a swim. Others relaxed with prison guards over coffee in a nearby café.”"

https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/04/05/the-demise-of-the-two-...

They were all pardoned a few months later.

You're trying to change the subject to a 1948 popularity contest because you can't refute the fact that the Irgun's extremist terrorist ideology won and became Israel's "state" policy. You resort to mocking the analysis with academic jargon because you're terrified of admitting that you're defending a colonial project that is currently in its final phase of exterminating the natives it couldn't get rid of in 1948.

Your last question is an amusing piece of Zionist projection. "Don't you think Palestinians have a terrorist organization problem?" - That's rich, coming from an apologist of a colonial project founded by terrorists, led by terrorists, and whose state terrorism has culminated in genocide. The very group you're pointing at was propped up with cash by your own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, as a deliberate strategy to divide Palestinians. https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...

The core problem Palestinians have is a Zionist occupation problem. What they also have is an internationally recognized right to armed resistance against a foreign military occupier. Zionism, from the King David Hotel to the Dahiya Doctrine, is the one with the "terrorist problem." You just call it your "state" https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...

I disagree. The palestinians refuse to take any responsibility for any of the acts that takes place in their name. On the other hand they never condemn or disown them either. The target of their violence is often their fellow Arabs but usually it's Jews. But always the people who suffer the most from their actions are their own. Yet their behaviour is rarely condemned and often implictly and explicitly encouraged. With such a mindset how can there be a reasonable prospect for peace?

That is a disgustingly cynical and dishonest argument, a masterclass in colonial propaganda.

You demand the people being crushed under a boot "take responsibility," while giving a pass to Zionists who have all the power and are the perpetrators responsible for it all. It's a sick moral inversion. You cry about a lack of peace while defending the Zionist entity that has demonstrated for a century that it is not interested in peace, only in surrender and domination. Also, the audacity to speak of a "prospect for peace" when Zionists has systematically sabotaged it at every turn, even murdering diplomats during negotiations.[0]

Another classic Zionist deflection is to make it about "Jews" so you can deflect from the racist[1], European colonial project that they are resisting. This is not a religious war. It is an anti-colonial struggle against Zionism. The only people who insist on making it about "Jews" are the Zionists themselves, because it's their most effective propaganda shield.

The violence you clutch your pearls over is the inevitable, desperate product of a hundred years of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. You are blaming the oppressed for the consequences of their own oppression. It is the oldest and most pathetic trick in the colonial playbook.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/12/israels-strike...

[1] "The British told us that there are some hundred thousand negroes [kushim in Hebrew] and for those there is no value." - Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.

You might call it a cynical colonial propaganda. However, I believe that someone who is so insistent on removing any agency from the Palestinians is actually someone who echos colonial propaganda.

One of the historical motivations for colonialism is seeing the 'natives' as merely children without agency that need the benevolent west's help, which is the exact dehumanizing vibe applied whenever someone suggests Palestinians may also have the concept of responsibility

That is such an intellectually dishonest attempt to flip the script, accusing him of the very colonial racism your entire project is built on.

You are dishonestly confusing explaining the context of oppression with denying agency. Acknowledging that Palestinian resistance is a direct response to a century of your violence is the ultimate sign of respecting their agency. It is treating them as human beings who fight back. Demanding they politely submit to their own ethnic-cleansing and extermination is what treats them like objects.

And let's be clear about who is actually echoing colonial propaganda. The ideology that sees natives as less than human is yours. It's the ideology of Weizmann, who called the Palestinians "kushim" of "no value." Don't you dare project your project's inherent, documented racism onto others while you are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state.

I am not confusing anything, you (or the other poster that shares your exact same style) wrote three paragraphs previously about how it is disallowed to attribute responsibility to the Palestinians.

That seems very racist to me, why would you think a people capable of conducting an attack such as was done on October 7, is incapable of choosing more peaceful leadership? Why even the mere thought of the Palestinians being able to affect their future amounts to heresy?

Removing agency from natives is the mark of colonial thought, and it is no surprise that western thought that is stuck in colonial times (post-colonialism) kept the old colonial racist stereotypes

Another blatant reversal of reality. You are deliberately twisting my words. Acknowledging that Palestinian resistance is the direct, inevitable consequence of your century of colonial violence is not "removing agency." It is the ultimate respect for their agency. It treats them as human beings who refuse to be objects of your ethnic cleansing. The real colonial mindset is your demand that they must politely submit to their own extermination.

And your question about choosing "peaceful leadership" is nauseatingly cynical as it is ironic. You are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state whose own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, admitted on record that his strategy was to fund Hamas precisely to ensure Palestinians would never have a unified leadership capable of negotiating for a state.[1] You assassinate their diplomats, jail their leaders, and prop up Hamas, and then you have the audacity to blame them for how they resist your genocidal colonization campaign. Don't you dare project your colonial project's inherent, documented racism onto others. Your rhetoric is nothing but manipulative deflection and projection.

[1] https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...

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