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Comment by wk_end | Hacker News Reader

IMO people just use the term to mean “pro-Israel” rather than in any reference to the original meaning ("supporter of the idea of a Jewish state"). Which could mean any combination of “pro-American financial support for Israel”, “moral support for Israel in their various military actions”, “opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state”, “a belief that Israel should continue to exist as a Jewish state”, and so on. It's more about the broad political alignment than the specific meaning of the word.

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Thank you for actually answering my question. That is very vague and explains why I find the word so annoying.

Zionist does have a specific meaning. It means you think the Jewish people have a god-given right to the Palestinian land, and that other creeds and ethnicities should be second class within the Jewish state in Palestine.

A non-zionist Israel would be one where all peoples had the same right, e.g.

"It means you think the Jewish people have a god-given right to the Palestinian land"

It was never actually Palastinian land. It was Jewish land, then Roman land, then Ottoman land, then British land, then Jewish land after Palastinians attacked Israel and lost. At no point were the Palastinians ever a sovereign country and in fact they incredibly foolishly rejected the UN offer for one.

"other creeds and ethnicities should be second class "

Approximately 2.5 to 2.6 million non-Jews live in Israel, comprising about 25% to 26% of the country's total population. This is compared to less than 1% of the population of Gaza being non-muslim.

Ok, well, you seem to be a Zionist. And not very educated on the matter (or willfully misrepresenting things).

The Palestinians are the people who lived there. The Zionists expelled half of them and razed 500 villages to the ground in 1948. It was an ethnic cleansing. They denied them the right to return.

There was a Palestinian identity and there was a Palestinian society. They revolted against the Ottomans, and the British promised them sovereignty. The British betrayed them and caved to the Zionists, and the rest is settler colonialism and apartheid.

> And not very educated on the matter (or willfully misrepresenting things).

Right, like stomping around the comments claiming that anything less than pretending Israel didn't set foot in Gaza between 2025 and October 7, 2023 is filthy Hamas propaganda, the existence of at least six formally named IDF operations being just a pesky bit of reality that can be easily run over by a Merkava Mk V main battle tank.

What do you think that proves? It only proves how pointlessly violent Hamas is.

Maybe it will stop you from yelling at people that they are liars when they say anything about Israel being in Gaza?

Or, who am I kidding, of course it won't.

IDF actions in response to Hamas attacks are not the same as permanent occupation of Gaza. Israel left Gaza in 2005 and Hamas has been in power ever since and has gleefully killed any Palestinians opposing them.

I'm not a zionist I think the Palastinians were fools to refuse the UN offer of their own country and attack Israel. If they had won they would have expelled all Jews. They could have had their own sovereign Nation for 78 years now.

Just for comparison after Germany lost WW2 they lost 25% of their land and 14 million German living on it were expelled. Has Germany spent the last 78 years trying to get it back? No. Instead they have been doing the smarter option which is creating a peaceful and rich country, which is what the Palastinians should have done.

You're not a Zionist, but you then proceed to make a Zionist argument?

The Palestinians were the only people living on the land before the settlers came. That included Jews and Christians, because Palestinians are not a homogeneous group.

The Zionist settlers are not indigenous, they had no right to settle there. They also took the UN resolution and just started a war where they razed 500 villages. I'm sure if the Palestinian side had won, they would have expelled the settlers. But that is only natural. And beside the point, because the Palestinians didn't start the war, and of course uou expel invaders.

"The Palestinians were the only people living on the land before the settlers came"

And native americans were living in Canada, US, and Mexico before settlers came. The Palestinians are hardly unique in losing land in a war. In fact this is basically the norm in human history. What is almost unique is how Palestinians have made their lives much much worse pathetically trying to get the land back when they have absolutely no chance of doing so, anymore than Native Americans do.

The jews living in Israel in 2026 are indigenous in the sense they are NOT leaving so any scenario where they do is a stupid fantasy. the Palestinians DID start the war, they rejected their own sovereign state in favor of gambling for everything and lost. But they have spent 78 years just refusing to accept reality while Israel has grown rich and powerful.

The Palestinians did not start the war. Israel has started every war against the Palestinians, including the 1948 one.

Israelis are not indigenous (there are rare exceptions of Mizrahis or Jerusalem Palestinians with some form of citizenship), they are colonists.

Arabs stared the war when they rejected the UN offer of a sovereign internationally recognized Palastinian state and tried to destroy Israel instead. They lost. In retrospect this was very stupid.

It doesn't matter if Israelis are indigenous or not because 7 million people are not going to leave.

What is plan Dalet? Rejecting the establishment on your land is also not a declaration of war. Israel was the one who started the hostilities

Jews legally migrated to the area and bought land starting 1882 driven by the rise of the Zionist movement and pogroms in Eastern Europe. If the Arabs had won the war they would have forced every last Jew out of the area and Israel would never have existed. When the Jordanian Arab Legion took control of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the ancient synagogues were destroyed, and the entire Jewish population was expelled or taken prisoner. The same happened in the Gush Etzion bloc. If the combined Arab armies had won the war, the Jewish state would have been dismantled, and the Jewish population would have been expelled or killed.They lost but have rather pathetically refused to accept this for 78 years now.

> rare exceptions of Mizrahis

It's not rare at all, the majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi.

That's not true, it's not a majority. It is true that Mizrahi are ~40-45% of Jews in the country, but all Mizrahim are not all indigenous to Palestine. I was referring to the subset of Mizrahi who are Palestinian.

What do you mean by “Palestinian”? They’re Palestinian by the classic definition of “those who live in the region of Palestine”.

If you mean citizens of the State of Palestine, that’s a political matter, and zero Jews have that citizenship.

If you mean something along the lines of “unbroken lineage of ancestors who never left Palestine", that would also exclude many people who we all consider Palestinian, such as Arafat himself who was born in Cairo.

By Palestinian Mizrahi, I mean Mizrahi who are culturally Palestinian. Who have some ties to Palestine. Someone you could call native.

Any Jew certainly has cultural ties to Palestine, if we're talking about the region rather than the modern national identity with the same name.

There are more Muslims living happily in Israel than Jews in all Muslim countries combined.

More specifically there are 0 Jews living in areas under control of the Palestinian Authority, or in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen.

Illogical collectivist blather suggesting that therefore, Muslims should be treated as a collective, and deprived of rights in Israel? Also, what’s with the “happily”?

No, it just points out how hypocritical Muslims are being.

Hypocrisy is an individual quality, not a collective quality, Zio!

"Zio"

Thank you for providing a perfect example of how the word zionist has become a replacement for kike among jew-haters.

Common term for about 75% of democrats under 50, who must be Jew-haters, of course. Sorry, ethnonationalism just isn’t a popular ideology, and the word is, in practice, just a shorthand for an instance of that. You’ve lapped up hasbarist propaganda to such an extent that it’s started to be reality.

Thank you for providing a perfect example of how the word zionist has become a replacement for kike among jew-haters.

You can stay paranoid or you can choose to face reality. Up to you.

Reality is that irrational hatred of Jews has become normalized among the far left.

The left? The left is against Israeli violence. The far right hates Jews.

Let's compare figures like, say Nick Fuentes and Hasan Piker.

Fuentes regularly spouts vile anti-semitic rhetoric, painting up a picture of Jews as greedy schemers.

Piker always makes it clear he is talking about Israel, not Jews. Painfully so.

I have not seen a single self-odentified leftist say anything anti-semitic IRL. But I have seen right-wingers do this.

And this same story is reflected in politicians statements as well. The right is anti-semitic.

The ADL claims that the left is, but that is because the ADL wants to conflate Israel with the entire ethnic group of Jews. Which is an obvious and silly bad faith trick. You're also doing the same thing.

Hasan Piker is a very bad example because he supports the Houthi, and the Houthi are VERY anti-semitc, their flag literally curses ALL jews

"God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse be upon the Jews, Victory to Islam"

Ah, yes. So if Piker, when looking at the Houthi/Israel dichotomy, is more sympathetic to the Houthis, that means he adopts all of their positions?

That doesn't follow. Not even a little bit.

That is just a blatant lie? There are Jews living in all those places. Not that many perhaps, but they exist.

And it's not really about religion. It's about Palestinians specifically, who are indigenous to Palestine, and are under Israeli apartheid.

The Palestinians who have been exiled by Israel, and their children, cannot live where their grandparents lived (even though they should have a right to return, under UN resolutions that Israel has accepted), but any Jew from, let's say Brooklyn, does.

Also, Islam is the only faith in Israel which is not allowed to self-organize. It is singled out among all religious communities as the only one who is not given this right. Which is of course incredibly discriminatory.

There are a lot less Jews living in Muslim countries after Israel was created than before. 800,000 were expelled and mostly moved to Israel. You don't hear them whining for the right to return.

There isn't a single jew living in Gaza. Why is that?

It is very much about religion. Hamas is an explicitly Islamic supremacist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel as a religious obligation.

What do you mean there isn't a single jew living in Gaza? How is that relevant? That is entirely beside the point.

If you had the option to live as a full citizen in Israel, being told you're part of the dominant ethnicity that's treated as human beings; or staying in Gaza, where you are being bombed to death by the IDF, I wonder which you would choose?

Your argument is essentially stating the conditions of apartheid as negative for dominant ethnic group. I didn't know someone could be so divorced from reality.

Between apartheid and genocide Hamas supporters really love using words wrong.

Where's the Hamas supporter?

You sound like one.

Based on what?

Your comments

I'm going to need some more basis than that.

Otherwise this is just the good old "Anyone who criticizes Israel is Hamas" trope.

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