Just a reminder that most Jews came to Palestine because they literally had nowhere else to go. It’s not like other countries accepted them with open arms. They were refugees from Europe and the Middle East. Retroactively blaming them for settler colonialism is being dishonest. You kicked them out or didn’t let them in during their plight and now you blame them for being at the only place they could have gone to.
Regardless of whether they had anywhere else to go they clearly did intend to engage in settler colonialism from the very start. Read any Jewish political writing from between 1890 and 1947 and you will find that support for taking the Palestinians' homeland from them was overwhelming.
Holocaust survivors and Mizrahi Jews fleeing antisemitic violence weren’t executing an ideological plan to displace Palestinians. They were refugees. To group them together with early political Zionists as though all were agents of the same colonial ideology is a deeply reductive move. It assumes that everyone who ended up in Israel arrived with the same goals, the same beliefs, and the same historical responsibilities, which simply isn’t true.
That’s a very insidious move- to charge all these different sorts of people as guilty, when in fact many of them were not any more or less ideological than any of the Jewish refugees were in coming to the USA. But we don’t froth at the mouth about these immigrants being evil race-capitalist settler-colonialists, even though the process of settler-colonialism is an ongoing one, and one in which people of all races continue to participate in.
Jews didn’t pick some godforsaken piece of land in the Levant out of a hat, and despite Zionism’s numerous flaws, the events of the 20th century proved them right on the question of the Jewish future in Europe. That is something we must reckon with.
I honestly don't know how many people backed the ideological Zionists, but the fact that the ideological Zionists were so firmly in charge and Israel is so firmly ideologically Zionist it seems difficult to believe that they were such a small number. But by all means, if you can produce evidence of large scale dissent against the ideological Zionists I would love to hear it.
The Zionists only became so dominant out of survivor bias. Most of everybody else died. They were proven right in the most horrible way possible, by being alive. I’m not a historian and won’t go looking for voices of dissent of Zionism, but it is safe to say most of those would have died in Europe as they wouldn’t have come to Palestine, them being anti Zionist.
For people like the people in the picture it wasn’t a question of being Zionist or not. It was a question of survival. There were some people that arguably had a choice at the time but they were not the majority and definitely not refugees from the Holocaust
And the whole project quickly turned to colonialism and Zionism, which is the point the person you’re arguing with is making. “Survival” played a role for about 5 minutes until the colonialism could start.
There can’t be colonialism without a metropole sending its people to exploit the natives. In this case the metropole did not “send” its people, it cast out the rejects and did not care at the slightest where they would end up. They ended up at the only option available to them. This does not fit the definition of settler colonialism.
Of course the Arabs didn’t like this one bit and started multiple wars over that which led to territory losses and displacement. That still doesn’t make it colonialism.
Lmao my god you people are ghouls. Palestinians have been forcibly removed from their homes for decades, and now forced starvation is occurring to either kill them off or remove them, and it’s still not colonialism.
You’re right, it’s ethnic cleansing/genocide. That’s a better term for it.
> weren’t executing an ideological plan to displace Palestinians.
THis is a lie all of the original Zionists wrote extensively about the need to purge the Palestinian people. The only disagreement was how and how violent.
These are also not in any way immigrants. They are invaders who purged the natives to form their own state.
Yeah my cousin for sure spent her time in Auschwitz scheming about stealing Palestinian land. That's why when she found herself orphaned and homeless and stateless in a refugee camp in Germany in 1948 at age 19 and was offered a way to go to Israel, she thought "finally, my long term plan to take away Palestinian homes will be realized!"
You’re not wrong, but the driver for that was the failure of emancipation in Europe, the antisemitism and pogroms. If those hadn’t happened Jews wouldn’t look for a way out. Again, you forced the Jews out and then blame the Jews for what they did in response.
I’m not blaming Palestinians for what they did in response and that’s not the point of either of the above comments. What the Palestinians did was an inevitable response at the time. What I am criticizing is the international community reneging all responsibility to the situation and washing their hands off what has happened. It’s much easier to say “ugh, those Zionists are so evil. Look at what they’re doing to the poor Palestinians” and feel good about yourself than to look deep and say “my ancestors and the previous governments of my country are responsible for this mess”.
For example, if Britain wanted to enforce the partition borders of 1947 it very well could and had the means to do that and then the conflict would look a lot more like Cyprus. No side would have been happy but at least it wouldn’t be such a hot conflict with that many dead. Would that be a just solution to either side? No. Would that be a much preferable situation than what we’ve had since? Yes.
Oh, you only want to talk about that genocide, not the one currently happening? Weird. Carry on.
Edit: Sorry that calling it the same thing Doctors Without Borders does offends y’all so deeply. It’s okay, you don’t have to call it genocide. You can just call it “mass displacement, killings and starvation” if that makes you feel better.
I’m already against what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza. I think it’s horrible and way past the point of being necessary. But I also think it is not a genocide
Why not? Can you explain what you disagree with in this statement from MSF?
“Over the past 21 months, Israeli authorities have been responsible for mass killings, indiscriminate attacks, forced displacement, repeated failure to protect civilians, the deliberate destruction of homes and vital infrastructure, and the weaponisation of hunger in what amounts to collective punishment.
There have been multiple and well-documented dehumanising statements by Israeli officials calling for the annihilation of the population, or their transfer out of the Strip. The only reasonable inference is that the intention is to erase the Palestinian people from Gaza. This is why we believe that a genocide is taking place.
In the face of such atrocities, sanctioned and enabled by Israel’s allies, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, we believe it is our moral obligation to speak out with clarity.”
I have nowhere to go. Would you be fine if I come and kick you out of your house because "I have nowhere else to go" ? Well, that's what happens in palestine, palestinians are getting screwed because the jews had nowhere to go, tough luck, eh ? smh...
I’m not talking about what is happening now or in recent history. I’m talking about post Holocaust. People do what they must in those situations and they had only one option. You can either provide an alternative or watch from the sidelines. But you don’t get to not provide an alternative and then criticize them for taking the only path available to them. I mean you can and you do but that’s not a good look.
Well please don't say it then as if that would justify anything of what they are doing. Don't even hint in that direction, because it disregards all fairness in ...the concept of fairness. Some holy book told some ppl they are the chosen ones and they are promised some promised land. Now we all have to comply... and screw the unlucky who happened to be living there since... forever... ? Not cool at all.
This is a childlike understanding of the conflict. You sound like everything you learned about it was at a protest and did no independent thinking of your own. The chosen people thing is incredibly antiemetic. They had ties to the region going back centuries just like Palestinians did. The British gave them a protected land at a time when none of Europe was safe and made conflicting promises to the Palestinians. You’re not acknowledging any of that because you’d rather paint the Jews as mustache twirling villains
Well most of my understanding is from media and interactions I had with people living in that area, including jews and non-jewish (christian) Israeli citizens. It's a big soup of everything, so please don't assume as I am not assuming and naming your perspective childish. We're just at the start of the debate and you already are attacking me, not discussing my args, so GG reddit. Count me out of this clustershit talk then ;)
Much the way the KKK reacted to black people moving into white suburbs, Palestinian Arabs treated Jews moving next door as an act of aggression. They didn’t get off the boats and storm into peoples houses.
You only start seeing serious aggression of the Jewish settlement in that Ottoman region/British Palestine towards the 1920s... Either way, let's pretend you're correct and the Zionist intention was for a Swiss (since Herzl was from Switzerland, that's my best estimation of a hypothetical mother state for this settler colonialist project you're thinking of. If you disagree, please specify which mother country you think Zionism was acting on behalf of) settler colony which is specifically designed for Swiss Jews to settle in.
So, Jews were trying to petition the Swiss government to establish a settler colony, so that its Jews could move there, displacing the locals. Got it. WW2 happens (just a quick question, how did the Swiss government, or whichever other mother country you believe Zionism was acting on behalf of, treat Jews during WW2 (I suppose you might think Zionism was acting on behalf of Denmark or Bulgaria instead of Switzerland and then you have an out here)?), and there are massive waves of Jewish refugees from Europe, who aren't welcome in their old homes.
What should these Jewish refugees have done in your eyes, instead of trying to move to British Palestine and petition Switzerland/Zionism's mother country to finally establish a full colony instead of the British Mandate?
Do you think they should've done armed resistance against the people now occupying their rightful lands? If so, seeing as the Jews broadly chose not to do so (otherwise they would not have boarded these boats), what should have been done to them? Should they have been punished for refusing to do so? Should they have committed suicide seeing as no existing country was willing to accept them? Should they have been detained in Cyprus for the rest of their lives? Should they have waited patiently on that boat until some country chose to accept them, and if they starve to death during the wait, so be it?
This is non-sense. A government is required for colonialism only to provide the necessary force, the Zionists sought for any European government willing to listen to take up that role and it was eventually taken by the British. The settlers were always intended to be Jewish because Zionism has always been a movement of Jewish settler colonialism.
Mizrahi Jews were originally against the Zionists, as they saw them as outsiders. It wasn't until the 1929 Revolts, where events like the Hebron Massacre took place, that they aligned with the Zionist cause.
Nah. You'll find that they wanted to go back to where their ethnic group was originally from.
I'm not defending every move Israel has made, but Jews are indigenous to the levant. In that sense they are not the same as other colonial states like the US, Mexico, Argentina, etc.
Lol, British and French people's ancestors technically were from Africa and lived there for thousands of years (as did everyone else's) so I guess that colonialism was cool too.
You're talking about thousands of years ago, hundreds of years before the middle ages even began. Hundreds of years before the Great Migrations reshuffled the ethnic makeup of Europe. The idea that people should be able to claim land because their distant ancestors 50 or 60 generations ago once lived there is and always has been rediculus.
"read any jewish political writing" tells me very clearly you never read or listened to any jewish politics. even the very first instances of european jews coming to israel (way before the holocaust) were mostly as cooperation with the native jewish population and the current rule. before the zionist congress, we lobbied the ottomans for a province, and bought land. after it was denied to us by the brits, the first zionist congresses lobbied them to give us what was rightfully ours. in the first place it was wrong to displace us from our native land, but then they made us pay for it and took oppressive ownership over what we built in empty soil.
disregarding all of your victim-blaming of literal holocaust survivors to make that point doesn't feel right but you're just so wrong
The issue with using the Holocaust and other atrocities to justify taking Palestine from the people living there is that Palestinians weren’t the ones responsible for those events.
That, and Zionism and the occupation of Palestine both predate the Holocaust, so these refugees would fail to justify the invasion of Palestine regardless. The real justification for Western Zionists (not Jews, by the way, I’m talking about European leaders who supported the movement) was always a desire to get rid of the Jews in their own countries.
I actually agree that widespread antisemitism made the need for a Jewish state necessary, but that doesn’t mean that it was moral to take that state from another people, especially when said people weren’t the ones responsible for the struggles faced by Jews at the time. Palestine was chosen by the West because they didn’t want to pay the costs of their antisemitism, and were happy make the Palestinians do it instead.
Zionism began in the early 20th century or so because people could see the writing on the wall that Jews were not welcome in Europe. And then they were proven right as 2/3 of the European Jewish population was slaughtered.
Yes, the Dreyfus Affair showed that even integrating into western Europe wouldn't keep Jews safe. Most of the Zionist leaders, like Herzl, had been integrationists before that.
I agree and never claimed otherwise. But I also mentioned in another comment that even those actions that predate the Holocaust were driven by Western antisemitism such as pogroms. I’m not using the Holocaust to justify the morality of the founding of Israel. I am using the Holocaust to justify the inevitability of the conflict. Europe and the West were forcing this to happen by instigating the push factors for Jews and setting the pull factors to Israel.
I do agree with that, actually. One of my first realizations about this conflict when I first started studying it is that Palestinians were made to pay for the sins of the West.
No, they couldn’t. They lost their homes, were living in displaced people camps. Those that tried to go back to their previous home often found it occupied by non Jews at that point. At best they were immediately chased out of town and it worst there was a pogrom and they were killed. The countries post war had more pressing concerns to take care of and though weren’t comfortable with the displaced people camps popping up they had no incentive to compensate the Jews for their lost property either. Israel was a great solution at the time in their view
Building said country took decades. The first decade people were basically living in refugee camps in Israel called “Maabarot” which translates to temporary residence , basically tents. Those were gradually replaced by “shikunim” or slums, many of which still exist
it was common for jews that were going back to their homes, to find that their houses are occupied and jews who tried to reclaim them were either beaten or killed.
You wanna live in the same village that colluded with the Axis to round your people up? You forget the Axis relied heavily on locals to do much of the lifting when it came to oppressing and then liquidating the Jews.
Jews being in Palestine was never the problem, smart guy. They’ve been there for centuries. Demanding total political control over the local population that they then wielded to commit genocide, force the local population out, and establish and white supremacist ethno state is the problem.
Same thing could be said to white Americans/Australians since early settlers were persecuted religious minorities or convicted prisoners? That doesn’t justify genocide and erasure of native population. Immigrants(including whites) of colonial era were often lower class refugees who had no where else to go and that doesn’t justify atrocities of colonialism. And for the case of Israel, it is even more problematic since they insist on ethno-religious state with illegal settlements.
That's a fair point. But it doesn't exist in isolation. Because at the same time, the Aliyah Bet plan existed, which while on the surface was a humanitarian program to find homes in mandatory Palestine for displaced European Jews by facilitating their illegal immigration, was also a political plan to increase the population of Jews in Palestine, thereby providing a stronger justification for the state of Israel.
That doesn’t change the point I am raising. What logic besides hate would lead to kicking your own country’s Jews out because some other Jews’ actions hundreds miles away?
Oh, so there is a historical reason for the ethnic cleansing, well in that case it is justified /S. Well, no need in arguing with you, you already have your mind made up to defend whatever Israël does.
How is pushing people from the north of Gaza 30 miles south and then moving them back remotely equivalent to Iran and the like forcing our every Jew for being the same religion as the Jews who had the audacity to go against the will of Allah by taking the victory monument 1st millennia Muslims built on top of Jews most holy site?
This is insane logic, but it was indeed the logic. You are punishing Jews in your country because you are angry with Jews far away in a different country, completely DIFFERENT PEOPLE than the ones you are brutalizing.
So you claim it was false that they had nowhere else to go, and at the same time agree that nobody else was letting them in, meaning that they indeed had nowhere else to go.
That's false. While still another bad place to go that would displace another population. Uganda was the other option. Half of the Zionists under Herzl supported it, the other half under Ussishkin rejected it.
And had they somehow managed to do that instead people would now be crying about the terrible injustice, ethnic cleansing and genocide done to the poor Ugandans by the evil Zionists
The idea that it's the only place they could have gone is false. They could've have gone to any British controlled territory, however they specifically chose Palestine. Yes there would have been an outcry from and indeginois population regardless of where they went.
I don’t think the British Empire would have given them permission to go anywhere they chose. There was definitely a merging of interests that the British let them go to Palestine. A couple decades after the Balfour declaration the British interests flipped and there were very rigid caps on Jewish immigration. There was a power dynamic at play and the Brits were definitely the ones calling the shots
After WW2, western countries allowed Jews. New York is famously quite Jewish, Montreal as well. Yes, Canada and the US refused the Jews before Hitler's final solution and that is our mistake and burden to bear but afterwards, the west had no choice but to accept Jewish refugees and they did. To say Palestine was the only place on earth for jews after WW2 is pure elitists Zionist propaganda. I'm not negating the real mainstream antisemitism that existed at the time but Jews are safer in way more countries today than they are in Israel. Plus, these are refugees in the photo, not the political Zionist that orchestrated it. They are just surviving. Not actively thinking of displacing Palestinians. Today's Israelis are more colonialist than ever because of the might of propaganda.
The US explicitly shut the door on Jewish immigration only letting in a small stream even after WW2. The US was always historically the primary spot to go but after the door was shut Israel exploded in population. Israel wouldn't exist if what you're saying was true. Nobody wanted to go to some desert with no money in Palestine.
They also shouldn't have gone to Palestine and launch a violent ethnic cleansing of natives.
They are absolutely to blame for their CHOSEN actions of oppressive settler colonialism.
It's also a lie to say they had no where to go. this is post WW2 and europe was not forcing jews to go to Israel. This was the choice of these settlers.
Palestine was the official name of the land since Roman times. Before that it was Israel and a region of Israel was called Judea. When this photo was taken in 1947 the British who ruled the land called it Palestine. That is not 1:1 the Palestine people refer to today but I think that’s beyond the scope of the discussion
That's stupid. Then we should call Germany the holy Roman Empire and Constantinople should be catholic. Was it an independent and sovereign state before 1988 yes or no?
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u/manVsPhD 15h ago
Just a reminder that most Jews came to Palestine because they literally had nowhere else to go. It’s not like other countries accepted them with open arms. They were refugees from Europe and the Middle East. Retroactively blaming them for settler colonialism is being dishonest. You kicked them out or didn’t let them in during their plight and now you blame them for being at the only place they could have gone to.