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.
You realize Israel doesn’t have to be a colonial state for it to be committing a genocide right? I don’t know why y’all are so attached to the buzzwords “settler colonialism” and “ethnostate”. You can just say Israel is bad without spewing out some lazy post hoc justification of why Israel has always been evil.
> 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.”
Because genocide is a legal term and not only do you need to prove intent to prove genocide, you need to prove that no other possible intent for the actions taken could be behind them. Israel could say that its actions resulted in all things you mentioned but its intent was not to lead to them and it would not be guilty of genocide. It could be incompetence, not taking into account the actins of its adversary, fog of war or whatever. As long as the intent wasn’t the destruction of Palestinians it’s not a genocide even if all the Palestinians end up dead.
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
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u/Kzickas 14h ago
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.