> If continuous presence in a land doesn't define a people's right to exist as a nation, you know what does?
You're playing a deliberate sleight of hand here. A tiny number of Jews lived as a small minority in Palestine, therefore Jews were always there, therefore European Jews have the right to turn Palestine into a Jewish state.
The "continuous presence" was tiny, and had nothing to do with the millions of Jews who lived in Europe - the people who later founded Israel.
> Israel has that. Israel was invaded on the day it declared independence on May 14th, 1948. Invaded by 9 Arab nations and armies, Israel not only successfully defended itself and won the war, it even gained territory from the aggressors.
The Zionist paramilitary groups had already been waging war against the Palestinians for 6 months by the time the Arab armies intervened. The Zionists had already driven hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes and conquered much of Palestine. But Israelis like to present this as little old us being attacked by the big mean Arab armies.
> The only people who deny this right of Jews to return to their native homeland? Bonafide neo-Nazis, Islamic fundamentalists, KKK members, and other antisemites.
You forgot to mention Jewish people. The large majority of Jews were antizionist before WWII, and opposition to Zionism has always been a prominent position among Jews. And inversely, many of the strongest proponents of Zionism have always been antisemites (for example, right-wing Christians in the US today).
Imagine if in the year 3600 AD, an African American political movement were to start saying that Africa is their true homeland and that they have the right to take over Ghana and to turn it into their own state. It would be absurd, and the Ghanaians would fight it tooth and nail.
Yet here you are saying that Palestine was the true homeland of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, and that European Jews had a 2000-year-old right to take over Palestine, regardless of what the people who lived there had to think about it.
Albert Einstein legally traveled to British Mandate Palestine in 1923 to help set up the Hebrew University - on land that was legally purchased.
While some Arabs (and Jews) were displaced during the War of independence, most of Israel’s cities are built on land that was legally purchased, and the vast majority of Israelis immigrated legally.
Making it sound like all of the land was stolen because some Jews immigrated from Europe is like saying that Muslim migrants are stealing European land.
> Albert Einstein legally traveled to British Mandate Palestine in 1923
You're claiming that visiting once made him native to Palestine? He was a German. That was his native language, his culture, the world he grew up in.
> Making it sound like all of the land was stolen because some Jews immigrated from Europe is like saying that Muslim migrants are stealing European land.
Have Muslim immigrants to Europe established their own country through the mass expulsion of the pre-existing European population?
The Zionists weren't just immigrants to Palestine. They openly declared that their goal was to turn Palestine into their own country.
> most of Israel’s cities are built on land that was legally purchased
This is simply untrue. The vast majority of what became Israel was conquered, and the local population was expelled. Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth, Ramle, Lod, Be'er Sheva, Ashdod - these were all Arab cities that Israel conquered.
> the vast majority of Israelis immigrated legally
They arrived under British rule, when the native population of Palestine had virtually no say in its own governance. The native population deeply resented the British promising Palestine to a foreign people, and allowing them to come in and build up their own settlements and quasi-governmental institutions. The Palestinians knew exactly what the intentions of the Zionist movement were, and they obviously opposed it, as any people in their situation would have done. So yes, much of the Zionist immigration was "legal" according to the British, but the British were illegitimate colonial occupiers who were pursuing a policy that was almost universally opposed by the native population.
Looking at the largest population centers in Israel:
Jerusalem (pop. 1M): was 54% Jewish in 1922 and is 59% Jewish now. Jewish purchase and development of land there predates the British Mandate.
Tel Aviv (pop. 400k) - excluding Jaffa (pop. 50k): Pro-Palestinians like to conflate it with Jaffa because the two municipalities merged. But the vast majority of it is a city built on sand dunes purchased by Jews starting in the Ottoman era.
Petah Tikva, Rishon LeZion, Netanya, Bnei Brak (1M): Jewish cities built by Jews on land purchased legally.
Haifa (pop. 300k): was 54% Jewish in 1945, it’s 72% Jewish now.
The population of Nazareth is almost 100% Arab.
Ashdod was built on sand dunes 6 kilometres north of the town of Isdud, which was depopulated in 1948. The ruins of Isdud are still standing to the south of Ashdod.
We can acknowledge that some Arabs were forced out of some towns during the war - the Arab armies forced out every single Jew from the areas they conquered during the same war. However, the core of the conflict is the Arab side insisting that Jews have no right to any land between the river and the sea simply because of who they are.
You think that Jews of European heritage have some fundamental un-right to live in Petah Tikva?
Many Europeans and Americans oppose the immigration policies of their governments. Can they claim in 100 years time that the migrations were illegal?
> We can acknowledge that some Arabs were forced out of some towns during the war
That's a massive understatement. The Zionists / Israelis[0] expelled 80% of the native population of the territory that became Israel in 1948.
Across Palestine, Zionist / Israeli forces carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing, with the goal of capturing as large a territory as possible with as few Arabs as possible.
In Haifa, Zionist forces first carried out a campaign of terrorism, which caused nearly half of the Arab population to flee. Then, they launched a massive attack on the Arab neighborhoods, deliberately shelling civilian areas and using psychological warfare (threatening radio broadcasts in Arabic, for example) to try to convince the local population to flee. By the end, more than 90% of the Arab population had fled, and the city fell to Zionists forces.
This pattern was repeated across Palestine. The area that eventually became Israel had a large Arab majority: 60% to 40%. After the Israelis were done kicking out the Arab population, less than 15% of the population was Arab.
> the Arab armies forced out every single Jew from the areas they conquered during the same war.
The Arabs hardly conquered any territory in 1948. They were largely on the back foot. The vast majority of people who were violently expelled from their homes in 1948 were Arab.
> However, the core of the conflict is the Arab side insisting that Jews have no right to any land between the river and the sea simply because of who they are.
That's what you think the "core of the conflict is"? Not the fact that a foreign people came into Palestine and announced that they were going to turn it into their own country - and then actually did so through the expulsion of 80% of the native population? The goals of the Zionists made war with the native population completely unavoidable. Do you think that any population anywhere else on Earth would have allowed their country to be taken over by a foreign people - who wanted to establish their own state on it - without resisting?
> You think that Jews of European heritage have some fundamental un-right to live in Petah Tikva?
You talk about this as if it were just a few people immigrating to a foreign country and wanting to settle down among the locals. That's not what Zionism was. It was a movement that aimed to turn an Arab land, inhabited almost entirely by non-Jews, into a Jewish state, regardless of what the native population wanted. It was essentially a foreign invasion, facilitated by the British Empire, which held down the locals long enough for the Zionists to gain a strong foothold in Palestine.
> Many Europeans and Americans oppose the immigration policies of their governments. Can they claim in 100 years time that the migrations were illegal?
You keep talking about Zionism as if it were just a few immigrants arriving in a country and settling down. Are Mexican immigrants in the United States part of a large, organized movement that has declared that it will turn the United States into a new Mexican country for Mexicans alone? Zionism was an attempt to turn Palestine into a Jewish state. The locals were not even consulted. They were forced to accept it by a foreign empire - the British Empire - that ruled over them undemocratically.
0. I use this term because Israel was officially founded in the middle of the conflict. Zionist paramilitaries became the Israeli army.
The Arabs expelled 100% of all Jews in the territories they gained. To this day territories under control of the Palestinian authority are kept ethnically cleansed of Jews.
The Jews were migrating in accordance with local laws, and they bought deserted land at fair prices and developed them from the ground up into the big beautiful cities they are now. Until the British banned land sale to Jews and severely restricted migration (preventing Jews from fleeing the Holocaust), at the behest of the Arabs.
Any mass migration comes with a level of power in a democracy, and demographic changes are happening all over the Western world. Brussles is now majority foreign. London and NYC have Muslim mayors.
The Arabs just couldn’t take it that they will be one Middle Eastern country where Jews have significant authority and equal rights.
> To this day territories under control of the Palestinian authority are kept ethnically cleansed of Jews.
This is an insane statement. Israel controls all of East Jerusalem and the entire West Bank. They are moving their own settlers into those territories, in violation of international law, with the goal of annexing them to Israel. The Palestinians in the West Bank live under military occupation and are subject to constant violent pogroms at the hands of Israeli settlers, who have the backing of the IDF.
Yet in your narrative, the Israelis are somehow the victims here, because the Palestinians don't want them to keep stealing more land.
> The Arabs just couldn’t take it that they will be one Middle Eastern country where Jews have significant authority and equal rights.
They couldn't take it that European settlers would take over Palestine. You seem to have a very hard time accepting that the native population of Palestine should have had any say in whether their country, which was 95% Arab, should be gifted to European settlers.
> London and NYC have Muslim mayors.
Last I checked, London was still part of the UK, and NYC was still part of the US. The UK and US didn't have immigration laws forced on them by a foreign empire - they decided democratically that they're okay with a percent or so immigration each year. And Mamdani isn't trying to turn NYC into a breakaway Muslim state that will leave the US and declare Muslim supremacy over the rest of the population.
The WB is divided into zones. Look this up. Areas A are under full control of the Palestinian Authority. On the roads leading into these areas are big signs saying that it’s forbidden for Jews to enter.
It truly is insane that in this day and age there are parts of the world that are banned for Jews simply for being Jews. In addition, it is a capital offence punishable by death for Arabs to sell property to Jews. True apartheid.
Ultimately, your line of reasoning comes down to the concept of blood and soil, that the race of a person gives them unique rights to land and to reject others who they claim don’t have the correct genes to live there.
Jews were perfectly happy to share the land fairly with the other residents - as they do now with Israeli Arabs, who have full equal rights, and are doing much better than Arabs in neighbouring Arab countries, in terms income and life expectancy.
> It truly is insane that in this day and age there are parts of the world that are banned for Jews simply for being Jews.
It's the Israeli government that bans Israeli citizens from entering Area A. The Palestinians do not ban Jews from entering, and Jews enter all the time.
I am always amazed by the ability of Israelis to paint themselves as the victims in every situation. You control the entire West Band and hold millions of Palestinians under a brutal military regime. But in your mind, you're the victim. Incredible.
> Ultimately, your line of reasoning comes down to the concept of blood and soil, that the race of a person gives them unique rights to land and to reject others who they claim don’t have the correct genes to live there.
This is a crazy level of mental gymnastics. The Zionists announced that they wanted to take over Palestine and turn it into a Jewish state. But when the Zionist movement began, 95% of the population of Palestine was non-Jewish. Of course the population was against a foreign people coming in and taking over their country.
> Jews were perfectly happy to share the land fairly with the other residents - as they do now with Israeli Arabs, who have full equal right
The Zionists were actually adamant that Israel must have a large Jewish majority - large enough that the Arabs would have no meaningful political influence. Ben Gurion said it should be 80% at a minimum. Zionism is all about establishing a Jewish state, not a state that is simply for all of its citizens.
In order to achieve that overwhelming demographic majority in as large a part of Palestine as possible, it was necessary to expel the vast majority of the Arab population of the territory that became Israel - about 80%.
So when you say that the Israelis were perfectly happy to share the land fairly, that's just a pleasant lie - though maybe one you believe.
It was public knowledge that the Jews were removed against their will and are hoping to return (and have done so on different scales throughout history). This is documented even in Quran.
The Arabs knew when they moved in and built mosques on top of ancient Jewish holy sites that the land is contested. Still, the returning Jews by and large paid the occupiers to purchase the land fairly, and would happily pay Palestinians good money for more land in Judea and Samaria - which is why the PA needs to threaten to murder anyone who sells.
No, selling land to Israelis or people acting on behalf of Israel is punishable by death. The reason for this is that Israel is trying to annex the Palestinian territories, and every bit of territory that gets sold to Israelis is territory that will be permanently removed from Palestine. The Israelis establish settlers on the land and then use those settlements to argue that the land should belong to Israel.
This is viewed in the same way as selling land or national treasures to German occupiers during WWII would have been viewed in European countries.
> Jews who enter Area A are detained by PA forces and escorted out, or lynched. (With an exception of some token visits by activists).
Not true at all. I'm actually surprised by the number of Israelis who believe this, because American Jews visit Area A all the time, and are treated very well. There are actually some popular tourist destinations there, like Bethlehem. In my experience, Palestinians generally have nothing against Jews - they just don't like Israel.
The first cases you linked is one in which an armed Israeli man was handed over to the Israeli police, and the other is a case in which an Israeli family got lost and was handed over to the IDF.
What makes this really galling is that there is a wave of pogroms right now directed at Palestinians in the West Bank. Yet you're inverting this and presenting Israelis as the victims. It would be like claiming that whites were the true victims in the Jim Crow South, while black people were being lynched.
> Zionism started more than 2000 years ago.
Zionism started at the end of the 1800s. You're just trying to invent an alternate history.
> The Arabs knew when they moved in and built mosques on top of ancient Jewish holy sites that the land is contested.
This is insane. I'm sorry, but nobody gets to claim that land is "contested" in the modern age because an ancient Roman emperor expelled a group of people nearly 2000 years ago. You would laugh at any other group of people who made such a ridiculous claim.
Jewish return to the Land of Israel has been ongoing for 2000 years. Either people who’ve historically been displaced have a claim or they don’t. Either way Israelis have a claim. You can’t choose a statute of limitations arbitrarily to suit only one side.
Besides, the Jews mostly paid for the land they built on (or they built on land that wasn’t privately owned). The fact that Palestinians need to threaten to kill anyone who sells land to Jews shows that Israelis don’t generally just steal Palestinian land. And you think killing people for selling land is justified.
There are 2 million Arabs living in Israel. How many live in areas under the control of Palestinians?
It’s absolutely not safe for anyone visibly Jewish to enter Area A. You are simply lying about this, and I will stop engaging.
> You can’t choose a statute of limitations arbitrarily to suit only one side.
You don't have to precisely draw a statute of limitations to know that claiming land because of what happened during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian is completely insane.
> How many live in areas under the control of Palestinians?
Are you seriously asking this? There are nearly a million Israelis living (illegally, according to international law) in the Palestinian territories, but the Israelis will never let the Palestinians exercise legal authority over them. The Israelis have effectively annexed large swaths of the Palestinian territories, and wherever Israelis settle, the Palestinians are not allowed to exercise any control.
> It’s absolutely not safe for anyone visibly Jewish to enter Area A.
Dude, I have family members who have gone to Area A. They told me that the Palestinians were lovely to them, and mainly complained about how much their lives were restricted by the Israeli military occupation. In contrast, they told me that Israel was the rudest society they had ever experienced, by a very large margin.
Sounds like your relatives excel at generalizing to millions of people from a few individual interactions.
Jews were 100% ethnically cleansed from Gaza and the WB in 1948 - including from places where Jews have lived and owned property for hundreds of years, and this is maintained to this day wherever Arabs are in control. They were also ethnically cleansed from other Arab and Muslim countries.
The only places Jews can live safely in the Middle East are areas the IDF secures. It’s unfortunate that it has to be that way, when Arabs feel perfectly safe to live amongst Jews in Israel.
> Sounds like your relatives excel at generalizing to millions of people from a few individual interactions.
You claimed that it's extremely dangerous for any Jewish person to enter Palestinian cities, based on nothing. When I inform you that not only do many Jewish people go there all the time, but I have family members who have done so (and were treated far better by Palestinians than by Israelis), you just dismiss it.
> Jews were 100% ethnically cleansed from Gaza and the WB in 1948
There were hardly any Jews in the West Bank and Gaza in 1948 to begin with. The ethnic cleansing was almost entirely in the other direction.
> They were also ethnically cleansed from other Arab and Muslim countries.
This happened years after Israel ethnically cleansed the 78% of Palestine it took over. Arab Jews were victims of Israel's founding. The creation of a self-styled "Jewish state" through mass land theft and expulsion of the native population generated intense anger throughout the Arab world, which led to Arab Jews eventually being expelled or pressured out of their home countries.
> The only places Jews can live safely in the Middle East are areas the IDF secures.
Not true at all. There are plenty of Jewish tourists in the Middle East. The only thing I'll grant you is that Israel pretending to act in the name of all Jews does generate a lot of antisemitism and make Jews less safe around the world.
> Arabs feel perfectly safe to live amongst Jews in Israel.
Tell that to the millions of Palestinians who live under Israeli military rule and who are constantly subjected to pogroms.
The person you are replying to isn't arguing in good faith. They are a loyal propagandist for Israel, and their ability to spit lies and misinformation exceeds the rate at which you can correct it. It's a losing game.
You're playing a deliberate sleight of hand here. A tiny number of Jews lived as a small minority in Palestine, therefore Jews were always there, therefore European Jews have the right to turn Palestine into a Jewish state.
The "continuous presence" was tiny, and had nothing to do with the millions of Jews who lived in Europe - the people who later founded Israel.
> Israel has that. Israel was invaded on the day it declared independence on May 14th, 1948. Invaded by 9 Arab nations and armies, Israel not only successfully defended itself and won the war, it even gained territory from the aggressors.
The Zionist paramilitary groups had already been waging war against the Palestinians for 6 months by the time the Arab armies intervened. The Zionists had already driven hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes and conquered much of Palestine. But Israelis like to present this as little old us being attacked by the big mean Arab armies.
> The only people who deny this right of Jews to return to their native homeland? Bonafide neo-Nazis, Islamic fundamentalists, KKK members, and other antisemites.
You forgot to mention Jewish people. The large majority of Jews were antizionist before WWII, and opposition to Zionism has always been a prominent position among Jews. And inversely, many of the strongest proponents of Zionism have always been antisemites (for example, right-wing Christians in the US today).
Imagine if in the year 3600 AD, an African American political movement were to start saying that Africa is their true homeland and that they have the right to take over Ghana and to turn it into their own state. It would be absurd, and the Ghanaians would fight it tooth and nail.
Yet here you are saying that Palestine was the true homeland of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, and that European Jews had a 2000-year-old right to take over Palestine, regardless of what the people who lived there had to think about it.