To be annoyed nobody mentioned who started the war

I wondered how long that would take.

You are so right about lack of knowledge on this subject. Most people seem to form an opinion from bias social media or news stories rather than finding balanced sources or having grown up conversations with people that have lived this stuff all their lives.

Also over half the current Jew population in Israel decend from Middle Eastern Jews.

The number of slaves the English bought of Africans is nothing to the number enslaved by Muslims, and who continue to by enslaved by them to this day. The trade to the east outsized the trade to the west, predated it by millennia and outlasted it by hundreds of years. The word ‘slave’ comes from the Muslim enslavement of Slavs. The Islamic caliphates massacred tens of millions - far far outstripping anything in the British Empire.

Surely the important thing is how we’re going to end it?

I remember seeing an exhibit years ago about the years before the creation of Israel. One photo has always stayed in my head. It was of a Jewish village that had been attacked by Arabs. They had raped most the men and women, killed everyone they could. Then driven poles through some of the men. The photo showed two of the men with poles going from there mouth down their throats and coming out somewhere lower down. No idea if the men were dead before they did this or not.

Before Israel was made there was great unrest on the land already. Not just from the Arabs, Jews would retaliate and do horrible things too.

Apart from the whole Islamic Jews must live as dimmis (lesser people) and all that they was the Hitler influence on the Arabs during the war too. Hitler had his own news channel that he set up there. This was massive in properganda and brainwashing the Arabs into Jew hate even if they were fairly Jew friendly before. As you can see in Gaza from pre war photos they would often still fly nazi flags. Gaza also had two different shops called Hitler, one in Gaza city the other I can't remember the location. So can you imagine what was going to happen to the Jews the moment the British soldiers left if Israel wasn't created and supported by the international community then. Or maybe you just would prefer dead Jews and the land ethnic cleaned of Jews forever. I do think some people definitely would prefer that had happened, yet still think they are on the right side of history blah blah blah.

I hope youve told that to Hamas. Wanting the wipe out of Jews

Absolutely this. This is but a mere blip in time. We just happen to be living through this bit.

Who gives a shit?

'But he started it' doesn't fly when committing genocide.

Wasn't it started by King Saul and his sidekick young David vs the Philistines? Obviously what with being commanded by the Lord God Almighty to take the land from the peoples who already lived there, they had to obey, but I can understand the people who weren't chosen by Almighty God being a bit miffed. That lovely fertile bit of land by the river has been contested throughout recorded history and is never going to be an independent state - as it has been for thousands of years, it will always be a semi-autonomous region under the prevailing hegemony of whatever the biggest global empire is at the time. Currently, that empire is the USA. No empire lasts for ever.

Agreed. It’s ridiculous how people can twist the facts of what actually happened. It’s more crazy that no one is disagreeing with it! Although they may be scared of the consequences of doing so.

It has been eye opening to me, a non-Jew to discover how little we are taught in the UK about what happened in the Middle East during and after WWII. The number of times I've had to tell people that many of the ME states saw what Hitler was doing in the 1940s and decided to turn on their Jewish population at the same time, and no one I've spoken to had any idea. Likewise the belief that all Israeli's ancestry originates from European Jews when actually the original state was set up for Middle Eastern Jewish refugees.

They started it in 1947? What could possibly have happened then? Could they have been turfed from their homes? It’s amazing that you didn’t mention this OP, and shows very poor understanding of how they may view the situation differently from you.

And why was it created?

You are wilfully ignoring or simply don't know the history of the mass slaughter of Jews on that land in the years before the creation. Which is why because of the pulling out of European soldiers there was no choice but to separate the land into two separate states. Yes there was other factors at play but ultimately what else were the international community and the Jews supposed to do? Just let the Jews in on the land get either tortured as had already happened in many villages and killed, forced to convert to Islam or forced to flee? If flee where too? European that had just had the holocaust and where most countries were still mistreating or barring Jewish refugees, where they didn't feel safe because they provably were not. Or the neighbouring Arab countries were they were slowly getting ethnically cleaned and were forced to live as second class citizens under Islam, paying extra taxes and having limits on where they can work or what they can own. Post war most countries would not take very many Jewish refugees from Europe and the were even less likely to take Middle Eastern Jews of colour. Once the soldiers were going to pull out something had to be done like it or not to try and protect both Arab and Jews on the land, the fact that the Arab countries decided to sacrifice the land and the Arab people living there to an endless war rather than peace is what you should be annoyed at, not the creation of Israel. I may not actually agree with the way the state was created but it did have to be created for the sake of millions of people then (and now judging by the jew hate happening openly in many countries these days).

Everyone is a victim, except English people presumably?

Your fears are completely valid. At the same time, the world is the way it is partly because we spent a great deal of time plundering and oppressing it. Nothing that has happened to you comes close to what others have experienced at the hands of the English. It's not a competition but we won't get far unless we acknowledge that everyone is, in some way, a victim. People become radicalised when there is systemic corruption and oppression.

YANBU. Even the most recent war wasn't instigated by Israel. I feel Israel have acted extremely disproportionately in response to what Hamas did, but much of this may not have happened if the 7 October 2023 attacks hadn't taken place.

In that scenario I think establishing an Irish state in Ireland would be justifiable.

What about you?

I don’t think that would give the Irish state carte blanche for everything. And I think both pragmatically and morally that Irish state should allow for non-Irish who lived on that land to be citizens of that Irish state.

I would put a lot of blame on the surrounding European countries that tried to strangle a sovereign Ireland at birth. Especially if they had simultaneously expelled their Irish-descent citizens.

It’s not a perfect parallel but that is pretty much what I think on Israel too.

Jews have private security outside their temples. They often have a police presence (Manchester, Prestwich) on holy days.

Christmas markets have anti-ram barricades installed (as does Piccadilly gardens)

Concert venues have Airport style security protocols.

Airport security has to be insanely tight.

All for one, universal reason. And yet that 'reason' is often the one to cry 'racism/phobia etc'

I'm beyond caring what people label me as now.

I don't want this misogynistic, homophobic, totalitarian and threatening takeover.

Read your History! Arabs, Jews and Christians lived peacefully under the Ottoman Empire.

Tens of millions of Christians were massacred and those that survived and were not enslaved had to pay tribute to their Muslim overlords. Arab Muslims were of course allowed to live peacefully under Muslim rule.

Next you will be saying the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul was offer freely by Christians.

I think so.