Free Palestine

And what was notable about the surge in antisemitism here and elsewhere was that it was immediate after 7 October nothing to do with Israel's response which came later anyway It was like a dam burst, Jew hatred was ok, and was even to be celebrated. And then, denied.

I am so sorry about your family's experience and horrified that it is replicated around the diaspora.

There are still wars about boundaries elsewhere, this isn’t particularly unique. The thing that is incredibly difficult is that this war gets so much more attention than other ones, and it’s hard not to think it’s more about Jewish people than an argument about borders.

Ukraine used to be part of Russia, then wasn’t and now Russia wants them to cease to exist. This was the popular topic for marches and fundraising and sunflowers and whatnot until everyone moved on to Israel.

But the marches and the chanting and whatnot isn’t entirely or always about the country of Israel, its spilling out into every single aspect of many Jewish people’s lives. My daughter was attacked at school, my father’s synagogue had horrible graffiti just last week, my brother’s Jewish school has armed security now as they’ve had so many bomb threats… this has always happened but, in my lifetime, never as intensely and constant. My grandparents would recognise this fear however as they lived through it.

Its not clear what you're saying. You say you don't think Israel should be 'undone'.Do you accept Israel as it is should exist? Yet you seem to also be questioning its legitimacy. How can peace progesss without an acceptance of the legitimacy of yhe modern state of Israel?

As I said, I agree - what was done should not be undone. I don't think a nation should be founded where other people were living, but clearly that happened a lot in the past. I can't imagine we'd think it was acceptable now.

I certainly don't want hamas to have any more power, I'd like them to go, along with Netanyahu and his crowd from Israel, and let more moderate people from both sides to negotiate a way for people to live together.

It’s not something that is easily “simplified”.

As I said, I don’t personally care what happened 2000 years ago. Who could possibly even know. I do care about Israel’s continued existence and I do think the Jewish people can surely unapologetically have one teeny tiny country without being under constant threat.

of course it is terrible to be displaced but there are endless stories about displacement (highland clearances, Russian pogroms, trail of tears, on and on forever) and that’s awful but we can’t solve human nature by destroying Israel. The result would be catastrophic for the Jewish people, the region and the rest of the world too. Surely no one actually thinks Hamas should have more responsibility?

I believe that modern history is relevant but not ancient history. I don't believe the Romans have any claim on England. Or the Vikings.

More modern history is very different.

I don't see how it can be right for Israel to claim the land based on an ancient historical state, whilst ignoring more modern history with it being predominantly Palestinian.

What's done is done, and I'm not suggesting the state of Israel be undone in any way now, because that would be an injustice for the people living there. But there also needs to be justice for the Palestinians who have been treated abysmally in this.

@Alittlefeedbackwouldbenice Land has changed that so many times throughout history. I really don't think it's relevant anymore.

Did you not mean that?

Which country was Israel a colony of?

And no such thing as an ancient claim to the land by Israel. Therefore, they were colonisers.

So let me get this right, Israel gets the land because of a claim thousands of years ago, but the Palestinians don't because we shouldn't be thinking about history. I'm not quite sure how to comprehend that level of hypocrisy.

Indeed. No such thing as occupied territories then.

So many historical redrawings of borders.

Meanwhile at the UN.....

Tell that to Palestinian people who gave been lobbing missiles into Israel fir a very long time. Tell them. Israel is a state and its not going anywhere. Perhaps Palestinian Jordan could share it's land with other Palestinian people. Its Palestinian Jordan big enough, do they need Israel as well. Are Jewish people not allowed any land anywhere.

You can only blame the British you know, never the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire fell and never gets blamed for any of their colonisation.

All this talk about who had to learn thousands of years ago makes me a bit worried that Rome is going to want its land back...
Should we get our empire back?

Land has changed that so many times throughout history. I really don't think it's relevant anymore.

Jewish temple underneath a mosque because Jewish people lived there thousands of years BEFORE Islam existed and Islam was brought into that area by people of the Muslim faith.

I think as ever with this subject people view what happened to Palestinians in isolation against a standard of perfection. Rather than in its actual historical and geo-political context.

It’s also true what you say about Palestinians being bought out and whole communities being displaced, but again, that was happening all over the place. There were thriving Jewish communities in Egypt, Syria, Iran etc that completely disappeared at that time. In my view the partition itself was the right decision. In that context I can’t see what else they should have done.

The Ashkenazi ‘elite’? Huge numbers of them were Eastern European peasants…

Regardless, the point is not whether the displacement of Jews was the Palestinians fault. I don’t know why you’d look at it in terms of fault and blame. Partition was happening at that time to address practical problems: displacement; empire collapse; desire for self-determination etc.

And yet it was tiny compared to the mass movement of people and deaths caused by the Partition of India which happened in 1947, an estimated 12-20 million people displaced per Wikipedia, compared with around 750,000 Palestinians displaced in 1948. At the time it was probably considered a comparably minor act.

It was about half of the population. Percentage wise more of the population were displaced in Mandatory Palestine than by the Partition of India.

Exactly. There were around 60 million people displaced in Europe at the end of the second world war. National borders were being redrawn all over the place and vast movements of people uprooted from places that had been their homes for generations.. It was a time of extraordinary upheaval.

The Nakba was massive. Whole Palestinian villages were depopulated. It’s an accurate thing to say.

And yet it was tiny compared to the mass movement of people and deaths caused by the Partition of India which happened in 1947, an estimated 12-20 million people displaced per Wikipedia, compared with around 750,000 Palestinians displaced in 1948. At the time it was probably considered a comparably minor act.

Post WWII was a time of massive upheaval and redrawing of maps all over. Germany was split in two around the same time.

Obviously these things had devastating consequences for the people involved, but in the general world situation, why not draw a few more lines on a map and create a Jewish state?

The Nakba was massive. Whole Palestinian villages were depopulated. It’s an accurate thing to say.
And yes European Jews bought up land. Sometimes the land was empty, sometimes it resulted in the eviction of the Arab tenants. It’s not inaccurate to say that.
Every sympathy for those Mizrahi Jews who were evicted from the Middle Eastern lands, especially as they often suffered discrimination at the hands of the Ashkenazi elite upon arrival. Every sympathy, but again it’s not the fault of the Palestinians.

This narrative of refugees coming in and 'taking land' from people already there is massively simplistic though. In some cases that did literally happen, but often the land was bought or had not been occupied. In any event, there were many Jewish people already there who had a wish for statehood, as well as many middle-eastern Jews in places like Egypt and Iran who were being persecuted and wanted a safe place to go within the middle-east. The whole region was being carved up following the collapse of the Ottoman empire.

Again, we should remember that half the people living in Israel are not European. There was a great deal of movement of peoples around the middle east at that time and it is completely reasonably that the UN and the British thought that partition was the solution, as it had been in other parts of the world. The result of partition is always that some people have to move. The narrative always focuses on displacement of Palestinians and forgets the many thousands of middle-eastern Jews who were displaced.

Again with this weird deflection of agency. The Ottomans entered WW1 on the side of Germany and then attacked Russia. Obviously they were then open to attack from Russia's allies.

The point is, the Ottomans had controlled the area now known as Palestine for centuries. They did not make any moves to allow self-government or statehood to the people living there. The British attempted this and it went badly. Should they have just stepped in and administered it as a colonial power like the Ottomans?