If you are anti-Zionist, what do you think Israel should do?

[Poudretteite]

Should Israel open its borders? Be given back to the Palestinian people? Where should the Jewish people go? What about the high risk of genocide?

Interested to hear as many people over the last few days have said they are anti-Zionist and that it's different to antisemitism.

Oh for Gods sake don't be so dense.We turned away Jewish refugees.

Also, the Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, French,Czechs, Austrians , Bulgarians Romanians Hungarians and Italians all did support and condone and indeed in many cases activley aided the Holocaust. Want to know where the 50,000 Jews of Thessaloniki ( themselves the descendants of refugees in the 15th century) ended up, for example? Auschwitz.

Enough for you?

But this is not about Peckham! It's about the Middle East! You can't compare the two!
Goes without saying be nice and respect each other goes a long way.
I'm sorry I'm just finding this so incredibly frustrating. There are 1000s of people dying... I know there is nothing we can do here on mumsnet but the whole situation is just breaking my heart.

But this is not about Peckha

commenting on the person I quoted, and their attitude to multiculturalism.

do keep up.

Only one point I wish to contest in your post…

The massive problem is that (the kleptocrat) Yasser Arafat rejected a really good peace deal

Are you referring to the Oslo Accords of 1993? Because he accepted and signed that deal….and then Israel ignored it and started their illegal settlement drive. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/13/what-were-oslo-accords-israel-palestinians

”The peace process that the deal was supposed to begin has been stillborn, with Israel continuing its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, and the Palestinian people no closer to – and some would argue further away from – an independent state.”

Oh this is great news!

Can you send a WhatsApp to Iraq and ask them if I can have my grandparents land back / a passport? And also, what human rights will I have? Have you discussed any of this with the Arab league?

Answering the original question - I think the Israeli government should not bomb the areas they have told Palestinians to flee too. I think they should support delivery of aid from Egypt and not bomb boarder crossings. I think they should withdraw settlements in Palestinian lands.

The Palestinians were there before the religion of Islam emerged too.

Hermione - you make no sense -so it is OK if Israel continues to take land designated to be Palestinian land and illegally by international law build settlements on it.
If you poke a cornered animal enough times it will fight back - what is true for the Israelis is true for the Palestinians.

It is so sad to see a population who were herded up, forced into ghettos and exterminated, perpetrate the same crimes over another population in exactly the same manner.

I work in a department with Jews and Palestinians - both sides are hurting but neither side has the moral high ground on this. Both have now lost family members in this atrocity, both agree the two sides have to work out a peaceful solution but neither could think of a way to get there.

The Jews were indigenous to the area. They lived under apartheid during the ottoman empire, subject to frequent massacres and very limited freedoms and rights.

When the empire was toppled, they very reasonably negotiated their right to live in freedom from the land from whence they came.

Yes, 700k Palestinains were exiled and fled their home and land. As did over a million Jews from their homes and lands across the Arab world.

It was not the Jews who refused to live in equality or to share.

Are you being serious? Hamas’ charter states it wants a global genocide of all Jews. Of course Israel wouldn’t want to live (for however short a time) in a ‘multicultural society’ with them!

Israel is very much a multicultural society though. 20% of the citizens are Arabs who are Muslim. It is made upon Jews from all over the Arab world that largely were driven out of their homes during the ethnic cleaning that has took place in those lands. Middle Eastern Jews make up a large percentage of the population.

You have Ethiopian Jews that lived a terrible life and were at risk of being wiped out in Africa.

You also have people from the globe like the Ukrainian refugees they have rehomed.

Obviously to a large number of Christians Israel is home too. A lot of which of which have lived there for generations.

All these people are citizens with equal rights to work, vote, be elected etc. Which is more than you can say for Gaza and West Bank!

I'm talking about Palestinians. Not Hamas.

The Jews were indigenous to the area. They lived under apartheid during the ottoman empire, subject to frequent massacres and very limited freedoms and rights.

Fantasist rewriting of history. The majority of Israelis that settled there when Israel were formed were immigrants to the area, from Europe, US and arab countries. Most of the population now have been there for one or two generations but even then it’s something like two thirds.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Jews#:~:text=Nearly%20half%20of%20all%20Israeli,from%2C%20Ethiopian%20and%20Indian%20Jews.

That's great! Sounds like it might not be such a big upheaval for everyone to live together then. It was someone else who said that Israel would be against it not me.

Oh fgs.
She was pointing out that you can't impose multiculturalism on another region, and that the majority of countries in that region don't want it.
And you responded with a facetious comment about Peckham.

@Trulywonderful which holiest site are you referring to that jews are banned from praying in?

Yes, that’s the entire point. Palestine was a region, and as such, not clearly defined. Syrians called it the southernmost region of Syria, for example. Jordan annexed it after Israel was created. Many early Zionist Jews in Europe called themselves Palestinians.

I'll stand corrected so

Are you being serious? Hamas’ charter states it wants a global genocide of all Jews. Of course Israel wouldn’t want to live (for however short a time) in a ‘multicultural society’ with them!

and what about this?

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy"

Why do people use this ridiculous comparison? This would be more accurate.

Imagine if tomorrow the British were made the only "white Christians" on the planet. And imagine someone colonised them and 80% of them were exiled to go and live around the world, and that in each one of those places they were massacred, lived under apartheid, forced to convert their religion on pain of death and even burned like witches. For say, about 2000 years.

Then let's say the 20% who were left behind in Britain were dominated by the majority. Told they couldn't be in government or the military. Forced to live in Ghettos. Told they had to defer to their masters in the street. Told they couldn't socialise with or marry with their new masters. Forced to wear yellow stars or similar to identify them as lower class citizens. Imagine rights of law were taken away from them, and they were told they couldn't testify in court against their new masters. Imagine if they were routinely beaten, murdered (sometimes in their thousands) for absolutely no reason and that children would throw rocks at them in the street.

Then a war happens and their "new" masters are toppled. And the British said "umm, okay, we don't like living like this so please can we have our own country?" and that this is debated for some time and while that's happening the 80% who were exiled and sent around the world have now, after 2000 years on ongoing massacres and edicts stopping them from existing in any freedom of any kind, have been almost completely exterminated by a lunatic gassing them in showers while the world stood by in silence.

So imagine the world says "hmm, maybe the British should actually have a bit of this country for themselves. Seeing as they are from here technically and basically everyone keeps killing them? Fair enough right?".

That is more accurate that someone showing up in Britain and asking you to give up your house. It really isn't on to diminish the reality of Jewish History.

I’m not suggesting it isn’t complex. The Camp David 2000 summit was to try and get Israel to agree to live up to their promises in the Oslo accords of 1993 and give back the land they had illegally settled on in the interim.

Israel refused to give hack land illegally settled and wanted to annex yet more land. They also didn’t want to give Palestinians sovereignty over what was left of their territory even though the Oslo Accords stated they should have had that within 5yrs (1998).

So of course no agreement was made.

Heaven help us the Wikipedia experts are in the house!

Population of pre-Mandate Palestine was 800k about 80k of whom were Jewish, the rest a mix of Turks, Bedouins, Muslim & Christian Arabs, & European ex-pats.

Over 500k of that initial 800k were Arabs who arrived between 1932 & 1944 attracted by the Yishuv's burgeoning finances.

“The bottom line is that approximately 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes. Regardless of who controlled the land, they and their ancestors lived there for generation after generation in the exact same way that many European families have lived for generations in areas that been controlled by different powers. “

No, ‘disingenuous’ is quoting the 700,000 Palestinians who fled what’s now Israel without mentioning the 900,000 Jews who fled the majority Arab countries. They, too, had been living there for centuries. Do you think the countries they fled from will give them their land and property back?

Also ‘disingenuous’ is failing to mention that the Palestinians who fled are, for example, unable to apply for citizenship in Saudi Arabia. There’s been some naturalisation in Lebanon, but there are still about 180,000 Palestinians who can’t apply for citizenship. Similar situation in Syria. And Egypt. The only country to fully naturalise the Palestinians who came there in 1948 are the Jordanians.

We are talking a 75 year old refugee problem that too many of the neighbouring countries appear to think will go away if they just close their eyes and wish really hard. Too many NGO’s also seem to think it’s a great idea to consistently lie to those Palestinian refugees by telling them that they’ll get their land back someday. They won’t. Neither side is getting their land and property back. Not the Palestinians, not the Jews.

‘Disingenuous’ - suggesting that the current situation is entirely the fault of one side while completely ignoring the other side’s massive contribution to the problem.

Actually tiny Palestine was divided so the current Israelis had somewhere to go. They have occupied not the other way around.

I personally believe it is.

Palestine did not really exist as a country at all. It never did. A lot of the people there are migrants. It didn't have a national identity. No mentions in historical context. I believe if "Zionism" had never existed, it would have simply been enveloped into Egypt and Jordan and never been a state at all. That is just my belief. It seems like the concept of Palestine was in itself created as an argument for their not being an Israel.

That was the conclusion I personally drew from studying the history, but of course historical conclusions are hypothesis!

What I found very interesting is that Jordan Annexed the West Bank for almost 20 years and there was so fighting over it. They were happy to be "occupied" in entirety by Jordan. Terrorist attacks and war began again only once Israel took over again.