It the whole basis of this whole mess. Superiority.
Colonialism and Imperialism tinged with a large dose of eschatology dressed up as the modern day manifest destiny.
Remember that "the borders of the Middle East were drawn during World War I by a Briton, Mark Sykes, and a Frenchman, Francois Picot.
The two diplomats' pencils divided the map of one of the most volatile regions in the world into states that cut through ethnic and religious communities."
The initially secret (before being leaked by the Bolsheviks after they seized power in Russia) agreement.
Sony Thang, born in Vietnam so intimately knowledgeable about imperliasim said something that resonates to every colonised person:
"When European settlers displaced Native Americans, they too said it wasn’t ethnic cleansing. They called it "conflicting claims to the land."
When the French ruled Algeria, they too claimed ancient ties and called it a civilizing mission, not colonialism.
You’re not making a new argument. You’re just recycling it with better PR.
Let’s start with 1947.
The UN didn’t propose peace.
It proposed partition, not between two states, but between a native majority and a foreign settler movement that owned 6 percent of the land and represented one-third of the population.
The Palestinians didn’t reject peace.
They rejected a plan they never agreed to, written by people who never lived there, giving away land that was never theirs to offer.
What you call rejection, we call refusal to be erased on paper before being erased in stone.
You say "160,000" Palestinians remained.
You forget to mention the 750,000 who were expelled.
You forget the over 400 villages erased from the map.
You forget the laws that turned the Palestinians who stayed into second-class citizens on their own land.
Ethnic cleansing is not disproven by the survival of a remnant.
That’s what survivors are. The ones who were not killed, not exiled, not erased.
You say Jews were expelled from East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Yes. That is what happens when a population rises against colonial settlement.
But that expulsion ended in 1967, when Israel took all of it, and still has not given it back.
You talk about Jewish indigeneity.
Let’s talk about it.
Being indigenous to a land does not give you the right to colonize it.
You cannot reclaim roots by uprooting others.
You cannot revive a past by extinguishing a present.
Indigeneity is not a license for apartheid.
It is not a moral shield for bombing refugee camps, bulldozing homes, or jailing children.
It is not a justification for a state that grants citizenship by bloodline and shoots journalists in the face.
Palestinians are not being punished for rejecting coexistence.
They are being punished for refusing to disappear.
You want to talk about ancient ties? Fine.
But if we are going back 3,000 years to justify modern supremacy, then every empire will rise again, every border will burn, and every genocide will have its excuse.
This is not a tragic clash between equals.
This is a military superpower, armed to the teeth, funded by billions, and shielded by the most powerful empire on Earth.
It is imposing itself on a stateless, occupied, and besieged people.
You say calling Israel a colonial, ethnic cleansing project is false.
But the mass graves say otherwise.
The checkpoints say otherwise.
The separation wall says otherwise.
The refugee camps say otherwise.
And the silence that follows every airstrike says it loudest of all.
You say denying one side’s history is dishonest.
What do you call erasing 77 years of dispossession, siege, and exile, and blaming the victims for surviving it?
This isn’t a conflict.
It is a conquest.
And the only thing more dishonest than denying it is pretending both sides hold the gun."