> When Israel declared independence, its military had already succeeded in depopulating Palestine’s largest cities of Jaffa and Haifa as well as Tiberias, Safad

> When Israel declared independence, its military had already succeeded in depopulating Palestine’s largest cities of Jaffa and Haifa as well as Tiberias, Safad and Beisan. Dude. I live next to Jaffa and it is 100% an Arab city. Not "depopulated". Neither is Haifa etc. We can go back to 48 in which case we can start talking about the staggering amount of death dished out by both sides. It's tragic but doesn't help anyone. It also predates modern law and democracy in Israel. It predates human rights laws etc. There was a large amount of immigration to Israel in the 40s as Jews fled the Holocaust. Once borders opened up they moved in and also fled Arab countries where they were quickly deemed the enemy. People lost everything there too. I'm not saying the Palestinians aren't a victim here, but don't pretend they weren't an aggressor either. This was a bad situation with victims and aggressors on both sides. > Such things happen only by design. This is nonsense and speculative. It's inconsistent with the facts that some communities remained whole while others were indeed chased away. > People would respect Israel a lot more if it just admitted it's a Jewish ethno-state borne of conquest, instead of peddling excuses and rationalizations how they just want to ensure democracy, and expelling the previous inhabitants of what is now their land is just an unfortunate coincidence that is not their fault. This is ridiculous. People would most certainly not respect Israel more if it made such a claim. Why doesn't the USA make this exact claim for native Americans? Or really, any country that exists in the Americas? Australia? Hell, the UKs crown is German ruling over Danes. If the unfortunate coincidence would have gone the other way it's a good chance that Jews would no longer exist. I'm sorry for the suffering of the Palestinian people. I truly am. But when that happened instead of talking to Israel the surrounding countries ganged up and attacked multiple times. The only reason Israel has these territories to begin with is that 3 armies surrounded Israel and attacked it together.