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> ... the Jewish state... its people experienced... This is your error. States and peoples are not unitary entities with a single coherent outlook and will. Th

> ... the Jewish state... its people experienced... This is your error. States and peoples are not unitary entities with a single coherent outlook and will. The vast majority of the Israeli population is far too young to have directly experienced the Holocaust, which ended 80 years ago. There are plenty of people in Israel who do not want to commit atrocities against Palestinians. There are also people who feel that they have a (literally) god-given right to occupy the territories where Palestinians currently live. If you think of Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet as being basically the same people who survived Nazi concentration camps in World War 2, then nothing Israel is doing in 2024 will make much sense. To my mind, Israel's actions toward Palestinians (both in Gaza and the West Bank) are powerful evidence that nationalism inherently leads to atrocity no matter who's involved. If the cultural memory of being targeted by the Holocaust won't stop an ethno-state from setting up an apartheid regime, what will?

alwayslikethis 3y ago
It's not self-evident that "the cultural memory of being targeted by the Holocaust [should] stop an ethno-state from setting up an apartheid regime". In Liberia, where the freed American slaves were sent to, they essentially enslaved the native population.
tptacek 3y ago
It's under-remarked on, but for a majority of Israeli Jewish people, the nakba era might have more immediate salience than the Holocaust. That's because they're not, as the popular imagination has it, all colonists from Europe; they're the Jewish people of the Middle East and North Africa, all of whom were forcefully expelled from their own homes after 1948. There's no question that the Holocaust has enormous salience to Israeli Jewish people. But if you trace your roots to rural Arab Jewish families from Yemen or Iraq, your more immediate concern would be your own family's immediate viability in a world without Israel. A new rise of European fascism wouldn't be your problem; the fact that you'd have literally no place to go would be. You're sure as shit not moving back to Yemen.
- hypeit 3y ago
  Zionists worked to recruit Jewish people from Arab nations to populate Israel. It wasn't until Zionist intervention that hostilities ramped up. Zionists even false flag attacked Iraqi Jews to help spur immigration to Israel: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraq-jews-attacks-zionist-role-confirmed-operative-police-report https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraq-jews-attacks-zionist...
  - tptacek 3y ago
    This is both false and irrelevant. Anti-Jewish pograms in MENA following the Arab-Israeli war are well documented. Israel had a variety of motivations for ensuring they could comfortably resettle in Israeli territory, but that doesn't change the crisis Arab Jewish people faced in their home countries: they were forcibly expelled. Further, it doesn't matter. Most stats I've seen suggest that the Mizrahim are at least a plurality of Israelis, and none of those people can return to their "colonialist home countries". By way of example, long before the current Gaza war, the literal first "official" action Ansar Allah took when it established control of territory in Yemen was to expel the very few remaining Jewish families.
    - hypeit 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - tptacek 3y ago
        People can say it matters until they're blue in the face, but the legitimacy of Israeli popular sovereignty within its 1967 borders is so difficult to argue with that we might as well accept it as complete. We're talking about millions of people, well armed, with a series of powerful historical arguments, and, of course, a nuclear arsenal. Their self-conception is immensely material in ways I don't feel like online Palestinian activists understand. One reasonable way to think about Israel: their moral claim to Tel Aviv is much stronger than our claim to Dallas. And yet, for all the "turtle island" talk, no serious person entertains the idea of rolling back American sovereignty. None of this legitimizes the ongoing military strategy in Gaza, or, for that matter, the West Bank crisis or the management of the 2-state process, something that the Israeli right has successfully and for decades worked to derail. I only bring this up because I feel like there's a tendency in message board discussions to center Israel's legitimacy on the Holocaust, as if that's the sum total of what binds Israeli Jewish people to the land. No, it's much more complicated and deep than that.
genman 3y ago
[flagged]
- Symbiote 3y ago
  If we're going back, you should also remember the attacks Israel has made against Palestine since 1948.
  - genman 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - hbt 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - dang 3y ago
        You've been posting flamewar comments to this thread, which is against HN's rules and particularly against the intended spirit that I tried to express at the top of the thread. Please stop doing this. The thread is hellish enough as it is, and posts like these put it on the fast track to far worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - dang 3y ago
      You've been posting flamewar comments to this thread, which is against HN's rules and particularly against the intended spirit that I tried to express at the top of the thread. Please stop doing this. The thread is hellish enough as it is, and posts like these put it on the fast track to far worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - genman 3y ago
        Then kindly please eliminate racist and antisemitic comments so people don't have to respond to them. Especially the ones that spread false information and hatred like the comment I was responding to.

alwayslikethis 3y ago

It's not self-evident that "the cultural memory of being targeted by the Holocaust [should] stop an ethno-state from setting up an apartheid regime". In Liberia, where the freed American slaves were sent to, they essentially enslaved the native population.

tptacek 3y ago

It's under-remarked on, but for a majority of Israeli Jewish people, the nakba era might have more immediate salience than the Holocaust. That's because they're not, as the popular imagination has it, all colonists from Europe; they're the Jewish people of the Middle East and North Africa, all of whom were forcefully expelled from their own homes after 1948. There's no question that the Holocaust has enormous salience to Israeli Jewish people. But if you trace your roots to rural Arab Jewish families from Yemen or Iraq, your more immediate concern would be your own family's immediate viability in a world without Israel. A new rise of European fascism wouldn't be your problem; the fact that you'd have literally no place to go would be. You're sure as shit not moving back to Yemen.

hypeit 3y ago
Zionists worked to recruit Jewish people from Arab nations to populate Israel. It wasn't until Zionist intervention that hostilities ramped up. Zionists even false flag attacked Iraqi Jews to help spur immigration to Israel: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraq-jews-attacks-zionist-role-confirmed-operative-police-report https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraq-jews-attacks-zionist...
- tptacek 3y ago
  This is both false and irrelevant. Anti-Jewish pograms in MENA following the Arab-Israeli war are well documented. Israel had a variety of motivations for ensuring they could comfortably resettle in Israeli territory, but that doesn't change the crisis Arab Jewish people faced in their home countries: they were forcibly expelled. Further, it doesn't matter. Most stats I've seen suggest that the Mizrahim are at least a plurality of Israelis, and none of those people can return to their "colonialist home countries". By way of example, long before the current Gaza war, the literal first "official" action Ansar Allah took when it established control of territory in Yemen was to expel the very few remaining Jewish families.
  - hypeit 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - tptacek 3y ago
      People can say it matters until they're blue in the face, but the legitimacy of Israeli popular sovereignty within its 1967 borders is so difficult to argue with that we might as well accept it as complete. We're talking about millions of people, well armed, with a series of powerful historical arguments, and, of course, a nuclear arsenal. Their self-conception is immensely material in ways I don't feel like online Palestinian activists understand. One reasonable way to think about Israel: their moral claim to Tel Aviv is much stronger than our claim to Dallas. And yet, for all the "turtle island" talk, no serious person entertains the idea of rolling back American sovereignty. None of this legitimizes the ongoing military strategy in Gaza, or, for that matter, the West Bank crisis or the management of the 2-state process, something that the Israeli right has successfully and for decades worked to derail. I only bring this up because I feel like there's a tendency in message board discussions to center Israel's legitimacy on the Holocaust, as if that's the sum total of what binds Israeli Jewish people to the land. No, it's much more complicated and deep than that.

genman 3y ago

[flagged]

Symbiote 3y ago
If we're going back, you should also remember the attacks Israel has made against Palestine since 1948.
- genman 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - hbt 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 3y ago
      You've been posting flamewar comments to this thread, which is against HN's rules and particularly against the intended spirit that I tried to express at the top of the thread. Please stop doing this. The thread is hellish enough as it is, and posts like these put it on the fast track to far worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dang 3y ago
    You've been posting flamewar comments to this thread, which is against HN's rules and particularly against the intended spirit that I tried to express at the top of the thread. Please stop doing this. The thread is hellish enough as it is, and posts like these put it on the fast track to far worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - genman 3y ago
      Then kindly please eliminate racist and antisemitic comments so people don't have to respond to them. Especially the ones that spread false information and hatred like the comment I was responding to.