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The plurality of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi (aka, Jews who never left the Middle East), at 45% of the population [1]. This isn't about Europeans, or even "race":

The plurality of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi (aka, Jews who never left the Middle East), at 45% of the population [1]. This isn't about Europeans, or even "race": Mizrahi Jews and their Palestinian neighbors are racially indistinguishable. Ashkenazi Jews — that is, Jews who lived in Europe during the Diaspora — make up less than a third of Israeli Jews. [2] Although if you're dead-set on racial essentialism and blood-and-soil nationalism, Ashkenazi Jews are firmly within the Middle Eastern/Levantine clade and are more closely related to Palestinians than they are any European group. [3] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews_in_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews_in_Israel 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews_in_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews_in_Israel 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jews

ignoramous 2y ago
> Although if you're dead-set on racial essentialism and blood-and-soil nationalism You're reading things OP didn't even write; and addressing a historical assertion with present-day facts. OP posits that European settlers coming in during the Ottoman era (establishing Hebrew-only areas & businesses, only to later demand a Jewish State, in opposition to the local majority [0]) is what kickstarted the current conflict. It isn't a 1000 year old feud. Mizrahis, save for Yemenis, migrated en masse after the conflict was irreversibly set in motion by Imperial Britain & various Arab states. [0] https://www.pbs.org/video/1913-seeds-conflict-establishing-roots-palestine/ https://www.pbs.org/video/1913-seeds-conflict-establishing-r...
- thomassmith65 2y ago
  That's a high quality comment but nothing at all like the comment it is defending whose main thrust is that the conflict is simple to understand and one side is just wrong.
  - mandmandam 2y ago
    Apartheid, oppression, occupation, genocide, and ethno-nationalist supremacy are "just wrong", and not all that complex once you get past the lie that they don't exist. Also, the comment's "main thrust" was in response to the claim that the area is 'just always like that', for 'thousands of years', which is categorically untrue; a deliberate thought-terminating lie. Israel's terror campaign and colonialist brutality of the last 80 years is something quite new and different, based as it is on brutal British and American colonial strategies.
    - HDThoreaun 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - pastage 2y ago
        What makes me feel uncomfortable is the whole and eye for an eye argumentation in these debates. Your comment on the actions of the US makes me see that clearer. I do not think you can compare war crimes that will end in what-aboutism, and I do believe Israel, the US and Russia has commited horrible war crimes against civilians. I do not get is how any sane human being can justify killing or abusing civilians at such large scales. A war crime is always a crime even though you might think it is justified.
        HDThoreaun 2y ago
        There is no eye for an eye argument. The Gaza war is not about revenge, it’s about security. Israel didn’t poke out the Palestinians “eyes” because the Palestinians poked their eye first. They did it because they wanted the stop the Palestinians from poking their eye out before it happens again. As far as justifying killing and abuse, the world is a complicated place. Personally I think killing is justified in self defense but you may not agree. Israel is certainly a bad actor but Hamas is far worse and unfortunately you do have to choose sides here. What I think is clear is that Israel is not obligated to go easy on Hamas just because Hamas is economically and militarily weak. Being oppressed doesn’t automatically make you right.
- dotancohen 2y ago
  How is this different than the Muslims currently pouring into Europe today? Whatever happened to "refugees welcome"? It should be noted in context that in 1856 the Ottomans, after their war with Prussia, actively invited all peoples - not only Muslims - to come and settle the sparsely populated Holy Land specifically in order to collect more taxes. Jews and Arabs happily took up the offer. The last Jerusalem census to show a Muslim majority in that city was 1876, and the 50 years preceding it were neck and neck for Jews and Arabs majority.
  - MisterTea 2y ago
    > in order to collect more taxes. Non-Muslims were taxed more so of course they were welcomed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_Ottoman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_Ottoman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya
  - 3uler 2y ago
    Muslims have not asked for a majority Muslim state in Europe or started a terror campaign in support of that goal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence
aprilthird2021 2y ago
It's not about race, but it is about the invention of a country that relies on specific demographics to exist (majority Jewish) which necessitate keeping millions of people stateless yet under the full control of an elite ethnicity who actually have the votes and the control. And no matter where Jewish people are from, they are that privileged ethnicity. The Arabs in Israel get token rights (but you and I both know if they were a demographic threat in Israel those rights would be revoked). And the Arabs in Palestine get no rights in Israel but are fully controlled and blockaded by Israel. That's the ultimate source of the conflict. It's not thousands of years old, and it is partly about race (if you consider Jewish a race, as the nation of Israel does).
- southernplaces7 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - redmajor12 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - hardwaregeek 2y ago
    Stay in the land that was allotted in 1967 (or 1948), don’t create settlements, allow the Palestinians territories to self govern and have open borders. Obviously that won’t stop bad faith actors like Hamas but that’s not going to stop with a war either. Bibi majorly screwed up by ignoring Gaza and allocating troops to guard West Bank settlements. Not claiming this will be a panacea, but I don’t see how Israel’s current plan will accomplish anything more than perpetual conflict and an increasingly radicalized population on both sides. Oh and kick out Itamar Ben-Gvir and the rest of the ultra right wing.
    - southernplaces7 2y ago
      These are debatable arguments but at least fair and in good faith. I'm not at all saying that Israel is without fault in the current conflict or the decades worth of conflict going back to the formation of the state in 1948. However, I do argue that it has a right to exist, and by virtue of the settlement and development its millions of residents have invested in across the decades, that right is further fortified into the present day. Anyone simply rejecting this seems to ignore explaining what would be done to the millions of Jews living there. I also argue that the political organizations representing the Palestinians (Hamas definitely included here) and several neighboring governments that have supported these organizations also have their own fault in not only prolonging conflict with unreasonable demands of their own against Israel, but also have fault in mistreating their own people in brutally cynical ways.
panick21_ 2y ago
Yes and the reason many of the Mizrahi are in Israel and not in all the other places is the Zionists.
- taleodor 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Thiez 2y ago
    It seems that they kind of did, performing false flag operations in neighbouring Arab countries to "encourage" Jews to move to Israel: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230619-undeniable-proof-uncovered-that-zionist-agents-targeted-jews-in-iraq/ https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230619-undeniable-proof-....
    - taleodor 2y ago
      This link you are sharing is an example of low quality journalism or propaganda - whatever you want to call it. I'll give you some context - in 1948 Egypt declared war on Israel, which ended with a cease fire in 1949. From this context, it should become obvious that Israeli espionage operations in Egypt in early 1950s are warranted. Even Avi Shlaim referenced in your article admits that it was mainly Arab nationalists who were driving the Jews out. These reactions are very similar to modern day shootings at Jewish schools in Canada or airport pogrom in Dagestan - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67258332 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67258332 Pro-Palestinian crowd is unable to admit that they have imperfections and blames all these events on Israel / Zionists as well (I read a lot of forums from both sides). A common reference is "they made us do it" / "it was a Zionist school / plane". Drawing parallels between today and 1950s, it becomes very clear that it's old propaganda playbook trick. I would go even further and say it's a millenia-old antisemitism, where people would blame everything on Jews / witches / etc. Now, back to the article you shared - "undeniable proof" - is an interview of a 89-year old man, who did not even hold the leadership role in an underground Jewish cell and did not claim first-hand participation in any of the events. More so, his interview is full of contradictory statements, including dates and attributions of who did what - I encourage you to do more research on that. So on one hand, you have this "undeniable proof", and on the other hand you have many well documented actions of Arab nationalists and Iraqi government. And you choose to believe (even contradictory to Avi Shlaim) that it's all Zionists. Next, thinking logically, there was no need for Mossad to do false flag operations, because there were enough actions by Arab nationalists and before 1950 there was a policy in place by Iraqi government banning Jews from emigrating to Israel - like if Jews didn't want to emigrate, why would they ban this? Once they lifted the policy, everybody left. This is very similar to USSR where millions of Jews left in early 1990s after the fall of the USSR. Probably propagandists will soon be explaining that this was Mossad false flag operations or some other Zionist tricks - I wouldn't be surprised.
biminb 2y ago
> Ashkenazi Jews — that is, Jews who lived in Europe during the Diaspora — make up less than a third of Israeli Jews. This isn't true, and the link you posted in support of it contradicts it in the third sentence. 'less than a third of Israeli Jews' excludes Jews who migrated to Israel from the Soviet Union, or from the post-Soviet Union countries. In fact around 20% of the population of Jewish people in Israel arrived during the wave of migration which happened in the 90s and early 2000s.
- exe34 2y ago
  > In fact around 20% of the population of Jewish people in Israel arrived during the wave of migration which happened in the 90s and early 2000s. any idea where the millions of Jews from around the middle east disappeared to around the same time?
dralley 2y ago
Also, if you were a European Jew in the late 1940s after the fall of the Nazis, you were still faced with the prospect of living under the local governance of Nazi collaborators, continued pogroms [0] and antisemitism, and potentially Joseph Stalin's USSR. It's not like everything immediately went back to normal, either in real terms or psychological ones. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom It's unsurprising that many wouldn't want to reintegrate with that society after what they experienced, even if they managed to avoid the camps (and especially if they didn't).

ignoramous 2y ago

> Although if you're dead-set on racial essentialism and blood-and-soil nationalism You're reading things OP didn't even write; and addressing a historical assertion with present-day facts. OP posits that European settlers coming in during the Ottoman era (establishing Hebrew-only areas & businesses, only to later demand a Jewish State, in opposition to the local majority [0]) is what kickstarted the current conflict. It isn't a 1000 year old feud. Mizrahis, save for Yemenis, migrated en masse after the conflict was irreversibly set in motion by Imperial Britain & various Arab states. [0] https://www.pbs.org/video/1913-seeds-conflict-establishing-roots-palestine/ https://www.pbs.org/video/1913-seeds-conflict-establishing-r...

thomassmith65 2y ago
That's a high quality comment but nothing at all like the comment it is defending whose main thrust is that the conflict is simple to understand and one side is just wrong.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  Apartheid, oppression, occupation, genocide, and ethno-nationalist supremacy are "just wrong", and not all that complex once you get past the lie that they don't exist. Also, the comment's "main thrust" was in response to the claim that the area is 'just always like that', for 'thousands of years', which is categorically untrue; a deliberate thought-terminating lie. Israel's terror campaign and colonialist brutality of the last 80 years is something quite new and different, based as it is on brutal British and American colonial strategies.
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - pastage 2y ago
      What makes me feel uncomfortable is the whole and eye for an eye argumentation in these debates. Your comment on the actions of the US makes me see that clearer. I do not think you can compare war crimes that will end in what-aboutism, and I do believe Israel, the US and Russia has commited horrible war crimes against civilians. I do not get is how any sane human being can justify killing or abusing civilians at such large scales. A war crime is always a crime even though you might think it is justified.
      - HDThoreaun 2y ago
        There is no eye for an eye argument. The Gaza war is not about revenge, it’s about security. Israel didn’t poke out the Palestinians “eyes” because the Palestinians poked their eye first. They did it because they wanted the stop the Palestinians from poking their eye out before it happens again. As far as justifying killing and abuse, the world is a complicated place. Personally I think killing is justified in self defense but you may not agree. Israel is certainly a bad actor but Hamas is far worse and unfortunately you do have to choose sides here. What I think is clear is that Israel is not obligated to go easy on Hamas just because Hamas is economically and militarily weak. Being oppressed doesn’t automatically make you right.
dotancohen 2y ago
How is this different than the Muslims currently pouring into Europe today? Whatever happened to "refugees welcome"? It should be noted in context that in 1856 the Ottomans, after their war with Prussia, actively invited all peoples - not only Muslims - to come and settle the sparsely populated Holy Land specifically in order to collect more taxes. Jews and Arabs happily took up the offer. The last Jerusalem census to show a Muslim majority in that city was 1876, and the 50 years preceding it were neck and neck for Jews and Arabs majority.
- MisterTea 2y ago
  > in order to collect more taxes. Non-Muslims were taxed more so of course they were welcomed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_Ottoman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_Ottoman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya
- 3uler 2y ago
  Muslims have not asked for a majority Muslim state in Europe or started a terror campaign in support of that goal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence

aprilthird2021 2y ago

It's not about race, but it is about the invention of a country that relies on specific demographics to exist (majority Jewish) which necessitate keeping millions of people stateless yet under the full control of an elite ethnicity who actually have the votes and the control. And no matter where Jewish people are from, they are that privileged ethnicity. The Arabs in Israel get token rights (but you and I both know if they were a demographic threat in Israel those rights would be revoked). And the Arabs in Palestine get no rights in Israel but are fully controlled and blockaded by Israel. That's the ultimate source of the conflict. It's not thousands of years old, and it is partly about race (if you consider Jewish a race, as the nation of Israel does).

southernplaces7 2y ago
[flagged]
- redmajor12 2y ago
  [flagged]
- hardwaregeek 2y ago
  Stay in the land that was allotted in 1967 (or 1948), don’t create settlements, allow the Palestinians territories to self govern and have open borders. Obviously that won’t stop bad faith actors like Hamas but that’s not going to stop with a war either. Bibi majorly screwed up by ignoring Gaza and allocating troops to guard West Bank settlements. Not claiming this will be a panacea, but I don’t see how Israel’s current plan will accomplish anything more than perpetual conflict and an increasingly radicalized population on both sides. Oh and kick out Itamar Ben-Gvir and the rest of the ultra right wing.
  - southernplaces7 2y ago
    These are debatable arguments but at least fair and in good faith. I'm not at all saying that Israel is without fault in the current conflict or the decades worth of conflict going back to the formation of the state in 1948. However, I do argue that it has a right to exist, and by virtue of the settlement and development its millions of residents have invested in across the decades, that right is further fortified into the present day. Anyone simply rejecting this seems to ignore explaining what would be done to the millions of Jews living there. I also argue that the political organizations representing the Palestinians (Hamas definitely included here) and several neighboring governments that have supported these organizations also have their own fault in not only prolonging conflict with unreasonable demands of their own against Israel, but also have fault in mistreating their own people in brutally cynical ways.

panick21_ 2y ago

Yes and the reason many of the Mizrahi are in Israel and not in all the other places is the Zionists.

taleodor 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Thiez 2y ago
  It seems that they kind of did, performing false flag operations in neighbouring Arab countries to "encourage" Jews to move to Israel: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230619-undeniable-proof-uncovered-that-zionist-agents-targeted-jews-in-iraq/ https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230619-undeniable-proof-....
  - taleodor 2y ago
    This link you are sharing is an example of low quality journalism or propaganda - whatever you want to call it. I'll give you some context - in 1948 Egypt declared war on Israel, which ended with a cease fire in 1949. From this context, it should become obvious that Israeli espionage operations in Egypt in early 1950s are warranted. Even Avi Shlaim referenced in your article admits that it was mainly Arab nationalists who were driving the Jews out. These reactions are very similar to modern day shootings at Jewish schools in Canada or airport pogrom in Dagestan - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67258332 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67258332 Pro-Palestinian crowd is unable to admit that they have imperfections and blames all these events on Israel / Zionists as well (I read a lot of forums from both sides). A common reference is "they made us do it" / "it was a Zionist school / plane". Drawing parallels between today and 1950s, it becomes very clear that it's old propaganda playbook trick. I would go even further and say it's a millenia-old antisemitism, where people would blame everything on Jews / witches / etc. Now, back to the article you shared - "undeniable proof" - is an interview of a 89-year old man, who did not even hold the leadership role in an underground Jewish cell and did not claim first-hand participation in any of the events. More so, his interview is full of contradictory statements, including dates and attributions of who did what - I encourage you to do more research on that. So on one hand, you have this "undeniable proof", and on the other hand you have many well documented actions of Arab nationalists and Iraqi government. And you choose to believe (even contradictory to Avi Shlaim) that it's all Zionists. Next, thinking logically, there was no need for Mossad to do false flag operations, because there were enough actions by Arab nationalists and before 1950 there was a policy in place by Iraqi government banning Jews from emigrating to Israel - like if Jews didn't want to emigrate, why would they ban this? Once they lifted the policy, everybody left. This is very similar to USSR where millions of Jews left in early 1990s after the fall of the USSR. Probably propagandists will soon be explaining that this was Mossad false flag operations or some other Zionist tricks - I wouldn't be surprised.

biminb 2y ago

> Ashkenazi Jews — that is, Jews who lived in Europe during the Diaspora — make up less than a third of Israeli Jews. This isn't true, and the link you posted in support of it contradicts it in the third sentence. 'less than a third of Israeli Jews' excludes Jews who migrated to Israel from the Soviet Union, or from the post-Soviet Union countries. In fact around 20% of the population of Jewish people in Israel arrived during the wave of migration which happened in the 90s and early 2000s.

exe34 2y ago
> In fact around 20% of the population of Jewish people in Israel arrived during the wave of migration which happened in the 90s and early 2000s. any idea where the millions of Jews from around the middle east disappeared to around the same time?

dralley 2y ago

Also, if you were a European Jew in the late 1940s after the fall of the Nazis, you were still faced with the prospect of living under the local governance of Nazi collaborators, continued pogroms [0] and antisemitism, and potentially Joseph Stalin's USSR. It's not like everything immediately went back to normal, either in real terms or psychological ones. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom It's unsurprising that many wouldn't want to reintegrate with that society after what they experienced, even if they managed to avoid the camps (and especially if they didn't).