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> Arab population growth in Palestine was almost entirely due to simple births minus deaths Do you have a source for this? I don't think that matches the Briti

> Arab population growth in Palestine was almost entirely due to simple births minus deaths Do you have a source for this? I don't think that matches the British census data, unless we postulate that the birth rate somehow skyrocketed. > There were Jews who were native to Palestine. They made up a few percent of the population of the region What do you mean by "native"? What's special about the particular time period you're referencing? The Palestinian identity didn't exist then. > the Palestinians are the people who lived in Palestine before the Zionists came in There were always Jews in Palestine. Even if we're zooming in on a period where their numbers were small (and I'm not sure why), we shouldn't be saying things that erase these Jews from history. > as a consequence of it I think most of us would agree that there's no justification for ethnic cleansing. (I don't condone the cases of that done by Jewish militias in some towns either.) > and think it's the same as everyday immigration Not what I said at all. The point is that, in both this analogy and the actual topic of immigration to the Levant, it shouldn't matter how many centuries a family has lived in a region.

DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
> Do you have a source for this? I don't think that matches the British census data, unless we postulate that the birth rate somehow skyrocketed. It's in the official report of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry, which did actually use demographic data gathered by the British. It's not that births skyrocketed. It's mainly that infant mortality went down. This exact same phenomenon has played out throughout most of the world at some point in the last 200 years, and it typically leads to a population boom (until families adjust and start having fewer children). > What do you mean by "native"? What's special about the particular time period you're referencing? The Palestinian identity didn't exist then. We don't have to get into a big theoretical discussion of what "native" means. When the Zionist movement began, there were already people living in Palestine. Most of them had deep roots there, going back many hundreds of years (or more). The Zionist movement was a European movement that aimed to colonize Palestine - to settle it and establish a state for European Jews. This is basically very similar to what happened in North America with European colonists and Native Americans. There are particularities to each case, but the basic dynamic between the existing ("native") population and the group that's coming in to displace them is the same. The fact that Palestinians didn't have a firm national identity in 1900 isn't a justification for taking their land and expelling them. > There were always Jews in Palestine. This is a red herring. The fact that there was a tiny group of Jews living in Palestine does not have much of anything to do with our discussion. We're talking about Zionism, a movement among European Jews to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. > I don't condone the cases of that done by Jewish militias in some towns either. Without the ethnic cleansing carried out by Zionist militias (and the IDF, after it was officially founded), there would be no Israel. The entire basis for Israel's existence is the creation of a large Jewish majority in a substantial portion of Palestine. That happened through the mass ethnic cleansing campaign in 1947-48. > Not what I said at all. The point is that, in both this analogy and the actual topic of immigration to the Levant ... We're not discussing "immigration to the Levant." We're talking about an organized effort to take over a foreign territory, against the will of the people who live there.
- dlubarov 1y ago
  > This is basically very similar to what happened in North America with European colonists and Native Americans This is a complicated analogy. There was no sovereign, so noone to decide on an immigration policy and no arbiter of legality. Some settler groups purchased land and had good relations with natives. We don't tend to deem those problematic merely because people relocated and didn't look like the other people living there at the time. Many settlements were of course problematic for other reasons. A closer analogy would be black families legally relocating to safer white neighborhoods, "against the will of the people who live there". If a neighborhood flipped from majority-white to majority-black, and black politicians gained power, would you say the white community gave up something that was rightfully theirs? > Without the ethnic cleansing carried out by Zionist militias (and the IDF, after it was officially founded), there would be no Israel. The entire basis for Israel's existence is the creation of a large Jewish majority in a substantial portion of Palestine. That happened through the mass ethnic cleansing campaign in 1947-48. This isn't accurate at all. There was already a Jewish majority in the proposed Jewish state by the time of the partition plan. Hundreds of thousands of additional Holocaust survivors were expected. Ethnic cleansing of Jews from surrounding Arab states also greatly contributed to what became a much stronger Jewish majority. > against the will of the people who live there I don't believe a demographic majority has some inherent right to deny access to minorities who wish to legally immigrate.
  - DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
    The fact that you think Zionist colonization of Palestine was analogous to black families moving into white neighborhoods is just crazy. I don't think anyone who has ever read about this history could sincerely think that those two scenarios are even remotely comparable. You're making a big deal of the existence of a "sovereign" - in this case, an imperial overlord that ruled without any democratic accountability, and which implemented policies that were almost universally hated by the local population they ruled over. But because the British Empire supported Jewish settlement of Palestine, you view that as just fine - regardless of what the people who actually lived there thought. > I don't believe a demographic majority has some inherent right to deny access to minorities who wish to legally immigrate. That "legality" was established by an undemocratic regime that ruled directly against the will of the overwhelming majority of the population. You're setting up a morality here in which the European imperial powers had a moral right to dictate to their captive colonial populations who would be allowed to live where, and to force them to accept the political / demographic takeover of their lands by a foreign people. And what's more, you think it would be immoral for the colonial population to resist what would effectively be an invasion by a foreign people. Why? Because the imperial overlord said the invasion was legal. But if you're being morally consistent, you'll have to now say that the Israelis have no moral right to prevent the millions of Palestinians who live scattered across the world from immigrating to Israel. I'm sure you'll quibble that Israeli law doesn't allow that immigration, but that's not a moral objection. If the Palestinians had been allowed to run their own affairs in the 1920s-40s, instead of being ruled over by a foreign power, they would have passed laws preventing Jewish immigration, just as Israel now prevents Palestinian immigration. If you're morally consistent, you'll accept that Israel should allow itself to become a majority-Palestinian country.

DiogenesKynikos 1y ago

> Do you have a source for this? I don't think that matches the British census data, unless we postulate that the birth rate somehow skyrocketed. It's in the official report of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry, which did actually use demographic data gathered by the British. It's not that births skyrocketed. It's mainly that infant mortality went down. This exact same phenomenon has played out throughout most of the world at some point in the last 200 years, and it typically leads to a population boom (until families adjust and start having fewer children). > What do you mean by "native"? What's special about the particular time period you're referencing? The Palestinian identity didn't exist then. We don't have to get into a big theoretical discussion of what "native" means. When the Zionist movement began, there were already people living in Palestine. Most of them had deep roots there, going back many hundreds of years (or more). The Zionist movement was a European movement that aimed to colonize Palestine - to settle it and establish a state for European Jews. This is basically very similar to what happened in North America with European colonists and Native Americans. There are particularities to each case, but the basic dynamic between the existing ("native") population and the group that's coming in to displace them is the same. The fact that Palestinians didn't have a firm national identity in 1900 isn't a justification for taking their land and expelling them. > There were always Jews in Palestine. This is a red herring. The fact that there was a tiny group of Jews living in Palestine does not have much of anything to do with our discussion. We're talking about Zionism, a movement among European Jews to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. > I don't condone the cases of that done by Jewish militias in some towns either. Without the ethnic cleansing carried out by Zionist militias (and the IDF, after it was officially founded), there would be no Israel. The entire basis for Israel's existence is the creation of a large Jewish majority in a substantial portion of Palestine. That happened through the mass ethnic cleansing campaign in 1947-48. > Not what I said at all. The point is that, in both this analogy and the actual topic of immigration to the Levant ... We're not discussing "immigration to the Levant." We're talking about an organized effort to take over a foreign territory, against the will of the people who live there.

dlubarov 1y ago
> This is basically very similar to what happened in North America with European colonists and Native Americans This is a complicated analogy. There was no sovereign, so noone to decide on an immigration policy and no arbiter of legality. Some settler groups purchased land and had good relations with natives. We don't tend to deem those problematic merely because people relocated and didn't look like the other people living there at the time. Many settlements were of course problematic for other reasons. A closer analogy would be black families legally relocating to safer white neighborhoods, "against the will of the people who live there". If a neighborhood flipped from majority-white to majority-black, and black politicians gained power, would you say the white community gave up something that was rightfully theirs? > Without the ethnic cleansing carried out by Zionist militias (and the IDF, after it was officially founded), there would be no Israel. The entire basis for Israel's existence is the creation of a large Jewish majority in a substantial portion of Palestine. That happened through the mass ethnic cleansing campaign in 1947-48. This isn't accurate at all. There was already a Jewish majority in the proposed Jewish state by the time of the partition plan. Hundreds of thousands of additional Holocaust survivors were expected. Ethnic cleansing of Jews from surrounding Arab states also greatly contributed to what became a much stronger Jewish majority. > against the will of the people who live there I don't believe a demographic majority has some inherent right to deny access to minorities who wish to legally immigrate.
- DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
  The fact that you think Zionist colonization of Palestine was analogous to black families moving into white neighborhoods is just crazy. I don't think anyone who has ever read about this history could sincerely think that those two scenarios are even remotely comparable. You're making a big deal of the existence of a "sovereign" - in this case, an imperial overlord that ruled without any democratic accountability, and which implemented policies that were almost universally hated by the local population they ruled over. But because the British Empire supported Jewish settlement of Palestine, you view that as just fine - regardless of what the people who actually lived there thought. > I don't believe a demographic majority has some inherent right to deny access to minorities who wish to legally immigrate. That "legality" was established by an undemocratic regime that ruled directly against the will of the overwhelming majority of the population. You're setting up a morality here in which the European imperial powers had a moral right to dictate to their captive colonial populations who would be allowed to live where, and to force them to accept the political / demographic takeover of their lands by a foreign people. And what's more, you think it would be immoral for the colonial population to resist what would effectively be an invasion by a foreign people. Why? Because the imperial overlord said the invasion was legal. But if you're being morally consistent, you'll have to now say that the Israelis have no moral right to prevent the millions of Palestinians who live scattered across the world from immigrating to Israel. I'm sure you'll quibble that Israeli law doesn't allow that immigration, but that's not a moral objection. If the Palestinians had been allowed to run their own affairs in the 1920s-40s, instead of being ruled over by a foreign power, they would have passed laws preventing Jewish immigration, just as Israel now prevents Palestinian immigration. If you're morally consistent, you'll accept that Israel should allow itself to become a majority-Palestinian country.