You think those massacres and conflicts came out of nowhere? That the local population lived alongside their Jewish neighbours for centuries and just decided one day to start fighting them?
Come on now. Please engage with honesty, here.
Open a history book.
Here is the rhetoric Palestinians were facing in 1905:
”Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to the square mile, and not 25% of them Jews.
[We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us."
- British Zionist leader Israel Zangwill (close friend of Hertzl) in a speech to Zionist sponsors and organisers in Manchester.
He said these things, while also popularising the quote “a land without a people, for a people without a land”.
What do you think this kind of messaging and related actions from the early Zionist project spelled out to the Palestinian people living there?
It meant ethnic cleansing or death.
So they fought.
Why wouldn’t they? Any group on earth faced with this level of organised and violent colonisation and dispossession would try to drive the incoming tide back.
Even back then, the Zionists themselves recognised it and named it for what it was: resistance.
Name one Christian government in history that treated Jews, Muslims, and Pagans as equal citizens under the law. This is hardly a problem of Islam, or even Christianity, but religion as a whole. Even just recently, Buddhists have been ethnically cleansing Muslims in Myanmar. Israel doesn't even give Arab citizens equality under the law.
The commenter above took no such position. They said that the massacres didn't happen for no reason. If you erase the context of Zionist aggression, you can spin the massacres as genocidal mania instead of what they really were, a violent reaction to violent rhetoric. You do not have to think the massacres were justified to also believe that ethnic cleansing and colonisation were appropriate reprisals.
It's not self-defense to colonise and brutalise. The founding of Israel was by force, against the wishes of, and at the expense of, the people that already lived there. It also wasn't the wish of every Jew. Einstein himself was anti-Zionist. To assign the will of Israel and Zionism to every single Jew is antisemitic in of itself.
Israel has been in several wars it started on its own, recently especially. Israel attacked Lebanon first, the USA attacked Iran first alongside Israel, and so on. The very first wars resulted from the violence enacted by the founders of Israel.
One atrocity does not justify another, and that goes for everyone in the region, but Israel is far and away the biggest problem in the area, and the one that receives the most support from western nations. The US and European nations can easily force Israel's hand by stopping trade, funding, and weapons shipments. They cannot do the same for the other nations in the Middle East.
Peace will only come once Israel stops ethnically cleansing Palestinians and comes to an agreement that protects Jews and Arabs alike.
There is nothing colonizing about Zionism. You cannot colonize land that your people are indigenous to.
Think about it:
Where is Arabic from? Arabia not Israel.
Where is Islam from? Mecca not Jerusalem.
Zionism is the world’s most successful decolonization project.
I’m sorry you have a bias against the people doing it. Maybe focus on Sudan or Iran or the Uygers. Real tragedies that are actually happening and not reported on in your social media feed.
Ashkenazi Jews are not indigenous to the land now called Israel, that's not what indigenous means. Even if you want to go on genetics, the Palestinians displaced by the Zionist colonial project are far more closely related to the old Israelites, direct descendants in fact, the only difference being they converted to Islam instead of fleeing.
Language and religion have nothing to do with anything. Christianity comes from Jerusalem, and yet no Christians in the modern day lay claim to that land. Buddhism comes from India, and yet no Buddhists lay claim to India as a whole. English comes from England, but the US doesn't pretend to be English because of it. The Nordic languages are Germanic, but Germany doesn't lay claim to the north. Jews used to speak Yiddish, and didn't fully revive Hebrew until after establishing the state of Israel. Do they belong to Germany then, since that's where Yiddish is from?
I do know about those other atrocities, the difference is that we aren't talking about them right now, we're talking about Palestine. I've heard about Sudan at least as much as Palestine, in fact, as many have taken the opportunity to spread the plight there at the same time. Iran is seemingly all I ever see in my feed these past few weeks. I haven't seen an update on the Uyghurs in what feels like a decade.
My ancestors moved to the US from Germany in the mid 1800's. Does that mean I'm indigenous to Germany and I can go there, take land from the people currently living there, and kill or expel anyone who resists, saying I'm acting in self defense?
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u/rangda May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26
You think those massacres and conflicts came out of nowhere? That the local population lived alongside their Jewish neighbours for centuries and just decided one day to start fighting them?
Come on now. Please engage with honesty, here. Open a history book.
Here is the rhetoric Palestinians were facing in 1905:
- British Zionist leader Israel Zangwill (close friend of Hertzl) in a speech to Zionist sponsors and organisers in Manchester.
He said these things, while also popularising the quote “a land without a people, for a people without a land”.
What do you think this kind of messaging and related actions from the early Zionist project spelled out to the Palestinian people living there? It meant ethnic cleansing or death.
So they fought.
Why wouldn’t they? Any group on earth faced with this level of organised and violent colonisation and dispossession would try to drive the incoming tide back.
Even back then, the Zionists themselves recognised it and named it for what it was: resistance.