Israel didn't "invade" the land. Jews moved into the land legally, and then the rulers of the land at the time gave it to the UN to recommend what to do with it, given that there were two peoples there. The UN recommended splitting it into two parts, one for each people (the Arabs and the Jews). The Jews agreed to this plan, the Arabs didn't. The Jews then declared independence, and other Arab countries launched a war on Israel, urging the current Arab inhabitants of that land to flee, and return when the land is taken away from the Jews.
Some of the original Arab inhabitants fled (there are massive debates on whether they fled because of the urging of the Arab leaders, or out of fear). When Israel won the war, these original inhabitants were unable to return.
Other Arab inhabitants of that land stayed, and they and their descendants are now Israeli citizens, that have full rights and can vote just like any other citizen (Arab Israelis make up 20% of Israel).
So: > Palestinians have no rights in their homeland,
Not true. 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinians.
> Israel invaded [their homeland]
No, Israel didn't exist, and the Jews who came to Palestine weren't "invading" anything, they arrived legally for the most part (and many were turned away, even during the Holocaust, and ended up dying).
Your forgot to mention the Zionist terrorism, the Zionist pogroms and massacres, the very biased western diplomats involved in splitting a land that was not theirs, and the fact that neither the Turks nor the Brits had any legitimacy over Palestine.
The Palestinians did nothing wrong, but they ended up the victim of a bunch of fanatical ethnonationalists who wanted to build a Jewish state on their land.
Right, and remember, slave owners didn't kidnap people, slaves were legal property.
Moreover, there were not two people living there, there were the people who had been living there for thousands of years, who had been claimed by Britain (though not colonized). Claiming there were "two people" is revisionist BS.
> The UN recommended splitting it into two parts, one for each people (the Arabs and the Jews). The Jews agreed to this plan, the Arabs didn't.
That is, the government sold half your home to a stranger, they agreed to this, you however unreasonably did not. What an asshole you are.
> The Jews then declared independence, and other Arab countries launched a war on Israel, urging the current Arab inhabitants of that land to flee, and return when the land is taken away from the Jews.
The jews, who just moved into a country, and seized a pile of land and property from the occupants of that country without the occupants consent "declare independence", starting a war. Civilians flee there home so as to not be killed, these are called normally called refugees, but in this case they are Palestinians which Israel has established are not people. When the fighting ends, the refugees returned to their homes to find that the Israeli government had now given their homes to yet more settlers. Opposing that is a criminal offense.
I don't know about you but this sure as shit sounds like their homes were illegally invaded. To back up my assessment: Israel has never stopped doing this, and it has been found to be explicitly illegal every single time it has gone to court.
> Arab Israelis make up 20% of Israel
Right, except 100% of Israel is Palestine, and the overwhelming proportion of the Palestinian population has been forced into ghettos that are not considered part of Israel and have no voting rights in Israel, despite Israel having near total control of all food, water, medical care, ...
You're playing BS semantic games, and by your logic SA could have claimed to not be apartheid by just saying that the black South Africans were part of a "different" country that just happened to significantly overlap .. South Africa.
I want to be absolutely clear, these BS arguments about Israel not be a colonial invader are no different from claiming that there was nothing illegal when the US government sold the land of native Americans to colonists, and allowed them to eradicate those inhabitants.
I get it, you're pro-Israel, and believe the Palestinians don't have any rights to their own homeland, but pretending that Israel is not an invading colony, and pretending Palestinians have equal rights to Israelis (or lets be honest, Israeli jews - the discrimination against muslims and even arabic jews in Israel is well documented - is objectively false. Just say you don't believe Palestinians are people so didn't have any right to their homeland.
I don't see the commenter you're replying to saying that Palestinians don't have any rights to their own homeland, for what it's worth.
Always useful to keep in mind that this is an immensely complicated struggle, not well captured by any slogan or argument that fits in an HN comment, and that it is extraordinarily unlikely that we're going to resolve it on HN at all.
You're both great commenters on this site. If you're at an impasse over this, maybe agreeing to disagree is a strong move here?
If that's true – where did Jews come from, and where are they meant to be?
This kind of comment is not warranted. It is beneath the standards of Hacker News. It's putting words in my mouth which I vehemently disagree with. I will attempt to answer the rest of your comment civilly, but if you think that anyone who disagrees with you is evil, may I suggest your worldview is... incorrect.
> Moreover, there were not two people living there, there were the people who had been living there for thousands of years, who had been claimed by Britain (though not colonized). Claiming there were "two people" is revisionist BS.
Not sure why you think so. There had always been a minority of Jews in Palestine. By 1890, that was a 10% minority. By 1947, that was a 30% minority. What exactly is bullshit about saying this?
> That is, the government [the UN] sold half your home to a stranger, they agreed to this, you however unreasonably did not. What an asshole you are.
Or how about: the UN, the representative of all countries, which was given custody of the land by Britain, who had owned that land, recognized that there was an issue, both because two different peoples had legitimate aspirations for that land, and because many Jews who had managed to survive the Holocaust had nowhere to go. Given that Jews were by this point a 30% minority on that land, and given the many Jewish refugees, the UN decided to suggest a compromise.
And like I said, you can think this was a bad decision by the UN, it's certainly debatable, though I'm not sure what you think should've happened instead (either to the Jewish refugees of the Holocaust, or to the Jews living in Palestine). Was starting a war probably aimed at wiping out Jews really the correct alternative?
Either way, I don't think calling it "an invasion by Israel" makes any sense, since Israel didn't even exist.
Btw, serious question - what would you have suggested if you were the UN? What would you think should've been done in Palestine, and with the Jewish refugees?
> The jews, who just moved into a country, and seized a pile of land and property from the occupants of that country without the occupants consent "declare independence", starting a war.
It wasn't a "country" into which the Jews moved, it was part of the Ottoman empire in the early 20th century, then later British territory. Also, which land did Jews "steal" from the occupants of that country before 1947?
> When the fighting ends, the refugees returned to their homes to find that the Israeli government had now given their homes to yet more settlers. Opposing that is a criminal offense. > Right, except 100% of Israel is Palestine, and the overwhelming proportion of the Palestinian population has been forced into ghettos
After the war, the Palestinian refugees were actually taken in by Jordan and Egypt. They didn't "return to their homes" and "get put in Ghettos". I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to. The Palestinians that stayed in Israel were kept under some kind of military rule, but eventually made equal citizens.
As for 100% of Israel is Palestine... ok. What do you think should happen to the 9 million Israeli citizens on that land currently (or 7 million Jews if you prefer to split it by ethnicity)?
> You're playing BS semantic games,
I'm really not, I honestly think you're just wrong on many actual facts, as I pointed to above. These are not at all semantic distinctions.
> I want to be absolutely clear, these BS arguments about Israel not be a colonial invader are no different from claiming that there was nothing illegal when the US government sold the land of native Americans to colonists, and allowed them to eradicate those inhabitants.
"Israel" being a colonial invader makes little sense, since Israel didn't exist before that. You may mean "Jews" were colonial invaders, which is more understandable, though still not really in line with a lot of facts, like that they moved in mostly legally, and that most Jews in Israel were actually refugees themselves. Not exactly scheming colonial invaders. Most Israeli Jews had and have nowhere else to go.
As for the legal status of what Americans did in the colonies - firstly, Israel never "eradicated" the Palestinians. Secondly, even assuming your history is 100% spot on - what now? Because of the past, should the Americans living in American now be.. what? Removed? And sent where? Similar questions to what you think should happen to Israelis now.
> pretending Palestinians have equal rights to Israelis (or lets be honest, Israeli jews - the discrimination against muslims and even arabic jews in Israel is well documented - is objectively false.
Let's leave aside "arabic Jews", which is not how most of that group chooses to identify for various historical reasons (and which make up the majority of Israelis, btw).
Yes, there is a lot of discrimination and racism against Israeli-Palestinians. Yes, things are not perfect, not by a long shot. But legally, Isareli-Palestinians have the same rights as any other Israeli citizen, including voting rights. (And including there being many Arab members of the Israeli parliament.)
How does this square with the Nation-State Law, which states that the former group has precisely zero rights to "self-determination"? And while you're at it, can you tell as about the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law and how that affects the right to apply for citizenship rights for one's spouse, in practice?
(Correcting the term used for this group, given that the vast majority of them do not self-describe as "Israeli", per numerous polls).
There were the indigenous inhabitants of the region. Then European powers started funding and arming a mass migration into Palestine, and in a totally unsurprising turn of events that increased the proportion of that region that were jewish. This is like saying america was not invaded, people just migrated to it, and suddenly there were more europeans than the indigenous population.
And much like america, the non-invading migrants ended up with all the power and resources.
> "Israel" being a colonial invader makes little sense, since Israel didn't exist before that.
Israel is the name the invaders gave to the country after they seized control of it from the people who lived there prior to the invasion. We could call it a European invasion, because the colonizers were from all over Europe, and were funded by Europe, if that helps?
> Yes, there is a lot of discrimination and racism against Israeli-Palestinians. Yes, things are not perfect, not by a long shot. But legally, Isareli-Palestinians have the same rights as any other Israeli citizen, including voting rights.
I just checked, and indigenous Palestinians can't vote in Israel's elections, so I'm not sure where your getting this claim that they have equal rights? Yes there are _some_ Palestinians that are allowed to vote by magically being classified as Israeli, but the overwhelming majority are not permitted to because Israel decreed that only specific parts of Palestine count as being Israel for the purpose of having rights.
