Cowardly Idf Soldiers, amazing clip

[AlexB]

@janab-e-ali

Surely you aren’t trying to equate a people who’s last direct connection to the land was over 1000 years ago to those who were forced out just 1-2 generations ago and have since been living in refugee camps? Platitudes observed on Passover aside, the Jewish people settled and fully acculturated themselves across Europe and the Middle East over the course of that millennium, and at best retained a tenuous, largely symbolic relationship with the land of Palestine.

This is exactly where you are wrong. The Jews did not “fully acculturated”. They have always preserved a separate identity as a separate people. It’s especially true for the Ashkenazim who lived for centuries in closed communities with very limited contact with the local gentile population.

Jewish ghettos in Europe

Jewish emancipation

The history of the Jews in Europe is 1000 years of refugee camps. It’s been only about 100-150 years since the European Jews broke out of ghettos and started integrating with the general population. And as we all know it did not go too well.

@janab-e-ali

Moreover, how do their rights to the land somehow supersede those of the Palestinians? After all, the Palestinians are essentially descendants of local Jews and Christians who became Arabized and (mostly) converted to Islam…does the act of conversion somehow negate their right to a homeland?

This what makes the difference between assimilation and loss of national identity vs. preserving it.
Regarding the origins of the Palestinian Arabs, it is really hard to determine at this point. The Arabs is a very mixed bunch, genetically speaking. They freely moved and intermixed with other Arabs/Muslims throughout the Middle East. So the genetic background of the Arabs who happened to populate Palestine when they started drawing borders through the area (mid. 20th century) is highly ambiguous. Not that it matters, anyway.

@janab-e-ali

Fine. My ancestors left Iran and settled in Kashmir in the 17th century. Like many other similar families, we retain a Persian surname, and continue to observe Persian cultural customs. Our linguistic heritage is also heavily influenced by the Persian language, in fact, up until my grandparents’ generation, people in my family still learned Farsi in addition to the local language. Does that give me, and other South Asians of Persian descent, the right to carve out a “homeland” in modern-day Iran?

What about the Moors? Andalucian Arabs lived in Spain for nearly 800 years before they were massacred and expelled during the Reconquista. Many of them fled to modern day Morocco, where to this day, their descendants still pass down the keys to their ancestral homes in Spain as heirlooms, once saved in hope of returning. They also speak a dialect heavily influenced by Andalucian Arabic. Surely they have a right to return to Granada and claim a Moorish homeland?

I’m not sure if you know it, but the Reconquista resulted not only in the expulsion of the Moors, but also of the Jews. The Jewish presence in Spain was even longer than Moorish. Yet, the Jews do not claim a homeland in Spain, or any other place where the Jews used to live. And they used to live in maaaaany places, but these places were not the Homeland. They were places of exile where the Jews managed to settle between one expulsion to another. There is only one place on earth, a very small one, which is the true homeland of the Jewish people - the Land of Israel.

The history is full of instances when people migrated, borders shifted, nations were created and destroyed. Yet, the Jewish situation is rather unique. The Jews lost their state and their homeland in its entirety. Not some part of land were they used live, while still having vast territories to call their own. They never had their own state again anywhere on the planet, no country were they would constitute a majority, no other capital since Jerusalem. And yet, they have preserved their national identity and their connection to the homeland as a part of their identity for all that time in exile.

It’s also worth mentioning that re-establishing the Jewish state did not require carving a part from any sovereign state. The Land of Israel was not a part of any sovereign Arab or Palestinian state then.

@janab-e-ali

How, pray tell, did they intend to establish a “Jewish state” in a land that where Muslims and Christians comprised over 2/3 of the population then? The war simply provided an excuse for the forced expulsion of non-combatant civilians as part of the ethnic cleansing necessary to make way for the Israeli state.

First the area was not heavily populated then and the number of the Jews in Diaspora exceeded by far the Arab population of Palestine. Back then, the Jews presented a demographic threat to the Arabs (not the other way around as it is now). That is why the Arabs vehemently, and frequently violently, resisted Jewish migration into Palestine, which led to severe restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine imposed by the Brits. The restrictions were in force during 1934-1948 - that it throughout the WWII and the Holocaust.
In addition, the Jews were ready to pay generously to the Arabs who were ready to sell their property and move to an Arab state. This is exactly were the Jewish National Fund, which you’ve mentioned, came into play. It’s purpose was to raise money and buy land and property in Palestine and to pay compensations to the Arabs who were willing to relocate.