I don't know about the "Israeli Zionist European settler Jews", but a plurality of all Israeli Jewish people are indigenous to MENA, so summing the population up that way is a little bit racist. I may be misreading you, though.
I believe the poster above was referring to the biggest representatives of the extremist minority of Israel who are cheering this conflict on in those terms. Not all of Israel is pro-genocide, but those that are are more likely than not to be in that group.
Ironically: the extremist minority in Israel is probably more likely to be of MENA origin, not less. Ben Gvir is from Iraq, for instance. The Mizrahim are generally more conservative, and the Ashkenazim are generally more liberal.
You keep referring to "indigenous" Palestinians and implying that Israelis are themselves interlopers. That simply isn't true. The fact that Netanyahu is Ashkenazi doesn't erase the ethnic identity of the plurality of Israeli Jewish people who are from the region, and for whom Israel is --- like the Palestinians --- their only real home.
A lot of ugly stuff is certainly said by right-wing Israelis (who are, generally speaking, more likely to be indigenous than the left-leaning Ashkenazim). But there's also a great deal of erasure of hostile Palestinian advocacy in your summary as well.
These discussions would be simpler if we could keep focus on the actual misdeeds of the Netanyahu administration, and stop trying to generalize problems out to Israel as a whole. It's not that it's impossible to make such an argument, but as you can see from your comment, those arguments are treacherously difficult to construct reliably without leaving gross, obvious, and sometimes even overtly racist generalizations in them. If you want to condemn the entirety of Israeli society, you aren't putting enough effort into your comments to do so here.
At the end of the day, I don't think it's worth it to try to litigate that kind of question. We're not going to resolve Israel vs. Palestine in an HN thread. But if you must try, the guidelines ask you to try harder than that.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> the plurality of Israeli Jewish people who are from the region, and for whom Israel is --- like the Palestinians --- their only real home.
All but a tiny population of pre-existing Jews in historic Palestine are settler colonialists living in territory violently ethnically cleansed of the indigenous Palestinian population to make way for Jewish settlers.
If Israel is ever forced to abide by international humanitarian law, or through boycott divestment and sanctions, Israel is forced to become an actual democracy where Palestinians are treated as human, first class citizens-- either will lead to Palestinians being able to exercise their UN mandated right of return. With the changing demographics many Ashkenazi will likely leave voluntarily back to Europe/US-- many not only have another place they call home, they retain dual citizenship.
There will likely be a turbulent period with terrorist attacks by Jewish extremists. Palestinians who lost their families to Jewish violence may also engage in revenge attacks. There may also be terrorist attacks by (American/European) Christian Zionists in a last ditch attempt to start the war in the region, that they dream of. But, under Muslim Ottoman rule, people of all religions in Palestine, including Jews, lived mostly peacefully together, so it is possible that they can again. We also have the S. African example-- many of the white European settler colonialist Afrikaners remained citizens of a free S. Africa, but they no longer rule / oppress the indigenous population.
> stop trying to generalize problems out to Israel as a whole.
95% of Israeli Jews support the current genocidal massacre of Gaza. This _is_ Israeli Jews as. a. whole. Another poll showed 80% of Israeli Jews didn't think the genocidal bombing was enough, they wanted greater destruction i.e., greater death-toll.
You seem to think history of the atrocities by the settler colonialist Jews of Israel began with Netanyahu. The Jewish Zionist atrocities began prior to the founding of Israel. There has never been a period in Israel's history when they did not engage in atrocities against the indigenous population.
Netanyahu is a monstrous man, but if he were to be replaced today, his replacement would likely be just as bad, or worse. Israel is a sick society overtaken by blood lust (similar [but worse] to the US after 9/11 blow-back for US atrocities in the middle east [including support for Israel and their atrocities]).
I was unable to locate the study, but a professor of Middle East Studies (in an interview) mentioned a study conducted in Israel which found that those (Ashkenazi Jews) who experienced the Nazi concentration/death camps were more likely to be more aggressive and ruthless toward Palestinians than other Israelis.
Interestingly, Israeli society was also crueler to Jews who experienced Nazi concentration camps. These people were looked down upon as weak. No idea if this dynamic factored into the cruelty these concentration camp survivors exhibited toward the Palestinians.
We disagree, but Israeli polls, Israeli social media posts, Israeli leadership's public statements, and most importantly, Israeli actions, support my statements. Israeli Jewish society, as a whole (including Kibbutzniks living in a kibbutz on stolen land), is responsible for ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide, with extra responsibility to Ahskenazi without whom there would be no Zionist settler colonial project of Israel on Palestinian land.
> erasure of hostile Palestinian advocacy
An occupied, oppressed people, even if they were not experiencing a genocide at the hands of their oppressors have a right to defend themselves both morally, and under international law.
> overtly racist generalizations
I'm sorry that you perceive things that way. It is not my intent. I've been bending over backward to attempt to separate the genocidal monsters in Israel and their supporters, from Jews in general-- non-Jewish supremacist non-Zionist Jews are some of the strongest voices against Israeli atrocities and least likely to be forcibly silenced (but, I recall, in the US, every Muslim [I am not one] being forced to declare how evil the 9/11 attackers were, and I want to see the same with American Jews calling out the genocidal apartheid regime of Israel [or, at least, admit that they too are genocidal racist monsters]). I am also not willing to pretend that Zionism isn't a European creation. Nor that the genocidal monsters in Israel are not Zionist Jews-- recent settlers on stolen Palestinian land. The latter is important, as it is, in one sentence, what the entire "middle east conflict" is about.
I would speak just as vehemently about the German Christian Nazis committing genocide against Romani and Jews of Europe. I just don't think Israeli Jews should get a pass on genocide and other crimes against humanity, just because someone else committed similar atrocities against the ancestors of some of them. And, it infuriates me that within discourse in the US and W. Europe, it is considered "antisemitic" or "racist" to criticize a murderous, racist, apartheid, genocidal, settler colonialist regime just because the oppressors and perpetrators of violence are Jewish. Imagine if criticism of Nazi Germany was instantly shut down by people claiming racism against Christians.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
You mainly have simply repeated yourself in your comment. (I am guilty of this to some extent too [necessarily so, otherwise is to concede that Israel has a right to ethnically cleanse, engage in genocide, etc., which I vehemently do not believe], but I hope you will see some of my comment as substantive content as well)
All but a tiny population of pre-existing Jews in historic Palestine are settler colonialists living in territory violently ethnically cleansed of the indigenous Palestinian population to make way for Jewish settlers.
This isn't just false, it's luridly, categorically false. A plurality of Jewish Israeli citizens are of MENA origin --- from Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, Ethiopia, and other countries in the region. They're the "Mizrahim", they're a huge chunk of the population, Israel is literally their only homeland, and they tend to be more right-wing than the "settler-colonialist" Ashkenazim, who tend towards the left.
> from Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, Ethiopia, and other countries in the region.
So, you agree with me. These are Jewish settlers from OUTSIDE Palestine. These followed after the initial European Jews had already engaged in violent ethnic cleansing.
When the English directed their colonialism against Ireland, the settlers were "from the region", but still settler colonialists.
This is what happened to the Palestinian _survivors_ of the original Nakba (violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine to make way for Jewish settlers):
Zionist Jews poisoned wells, planted bombs/threw grenades into bus stops and shopping centers, mortared Palestinian villages, etc. to mass kill Palestinian civilians and "encourage" them to flee.
What Israel is doing is putting Jews, Zionist or not, in danger everywhere, as many see the people of "The Jewish State" as committing genocide, and the Zionists are doing their best to conflate Zionism and Israel with all Jews (criticism of Israel is "antisemitic").
Outside the US and parts of the EU (especially Germany) news outlets are actually reporting on the genocide-- In the US, CNN even sends all their Israel stories, to Israel to be censored to ensure the "proper" narrative on the Israeli genocide and other atrocities i.e., Americans never hear about them.
E.g., did you see images of the row of Palestinians lined up, face down, on the ground, hands zip-tied behind their backs, then run over by a truck, crushing them-- on your US news broadcasts (or German)? Someone, anywhere in the rest of the world might have. The Israelis are committing monstrous acts for most of the world to see, while claiming that they represent all Jews.
I'm curious, why do you defend them? "Never again" should mean Never again for anyone.
Your apparent claim that poor rural Moroccan and Yemeni Jewish people forced from their communities by mobs enacting pogroms throughout the Middle East and North Africa are "settler colonialists" unworthy of "defense" is racist, and not in a "the real racism is against white people way"; it's Racism Classic(tm).
This is a long-dead thread and we need not keep it alive.
> This is a long-dead thread and we need not keep it alive.
Agreed.
You haven't outright admitted it, but your technique of repeatedly accusing those criticizing Israeli policies/atrocities as being racist while never addressing any of the Israeli atrocities is SOP for Zionists.
Good luck. Hopefully some day, you will consider the lives of the indigenous Palestinians of equal value to those of the brutal genocidal Israeli Jewish Zionist settler colonialists who stole the Palestinians homes, land, and the lives of their children, parents, brothers and sisters-- people who never had a quarrel with Jews before the Zionist Jews, of Europe, attacked them, and stole-- everything.
