by tasn | 2025-04-16 01:04:56+00:00
I'm not sure I fully follow what you were saying, but here's an attempt at responding:

> Why does believing that Israel's system of only allowing a minority ethnicity in the land it controls to have political power and rights but claiming to be a democracy is wrong, and why do you assume people who believe this also believe in whatever weird conspiracy you're talking about.

1. Jews are a majority in Israel. 2. Non-Jews have equal rights (actually slightly better rights as they are exempt from military service). 3. I wasn't assuming he believes in that, he said "what can we do ... about Israeli control of western politics", which is the conspiracy.

> Maybe the blood of one's ancestors doesn't make it okay for someone thousands of miles away who never lived in a place be eligible to move there while someone who lived in their own home a few miles away can never return to it in the same piece of land? Isn't that obviously wrong to you?

I think what you're asking is: why is it OK to have the "right of return" to Jewish people to get automatic citizenship based on them being Jewish while someone that lives in Gaza and was born in Israel can't return there?

Let's split this part to two. Let's start with the right of return: sovereign countries can make their own laws, which includes immigration laws. In fact, many countries do. Is it fair that if you're rich you can buy a New Zealand citizenship and if you're poor it's much harder? Maybe not, but that's their right to do it.

Additionally, you can't remove this law from the general context in which it lives: Jews have been persecuted throughout history wherever they lived, culminating in the murder of 6 million Jews in the holocaust. Jews have therefore fled from all over the world to the only country in the world where they are protected, which is Israel. This persecution btw happened in the Muslim world as well, which is why you don't see many Jews still living in any Muslim countries anymore.

The second part of your statement was about the Gazans coming back to Israel. The UN resolution that created Israel also created Palestine. Though unlike the Jews that accepted it, the Muslims did not, and they, along with Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon decided to attack Israel. In fact, if you look at the history of wars in the region it's always: someone attacked Israel, and Israel defended itself. Not one war started by Israel.

Anyhow, the Arab forces lost and during the wars Palestinians fled. This is not even conquered land btw, this is part of the original UN decision. Wars are awful, and it's sad that they decided to flee, but they didn't have to. In fact, there are many Muslims living in Israel (and with equal rights, unlike your original claim) which are descendants of the ones that didn't flee. Should they be allowed to emigrate to Israel? I don't think in the history of the world any country has allowed the descendants of a losing army to emigrate to their country. I also don't think they want to do that, they want to make Israel their own ("from the river to the sea...").

Additionally, I know that it's easy to look at Israel now and think wow, this is what Palestinians are losing on. Though Israel was mostly swamps and desert and was built by Israelis. Here is downtown Tel-Aviv and the founding families that built the city: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%92%D7%A8%D7%9C%D7%AA...

There was no such thing as Palestine in the way that you think about it. E.g. the Palestinian flag was created in 1964, and Israel was created in 1948 (16 years prior). All the silly memes you see showing coins and stamps from Palestine in 1914 actually all say "Palestine (Land of Israel)" in Hebrew, it just says Palestine as well because that was the name the region was called by Brits when they took over the area. In fact, if memory serves, the name Palestine comes from the Romans who conquered Judea (source of the word Jew, was the Jewish kingdom) and wanted to spite the Jews so they renamed it to something else (Palestine).

Anyhow, ended up being quite long, I hope it was interesting.