> You just glossed over Nakba again:

I'm not glossing over it, we disagree about it. Also, the Nakba doesn't usually refer to the founding of Israel itself, but rather the ethnic cleansing of Arabs as part of the war, which is why you might think I'm glossing it over - I literally didn't understand what you mean.

That said, let's get into it.

First, let me again say - this doesn't matter as much as you claim it does. Is the foundation of other countries any more legitimate? Is the foundation of the US legitimate? What makes the foundation of a state "legitimate" is a question, but the fact that Israel is a worldwide-accepted state for 75 years for sure means that this question doesn't matter as much - there is no world in which saying "oops it was illegitimate" leads to anything but much more trouble for everyone. You continue to refuse to say what should actually happen - even if you think the founding of Israel is illegitimate, what now? What should happen in practice?

All that caveat aside, let's get into the question itself. Why do you think Israel's founding is illegitimate?

In 1947, the land of Palestine had both a Jewish and Arab population living on it - about 30% Jewish and 70% Arab, iirc. These populations were often in conflict, and signaled, many times, that they didn't particularly want to live together (moreso from the Arab side than the Jewish side).

The land was ruled by the British - and they handed over to the UN the question of what to do with the land. The UN gave the same answer that everyone else who's ever looked at the land said; there's two peoples who don't want to be part of the same country but live on the same land - so split up the land into a majority-Jewish state and a majority-Arab state. This also solved another problem the UN/world had - there were 250k Jewish displaced persons after WW2 that no country wanted as immigrants, and had nowhere to go.

So the UN voted on and officially proposed the partition plan for Palestine. This was accepted by the Jews, and rejected by the Arabs. This led to the Jews declaring independence on the land. The Nakba happened when this declaration of independence was followed by surrounding Arab armies attacking Israel, and Israel fought back. Some of the Arab population stayed where they were - they are today citizens of Israel. Some fled - unclear exactly how many or why, probably partially fear and partially at the urging of Arab leaders. Some were ethnically cleansed - actually pushed out. There are disagreements about the exact numbers of each of these groups, with Palestinians largely claiming everyone was pushed out, and Israelis largely claiming the majority just fled.

Anyway, from all the above - what part exactly do you think is illegitimate? Is there a more legitimate way of declaring independence than after the world's countries get together and officially vote for a new state to be founded? Seems far more legitimate than how most countries have been founded (pure force).

And if you think the founding of Israel was so illegitimate, what do you think should have happened in Mandatory Palestine instead? Both sides had a thriving community life on that land, and did not want to be a single country (with the early-Palestinian leadership pretty explicitly refusing to state "what should happen" to the Jews if an Arab state were to arise there). So what should have happened?

And on that subject, what should have happened to the 250k Jewish displaced persons from WW2, or to the millions of Jews facing persecution in the Arab world, that were themselves ethnically cleansed after the founding of Israel, and made up the majority of the early-Israeli population?