This pretty much sums up my attitude.
I support Israel in the sense that I support all countries. As a Jew with family over there I probably feel more strongly than your average Joe. I guess that makes me a Zionist. I don’t always agree with the actions of the state of Israel though.
I do wonder a bit what the poster upthread who wasn’t sure what a Jew even was anymore meant though. Is Judaism not a clear thing any longer?
Well, it’s a religion and an ethnicity, which distinguishes it from most religions and can be confusing.
Not “somehow,” and not “will.” Ensuring the majority and supremacy of the Jewish nation in the state of Israel has been the more-or-less express point all along.
I suppose they would be stripped of even their present second-class citizenship. Again, as you acknowledged, in the present structure, allowing a non-Jewish majority in the unitary Israeli polity would mean
I suggest you read this course on Israeli citizenship and Jewish nationality. Here is a useful short summary of Israeli laws that discriminate against non-Jews.
Hell, yes. My dad fought in 1948. He, my mom and sister went to Israel after being liberated. My dad had a priority Visa to come to the USA but gave it up to fight in Israel. Support for Israel was infused throughout everything in my childhood. From buying Israeli bonds, to trees in Israel, to visits.
Not sure how this is responsive. The issue is - how exactly will the ‘law of return’ ensure a Jewish majority?
I could “suppose” a lot of things: maybe the Israelis would go ‘full Nazi’. ‘Supposition’ isn’t proof, nor is it a good basis for condemnation of an entire country.
I have glanced at your two links, and they appear to be full of glaring errors and one-sided leading positions.
To give but a tiny example, from the second link:
This is simply incorrect. Palestinians are not “forbidden” to serve in the Israeli Army. Most are not required to do so (but may volunteer). Some Palestinians (the Druze) are required to serve (while some Jewish Israelis, as your source states, are not required). One Palestinian Arab community (the Bedouin) routinely provides significant volunteers. In fact, six Arabs have received Israel’s highest military decoration, including this fellow.
It strikes me as odd indeed to state that a lack of conscription (and one, at that, that applies to some Jewish groups as well as some Palestinian groups, and that does not apply to others both Jewish and Palestinian) is being held up as an example of the horrors of Israeli Jewish bigotry.
Time does not admit for correcting all the errors in your sources. Suffice it to say no serous student of the region ought to take them seriously, when a cursory glance reveals such a whopper. I suppose that’s what one gets from a source entitled “itISaparthied.org”.
On the subject of the Israeli use of the “law of return” to allow preferential treatment for Jews seeking asylum, it should be noted that the US is presently considering somewhat similar legislation for Christians (and Yazidis) in the proposed “Save Christians from Genocide Act”, though it is geographically limited (only those fleeing certain countries, such as Iraq, Syria or Pakistan, will be eligible):
“Not anymore.”
:dubious: The Wikimedia Foundation, of which Wikipedia is a part, is American, per Wikipedia’s own page.
Not Jewish.
I support the right of Jewish people to have a state.
I don’t consider myself particularly well-informed about the 20th century history involved but I’m under the impression that things were not handled very adeptly in the post WW2 period — that there was supposed to be a Palestinian state also. In my ignorance, I don’t know whose fault that is.
I was most certainly alive in the Rabin era. And on that one I will point fingers. The Palestinians blew it big-time. They should have worked with Rabin. If they had, they might have a state now and Rabin might still be alive. (Or not. Hard to know).
I think some of the treatment of ethnically Palestinian people within the borders of Israel is seriously fucking deplorable. And I consider the ongoing settlements by Jewish people on land that is ostensibly set aside for the maybe-someday Palestianian state, and Israel’s disinclination to put a stop to it, to be extremely bad politics. But at the same time I have to detach from the current leftwing tendency to opt into binary absolutist politics and proclaim Israel Bad, Palestinians Good. The Palestinians created and/or perpetuated a great deal of their current situation and it cannot all be laid at the feet of Israel.
The UN originally proposed a “partition plan”, which would have divided the current State of Israel into Palestinian and Jewish zones. The wanna-be Israelis accepted it, but the Palestinians - and surrounding Arab nations - did not, leading to the 1948 War. The Arabs lost the war, and the Israelis seized the entire area.
The area of controversy in that conflict is the extent to which the victorious Israelis committed war crimes to encourage the Arab population to flee the area. Needless to say, there is no unanimity among serious historians on this issue.
I myself think Morris’ detailed explanation makes most sense of the actual data: namely, that it was a combination of factors that led to the population fleeing, including occasional Israeli atrocities and expulsions - but the majority simply and sensibly fled because of the fighting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_1948_Palestinian_exodus#Morris.27s_Four_Waves_analysis
I agree with much of that. The current Israeli leadership is, I think, engaged in short-sighted opportunism. Never before has the ME (aside from Israel) been in such disarray - what with the Syrian Civil War, Egypt in turmoil, Daesh, etc. Never before has the Israeli position been relatively stronger - the discovery of natural gas makes Israel potentially energy-independent for the foreseeable future, its tech sector is booming, etc. Now would be the time to make concessions from a position of strength - but rather than do that, they are simply taking more, because they can.
The problem is a lack of wise leadership. That does not, however, undermine the legitimacy of the country: for some reason, it seems almost impossible for non-Israelis to separate out “criticism of the current actions of the nation’s leadership” from “criticism of the legitimacy of the country as a whole”. Israelis, OTOH, in my experience criticize their country’s leaders incessantly. 
I agree. Israel ~could~ largely ensure both the survival and the justice of a Jewish homeland. But where is the visionary leadership?
Yo soy un Xionisto!!
Within my lifetime, people claiming to act on behalf of Israel have
hijacked fewer airplanes
hijacked fewer ships
hijacked fewer tour buses
shot fewer tourists
bombed fewer discotheques
bombed fewer restaurants
than people claiming to act on behalf of Palestine.
So, I am fine with an Israeli state. The Palestinians need to rein in their nutballs.
Well, that kind of figures. They’ve already got a country. Why would they hijack anything? Go back to pre-1948 and see what things were like.
Malthus:
How did that work out in Gaza?
The notion that the pre-1948 Israelis were engaged in modern-style terrorism is - much overblown. They engaged in bombings and assassinations it is true - but their targets were, by and large, military. The exception was some actions of the Irgun.
Part of the reason Israel succeeded in its nationalist ambitions is exactly because the more ‘reasonable’ nationalist organizers were able, successfully though traumatically, to ‘reign in’ the more violent agitators of the Irgun.
In an action known as “the Hunting Season”, the Haganah violently suppressed the Irgun (when the latter wanted to engage in a violent struggle against the British Mandate during WW2).
Later, the new Israeli army fought a battle against Irgun to seize control of a weapons ship:
The “Altalena Affair” later became hugely controversial - but it strikes me as absolutely necessary: a state must have a monopoly of force, and cannot allow armed violent extremists, even those ‘on its side’, an independent existence - or it cannot be a successful state. This has been a major problem for the Palestinians, that they never succeeded in cracking.
Gaza is a problem it is true (and, while one is at it, one might throw in the Sinai as well - enormously lauded at the time, which has since become a huge headache for the Egyptians as the place is a breeding ground for Daesh).
Though I’d say this: the withdrawal from Gaza was not wisely implemented. It was not done as part of a conscious effort of state-creation, but unilaterally, in a rush, leaving a power vacuum behind - which was filled eventually by Hamas, not the PA.
Making concessions from a position of strength ought, in a perfect world, to allow for doing things gradually and getting them right.
Malthus:
No. Making unilateral concessions from a position of strength just makes the weaker party think that the stronger party isn’t all that strong and leads them to redouble their efforts to exploit the newly-perceived weakness.
Parties in a position of strength don’t unilaterally concede. Parties in a position of strength use their strength to negotiate agreements on terms agreeable to them.
“Concessions” maybe isn’t the right way to put it. Israel has the opportunity to remake its structure, to protect both Palestinians and Israelis for the future. It is wholly in Israel’s self-interest to “give up” certain lands and realms of political authority in the course of this.
I’m not taking a position on whether pre-1948 Israelis were “modern” terrorists, just pointing out that when the shoe was on the other foot Israelis were not (all) peaceable.
Thank you for the history lesson, though (and I don’t mean that sarcastically; the links are interesting).