# The creation of Israel was not a colonial project **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 23, 2023, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967 "2023-10-23T18:48:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/141 "2023-10-24T13:35:23Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > > [@Babale](#): > > > > I think you are deeply underestimating how significantly anti-Semetism was weakened by the whole “stateless parasite” myth being dispelled by Israel. I think American anti-Semetism would be far worse if Israel did not exist. > > I shed a tear every time I read “Semetic”. Blech. Sometimes when I post from my phone it decides that it’s going to keep autocorrecting me to a typo. I think it happens when I try to tell it to correct but instead add the typo to my wordbank? Blech. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/142 "2023-10-24T13:47:08Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > between the Crusades and the Inquisitions The former has nothing to do with Mexican colonization. So not really relevant. At issue is whether _the church in Mexico_ killed more natives than would have died as sacrifices. > [@Babale](#): > > the Nahuatl could have done the same thing Or they could have gotten _much_ worse (given the impetus for Nahua sacrifice was political and they seemed to be in the active stage of their empire building at the time of Contact) > [@Babale](#): > > I think American anti-Semetism would be far worse if Israel did not exist. I think it was WWII and the Holocaust that mellowed America more, personally - antiSemitism was already on the decline before the creation of Israel, according to that site I posted earlier. > [@Babale](#): > > That would _definitely_ have been Colonialism. Especially given Madagascar wasn’t even a German colony at the time. > [@Babale](#): > > No, but they foolishly and complacently say “It can’t happen here” They don’t say that. They just don’t think Zionism is the answer. > [@Babale](#): > > Here are the people who would happily carry it out: These are South African Jews. They’re [intimately familiar with the problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaner_Weerstandsbeweging) > [@Babale](#): > > I don’t think the Americans would have allowed the mass migration of all the Jews that went to Israel to go to America instead. Immediately after the war, with the Holocaust fresh in public memory (and the actual memory of many GIs)? I think they might have, actually… especially since “all the Jews who went to Israel” included quite a lot of American Jews who would not be going,so the absolute numbers would be less. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/143 "2023-10-24T13:52:33Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > I shed a tear every time I read “Semetic”. 😢 It’s a very [meaningful](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seme_(semantics)) word for this discussion… ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/144 "2023-10-24T14:05:46Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > I mean, you _said yourself_ that this is how the Jews should have remained: > > > [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > > > Migrate somewhere you can accumulate power, then shift your security problems onto those people? > > First the Dreyfus Affair and then the Holocaust showed us that _this does not work_. Not matter how loyal we are, not matter how well we serve our nations, we always remain Othered Now hang on a second here, you’ve misinterpreted. Here is the exchange: > [@Babale](#): > > But if _so sorry, two thousand years is just too long to hold on to a claim_ and _so sorry, settling somewhere you have no claim to is colonialism_ then there can be only one conclusion: Me, with apparently understated sarcasm: > [@HMS Irruncible](#): > > Migrate somewhere you can accumulate power, then shift your security problems onto those people? If your view is that Jews had absolutely no option except to go to Palestine and accumulate power until they could gain that sense of security by taking it away from Palestinians, then this is one of the ways that Zionism is very much a colonial project. The Palestinians don’t exist in your equation; they are just a loose variable to be balanced after the fact, depending on whether there’s any international pressure to give them anything at all. cue the thought-stopping rhetoric: “What were the other options? What were we supposed to dooooooo? Do I care how it impacted the Palestinians? Fuck that!” ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/145 "2023-10-24T14:11:25Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Seriously, this is how you characterize the Jewish response to the Holocaust? Are you kidding? No, this is how I characterize the thought-stopping rhetoric in this thread that says “of course we had to take security and land from Palestinians, I mean, who else were we supposed to take it from?” The existence of understandable motivation for an injustice doesn’t make it any less of an injustice. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/146 "2023-10-24T14:15:50Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Immediately after the war, with the Holocaust fresh in public memory (and the actual memory of many GIs)? I think they might have, actually… especially since “all the Jews who went to Israel” included quite a lot of American Jews who would not be going,so the absolute numbers would be less. Even if this would be the case, and if Americans fully accepted all the European Jews, you still have to wonder whether a few decades later they’d accept Beta Israel, or if they would accept Middle Eastern Jews who wanted to flee, or whether 50 years down the road a reactionary government will grow wary of the Jewish presence. Maybe American lets in a bunch of Eastern European Jews, but then locks them up in interment camps during the Red Scare because some would-be Kibbutzniks found collective farms in the midwest, and it’s not like reactionaries have ever needed much of an excuse to link Judaism and Communism. I’m not saying Jewish people can’t have a good life in America. But I _am_ saying that I am extremely happy that I don’t have to bet my life on Americans staying magnanimous towards Jews, and neither do Jewish people in any other country. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/147 "2023-10-24T14:20:19Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > If your view is that Jews had absolutely no option except to go to Palestine and accumulate power until they could gain that sense of security by taking it away from Palestinians, then this is one of the ways that Zionism is very much a colonial project. The Palestinians don’t exist in your equation; they are just a loose variable to be balanced after the fact, depending on whether there’s any international pressure to give them anything at all. Not at all. The Palestinians are in much the same boat. They have been marked apart from the other Arabs, they are not allowed to assimilate into Jordanian or Syrian or Lebanese culture (Egyptians aren’t exactly Arab, but they aren’t allowed to assimilate there either). Like the Jews in Europe, they are othered in these places, and those nations certainly do not have the best interests of the Palestinians at heart. That’s why I believe in a two state solution, with a Palestinian state that makes the lives of Palestinians in Palestine or abroad its top priority. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/148 "2023-10-24T14:29:16Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > They have been marked apart from the other Arabs, they are not allowed to assimilate into Jordanian or Syrian or Lebanese culture (Egyptians aren’t exactly Arab, but they aren’t allowed to assimilate there either). btw I knew at least one Lebanese who insisted he was not an Arab… (I mean, there are obviously a lot of ethnic groups there, but you cannot simply classify it as an Arab country) ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/149 "2023-10-24T14:30:04Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > No, this is how I characterize the thought-stopping rhetoric in this thread that says “of course we had to take security and land from Palestinians, I mean, who else were we supposed to take it from?” Are you under the impression that the Jewish people came in and conquered the land from a sovereign Palestinian nation? When Jewish people started settling in the region in the 1900s, “Palestinian” wasn’t a distinct polity. The land was part of Ottoman Syria, and the Jewish settlers built (with the permission of the Ottoman overlords and the local sheiks) in places that were not inhabited, not by displacing locals. If a two state solution had been accepted in 1948 than both the Palestinians and the Israelis could have been freed from colonial rule. No security needed to be taken from anyone. * * * Ok, so, we cleared up that misunderstanding. So your suggestion that the Jewish people go somewhere else was sarcastic. So I guess we are back to you not caring where they go, as long as they know their place as homeless second class citizens. > [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > The Palestinians don’t exist in your equation; they are just a loose variable to be balanced after the fact, depending on whether there’s any international pressure to give them anything at all. Talk about PROJECTION! ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/150 "2023-10-24T14:33:53Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > btw I knew at east one Lebanese who insisted he was not an Arab… Was he Syriac/Assyrian? They are one of the indigenous pre-Arab peoples of the region. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/151 "2023-10-24T14:35:22Z")
IIRC he said he was Phoenician. He looked “Mediterranean” if you want to grossly generalise. He told a story about being beaten by Syrian soldiers one time. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/152 "2023-10-24T14:38:39Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > the Jewish settlers built (with the permission of the Ottoman overlords and the local sheiks) in places that were not inhabited, not by displacing locals. Cite? I mean, I’ve been looking at the growth of Haifa, and that wasn’t exactly _uninhabited_ to start with. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/153 "2023-10-24T14:48:30Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Ok, so, we cleared up that misunderstanding. So your suggestion that the Jewish people go somewhere else was sarcastic. In fact you have still misunderstood the meaning. I will not bother trying to clarify it since it’s now evident that the hair-trigger response to argue with strawmen is an obstacle to discussing what was actually said or intended. > [@](#): > > So I guess we are back to you not caring where they go, as long as they know their place as homeless second class citizens. Here’s more of that hair-trigger strawman rhetoric I was talking about. “I guess you just want all Jews to disappear!” There’s no more point in me engaging with any of this. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/154 "2023-10-24T14:50:14Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > > [@Babale](#): > > > > I don’t think the Americans would have allowed the mass migration of all the Jews that went to Israel to go to America instead. > > Immediately after the war, with the Holocaust fresh in public memory (and the actual memory of many GIs)? I think they might have, actually… especially since “all the Jews who went to Israel” included quite a lot of American Jews who would not be going,so the absolute numbers would be less. You would think wrong. The racist Immigration Act of 1924 almost entirely shut off immigration from anywhere with large Jewish populations (and from anywhere not dominated by white Protestants, for that matter). Desperate campaigns by Jewish Americans and their allies persuaded the US to accept 200,000 Jewish refugees during the period just before and after the war, but that was as far as they would go. It’s not the case that it just never occurred to any Jews to ask the Americans nicely to let them in. I think it might have worked out better for everyone if the US had just allowed unrestricted Jewish immigration in the post-Holocaust period, but that’s about as realistic as saying it would have been better if white South Africans in 1900 had decided to stop being racist. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/155 "2023-10-24T14:56:25Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > that was as far as they would go This seems to not include the Truman Directive, so I would say immediately post-War, they went further. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/156 "2023-10-24T14:58:02Z")
There are several million Jewish people in Israel. If you don’t think Israel should exist, please tell me where you think these people should go. Hint: “They can stay where they are, but they should stop defending themselves from people who are constantly trying to murder them” is not an acceptable answer. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/157 "2023-10-24T15:05:01Z")
Well, here’s what the US Holocaust Museum Encyclopedia has to say about the Truman Doctrine. Note the last sentence of the first paragraph in particular, which addresses some misconceptions you seem to have about the benevolence of white Americans. > Allied victory brought an end to Nazi terror in Europe in May 1945, and to the [war in the Pacific](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/narrative/2839/en) in August. Six million European Jews had been murdered. Hundreds of thousands of liberated Jews, suffering from starvation and disease, emerged from concentration camps, hiding places, and places of temporary refuge to discover [a world which still seemed to have no place for them](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/narrative/2275/en). Visual evidence of the [Holocaust](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/narrative/72/en), shown in popular magazines, newspapers and movie theater newsreels, did not change Americans’ minds towards immigration or refugees. In a December 1945 Gallup poll, only 5% of Americans were willing to accept more European immigrants than the nation had prior to the war. > > President Harry S. Truman favored a liberal immigration policy toward [displaced persons](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/narrative/6365/en) (DPs). Faced with Congressional inaction, he issued a statement, known as the “Truman Directive,” on December 22, 1945, announcing that DPs would be granted priority for US visas within the existing quota system. While overall immigration into the United States did not increase, between 35,000–40,000 DPs, most of whom were Jewish, entered the United States between December 22, 1945, and July 1, 1948, under provisions of the Truman Directive. So that got another 40,000 in, leaving only several million out of luck. Good for Truman, he did all he could, but that was never going to be nearly enough. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/158 "2023-10-24T15:11:30Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > IIRC he said he was Phoenician. He looked “Mediterranean” if you want to grossly generalise. He told a story about being beaten by Syrian soldiers one time. Gotcha. That probably has to do with the below then: > **[Phoenicianism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicianism)** > > Phoenicianism is a form of Lebanese nationalism adopted by a section of Lebanese people, at the time of the creation of Greater Lebanon. It constitutes identification of the Lebanese people with the ancient Phoenicians. > Proponents claim that the land of Lebanon has been inhabited uninterruptedly since Phoenician times, and that the current population descends from the original population, with some admixture due to immigration over the centuries. They argue that Arabization merely represented a ... > [@MrDibble](#): > > Cite? > > I mean, I’ve been looking at the growth of Haifa, and that wasn’t exactly _uninhabited_ to start with. I was thinking about towns and cities built up that were purely “Jewish”. Haifa is an ancient city and still has a very large Arab population today (as well as other faiths - it’s a very multicultural city). Those Arabs are full Israeli citizens. Even if you _did_ argue that Palestinians are victims of colonization I don’t think you could argue that Arab-Israelis are. They are every bit as Israeli as the Jewish Israelis. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/159 "2023-10-24T15:15:33Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > leaving only several million out of luck Several million? But only 650,000 immigrated in the first few years of independent Israel. , ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967/160 "2023-10-24T15:39:05Z")
And another 450,000 or so were already there before the War. Almost all of them came from places which were subsequently occupied by the Nazis, so they would have become refugees or worse if they hadn’t made it to Israel. Immigration from other Middle Eastern countries continued for 25 years after the founding of the State. And then another million fled Russia as soon as they could in the Nineties. Having said all that, it appears that the number of Jews officially recognized as Displaced Persons immediately after the war was “only” about a quarter million, so I misspoke. Still, that number is a) smaller than the number of Jews who, judging by their actions, actually wanted to go to Palestine, and b) much larger than the US was ever going to accept. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-creation-of-israel-was-not-a-colonial-project/991967.md?page=9)