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What went wrong in Israel? A genocide scholar examines ‘what Zionism became’
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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I think the "mistake" started with the formation of Israel. I can understand the founding of their state after WWII, and their desire for a place where they can live without persecution. But, the location was a huge mistake if the goal was "peace".
Dropping them in the middle of their Holy Land? Automatic war for as long as they are there. Now, many are under the impression that they really are "God's Chosen People" and all of their desired "Holy Land" righteously belongs to them.
I think what is happening today was the desired outcome of Israel's foundation. USA and UK were perfectly fine with the Jews and Muslims fighting to the death, no matter who "wins", whatever is left will be all the easier for them (Christians incidentally) to control.
personally, I am opposed to Christians, Jews, and Muslims, to me there are no "good guys" to be found in the "Holy Land".
ETA Israel is a nuclear power now, remember that when you propose "solutions".
The mistake is that zionists decided to force a state on the local people instead of living along the locals are a single people
In 1884 the first Yemenites settled in Silwan and for 45 years lived peacefully and on very good terms with their Arab neighbors. It seemed that the people of Silwan, which was known to be a poor village, found common ground with the poor Jewish Yemenites that lived among them.
Despite the attempt to depict the 1929 Arab Riot as a violent incident against the Jews in Silwan, it is clear that it was not the case. From a letter of gratitude that the Yemenite Jews sent to their Arab neighbors, we can learn about the devotion and benevolence that the Arabs have shown towards the Yemenites by undauntedly protecting them, and also about the amity and good neighborly relations that prevailed between the two communities.
https://emekshaveh.org/en/yemenites/
1945: A part of Germany should have been disposessed, a jewish state founded on this territory, and this Jewish state given nuclear arms, in case any fuckin Kraut ever had "ideas" again. End of story. Would have saved Jewish people and the Palestinian people a lot of horror. Would have saved me as a German many fuckin bonkers discussions with German bigots who all are so conveniently defending a jewish state (not on their land).
Israel didn't form because of WWII or because of Germany. The big aliyah waves started in the 1800s, and the Holocaust just accelerated what was already in motion. The Soviet Union, the Ottoman Empire, the colonized Arab areas of North Africa were all extremely antisemitic, just as much as Germany. The only difference is that Hitler made mass murder industrial.
But it did... UK and USA created the state in 1948?
They wanted Israel before WWII, but US/UK/UN formed it, and they did so because of WWII. The Jews always wanted their Holy Land, of course.
Their holy land? It is the holy land of all the Abrahamic religions. They should live together peacefully
Nope, Jews were living peacefully side by side Muslims in Arab countries in pre-Israel times. This is confirmed by Holocaust scholars like Omer Bartov. Antisemitism is historically something deeply European. It has been exported to Arab countries. Most notoriously via Amin al-Husseini. Israel would never have been founded the way it was, i.e. as a jewish ethno-state or maybe would not have been founded at all without the Holocaust.
Yeah sure the nazis was Muslims and not Europeans. Yo are a dimwit
Pure bullshit. Amin al-Husseini was pretty irrelevant , he wanted Arabs to fight for the axis but did not succeed most Arabs sided with the allies. 18k Palestinians volunteered . Yes discrimination existed but it is true that arab muslims and arab jews lived generally in good relation
From an israeli source
https://emekshaveh.org/en/yemenites/
Sorry, but ethno-states are a flat-out bad idea.
There's definitely no good guys. If you read into the history of the region, you'll quickly realize that there was never a "rightful" or "righteous" ruler. The ancient Persians, the Romans, the Turks, the Assyrians, the Arabs, the British, and the Israeli Jews have all been horrid. Genocide, oppression, slavery, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, deep seated hatred, and the idea of "if I don't do fuck them over first then they'll come after me" is the norm in this cursed region.
thats BS. The turks made peace between a lot of tribes and kept the bloodshed down. Comparing them to Israel and pretending they are the same is way beyond the pale.
The Ottoman Turks? Are you an idiot?
The Ottoman Empire was one of the most violent and brutal empires in human history. They practiced slavery and had one of the largest slave trades in the world. They would go invade their weaker neighbors unprovoked to expand their empire. When they force the people they attacked into submission they'll take "spoils of war" and distribute them among muslim soldiers and officials as instructed by islam. Therefore, they would steal the land, loot possession, and enslave people and hand them out as rewards for winning the war.
They would specifically kidnap and enslave young women and children either as servants or as sex slaves in harems. Everybody else gets a choice of either converting to islam or becoming a second class citizen under islamic law where you're forced to have less rights, less freedoms, face more discrimination, and harsher punishments than muslims. Oh, and you have to pay an extra tax that muslims don't have to pay (jizya) for the privileged of being oppressed.
They also colonize the lands that they conquer. They'll kidnap and relocate the children elsewhere, they'll give special benefits for muslims to settle the newly annexed lands, and they'll forcefully exile or relocate the nonmuslims if they're in the way of muslims colonizing the land. Oh, and the conquered people have zero representation at any institutional power if they're not muslims, and they can't hold a high ranking position if they're not also Turkish. Therefore these nations were often ruled by muslim rulers who ruled had no interest or obligation for the natives, they were just there to serve and enrich themselves. Because of this, a lot of the conquered nations were subject some pretty horrid treatment.
Turkish rule is so brutal that Ottoman history was filled with conquered nations breaking out in revolts, some lasted centuries because they would rather fight to the death and than be ruled by the Turks. The thing is that the Turkish reaction to revolts is so extreme that it's infamous in history. Instead of fighting to put down the revolt, the Turks would seek to genocide that society. They want to mass murder them, take their land, erase their culture, and pretend that it was always Turkish land. They did that with the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Jews, and Arab Christians.
The Ottoman genocides are some of the worst in history. The very concept of genocide was literally made to describe what the Turks did to the Armenians. This idea that the Ottoman empire was peaceful golden age is quite literally bullshit propaganda that's funded by the Turkish government. There's a reason why that empire collapsed, and there's a reason why every single ethnic group in southeastern Europe, the Caucuses, and the Middle East despises it with a burning passion.
You would think that this something in the long past, right? But no. The Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides are barely a century old. Turkey today still officially denies these genocides. They're still trying to genocide the Kurds to this day. Kurdish clothes, names, music, press, and language were outright banned until the 1990s. Even today, you can't call Kurdish towns by their Kurdish names, they can't speak Kurdish at any position in government, they don't true Kurdish media, and Kurdish children can't learn Kurdish in school. Not only that, but Turkey is also actively burning down entire Kurdish villages, they're mass arresting Kurdish activists and journalists, they're helping Azerbaijan invade Armenia, they're invading and occupying the Assyrian and Kurdish parts of Syria, they're literally illegally occupying and colonizing Northern Cyprus, they're trying to steal Greek islands and maritime territory as their own, they're constantly bombing Kurds in Iraq to keep them down, and the list goes on and on.
They're the biggest menace in the middle east, and this is all just legacy that was carried over from the Ottoman Empire, who by the way is heavily supported and celebrated in Turkey. Not in some delusional sense where they have a different view from what it actually was, but not Turkish nationalists are actively proud of all the genocides, oppression, and conquering they inflected upon the world and they want to see Turkey do it again.
Thinking that the Ottoman Turks were peace makers is so fucking mind numbingly stupid that it's painful to think that there are people this ignorant out there in the world.
Oh the long winded "Palestine desnt even really exist" zionist guy wants to spew comments. OK.
Give this a read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ottoman_Empire
And you call out the Ottomans empires slavery. They abolished slavery in 1840. England in 1834. The US not till 1865 I think. You going to go after England and the US too then or is it only an issue in selective cases where its convenient for you?
If that's what you got from my comment then you really are an idiot.
The article doesn't contradict any of the points that I made.
The Ottomans practiced slavery for 500 years and had one of the largest slave trades in history. Playing whataboutism doesn't disprove my point, it just shows that you're dimwit who's engaging in bad faith.
and you are a foul mouthed little bitch. I'm getting pretty sick of your constant ad homs in comment after comment. If you cant engage with words then be quiet. This place has rules for that sort of thing. You will follow them one way or another.
This is liberal whitewashing. There are colonisers and there are the natives who are being exterminated. Its that simple.
That's precisely the issue though. You're dismissing important nuance and context for an oversimplified soundbites. That's just willful ignorance. If you're not even willing to entertain the idea of being honest then this conversation is not for you.
Where is the nuance in the Nakba? Or the Deir Yassin massacre? or the Gaza Genocide? The Zionists stole the land and are exterminating the native Palestinians, either slowly, through apartheid and land seizures, or quickly, through mass murder and ethnic cleansing.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar
I think you need to reread the original comment you replied to because you don't seem to understand what my claim even was
Your original comment amounts to "they're all as bad as each other so why even worry about it".
Its another version of "its all so complicated" or "both sides are to blame" thats why I called it whitewashing
Shameless racism from you
Pointing out historical facts is not racism you dimwit
Thinking the middle east is the most violent region of the world with blood thirsty rulers for thousands of year when historical facts shows that Europe and the two americas was the most savage region is racist. Still all regions in the world has period of peace and periods of wars
The problem is that statement is so sweeping and general that it isnt really saying anything. You could say that about literally any part of the world.
Jews and Christians are "people of the book" according to Islam and the Abrahamic religions coexisted relatively harmoniously for millennia. The Jew hatred seen in mediaeval and modern Europe was completely alien.
The rise in sectarian violence is relatively knew in the region and coincides, funnily enough, with the establishment of the European Zionist colony in Palestine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_Book?wprov=sfla1
The statement could be applicable elsewhere, but it is most definitely applicable here. Just because it could be generalized that doesn't mean it's not true or that it doesn't hold value.
I'm pretty damn knowledgeable on islam. I'm an exmuslim who studied the religion for a long time and I've also lived in Iraq and Syria, I've seen these things first hand, and I can tell you, that you're not even scratching the surface here. Your understanding of islam and how it treats religious minorities under its rule is very much incomplete.
islamic scriptures (quran and the hadiths) are very explicit about the fact that islam is inherently superior to all other religions because it is the perfect word of allah. Those who don't follow it are going against allah, and therefore they are enemies of islam. The religion treats is EXTREMELY hostile to anything that threatens islam. Atheism is punishable by death, polytheism is punishable by death, apostasy is punishable by death, criticizing islam is punishable by death. There are dozens of verses and sahih hadiths that talk about how Jews and Christians are vermin who will try to corrupt the pure hearts of muslims with lies about the allah and his messenger. It specifically gives stories about Jews are lying backstabbers who should never be trusted.
Like just take a minute and read these verses in the quran:
https://quranx.com/5.51?Context=3
https://quranx.com/5.64?Context=3
https://quranx.com/5.82?Context=3
Also take a minute to read these sahih hadiths:
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/Reference/Hadith-2922/
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/Reference/Hadith-2767d/
https://quranx.com/Hadith/AbuDawud/DarusSalam/Hadith-4542/
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/Reference/Hadith-1731a/
This is stuff that makes Hitler blush. Antisemitism is a core part of islam, and always was from the very beginning. Pretending that islam is a great peaceful religion that got along with other religions is a delusional take that's only held by ignorant westerners who have a completely falsified image of the religion. This is the reality. islam has never gotten along well with Christians, Jews or any other religion for that matter because it's inherently against the religion to do so.
Again, this is something that's entirely false. Medieval europe was definitely very antisemitic, however, it was not worse than the muslim world at any point in history. This view you have of islam is not based in reality. Statements like this tell me that your knowledge on islamic history is very limited. The history of antisemitism in the muslim world was and still is just as severe, extensive, and chronic as Europe.
I have no idea where you're getting your information from, but these statements have no historical accuracy. Sectarian violence is the norm in this region. That's literally THE defining trait of this region. You can't substitute actual factual history with ideological narratives. This idea that this region was all flowers and rainbows where everybody lives in peace and harmony while singing and dancing together before Israel showed up is not reality. That's a myth. The reality is that this region and the middle east at large has such a comically long history of sectarian violence that it make statements like this equally frustrating and silly.
Before the modern states of Israel and Palestine and even the British mandate, this area was controlled by the Ottoman Turks. The Turks had a system of divide an conquer that they used to oppress all the non muslims and non Turks to keep the muslim Turks at the top. The Ottomans would employ tactics such evacuating entire towns when there's a war nearby, but only allowing muslims to go back, not Christians, Jews, or other religious minorities. They place restrictions on certain religious groups from migrating to cities that are culturally significant to them (like Jews being banned from moving to Hebron and Jerusalem). All of this while, these people are subjugated under islamic rule where they're treated as second class citizens. It's not religious minorities, even muslims from other ethnicities like the Kurds and Arabs got rough treatment. There were so many revolts, genocides, ethnic cleansing campaigns, and wars under the Ottoman Empire that there exist lists of lists of the atrocities that they committed.
It's not just the Ottomans, if you go back to the Arab caliphates like the Malmuks, Umayyads, and the Abbasids, you'll see that they have a long history of exiling Jews, Christians and other religious minorities as well ethnically cleansing them, enslaving their women and children, oppressing them, and constantly going to wars with them in order to conquer them.If you go back even further, you'll see the Crusader states did the same thing with muslims, Jews, and others. Even the Romans did similar things.
The reason for this is because religion in the middle east has a different place in society than in the west. In western societies, religion is seen as a personal matter. You believe what you want to believe, and as long as you're not bothering anybody else there's no problem with it. At the end of the day everybody has this right as long as they except the secular system of governance. That's not how works in the middle east, your religion is your whole identity.
Your religion defines who your people are, what your public beliefs are, what your culture is, how open you can be, where you get to live, what your social status is in society, who your friends will be, who get to marry, how you get treated, and who's going to look out for you. If your religious group and another hate each other, then you have to hate the other group. If you don't then you'll be cast out and you could lose your place in society. You also have to assume everybody else from the other religious group is out to get you, and they will assume you're out to get them. If you try to get out of it by leaving your religion then you'll branded as a traitor and you'll be treated as an outcast or people will come to take your life. It's very serious, and that sort of dynamic is simply foreign to people in the west. This is why things like collective punishment, sectarianism tensions, and religious hatred are so high in the middle east. Religion just has a different meaning over there.
Actually, the Palestinian people initially welcomed the Jewish diaspora with open arms and were totally willing to live alongside them. But Zionism is a fascist ideology, so of course the Zionists could not live equally, they had to have domination.
"Actually" what? I didn't imply otherwise... if every Palestinian moved to Egypt tomorrow, the war would continue... Israel would continue to expand.
See "Greater Israel".
Your comment sounded like you believe Jewish people couldn’t coexist in the region, which is untrue, the problem is the Israeli state, which exists to be a proxy for western imperialism.
My apologies if I misunderstood.