"How far back should I go? To times 2,000 years ago"
And this is where you and I immediately begin to diverge in our perspective. Jews were expelled multiple times, but until the well-known Diaspora, they had always meandered back to that area within a reasonable time.
But ~2500 years ago, Jews left the area, never to return. I don't see how a race of people does that, then feels entitled to land after being away for 2500 years.
Native Americans once built cities in the US, had trade routes, had pacts between tribes (from which the Constitution took much of its purpose) prior to the arrival of the Europeans, and the only land that current Natives ask for is the land that was signed over to them in treaties AFTER they were slaughtered and forced to leave.
But if we used the logic of Zionists, Native American tribes would own all of the US. Do you think the US government should kick European Americans out of their homes to make way for Native families?
Of course not. Nor do we. And this happened within the last 500 years, not 2500!
You also claim that Arabs always hated Jews but fail to realize that Jews & Arabs of 2500 years ago are the same people with differing dialects. If you were to go back in time, Jewish people would have looked very similar to, if not exactly like, their Arab counterparts. This is also why both Arabs & Jews are considered Semites. The Semitic languages were all very similar.
That's akin to Southern US states disliking Northern US states. Do we believe that one is more right than the other? No, of course not.
I also take issue with any stories gleaned from either the Koran or the Tanakh. I don't buy into religious texts as historical documents and much of what is found in both books is missing a lot of history, or, is inaccurate. Dates are wrong in many parts of the Tanakh, and the Koran, as are names, locations, etc. There is some accuracy, sure, but not all of it. Probably not even most of it.
"one for Jews, one for Arabs, and a neutral state" -- I do not believe that we should have single-race states in 2021. This is probably a philosophical disagreement, though.
But to do that, every Palestinian that lived in the area that we now call Israel, had to be forced from the land. It's no surprise they revolted against this idea.
Unfortunately for them and all surrounding nations, Zionists brought with them military armaments that did not exist in that area at the time, save for Egypt, but even their military prowess was all but non-existent. Pitchfork vs nuclear weapon is how I'd describe that.
All of those people were ejected from their lands and that should not have been the case. You cannot 'rightly' eject people whose families have lived in an area for thousands of years and not expect them to be upset about it. You would have been, and you would have been right to be upset.
So, while your premise of separated nations is right, you fail to mention the only way to get that was by kicking out and killing anyone that existed in that area. Otherwise, the nation you create will consist of both the newcomers (Jews) and those who've lived there for millennia (Arabs).
You then also blame the people who were being kicked out on "hating Jews," though I believe it was less that the people coming were 'Jewish' and more that this group of people were slaughtering whole families.
When I said 'go back to the original boundaries,' I didn't say that because I think it was the right thing to do. I say that because no one is about to kick Jews out of Israel, and while I believe that 100% Zionists were wrong to believe themselves entitled to land they hadn't lived on for 2500 years (not in any real numbers) , I think it's too late to bother with that now.
So I say 'go back to the original boundary' because that was the agreement and it's too late to rectify the horrors that Zionists brought against Palestinians and other Arabs in the region when they stole the land in the 40s, which they absolutely did do.
Unfortunately, there was a secondary movement that went largely unnoticed in the decade leading into the ground invasion by Jews. Etzel, or Irgun, was a precursor to the IDF, and a spin-off of Zionism.
They believed every Jew had a right to enter Palestine, despite it not being their country, and the only way to get Arabs to obey was by actively killing them.
Ever heard of the Deir Yassin massacre? 107 Palestinian Arabs, women and children included, were massacred. 1/6 the population of Deir Yassin was wiped off the face of the earth to make way for Jews.
The attacking Zionists raped, mutilated, and looted the village, as history shows.
It was so bad that Jews actually apologized for it. Einstein even spoke out against this. Einstein once compared Irgun to the Nazi and Fascist parties and called them a terrorist organization. He made these statements in a NYT article in 1948. https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948
The Irgun even attacked the British, who they saw as occupiers of Jewish land, which is ironic given that GB was the reason they had military support to begin with.
Even at the time, the main Jewish leaders denounced and apologized for them. But you know what happened instead of actually ridding themselves of such bloodthirsty people?
They were absorbed into the government and became the political predecessor of Herut, which is now the Likud party and has been in the Israeli government ever since.
What's most telling about the belief of the Irgun is their original name: Ha-Haganah Leumit, which means The National Defense. Sound familiar? It should because it later became the entire country's military force.
So, bloodthirsty racist? Yes, I think that is a pretty accurate assessment.
This is similar to how the US government, filled with Europeans, went across the entire US, killing and slaughtering natives as they executed Manifest Destiny. Do we now blame Natives for what the US government did? Because anyone saying "but Palestinians revolted!" is basically arguing that Natives were at fault for fighting back.
Propaganda in the US does STILL try to make this claim - that natives were just 'savages' and they had to be killed because natives were killing Europeans. But the reality is simple: when you steal someone's land, they have a right to attack you.
"I believe any peace plan must also take into account the culpability of those Arab countries too who refused to accept the Palestinian refugees"
Okay, first of all, why should Arabs have ever been okay with Jewish occupation of land that hadn't been "Jewish" for 2500 years, and even then, had only been Jewish for a couple of hundred years before that, if even a couple of hundred years?
Why do you believe Jews are entitled to that land? Do modern-day Syrians not have as much right to it as Jews? They once ruled that area, so why not them? Why only Jews?
Why not Iranians? They held the land for quite a long time - longer than Jews ever did. In fact, I'd argue that Jews didn't ever conquer the land. When they came into the land, it had largely fallen due to the end of the Bronze Age, but either way -- Jews never really had full control of that area because every time another people came in, they conquered it.
Why not Egypt? After Alexander the Great, Palestine became part of the Kingdom of Ptolemaic Egypt, so why not Egyptians?
Do you see where I'm going? The sense of entitlement to that land is illogical. Jews LEFT the area and traveled to Europe. It would have been different had they returned to capture the land a hundred years later but they didn't. They abandoned the land. Full stop.
They then mixed into the culture of Europe and their Arabic descent was bred out of them to a very large degree.
I bring all of this up because your words suggest that Jews were entitled to all of that land, but that's just not true. In my mind, based on the history of that region, Jews have no claim to that land, aside from the few families that stayed. But those Jews - the ones that stayed - were able to live side-by-side w/Arabs throughout the course of history.
So I should clarify that I do not agree that the gifting of Palestinian land to Jews was right. GB had no right to do what they did, nor should they have. Military strategists even warned the US not to back that play.
But it has been ~60 years since then and nothing is going to unf*ck that situation, so when I say go back to the original boundary, I do not say it because I believe those boundaries should even exist - I say it because Jews aren't going to go anywhere unless they are completely conquered, which isn't going to happen either, nor do I believe it should.
And I think this is where I diverge from most Jews. I, as a Native American, do not feel entitled to 100% ownership and control of the US. I do not believe that Native tribes in the US should be removing European-Americans from their homes to make way for natives. I live WITH them because they aren't going anywhere and I'm entitled to nothing.
Jews need to realize that they have no right to a complete "Jew" state. They don't. They have a right to exist and live peacefully, yes, but they have no "right" to a state that they call their own. Their land was not Jewish and will never be free of Arabs. Just because most modern Jews have more European blood than Arabic blood doesn't mean they have a right to be free of the people that have lived there for thousand upon thousands of years, far longer than they.
"How can it be racist when you find every ethnicity possible living there with full rights" -- because Arabs do not have full rights.
Black people in America still do not have full rights in the US as there are still laws on the books that were created solely for them and are enforced against them mostly. Yet America has, literally, every race on the planet living within its borders, but that doesn't mean the American government (and an unhealthy portion of European-Americans) doesn't still hate black people.
If you hate a group of people because of their race, or if you treat them differently because of their race, no matter if you treat other races just fine, you are still a racist. Not YOU in that sense, but you know what I mean.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-57097554
Mobs of Jews have been going around beating up Arabs because they are there. You do see how that is a problem, yes?
If it was a mob of Palestinians going around beating up Jews, I'd be just as upset by it.
"Can you grant that perhaps your exposure to the Israel-Palestinian issue might be a tad one-sided and could use a little rounding out?"
I concede that my exposure of the I-P issue IS one-sided, but not for Palestine.
In the US, the vast majority of people have been pro-Israel. All my life, this has been true. When I grew up watching the news, and seeing the 'every so often' attacks between Israel & Palestine, the mainstream media in this country ALWAYS -- and I do mean ALWAYS -- blamed every bit of the conflict on Palestinians. This is beginning to change, though, because you can't hide ethnic cleansing for long.
I have heard, over the course of my entire life, how Palestinians ,and Arabs in general, are "terrorists." Not just Palestinian Arabs, but ALL Arabs --- terrorists.
I also grew up prior to the internet, so the news I would see or read came from TV or the newspaper.
It was ALWAYS pro-Israel. Mainstream media is STILL pro-Israel.
So, was it one-sided? Yeah, but not pro-Palestinian.
Another example is propaganda. Jewish propaganda is literally EVERYWHERE. I cannot escape it.
If I want to learn about a certain thing in history, and I type it into Google, the first several pages are typically from Jewish newspapers or websites that are clearly pro Jew. (or should I say anti-Arab).
I just did a little experiment: I Googled "israel attacks"
Let me list to you the websites that popped up under "Top Stories"
https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1094712
And now I'll go through the listings:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-57492745
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-57110368
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Israel%E2%80%93Palestine_crisis
https://www.jpost.com/tags/israel-attacks-syria
My point here being that I live in a pro-Israel country where my elected representatives are all but forced to sign pledges to Israel: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ilhan-omar-israel-antisemitism-allegiance-congress-a8806126.html.
Contractors forced to sign agreements to not boycott Israeli companies: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/18/she-lost-her-school-job-after-refusing-sign-pro-israel-pledge-now-shes-filing-lawsuit/
My government votes against boycotts of Israel: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/us/politics/house-israel-boycott-bds.html
Another 'contractor pledge': https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/pro-israel-loyalty-oath-required-to-do-business-with-texas-aandm-11589214
All over my country, Israeli lobbyists are paying our representatives to force pro-Israel ideology: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/05/01/statehouse-model-bills-bds-protest-bans/3575083002/
After 9/11, the anti-Arab sentiment grew even more in this country and reached a feverish point. My country began invading middle-Eastern nations and didn't stop. From my 20s until today, I've lived in a country that has largely hated Arabs. My country IS filled with racists, btw.
I've been following politics throughout my entire remembered life. My Mom watched the news constantly. She'd sit for hours watching debates on the floor, on C-Span, and would scream at the TV, or read newspapers, and scream at that.
But when I turned 20 and was in college, I began to wonder why we hated Palestine and other Arabs, but loved Israel and countries like Saudi Arabia.
Unfortunately, there wasn't anything that I could find that hadn't been tainted by some Jewish Scholar, or written by a Pro-Israel company, or spoken by a politician that hadn't received money from AIPAC, so I had to dig.
I went to my college's library and started to devour history books. From Britannica to newspaper clippings (microfilm).
At that point, I actually thought Israel had always been there. That's what I always thought. I once wished Palestinians would stop attacking Israel. But I also, again, thought Israel had always existed.
Mainstream media in the country never talked about the history behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was always just "Palestinians attacked 'x' and Israel responded with bombs" or whatever other thing.
The moment I realized that Israel had been created in the 40s, my entire thought pattern changed and new questions emerged: why was it created? What did its creation have to do with Nazis and WWII?
I continued scouring textbooks, encyclopedias, old newspaper articles, etc.
Fast forward a few years and a new image emerged of the situation in that region: Zionists believed themselves entitled to the land, paid Jews to travel to Palestine and begin starting businesses, schools, etc.
But once the world began discussing the creation of a Jewish state, smack-dab in the middle of Arab territory, Arabs in the area began to buck against it.
I put myself in the shoes of the Palestinians, in my mind anyway. If someone came to my house, held a gun to my head and told me to leave, would I then be obligated to treat that person with respect because 2500 years prior, their religious counterparts (not even ancestors necessarily) occupied that land?
Of course I wouldn't agree with that.
So, when you ask me if I will concede that my exposure to I-P issue is one-sided, I will rightly concede. My exposure to the Israeli-Palestinian issue HAS been one-sided, but my exposure has ALWAYS been on the side of Israel, not Palestine.
Only when I took it upon myself to understand why my country loved Israelis and hated Palestinians did I realize that their love of Israel is due to 1) religious zealotry, 2) racism against people with dark skin (the darker the skin, the more hate), and 3) propaganda.
I am an atheist (or rather, agnostic) and have no religious skin in the game. I am native and my people were once slaughtered and forced to flee from their homes to make way for farms and gold mines, and I live in a nation that is 60+% European where I am the outcast.
When you look at those factors, you'd think that I would be on the side of Jews because they dealt with what Natives dealt with: both of our people were victims of genocide (we lost 90% of our people -- it is estimated that the total loss of life has been ~100 million natives: https://archive.org/details/americanholocaus00stan )
So my ancestors were more recently displaced, lost more of its population, and are STILL treated poorly in the very nation we once occupied fully and had for thousands of years. But even still, I do not have any sense of entitlement towards owning all of the land or controlling the marriage habits of the people in my country, nor would I ever kick someone out of their home to make way for my people. If I did that, I would be in the wrong.
That's how I see it. I was not exposed to ANY anti-Israel sentiment growing up, other than what I learned in history classes that drilled into my head that 6 million Jews were killed in WWII, which we now know as The Holocaust.
A terrible tragedy, for sure, but tragedy does not entitle a person to owning land they have not occupied for 2500 years. I cannot square that logic in my head.
But as of right now, they aren't going anywhere, and that's fine, so what I expect from one of the most powerful nations on Earth (Israel) is to tolerate and accept their role in the current situation and to realize that Palestinians have just as much right, if not more right, to live and mingle, as they do.
I really don't think it's too much to ask. I've been begging my European counterparts to stop hating black people all my life and they still get upset by it.
Sadly, whenever I criticize Israeli policy in any way, I'm called an anti-semite. It's annoying, but it's just not true. I have no hate for any race or any culture. Not even Europeans. I married a European!
But this is how I see it. You and I may disagree, but none of the perspective I have comes from a place of racial issues. It just stems from what I believe is right.
Jews have a right to exist. Arabs/Palestinians have a right to exist. Israel MUST lose its sense of entitlement to the land because I believe all of these problems stem from that.
Palestinians should be welcomed into the Israeli government and they should push for either a unified Israel, or, dissolve Israel and push for a unified Palestine.
But again, you and I may disagree, but I think it's important that you are able to hear someone speak about it this way without believing that person to have some racial or religious hate towards your people, because I don't. Most people that believe Israel is acting poorly aren't saying it from a position of anti-semitism. That term has been used as a cudgel to squash any dissent.
