Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> Some would might consider it racist.

How come whoever pointing out the fact that those who're emigrated later to modern Israel for the past century since the Israel - Palestinian conflicts started are actually outside immigrants, they themselves can be considered racist?

Actually most people would consider artificial emigration en mass based on the dubious promised land claim of the holy book of one single race religion in this case Jewish, is the act of racism itself.

However, when the new immigrants govt started forcefully displacing the original native people out of the home without proper land purchase transactions and agreements of the local native populations, thus becoming majority in a very short time span. This very act is even more problematic beyond racism and under international law it can be considered apartheid [1].

Since your ancestors are from Morocco, imagine if the Jewish and the Muslim of Morocco in the near future start claiming back Spanish lands by emigrating en mass, and forcefully displacing the local native Spanish just because their ancestors have once lived and ruled Iberian peninsular for several hundreds years [2]. Is this hypothetical situation is fine with you?

Fun facts, now Spain is allowing and inviting the expelled Jewish descendants in Morocco to come back to Spain and become Spanish citizen [3]. Why do you think that they're not extending this goodwill offers to Muslim descendents that were also expelled alongside Jewish population from Spain? I think you'll probably the answer because allowing it will most probably upset the demographics of the current Spain due to potential en mass migration of this Muslim descendants compared to much smaller number of Jewish descendants.

[1] Apartheid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

[2] Islam in Spain:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Spain

[3] Spain passes citizenship plan for descendants of Jews exiled centuries ago (2015):

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33102891



> > Some would might consider it racist. > > How come whoever pointing out the fact that those who're emigrated later to modern Israel for the past century since the Israel - Palestinian conflicts started are actually outside immigrants, they themselves can be considered racist?

I explained it. It ignores the fact the Judea/Israel existed historically. It ignores the fact that Jews were prohibited from immigrating back to their homeland. It classifies Jews as immigrants and ignores the fact that Palestinians also immigrated mostly in recent centuries on the wings of the Ottoman empire. You effectively define a start/end date for homeland validity that conveniently leaves out Jews.

> Actually most people would consider artificial emigration en mass based on the dubious promised land claim of the holy book of one single race religion in this case Jewish, is the act of racism itself.

Again, deeply problematic. First off, there's historical facts that show the Jewish land in Israel. It's evident in the archeology and history, it isn't up for debate.

The "promised land" narrative and relation between Jews and Israel is in the Quran and Bible. I suggest reading them. In fact when talking to people from Muslim countries they sometimes don't connect the narrative of Israel and Judea etc.

Do you even know why Jews lost their land? Why it was called Palestine which was never a country?

The Roman emperor got tired of the rebellions coming out of Judea and decreed that every Jew in the area would be put to death. For the final f*ck you to the Jews he renamed the territory and picked a name based on the old enemies of the Jews: Philistines. Based on Jewish writings from the time roman horses waded in rivers of blood up to their necks... It worked.

> However, when the new immigrants govt started forcefully displacing

Again. Deeply false narrative.

First mistake is that a government displaced people. Nope. You're mixing between the occupied territories which are not a part of Israel and Israel. The Palestinians who stayed within Israel after 1948 are Israeli Arabs and have full citizenship. Not displaced. Those who ran away due to the war aren't the responsibility of Israel, that was a war Israel didn't choose and the consequences of the war aren't its fault.

> the original native people

Second mistake. They are not. They try to claim it and some people back that claim, but there is no evidence of that. There is no archeological evidence and no Palestinian people in history. They have no history in common and that's one of the big problems they have. Unlike Jews who unified and came together despite the long exile, Palestinians still slaughter each other to this day. Looking at them as a single people is deeply ignorant of who they are. If they were a single people they would have had a country ages ago. They would have followed a leader just like Begin yielded to Ben Gurion and enabled unity.

> out of the home without proper land purchase transactions and agreements of the local native populations

Third mistake. When Jews started immigrating to Israel they bought lands en-mass. 7% of the land was purchased until Palestinian leaders and the British put a stop to that.

Most of the land had problematic ownership history during those times. After the war and the formation of Israel the status of many areas became in flux as many people were displaced on both sides. Due to that war Jews who were living in Muslim majority countries had to flee their homes and come to Israel while losing everything. That's 40% of the immigration to Israel. They too lost everything. Not to mention the Jews who were displaced/murdered in the holocaust.

This was not unique or special in any way: https://www.news18.com/opinion/opinion-why-muslim-world-shou...

> This very act is even more problematic beyond racism and under international law it can be considered apartheid

You provided the wrong link. It also very clearly states that this is not the case:

"inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them."

When Israel was formed in 1948 all Arab residents that remained instantly became citizens with full rights. So there's no racial aspect here. Was there discrimination? Sure. But that's not apartheid and not systemic.

Notice that after that and most following wars Palestinians still had most of the territory the UN assigned to them. But they were occupied by Jordan and Egypt. In the 6 day war Israel was surrounded with the purpose of obliteration, the running joke in Israel was "The experiment is over, the last one out turn off the lights" (there are still people living today who remember the level of existential dread this brought). Instead of crumbling Israel attacked and took over the occupied territories. But unlike historic cases it didn't annex them because the Arab population was much larger. This is the source of most of the problems we have today.

Had Israel been an apartheid state or interested in ethnic cleansing the Palestinians would be gone in 67. It wasn't interested in that then and isn't interested in that now although there are people in the extreme right-wing who are pushing for that and getting traction because the attempts at peace failed.

In the occupied territories you could try and argue an apartheid based on that definition. But that's not technically true. It's not a part of Israel and Israel literally left Gaza (removing its citizens) and tried to leave the West bank. There's a problem there for sure, but using existing terms like that is intentionally misleading.

> Since your ancestors are from Morocco, imagine if the Jewish and the Muslim of Morocco in the near future start claiming back Spanish lands by emigrating en mass, and forcefully displacing the local native Spanish just because their ancestors have once lived and ruled Iberian peninsular for several hundreds years. Is this hypothetical situation is fine with you?

Jews came back to Israel when it was ruled by the Ottoman and British empires. Unlike your example, there was no country to "invade". It seems that you accept hate toward immigrants... Are you OK with hate toward other immigrant populations that aren't Jews?

Are you comparing Palestinians to MAGA?

> Fun facts, now Spain is allowing and inviting the expelled Jewish descendants in Morocco to come back to Spain and become Spanish citizen [3]. Why do you think that they're not extending this goodwill offers to Muslim descendents that were also expelled alongside Jewish population from Spain?

This was old news and has ended by now. You should ask the Spain why they didn't provide it to Muslims. I don't see the relevance here. Spain/Portugal etc don't have enough birth rate to sustain population and needs immigration to keep the economy going, this is an incentive for that.

Why do you think this is relevant to the situation in Israel which is radically different in every regard?


>The "promised land" narrative and relation between Jews and Israel is in the Quran and Bible.

This false narrative is the very root cause of the current problems in Israel and Palestinian conflict.

I'm not anti-immigration as you accused me of, far from it but I think you need to accept the fact that emigration en mass to any part of the world is not natural and will definitely causing instability. The situation in Israel cannot be justified similarly as if the Muslim want to emigrate en mass back to Spain. However you never answer my questions what's your personal opinions regarding this similar hypothetical situation?

I'd really appreciate if you can provide the valid references of the verses for the dubious promised land narrative in the Quran and Bibles with respect to modern Israel (not ancient Moses time).

The original promised land narrative was for the Moses Jewish followers at that specific time and it has been fulfilled at that particular time although not without much bruhaha. Ironically it's reported in the Quran that the Jews at the time famously and cowardly refused to enter and fight alongside Moses into Jerusalem and God caused them to be lost in the wilderness for 40 years as a punishment from God [1]. Not until after Moses death that the Jews can later enter Jerusalem for good and any learned Jews should know these very facts.

Another interesting potential fact is that most of the current Palestinians are actually the descendents from the original Jewish people living in the ancient Judea time that have converted to Islam. I think Israel govt can and should check the Palestinian people ancestry based on DNA test accordingly. If that's true it will make the current Israel govt as self-hating Jews or self-hating Semite. Potentially, some of the Palestinians may have higher Jews ancentors percentage from the ancient Judea Jews population than the emigrants themselves. This will be very ironic and very sad situations at the same time, after all these series of deadly conflicts over hundred years. I'd like to know your honest opinions on this matter as well since it's a very highly likely situation.

As for Muslim anything in the Old Testament and New Testament (both directly sent to Jews and not for other races) are dubious in its contents veracity and some of the original verses had been changed illegally to suite the Jewish community. Hebrew as a language is mostly forgotten for several thousands of years and even in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus back in the very 1st CE, the Jerusalem people were speaking Aramaic (a Semitic Syrian language closer to Arabic than Hebrew) [2]. God's words in holy books are not supposed be changed and apparently all previous holy books sent by God (to Jews or other races) were not guaranteed their contents except Quran.

>Third mistake. When Jews started immigrating to Israel they bought lands en-mass. 7% of the land was purchased until Palestinian leaders and the British put a stop to that.

According to reluable sources only a few percents or around less than 3% of land properties were legally bought by the Israel Jewish community from the Palestinians.

But honestly, even if we take your inflated claim of legal land purchases at 7%, do you honestly think the Palestinian would sell the Jews the remainder of the 93% land if the British and the Palestinian authority had not stop the land purchasing exercises?

>In the occupied territories you could try and argue an apartheid based on that definition.

The proof is in the pudding. You can ask the remaining survivors of the apartheid regime from South Africa to visit Gaza and West Bank, and ask them is their apartheid version is worst or better than what the Palestinian are experiencing right now. I cannot recall any incidents where the South Arican black news broadcasting stations, people houses, schools, hospital, house of worships, etc were indiscriminately and systematically decimated from the air by the South African govt at the time. Israel really took the definition of apartheid to the next level /s.

Do you not know that throughout history for over more than a thousand years never ever have any Muslim authorities totally expelled or decimated the Jewish population. This is because together with Christian, Jews are considered and respected as the people of the Books. The same cannot be said to the Nazi and the Spain Inquisition, just to name a few. Not sure you know about this fact, at one time all Jews were banished altogether from the entire British islands and the current Jews now in British Islands are the descendants from later emigrants.

Under the Muslim empires, the Jews not only surviving but were thriving. The fact that Jewish current canonical versions of Jewish holy books or Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, namely the 10th-century medieval Masoretic Text compiled by the Masoretes (currently used in Rabbinic Judaism), were brought back and edited during the Islamic Caliphates period as the Hebrew language has been unspoken for several thousand of years as I've mentioned earlier [2],[3]. If the Muslim authorities want to get rid of the Jews as did the Nazi, the Spanish and the British, it's not certainly beyond their means and capabilities, it's a matter of won't not can't. You are the living proof and testament to this fact since your ancestors were from Morocco where it's a predominantly Muslim community and Jewish community have been continously living in Morocco (and many other muslim majority countries) for more than a thousand years.

I'd strongly suggest you read the The Hundred Years' War on Palestine book, from the academic perspective of the situations. The author Rashid Khalidi is the Editor of the reputable Journal of Palestine Studies based in the US. His relative was once the mayor in Jerusalem a hundred years ago, and the book begins with an examination of correspondence from 1889 between his relative Yusuf Diya ad-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, and Theodor Herzl, father of modern political Zionism [4],[5].

[1] Musa Reminds His People of Allah's Favors on Them; The Jews Refuse to Enter the Holy Land:

https://quran.com/al-maidah/20/tafsirs

[2] Hebrew language:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language

[3] Hebrew Bible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_Bible

[4] The Hundred Years' War on Palestine:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hundred_Years%27_War_on_...

[5] A new abyss’: Gaza and the hundred years’ war on Palestine:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/11/a-new-abyss-ga...


> I'm not anti-immigration as you accused me of, far from it

Nope. I asked if you would be as judgemental towards any other ethnic group. Notice that the immigration in question (in massive numbers) happened for the most part in the 19th century. There was a big push when the country was formed but it was related to the existing WW II displacement of population.

> but I think you need to accept the fact that emigration en mass to any part of the world is not natural and will definitely causing instability.

Sure. But it happened. My ancestors didn't have much of a choice and neither do I. It happened and people need to get over it.

> The situation in Israel cannot be justified similarly as if the Muslim want to emigrate en mass back to Spain. However you never answer my questions what's your personal opinions regarding this similar hypothetical situation?

Why would I care about Spain?

You're trying to create a false equivalency and renegotiate history. Those are mute points. I get exactly why the Palestinians didn't want Jews to return to Israel, I don't blame them for that. Did I give a sense that I did?

I also understand why they started the war in 1947/8. It was objectively stupid on their part as history shows.

> I'd really appreciate if you can provide the valid references of the verses for the dubious promised land narrative in the Quran and Bibles with respect to modern Israel (not ancient Moses time).

You must have me confused with someone else. I'm an atheist. I don't give a crap about the promised land and neither do most Israelis. We were born here, it's as simple as that. Our lineage was displaced a lot through history and we don't claim ownership of everything that was stolen from our ancestors.

You're debating as if you're in the 1940s. This debate is mute. Almost all Palestinians were born outside of what is today's Israel and most Israelis were born here.

> Another interesting potential fact is that most of the current Palestinians are actually the descendents from the original Jewish people living in the ancient Judea time that have converted to Islam.

That is nonsense. Since Jews were literally murdered by Romans that would not have been the case. Islam didn't exist at the time. Notice that you're grasping at straws trying to invalidate an entire people, would you feel OK trying to invalidate the history/ethnicity of any other race other than Jews?

> I think Israel govt can and should check the Palestinian people ancestry based on DNA test accordingly.

There is actual DNA relation between Jews and Palestinians, but DNA doesn't work like people think it does. It doesn't tell us anything much. We do call Arabs/Palestinians cousins in Hebrew because religious people do believe we are related and descendants from the same line.

> If that's true it will make the current Israel govt as self-hating Jews or self-hating Semite.

Nope. Not a thing.

> Potentially, some of the Palestinians may have higher Jews ancentors percentage from the ancient Judea Jews population than the emigrants themselves.

There is no way of knowing that. What we do know is where some Palestinians came from and its often Sudan, Yemen etc. There's a strong genetic connection between them and the north African/Yemenite population though... A huge amount of them were work immigrants who came to the region in the 1920's and encouraged by the local population as a contrast to the Jewish immigration. This goes both ways.

> According to reluable sources only a few percents or around less than 3% of land properties were legally bought by the Israel Jewish community from the Palestinians.

Wikipedia says 6.6% and it's generally very anti-Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_Palest...

Your mistake is that you assumed incorrectly that Palestinians owned the land. They did not, half of the land was purchased from other owners.

> But honestly, even if we take your inflated claim of legal land purchases at 7%, do you honestly think the Palestinian would sell the Jews the remainder of the 93% land if the British and the Palestinian authority had not stop the land purchasing exercises?

Again no. You assume Palestinians owned the other 93% of the land which again isn't how territories work. The number is much much lower. Most of the ownership was by public land, churches, mosques, etc. The actual number is open to debate but is indeed in the 40+ percent. Here's the thing: most of it wasn't in the area where Israel was originally formed. Even after 1947, most of the Palestinians were still on their owned land. In fact, they often still are if they didn't run away during the war.

I agree it's terrible that people got displaced and lost their land. Hell, it happened to my family dozens of times. It sucks. But I don't expect to go back to Morocco, Lativa, Germany (the list goes on) and ask for the lands back. Its gone.

> I cannot recall any incidents where the South Arican black news broadcasting stations, people houses, schools, hospital, house of worships, etc were indiscriminately and systematically decimated from the air by the South African govt at the time.

You're again confusing Gaza and the West bank. It seems there's too much information for you to process.

Gaza is on its own. That's a war.

The west-bank is where I would argue there's a far more severe problem. Unfortunately, the government is using the mess in Gaza to make matters worse in the west-bank.

> Do you not know that throughout history for over more than a thousand years never ever have any Muslim authorities totally expelled or decimated the Jewish population.

That is far from accurate but the point is true that Christians have been far more murderous towards Jews in history. That's part of why we're paranoid and rightly so.

Just to correct the false narrative I suggest looking up: Almohad Caliphate (12th century). Orphans Decree under Zaydi Imams in Yemen (20th century) and Mawza Exile in the 17th century. Allahdad Incident 1839 in Persia and Safavid Era Forced Islamization in the 17th century (and another incident in the 14th century). In Morocco through many centuries and as late as 1790 there was forced conversion.

But yes, the Christians were far worse. This is all before the formation of Israel when things got really bad and Jews had to escape.

> I'd strongly suggest you read the The Hundred Years' War on Palestine book

What makes you think I haven't read that and countless others on the subject?

I'm amazed that you're trying to explain my history to me and assume we don't all know this stuff. We live this stuff every day and are exposed to the "other side". I'd argue that you are not, you think of this entire conflict in simplistic two dimensional terms. You overweight facts that have absolutely no relevance to the current situation and mix two completely different situations/narratives. You also look at the situation in the completely wrong way.

This isn't about Palestinians vs. Jews/Israelis. It's about moderates vs. extremists. The moderates are a huge majority here and just want peace/compromise. However, extremists keep burning everything down and forcing us into conflict that we don't want.

Hamas is a death cult, it will never surrender its purpose to destroy Israel. If it survives it might be able to strike a blow that will give the extreme right in Israel the power to do the unthinkable.

The problem is that most westerners are acting as chaos agents by providing unintentional support for Hamas. This strengthens the Israeli right-wing and is ultimately bad for the moderates on both sides, but mostly bad for the Palestinians. Those are the facts that you're conveniently ignoring.


>> I'm not anti-immigration as you accused me of, far from it

> Nope. I asked if you would be as judgemental towards any other ethnic group.

The following is your own statement that accusing me of anti-immigrant but you later denying this very fact.

> It seems that you accept hate toward immigrants...

For the record I don't accept hate toward immigrants because if that the case I'd be anti-immigrants and anti-immigration, but I'm against emigration en mass into one particular region especially if the immigrants are mainly from a single race ethnicity as happened and still happening in Israel displacing the native population.

Do you know and realize that despite Palestinian population is very much less than the Israel population, but consistently every year there are more Palestinians were killed by the conflict than the Israel citizens that were killed every year because of the conflict?

In addition to that, despite the the claim of Israel govt of only specifically targeting Hamas fighters, every time there is fresh conflict it always the news agency building are being targetted first in early stage of the conflict, and killing many journalists in the building. Do you not know that killing the journalists and messengers are the hallmark of a tyrant? Apparently Jews are well known of killing many of their very own messengers and prophets including the infamous prophet John incident.

On top of that during most Israel - Palestinian conflicts the majority of the killed casualties (not to include the injured Palestinians) are mostly Palestinian women and children. These cruel and inhuman activities are apartheid in nature and is borderline genocide. That's why in my first reply to you in this thread is that why you're very much adamant in backing the Israel govt in justifying their inhuman actions.

I think you and the the Jewish people in Israel are trying to play victims here. Jewish people throughout history are also known to be the oppressors when they're in authority, and for example one of them is well documented. Reportedly the Jewish king Dhu Nuwas in Yemen was oppressing against the Christians before the advent of Islam, the incident happened near Najran, near the modern Saudi and Yemen border [1]. This story is well documented in Roman/Byzantine chronicles and even recorded in the Quran inside the Surah Al-Buruj [2]. Perhaps your wife can share this true story to you since she's originally from Yemen. My point is that Jews should not acting innocent because history has proven that they are as capable as other people to perform hideous oppression, tyranny and genocide. In fact in the Quran (in addition to Dhu Nuwas incident), the Jewish people was specifically mentioned to be the oppressors of two incidents before being crushed twice by other empires as direct punishments from God [3].

>The moderates are a huge majority here and just want peace/compromise.

As a fellow human being, my personal advice for you is that you should migrate to somewhere else with your family for not being caught in the crossfire. Since you're not religious Jews, I've bad news for you because the trend is that the Israel Jewish population are becoming more and more Orthodox everyday. This fact has been prophesized in reputable (sahih) Islamic traditions and based on the latest documentaries that I watched on Israel, this is also the case.

I'll not continue this thread anymore since I think I've mentioned and conveyed my points on the matter as an outsider. But you as insider of the conflict you know better than me to make the correct and wise decisions regarding the situations. I sincerely hope the best for you and family, as human we only live temporarily in this world and might as well get the best version of it. For religious people, they even have these extra realization and consciousness that if they committed any good or bad things in this world based on their own free will, they'll be rewarded in fairness accordingly both in this world and hereafter.

[1] Dhu Nuwas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhu_Nuwas

[2] Surah Al-Buruj (85):

https://quran.com/al-buruj

[3] Quran, Surah Al-Isra (17), verses 4 - 8:

https://quran.com/al-isra/4-8

17 - 4: And We warned the Children of Israel in the Scripture, “You will certainly cause corruption in the land twice, and you will become extremely arrogant."

17 - 5: When the first of the two warnings would come to pass, We would send against you some of Our servants of great might, who would ravage your homes. This would be a warning fulfilled.

17 - 6: Then (after your repentance) We would give you the upper hand over them and aid you with wealth and offspring, causing you to outnumber them.

17 - 7: If you act rightly, it is for your own good, but if you do wrong, it is to your own loss. And when the second warning would come to pass, your enemies would (be left to) totally disgrace you and enter that place of worship as they entered it the first time, and utterly destroy whatever would fall into their hands.

17 - 8: Perhaps your Lord will have mercy on you (if you repent), but if you return (to sin), We will return (to punishment). And We have made Hell a (permanent) confinement for the disbelievers.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: