Comment by DiogenesKynikos

> If the Zionist pioneers had managed to achieve a 99% majority of Jewish population in Palestine through legal immigration before asserting sovereignty, would that pass your test?

The whole enterprise was illegitimate, because it was carried out against the will of the population of Palestine. The population did not want a foreign group of people to come in, settle the land and take over. The British colonial rulers forced Zionism on the Palestinian population undemocratically.

You keep on appealing to self-determination, but you completely ignore the Palestinians' right to self-determination on the land they had inhabited for centuries.

> Or would you just prefer to see the European Jewry perish in toto under the Holocaust and Eastern European pogroms?

The way to avert the Holocaust would have been to prevent the rise of fascism in Europe. The vast majority of Jews were anti-Zionist, and did not want to leave their home countries. The idea that Polish Jews would have all left Poland for the Middle East before WWII is just fanciful. Only a small percentage of them wanted to pack up and go to Palestine, a far-away place they knew nothing about.

settrans 9 days ago

This isn't a serious argument. You want the Jews to have self determination if and only if they can conjure into existence a magical fairy land free of compromise or can will into existence powers like militarily defeating the Nazis despite lacking even a basic police force.

> Only a small percentage of them wanted to pack up and go to Palestine, a far-away place they knew nothing about.

And pray tell, what happened to the ones who stayed?

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DiogenesKynikos 9 days ago

> You want the Jews to have self determination if and only if they can conjure into existence a magical fairy land free of compromise
I think it's much more serious than arguing that they had the right to take over land already inhabited by another group of people, because of events from 2000 years ago. It just doesn't seem to occur to you that the Palestinians also have rights, and shouldn't have been forced to give up their land.
> or can will into existence powers like militarily defeating the Nazis despite lacking even a basic police force.
You're supposing that Jews would have left Europe en masse for Palestine. They wouldn't have. Most Jews before WWII did not accept Zionism. For example, in Poland, the dominant Jewish political movement was the Jewish Labour Bund, which was hostile to Zionism and which strove for Jewish civil rights inside the Polish Republic. In the real world, the only way the Jews of Europe could have been saved would have been by preventing the rise of fascism.
To get back to your original point, you still haven't acknowledged that Zionism was fundamentally different from other movements for self-determination. It was a movement for self-determination on land that the group in question did not inhabit, and which an entirely different group of people already inhabited. When Zionism succeeded, it created a massive refugee population (the previous inhabitants of the land the Zionists wanted for their own "self-determination") and sparked a conflict that has been going on for nearly a century now.

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- settrans 8 days ago
  
  No, you're dodging the point. You're basically saying Jews deserved self-determination only if they could pull off the impossible: either magically prevent fascism, or create a homeland without upsetting anyone. That's not how history works. Zionism wasn't a luxury ideology, it was a response to existential threat. Jews didn't have the option to stay in Europe: Europe made that brutally clear. And yes, the land was inhabited, but so what? Every nationalist movement has had to contend with messy realities. The alternative you're proposing amounts to telling the Jews: stay stateless, stay vulnerable, or wait for miracles. That's not a serious moral position; at best it's an abdication, at worst a double standard against the Jews (i.e. antisemitism).
  
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  DiogenesKynikos 8 days ago
  
  Actually, I've never said that Jews deserved self-determination in a separate country specifically created for Jews. Jews lived (and still live today) in many countries. They deserve equal rights in their home countries.
  > The alternative you're proposing amounts to telling the Jews: stay stateless, stay vulnerable
  Jews were not stateless. They were Polish, German, French, Russian, English, American, etc. You mean to say that there was no Jewish state, which is something entirely different from being stateless. American Jews today, for example, are "stateless" by your loose terminology, but arguably have more rights than and are safer than Israeli Jews.
  > Jews didn't have the option to stay in Europe: Europe made that brutally clear.
  Without the rise of Hitler, Jews would have been able to remain in Europe. The rise of fascism and WWII were a catastrophe for civilization, which could have been averted.
  > magically prevent fascism
  There's nothing magic about it. For example, if the Social Democrats and Communists had coordinated against fascism, they might have been able to prevent Hilter's rise. If France and Britain had decided to defend Czechoslovakia in 1938 or prevent the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, there may very well have been no WWII and no Holocaust. However, one thing I can tell you for certain is that the chance that most Jews would have decided to move to the Middle East is basically zero. They weren't Zionists and didn't want to leave their home countries.
  > Every nationalist movement has had to contend with messy realities.
  You're hiding a lot behind that phrase, "messy realities."
  I have yet to see you acknowledge the Palestinians and their rights in any way. You're asserting the right of Jews to take over control of Palestine, depriving the Palestinians not only of the right of self-determination, but taking their land and expelling them. You've now justified this in two completely different ways: first by an appeal to ancient history, and then by an appeal to the Holocaust.
  > That's not a serious moral position; at best it's an abdication, at worst a double standard against the Jews (i.e. antisemitism).
  I was wondering how long it would take you to explicity come out and start accusing me of antisemitism. But if you really want to choose the right insult, you should call me a "self-hating Jew."
  
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