> To this day territories under control of the Palestinian authority are kept ethnically cleansed of Jews.
This is an insane statement. Israel controls all of East Jerusalem and the entire West Bank. They are moving their own settlers into those territories, in violation of international law, with the goal of annexing them to Israel. The Palestinians in the West Bank live under military occupation and are subject to constant violent pogroms at the hands of Israeli settlers, who have the backing of the IDF.
Yet in your narrative, the Israelis are somehow the victims here, because the Palestinians don't want them to keep stealing more land.
> The Arabs just couldn’t take it that they will be one Middle Eastern country where Jews have significant authority and equal rights.
They couldn't take it that European settlers would take over Palestine. You seem to have a very hard time accepting that the native population of Palestine should have had any say in whether their country, which was 95% Arab, should be gifted to European settlers.
> London and NYC have Muslim mayors.
Last I checked, London was still part of the UK, and NYC was still part of the US. The UK and US didn't have immigration laws forced on them by a foreign empire - they decided democratically that they're okay with a percent or so immigration each year. And Mamdani isn't trying to turn NYC into a breakaway Muslim state that will leave the US and declare Muslim supremacy over the rest of the population.
The WB is divided into zones. Look this up. Areas A are under full control of the Palestinian Authority. On the roads leading into these areas are big signs saying that it’s forbidden for Jews to enter.
It truly is insane that in this day and age there are parts of the world that are banned for Jews simply for being Jews. In addition, it is a capital offence punishable by death for Arabs to sell property to Jews. True apartheid.
Ultimately, your line of reasoning comes down to the concept of blood and soil, that the race of a person gives them unique rights to land and to reject others who they claim don’t have the correct genes to live there.
Jews were perfectly happy to share the land fairly with the other residents - as they do now with Israeli Arabs, who have full equal rights, and are doing much better than Arabs in neighbouring Arab countries, in terms income and life expectancy.
> It truly is insane that in this day and age there are parts of the world that are banned for Jews simply for being Jews.
It's the Israeli government that bans Israeli citizens from entering Area A. The Palestinians do not ban Jews from entering, and Jews enter all the time.
I am always amazed by the ability of Israelis to paint themselves as the victims in every situation. You control the entire West Band and hold millions of Palestinians under a brutal military regime. But in your mind, you're the victim. Incredible.
> Ultimately, your line of reasoning comes down to the concept of blood and soil, that the race of a person gives them unique rights to land and to reject others who they claim don’t have the correct genes to live there.
This is a crazy level of mental gymnastics. The Zionists announced that they wanted to take over Palestine and turn it into a Jewish state. But when the Zionist movement began, 95% of the population of Palestine was non-Jewish. Of course the population was against a foreign people coming in and taking over their country.
> Jews were perfectly happy to share the land fairly with the other residents - as they do now with Israeli Arabs, who have full equal right
The Zionists were actually adamant that Israel must have a large Jewish majority - large enough that the Arabs would have no meaningful political influence. Ben Gurion said it should be 80% at a minimum. Zionism is all about establishing a Jewish state, not a state that is simply for all of its citizens.
In order to achieve that overwhelming demographic majority in as large a part of Palestine as possible, it was necessary to expel the vast majority of the Arab population of the territory that became Israel - about 80%.
So when you say that the Israelis were perfectly happy to share the land fairly, that's just a pleasant lie - though maybe one you believe.
It was public knowledge that the Jews were removed against their will and are hoping to return (and have done so on different scales throughout history). This is documented even in Quran.
The Arabs knew when they moved in and built mosques on top of ancient Jewish holy sites that the land is contested. Still, the returning Jews by and large paid the occupiers to purchase the land fairly, and would happily pay Palestinians good money for more land in Judea and Samaria - which is why the PA needs to threaten to murder anyone who sells.
No, selling land to Israelis or people acting on behalf of Israel is punishable by death. The reason for this is that Israel is trying to annex the Palestinian territories, and every bit of territory that gets sold to Israelis is territory that will be permanently removed from Palestine. The Israelis establish settlers on the land and then use those settlements to argue that the land should belong to Israel.
This is viewed in the same way as selling land or national treasures to German occupiers during WWII would have been viewed in European countries.
> Jews who enter Area A are detained by PA forces and escorted out, or lynched. (With an exception of some token visits by activists).
Not true at all. I'm actually surprised by the number of Israelis who believe this, because American Jews visit Area A all the time, and are treated very well. There are actually some popular tourist destinations there, like Bethlehem. In my experience, Palestinians generally have nothing against Jews - they just don't like Israel.
The first cases you linked is one in which an armed Israeli man was handed over to the Israeli police, and the other is a case in which an Israeli family got lost and was handed over to the IDF.
What makes this really galling is that there is a wave of pogroms right now directed at Palestinians in the West Bank. Yet you're inverting this and presenting Israelis as the victims. It would be like claiming that whites were the true victims in the Jim Crow South, while black people were being lynched.
> Zionism started more than 2000 years ago.
Zionism started at the end of the 1800s. You're just trying to invent an alternate history.
> The Arabs knew when they moved in and built mosques on top of ancient Jewish holy sites that the land is contested.
This is insane. I'm sorry, but nobody gets to claim that land is "contested" in the modern age because an ancient Roman emperor expelled a group of people nearly 2000 years ago. You would laugh at any other group of people who made such a ridiculous claim.
Jewish return to the Land of Israel has been ongoing for 2000 years. Either people who’ve historically been displaced have a claim or they don’t. Either way Israelis have a claim. You can’t choose a statute of limitations arbitrarily to suit only one side.
Besides, the Jews mostly paid for the land they built on (or they built on land that wasn’t privately owned). The fact that Palestinians need to threaten to kill anyone who sells land to Jews shows that Israelis don’t generally just steal Palestinian land. And you think killing people for selling land is justified.
There are 2 million Arabs living in Israel. How many live in areas under the control of Palestinians?
It’s absolutely not safe for anyone visibly Jewish to enter Area A. You are simply lying about this, and I will stop engaging.
> You can’t choose a statute of limitations arbitrarily to suit only one side.
You don't have to precisely draw a statute of limitations to know that claiming land because of what happened during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian is completely insane.
> How many live in areas under the control of Palestinians?
Are you seriously asking this? There are nearly a million Israelis living (illegally, according to international law) in the Palestinian territories, but the Israelis will never let the Palestinians exercise legal authority over them. The Israelis have effectively annexed large swaths of the Palestinian territories, and wherever Israelis settle, the Palestinians are not allowed to exercise any control.
> It’s absolutely not safe for anyone visibly Jewish to enter Area A.
Dude, I have family members who have gone to Area A. They told me that the Palestinians were lovely to them, and mainly complained about how much their lives were restricted by the Israeli military occupation. In contrast, they told me that Israel was the rudest society they had ever experienced, by a very large margin.
Sounds like your relatives excel at generalizing to millions of people from a few individual interactions.
Jews were 100% ethnically cleansed from Gaza and the WB in 1948 - including from places where Jews have lived and owned property for hundreds of years, and this is maintained to this day wherever Arabs are in control. They were also ethnically cleansed from other Arab and Muslim countries.
The only places Jews can live safely in the Middle East are areas the IDF secures. It’s unfortunate that it has to be that way, when Arabs feel perfectly safe to live amongst Jews in Israel.
> Sounds like your relatives excel at generalizing to millions of people from a few individual interactions.
You claimed that it's extremely dangerous for any Jewish person to enter Palestinian cities, based on nothing. When I inform you that not only do many Jewish people go there all the time, but I have family members who have done so (and were treated far better by Palestinians than by Israelis), you just dismiss it.
> Jews were 100% ethnically cleansed from Gaza and the WB in 1948
There were hardly any Jews in the West Bank and Gaza in 1948 to begin with. The ethnic cleansing was almost entirely in the other direction.
> They were also ethnically cleansed from other Arab and Muslim countries.
This happened years after Israel ethnically cleansed the 78% of Palestine it took over. Arab Jews were victims of Israel's founding. The creation of a self-styled "Jewish state" through mass land theft and expulsion of the native population generated intense anger throughout the Arab world, which led to Arab Jews eventually being expelled or pressured out of their home countries.
> The only places Jews can live safely in the Middle East are areas the IDF secures.
Not true at all. There are plenty of Jewish tourists in the Middle East. The only thing I'll grant you is that Israel pretending to act in the name of all Jews does generate a lot of antisemitism and make Jews less safe around the world.
> Arabs feel perfectly safe to live amongst Jews in Israel.
Tell that to the millions of Palestinians who live under Israeli military rule and who are constantly subjected to pogroms.
This is an insane statement. Israel controls all of East Jerusalem and the entire West Bank. They are moving their own settlers into those territories, in violation of international law, with the goal of annexing them to Israel. The Palestinians in the West Bank live under military occupation and are subject to constant violent pogroms at the hands of Israeli settlers, who have the backing of the IDF.
Yet in your narrative, the Israelis are somehow the victims here, because the Palestinians don't want them to keep stealing more land.
> The Arabs just couldn’t take it that they will be one Middle Eastern country where Jews have significant authority and equal rights.
They couldn't take it that European settlers would take over Palestine. You seem to have a very hard time accepting that the native population of Palestine should have had any say in whether their country, which was 95% Arab, should be gifted to European settlers.
> London and NYC have Muslim mayors.
Last I checked, London was still part of the UK, and NYC was still part of the US. The UK and US didn't have immigration laws forced on them by a foreign empire - they decided democratically that they're okay with a percent or so immigration each year. And Mamdani isn't trying to turn NYC into a breakaway Muslim state that will leave the US and declare Muslim supremacy over the rest of the population.