Reading about the current events got me looking into the history of Palestine and Israel, and I noticed a lot of Israel’s politicians (like Yitzhak Shamir, Menachem Begin, and Ariel Sharon to name a few) were Zionist terrorists (using the word literally, not subjectively) since before the establishment of Israel. The groups they belonged to, like Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi have been designated terrorist organizations by the United Nations, British, and United States governments, and
Albert Einstein, in a letter to The New York Times in 1948, compared Irgun and its successor Herut party to “Nazi and Fascist parties” and described it as a “terrorist, right wing, chauvinist organization”.
The Zionists have explained their view as follows:
Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: “Ye shall blot them out to the last man.”
and
Late in 1940, Lehi, having identified a common interest between the intentions of the new German order and Jewish national aspirations, proposed forming an alliance in World War II with Nazi Germany.[22] The organization offered cooperation in the following terms: Lehi would rebel against the British, while Germany would recognize an independent Jewish state in Palestine/Eretz Israel, and all Jews leaving their homes in Europe, by their own will or because of government injunctions, could enter Palestine with no restriction of numbers.[32] Late in 1940, Lehi representative Naftali Lubenchik went to Beirut to meet German official Werner Otto von Hentig. The Lehi documents outlined that its rule would be authoritarian and indicated similarities between the organization and Nazis.
It just gets worse the more you look into it, but it does give important context to the current genocide in Gaza, and to the decades old conflict in general.
Well, if we start from the ‘living in relative peace’ part during during the latter century of the Ottoman empire, one can get quite a clear picture on how we arrived here today. It takes around 3 minutes.
During the Ottoman empire, jews were a small and dispersed minority living under laws that were, in large, inspired on islamic sharia. Although there were regions and periods of time where this was less enforced, it still meant that they would always be second class citizens, or worse. For example: they weren’t allowed to build or repair synagogues, could not carry guns or ride horses, had to pay a special tax, etc…
So they were living in relative peace as long as they put up with the systemic discrimination (and the occasional local sectarian massacre but hey, it was the 19th century after all).
So we jump forward to the 1850-1870’s and reforms are ongoing to modernize the empire and this came with a lot of the systemic discrimination being removed, moving towards a more secular state with the different religious communities given self-government wrt religious laws. Finally light at the end of the tunnel for the Ottoman jews, right? Well, sucked to be them as in 1876 Turkish nationalists seized power, abolished parliament and installed a new sultan which was a pan-Islamist and sought to re-consolidate the people of his empire under islam. (Btw, the Turkish nationalists would later go on to purge their land by doing multiple genocides, some still ongoing).
So this is where zionism picks up, with Ottoman jews seeing the future darken and the idea growing that they should unite in one place. This led to a lot of jewish immigrants moving into (modern day) Palestine starting around 1880 towards this goal, with the zionist idea picking up around the world, gaining more and more steam and here we are, 2024 and jews and muslims are still fighting over it.