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Comment by weatherlite | Hacker News Reader

> The state was created by western powers less than 100 years ago

That's not entirely accurate at all. There was indeed a UN decision to partition the land and to acknowledge Israel, but no one was enforcing it. The Arabs and Jews were left to battle it out in a horrible war. Jews were facing the real possibility of a second extermination only 3 years after the holocaust (I don't think I'm exaggerating the consequences of what defeat would have looked like had the Jews lost that war).

The British policy towards Jews in Palestine was not consistent at all, and at a certain point they sided with the Arabs and banned Jewish immigration to Palestine - even at the height of the holocaust.

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> That's not entirely accurate.

It's fair to say that it wasn't directly created by them but their actions in the years prior did lead to the end result. The UK administered the region and had committed to making it a "national home" for the Jewish people. That doesn't necessarily mean a state, but the result was a rapid shift in demographics.

It didn't help that the UK had also made promises of independence to other groups in the region.

> There was indeed a UN decision to partition the land and to acknowledge Israel, but no one was enforcing it. The Arabs and Jews were left to battle it out in a horrible war. Jews were facing the real possibility of a second extermination only 3 years after the holocaust (I don't think I'm exaggerating the consequences of what defeat would have looked like).

I entirely agree with you on the situation that Jews in the region were faced with at the time. One of the depressing things is that despite the proximity to the holocaust, antisemites in allied countries saw the situation as a way to encourage Jews to leave.

I can see how things might have turned out better if there hadn't been so much migration in such a short period of time.

> I can see how things might have turned out better if there hadn't been so much migration in such a short period of time.

Not enough migration if you asked me, millions of Jews could have been saved from the holocaust. If not in Palestine a real effort should have been made to take them in other places, yet no one was doing it - not in Palestine or anywhere else.

I was referring to the period after the war. To be clear, I don't think that having escaped the holocaust is a negative.

> If not in Palestine a real effort should have been made to take them in other places, yet no one was doing it - not in Palestine or anywhere else.

Agreed, the scale of the migration to palestine, even prior to 1945, indicates an abdication of duty by western countries. At the time Palestine was primarily under the control of the UK.

When you mentioned rapid demographic shift, I was assuming you meant the Jewish immigration in the early 20th century that brought bigger numbers of Jews into Palestine and the beginning of the Palestinian rejection of Zionism. There is a popular view that this (or basically Zionism altogether) should have never been allowed to take place because it eventually led to Palestinian displacement.

The early immigration certainly caused issues between two groups and I do think that the decision to support the zionists of the time was incorrect. For many, the purpose seems to have been to reduce their own Jewish populations.

While still a cause of tension, immigration was much lower before the war. The result was just as you said, European Jews were faced with an existential threat a few years after the holocaust.

One of the things I found quite interesting was that Palestine wasn't the only option considered by early Zionists. At some point places like Argentina and Uganda were potential candidates.

> For many, the purpose seems to have been to reduce their own Jewish populations.

I'm not really aware of much European support for Zionism outside the Balfour declaration in those years. The declaration remained a declaration and pretty soon the Brits flipped their policy and banned Jewish immigration. You had tiny movements of Christians Zionists (Churchill was a Zionist for instance) but I'm not aware of any substantial support they gave. After the war the big immigration waves were actually from Middle Eastern Jews, not from Europe. Jews from Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Syria etc etc whose lives became increasingly dangerous. So my main point is its quite unclear if there was any major support for Zionism in the West in those years. Only after the holocaust could you find a majority that supported establishing Israel in the UN.

If you want to dig into this look into where Israel got its weapons from during its war of survival in 48: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_shipments_from_Czechoslov.... From the communists.

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