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Comment by bakuninsbart | Hacker News Reader

That's a laughable argument, comparable to Italian fascists claiming Romania as the legacy of the Roman empire. Israel is built majority on refugees, and secondly on colonizers who hold a tenuous connection to the land. But you don't get to claim 2000 year old grievances, especially if your supposed ancestors share as much genetic material with the current inhabitants. Political zionism always had fascist components, but it really turned for the worst in the last 40 years, and I truly do not understand how an educated individual cannot see the parallels to the rise of fascism 100 years ago or apartheid South Africa 40 years ago. The post-holocaust refugees at least at large had the decency to recognize the injustice they put on the palestinians, but their children turned to a maximalist, fascist, and deeply dishonest ideology instead.

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I won't deny there exists a rise in extremism in Israel itself.

That said, my education strongly tells me that there is indeed something reflecting fascism coming alive and I don't look at Israel here.

The self reflection about innocents being harmed is something that you can see exclusively in Israel with very few exceptions. That is not an indignation of Palestinian children that have constantly exposed to severe propaganda, but at least have the decency to not blame Israel for that.

The parent comment also was wrong with his analysis of Israel being a result of western powers wanting some form of outpost. This is just bad history.

Clearly people in this discussion are getting different views of reality. There is definitely a long term rise in extremism in Israel but what that means to someone who is closely familiar with Israel and someone who is not can be two very different things.

I don't think people outside Israel think that Israelis are engaged in self reflection. That aspect isn't something that's reported on. There are some Israelis that don't care about innocents in Gaza, and it's easy to just pick up that story if it furthers the reality that you believe in. Reality isn't one, or two, or one hundred stories. It is a continuum.

Israel being a "western colonial enterprise" is not an analysis. It is a talking point. I've seen it hundreds if not thousands of times in online discourse on this topic. It's something that has been pushed for some time (a decade or two?) in various circles. The history of Israel can be studied superficially in one semester in University. To really understand the period and all the nuances, and the related historical processes, get a PhD. There are good lectures on YouTube by historians and good resources on the Internet that give you a taste but you need to put in time.

It's also about the semantics, what exactly do these terms mean, a common theme in the information war arena is to use words in unusual ways or to redefine them in a way more convenient to your cause.

Jews maintained a pretty strong connection to the land. They keep praying to be in Jerusalem and Zion. The connection is a central part of their identity and faith. Jews also generally stayed together as a people and a group and genetics do show this connection. It's not exactly a secret that Jews had a country in the region- it's mentioned in the most popular book in existence.

I'd say the connection of Israeli Jews to the land is stronger than the connection of most citizens of most countries to their land. To descibe that as "tenuous" is at best unfair.

[EDIT: erased a bit of not so nice retort]

Israel's right wing isn't very different than right wing parties in other parts of the western world. I'm not a fan of Israel's extreme right but conflating the violence between Israelis and Palestinians with either the rise of fascism or South Africa is just again yield to propaganda. The various governments of the Palestinians, the PA or the Hamas, make the Israeli right wing look centric. Put aside the various labels that are intended to dehumanize the Israelis, after Israel tried in earnest to make peace roughly around the proposed two state solution and was met by a wave of Hamas suicide bombers that impacted at some level every single Israeli, what do you think is an actual solution here?

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