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Comment by panick21_ | Hacker News Reader

Yes and the reason many of the Mizrahi are in Israel and not in all the other places is the Zionists.

I'm fairly certain it's because they were ethnically cleansed from and/or simply murdered in the rest of the Middle East by the surrounding Arab countries. For example, Egypt tortured and dispossessed its Jews, forcing them out at gunpoint while holding their family members hostage so they wouldn't speak to the press [1]. Syria made it illegal for Jews to buy property, own a telephone, or even drive, and then seized all the property they already owned and froze their bank accounts, killing them if they fled [2].

Blaming this on "the Zionists" is like saying America wasn't at fault for seizing the property of Japanese-Americans during WW2 and forcing them into internment camps — it was Japan's fault for attacking Pearl Harbor, whipping Americans into an unavoidable frenzy that can't be condemned. Only it's more absurd, because Israel didn't start the war with those countries — they invaded Israel in 1948 simply for existing!

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Egypt

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Syria

There is a difference between moral responsibility and factual causality. If you engage in colonialism and ethnic cleansing, its not surprising that both sides do it.

Its of course also true that Jews and other minority would have had lots of issue in Arab country with Arab nationalism on the rise. But Zionism clearly played a large role as well.

It was attack by various Zionist groups that result in Britain no longer wanting to control the area because they knew in any resulting deal and/or struggle they had a good chance of coming out ahead, and they were right.

I see: so ethnic cleansing is understandable if the other side started it first. Well then, perhaps you can answer a question for me: which side first tried to ethnically cleanse the other? Was it the Jaffa riots in 1929? The Kfar Sirkin ambush in 1947 after the U.N. partition plan? Which was the first act of violence in which one side tried to drive the other out, since in your opinion, "if you engage in ethnic cleansing, it's not surprising that both sides do it," and thus it's actually Zionism's fault for Arab countries ethnically cleansing their Jews?

You seem to be obsessed with finding one side to blame and then blaming it all on that side. And spend a lot of time point out the crimes of one side while not mentioning the reverse.

Sorry to disappoint, but I don't, both sides can be a morally wrong.

Zionism is colonialist and bad and was always going to lead to multiple forms of response and that is not surprising.

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