Regarding the Israel discussion on the previous page, I think it's important to note that the territory of Palestine was not the only area in consideration for creating the state. IIRC, an area of Texas and Argentina were also under consideration (this was before WW2). My opinion is that, with the advantage of hindsight, the state of Israel probably never should have been created. I'm honestly pretty disturbed at establishing any state with the express intent of having a religiously/ethnically pure population.
I understand the desire, after the revelations of the holocaust, for a save haven and a means to defend themselves against hostile states. And, to be fair, at the time Palestine was a sparsely populated territory without much of a national identity, so some people naively assumed Palestinians would just move to neighboring Arab states, but the people creating Israel knew that wouldn't happen and had already been planning on how to remove the Arabs. I think the best thing to do would have just been for Jews to move to existing countries more friendly to them, like the US (I realize at the time there was still more anti-Semitism in the US than now, but they still had legal protections). Hell, if the Zionists had organized to move a lot of Jews to a sparsely populated state like Wyoming they could still have a political subdivision where they're a majority, similar to Mormons in Utah.
I took a (introductory level) course on the Israel/Palestinian conflict history recently. I went into it with a negative opinion of Israel just based on the modern human rights abuses I see in the news, but I left with an even worse opinion of it, and my professor was a Jewish Rabbi (he was really good at explaining context objectively. I still have no idea what "side" he's on). For almost all of its history, since before its founding, Israel has been led mostly by right wing radical pieces of shit like Begin and Sharon. Israel has never had any intention of making peace with Palestine, and some of the big players in Israel's creation and early governance were literally terrorists, like Begin who was part of Irgun (which I believe is what became the IDF once Israel was created). Irgun was a right wing terrorist group that attacked the British in the Palestinian territory, seeking independence from the colonial powers. It's kinda funny how some of those same people, when in positions of authority in the new State of Israel, mercilessly kill Palestinian terrorists (fighting for independence from what they view as a colonial power) without the slightest hint of acknowledging the irony.
This post ended up being longer than I intended so sorry for the rant. My basic point is that I think creating Israel was a mistake, albeit with understandable and sympathetic reasons. However, the people in charge of Israel throughout history have ranged from being shitty to being cartoon villains. And the government has been consistently engaged in disgusting actions and policies that have made what was already guaranteed to be a bad situation even worse, rather than trying to actually address the problems Israel's creation caused with something other than war and Arab discrimination.
