dagbay wrote: ↑Wed Aug 14, 2019 7:12 pm
neverfail wrote: ↑Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:13 am
I take note of your observations with due respect Dagbay. Yet my earlier contention remains intact. Thew founding of the State of Israel pushed out the former Palestinian occupants. Even though it subsequently absorbed many displaced Jews from elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa it remains an undeniable fact that the modern state of Israel was and is an Ashkenazim construct.
I do not know for what reason there could have been any influx of Arabs from elsewhere into Palestine in the 2 years before independence - unless the British (whose mandated territory Palestine previously was) needed labor and could not trust either local Arabs or local Jews (very likely) to do the work without trying to kill them. It could not have possibly have been due to the enterprise of Jewish settlers. If Jewish settlers in those days had need to hire labor unerringly they would give the work to fellow Jews. As displaced Jews were at the time flooding in in large numbers there would have been no shortage to employ.
In any case the Palestinian Arabs who were driven out of their homes were NOT transitory guest workers but mainly local householders who had lived there usually for generations. You and others try to muddy the waters by pretending otherwise by raising this "latter day Arab influx" red herring.
I take issue with your statement "Even though it subsequently absorbed many displaced Jews from elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa it remains an undeniable fact that the modern state of Israel was and is an Ashkenazim construct". Particularly what makes it so? It is not the current makeup of the population which is overwhelmingly of Sephardi ie ME decent. It is not by the makeup of its political leadership which is split similar to the makeup of the citizenry.
So what is ýour criteria?
The complexion of Israel's Jewish population has changed markedly since independence in 1948. From the arrival of the first settlers in the late 19th century the founding pioneers were Ashkenazim.
Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism was Ashkenazim.
David Ben-Gurion was Ashkenazim....
...and so on!
Those idealistic early Ashkenazim pioneers (one might say) carved out a suitable land where Sephardi could withdraw to when their turn came to be mass-evicted from Islamic lands in the ME and North Africa; where in most cases they has lived for centuries in apparent equanimity with the locals.
Of course, those mass evictions were a direct reaction to the emergence of Israel as a sovereign state. If the state of Israel had never come into existence those Sephardi Jews could likely have gone on living in their countries of birth for centuries more.
(It never ceases to amaze me: you Jewish types really know how to make yourselves loved, don't you?

)
dagbay wrote: ↑Wed Aug 14, 2019 7:12 pm
Second is the issue of the "red herring" you claim of the transient nature of the Arabs who migrated into the British mandate area encouraged by the British and which is a well documented fact. This is not to claim that there were no Arabs who lived in the land for generations which is also a documented fact as is the Jewish populations of Jerusalem and Hebron which lived there for centuries. In the establishment of Israel Arabs were called upon to stay but r he chose to clear at the request of the Arab armies. The clensing of Arabs lands from their jewish citizens was a coordinated and forced evacuation.
Yes, token numbers of Jews had,as you claim, lived in Jerusalem and Hebron for centuries but that is not to say that they formed the majority population in either location. The point is that Israel had been ruled by foreign powers consistently for at least 2 millennia before Israeli independence and the majority population even in Judea (which is where the name Jew is derived from I believe) has been predominantly non-Jewish for almost as long.
( Indeed, Jerusalem ceased to be Jewish in population in 66AD when the Roman army wasted the city as part of its campaign to crush the zealot revolt. Arguably a form of divine retribution for having rejected Jesus Christ. The former Jewish lands did not remain empty - gentile settlers must have moved in to replace them. On the basis of the argument purporting unbroken occupancy therefore I cannot see how there is justification for a reborn Jewish state of Israel. Better if Jewish people had accepted their ancestral loss of country as the will of God.)
"Encouraged by the British?" As the British were on their way out (Palestine was after all only a League of Nations mandated territory: not an annexed colony of the British Empire that they could do whatever they liked with) they would have had no reason to encourage Arab migration into the area with a view to their permanent settlement. I can only conclude that the British hired them to do work that they could not rely upon either local Arabs nor Jewish settlers (both of whom were waging insurgency war against the Brits along with each other) to do.
I know that with the advance of Israeli forces (against the odds) in 1948 the resident Palestinian Arabs were incited to flee by their homes by their own leaders and the foolish buggers did. However, had Israel not declared its independence triggering the Arab reaction -
1. invasion by 5 separate Arab states armies
2. the mass expulsion of Jews from the ME and North African states especially after the Arabs lost.
then the Palestinians would not have had any incentive to flee their homes nor their leaders any incentive to incite them to do so.
In any case, those displaced Palestinian Arabs have never been allowed back into Israel to recover their lost property since. Understandably so. The Israelis clearly do not trust them.