Einstein was a pacifist whatever his other inclinations were. He certainly didn’t want the natives in Palestine to be harmed or displaced as European Jews also moved there.

“Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering.”

Einstein in his letter to Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, Nov. 25, 1929, AEA (Albert Einstein Archives) 33-411.

—

It might have been naive of him to think and hope for European Jews to come to Palestine in peace and without war (that is not how history played out), but I don’t think he had bad intentions.

Perhaps it feels like nitpicking, but Arabs in Palestine could hardly be called natives. Perhaps the most favorable term could "earlier settlers". From the historical perspective the Jews are the natives.

And as far I understand, Jews tried to negotiate, but agreements were refused by Arabs. Instead Jews had to repel attacks with genocidal intent, as per Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha in 1947: "this will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre"

Either way Einstein was not satisfied with the outcome because he refused the plea to become the president of Isreael in 1952: "I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it.".

From my understanding of history, the Jews that one thinks of as natives had historically converted mostly (which is where the Christian and Muslim population in Palestine came from - not by settling but through an organic change in what people believe, like how we in the west have a population becoming increasingly secular). The European Jews who migrated cannot be called natives.

This is racist nonsense disguised as "nitpicking." Arab is not an ethnicity, it's a pan-ethnicity that arose in the 20th century. "Arab" here means those who speak Arabic and have shared customs with other Arab groups. It has as much meaning as "Latino" suggesting that people who live in "Latino" countries are Spanish could hardly be called natives because they're Catholic and speak Spanish.

Jews would have fallen under the exact same blanket (and were forced to in places like Iraq) had there been another 50 years before their expulsion.

The people from the Levant have more of a stake of being descendants of Israelites than the majority of modern Jews.

This is why it's funny to hear that the Palestinian conflict is a religious or ethnic conflict: for the Jews it's a religious and ethnic one, for the Palestinians it's literally just over property rights, and for the greater Arab world it's a matter of pride and identity. That's why the whole Arab union fell apart after 67 and the region began rejecting the Arab title in favor of Islamization.

EDIT: Also worth mentioning, Jewish groups tried to develop similar pan-Caananite[0] sociopolitical identities at the same time (which included Ben Gurion and Ben Zvi[1]) but were outcompeted by mainstream Zionist and Arab identities instead, especially when the land and the residents became political strategic talking points for both Zionists and Arabs. Had Arab nationalism never gained popularity, or had it gained popularity a few decades earlier or a few decades later, we could have likely seen a unified Canaan with both groups co-existing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaanism

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians#In_...

In many South American counties people called Latinos are not natives indeed. Hint: their skin color gives it away. So I'm wondering why are you accusing me in racism using racist arguments?

I certainly agree with you that had Arabs not started the genocidal war to exterminate Jews then we would have completely different history.

But it didn't happen and the recent history demonstrates clearly that the idea that it would be possible to get rid of Jews in the region by genocide is still persistent.

For me the simple facts that Arabs in (then) Palestine befriended Hitler and attempted the genocide of Jews on their own puts them on the wrong side of the history in perpetuity. But this is not the past, as was demonstrated by the genocide of 7th October 2023.

Ah yes, I forgot all about the mountains of Caucasians which eclipse Latin America. Beyond that, though, not sure if you're being obtuse here but it's not hard to look at the skin tone of Ashkenazi Jews and draw a similar conclusion.

> I certainly agree with you that had Arabs not started the genocidal war to exterminate Jews then we would have completely different history.

Funny, they're not the ones in the ICJ for genocide.

I'd really encourage you to travel. It might help broaden your horizons.

Accused by SA, that has stated that they will not arrest a suspect wanted internationally for crime of genocide. Irony, isn't it? Of course the irony of it is even deeper if we take into account the historical background.

Looks like victim blaming when there should be enough evidence to demonstrate genocidal intent of the 7th October attack.

Even worse, it now appears that UN itself may have participated in genocide against Jews and this time directly and not just by material support.

What a time to be alive.

Traveling certainly is pleasing but I'll recommend also to read and be mindful about what you read and why something has been written.

This is just whataboutism.

"Don't look at me - look at them!" when one is caught in a bad act.

We can direct our energy to more than one thing.

I'm sorry, it is not whataboutism. It demonstrates that these accusations are political attack, started by a country that belongs to a political group that was behind initiating the 7th October genocide. Unless of course you can show that members of a terrorist organisation are protected group.

Just fyi, the "native" Americans are not native either, but got America by fighting the actual first settlers before them.

The man lived at the same time my great grandfather did, a ww1 Jewish German veteran.

Everyone’s views on their integration into German / Gentiles society were completely upended throughout those years. Einstein wasn’t always an ardent Zionist, he wasn’t always a pacifist, his lived experiences caused changes. Your question compresses 30 years of life, say 1925-1955, into a simple binary to try and drive some nasty conclusion.

What's the "nasty" conclusion, pray tell?

Are you going to come up with another anecdote about why you are my moral superior due to vague paternal claims?

Anecdote: My late grandfather was a British pilot in WW2. I am your moral superior because he actually fought and defeated evil mustache man.

I implore you to continue tracing your paternal line so you have some claim of heroism or moral legitimacy here: WW1 isn't really hitting. I hope your paternal anecdote line wasn't not doing anything at all -- that'd be a huge fait accompli.

I already responded to you at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39169987 but this is so bad that I need to add something: if you post like this again to HN, we will have to ban you.

That is not true, the Arab countries decided to wage war in Israel after the UN proposed the two state solution. Herzl and many other founding figures in Zionism called for peace and integration in the Middle East. Jewish people thought because they had no choice. Meanwhile in Europe Jews were massacred or if they were lucky bullied and harassed.

No group would or should have to tolerate a foreign state being established on their soil at gunpoint by colonial powers.

> the Arab countries decided to wage war in Israel after the UN proposed the two state solution

- That doesn't make sense. Israel didn't exist until it was established.

- The Arabs didn't voluntarily leave their villages.

- And during 1947, the Arabs ejected from the Arab side of the UN partition line did not leave because they wanted to give more land to Israel or because of the Arab League intervention a year later in 1948.....They left because of ethnic cleansing by Jewish religious extremists.

> other founding figures in Zionism called for peace and integration in the Middle East.

To the contrary, Israeli leadership wanted all of Palestine and the UN plan was treated as a stepping stone toward Greater Israel.

The current Prime Minister of Israel Netanyahu also rejects a two state solution, insisting for decades that only Israeli sovereignty should be allowed between the Jordan River and the Sea.

I'm sorry to remind you that Isreael has never been native territory for Arabs. It was the land that was taken by war and genocide from Christians who earlier, as Romans, took it the same way from Jews. If anything then it is a native Jewish land on what Arabs tried to establish their state.

Ah yes, "we lived here 2000 years ago, so you have no right to be here"

The aim of Arab war against Jews was complete extermination of Jews in Israel and they requested Arabs in the area to leave with the promise that they can get part of Jewish property when they return after the war.

Many still stayed and large part of them participated in attacks against Jews (in a genocidal war, mind you) and decided to flee when the war was decided in fear of retribution. How many of them figured it out on their own and how many had to be reminded by active measures, is disputed.

Colonial powers? Like the Ottomans? (The previous rulers)

The countries we're referring to were generally all established colonially, in many cases very close in time to the establishment of Israel.

While Israel does have a present problem with religious extremists I take issue with the characterization of the Irgun, Haganah, Levi and other terrorist groups that conducted the ethnic cleansing as “religious extremists”.

These were terrorist thugs. They had an objective and they naturally used violence to achieve it. Whatever “religious” views they may or may not have had are secondary. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine was conducted by violent terrorists who wanted to create a country that they dominated.

We can discuss and debate whether their religious views follows from or causes the Zionist terrorism that has prevailed for the past century separately. It’s a valid discussion point but in the context of the ongoing genocide and ethnics cleansing all it does is muddy the waters for many people.

My understanding is that the Arabs opposed a minority population suddenly and aggressively taking over half of their land.

This itself is a very simplified summary. I strongly recommend "Fear and loathing in New Jerusalem" for a long, nuanced explanation of what happened there. Starting at the UN proposition is ignoring a lot of critical context.

Where do you recommend starting?

I prefer starting at the Ottoman property laws, which were adopted by the British Mandate, by which the Jewish purchase of land was perfectly legal.

I'd start at episode 1, since it covers this with far more nuance than "it's legal therefore it's okay".

Thank you, I'll read episode 1. Episode 1 of what?

In the meantime, I would really appreciate a summary of why "it's legal therefore it's okay" is not a good answer. The Ottomans deliberately enacted liberal property laws to increase immigration, and thus tax collection, from the area. It was literally the stated goal of the government at the time.

Episode one of the aforementioned podcast?

One answer to this point in particular is that this wholesale liquidation of the land was made by rich landowners living far away, and cannot be treated as the Palestinians selling their own land away. The people actually living on the land had no say in this.

Their land? As far I can remember, Israel is not a native Arab land. It was also not a native land of Ottomans or British. History is most of the time not fair but there are occasions where former colonisers and conquerors have been forced to give up their captured land. Restoration of Jewsih state Istael was one of such occasions.

There were wars fought on that region with the intent of exiling the Jews there since at least the 19th century. Neither them nor the Muslims got any saying on the matter.

But all the discussion about who started it only serves to make it less likely that the situation will be resolved. (Or maybe we should punish the Ottoman Empire.)

And why did the UN propose a 2 state solution?

Because there was a formidable Jewish population in Israel before WW II and the horrors of the holocaust made the world understand the Jewish people must have their own country. On the other hand, the UN wanted to give the Palestinians (which were never an independent nation before) their own country.

You cannot give away some thing that doesn't belong to you.

If I accept stolen property which I know to be ill-gotten, then I am as responsible as the thief.

A Jewish state could've been established peacefully somewhere out in Utah instead (or joined the millions of American Jews prospering safely in their communities), but Palestinians had their land taken instead.

Why? Racism, plain and simple. Like the Native Americans, the Palestinians were treated as mere savages who could be dispossessed without consequence.

You also can't expect to receive something that doesn't belong to you. Arabs were not natives on the historical Jewish lands. The offer to give them just anything was more than generous.

What does "historical lands" mean? What's the cut off point on being able to claim the land your ancestors lived on?

They were never an independent nation? What does that mean?

I'm taking that to mean that you think their not being officially recognized as a state makes outside decisions about what land was and wasn't there's more valid.

But I would posit that the idea of statehood that this relies on is based on a Westphalian ideal that is in colonial in this case. The people of Palestine were a nation and they had land of their own. The lack of official recognition by western powers doesn't change that.

Did "the world" agree that there was a need for a Jewish state? It seems that many people disagreed both then and now.

Why did it have to be built where it was? Because there was a Jewish population there? What changed for the population of Jews to change from less than 5% to almost half within the preceding century?

I'm on the side of Israel, since to a certain extent I believe in "Might is Right". Don't challenge to a fight you can't win. But to large extent every claim that Israel makes to the land, the Palestinians could make. Hasan Parker kind of changed my opinion on this.

But currently the left sees Jewish people as high status white people, using their status to get away with bloody murder. And you can't be racist agains white people...so the claim. The right is waiting for the rapture....and Israel will bring God back to earth ...or something crazy like that.

I personally think a practical approach needs to be taken.

Years before that, the Israelis waged war against the British.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_insurgency_in_Mandatory...

Mind you the Jewish helped the British to get to Palestine in the first place. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nili The British, like in many other colonies were bad rulers, and even so the majority of the Jewish population didn’t wage war on the Brits and waited patiently for the Mandate to be over

- The British offered land that didn't belong to them because of colonialism

- They offered land to Zionists to further their imperialist goals

- The British enabled Jewish immigration to Palestine when it was clear that Zionists intended to take over the entire territory of Palestine

- The local Arab population wasn't stupid and they understood that Zionism was an organized political program driven in large part by Jewish religious extremists to take away their home

That only some Zionists resorted to terrorist bombing campaigns against the British is hardly "patiently waiting".

They were only there because of the British and still waged war against them, mirroring Israel's refusal to heed US admonitions against illegal land grabs in the West Bank despite absolute dependence on American protection.

It's a client state that feels it can write the rules, steal what it wants and bites the hand that feeds it.

> The British offered land that didn't belong to them because of colonialism

I’m sorry, but the British mandate didn’t exist because of colonialism. It existed because it was at war with the Ottoman Empire during WWI and won territory. That is very different than colonialism even though it was a colonial power and that’s how it got its strength and military experience and might. The local Arab population hadn’t had sovereignty in many hundreds of years.

> They offered land to Zionists to further their imperialist goals

They offered the same land to both Zionists and local Arabs as a reward for helping overthrow the Ottoman Empire. Of course they kept it through the British Mandate cause the Brits are a crafty folk. As for actually honoring the agreement in 1948, a large part of legitimizing the state of Israel was because of what happened to Jews in WWII - atrocities no other people felt as deeply and the general populace was shocked into action when they learned what had been going on. Today’s Jewish population is still smaller than it was in 1939 for context. Half of all Jews worldwide are in Israel which I hope explains the emotional reaction of treating critiques and attacks on Israel as anti semitism (and of course that argument is weaponized for political purposes).

> That only some Zionists resorted to terrorist bombing campaigns against the British is hardly "patiently waiting".

By that line of reasoning, that only some Palestinians engage in terrorist attacks means that all Palestinians are guilty? For context, once the state of Israel was established the other groups were labeled terrorist organizations and were ordered to merge into the IDF. One group resisted and the IDF attacked it and defeated it. The same doesn’t seem to be happening with Hamas which despite being in power can barely even control other militant groups in the area. Is your suggestion to hand control over to Hamas? Cause you only have to look at what happened with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to understand what popular democracy looks like in the area (keep in mind Hamas was elected and then immediately abolished democracy).

The land didn't belong to British. Nor did it belong to Ottomans and nor to Arabs. The only rightful option for the defacto controllers of the land was to return it to Jews.

> Mind you the Jewish helped the British to get to Palestine in the first place.

So did the Arabs. Before revolting against the League of Nations mandate for British administration they were revolting against the Ottoman Empire - and fighting alongside the British (/French/Italian) Egyptian Expeditionary Force.

Yeah, it was a complicated relationship. But that example seems to support the original statement that "Israel was never tenable without war." First against the Ottomans, then the British, then the Arabs.

Speaking of the UN, if we are to take them as the international organization with primary legitimacy on these affairs, let's do a quick check in:

https://unwatch.org/un-general-assembly-condemns-israel-14-t....

What the hell does it have to do with the 1947 resolution??? And yeah the UN is full of countries that call for the inhalation of Israel today. They expect Israel to stay silent while its citizens are being slaughtered, kidnapped, raped and bombarded

This is almost entirely just plain false.

Einstein didn't want a Jewish state, he wanted a binational Jewish - Arab state. Basically one state solution without the apartheid.

He was also quite vocal on this https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYork...

There’s no apartheid in Israel. 20% of Israel’s citizens are Arab. There are Palestinian civilians who chose to live in a separatist area and refused time after time to recognise Israel and have their own state in the West Bank.

Suppose an atheist born in Gaza would like to move to Tel Aviv. What is required, short of conversion to Judaism?

Many people accuse Isreal in apartheid without realising at all what it means.

Do you for example know why Isreal built fenced borders in Gaza and West Bank?

In period between 2000-2005 over 700 Jewish civilians were killed in terrorist attacks coming from these territories.

Attacks basically stopped after the fences were built.

You do realize you didnt actually argue against it being apartheid? You repeated a victim narrative, a common method in fascist systems to normalize crimes against humanity.

Its really worth reading Einsteins notes on Israel.

"“When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations build [sic] up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people.”" https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/albert-einstein-the-p...

Should echo in the ears of everyone that ignored Trudeau warning

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/israel-s-gaza-campaign-puts-...

Murderous totalitarian regimes do not work. They quickly turn into mafia states. At its not something you end up in accidentally, its very visible by people falling back onto tribalistic narratives they prefer over reality.

Looking back at Einsteins letter from 1948, its worth remembering, that Hannah Arendt co-wrote it while being a Zionist. Anyone actually interested in a future for Israel should think really hard if revisionist Zionism is a way to achieve that.

> Israel was never tenable without war.

The territory assigned to Israel by the UN partition plan had a population that was 47% Palestinian. I wonder what was the thinking there- how did the UN envision the establishment of a Jewish state with almost 50% of non-Jewish citizens.

You broke the HN guidelines egregiously here. Please don't do that again.

Turning this thread into a flamewar about Israel, of all things, was beyond vandalism and approaching arson.

I agree with sbilstein that its odor is nasty as well.

(Edit: it turns out you've been breaking the site guidelines a great deal. We have to ban accounts that post like this, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on, that would be good. Please especially don't use multiple accounts to break HN's rules with.)

I have no idea about your intent, of course—we have to moderate by effects, not intent (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Turning this thread into a flamewar about Israel was the effect of what you posted, and you're responsible for that. If it wasn't what you intended, you should either have posted something entirely different or refrained from posting.

I have no memory of previous responses to you, nor do I recognize your username. If I've posted moderation comments in the past, it would be in exactly same way as I do toward any other user. None of this is personal.

This policy means that

A) Nobody can ever even so much as mention Israel.

B) To completely suppress speech about a topic on Hacker News, I only need about 5 accounts. Hacker News is completely vulnerable to a singular group's efforts to suppress topic discussion.

C) The effects of a completely innocuous post can punish the author.

Unless you believe I am a malicious mastermind, it's obvious that this ex post facto methodology of meteing out bans is ridiculousa and ineffective and mostly just a justification for your current emotional state.

HN has had many comments about Israel and related topics in the last few days. Difficult as the discussion is under current circumstances, not all of them were flamebait. Your comment was. Worse, it was a generic flamewar tangent—taking the discussion away from the historical material of the OP and into an ugly slugfest about an obvious flamewar topic.

Re B: if you're going to make a claim like that, you should supply links, so we can look into what happened, and so readers can make up their own minds.

But in any case B is irrelevant to whether or not you broke the site guidelines in this thread, which you certainly did—it's not a borderline call.