King David Hotel Bombing - Terrorist Attack or Not?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

If it wasn't terrorism, then the term 'terrorism' has no meaning.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

It was a British mandate, meaning that the British had every right, and a moral responsibility to police it. No doubt if we just cleared out after 1945 you'd attack us for not intervening, and helping.

No, the British had absolutely no right to be there in the first place. Not in 1929, not in 1936, not in 1945 and certainly not in 1948.

If there had been no British mandate in Palestine, there never would have been Jewish emigration to Palestine on anything like the scale there was in the interwar years.  The options for the area following the Great War were either a British mandate or an Arab government which would have been even less welcoming to Jewish immigration than the British were.  An independent Jewish homeland c. 1920 was not achievable at all.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

If there had been no British mandate in Palestine, there never would have been Jewish emigration to Palestine on anything like the scale there was in the interwar years.  The options for the area following the Great War were either a British mandate or an Arab government which would have been even less welcoming to Jewish immigration than the British were.  An independent Jewish homeland c. 1920 was not achievable at all.

This is true, but it hardly legitimizes British colonization of the area, and much less their conduct in the area. Besides, it is not as if it was evident that there would be a Jewish state, since the British commitment to this idea seemed very shaky. Jewish fighters had to liberate the country.

Liberate a country from the people who were living there?  That's sort of like saying America was liberated from the Indians or that Britain was liberated from the Celts.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Liberate a country from the people who were living there?

No.

And since I have basic self-respect as a Jew, I'm not willing to engage in discussions with you on my people's indigenous rights to the Land of Israel, and this you know very well already. Besides, this thread is not even about (modern) Zionism in a more general sense, and neither was your initial remark to which I replied.

I'll agree our opinions of Zionism are widely divergent, which is why in my initial reply I limited myself to pointing out that the available alternatives circa 1920 to a British mandate would have been even less desirable from your point of view.  However, I'm not going to let go unchallenged the misuse of the word "liberation" to describe what Zionism, especially modern Zionism, entails.  There are a number of other terms that are accurate, not all of which are negative, but liberation is not one of them.  If Zionism had been limited to securing independence for existing pre-1918 Jewish communities, then it would have a right to be described as a liberation ideology.  But Zionism historically and currently is far more expansive than that.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

"Liberation of Jews" is not the same as "Liberation of Eretz Yisrael" unless one holds to the Zionist mythology of Palestine being a largely abandoned place in the 19th century waiting to be filled by the jewish diaspora.  Underdeveloped to be sure, but hardly unpeopled.  One of the difficulties the Zionist movement has faced is being a colonial movement that took place just as colonialism was falling out of fashion politically to be replaced by nationalism.  The lukewarm commitment of Britain to Zionism in the interwar era is due in part to that.  I'm quite sympathetic to the idea of a Jewish homeland, but unlike DavidB, not with regard of the existing inhabitants of whatever area it was established in. (Tho a Jewish state carved out of Germany after World War II, say with a capital in ex-Nuremberg, would meet my sense of justice.)

As for me liking Jews only as subservient inferiors, perhaps DavidB is transferring views he may hold about the Arabs to me. I think one would have to view Arabs as inferior to Jews to think that Zionism is about "liberating" the land.

I love how this thread went from denying a terrorist act to denying that Jews lived in the region of what is now Israel.

I don't deny that they were there, but for close to two millennia they were far from being the majority in that region.  Even now, demographically, Israel can't incorporate all the area it wants to control within its borders and remain a Jewish democracy unless it somehow could manage to expel a sizable portion of the Arabs living there now.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I don't even respond to IndyTexas' stupidity.

I did.  I reported it.  That sort of language he used about the Yemeni Jews has no place on this forum.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Indy, it often is the case that one man's terrorists are another man's freedom fighters, which is why tho I strongly disagree with those who don't think this bombing was a terrorist attack, I can respect what causes them to so think.  I have no respect for what caused you to make your "joke".

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I'm quite sympathetic to the idea of a Jewish homeland, but unlike DavidB, not with regard of the existing inhabitants of whatever area it was established in. (Tho a Jewish state carved out of Germany after World War II, say with a capital in ex-Nuremberg, would meet my sense of justice.)

Except a "Jewish" state thought up by Gentiles, its location chosen by gentiles, and built by gentiles wouldn't actually be a Jewish state, it would be a gentile state with Jews living in it to salve a guilty conscience. And furthermore, it treats the necessity of a Jewish national movement as something originating from the Holocaust, when in actuality it is anything but; virulent anti-semitism existed far before the Holocaust- indeed it would make just as much sense to set up a state in modern day Russia/Ukraine, except they won the war. Regardless, whatever you may think, Zionism is not supposed to be "revenge" on those that wronged the Jews; that in itself would be anti-Zionist.

Anyway, I'm not a fan of this reasoning (though I'm sure DavidB is, but it also would make sense to set up  a Jewish state where the original state-sponsored anti-semitism occurred- this would of course be the various anti-semitic crimes perpetrated by the Romans and those that came before them in Israel.

As I already stated, millennia old claims not backed up by more recent events don't hold sway with me. Palestine has not been a part of the Roman, Selucid, Babylonian, Assyrian, or Egyptian empires in quite some time. Maybe if Victor Emanuel had gotten his wish for Palestine to be an Italian mandate after the Great War your Roman idea would have a shred of merit, but even if that impossibility had occurred, justice does not involve taking an area inhabited by one group of people to a second group of people for the crimes of a third group of people. Absent the reason of restitution, there is no just reason for depriving a people of the land they inhabit.

In any case, the area is a mess; it will remain a mess for the immediate future; and while I hope the bloody end of Israel that I think will happen in a century or two when it collapses like the Crusader States of a millennium ago can be avoided, I doubt it. This looks to be a classic case of Santayana's maxim in action, but nothing we have to say will affect that.