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Should one be allowed to have a national state if that national state is an ethnostate, practices apartheid, and commits genocide? I'm seriously asking because that is a standard I would hold any country to. And I don't see how it means that "Jewish people can't have a homeland", just that it's unacceptable to build a homeland on the mass graves of the natives.

and it must restrain itself impeccably when fighting against terrorists with human shields.

Ridiculous. How does that single out Israel? No other nation shoots through 30 members of a single family to kill a "terrorist". How are Israel held to a different standard?

Sounds to me like a genocidal excuse fantasy.

and it must restrain itself impeccably when fighting against terrorists with human shields.

A base level of restraint would be fucking fantastic. Israel has killed more journalists in the past 10 weeks than ANYONE has EVER killed in a whole year. They dropped more bombs in a single week than America dropped in an entire year fighting ISIS, and in an area the size of a city. Calling it self defense is whitewashing intentional genocide.

Zionism has had a long and troubled history by this point, and I don't even know much below the surface. I'll tell you right up front I view Israel as an apartheid state and I'm not even a leftist. It's just right out there in the open, for anyone to see.

Here in the US, we have a Christian Nationalism movement that would love to set up exactly what Israel has in "The American Redoubt", also known as "Greater Idaho".

Fucking terrifies me and my property isn't even in their sights for conquest. Building a nation state along ethnic or religious boundaries is wrong in my opinion. I hold that opinion because I'm an American who believes in immigration, mixing of races, and freedom for all. Just the phrase "Jewish nation" makes my skin crawl.

quick edit: of course, all the ethnostates surrounding Israel are immoral in my view also.

Israel has no right to exist where it does right now. No group of people has a right to force others out of their homes to establish a nation for themselves. By your logic if all peoples have a right to establish a nation wherever they see fit then the Roma people can justifiably show up in tel aviv tomorrow and start conquering the place since they have no nation of their own

Please explain to me what "existential threat" is being posed to you by the children being murdered in Palestine?

I think you're conflating 2 other things: Religion and culture.

Jews as a religion should absolutely not be allowed their own nation state, just as Islam shouldn't and Christianity certainly shouldn't either. In fact, there should be no religion-states at all. One of the fundamental values in democratic societies is freedom of religion; people should be allowed to believe whatever religion they want. Any state that interferes with that right is in violation of one of the basic human rights, and a religion-state is by definition violating that right.

Jews as a culture should absolutely be allowed their own nation state, in fact, that's what Israel is. Such a state is indeed allowed to have interests, but "exterminating all non-Jews in the country" isn't a legitimate interest. In fact, you'll recall that a world war was triggered because a country wanted to exterminate a specific ethnic / religious group not only within their borders but also in their neighbors' country. Such a state is also allowed to defend itself, but I think it's normal for a persecuted people to resort to terrorism when other avenues for ending their persecution failed. That doesn't give the right to the persecuter to persecute even more. You'll note that we also heavily criticize the US for their "war on terrorism", and rightly so. Gaza is also not an existential threat to Israel the way Russia is to Ukraine either. There's a world of difference between the 2 conflicts.

So yeah, I guess I agree with you in part (there's a difference between Jews in general and the Israeli government), but I really disagree with you on the "Jewish nation" part.

That said, I'm just a random dude from the other side of the world, and I don't know anything about the specifics of the situation in the country, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Indeed, in other words, just as the IDF is racist against Palestinians