Well when they decide to make their 'safe haven' where people already live, there will be inevitable conflicts. Israel was founded on Anti-Semitism. Specifically: Anti-Semitism against Arabs, the largest Semitic group in the world. With their colonization of Palestine and continued ethnic cleansing and occupation, they incited wars with their Arab cousins.
So you're saying Israel was founded on a Jewish hate or prejudice against Arabs? You know what, you're right. When Herzl gathered Jews around and talked about a Jewish homeland it was because it was predicated on a hate for Arabs and he wanted to wipe out all Palestinians. Oh, wait, that wasn't it. He gathered Jews around and discussed a homeland initiative because of the rising anti-Semitism in Europe that saw Jews cordoned off into Ghettos and periodically slaughtered in pogroms…yes, yes, I think that's it. I think I read that somewhere.
Mind you, the Arabs and Muslims have , (many of which have Semitic, possibly even Jewish backgrounds) have lived in the region far longer than the colonizers of Eastern European origin, and their empires have lasted longer than even the ancient Jewish kingdoms.
This is fallacious rhetoric. Israel is home to Jews of all origins, not just "colonizers of Eastern European origin" (getting dangerously close to some Ashkenazi prejudice there, but you're clever enough to cover your tracks). Sephardic Jews are a large number there too, and Israel's purpose isn't to exist for a specific subordinate populace of Jews, it exists so that Jews who are persecuted have a place to go, a notion that was anathema in the early 1900s when the initiative was raised.
Because of the foundation of the "Jewish" state of Israel, Israel has ethnically cleansed over 700,000 Arabs, stolen their lands, blamed them for leaving, denied their right to return, and have now contributed to an over 5 Million Palestinian refugee problem and want to force their Arab neighbors to host them. Those that continue to stay in their lands are subjected to some of the most medieval methods of persecution known to man, including collective punishment and making it a criminal offense to lie about your ethnicity during sex. So yes, Kerry is absolutely right, you can't be a religious state and a secular democratic one.
As for the issue of 'safe havens,' Eastern European Jews who founded Israel in the heart of the Arab world rejected offers to have 'safe havens' in Uganda, in Texas (actual lands proposed to be given to them) and also seem to forget that America hosts almost the same amount of Jews as Israel does, if not more thanks to dual citizenship status with the US, and some European and Asian countries.
Your argument doesn't hold up. If it pretends that Arabs didn't exist in Palestine, it will continue with it's apartheid until it becomes a true Pariah state.
Ah, yes, a page in this topic is incomplete without one of your well-researched but poorly thought out and even more poorly argued diatribes. Firstly, Jews rejected the land in Uganda and the USA specifically because they didn't want to be a guest population in a host country. That dynamic is precisely why they were confined to ghettos, murdered in pogroms, and eventually gassed in concentration camps. They stipulated Israel because they had historic claim to it, and they wanted to be in control of their own land and policy. Germany was a place where Jews could live relatively safely for several hundred years, until it wasn't. They wanted to avoid being at the mercy of a host nation's tolerance and charity precisely to avoid the occurrence of something like Nazi Germany. Do you even understand how politics works in the real world? Land doesn't belong to those who live on it, it belongs to those who enforce their claim on it.
You keep coming in here and using morally reprehensible acts Israel has committed as logic for why Israel shouldn't have been founded nearly a hundred years ago now. Retrospectively arguing against a decision with current knowledge is an epistemic fallacy; stop doing it, it makes you look ignorant and biased.
My argument holds up just fine, because I live in the real world, not in your idealistic utopia where we get to go back in time and preemptively punish people for acts their state will commit in the future. You lament the fact that Palestinians are "subjected to some of the most medieval methods of persecution known to man" - Jews having endured that treatment for going on over 2000 years is precisely why Israel exists and must exist.
This doesn't negate the Jewish right to return, however, it also must coincide with the continual existence of Arab speaking multi-ethnic people who continue to reside there. Israel MUST be a pluralistic, secular democracy.
I'd prefer if it was, but no, Israel doesn't have to be a pluralistic and secular democracy the same way Vatican City doesn't have to. Israel exists to protect the existential rights of Jews and represents their interest to not have their synagogues burned down every month or their kids assaulted in the streets, it doesn't have to cede any of its religious or ethnic identity the same way the Vatican doesn't have to. Making it seem like Israel is "just another country" is either deliberately ignorant or willfully naive. I don't think you really believe Israel should be a pluralistic democracy for the sake of the Palestinians though, I think you argue that point because you know how Jews being on equal/weaker footing to another population eventually pans out, and that's your angle.
Don't bother replying to any of this, I know better than to converse with someone who's as unreasonable as you are and seemingly has no grasp on the historical context that made the creation of Israel a moral necessity.
