#yes there are absolutely many useful and productive ways to analyze israel by viewing it as a colonial ethnostate like many other

[seductivejellyfish]

Making this post against my better judgement but:

It is 100% true that decolonization does not have to include mass expulsion and/or revenge and those are scare tactics and false flags used by colonizing powers to prevent decolonization actions.

However, it is ignorant, willful or accidentally, to ignore the history of Jews as a group specifically when imagining the future for Jews in the middle east after Palestine is freed.

White people in the US, for example do not have a legitimate reason to fear that they will be expelled from their homes in the event of landback successes. That fear is manufactured and based on nothing.

Jews absolutely have reason to fear that they will be expelled from their homes in most countries in the world. That fear is more or less legitimate in various places due to a variety of factors, but it is not built on nothing, it is built on the history of Jews being expelled from nearly every country in the world, and a current state of the world that is still rife with antisemitism.

The region around Palestine is not on the whole wholly hostile to the state of Israel because of humanitarian support for the people of Palestine. That is absolutely a large part of the motivation for action for many people in the region and around the world, but on the governmental level, many of these countries are also deeply antisemitic and have eliminated the Jewish populations of their own countries.

It is reasonable and logical, not invented, for a Jew to fear expulsion from their home in the middle east without a Jewish state to protect them.

That does not mean that Palestinians want to force Jews out, kill them all, etc. Those are still false flag claims to discredit the movement.

It also does not mean that Jewish safety should ever come at the cost of Palestinian lives and safety. Palestine must be freed, and it is not on the suffering Palestinians to reassure Jews that they won't be 'taking revenge' or anything like that. It also doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any physical returning of home and lands - there absolutely must be.

But it it disingenuous to compare the situation precisely to other decolonization situations in this respect and gets in the way of communication. The Jewish fear of expulsion is not a fear built on nothingness and guilt, though those of course contribute to the fervor of that feeling among settler Israelis. Jews have real historical and current reasons to fear expulsions from governments of the world, even if they do not have immediate reasons to fear mass expulsions from a specifically Palestinian government.

And a second time, for good measure: It also does not mean that Jewish safety should ever come at the cost of Palestinian lives and safety.