Anti-Zionism Is Deadlier Than Antisemitism

[Stargleamer]

12. Much to be disputed here

"Saying that Israel stole the land is tantamount to saying Israel does not have a right to exist". No it isn't. I live in the US on land that was stolen from indigenous people. Acknowledging a crime doesn't mean that the thieves and/or country that stole necessarily no longer have a right to exist.

"Jews did not steal anything". This is not the case. As well as dispossessing Palestinians, there are indications that the Zionists had disregard for human rights--from Amnesty International's Report, "Israel's apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/ ) ":

"Until 1948, the total land purchased by Jewish individuals and institutions in mandate Palestine amounted
to about 1.6 million dunams (160,000 hectares), constituting around 6.5% of its total area.475 Palestinians
owned about 90% of the privately owned land in the territory.476 At that time, Jews comprised around 30%
of the population and Palestinians around 70%. Within the relatively short period of just over 70 years, a
deliberate Israeli state policy has reversed this situation, often using brutal means, to ensure Jewish Israeli
control over resources.

"Since 1948 the Israeli state has enforced massive and cruel land seizures to dispossess and exclude
Palestinians from their land and homes. Although Palestinians in Israel and the OPT are subjected to
different legal and administrative regimes, Israel has used similar land expropriation measures across all
territorial domains under the Judaization policy. This seeks to maximize Jewish control over land while
effectively restricting Palestinians to living in separate, densely populated enclaves. It does not completely
block Palestinian citizens of Israel from moving to predominantly Jewish localities, as demonstrated by
the fact that some mainly young Palestinians have done so, at least in recent years, but it has managed to
minimize their presence there. This policy has been continuously pursued in Israel since 1948 in areas of
strategic importance that include a significant Palestinian population such as the Galilee and the Negev/
Naqab, and has been extended to the OPT following Israel’s military occupation in 1967. Today, ongoing
Israeli efforts to coerce the transfer of Palestinians in the Negev/Naqab, East Jerusalem and Area C of the
West Bank under discriminatory planning and building regimes are the “new frontiers of dispossession” of
Palestinians, and the manifestation of the strategy of Judaization and territorial control.474 The land regime
established soon after Israel’s creation, which was never dismantled, remains a crucial tool in these efforts.

While much of the seizure of Palestinian land and property and the destruction of their villages inside Israel
occurred in the late 1940s and 1950s, massive and racially motivated dispossessions continued into the
1970s. The effects continue to severely impact Palestinians. They are still excluded from their families’ lands, prohibited from accessing and using land and property that belonged to them or their families in 1948,
discriminated against in access to resources, and effectively restricted to living in enclaves within the state.
Indeed, the definition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and the commitment to Jewish settlement
of the land has precluded any possibility of Palestinians enjoying equality in access to land, property and
resources, with disastrous consequences for their enjoyment of social and economic rights. It has also
contributed to the isolation and exclusion of Palestinian citizens from Israeli society, marking them as a
group with perpetual lesser rights and with no right to claim access to lands and properties that have been
in their families for generations. In this way, it has segregated Palestinian citizens of Israel in a particularly
cruel manner. This process continues until today, and was most recently reaffirmed by the 2018 nation state
law (see section 5.1 “Intent to oppress and dominate the Palestinian people”), which reiterated that Israel
views “the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and shall act to encourage and promote its
establishment and strengthening.”

The Development Authority was responsible for “developing” the State of Israel through the use of
Palestinian property. It settled immigrant Jewish families in Palestinian refugees’ houses and made
land available to state authorities for the development of new Jewish localities. The 1950 Development
Authority Law authorized the Development Authority to own, sell, lease, build and renovate property,
and conduct property transactions only with the state, the JNF/KKL or a body that was authorized for
this purpose by the state, such as municipal authorities."