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'During' implies that it had already started; they weren't taking any actions against Germany prior to the German government trying to kill them!
I think that proves too much; does defending the existence of the Republic of Kenya mean defending the Lari massacre during the Mau Mau rebellion? Does defending the independence of Algeria mean defending the Oran massacre?
Furthermore, not defending Israel means placing the survival of the Jewish people dependent on the opinions of the Gentiles, unless a sovereign Jewish state exists elsewhere.
After the Shoah, the Jewish people resolved "Never Again!"; the meaning of this, as can be expected from anything in Jewish culture¹, is widely disputed; however, my understanding of it is something along the lines of "Never again will the goyim be in a position to tell us 'You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.'.".
This makes a 'bi-national one-state solution' unworkable, except under the following circumstances:
A Jewish-majority state exists elsewhere.
This state is a sovereign state; no more subject to the domestic laws of any other state than Israel is.
It has the capacity to support the population of Israel.
In your 'Jewish state in America' proposal, would these conditions hold?
Specifically, would the Jewish state in America be subject to U. S. immigration law, or would they have the legal right to admit even individuals whom 95% of the population of every U. S. State would prefer be turned away?
Would the Jewish state in America have access to the ocean, for a seaport and desalination not dependent on the permission of the U. S. Government?
Would they be subject to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or would they have the authority to build their own nuclear power plant to power said desalination without having to tear everything out and start over halfway through, and decide for themselves how to balance the risk of radioactive releases with the geopolitical risk of being dependent on importing water or electricity?
And if Netanyahu's government were removed from power and a new Israeli government were established in the pre-1967 territory, or at least the areas allocated to Israel under the U. N. partition plan....
They would; but the U. S. Government as a whole might be more reluctant; thus making significant the question of which one is making the decision!
¹I suspect this tendency might be behind some anti-Semitism, as it makes gaslighting the public more difficult; it is also one of the things I find most admirable in Jewish culture, as people's adherence to social consensus even at the cost of 'denying the evidence of their own eyes and ears' is an alarmingly common failure mode in society; we could all benefit from more people willing to stand up and say "Whaddya mean the Party says the sky is pink? Anyone can see it's blue! What do they know from colours anyway?".
And the paramilitary organisations that ended up becoming Israel were trying to kill Palestinians before Israel even existed.
Who cares? There are plenty of ethnicities who do not have a sovereign state of their own, and the Jews lasted for quite a while without one. I don't think it'd be that bad if they went wandering for another thousand years, given what they've done with the state that they actually got.
Most people in the world interpreted Never Again to mean that there would never be a targeted campaign of extermination on the basis of ethnicity ever again, not that the Jews would have a free pass to commit a holocaust themselves in order to secure more lebensraum.
Ask the Americans - I only raised that proposal as an alternative to my actual position, so I don't have particularly strong feelings on this topic. But that said... given the actions of Israel itself, I don't think they can be trusted to have a sovereign state of their own (have fun defending the actions of Ehud Barak) - they'd need a caretaker government for quite some time until things settled down. Personally I don't think they should have any kind of nuclear power at all, but I don't think anyone should have nuclear power (see my comments in other threads - it isn't a viable energy source, and I don't believe they should become a nuclear power besides). No problems with them setting up a nice big solar/wind farm though!
No, my actual proposal is that they simply become members of a restored Palestine with full franchise. I'm not an ethnic supremacist, and I don't support ethnic supremacism for jews either - they can live in a multicultural and multi-ethnic society like the rest of the world. Otherwise, they can get the same treatment that nazis and ethnic cleansers of any other ethnicity receive - and given that most of the jews I meet in person(at anti-zionist protests) don't fall into this category I'm not going to be persuaded that this is arguing for their ethnic cleansing.
And Palestinian Arabs were killing Jews even earlier. Haganah was founded following the 1920 Nebi Musa riots; Irgun was founded in 1931, two years after the Hebron massacre; Lehi wasn't founded until 1940!
(Also, re your previous comment, the 'Stern Gang' and 'Lehi' were the same organisation; listing both of them is redundant.)
...up until the post-WWI imposition of widespread migration controls. If the United States had let in the passengers on the MS St Louis, and those following in their footsteps, the impetus for a Jewish-majority state would have been greatly diminished.
In that case, I'll be happy to see you at the open-borders-for-every-country-including-Israel/Palestine/combination-thereof protest marches!
The actions of Benjamin Netanyahu, many of which I do not condone, nevertheless are not something for which future-Anne-Frank-times-six-million bears any culpability. It is her, and her 5,995,000 innocent compatriots, about whom I am concerned.
...actions which only occurred because people were trying to kill them. Mordechai didn't just attack Haman for no reason.
And given the events of the MS St Louis, the Nations can't be trusted without such a state!
In a sovereign Jewish state, that would be up to its citizens; however, I'm sure many of those citizens would agree with your position on that particular issue.
In that case, for 'NRC' substitute 'EPA' and for 'potential radioactive releases' substitute 'disruption of endangered desert fauna by solar panels and birds by wind turbines'.
I believe that that is a laudable long-term goal, and hope that is achieved someday; however, I doubt that all the necessary pre-conditions have been established, or that it would be appropriate, given the events of the II quarter of the XX century, for such to be imposed on the Jewish people from without.
A world with many multi-cultural multi-ethnic societies with no immigration controls, in which ethno-nationalism and restriction of immigration had long and continuously been outside the Overton Window, would, I suspect, find the people of Israel much more amenable to a one-state solution.
Unfortunately, many people do not make such distinctions.
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