"In 1675, the native tribes of New England refused to accept a partition of the land, and decided to wage war against Christians (who accepted the plan) to remove them from the map. They were 100% certain to be able to do so, and nobody bet a penny on the Christians winning at 1 vs. 10. They never stopped trying to do so since that date. Now you can try to blame it on the Christians on X, but HN is an educated forum. Those kinds of arguments won't fly here."

I'm sure you can find ten reasons why my above little story is wrong. They're the exact same reasons your little story is wrong. To name a few:

1. The Zionists / Europeans were trying to colonize Arab / Native American land. They were the aggressors in a very fundamental sense. Asking for the native population to "partition" the land amounts to demanding that they cede part of their homeland to you.

2. The conflict has nothing to do with Judaism or antisemitism. By framing it in that way, you're trying to draw a connection to the Holocaust and the history of persecution of Jews in Europe. But in this situation, the Zionists just happened to be Jewish, but that was totally irrelevant for the Arab population of Palestine. What the native population cared about was that an outside group - it didn't matter who - was trying to come in and take over the land.

3. And contrary to your framing, the Zionists were the group that held the upper hand, for a whole number of reasons that apply across the colonial world. In Palestine, they weren't some little oppressed minority. They had more resources, better education, were better organized, and had the backing of the imperial rulers of Palestine, the British.

4. The Arabs were the underdogs in the 1948 war. This runs completely counter to Israeli national mythology, but the fact is that the Israelis had a larger, better trained and better equipped army. They had military training from the British. They had funding from a significant foreign base of donors. They were able to purchase large amounts of weaponry from Czechoslovakia. The Palestinians themselves never stood a chance against the Zionists / Israelis. The Arab states only intervened after the Zionists had begun carrying out mass expulsions and other atrocities against the Palestinian civilian population. From the point of view of the Arab world, they were attempting to save their brothers from vicious foreign colonizers. You present it as if "the Jews," by which you actually mean the Zionists in Palestine, were in a fight for survival. But that's like saying that a guy who walks into a bar and starts punching people wildly is in a fight for his own survival. It might be true, but he got himself into that situation.

I don't think you know much about jewish history. Not even the very beginning, as in "where does this name come from".

All the rest follows. Really, you should start from the very beginning.

About israel, you're probably reading the pov of a fringe minority that only sounds plausible because people analyze the past in today's context. Israel was many times on the brinks of defeat in the multiple wars that followed. Only since the fall of the soviet union did it become clear they were here to stay and started to build unmatched military superiority.

I know a fair bit about Jewish history, given that I'm generally interested in history and am Jewish myself.

The "fringe minority" POV that I'm reading is the mainstream historiography on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the standard works by Israeli historian Benny Morris.

> Israel was many times on the brinks of defeat in the multiple wars that followed. Only since the fall of the soviet union did it become clear they were here to stay and started to build unmatched military superiority.

This is a completely false and indefensible take on the history. Israel showed massive military superiority over the Arab states in 1967, when it defeated them in a matter of days, and it has been backed by the world's top superpower since then. Israel has been the only nuclear power in the Middle East since the 1960s. Its closest brush with defeat was in 1973, but it still managed to turn that around (with massive American aid), and has never faced any serious military threat since. Israel walked all over Lebanon in the 1980s, and nearly every Israeli war since then has had the same character: they've almost all been wars against small militant groups, not even other states. The only exception was the recent war Israel initiated against Iran, but even there, all Iran could do was lob missiles from a distance while Israel pummeled Iran from the air almost unchecked.

As I said, a major part of Israeli mythology is the idea that Israel is the scrappy underdog that manages to pull off miracles. But that is really just mythology. The reality is quite different, and Israel has had a distinct military advantage in every conflict it has ever fought, going back to its founding.

the "new historians" movement isn't standard by any mean, and their work is tainted by ideology and ubris in every step.

It's easy now to say that israel had "distinct advantages". But in the context of the cold war, with a tenth of the soldier, fighting against 4 countries, completely surrounded, you'd have to be crazy to consider yourself having a clear advantage.

Jews that lived through the 1960s/70s period distinctly remember how every war had everybody wonder if israel would survive any longer.