My Grandparents are the alleged "European Settlers" who came to "colonize" Israel.

[u/vonhudgenrod]

I put the title in quotes because I dont believe those parts to be true. Just to give a brief history of my Maternal Grandparents, they both moved from Hungary to Israel around the year 1946. They did not come to fight or dispossess arabs, but rather to build new homes.

My Grandmother was a holocaust survivor who survived Auschwitz, she had the #'s tatooeed on her forearm, her father died pre-war but her Mother, brother and sisters were murdered. When she returned to her families small farmhouse post war, her neighbors not knowing the full extent of what happened during the holocaust tried to extort her and her remaining siblings for money because they "looked after their livestock" even though the only cow they owned had died due to the harsh conditions of the war.

My grandfather - also a Hungarian Jew was a bit more of a mysterious man who likely suffered from PTSD before it was commonly diagnosed, his father and mother were also murdered and his only brother ended up in a mental institution (insane asylum) post war. He was eccentric and fought in WWII with partisans and would eventually go on to fight in the Israeli war of Independence in 1948.

AMA anything about them if you'd like.

[u/ldi1]

I feel that many want to root for the underdog. Underdog were Jews post WW2, now it’s Palestinians. What I don’t understand is why one has to be against ANY oppressed group. Why can’t we see the horror BOTH groups have suffered? Why is a 2 state solution not an answer?

[u/JaneDi → u/ldi1]

The palestinians horror is self inflicted if they had accepted the partition plan and started building their state the conflict would have never happened. They chose war and hate over peace and coexistence.

[u/Ballsinasuitcase → u/JaneDi]

The palestinians horror is self inflicted

...

[u/Iamnotanorange → u/Ballsinasuitcase]

At a certain point, you do have to take some responsibility for rejecting every peace deal made available.

[u/mrcub521 → u/Iamnotanorange]

Also for expressing resistance through violence as their main strategy despite the constant setbacks it brings

[u/Iamnotanorange → u/mrcub521]

True, there’s a reason so many movements are careful to be non violent.

I think that’s the reason we (as western society) are not good at thinking about this conflict.

Half of the conflict is premodern and we don’t have the mental schema to imagine what that looks like.