The reason they haven't done it is simple; it's not their stated goal and it never has been.
Other than the frequent calls from high-level Israeli officials for a Final Solution for the Palestinian "problem", of course. No, the only reason they haven't killed every Palestinian who refuses to get off Palestinian land for the benefit of the Zionist project is the fact that even Israel's sugar daddy, the United States, would have to respond with force.
That's not islamophobia; it's history.
It's not antisemitism, it's Zionist entitlement for land that hasn't been theirs for thousands of years.
On the other hand, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood etc have jihad and extermination of the Jews in their charter.
That talking point has been making the rounds, lately. The problem with a big lie, though, is that repeating it doesn't make it true, it just makes you a bigger and more pathetic liar.
It's amazing how Hamas is responsible for where every unguided gunpowder rocket lands (even if they're arresting the people that actually fire them), but Israel has no responsibility for where their precise munitions land. Sure, they can hit a dime on the ground two kilometers away, but it's just too much to expect them not to hit schools and hospitals, sometimes multiple times!
You might remember that the author is affectionately referred to as Charles Kraphammer for a reason. Israel "negotiated" a cease fire with Egypt, who, as you know, they aren't at war with. It's like your neighbor coming across your property line to beat the shit out of you, and then making an agreement to stop beating the shit out of you with your other neighbor across the street. Oh, and then demanding that you give up almost half your remaining property for a buffer zone in response to a conflict he started.
Hamas hadn't fired any rockets since 2012, prior to being struck multiple times by Israel. That's not according to Hamas, but Israeli officials. What was Hamas doing? Arresting groups that did.
And all this in a rampage through Gaza for kidnappings in the West Bank when Israeli authorities knew pretty damned well that the kids were already dead, between the shots heard over a cell phone call to the car being found full of blood and bodies.
You're just another imperialist blaming the victims of imperialism.
Religion only figures into it as far as it being the justification for a bunch of immigrants from Europe and the U.S. moving to another continent and laying claim to all of the land in a certain territory from people of another faith.
Religion is no more central to this conflict than was Manifest Destiny or South African Apartheid.
What part of "there is no place in Gaza away from civilians" did you not understand?
Your writing indicates that you have an extremely warped view of morality.
You are extremely warped in projecting, hypocrisy, and morality. You would never say that the 911 attacks were justified because there were government offices in the WTC. Unless you do, in which case you are merely warped and amoral, instead of a warped amoral hypocrite.
Orchestrated and systemic Israeli propaganda. None of the violence committed by squatters or the IDF allows Palestinians to try and level entire regions of Israel, but the IDF is entitled to "mow the lawn" in Gaza, even if Hamas was busy arresting groups trying to fire rockets.
I thought you had started keeping your company to those too stupid and racist to see that your eliminationist propaganda falls apart at the merest scrutiny.
You seem to be arguing that Hamas can attack as much as it likes
Hey, racist fool, you're responding to a post that debunked the propaganda point you're trying to use. Not only were those rockets not fired by Hamas, but Hamas were the ones who arrested those who did.
It doesn't matter which faction did the firing, Hamas is the governing authority of Gaza, they are responsible.
Hey, racist fool, does that mean that Tel Aviv should be leveled in the same way as Gaza, because of murders committed by squatters in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and everywhere by the IDF? As the occupying power, Israel would be responsible.
Your argument about scaling Palestinian Arab deaths is nonsense. Who are the "Palestinians"? They are simply the Arabs that live in that area of the Middle East. The Middle East has well over 100,000,000 Arabs living in it. There is no scaling required to count deaths among the Arabs.
Hey, racist fool, by your own reasoning any violence against Jews in the Middle East doesn't count, because far more Jews live in the United States. Which racist, genocidal flag flies over you house, cold fjord?
The storyline put forth goes like so: this all started when Hamas kidnapped three teenagers and then killed them in June. Israel launched a search and rescue mission, and Hamas responded by firing rockets.
But it's all bullshit. The month before the teens were kidnapped, the IDF straight up murdered two Palestinian boys in the street. And the month before that Israel tried to provoke Hamas by murdering one of its members the same night that Hamas and Fatah announced a unity agreement. The day before the kidnapping, Israel murdered a member of Hamas they accused of planning rocket attacks. Despite Israel's repeated violations of it's own cease fire agreement with Hamas, the latter did not respond in kind. Finally, not only had Hamas not fired any rockets since the last time Israel violated a cease fire in 2012, it had helped arrest those who had.
But Bibi found the excuse he needed with the kidnappings of the three teenagers. Despite being pretty damned sure they were all dead - you can hear gunshots over one of the teens cell phones and the car was soon found full of blood and bullet casings - they spent weeks arresting Palestinians and bulldozing homes in Gaza for a kidnapping in the West Bank even after the Palestinian Authority was helping search for the missing teens. And even Israeli outlets admit that rockets were only fired in response to IDF attacks:
At least 16 rockets were fired at Israel Monday morning, most of them hitting open areas in the Eshkol region, the army said. The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.
Since then, a thousand Palestinians have died, many of them children, for which the population equivalent would be over 200,000 people getting killed in the U.S. If anyone is defending themselves, it's Hamas defending the people of Gaza from racist Israeli provocation and aggression.
They are perfectly capable of leveling Gaza and frankly have more than enough reason to do so.
Thank you for your honest in calling for a Final Solution instead of hedging around your desired goal. The only difference from you and a real life Nazi shitbag is your choice of targets, but at least you are up front about your racist thirst for genocide.
Hamas fires weapons in areas with civilians so that when Israel retaliates against the launch site they kill children.
"Human shields" is just about the most amoral sophistry ever invented to justify the mass slaughter of civilians by vastly more armed forces. There is no area in Gaza where there aren't large amount of people, as they are shoved into a tiny open air prison, by design. And there are many areas in Israel where IDF facilities and troops are near civilians - using the "human shields" argument of the sociopaths, you could carpet bomb most of Israel and blame the resulting slaughter on the Israeli government.
That "handful of pesky terrorists" happen to be the elected Palestinian government. This is what happens when people elect terror organizations as their representatives...
More like....lies repeated by those who are useful fools at best and racists at worst. The storyline put forth goes like so: this all started when Hamas kidnapped three teenagers and then killed them in June. Israel launched a search and rescue mission, and Hamas responded by firing rockets.
But it's all bullshit. The month before the teens were kidnapped, the IDF straight up murdered two Palestinian boys in the street. And the month before that Israel tried to provoke Hamas by murdering one of its members the same night that Hamas and Fatah announced a unity agreement. Despite Israel's repeated violations of it's own cease fire agreement with Hamas, no rockets were fired.
But Bibi found the excuse he needed with the kidnappings of the three teenagers. Despite being pretty damned sure they were all dead - you can hear gunshots over one of the teens cell phones and the car was soon found full of blood and bullet casings - they spent weeks arresting Palestinians and bulldozing homes in Gaza for a kidnapping in the West Bank even after the Palestinian Authority was helping search for the missing teens. And even Israeli outlets admit that rockets were only fired in response to IDF attacks:
At least 16 rockets were fired at Israel Monday morning, most of them hitting open areas in the Eshkol region, the army said. The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.
Since then, a thousand Palestinians have died, many of them children, for which the population equivalent would be over 200,000 people getting killed in the U.S. On the Israeli side, almost all of the ~35 deaths have been soldiers, with only three civilians dying, and only one via rocket. Scale and proportion? Get some.
So all the Jews should have just got back on their boats and left? This was during WWII. They should have just gone back to Germany (while we're on the topic of ovens), right? The whole conversation reads like a joke. I suppose the only way to solve the problem is to just get the Israelis to all lie down on their backs, open the gates, and just let their enemies in to kill them all.
You're in outer fucking space. I'll speak slowly and use small words: why did the events in Europe entitle settlers to move to a place that had nothing to do with Germany and lay claim to all the land and murder anyone that favored coexistence over the creation of a Jewish state on non-jewish land.
So, lets fix your horseshit analogy:
Jews: Can we stay here? We're kind of being exterminated* at home. Arabs: Sure Jews: Umm...okay. Now can we have all your land? British: We don't want any trouble. Jewish terrorists, please stop bombing us. Jews: Fuck you. And we'll take all the land and you'll like it. Arabs: How bout no. You colononialists can't just take our land without our consent.
The reason why Hamas rockets "didn't hit a single person" is because of a combination of interceptor systems, early launch detection, and well-developed civil defense in Israel.
Those helped, but nowhere near close to them being primitive gunpowder rockets based on the finest 14th Century hardware available. Even the IDF dismissed Qassams as any kind of military threat before Iron Dome was rolled out:
"Clearly everyone wants to be surrounded by concrete block, but we need to remember that Qassams are more a psychological than physical threat. Statistically they cause the fewest losses, and therefore we must develop prevention systems but not invest all the money in this aspect."
You seem to be arguing that if a guy attacks me with a knife on the street, I can't use any force to defend myself until he actually manages to land a stab on me. If that's your notion of "proportional response", it's bullshit.
There's the willful obtuseness again, as flatly ignoring the fact that the person with the knife here would be the IDF rampaging through Gaza in response to kidnappings in the West Bank. And if anyone is defending themselves, it's Hamas defending the Palestinians from the latest round of slaughter from the IDF.
Seriously, how do you manage to compare with the straight face of the killing of a single person (first qassam death since 2012) with 500+ deaths with a straight face?
Simple answer for a simple question: how could Israel poooosibly make a proportionate response?
using the same targeting principle (i.e. aim where the concentration of people is highest)?
i.e., not killing a single person until late in 2016. As opposed to the current round of mass slaughter that you're endorsing, one that is wiping out entire families at a time.
your response is, "Hate the Jews more. You're not hating them enough."
Yeah, right next to the part where you want Palestinians to be shoved into ovens.
/rolls eyes
I post a perfectly balanced view saying both sides
If we can get away from the lame straw men for a minute, claiming there are two sides is massively unbalanced. There is the oppressor and the oppressed. There are those who have stolen the land, and there are refugees. Claiming there are "two sides" here is as nonsensical as claiming there were "two sides" in South Africa, or during the Trail of Tears, for the same reasons.
Maybe you're an honest person, as opposed to a racist propagandist like cold fjord, and you haven't managed to pull your head out of the thick propaganda and revisionist history heaped onto all things I/P.
Mine used to be in a similar place, but at some point you just can't fucking do it any more. The current round of war crimes should do that for any person with a conscious or strain of empathy. How do three kidnappings in the West Bank justify a rampage through Gaza? Bulldozing homes, re-arresting prisoners freed in the Gilat trade, weeks after the Israeli government pretty much knew that the teens were dead. Bombing schools and hospitals, sometimes more than once, and killing over 500 people.
Which, if done here in the United States and adjusted for population, would be like 90,000 Americans dying from a foreign assault.
Some good history, some whataboutery, but what entitled 10% of the population, almost all of whom were immigrants from Europe, to carve a state out for themselves without the consent of the people already living there? That's the bottom line.
The problem with this is that no-one seems to be able to coherently explain what a proportional response should look like.
Sounds more like willful obtuseness. If the poor bastards in Gaza can afford some gunpowder and tubes, methinks one of the world's top five military powers could manage it.
But no-one is willing to actually lay out the proper response to the rockets step-by-step.
There would be no rockets if Israel hadn't responded to kidnappings in the West Bank with a rampage in Gaza, bulldozing homes and arresting people that could have had nothing to do with the three missing teens.
They're still aimed, it's just that the target area is very wide. But in most cases, those target areas are city centers.
And so deadly that they hadn't killed anyone in over two years. Give Hamas some guided munitions and I'm sure they'll happily aim them at the military planes sitting at civilian airports. Any civilians dying from those attacks would be the fault of the Israeli government, for making them human shields.
I consider Hamas leadership basically insane - it's clear that what they're doing is just plainly not working, and is only making things worse for them, but they're doing it anyway.
Fast death vs slow and brutal strangulation. And the fast deaths draw attention to Israel's war crimes, whereas the U.S. can cover up the slow strangulation with it's Security Council veto pen.
Where the king of Jordan was assassinated after he claimed ownership of the land? "Jordan is the Palestinian state" is one of the more pernicious myths on the issue.
Gaza belonged to Egypt?
You mean in Cleopatra's day? Gaza has never belonged to modern Egypt, and if you're referring to the time that it was administered by the Egyptian government, I suggest you look up the definitions of "own" and "administer".
Ah, the time honored racist deflection of blaming other nations for Israel's war crimes. Man, if only Turkey had kept Saddam in line, Bush wouldn't have had to start an illegal war that resulted in a million dead and a four million refugees! Damn those Turks!
I actually agree with this, but two things. Nearly 70 years have passed.
Two more things: Israel is free to pursue crimes and property lost before that. If only Palestinian lives had the same value as Jewish art stolen in the 30's.
And the theft of Palestinian land was hardly a one time event that happens almost a century ago; it's been a daily event as people who have lived there for hundreds of years are forced off their land to make way for new settlements.
The UN drew a line in the sand
The UN also stipulated that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return as a condition of Israeli statehood, a condition that Zionists have no intention of ever honoring.
Revisionist BS. War started because a small pack of terrorist colonialists fresh off the boat from Europe declared they owned almost all the land. Terrorists because they engaged in massacres and bombings and assassinations of those who favored peace with Arabs even if they were Jewish.
Slashdot Mirror
Other than the frequent calls from high-level Israeli officials for a Final Solution for the Palestinian "problem", of course. No, the only reason they haven't killed every Palestinian who refuses to get off Palestinian land for the benefit of the Zionist project is the fact that even Israel's sugar daddy, the United States, would have to respond with force.
It's not antisemitism, it's Zionist entitlement for land that hasn't been theirs for thousands of years.
That talking point has been making the rounds, lately. The problem with a big lie, though, is that repeating it doesn't make it true, it just makes you a bigger and more pathetic liar.
It's amazing how Hamas is responsible for where every unguided gunpowder rocket lands (even if they're arresting the people that actually fire them), but Israel has no responsibility for where their precise munitions land. Sure, they can hit a dime on the ground two kilometers away, but it's just too much to expect them not to hit schools and hospitals, sometimes multiple times!
You might remember that the author is affectionately referred to as Charles Kraphammer for a reason. Israel "negotiated" a cease fire with Egypt, who, as you know, they aren't at war with. It's like your neighbor coming across your property line to beat the shit out of you, and then making an agreement to stop beating the shit out of you with your other neighbor across the street. Oh, and then demanding that you give up almost half your remaining property for a buffer zone in response to a conflict he started.
Hamas hadn't fired any rockets since 2012, prior to being struck multiple times by Israel. That's not according to Hamas, but Israeli officials. What was Hamas doing? Arresting groups that did.
And all this in a rampage through Gaza for kidnappings in the West Bank when Israeli authorities knew pretty damned well that the kids were already dead, between the shots heard over a cell phone call to the car being found full of blood and bodies.
You're just another imperialist blaming the victims of imperialism.
Religion only figures into it as far as it being the justification for a bunch of immigrants from Europe and the U.S. moving to another continent and laying claim to all of the land in a certain territory from people of another faith.
Religion is no more central to this conflict than was Manifest Destiny or South African Apartheid.
What part of "there is no place in Gaza away from civilians" did you not understand?
You are extremely warped in projecting, hypocrisy, and morality. You would never say that the 911 attacks were justified because there were government offices in the WTC. Unless you do, in which case you are merely warped and amoral, instead of a warped amoral hypocrite.
Orchestrated and systemic Israeli propaganda. None of the violence committed by squatters or the IDF allows Palestinians to try and level entire regions of Israel, but the IDF is entitled to "mow the lawn" in Gaza, even if Hamas was busy arresting groups trying to fire rockets.
I thought you had started keeping your company to those too stupid and racist to see that your eliminationist propaganda falls apart at the merest scrutiny.
Hey, racist fool, you're responding to a post that debunked the propaganda point you're trying to use. Not only were those rockets not fired by Hamas, but Hamas were the ones who arrested those who did.
Hey, racist fool, does that mean that Tel Aviv should be leveled in the same way as Gaza, because of murders committed by squatters in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and everywhere by the IDF? As the occupying power, Israel would be responsible.
Hey, racist fool, by your own reasoning any violence against Jews in the Middle East doesn't count, because far more Jews live in the United States. Which racist, genocidal flag flies over you house, cold fjord?
The storyline put forth goes like so: this all started when Hamas kidnapped three teenagers and then killed them in June. Israel launched a search and rescue mission, and Hamas responded by firing rockets.
But it's all bullshit. The month before the teens were kidnapped, the IDF straight up murdered two Palestinian boys in the street. And the month before that Israel tried to provoke Hamas by murdering one of its members the same night that Hamas and Fatah announced a unity agreement. The day before the kidnapping, Israel murdered a member of Hamas they accused of planning rocket attacks. Despite Israel's repeated violations of it's own cease fire agreement with Hamas, the latter did not respond in kind. Finally, not only had Hamas not fired any rockets since the last time Israel violated a cease fire in 2012, it had helped arrest those who had.
But Bibi found the excuse he needed with the kidnappings of the three teenagers. Despite being pretty damned sure they were all dead - you can hear gunshots over one of the teens cell phones and the car was soon found full of blood and bullet casings - they spent weeks arresting Palestinians and bulldozing homes in Gaza for a kidnapping in the West Bank even after the Palestinian Authority was helping search for the missing teens. And even Israeli outlets admit that rockets were only fired in response to IDF attacks:
At least 16 rockets were fired at Israel Monday morning, most of them hitting open areas in the Eshkol region, the army said. The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.
Since then, a thousand Palestinians have died, many of them children, for which the population equivalent would be over 200,000 people getting killed in the U.S. If anyone is defending themselves, it's Hamas defending the people of Gaza from racist Israeli provocation and aggression.
Thank you for your honest in calling for a Final Solution instead of hedging around your desired goal. The only difference from you and a real life Nazi shitbag is your choice of targets, but at least you are up front about your racist thirst for genocide.
"Human shields" is just about the most amoral sophistry ever invented to justify the mass slaughter of civilians by vastly more armed forces. There is no area in Gaza where there aren't large amount of people, as they are shoved into a tiny open air prison, by design. And there are many areas in Israel where IDF facilities and troops are near civilians - using the "human shields" argument of the sociopaths, you could carpet bomb most of Israel and blame the resulting slaughter on the Israeli government.
It's evil bullshit propaganda from evil people.
Bill Maher, is that you? Still pretending your own shit doesn't stink?
More like....lies repeated by those who are useful fools at best and racists at worst. The storyline put forth goes like so: this all started when Hamas kidnapped three teenagers and then killed them in June. Israel launched a search and rescue mission, and Hamas responded by firing rockets.
But it's all bullshit. The month before the teens were kidnapped, the IDF straight up murdered two Palestinian boys in the street. And the month before that Israel tried to provoke Hamas by murdering one of its members the same night that Hamas and Fatah announced a unity agreement. Despite Israel's repeated violations of it's own cease fire agreement with Hamas, no rockets were fired.
But Bibi found the excuse he needed with the kidnappings of the three teenagers. Despite being pretty damned sure they were all dead - you can hear gunshots over one of the teens cell phones and the car was soon found full of blood and bullet casings - they spent weeks arresting Palestinians and bulldozing homes in Gaza for a kidnapping in the West Bank even after the Palestinian Authority was helping search for the missing teens. And even Israeli outlets admit that rockets were only fired in response to IDF attacks:
Since then, a thousand Palestinians have died, many of them children, for which the population equivalent would be over 200,000 people getting killed in the U.S. On the Israeli side, almost all of the ~35 deaths have been soldiers, with only three civilians dying, and only one via rocket. Scale and proportion? Get some.
You're in outer fucking space. I'll speak slowly and use small words: why did the events in Europe entitle settlers to move to a place that had nothing to do with Germany and lay claim to all the land and murder anyone that favored coexistence over the creation of a Jewish state on non-jewish land.
So, lets fix your horseshit analogy:
Jews: Can we stay here? We're kind of being exterminated* at home.
Arabs: Sure
Jews: Umm...okay. Now can we have all your land?
British: We don't want any trouble. Jewish terrorists, please stop bombing us.
Jews: Fuck you. And we'll take all the land and you'll like it.
Arabs: How bout no. You colononialists can't just take our land without our consent.
Those helped, but nowhere near close to them being primitive gunpowder rockets based on the finest 14th Century hardware available. Even the IDF dismissed Qassams as any kind of military threat before Iron Dome was rolled out:
"Clearly everyone wants to be surrounded by concrete block, but we need to remember that Qassams are more a psychological than physical threat. Statistically they cause the fewest losses, and therefore we must develop prevention systems but not invest all the money in this aspect."
There's the willful obtuseness again, as flatly ignoring the fact that the person with the knife here would be the IDF rampaging through Gaza in response to kidnappings in the West Bank. And if anyone is defending themselves, it's Hamas defending the Palestinians from the latest round of slaughter from the IDF.
Seriously, how do you manage to compare with the straight face of the killing of a single person (first qassam death since 2012) with 500+ deaths with a straight face?
Simple answer for a simple question: how could Israel poooosibly make a proportionate response?
i.e., not killing a single person until late in 2016. As opposed to the current round of mass slaughter that you're endorsing, one that is wiping out entire families at a time.
Yeah, right next to the part where you want Palestinians to be shoved into ovens.
/rolls eyes
If we can get away from the lame straw men for a minute, claiming there are two sides is massively unbalanced. There is the oppressor and the oppressed. There are those who have stolen the land, and there are refugees. Claiming there are "two sides" here is as nonsensical as claiming there were "two sides" in South Africa, or during the Trail of Tears, for the same reasons.
Maybe you're an honest person, as opposed to a racist propagandist like cold fjord, and you haven't managed to pull your head out of the thick propaganda and revisionist history heaped onto all things I/P.
Mine used to be in a similar place, but at some point you just can't fucking do it any more. The current round of war crimes should do that for any person with a conscious or strain of empathy. How do three kidnappings in the West Bank justify a rampage through Gaza? Bulldozing homes, re-arresting prisoners freed in the Gilat trade, weeks after the Israeli government pretty much knew that the teens were dead. Bombing schools and hospitals, sometimes more than once, and killing over 500 people.
Which, if done here in the United States and adjusted for population, would be like 90,000 Americans dying from a foreign assault.
Some good history, some whataboutery, but what entitled 10% of the population, almost all of whom were immigrants from Europe, to carve a state out for themselves without the consent of the people already living there? That's the bottom line.
Sounds more like willful obtuseness. If the poor bastards in Gaza can afford some gunpowder and tubes, methinks one of the world's top five military powers could manage it.
There would be no rockets if Israel hadn't responded to kidnappings in the West Bank with a rampage in Gaza, bulldozing homes and arresting people that could have had nothing to do with the three missing teens.
And so deadly that they hadn't killed anyone in over two years. Give Hamas some guided munitions and I'm sure they'll happily aim them at the military planes sitting at civilian airports. Any civilians dying from those attacks would be the fault of the Israeli government, for making them human shields.
Fast death vs slow and brutal strangulation. And the fast deaths draw attention to Israel's war crimes, whereas the U.S. can cover up the slow strangulation with it's Security Council veto pen.
Can you try that again, but without the revisionist lies this time?
The ones that are revisionist fantasy?
Where the king of Jordan was assassinated after he claimed ownership of the land? "Jordan is the Palestinian state" is one of the more pernicious myths on the issue.
You mean in Cleopatra's day? Gaza has never belonged to modern Egypt, and if you're referring to the time that it was administered by the Egyptian government, I suggest you look up the definitions of "own" and "administer".
Ah, the time honored racist deflection of blaming other nations for Israel's war crimes. Man, if only Turkey had kept Saddam in line, Bush wouldn't have had to start an illegal war that resulted in a million dead and a four million refugees! Damn those Turks!
Two more things: Israel is free to pursue crimes and property lost before that. If only Palestinian lives had the same value as Jewish art stolen in the 30's.
And the theft of Palestinian land was hardly a one time event that happens almost a century ago; it's been a daily event as people who have lived there for hundreds of years are forced off their land to make way for new settlements.
The UN also stipulated that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return as a condition of Israeli statehood, a condition that Zionists have no intention of ever honoring.
Revisionist BS. War started because a small pack of terrorist colonialists fresh off the boat from Europe declared they owned almost all the land. Terrorists because they engaged in massacres and bombings and assassinations of those who favored peace with Arabs even if they were Jewish.
Lame rationalizations for racist colonialism and a sense of entitlement to other people's lands is lame. And racist.