Reply #40: thx for the response but there are so many errors in your post - where to begin?

[shira]

You ask, did it have to be Palestine where Jews went? Well where else could Jews go at the time? There were already Jews in Palestine. It's where the Jewish homeland used to be and it was where Jews had always longed to be. It was very sparsely populated in the 19th century. Not 'empty' but not at all heavily populated. It was ruled quite brutally by the Ottoman Turks until around 1916-17. It's insane to argue that Jews of that time had any notions of 'stealing' land or dispossessing or tossing out anyone. The Turks didn't consider the Jews a threat in any way. And neither did the leader of the Arabs in that area after the Ottoman empire was dissolved (see Weizmann-Faisal agreement). So no, it wasn't "known" all along that immigrating to Palestine would result in so much bloodshed. And Jewish immigration wasn't seen as some punishment to indigenous Arabs.

You say Israel was a result of Europe's crimes against Jews. But the first aliyahs into Israel by masses of Jews started in the 19th century, well before the Holocaust. Jews outside Europe, like in Russia, had it pretty bad. Those throughout the mideast at the time also suffered in dhimmitude.