Just calling them settlers would be ignoring a huge part of history, and missing out on a lot of nuance - as would calling them natives of the area. Some certainly were, but many, if not most were refugees to varying degrees.
To any reader, keep in mind this is not intended as a moral judgement in any direction, rather an important historic context to the situation. It’s a long read.
My writing of this context begins, loosely, in the 19th century. Jews are an almost omnipresent and incredibly diverse minority culture in Europe and have been persecuted to varying degrees for more than a millenia. This persecution has however usually been less systematic and more spontaneous. That changed with concepts such as nationalism, nation-states and more centralised governments.
Minority cultures were considered a detriment to national unity, and hence more “formalised” discussion of “the Jewish Question” (yes, the one the NSDAP in the 20th century attempted to “solve”) entered the European political discourse. Keep in mind, jews were far from the only persecuted group. Roma, for instance, was another, along with many local groups such as the Basque, Sapmi and Tatars.
It was in this enviroment that an idea sprung up among jewish intellectuals, that of Zionism. There are many different opinions on the motives behind it, but the goal was a jewish homeland, where they could be free from persecution. British Mandatory Palestine, heralded as the home of the jewish people in religious texts became the dream. Long before that “Shana Haba’ah B’Yerushalayim” (“Next year in Jerusalem”) had been a commonly used phrase during passover. Europeans invented and enforced nationalism, and Zionism became the jewish dream of their own nation, free from persecution. A trickle of jews to Israel would begin, but the events of the 20th century would turn that trickle into a flood.
Antisemitism continues to proliferate during the early 20th century and the German NSDAP (commonly known as the Nazi Party) would take things to the next level. Following 1933, Jews would attempt to flee Germany, sensing impending doom, yet be refused visas almost wherever they turned (with a few notable exceptions). The Western World was perfectly content to stand by and watch as Germany slowly commenced the horrors, and send back those desperate refugees who pleaded for their lives to their doom. On a personal note, I wonder if Germany would have been allowed to complete their genocide, had it not been for them starting yet another World War.
I will not elaborate on the Holocaust of WW2. I expect that you all are familiar, and if not, do yourselves a service and read about it.
The aftermath of it was just as gruesome. Nobody had wanted the jewish refugees before the war, and nobody wanted the “few” hundred thousands of survivors either. So, they were kept in camps. They had lost their homes, their posessions, most of their loved ones, along with any trust they had had for their local communities which had sent them off to die at the hands of Nazis.
Many of the refugees before, during and in the aftermath of WW2 would make their way to Israel, where burgeoning jewish communities would welcome them - pooling their resources along with using aid from mainly american jews to purchase land and build homes for them. The British were keeping the peace - and attempting to prevent the influx of people. This along with growing jewish communities meant freedom from persecution (mostly).
The British kept the peace, until they didn’t. I won’t elaborate on the details here as I would prefer to avoid controversy. Besides, I’d have to double the length of this text to just scratch the surface. The summary is that the State of Israel came into existence, born with a collective memory of the recent holocaust and a determination to never let it happen again, along with a huge dose of distrust against much of the Western World. Whatever the reasons, the law of return is implemented. I’d like to think it was an act of compassion, a reaction to the fact that jews had nowhere to go before, during or after the holocaust.
One would’ve hoped that the story ended there, but no.
In the aftermath of the war, and following other Arab-Israeli wars anti-semitism would blossom further in the Arab world, alongside Islamic Arab nationalism. With varied reasons, some of their own volition and some displaced, a mass exodus of jews occurred from Arab countries, some 80% of which moved to Israel, many without any of their possessions. By 2019 the number of Jews in Arab countries was less than 13’000 and 15’000 in Turkey, compared to a rough million people who were living there in 1948.
In the communist Bloc, antisemitism continued under soviet rule, continuing the ancient Russian traditions of pogroms. Despite efforts to prevent jewish emigration from Warsaw Pact communist republics, many managed to escape. When the bloc fell in the 90s, many more would find their way to Israel.
For those of you who read this far, thank you and I hope you found it informative and/or interesting. It is not the story of Israel, but rather that of a people who have been persecuted for a long, long time, and still, to a somewhat lesser degree, is being persecuted.
[Redacted]
The historical context makes the ongoing situation even more tragic, and I sincerely hope that there will be some sort of peaceful resolution.