EDIT: Okay all, I apologize that I don’t have the time to reply to every single comment (I didn’t realize how much this post would blow up with comments, which may have been bad judgment on my part).
While my views haven’t necessarily been changed completely, I have seen several good-faith arguments that a Jewish homeland should have been established somewhere else. Like I’ve mentioned in some of these comments, I don’t think that was necessarily realistic, because it would have involved the displacement of several Jews who were already living in Palestine at the time, which I don’t think would have necessarily been better or more ethical than the actual displacement of Palestinians, for example. Plus, there’s a lot of history associated with that particular land, including many Jews who never left the land, and it makes more sense why the Jews would have wanted to reclaim that land than settle on land that had no historical significance, and I’m not completely convinced that there wouldn’t have been unrest no matter where a Jewish state was established.
The one thing that has shifted my view a little bit, however, is that it maybe simply wasn’t the best idea to establish this land specifically in the Middle East, considering the general unrest of the Middle East. This, I can actually understand, and looking at it further, I understand why it caused so many issues establishing a state in such a controversial area. I don’t necessarily know what should have been done instead, but I do understand why people think that the state shouldn’t have been formed specifically in the Middle East. So thank you to everyone who commented with some of that insight.

……

I just want to clarify before I start: I am not in any way arguing that the creation of Israel was completely moral, or that people weren’t unwillingly displaced, or that there weren’t bad faith actors in the Zionist movement. What I am specifically trying to argue is that I truly don’t think there was any better alternative to establishing Israel as a state (also, I’m specifically talking about the UN resolution that led to this happening, not necessarily the actions taken between the resolution and Israel actually gaining independence–which did involve a lot of back-and-forth killing, displacement, and taking more land than was initially intended). I am pretty confident that anyone who argues that Israel being created as a state was a mistake or that Israel should be dismantled because it should have “never been created in the first place” has not actually considered what should have happened instead, or is possibly unaware of some historical facts that led to the necessity of Israel being established.

I’m going to present several arguments (in bold) that someone may make when arguing why Israel shouldn’t have been established. My responses to each of these arguments are not serving to discredit the legitimacy of the arguments, but rather show that there wasn’t really anything better that could have happened in each of these scenarios, unless we want to completely ignore historical context at the time. Let’s start by talking about the UN Resolution 181 that led to splitting Mandatory Palestine into two states–one Jewish, one Arab. The Jews accepted this plan, the Arabs did not.

“But why did the Arabs have to accept? It’s their land! They shouldn’t have to partition it!”

For one, it wasn’t just “their land”. Again, it was the “British Mandate of Palestine”. The land was owned by the British, won from the Ottomans after WW1, and there were several Jews living there at the time as well–some of whom had lived there for years and whose families had never been kicked out of the land, some whom had escaped pogroms in Eastern Europe starting in the 1800’s and had legally purchased land from the Ottomans, and a large number of refugees escaping from violence both in Europe and in other Middle Eastern countries (more on this in a few points). Now, does Palestine not being a country mean that the opinions of the Arabs living there shouldn’t have mattered? Of course not. They had been living there for thousands of years as well. But it isn’t true that it was ONLY their land.

Now, there can definitely be arguments that the way the land was partitioned was unfair, or that there were unfair components of the partition, but what would have been the right thing to do in that case? Offer a counter-proposal or counter-solution. Instead, they immediately went to war with Israel months before the partition plan was even put into effect.

Now, if you accept that both Jews and Arabs were living on the land at the time, your argument might be “They should have just created a binational/unified state where they could all live in harmony like they did before! Jews and Arabs lived together peacefully before Zionism!”

First of all, they definitely did not live peacefully together, and this is severe historical revisionism. Of course there were good relationships between Jews and Muslims; it wasn’t all hatred. But for the most part, there was a ton of violence and fighting between the two groups. Second of all–many people don’t know this, but a binational state was considered and proposed. There are several reasons why that didn’t work. This is just one source, so take it with a grain of salt, but here is more info on this that’s compressed into a fairly easy-to-follow post: https://www.instagram.com/p/C2PO89vtUVi/?hl=en&img_index=1 (there are sources for this information in the caption of the post).

So, long story short: At the time of partition, there were several Jews and Arabs living there, both of whom had the right to live on that land. A binational state wasn’t feasible, so there was no option but to partition.

To this you might say: “Okay, so there were several Jews there. But why did Palestine have to be responsible for all of them? It’s Palestine’s land! It’s terrible that Jews were kicked out of all those countries, but why did Palestinians have to deal with it?”

I mean, here’s the thing: The Jews who escaped to Palestine did so because there was a growing Jewish presence there and one of the only places they thought they would be safe (not to mention it’s technically the native homeland of Jews). In fact, the British essentially pushed them into Palestine because the UK refused to take in Jewish refugees to help them escape from the Holocaust….while letting them escape to Palestine, despite the fact that they knew the Arabs wouldn’t necessarily be happy with this. But ultimately, the reason they escaped was because of violence in the countries they came from, so they were essentially refugees. Are you anti-refugee? Or anti-immigration? Because I don’t think anyone trying to argue that “The Jews shouldn’t have immigrated to Palestine and just expected the Arabs to take them all as refugees!” would have any problem whatsoever with America or other Western countries taking in refugees. In fact, I think that anyone who did have a problem with Arab refugees escaping to Europe, or Latin Americans immigrating to America, would be seen as very racist and “anti-progressive”. Is it only “progressive” to take refugees in when it’s Western countries taking them in? Do refugees have to be “non-white” for their status as refugees to be taken seriously? (We could also go on for hours here about how the majority of Jews in Israel now come from the Middle East and aren’t white, or that Ashkenazi Jews in Europe were literally persecuted for not being white enough, but I think you get my drift here–a lot of people view Jews as being “whiter” than the rest of the Middle East, and therefore have the tendency to view Israelis as “white colonizers”)

Now to this you might say: “But it wasn’t just immigration! a lot of the Jews who came to Palestine weren’t just there as refugees, they were there as part of the ‘Zionist project’! They were intentionally lured there to displace Arabs and create a Jewish state!”

Sure, there were many Jews who immigrated to Palestine under the “Zionist project”, and I’ve already acknowledged that there were some Zionist leaders who acted in very bad faith. But, there were hundreds of thousands of Jews immigrating there–there is no way that all of them were escaping to Palestine specifically in order to be “part of the Zionist project” and help create a Jewish state. Many of them simply needed a safe space to go, and Palestine was one of the only options. When immigrating to Palestine, I can bet you a good majority of them weren’t thinking “Oh yay! Now that I’m escaping persecution and moving to Palestine, I can’t wait to be part of this movement that helps turn Palestine into a Jewish state!” No, they were mostly just concerned with escaping for their lives, and probably couldn’t give a sh*t in the moment about whether or not a Jewish state would eventually be created. And even if they did go there as part of some “project”–does that mean that because of their so-called “intentions”, they should be forced to leave? What were they going to do in the 1940’s? Were they going to invent some lie-detecting technology to brain-scan every Jew who arrived, to determine whether or not they were there with the intention of “displacing Palestinians”? Would this be any better than America refusing Mexican immigrants because they’re worried that the immigrants are trying to “take all their jobs”, or refusing Muslim refugees because they’re worried that they’re going to try to “impose Muslim law on us”? Regardless of why they came there in the first place, once they were there, were they going to send those Jews back to the countries that they themselves were displaced from, or where they were violently abused and watched their family members get killed? Were they supposed to just leave and go back to those countries? Because that seems pretty anti-progressive to me…..

Okay, now let’s go into some arguments that aren’t necessarily related to the creation of Israel, but people may follow up with afterward that bring us back to the original point.

After reading all of my arguments above, you might say, “Okay, but no state technically has a right to exist! A state just shouldn’t have been created at all!”

Okay then, why am I not seeing you spending even a fraction of your time advocating for other countries to be dismantled? If you’re spending this much time arguing that Israel shouldn’t have been established because “no state has the right to exist,” I better see you arguing the same energy for all countries–especially other countries that are built on “stolen land,” as you say. (Reminder that Jews are also native to the region! Doesn’t mean Palestinians aren’t, but Jews are too!)

Now in response to this, you might say “The reason I’m not putting energy into dismantling other states is because they aren’t committing atrocities the way Israel is! They’ve been killing and displacing Palestinians for decades now, and forcing them to live under apartheid!”

Israel has done some pretty atrocious sh*t, I’m not going to deny that. There are several things that I seriously think they could have dealt with better. But, if you look at some of the things that have happened, there is almost always some type of explanation as to why Israel reacted the way they did. Going all the way back to how Arabs declared war on Jews in 1948 after the partition plan–the partition plan was created so that not a single Arab would have had to be displaced more than around two hours away from where they lived. But they declared war on Israel, Israel fought back, and as a result, several Palestinians were displaced either by Israeli paramilitary forces (who acted in terrible faith and were trying to get even more of the land, which they ultimately succeeded at), or were tricked out of their homes by Arab leaders who convinced them that they should leave and that they would get their homes back once the Jews were defeated. This entire war taking place right now is in response to the deadly attack on 10/7. I think that Israel has gone overboard with how they’ve reacted and has created a humanitarian crisis (though I’m not a military expert so I can’t exactly say what they should have done differently), but do people really expect them to just not react at all after a terrorist attack like that? Also, all those checkpoints people complain about? The blockade? Those were created in response to suicide bombings that Palestine enacted on Israel, and rockets being fired into Israel from Gaza. Do you expect Israel to just not protect their citizens? Of course, some of it has gone way too far and can be argued as being collective punishment, but at the core, those things exist specifically to protect Israelis from being attacked, which I don’t think any other country receives criticism for.

And then if you say “But Palestinians acted that way because they’re oppressed! Occupied people have the right to exist the way they do! Again, they wouldn’t be acting that way in the first place if Israel hadn’t stolen their lands and displaced Palestinians from their homes!”

…then we’re back to square one and you can go back to reading this post from the very beginning to see how this entire situation wasn’t a “stolen land” situation and didn’t really have a better way that it could have worked out.

So, if anyone actually has any ideas as to what should have happened in 1948 instead of establishing the state of Israel, I am seriously interested in possibly having my view changed.