There was a Jewish community in Palestine (mostly centered around Jerusalem) but they did not come up with the Zionist project. Actually, many were opposed and some of their descendants still do so to this day.
> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region
The (European) architects of the Zionist project literally called it colonialism.
"You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews … How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial." -Theodor Herzl
Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects when arguing the people living there would fight back against their colonizers and the need for numbers and strength to counter them.
> Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects
The Zionist Project is comparable to colonialism. That doesn’t make it settler-colonialism. (And Jabotinsky isn’t the final word on anything other than himself.)
The whole notion of settling outside borders is marketing for annexation but has total support from Western Governments, yet those same governments are absolutely against the annexation of Ukraine.
There's a class of people who don't actually have moral principles but pretend to in order to justify selfishness. Their stated principles can turn on a dime because they don't actually believe them. Almost all politicians are in this group.
And history tells us that at some point those Jews are going to be a target. Other than the anomaly of the last 50 years or so. It wasn't that long ago that Jews in the US could not be members of golf clubs or were otherwise discriminated against. Antisemitism is on the rise again. If you think you can somehow magically decouple Jewish existence from Zion/Israel then think again. I've also built my life in a western country and antisemitism runs deep below the surface. Up until recently expressing that was frowned upon but seems that's changing.
I mean we know you guys run the media, control the money, run the US government, and fire space lasers from Mars. It's all fun and game until they burn your house and worse.
I'm also worried about Israel in many ways (re: ultra-orthodox ethno state) but if you think that living in Christian states or states of other ethnicity is somehow safer I'm not too sure about that. Even the European Jews that thought they were just Europeans found out they're not. And that story has repeated throughout history. To me a successful, democratic, moral, and Jewish, Israel is important part of the future of the Jewish people. And I'm not going to join the mob that wants it destroyed.
There was a Jewish community in Palestine (mostly centered around Jerusalem) but they did not come up with the Zionist project. Actually, many were opposed and some of their descendants still do so to this day.
> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region
The (European) architects of the Zionist project literally called it colonialism.
"You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews … How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial." -Theodor Herzl
Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects when arguing the people living there would fight back against their colonizers and the need for numbers and strength to counter them.