Certainly there is plenty of condemnation to go around here. Likud's policies & actions are identical to those of Hamas: promote endless conflict.

But Israel & Zionism are essential for the survival of the Jewish people. Especially Israel as a Jewish-majority. The binational approach, with full return for Palestinians, eventually leaves Jews as yet just another minority in someone else's county. If pogroms don't get us, assimilation will.

Historically speaking, I don't think the pogroms & resettlements of Eastern Europe, or even the Holocaust demonstrates the necessity the Jewish state as much as the Allies' post-war treatment of the Jewish people.

Seeing that the reality of those terrible rumors & reports of industrialized mass murder were not only true, but if anything minimized, did the Allies open their doors to survivors, demand a permanent homeland for them, somewhere?

Britain continued to enforce the White Paper restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine, while US immigration quotas also remained in effect. Survivors remained in DP as long as five years after the war's end. Britain's Anthony Bevin proposed survivors merely return to their homes, never mind that their erstwhile neighbors murdered some & drove others away, not wanting to return the property they had taken.

I disagree with the growing thesis that the Allies abandoned the Jews during the war. But after the war? A different story. Nor can you really blame them. WWII was in many respects a war for petroleum, & that petroleum was in the ME. Nations can't afford to let sentiment stand in the way of their vital strategic interests.

Nations.

The Jewish people had vital strategic interests, too, but no nation with which to pursue them. So, Israel necessary. Hence, Zionism. A settler-colonial enterprise? Very much so. No apologies, no regrets.

It seems possible that Palestinian Arabs might willingly trade land for a viable, secure & prosperous Palestinian state in Gaza & The West Bank, with direct compensation for lands taken. But the settler movement screwed that pooch. Today perhaps the only potential solution is to propose such a state, offer settlers one year or so to repatriate to Israel, or become Palestinian citizens carrying Palestinian passports. Let them know Israel will intervene in the case of a pogrom, but otherwise they're on their own.

I guess I do favor a binational state after all...