It might surprise you to know I agree with many of your bullet points, & I won't defend either Netanyahu or most of Israeli policies & actions of the past half-century.
Still, the first pair could use a tweak or two...
To start with, you accuse me of being reductionist & facetious, then write that first bullet point, seriously ... just seriously?!
The second, okay one by one:
The US: correct
The UK: also correct (assuming they don't kick us out again as they did in Edward I's day)
Europe: at the time of Israel's founding Jewish life in Europe was so disrupted as to be essentially Judenrein. Most of European Jewry was murdered or made refugees.
Eastern Europe: this is a joke, right? 3 -4 million Jews who had survived the pogroms of Poland & Russia were murdered there during WWII. After the war many attempting to return to their homes were murdered or driven away (ref Kielce Pogrom). Not my idea of happy, secure & prosperous
Asia: where? Like Iraq, where Jews were stripped of their possessions & expelled after Israel declared statehood?
Australia/New Zealand (sorry, Kiwis): Okay
Africa: Morocco? As in the Bloody Days of Fez, or numerous other pogroms. Algeria? I guess living as dhimma is better than being murdered or forcibly converted.
So that one's about half- right. It's important because if you know the actual history you might begin to understand why so many Jews of the day believed they couldn't go one living as a minority in someone else's country.
You say, Hey, not my problem. They had no business expelling the indigenes from Palestine to form Israel! Yeah, okay. It wasn't quite that simple. Palestine Arabs made their feelings known from Nebi Musa, 1920 to the Great Arab Revolt of '36, to the invasions of '48.
But the Jews were trying to save their lives & build for a future. The most trenchant irony of the ME is that w/o Zionism there would be no polity along the coast in the form of ancient Palestine. It would be part of Transjordan, & maybe Egypt & Syria. Those countries are every bit as opposed to a Palestinian state (whatever their public statements to the contrary) as Israel. And that's not deflection from Israel's very real misdeeds. A Palestinian state simply wasn't going to happen, & not because the Jews had other plans. But maybe it wouldn't have mattered because the people would likely still have their land.
Today, it seems as though Hamas & Netanyahu were made for one-another. Israel's response to the 7 Oct "act of liberation" is all wrong, but Hamas had to know it was coming, & they did it anyway, then left the people to face the consequences.
