There is no defense to Israel's actions in Gaza right now, or in the past decades since withdrawal. Likud follows the same strategy as Hamas: perpetual conflict.
Israel was founded as the result of western interests, but not in the way Baldwin suggests. The war over & the western Allies see firsthand the catastrophe European Jews had undergone, what do they do? Do they open their doors to refugees? Allow survivors entry to Palestine?
Not one bit.
The US maintained strict immigration quotas, & Great Britain the '39 White Paper limits on immigration & land sales. President Truman proposed Britain allow 100,000 refugees into Palestine on humanitarian grounds ... he was told to piss off.
Survivors were told they could go back to their homes in Europe where some were murdered by their erstwhile neighbors; others were just driven off. Thousands lived stateless in DP camps for years after the German surrender.
It was this, even more than the Holocaust & preceding decades of pogroms, that turned liberal, humanist Zionists towards Revisionist (ie. radical) Zionism., a program that entails colonizing the entirety of Eretz Yisroel & transferring the Arab population someplace else. See, Revisionist founder Vladimir Jabotinsky viewed the Arabs as one solid "nation", making no distinction between Palestinian, Saudi or Egyptian. So of course the view was they'd be just as happy in any Arab country.
This view still informs Israeli leadership, especially Likud, which has a direct lineage to Revisionist Zionism.
Neither the US nor Britain offered the Yishuv or newly born state any material support. Britain, still the principal power in the ME, abstained from the UNSC vote to partition Palestine. It was Stalin, by way of Czechoslovakia, that provided the Haganah/IDF its first cache of military-grade weapons.
Sure, the US later adopted Israel as its principal client in the ME—along with Saudi Arabia—once the Jewish state proved viable. But other than a nod of recognition, the Jews were on their own forming the Zionist state.
Finally, if we condemn settler-colonialism as wrong in every instance, we should ask: Is the slaughter of women & children & innocent civilians always wrong? Yet it featured in Nat Turner's Rebellion, the Indian Rebellion of 1857; the Haitian Revolution, the Dakota War of 1862 & other acts of defiance against white supremacy. Surely we acknowledge the tragic necessity that brought those about.
