Was the founding of Israel a moral act?

Answer 1

Naturally as this acts for a perception, you will have differing answers.

Answer 1

Killing innocent people, kicking them out of their houses and constructing your own luxury houses over their lands is moral then yeah its a very moral act.

Commentary on Answer 1

The first answer, above, is quite a perceptive, if sarcastic, summary.

Except for all the people, innocent and guilty, who were not killed, and still live there. And except for all the people who were not kicked out of their houses, and still live there. And except for all the houses in Israel that could never be mistaken for luxury. And except for all the land that was bought and paid for.

Answer 2

Israel is usually construed as a unique instance in the formation of a nation-state. In almost every other case, the majority of the population of the land on which the nation-state would be made was already the majority ethnicity for that future nation. For example, most people living in what would become Greece were Greeks. There were certainly some people that had to leave non-Greek areas to join with the Greeks and some non-Greeks in Greece (usually Turko-Greeks or Turko-Cretans) who had to leave for Turkey, but the population exchanges were always less than 20% of the overall population. The Jews in Mandatory Palestine in 1914 were less than 10% of the overall population. Therefore, to create a Jewish State, a massive influx of Jews and/or a massive decrease in non-Jews would have to occur in addition to population swaps.

The person who advocates that the founding of Israel is a moral action must therefore overcome two hurdles: First, there is the question of whether the foundation of any nation-state is a moral act. Nation-states are intentionally created to benefit and protect one ethnic group at the cost of all other minorities and establish a certain set of general goals and symbols that are not representative of those other minorities. Second, there is the question as to whether a nation-state should be created in a place where the local population must be substantially altered to create a majority of the proper ethnic group.

My view is that Israel succeeds on both accounts, but that is not the universal view.

The barrier to nationalism in general is a much lower bar. Anyone who would disagree with Israel purely on these grounds would also have to object to the founding of Greece, Croatia, Kosovo, Germany, Italy, Algeria, Turkey, Bulgaria, Poland, etc. They would also have to openly disagree with the attempts to create an independent Kurdistan, Balochistan, Palestine, and Darfur, since each area would become a nation-state for a certain ethnicity. Therefore, any true opponent of all nationalism must believe that both the founding and creation of Israel and of Palestine would be immoral acts.

As for why such a thing should be a moral act (as opposed to being just neutral or the lesser of two evils) is that every ethnic group on Earth has the right to autonomy at a minimum to prevent whole-scale slaughters, deportations, and massacres, and general repression of culture, language, religion, and history which are quite common in the Old World for minorities. The Jews have the same rights as the Greeks, the Armenians, the Turks, the Azeris, and the Arabs to determine their future. What seems to confuse people about this is that Judaism is commonly seen as "a religion" like every other religion. Religions are not interchangeable just as sports are not interchangeable and many have vastly different aspects. Judaism is relatively unique among the major world religions in that it also has an ethnic and cultural component, making the Jews a singular ethnicity different from that of any host country (much like the perception of the Romani/Gypsies).

The second bar, that the general population of an area should be altered significantly to create this state seems to be the main objection and a much higher bar. In this regard, since Israel is specifically unique, it needs a unique defense.

(1) The first and probably strongest defense was that the Zionists had no outward attempt to remove the Arabs to create this social engineering. The Arabs who fled did so as circumstances changed. If the writings of Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, and even right-wing Zionists like Jabotinsky and Trumpeldor are read, it quickly becomes apparent that the Jews imagined themselves working the land side-by-side with the original Arabs. Zionist Jews purchased much of their land from distant Ottoman landlords and significantly developed the economy, building a state infrastructure that actually attracted more Arabs. It was not until Arab riots began to target Jewish settlements in the late 1920s (like Hebron in 1929), that Jewish Militias were organized to defend the settlements. The skirmishes ultimately led to fights over Jewish sovereignty, which the Arabs unwisely tested.

(2) Secondly, the land was important to Jews throughout their history. Arab writers as recent as the late 1800s wrote about how the region of Palestine was holy and special primarily to the Jews and that only Al-Aqsa was holy to Muslims. Given that both Arabs and Jews recognized the Jewish historical claim to the land, it is not unreasonable that it should be moral for that claim to be vindicated.

(3) Thirdly, Israel became independent through completely legal channels, petitioning the United Nations for recognition of a right to declare independence. Unlike the Arab States which refused to negotiate at all about the future of any Jewish State in Palestine, the Jews were willing to make serious concessions to have any state at all. Typically, the party that follows the law is acting morally.

(4) Finally, Israel was proved necessary to accommodate a large percentage of the Jews fleeing a post-Holocaust Europe and 500,000 of the 850,000 fleeing Jews from the Arab World who now saw pogroms being waged against them. Considering that the Arabs at the time saw themselves as one nation, was the reciprocal Jewish/Arab exchange any different that Greco-Turkish exchange in 1923 or the Pakistani-Indian exchange in 1947?