This links back to an important point in American politics: Human beings are not primarily motivated by rational self interest, identity is a much more powerful motivator. So it's common for people to vote against their narrowly defined economic interests because their identification with a certain political party is just too powerful (example: rural Americans continuing to vote for a Republican party that promises and delivers them nothing.)
On the international scale, people often sign on to nationalist causes that are disastrous for their interests, both short-term and long-term, because nationalist identity is just too powerful to resist.
It is not just American politics, it is a universal theme. Attributed to LBJ, “if you can convince the lowest white man is is better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you are picking his pocket. Hell, give him
Somebody to look down on, he’ll empty his pockets for you.” You can insert any two religious/ethnic/regional groups who have any adversarial relationships into that quote and it would be accurate at any point in history. The question we need to be asking is why are identity politics so strong and attractive when we know how badly things turn out? In short it is fear. Fear of loss (perceived or real), fear of differences, and fear of being discovered as being insecure at one’s core.
Extremely insightful Adam, thank you. Puzzled by one word:
"The catastrophe may start with the American electorate once again rejecting CENTRIST Democrats in favor of Donald Trump. That prospect dramatizes the urgency of developing a PROGRESSIVE politics that is not a return to America’s hegemonic past but accepts and responds to the huge changes within the United States and in the wider world."
It was with the most painful reluctance that I read this passage and recognized it’s truth: “The model of economic convergence leading to geopolitical and political alignment, is dead. Indeed, it has long been a vain hope.”
Instantly reminded of Adam Curtis’s films of the past 15 years. He has documented the decay of this vain hope most accurately.
The history is a bit myopic. It ignores the Arab countries driving out their Jews in the 50s and the Russians effectively doing the same in the 80s. Is the sudentland neo colonialism or nationalism. Why did the world offer a two state solution in 1948. Is there another example of neocolonialism besides Israel.
Thank you Adam, for a year of wisdom and insights - a modern renaissance man! And for this latest newsletter where your humanity and learning is so apparent. Here’s to peace and prosperity for all in 2024... Ken
1. The "horror" of October 7, 2023 with almost 1200 killed was partially created by Israeli military, who Hellfired and tank shelled, hundreds of cars and tens of houses, with Israeli civilians in them, so to no risk any "terrorist" escaping... But as an occupier, Israel has no right for self defense, legally and morally. ANd that Oct 7 "horror" has been diluted by an order of magnitude by the killings of 21,000+ and counting and injuring of over 55,000+ Palestinians.
2. Japan is not at "peace" with Russia. No treaty and still has territorial disputes...
October 7, 2023, began the fifth war between Israel and Gaza since 2007. The horrendous gruesomeness of the attack by Hamas and Fatah under approval from Iran and Lebanon, again demonstrates the futility of economic progress assuring peace between ideologically opposing parties. Such is the surprise also created by China and US and EU as well as Russia and the EU. In short, democracies and dictatorships are mutual mortal enemies, using periods of non- violence to gain military power in order to attack again. Wars make money for elite investors. Hence, there is the continuous excitement for starting wars.
Gaza and West Bank are OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, under absolut control of Israel, with WEST BANK being continuously diminished. An OCCUPIER has no right of "self-defense". Israel lies, cheats, and steals, and kills, since before its official creation in 1948.
Also, no evidence Fatah was involved or Iran new about the attack.
Also, plenty of evidence that a lot of killing of Israeli civilians was done by IDF, including the three half naked prisoners escaped.
Also, plenty of evidence that Israel imprisons children to terrorize them and their families and scare them for life.
China, Russia are not dictatorships and US and EU are not democracies (just having some form of election does not make a country a democracy).
Have you seen the approval ratings Putin has, taken by the western funded Levada Centre? High 70s to low 80s? Compare that with any other western leader.
Then compare how close are the population wishes to the governmental actions & laws by country. Repeatedly, the US comes up as a plutocracy. Russia, not so much.
Sure, I'm gonna believe opinion polls taken in a dictatorship where people are sent to prison for holding up a blank sheet of paper. Don't make me laugh.
Livada Centre is a very reputable NGO, working for decades in Russia and nobody disputes its reports. As for dictatorship, probably you never lived in one to see how it is. And today's Russia is definitely not a dictatorship, as witnessed by many westerners travelling in Russia, or living in Russia can attest.
Then check on what Gideon Levy, working for decades for Haaretz has to say about it. Or Ilan Pape, Israeli historian, or David Levi, former negotiator for Israel on the Oslo Accords, or Norman Finkelstein, historic of the occupation, or Gabor Mate, or Aaron Mate, or Max Blumenthal, or Kate Halper, or B'Tselem, or +972, or so many other Jewish voices have to say about it. I gave you only Jewish names and sources here.
By "a progressive politics" do you mean: continuing open borders, support for LGBQXYZ+, Antifa, MSNBC/CNN version of "Trump is a Russian agent", Nov 7 "insurrection" and jailing of anyone who went near the capitol, covid policy, unlimited support for Ukraine . . .?
BTW, this is a nice example of something I've been thinking about for a while: That Republicans have lost the ability to talk to normal people in a normal tone of voice about issues that normal people care about. Might explain why they lose so often.
Oh yeah, that's the stuff, as crazy as it gets. Winning an election, both by the popular vote and our ridiculous Electoral College, that's now called an "insurrection."
Also, please read my comment about Republicans losing the ability to talk to normal people in words that normal people can understand. Not that I mind, please never change, I enjoy watching you guys lose.
I was intrigued by the map on the fifth slide of your slidepack. The map of settler/non-settlers states.
But I think it is not that helpful to consider a country as settler/non-settler, because, as far as I understand the definition, many countries are a combination of settler and non-settler parts.
Whether we like it or not large parts of many countries have been settled since 1492. I don't want to start a flame war, but China, Russia, Morocco, Turkey and Myanmar come to mind; probably also India, Indonesia and many others, but I'm no expert.
When such a large part of the world is a "settler", how does the distinction help?
In the current discourse, it serves primarily as a way of delegitimizing states founded by Europeans while pretending that everyone else is inhabiting the same land their ancestors did in the ancient past. The term "indigenous" is also deployed for the same purpose.
Russia's actions in Ukraine since 2014 are also best understood in terms of settler-colonialism. The systematic obliteration of Ukraine as an idea in occupied areas, the persecution of Tatars, the colonisation of Crimea by an estimated 500,000 Russians and even the reinvention of the sepoy after LNR and DNR conscripts were press ganged into the first of the now infamous Russian meatwaves, all speak of an imperial project. To talk instead of Russian nationalism is to concede too much to Kremlin talking points and to unthinkingly fall into another Western European orientalist mire, but of Eastern Europe.
That misrepresents what Russia is doing in Ukraine, which is 1) conscript locals to use in meatwave assaults and 2) allow property to be seized, then sold on to émigré Russians either as second homes or as their new home given the sudden need to fill the vacancies left behind by the poor conscripts. This is simply repeating the pattern seen in Crimea after 2014 where the Russian government gave soft loans to ex security officials to move there and explicitly 'Russify" the population. TBH the issue here is the refusal of some on the more esoteric Left to acknowledge what Russia is doing.
I am not sure your conclusion flows from your excellent analysis.
You should address what Biden should do vis-vis Israel NOW. in the Middle East--and maybe elsewhere as well--everything is likely to flow from that. Yes, the assassination of Rabin was a tragic turning point. But there may be no better approach than to try to return to something like that point almost 30 years ago.
Domestic policy has little or nothing to do with that.
On a more general level, just because trade and economic progress have not had the halcyon effect that many (including me) hoped for, that does not mean that the idea of global economic progress should be abandoned. In the long run, it remains the great hope, though it has to work better for more people.
We study history to learn from it. But taking its lessons about ideas that have not yet succeeded as being a call for massive change frequently is a mistake.
Your analysis of the change in assumptions post-1948 is spot-on. If we could go back to the foundation of Israel, we would hope to do a better job, though i do not know what that would entail. But having botched the fundamentals back then, creating a modus vivendi has proven extremely difficult. Rabin saw that--and it is for that that he was killed, IMO.
I'll give that a try: What Biden should do now is recognize that the policy of the past, of unquestioning support for Israel and an endless supply of weapons to the Israelis, no matter how they use them, needs to STOP. Where we go from there is open to discussion, but until that fact is recognized, any discussion is pointless, because Israel can continue to do whatever it wants whatever we say.
>The assassination of Rabin was a tragic turning point
It wasn't at all. Rabin was already losing in the polls, Arafat was already allowing Hamas to operate, and and the peace process derailed only 5 years later under Barak. The problem is that few want to reckon with what actually happened, so it's easier to pretend 1995-2000 period just didn't exist (same for 2005-2007).
October 7, 2023, began the fifth war between Israel and Gaza since 2007. The horrendous gruesomeness of the attack by Hamas and Fatah under approval from Iran and Lebanon, again demonstrates the futility of economic progress assuring peace between ideologically opposing parties. Such is the surprise also created by China and US and EU as well as Russia and the EU. In short, democracies and dictatorships are mutual mortal enemies, using periods of non- violence to gain military power in order to attack again. Wars make money for elite investors. Hence, there is the continuous excitement for starting wars.
The logic of History toward an incremental international political creation? America has two political ideas it needs to lead or act strongly with: Liberalism and Republicanism. These ideas reject the ideas of power prominence, hierarchy, and anarchy. America created a large political that realizes universal power and freedom to participate in the creation of its political. International History needs these ideas to be realized! What an idea to reject natural law based on hierarchy and instead realize natural law based on universal power and freedom to participate and create politicals!!!
"his Zionist imagination fitted within the nationalist imagination of the period as well as within a postwar international context that looked favourably on forced population movements. In the 1940s massive ethnic cleansing became the order of the day in eastern Europe.... These expulsions were part of a larger European process whereby the borderlands of the Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian, and Ottoman Empires, geographical areas of multiethnic co-existence, turned in the first half of the twentieth century into a locus of ethnic cleansing and genocides in state-authorized suppression of ethnoreligious difference. Palestine was part of this wider process of nationalist state-formation, from the Baltic Sea to the shores of the Mediterranean."
Another excellent piece and thanks for the reference to Confino's study. Curiously there's no reference in that quote to the Armenian genocide, arguably the starting point for the era of European and global genocides and forced population transfers, that not only famously inspired Hitler but also the Zionists. One of the rare books about the Armenian genocide in the interwar period when it was largely buried, was by the German-Jewish writer Franz Werfel "40 Days of the Musa Dagh" published ominously in 1933! Did he write it as a warning to his fellow Jews or as an inspiration to claim their own homeland at the expense of others? Do it to them before they do it to us?
Let's not forget that the Armenian genocide barely attracted any attention or serious scholarly research until after the Cold War ended, with most western leaders deeply reluctant to reference the "g" word for fear of offending Turkey, a vital strategic ally.
It's notable that Jewish and Zionist leaders were and always have been conspicuously silent and ambiguous towards the Armenian genocide. Shimon Peres, whom you mention, was famously derisive and even contemptuous towards Armenian claims of a genocide, dismissing it merely as a "tragedy", fearful it might challenge the unique status of the Holocaust and culture of Jewish victimhood from which Israel profits and ruthlessly exploits.
As your article shows, Zionism takes its inspiration and motivation from a pool of sources starting with European antisemitism, especially Russian antisemitism that gave us mass pogroms and the Protocols and finally the Holocaust; European colonialism and the idea that you could displace native non-white populations from colonised territories and replace them with ethnic Europeans; and finally, the waves of ethnic cleansing and genocides that gave the Zionist the tools and in their eyes the legitimacy to do to Palestinians what had been done to them and other peoples in the first half of the 20th century.
As a footnote to all this there's a fascinating connection between Hitler and the Armenian genocide in the form of the antisemitic White Russian exile Scheubner-Richter who was an eye witness to the Armenian mass killings and ironically saved several hundreds from death. He died at Hitler's side during the failed beerhall putsch in 1923. A story told in Michael Kellog's "Russian Roots of Nazism."
There's also a fascinating BBC Storyville about Bengurion's "architect of transfer" during the founding of Israel who warned that Israel's actions would leave a legacy of bitterness and hate for future generations. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001q7qz
This links back to an important point in American politics: Human beings are not primarily motivated by rational self interest, identity is a much more powerful motivator. So it's common for people to vote against their narrowly defined economic interests because their identification with a certain political party is just too powerful (example: rural Americans continuing to vote for a Republican party that promises and delivers them nothing.)
On the international scale, people often sign on to nationalist causes that are disastrous for their interests, both short-term and long-term, because nationalist identity is just too powerful to resist.
It is not just American politics, it is a universal theme. Attributed to LBJ, “if you can convince the lowest white man is is better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you are picking his pocket. Hell, give him
Somebody to look down on, he’ll empty his pockets for you.” You can insert any two religious/ethnic/regional groups who have any adversarial relationships into that quote and it would be accurate at any point in history. The question we need to be asking is why are identity politics so strong and attractive when we know how badly things turn out? In short it is fear. Fear of loss (perceived or real), fear of differences, and fear of being discovered as being insecure at one’s core.
Scotland :-(
Extremely insightful Adam, thank you. Puzzled by one word:
"The catastrophe may start with the American electorate once again rejecting CENTRIST Democrats in favor of Donald Trump. That prospect dramatizes the urgency of developing a PROGRESSIVE politics that is not a return to America’s hegemonic past but accepts and responds to the huge changes within the United States and in the wider world."
Shouldn't "progressive" read "center-left"?
Valuable insights as always Adam, thank you.
It was with the most painful reluctance that I read this passage and recognized it’s truth: “The model of economic convergence leading to geopolitical and political alignment, is dead. Indeed, it has long been a vain hope.”
Instantly reminded of Adam Curtis’s films of the past 15 years. He has documented the decay of this vain hope most accurately.
The history is a bit myopic. It ignores the Arab countries driving out their Jews in the 50s and the Russians effectively doing the same in the 80s. Is the sudentland neo colonialism or nationalism. Why did the world offer a two state solution in 1948. Is there another example of neocolonialism besides Israel.
Thank you Adam, for a year of wisdom and insights - a modern renaissance man! And for this latest newsletter where your humanity and learning is so apparent. Here’s to peace and prosperity for all in 2024... Ken
Two qualms:
1. The "horror" of October 7, 2023 with almost 1200 killed was partially created by Israeli military, who Hellfired and tank shelled, hundreds of cars and tens of houses, with Israeli civilians in them, so to no risk any "terrorist" escaping... But as an occupier, Israel has no right for self defense, legally and morally. ANd that Oct 7 "horror" has been diluted by an order of magnitude by the killings of 21,000+ and counting and injuring of over 55,000+ Palestinians.
2. Japan is not at "peace" with Russia. No treaty and still has territorial disputes...
October 7, 2023, began the fifth war between Israel and Gaza since 2007. The horrendous gruesomeness of the attack by Hamas and Fatah under approval from Iran and Lebanon, again demonstrates the futility of economic progress assuring peace between ideologically opposing parties. Such is the surprise also created by China and US and EU as well as Russia and the EU. In short, democracies and dictatorships are mutual mortal enemies, using periods of non- violence to gain military power in order to attack again. Wars make money for elite investors. Hence, there is the continuous excitement for starting wars.
Gaza and West Bank are OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, under absolut control of Israel, with WEST BANK being continuously diminished. An OCCUPIER has no right of "self-defense". Israel lies, cheats, and steals, and kills, since before its official creation in 1948.
Also, no evidence Fatah was involved or Iran new about the attack.
Also, plenty of evidence that a lot of killing of Israeli civilians was done by IDF, including the three half naked prisoners escaped.
Also, plenty of evidence that Israel imprisons children to terrorize them and their families and scare them for life.
China, Russia are not dictatorships and US and EU are not democracies (just having some form of election does not make a country a democracy).
True, having elections does not guarantee democracy. Just look at Russia for an example.
Have you seen the approval ratings Putin has, taken by the western funded Levada Centre? High 70s to low 80s? Compare that with any other western leader.
Then compare how close are the population wishes to the governmental actions & laws by country. Repeatedly, the US comes up as a plutocracy. Russia, not so much.
Sure, I'm gonna believe opinion polls taken in a dictatorship where people are sent to prison for holding up a blank sheet of paper. Don't make me laugh.
Livada Centre is a very reputable NGO, working for decades in Russia and nobody disputes its reports. As for dictatorship, probably you never lived in one to see how it is. And today's Russia is definitely not a dictatorship, as witnessed by many westerners travelling in Russia, or living in Russia can attest.
Your reality is so different than mine that I will not engage in discussing your alternative facts and beliefs.
Then check on what Gideon Levy, working for decades for Haaretz has to say about it. Or Ilan Pape, Israeli historian, or David Levi, former negotiator for Israel on the Oslo Accords, or Norman Finkelstein, historic of the occupation, or Gabor Mate, or Aaron Mate, or Max Blumenthal, or Kate Halper, or B'Tselem, or +972, or so many other Jewish voices have to say about it. I gave you only Jewish names and sources here.
By "a progressive politics" do you mean: continuing open borders, support for LGBQXYZ+, Antifa, MSNBC/CNN version of "Trump is a Russian agent", Nov 7 "insurrection" and jailing of anyone who went near the capitol, covid policy, unlimited support for Ukraine . . .?
BTW, this is a nice example of something I've been thinking about for a while: That Republicans have lost the ability to talk to normal people in a normal tone of voice about issues that normal people care about. Might explain why they lose so often.
At least he is making an effort in subscribing to AT
Nov 7 "insurrection"
Oh yeah, that's the stuff, as crazy as it gets. Winning an election, both by the popular vote and our ridiculous Electoral College, that's now called an "insurrection."
no; I'm obviously referring to events around the "storming of the capitol" which was compared to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, threat to democracy, etc .
Also, please read my comment about Republicans losing the ability to talk to normal people in words that normal people can understand. Not that I mind, please never change, I enjoy watching you guys lose.
The storming of the capitol that happened on Nov. 7? What are you talking about?
Jan 6
The Jan 6 that happened on Nov 7? Are you OK?
I'm really laughing now :-)
Here, let me ask the question that emergency-room doctors ask of someone who has suffered a head trauma: What is the name of the President?
Thanks for the post.
I was intrigued by the map on the fifth slide of your slidepack. The map of settler/non-settlers states.
But I think it is not that helpful to consider a country as settler/non-settler, because, as far as I understand the definition, many countries are a combination of settler and non-settler parts.
Whether we like it or not large parts of many countries have been settled since 1492. I don't want to start a flame war, but China, Russia, Morocco, Turkey and Myanmar come to mind; probably also India, Indonesia and many others, but I'm no expert.
When such a large part of the world is a "settler", how does the distinction help?
In the current discourse, it serves primarily as a way of delegitimizing states founded by Europeans while pretending that everyone else is inhabiting the same land their ancestors did in the ancient past. The term "indigenous" is also deployed for the same purpose.
Go tell that to Rassemblement National politicians
I agree with the part you state you are no expert
Russia's actions in Ukraine since 2014 are also best understood in terms of settler-colonialism. The systematic obliteration of Ukraine as an idea in occupied areas, the persecution of Tatars, the colonisation of Crimea by an estimated 500,000 Russians and even the reinvention of the sepoy after LNR and DNR conscripts were press ganged into the first of the now infamous Russian meatwaves, all speak of an imperial project. To talk instead of Russian nationalism is to concede too much to Kremlin talking points and to unthinkingly fall into another Western European orientalist mire, but of Eastern Europe.
If you listen to the interview AT posted on settler colonialism, Russia’s intervention resembles franchise colonialism rather than settler.
That misrepresents what Russia is doing in Ukraine, which is 1) conscript locals to use in meatwave assaults and 2) allow property to be seized, then sold on to émigré Russians either as second homes or as their new home given the sudden need to fill the vacancies left behind by the poor conscripts. This is simply repeating the pattern seen in Crimea after 2014 where the Russian government gave soft loans to ex security officials to move there and explicitly 'Russify" the population. TBH the issue here is the refusal of some on the more esoteric Left to acknowledge what Russia is doing.
I am not sure your conclusion flows from your excellent analysis.
You should address what Biden should do vis-vis Israel NOW. in the Middle East--and maybe elsewhere as well--everything is likely to flow from that. Yes, the assassination of Rabin was a tragic turning point. But there may be no better approach than to try to return to something like that point almost 30 years ago.
Domestic policy has little or nothing to do with that.
On a more general level, just because trade and economic progress have not had the halcyon effect that many (including me) hoped for, that does not mean that the idea of global economic progress should be abandoned. In the long run, it remains the great hope, though it has to work better for more people.
We study history to learn from it. But taking its lessons about ideas that have not yet succeeded as being a call for massive change frequently is a mistake.
Your analysis of the change in assumptions post-1948 is spot-on. If we could go back to the foundation of Israel, we would hope to do a better job, though i do not know what that would entail. But having botched the fundamentals back then, creating a modus vivendi has proven extremely difficult. Rabin saw that--and it is for that that he was killed, IMO.
I'll give that a try: What Biden should do now is recognize that the policy of the past, of unquestioning support for Israel and an endless supply of weapons to the Israelis, no matter how they use them, needs to STOP. Where we go from there is open to discussion, but until that fact is recognized, any discussion is pointless, because Israel can continue to do whatever it wants whatever we say.
>The assassination of Rabin was a tragic turning point
It wasn't at all. Rabin was already losing in the polls, Arafat was already allowing Hamas to operate, and and the peace process derailed only 5 years later under Barak. The problem is that few want to reckon with what actually happened, so it's easier to pretend 1995-2000 period just didn't exist (same for 2005-2007).
Its impossible to conceive of self interest without identity.
Marc Herlands
Writes Marc’s Substack
4 mins ago
October 7, 2023, began the fifth war between Israel and Gaza since 2007. The horrendous gruesomeness of the attack by Hamas and Fatah under approval from Iran and Lebanon, again demonstrates the futility of economic progress assuring peace between ideologically opposing parties. Such is the surprise also created by China and US and EU as well as Russia and the EU. In short, democracies and dictatorships are mutual mortal enemies, using periods of non- violence to gain military power in order to attack again. Wars make money for elite investors. Hence, there is the continuous excitement for starting wars.
The logic of History toward an incremental international political creation? America has two political ideas it needs to lead or act strongly with: Liberalism and Republicanism. These ideas reject the ideas of power prominence, hierarchy, and anarchy. America created a large political that realizes universal power and freedom to participate in the creation of its political. International History needs these ideas to be realized! What an idea to reject natural law based on hierarchy and instead realize natural law based on universal power and freedom to participate and create politicals!!!
Uhh... that link to the Charnysh piece doesn’t work. Anyone have an actual link or enough info to track the piece down?
Thanks!
https://sites.duke.edu/hiscope/files/2022/04/Charnysh_Book_Excerpt.pdf
Got it, thanks!
"his Zionist imagination fitted within the nationalist imagination of the period as well as within a postwar international context that looked favourably on forced population movements. In the 1940s massive ethnic cleansing became the order of the day in eastern Europe.... These expulsions were part of a larger European process whereby the borderlands of the Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian, and Ottoman Empires, geographical areas of multiethnic co-existence, turned in the first half of the twentieth century into a locus of ethnic cleansing and genocides in state-authorized suppression of ethnoreligious difference. Palestine was part of this wider process of nationalist state-formation, from the Baltic Sea to the shores of the Mediterranean."
Another excellent piece and thanks for the reference to Confino's study. Curiously there's no reference in that quote to the Armenian genocide, arguably the starting point for the era of European and global genocides and forced population transfers, that not only famously inspired Hitler but also the Zionists. One of the rare books about the Armenian genocide in the interwar period when it was largely buried, was by the German-Jewish writer Franz Werfel "40 Days of the Musa Dagh" published ominously in 1933! Did he write it as a warning to his fellow Jews or as an inspiration to claim their own homeland at the expense of others? Do it to them before they do it to us?
Let's not forget that the Armenian genocide barely attracted any attention or serious scholarly research until after the Cold War ended, with most western leaders deeply reluctant to reference the "g" word for fear of offending Turkey, a vital strategic ally.
It's notable that Jewish and Zionist leaders were and always have been conspicuously silent and ambiguous towards the Armenian genocide. Shimon Peres, whom you mention, was famously derisive and even contemptuous towards Armenian claims of a genocide, dismissing it merely as a "tragedy", fearful it might challenge the unique status of the Holocaust and culture of Jewish victimhood from which Israel profits and ruthlessly exploits.
As your article shows, Zionism takes its inspiration and motivation from a pool of sources starting with European antisemitism, especially Russian antisemitism that gave us mass pogroms and the Protocols and finally the Holocaust; European colonialism and the idea that you could displace native non-white populations from colonised territories and replace them with ethnic Europeans; and finally, the waves of ethnic cleansing and genocides that gave the Zionist the tools and in their eyes the legitimacy to do to Palestinians what had been done to them and other peoples in the first half of the 20th century.
As a footnote to all this there's a fascinating connection between Hitler and the Armenian genocide in the form of the antisemitic White Russian exile Scheubner-Richter who was an eye witness to the Armenian mass killings and ironically saved several hundreds from death. He died at Hitler's side during the failed beerhall putsch in 1923. A story told in Michael Kellog's "Russian Roots of Nazism."
There's also a fascinating BBC Storyville about Bengurion's "architect of transfer" during the founding of Israel who warned that Israel's actions would leave a legacy of bitterness and hate for future generations. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001q7qz
Scotland :-(