I'm curious as to whether or not you actually read the article? As stated multiple times throughout, I wholeheartedly condemn the violence against Palestinians and also the very fact that Israel still "owns" these territories. I used the word "atrocious" and "abominable" but I'm happy to concede to "abhorrent" here too as you have said.

Please go ahead and show me where I said Jews were *incapable* of inflicting the same phenomena onto others that they experienced, I'll wait. Of course Israeli Jews are oppressing Palestinians right now, there is no question of that. My point, if you actually read the article, is that the oppression itself still doesn't qualify as any of these things.

But I'm more than open to listening to how you would counterargue that based on the "innumerable ways this has been proven" as you state.

Whether you like it or not, Jews are ethnically (proven by DNA!) Middle Eastern. Thousands of years of archaeology validates our presence there for thousands of years. "Settler colonialism" as a buzzword makes it sound as though Christopher Columbus hopped off the boat to destroy Palestinians and steal their land, which you clearly believe. But even if it doesn't fit neatly in the narrative that you conceive of the situation, BOTH groups claim indigeneity to this land; Jews were EXPELLED from the land violently against their will, and they have a right to be there. They don't have a right to harm Palestinian people, but then again Palestinian people don't have a right to harm innocent Jews.

Yes, there is a power differential. Yes, Israel's responses have been outsize and inhumane and should be condemned; they should be held accountable. But anyone who knows the history of the region -- not the "Jewish supremacist" history (by the way, that's a term taken from David Duke in case you or anyone else is about to send me B'Tselem publications), but the actual, complex history, knows that Muslims and Jews have been in conflict for over a thousand years. Power differential or not, it has been war.

In fact, the only reason Israel "owns" these territories is because so much of the Arab world united in 1967 to annihilate Israel and wipe it off the map, which it miraculously did not. The consequence was possession of the territories, until a two-state solution could be affirmed, which required the recognition from Palestinians that Jews are entitled to exist there. They refused, which is right in line with what you see in Hamas's charter today, as I mentioned in this article that you didn't read.

Jews didn't have the upper hand either when they were expelled from the land by the Arab empire. Continuous occupation of land is not the only condition for entitlement, as I'm sure you would concede in the case of white colonists in America. That doesn't mean they should be disproportionately retaliating today, but let us not pretend that just because Israel has more money and infrastructure than Palestine that it's inherently wrong for it to defend itself.

Jews have been tortured, murdered and expelled from every other country in the Middle East. We have been refugees too in a diaspora we didn't ask for. Palestine should and must be free, but not at the expense of Jewish life.

The world is "waking up" not to the plight of Palestinians, which it certainly hasn't cared about in the context of thousands of Palestinians dead, missing and jailed in places like Syria, but it's waking up to a new way to hate Jews in public and get away with it.

We can all collectively agree that it's disgusting the British Empire was able to construct borders the way it was, but the reality is that every border that has ever existed has come so due to colonialism and imperialism; in fact the British Empire won that land by vanquishing the Ottoman Empire, which had vanquished the Byzantine Empire, which had been another empire to torture and expel Jews. This example of "settler colonialism" as you say is no worse than any other example of imperialist warmongering and agendas that happen anywhere else in the world-- from Russia to China to Saudi Arabia to the United States. The only difference is you and many others hate it more because it involves the Jews.

Yes, Jewish Israelis are culpable and accountable for war crimes. That doesn't mean Israel doesn't have a right to exist and it doesn't mean we don't also deserve self-determination on our indigenous land. Neither you nor anyone else gets to whitewash or change the history of Jews in the region simply because you hate us or arbitrarily hold us to a higher standard of conduct.

By the way, whether you or anyone else acknowledges it (though the EU and US already have), Hamas is a terrorist organization that deliberately targets civilians. This is not in accordance with international human rights laws, either. And unless you advocate for either A) all non-Indigenous, non-Black Americans vacating the country immediately to give land back, and/or B) the legalization and celebration of indiscriminate killing of all non-Black, non-Indigenous peoples on American soil, then please pause for a moment before referring to Hamas as an "anti-colonial organization defending itself from colonialism."

Israel is here. No one wants the Jews. Most would be happy for us to simply die. Please ask yourself if you're one of those people, and if that might be informing any of your opinions on the matter at all.

Thanks if you're still reading, which I suspect you are not. Thanks to anyone else who does!