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Michael Schlarbaum's avatar

Respectfully, I think that your characterization of the history of this conflict is missing a serious back story. I didn’t see it mentioned that Izzy and her family were moving into the apartment because it was the only place they could be, relatively safe.

The reality is that the first waves of Jewish— well I really think the rest of this comes down to what noun you want to follow that— but the reality is that the first waves of Jewish migrants, settlers (potentially your word), or refugees (I most align with this word) were a group of people who were fleeing mass pogroms in Eastern Europe ; when it wasn’t outright genocidal, they were being ostracized politically and treated as second class citizens. Such was the case from the late 19th century to the early 1920s. The Zionist project or dream didn’t emerge out of a vacuum, it was a response to a genuine and persistent antisemitism— and we all know where that ended up some twenty years later.

It is also important to note— and I believe this is vital— that at a time when Jewish people were fleeing Eastern Europe in mass numbers, the rest of their world turned their back on them. The United States and Western Europe had placed severe limits on Jewish immigration; and Great Britains solution to this conflagration of Jewish refugees was to utilize one of their actual colonies to house them— chiefly because they did not want them.

It is one of the great tragedies of the world that at a time when so many Jews sought refuge from Nazi germany— the world turned their backs on them. I believe that if we are being honest that history, that shared responsibility of Western Europe and the US, that is one of the roots of this cause. So no Izzy did not simply invite her family into the apartment. They fled there when the entire world was either trying to kill them or refused to help.

Any telling of the origins of situation that doesn’t account for this is missing a vital piece. And the Jewish migrants or refugees or if you insist settlers who came during this time certainly do not fit the traditional definition of settler colonialism. They had no mother country backing them. The rest of the world was either hell bent on killing them or was hell bent on keeping them out of their country. In either case that is how Izzy and her family ended up there.

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