This is why HN threads about AI have become exhausting to read

https://x.com/alexwei_/status/1946477745627934979?s=46&t=Hov...

[1] https://x.com/markchen90/status/1946573740986257614?s=46&t=H...

https://github.com/aw31/openai-imo-2025-proofs/tree/main

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-voters-narrowly-r...

Yes you did. You said Israel was created by "forcefully stealing land." The vast majority of Jewish migrants in the late 19th century bought the land. If you're talking about the 1949 war... well, it was a war, in which the Israelis agreed to the fair UN partition plan, and the Arab states did not. At the very least, "stealing" is a very reductive way to summarize it.

> by saying it’s complicated, are trying to paint a simple picture

But is is complicated! That is actually true, and that's OK!

> in which Israel apparently didn’t do anything wrong

Of course Israel has done things wrong.

> That’s actually incredibly partisan

I am trying my absolute best to make comments in the spirit of HN. If you think it's too partisan to engage with, then I'm sorry, but you should know that I really did try.

Israel exists because of the much-repeated global pogroms against Jews. The Mizrahi Jews fled Yemen, Morocco, and other Muslim countries because of antisemitic persecution. Beta Israel fled the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia, which threatened a Jewish genocide. Those Jews had that option because of the existence of Israel, a country located in the ancestral homeland of the Jews.

I sincerely believe that fighting for the destruction of Israel is akin to antisemitism. Because what will happen when the next round of Pogroms and genocides roll around? It's been happening for thousands of years, and as recently as the 70s. Jews need a safe country.

The term "antisemitic" is well-understood in English to refer to hostility towards Jews. I know the root "-semitic" is in there. Yes, Palestinians are also semitic, but that's not what anyone is trying to communicate when they use the word "antisemitic."

Please don't do it, because it's incredibly trivializing.

Jews have a legitimate and ancient claim to indigeneity in the Levant. (In fact, Chanukah is about Jews being persecuted and evicted from their homes in the Levant by the Greeks.)

Jews are obviously not the only ethnic group with a legitimate claim to the land. Turks, Ottomans, Arabs, and Palestinians all lived in the area "historically."

In fact, many Israeli Jews are the opposite of colonizers: millions of Mizrahi Jews fled persecution from Arab countries (especially Yemen and Morocco), to return their ancestral homeland in Israel.

Jews have a legitimate and ancient claim to indigeneity in the Levant. (In fact, this week's story of Chanukkah is about Jews being persecuted and evicted from from their homes in the region by a Greek empire.) Of course, Jews eventually left the region due to forcible diaspora.

Jews are obviously not the only ethnic group with a legitimate claim to the land. At least the following groups can all claim to be native to the land, for some definition of native: Turks, Ottomans, Arabs, and yes, Palestinians.

In a very real sense, the millions of Mizrahi Jews are in fact refugees from Arab countries (especially Yemen and Morocco), who fled persecution to their ancestral homeland.

But calling Israeli Jews settlers -- especially within the UN Green Line! -- is terribly inflammatory, and not particularly accurate.