Deep Blue beat Kasparov fair and square. Kasparov was a bit of a bad sport at the end of the match, though the reasons are understandable. He was at the top of the human chess world. He wasn't used to losing, and he took it badly.
20% of people in Germany were born abroad. A good share of them have naturalized and are now German citizens. The top countries of origin are Poland, Turkey and Ukraine.
Very few of them go to Saxony-Anhalt. Less than 10% of the population of the state is foreign-born. As GP said, anti-immigrant sentiment is strongest where there are the fewest immigrants.
> But I guess its easier to think that 44% of the inhabitants of Saxony-Anhalt are secretly Nazies
People have a hard time imagining that any person ever voted for the Nazis. 37% of Germans did. It's entirely possible for large parts of the population to vote for fascist parties. It has happened in history before.
> being told they're all nazis (I'm sure some of them are, but nowhere near all)
Many of their senior leaders are Nazis. The head of the party in the state of Thuringia used to write pro-Hitler articles under a pseudonym.
> ignoring and belittling a large group and ignoring their concerns entirely
The AfD doesn't address their problems either. It tells them that all of their problems are because of foreigners and immigrants.
What's the AfD's solution for affordable housing? Deport immigrants to free up apartments. What's their solution for creating jobs? Deport immigrants.
This is a party that wants to deport all German citizens who don't have a sufficient quantum of German blood. There's no need to pretend the party is anything other than what it is: a fascist party.
Right, I agree. But what makes people vote for this kind of stuff? It's not like 44% of saxon-anhalt just wakes up overnight and decides "Hey, you know what...". I think it must grow over years of their feelings/opinions being ignored.
My only point was that, perhaps, we should think about these causes and why the core political parties can't solve them; otherwise it's only going to get worse -- hell at this rate they'll actually get enough people onboard to achieve their goals within a few cycles.
The fall of East Germany, which led to mass unemployment in the East (including Saxony-Anhalt).
The Thatcher-Reagan-style reforms that the Social Democrats and Greens pushed through in the early 2000s, which reduced the social safety net and created new types of less-secure temporary work. In particular, these reforms ended the Social Democrats as a mass party in Germany.
The 2008 financial crisis, which weighed heavily on Europe for years.
The rise in inflation, caused by Covid and wars in Ukraine and Iran.
As in the 1930s, right-wing parties blame everything on immigrants, foreigners and minorities, even though they're not responsible for any of the above.
There has been a big problem with migrants in the syrian civil war, most of which are gone again.
Without immigrants the ageing German population has no chance to keep their social safety net and as we see in the US, even when the social safety net is significantly reduced, the immigrant scarecrow will still have the desired effect for the populists because the immigrants are not the problem, they make, however a phenomenal scapegoat and will always appeal to the general populace. In consequence, focussing solely on immigration won't solve the fundamental problems and certainly won't help when the first waves of hungry climate refugees march north.
The consequences are border tightening and rearming and repopulating the military and marching confidently in the completely wrong direction. Dialog is dead and so is diplomacy.
Re-establish communication, not twitter. Collaborate on a wide front, analyse the data, compile potential solutions, discuss them, etablish them. Talk to Russia, talk to Ukraine, Defang NATO or abolish it. Talk to Iran. Stop the US propagating pseudo diplomacy via Kushner and send real diplomats. Look to invest in R&D for recycling techniques, carbon sequestering, substitutes for plastics, redirect military funding to massively expand renewable energy. Close all European borders the next time the US starts a war. There is so much to do.
You're talking about the party. You're not saying anything wrong, but parent was talking about the voters.
It is true that the issues of people who vote far-right are ridiculed, and they themselves are demonised, which the parent holds, and I agree, is unproductive.
Far-right voters are largely the losers of globalisation/economic growth trying whatever they can to improve their situation: the phenomenon of many of these voters alternating between far-right and far-left from one election to the other is one of many indicators of what their real goal is, ie improving their situation.
Re migration: it does have negative effects on the economically marginalised, which the readership of HN and the talking heads in mainstream media are largely not. Among these are increasing housing costs, downward pressure on salaries, rapid and alienating shifts in cultural (and I mean cultural, not racial) makeup of cities and neighbourhoods: none of this should be controversial.
The establishment parties (so right and "left" like SPD, Labour, PS) have financial incentives to increase migration, which they do (see the Boris wave in the UK).
While migration is not an inherent evil at all, the way it's done by these parties does lead to negative effects, which adds one reason among many to vote for the far-right. So the short-term solution (curbing migration) is the simple and popular answer. The long-term solution (curbing capitalism) is harder and unpopular, so radical left parties unfortunately get fewer votes (except in France, where there's a real chance of the LFI showing a better path).
That's a trick question though, and it cunningly pre-supposes / takes-for-granted there IS an "immigration problem", and implicitly that "the immigration problem is the root cause of other problems" (as opposed to, "there are real problems, and some people would like you to think they're because of immigration").
"Voters perceive problems. As is common in a democracy, voters elect people who propose solutions. Why is no other political party proposing solutions voters see as worth voting for?"
If you don't think the problems are real, make the case to the voters.
As far as I can tell, other political parties have no better answer than name-calling. Am I missing some politician/party that is actually making a real argument?
This kind of non-answer is exactly what leads to far-right parties getting more followers.
Tax paying citizens who want their concerns addressed absolutely LOVE hearing that "Ackchyually, your problem doesn't exist and is all in your head".
P.S. - I have no skin in the game regarding EU immigration policies, just making an honest observation about engaging with people who might have opposing views.
I approached it as a discussion on Hacker News, and I think my implicit assumption (which can be challenged!) is that taking a structured, logical approach benefits us all. When I saw what I perceive as a logical fallacy or assumption that takes us on an unproductive path, intended or not, I called it out.
In other venues, different approach may be more applicable.
To your other point, in case it wasn't clear:
* I absolutely do not think there's no problem, or that it's in anybody's head. I think there are a LOT of problems!
* At the same time, I strongly think that not-nice, dishonest people are working very very hard, very very consistently, to create an image that somehow immigrants are the root causes of these problems.
This has happened myriad times in history, and may sadly be repeating itself. The only answer I ever have for this is, to your point, a non-answer: it's education and information. I think most people propagating immigration as root of all evil are fairly aware that mathematically, socially, statistically, philosophically, logically, this is not supported. It's just intentional fallacy after intentional fallacy, starting with the "Lump of Labor Fallacy". It's clear on its face that if I had 100 people with 100 jobs yesterday, bringing 10 more people won't just magically take jobs without also creating/generating jobs! So I'm happy to discuss immigration problems at any length - but again, I think it's an intentional distraction. To your point, there ARE real problems, of housing and equality and prices and job market, and bad people are trying to make us think they're caused by immigrants, whether for personal profit or because they themselves are part of the actual root cause :-/
I find your response insulting, and as the other poster called you out, this is exactly why people are flocking to Afd.. that the “elite” dont take their problems seriously.
Im in Denmark and we have tried throwing money and ressources at the issue for 50 years, integration effort after integration effort, and for us the issue isnt money or jobs, we are a rich country with very little unemployment, the issue is gangs, violence, rape, where immigrants are far ahead of anyone..
What immigration problem? Immigrants are wonderful. Things have only improved in Germany with immigration. It is wrong and unethical to keep immigrants out of your country, you have no right to do so.
The US has one immigration system for honest law-following people (Visas, green cards, etc.) and a second system for people who don't follow rules (walk in from Mexico, overstay a Visa, etc.)
I have a feeling that the majority of AFD voters simply want some kind of change and action on what they are seeing happen in Germany. I'm definitely not one of them, (and being an auslander myself I have skin in this game) -- this is a failure of the other parties more than it's a victory for AFD. But then again, that's all it takes really.
See, this sort of thing is exactly is why they're going to continue to make progress. This attitude of painting all of them with the same brush and calling them nazis exactly is the thing that creates more nazis.
You're the problem here. I'm not on the side of the AFD, never will be -- and let me be clear: I and my family are directly impacted if they take power.
I don't think calling literal nazis nazis is a problem, my point, if you read it properly is that shutting down the (reasonable or not) concerns of a big chunk of the population and calling them all nazis only makes them more extreme, and grows their power. We need a better way.
In normal English, it would be from the average (median) voter. A party is "far-right" (or "far-left") if it is substantially to the right (left) of the average voter.
Assume that people vote for the person/party closest to their own view on an issue. 44% of voters choose the far-right candidate, meaning 44% of voters are closer to the far-right candidate than any other option.
How can this happen? Several ways, but only one is realistic: the other candidates are even farther away (to the left or right) from the position of the median voter. 40%+ of voters are themselves "far-right".
> The Nazi party got 37% of votes nationwide (not just in one state).
The Nazi party was not that far to the right of the median German voter at the time.
The far-left is using scary words ("Nazi", "Far-right", etc.) to tar a group they dislike (see what I did there?) They are counting on the fact that most voters can be influenced by group-think and name-calling. They are probably correct. But this is Hacker News, and the people here ought to be smart enough to see this for the stupid political smear that it obviously is. If you don't like a party, make the case that their policy is wrong. If vague analogy to the Nazis is the best argument you have, then you have no argument at all.
That comparison is depressingly applicable. The National Socialists gained power in a period when both the present and future looked very bleak to a large fraction of German voters, and a whole succession governments formed by political mainstream figures had demonstrated that they couldn't do squat to really fix things - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic#Renewed_crisis...
If https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II had not done such a comprehensive job of discrediting hereditary nobility, it might be healthier if German voters had the option to replace their elected government with a ruling Kaiser for 4 or 5 years. Ideally, that would lessen the appeal of more-extreme political parties. And the threat of indefinite irrelevance (the Kaiser could be reelected) might even motivate the politicians to occasional competence.
This is exactly the arrogant narrative that pushes more people to vote for AfD. It’s the people’s right to vote for any party they want and that’s part of the democratic process.
Labelling or bullying people because they have exercised their right and calling them Nazis is not gonna make them change their mind at all.
After all who are you or anyone else to say that what other person has voted is right or wrong. You can have your opinion, but you cannot judge them
I'm calling the AfD Nazis because that's exactly what they are.
Of course when people vote for a Nazi party, that's extremely alarming, and I have every right to say that they're wrong to do so.
If the AfD comes to power in Germany, it will be a disaster for the country, and not only for the country. Germany tried fascism once before in its history, and we all know how that turned out.
You can't compare Elo ratings over long stretches of time, period.
Ratings drift over time, based on the total population of people competing. I think the most accurate way to view Elo ratings is as a measure of skill vs. the average rated player.
If you want to compare Magnus Carlsen's peak rating of 2882 in the year 2014 to Garry Kasparov's peak rating of 2851 in the year 1999, you have to know how strong the total pool of players (including all the amateurs who compete at lower levels) was in the year 2014 vs. 1999.
The only way to actually anchor the Elo system over long periods of time would be to have rated humans occasionally play against a set of unchanging computer players, which could then serve as static rating calibrators. You could use those games to then calibrate Elo ratings from different time periods to a common scale, by asserting that the computer ratings don't change.
Even that would be slightly malinformative because of opening theory. If you warped a very strong player from the past to the present, he'd do very poorly at first simply because of advances in opening theory. But give him a bit to catchup and he'd likely have his rating zoom on up. So modern players would do better against the static computer because of the same advantage, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily stronger in the sense that we hope to measure. The question people always want to know are things like how would a Morphy, Capablanca, or Alekhine do in modern times with access to modern theory and the like - not how well would they do against Carlsen if they went in with nothing but the knowledge of their era.
In Go, we had an extensive documentary on this, based on the strange case of a man possessed by the spirit of an ancient master Go player. I'm not going to spoil the results here; it's an enjoyable series and includes many small introductory tutorials to the game.
> You can't compare Elo ratings over long stretches of time, period.
I agree that you cannot do it reliably, in principle.
However, Bobby Fischer peaked at 2785, and Gary Kasparov peaked at 2851. These are not far from what informed observers suggest--maybe 50 or 100 points off. They are well into super-grandmaster territory. Kasparov would be 1st today, Fischer would be 4th.
But on goratings.org, the top player of the 90s would be roughly 30th today.
My point is that the go ratings are much more unstable than the chess ratings. With chess ratings, you'll be wrong in the details. With go ratings, you'll be catastrophically wrong.
I agree that the drift in chess Elo ratings is slow enough that we can say Bobby Fischer at his peak would still be a strong grandmaster today (if he were given some time to study developments in opening theory). But I don't think we can say whether he would land at 2700 or 2800 in today's Elo scale.
This is within the realm of reasonable opinion, but I'd tentatively say it's an uncommon one--I thought it's generally agreed that the very best players of that era didn't lag contemporary players in terms of skill, only theory. I may be wrong, though.
Chess has developed significantly over the last 50 years. The best players now can be reasonably expected to be much more skilled than the best players of 50 years ago, even if you discount opening theory knowledge.
> If you want to compare Magnus Carlsen's peak rating of 2882 in the year 2014 to Garry Kasparov's peak rating of 2851 in the year 1999, you have to know how strong the total pool of players (including all the amateurs who compete at lower levels) was in the year 2014 vs. 1999.
I imagine that FIDE has all of this data somewhere, right? They don't publish more in-depth distributional analyses of players somewhere?
The distribution of Elo ratings will not tell you how strong the average player is in an absolute sense.
Elo ratings measure differences in skill between different players. A player rated 400 points above another player will win 90% of the time. Only rating differences are meaningful. Absolute ratings aren't.
Yes, I can understand why absolute ratings are impossible to extract.
However, since the population maintains some continuity over time (players gradually enter and then leave over time), would it not be possible to reconstruct relative ratings between players that didn't play during the same era?
Only if you were to assume that a player's prowess remains constant throughout their career, which we generally know to be false. (I'm completely inventing dates here) If Fisher played Kasparov in 1990 and Kasparov played Carlsen in 2020, you can only compare Carlsen to Fisher if you assume Kasparov's skill was about the same for this entire duration, which no one believes to be the case.
A lot of people don't realize that chess players peak around the same age as athletes do. Carlsen was at peak dominance in his mid-20s. Kasparov peaked later, at 36 years old, but still, it wasn't at age 50 or 60.
Chess requires you to be really sharp. Experience increases with age, but there's some cross-over point at which the decline in calculating speed is more important than increasing experience. Heck, I'm measurably better at chess tactics in the morning after a good night's sleep than in the evening after work.
I'm sure it's also a matter of how much time you actually dedicate daily to this - and it's quite hard to maintain passion and focus for 8+h /day on the same game for 30-40 years.
I can imagine an Ed Zitron in 1840 arguing that trains and steam engines are useless - or even a scam - because railroad investment was a bubble (which it was).
One thing I've noticed is that since LLMs came out, scientific papers with poor English have essentially disappeared. Just one of the many ways that AI is changing the world. People are using AI in all kinds of fields.
Oh c’mon. You must be trolling. Great, now we have have scientific papers with formally correct English, but data and sources of which are fabricated and most of the paragraphs are utter nonsense. And publications are drowning on these. Oh thanks for changing the world!
AI has been great for scientific research. It writes code, it can help solve difficult mathematical problems, you can bounce ideas off of it, you can learn background info on a scientific question quickly, etc.
I haven't noticed any uptick of trash papers in quality journals, or even on the arXiv. I know submissions are way up to all the journals, but peer review appears to still be working to filter out obvious junk.
And yes, papers being written in understandable English is important. Most scientists around the world are not native speakers of English, and now they can all suddenly write in perfect English.
I am not saying LLM-based software is not useful. For instance, you can use it to verify claims made on HN:
What we find is sobering. Submission volume has risen by 42% since November 2022. At the same time, submission writing quality also began to decline at the end of 2022, with Flesch Reading Ease (a standard measure of writing quality) 1.28 standard deviations (SD) lower in January 2026 relative to January 2021. Submissions that are heavily AI-generated account for nearly all of these trends. The quality of reviews has also dropped sharply since November 2022, driven by an increase in heavily AI-generated reviews. These reviews, in addition to being of worse quality, are also narrower in their emphasis, focusing more on theory and less on data. In short, more research is being submitted, with more AI writing that is lower in quality—not better.[1]
AI researchers themselves are saying that gaming the peer-review system with barrage of AI is extremely frustrating and pointless:
Peer review is unpaid work that we do (often on nights and weekends) because peer review on our own work is so valuable. Spending hours going through a submission and then realizing that there are hallucinated citations is infuriating as it is a waste of our time! If you haven’t spent enough time with your work to even get the references correct, then a.) why should we spend time reviewing it for you, and b.) what are you hoping to accomplish with the submission in the first place? Learning from reviews requires reflecting on your work, and you need to spend time with your work in order to do this.[2]
There’s also serious concern whether the peer-review system can survive the slop-era [3]. So excuse me if I found your comment on ”better English” and ”great for scientific research” rather amusing. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot and celebrating how much you will save on shoes.
You seem to think papers being legible is not important. Fine. Who needs to actually understand what the authors wrote?
But AI is extremely powerful for scientific research, and is massively increasing scientific output. It has side-effects that will have to be dealt with, like an increase in junk submitted to the journals, but there are ways to deal with that (the simplest one would be to use AI to screen out obvious junk).
So no, science is not "shooting itself in the foot." AI is a massive boost for science, but like every new powerful tool, it has side effects. The biggest side-effect in the long term may be that AI does all the work for us, but we haven't crossed that bridge yet.
I do think legible writing is important. You know how you can achieve that? By learning how to write. If you want to be a software developer you need to be able to write code, if you want to be a runner you have to run, if you want to be a researcher you must be able to write clearly and concisely in English. There’s multiple tools to help in that none of which are LLM’s. That is one of the dumber uses for LLM’s, complete waste of computing.
In terms of your claims, you notice how I just backed up my arguments with sources from actual scientists, who say that this is a serious problem which those ai-based ai-slop-spotters won’t fix? Whereas your claims are based with… Nothing. You just really want to believe.
Before AI, there were tons of very bright researchers around the world who couldn't write English well. It was a major problem. It isn't anymore. Writing well is actually very difficult, even if English is your native language.
> There’s multiple tools to help in that none of which are LLM’s.
The first good tool I ever saw was an LLM. The tools before then just weren't very good.
> That is one of the dumber uses for LLM’s, complete waste of computing.
Allowing people who speak different languages to communicate is a very good use of compute, in my opinion.
> notice how I just backed up my arguments with sources from actual scientists
The good news is that, while the number of fabricated papers have accelerated, so too is our ability to detect fabrications. Also, fabricated papers were a massive problem well before AI was useful in research. I think it's fair to characterise AI as our saviour here instead of the villain.
The broader issue pertains to the [Replication Crisis.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis) For decades, journals relied mostly on the honour system. Many people think peer review requires validating the data. It does not. It's basically a cursory check that the claimed methods are valid. The data is usually not validated. In fact, the data is usually not even produced for the journal or peer reviewers at all. This has become such a large issue that research began to sample studies to see if they could replicate the results given the claimed methods. A shocking number of papers could not be replicated. Scientists are loathe to claim this proves fraud, but when one has carefully written 50 pages of dense research methodology to arrive at statistically significant findings, it's clear that they would know if their experiments were replicable.
There is also another major issue with academic research as it exists: findings are (almost) only ever published when they confirm the hypothesis. Researchers begin from an often very biased perspective about the way they believe the world works (sociology is one of the worst for this), and work backwards from their conclusion. They might conduct dozens or hundreds of experiments, all while fail and are never published. Then they land on an experiment which can be massaged to reflect the message, and that is published. The fact is that all those "failures" are equally insightful research, and it should all be published for a variety of reasons.
There are also major issues re how research is gated and funded, and how many hobby researchers are never given the opportunity to publish at all - even if they could afford to pay the journal bribe.
Long story short, this entire industry was on the verge of collapse prior to AI. I cannot imagine it could get any worse, and I'm hopefully that AI will enable us to easily screen fraudulent and non-replicable research in the future. I expect 98% of papers to be rejected.
> we realized it was time to return to our own country
The problem is that it was someone else's country.
"Returning" after 2000 years and telling the people who have lived there for centuries that you rightfully own the place is insane. No one anywhere on earth would accept that.
By "continuous presence," you mean that a tiny number of Jews lived there. The vast majority of Jews lived elsewhere, and the vast majority of the local population was not Jewish.
I'm sorry, but 5% of the population of Palestine being Jewish does not give one the right to take over the country, not to mention the fact that the longstanding Jewish population of Palestine was hostile to Zionism. It was a European political movement.
If continuous presence in a land doesn't define a people's right to exist as a nation, you know what does?
The ability to create and defend borders.
Israel has that. Israel was invaded on the day it declared independence on May 14th, 1948. Invaded by 9 Arab nations and armies[0], Israel not only successfully defended itself and won the war, it even gained territory from the aggressors.
Israel has a right to exist because its people have had a continuous presence in that land going back longer than the British have been in London, longer than the French have been in Paris.
Israel has a right to exist because it defends its people and its borders and has the approval of the United Nations, UN Resolution 181.
The only people who deny this right of Jews to return to their native homeland? Bonafide neo-Nazis, Islamic fundamentalists, KKK members, and other antisemites.
> If continuous presence in a land doesn't define a people's right to exist as a nation, you know what does?
You're playing a deliberate sleight of hand here. A tiny number of Jews lived as a small minority in Palestine, therefore Jews were always there, therefore European Jews have the right to turn Palestine into a Jewish state.
The "continuous presence" was tiny, and had nothing to do with the millions of Jews who lived in Europe - the people who later founded Israel.
> Israel has that. Israel was invaded on the day it declared independence on May 14th, 1948. Invaded by 9 Arab nations and armies, Israel not only successfully defended itself and won the war, it even gained territory from the aggressors.
The Zionist paramilitary groups had already been waging war against the Palestinians for 6 months by the time the Arab armies intervened. The Zionists had already driven hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes and conquered much of Palestine. But Israelis like to present this as little old us being attacked by the big mean Arab armies.
> The only people who deny this right of Jews to return to their native homeland? Bonafide neo-Nazis, Islamic fundamentalists, KKK members, and other antisemites.
You forgot to mention Jewish people. The large majority of Jews were antizionist before WWII, and opposition to Zionism has always been a prominent position among Jews. And inversely, many of the strongest proponents of Zionism have always been antisemites (for example, right-wing Christians in the US today).
Imagine if in the year 3600 AD, an African American political movement were to start saying that Africa is their true homeland and that they have the right to take over Ghana and to turn it into their own state. It would be absurd, and the Ghanaians would fight it tooth and nail.
Yet here you are saying that Palestine was the true homeland of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, and that European Jews had a 2000-year-old right to take over Palestine, regardless of what the people who lived there had to think about it.
Albert Einstein legally traveled to British Mandate Palestine in 1923 to help set up the Hebrew University - on land that was legally purchased.
While some Arabs (and Jews) were displaced during the War of independence, most of Israel’s cities are built on land that was legally purchased, and the vast majority of Israelis immigrated legally.
Making it sound like all of the land was stolen because some Jews immigrated from Europe is like saying that Muslim migrants are stealing European land.
> Albert Einstein legally traveled to British Mandate Palestine in 1923
You're claiming that visiting once made him native to Palestine? He was a German. That was his native language, his culture, the world he grew up in.
> Making it sound like all of the land was stolen because some Jews immigrated from Europe is like saying that Muslim migrants are stealing European land.
Have Muslim immigrants to Europe established their own country through the mass expulsion of the pre-existing European population?
The Zionists weren't just immigrants to Palestine. They openly declared that their goal was to turn Palestine into their own country.
> most of Israel’s cities are built on land that was legally purchased
This is simply untrue. The vast majority of what became Israel was conquered, and the local population was expelled. Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth, Ramle, Lod, Be'er Sheva, Ashdod - these were all Arab cities that Israel conquered.
> the vast majority of Israelis immigrated legally
They arrived under British rule, when the native population of Palestine had virtually no say in its own governance. The native population deeply resented the British promising Palestine to a foreign people, and allowing them to come in and build up their own settlements and quasi-governmental institutions. The Palestinians knew exactly what the intentions of the Zionist movement were, and they obviously opposed it, as any people in their situation would have done. So yes, much of the Zionist immigration was "legal" according to the British, but the British were illegitimate colonial occupiers who were pursuing a policy that was almost universally opposed by the native population.
Looking at the largest population centers in Israel:
Jerusalem (pop. 1M): was 54% Jewish in 1922 and is 59% Jewish now. Jewish purchase and development of land there predates the British Mandate.
Tel Aviv (pop. 400k) - excluding Jaffa (pop. 50k): Pro-Palestinians like to conflate it with Jaffa because the two municipalities merged. But the vast majority of it is a city built on sand dunes purchased by Jews starting in the Ottoman era.
Petah Tikva, Rishon LeZion, Netanya, Bnei Brak (1M): Jewish cities built by Jews on land purchased legally.
Haifa (pop. 300k): was 54% Jewish in 1945, it’s 72% Jewish now.
The population of Nazareth is almost 100% Arab.
Ashdod was built on sand dunes 6 kilometres north of the town of Isdud, which was depopulated in 1948. The ruins of Isdud are still standing to the south of Ashdod.
We can acknowledge that some Arabs were forced out of some towns during the war - the Arab armies forced out every single Jew from the areas they conquered during the same war. However, the core of the conflict is the Arab side insisting that Jews have no right to any land between the river and the sea simply because of who they are.
You think that Jews of European heritage have some fundamental un-right to live in Petah Tikva?
Many Europeans and Americans oppose the immigration policies of their governments. Can they claim in 100 years time that the migrations were illegal?
> We can acknowledge that some Arabs were forced out of some towns during the war
That's a massive understatement. The Zionists / Israelis[0] expelled 80% of the native population of the territory that became Israel in 1948.
Across Palestine, Zionist / Israeli forces carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing, with the goal of capturing as large a territory as possible with as few Arabs as possible.
In Haifa, Zionist forces first carried out a campaign of terrorism, which caused nearly half of the Arab population to flee. Then, they launched a massive attack on the Arab neighborhoods, deliberately shelling civilian areas and using psychological warfare (threatening radio broadcasts in Arabic, for example) to try to convince the local population to flee. By the end, more than 90% of the Arab population had fled, and the city fell to Zionists forces.
This pattern was repeated across Palestine. The area that eventually became Israel had a large Arab majority: 60% to 40%. After the Israelis were done kicking out the Arab population, less than 15% of the population was Arab.
> the Arab armies forced out every single Jew from the areas they conquered during the same war.
The Arabs hardly conquered any territory in 1948. They were largely on the back foot. The vast majority of people who were violently expelled from their homes in 1948 were Arab.
> However, the core of the conflict is the Arab side insisting that Jews have no right to any land between the river and the sea simply because of who they are.
That's what you think the "core of the conflict is"? Not the fact that a foreign people came into Palestine and announced that they were going to turn it into their own country - and then actually did so through the expulsion of 80% of the native population? The goals of the Zionists made war with the native population completely unavoidable. Do you think that any population anywhere else on Earth would have allowed their country to be taken over by a foreign people - who wanted to establish their own state on it - without resisting?
> You think that Jews of European heritage have some fundamental un-right to live in Petah Tikva?
You talk about this as if it were just a few people immigrating to a foreign country and wanting to settle down among the locals. That's not what Zionism was. It was a movement that aimed to turn an Arab land, inhabited almost entirely by non-Jews, into a Jewish state, regardless of what the native population wanted. It was essentially a foreign invasion, facilitated by the British Empire, which held down the locals long enough for the Zionists to gain a strong foothold in Palestine.
> Many Europeans and Americans oppose the immigration policies of their governments. Can they claim in 100 years time that the migrations were illegal?
You keep talking about Zionism as if it were just a few immigrants arriving in a country and settling down. Are Mexican immigrants in the United States part of a large, organized movement that has declared that it will turn the United States into a new Mexican country for Mexicans alone? Zionism was an attempt to turn Palestine into a Jewish state. The locals were not even consulted. They were forced to accept it by a foreign empire - the British Empire - that ruled over them undemocratically.
0. I use this term because Israel was officially founded in the middle of the conflict. Zionist paramilitaries became the Israeli army.
The Arabs expelled 100% of all Jews in the territories they gained. To this day territories under control of the Palestinian authority are kept ethnically cleansed of Jews.
The Jews were migrating in accordance with local laws, and they bought deserted land at fair prices and developed them from the ground up into the big beautiful cities they are now. Until the British banned land sale to Jews and severely restricted migration (preventing Jews from fleeing the Holocaust), at the behest of the Arabs.
Any mass migration comes with a level of power in a democracy, and demographic changes are happening all over the Western world. Brussles is now majority foreign. London and NYC have Muslim mayors.
The Arabs just couldn’t take it that they will be one Middle Eastern country where Jews have significant authority and equal rights.
> To this day territories under control of the Palestinian authority are kept ethnically cleansed of Jews.
This is an insane statement. Israel controls all of East Jerusalem and the entire West Bank. They are moving their own settlers into those territories, in violation of international law, with the goal of annexing them to Israel. The Palestinians in the West Bank live under military occupation and are subject to constant violent pogroms at the hands of Israeli settlers, who have the backing of the IDF.
Yet in your narrative, the Israelis are somehow the victims here, because the Palestinians don't want them to keep stealing more land.
> The Arabs just couldn’t take it that they will be one Middle Eastern country where Jews have significant authority and equal rights.
They couldn't take it that European settlers would take over Palestine. You seem to have a very hard time accepting that the native population of Palestine should have had any say in whether their country, which was 95% Arab, should be gifted to European settlers.
> London and NYC have Muslim mayors.
Last I checked, London was still part of the UK, and NYC was still part of the US. The UK and US didn't have immigration laws forced on them by a foreign empire - they decided democratically that they're okay with a percent or so immigration each year. And Mamdani isn't trying to turn NYC into a breakaway Muslim state that will leave the US and declare Muslim supremacy over the rest of the population.
The WB is divided into zones. Look this up. Areas A are under full control of the Palestinian Authority. On the roads leading into these areas are big signs saying that it’s forbidden for Jews to enter.
It truly is insane that in this day and age there are parts of the world that are banned for Jews simply for being Jews. In addition, it is a capital offence punishable by death for Arabs to sell property to Jews. True apartheid.
Ultimately, your line of reasoning comes down to the concept of blood and soil, that the race of a person gives them unique rights to land and to reject others who they claim don’t have the correct genes to live there.
Jews were perfectly happy to share the land fairly with the other residents - as they do now with Israeli Arabs, who have full equal rights, and are doing much better than Arabs in neighbouring Arab countries, in terms income and life expectancy.
> It truly is insane that in this day and age there are parts of the world that are banned for Jews simply for being Jews.
It's the Israeli government that bans Israeli citizens from entering Area A. The Palestinians do not ban Jews from entering, and Jews enter all the time.
I am always amazed by the ability of Israelis to paint themselves as the victims in every situation. You control the entire West Band and hold millions of Palestinians under a brutal military regime. But in your mind, you're the victim. Incredible.
> Ultimately, your line of reasoning comes down to the concept of blood and soil, that the race of a person gives them unique rights to land and to reject others who they claim don’t have the correct genes to live there.
This is a crazy level of mental gymnastics. The Zionists announced that they wanted to take over Palestine and turn it into a Jewish state. But when the Zionist movement began, 95% of the population of Palestine was non-Jewish. Of course the population was against a foreign people coming in and taking over their country.
> Jews were perfectly happy to share the land fairly with the other residents - as they do now with Israeli Arabs, who have full equal right
The Zionists were actually adamant that Israel must have a large Jewish majority - large enough that the Arabs would have no meaningful political influence. Ben Gurion said it should be 80% at a minimum. Zionism is all about establishing a Jewish state, not a state that is simply for all of its citizens.
In order to achieve that overwhelming demographic majority in as large a part of Palestine as possible, it was necessary to expel the vast majority of the Arab population of the territory that became Israel - about 80%.
So when you say that the Israelis were perfectly happy to share the land fairly, that's just a pleasant lie - though maybe one you believe.
It was public knowledge that the Jews were removed against their will and are hoping to return (and have done so on different scales throughout history). This is documented even in Quran.
The Arabs knew when they moved in and built mosques on top of ancient Jewish holy sites that the land is contested. Still, the returning Jews by and large paid the occupiers to purchase the land fairly, and would happily pay Palestinians good money for more land in Judea and Samaria - which is why the PA needs to threaten to murder anyone who sells.
No, selling land to Israelis or people acting on behalf of Israel is punishable by death. The reason for this is that Israel is trying to annex the Palestinian territories, and every bit of territory that gets sold to Israelis is territory that will be permanently removed from Palestine. The Israelis establish settlers on the land and then use those settlements to argue that the land should belong to Israel.
This is viewed in the same way as selling land or national treasures to German occupiers during WWII would have been viewed in European countries.
> Jews who enter Area A are detained by PA forces and escorted out, or lynched. (With an exception of some token visits by activists).
Not true at all. I'm actually surprised by the number of Israelis who believe this, because American Jews visit Area A all the time, and are treated very well. There are actually some popular tourist destinations there, like Bethlehem. In my experience, Palestinians generally have nothing against Jews - they just don't like Israel.
The first cases you linked is one in which an armed Israeli man was handed over to the Israeli police, and the other is a case in which an Israeli family got lost and was handed over to the IDF.
What makes this really galling is that there is a wave of pogroms right now directed at Palestinians in the West Bank. Yet you're inverting this and presenting Israelis as the victims. It would be like claiming that whites were the true victims in the Jim Crow South, while black people were being lynched.
> Zionism started more than 2000 years ago.
Zionism started at the end of the 1800s. You're just trying to invent an alternate history.
> The Arabs knew when they moved in and built mosques on top of ancient Jewish holy sites that the land is contested.
This is insane. I'm sorry, but nobody gets to claim that land is "contested" in the modern age because an ancient Roman emperor expelled a group of people nearly 2000 years ago. You would laugh at any other group of people who made such a ridiculous claim.
Jewish return to the Land of Israel has been ongoing for 2000 years. Either people who’ve historically been displaced have a claim or they don’t. Either way Israelis have a claim. You can’t choose a statute of limitations arbitrarily to suit only one side.
Besides, the Jews mostly paid for the land they built on (or they built on land that wasn’t privately owned). The fact that Palestinians need to threaten to kill anyone who sells land to Jews shows that Israelis don’t generally just steal Palestinian land. And you think killing people for selling land is justified.
There are 2 million Arabs living in Israel. How many live in areas under the control of Palestinians?
It’s absolutely not safe for anyone visibly Jewish to enter Area A. You are simply lying about this, and I will stop engaging.
> You can’t choose a statute of limitations arbitrarily to suit only one side.
You don't have to precisely draw a statute of limitations to know that claiming land because of what happened during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian is completely insane.
> How many live in areas under the control of Palestinians?
Are you seriously asking this? There are nearly a million Israelis living (illegally, according to international law) in the Palestinian territories, but the Israelis will never let the Palestinians exercise legal authority over them. The Israelis have effectively annexed large swaths of the Palestinian territories, and wherever Israelis settle, the Palestinians are not allowed to exercise any control.
> It’s absolutely not safe for anyone visibly Jewish to enter Area A.
Dude, I have family members who have gone to Area A. They told me that the Palestinians were lovely to them, and mainly complained about how much their lives were restricted by the Israeli military occupation. In contrast, they told me that Israel was the rudest society they had ever experienced, by a very large margin.
Sounds like your relatives excel at generalizing to millions of people from a few individual interactions.
Jews were 100% ethnically cleansed from Gaza and the WB in 1948 - including from places where Jews have lived and owned property for hundreds of years, and this is maintained to this day wherever Arabs are in control. They were also ethnically cleansed from other Arab and Muslim countries.
The only places Jews can live safely in the Middle East are areas the IDF secures. It’s unfortunate that it has to be that way, when Arabs feel perfectly safe to live amongst Jews in Israel.
> Sounds like your relatives excel at generalizing to millions of people from a few individual interactions.
You claimed that it's extremely dangerous for any Jewish person to enter Palestinian cities, based on nothing. When I inform you that not only do many Jewish people go there all the time, but I have family members who have done so (and were treated far better by Palestinians than by Israelis), you just dismiss it.
> Jews were 100% ethnically cleansed from Gaza and the WB in 1948
There were hardly any Jews in the West Bank and Gaza in 1948 to begin with. The ethnic cleansing was almost entirely in the other direction.
> They were also ethnically cleansed from other Arab and Muslim countries.
This happened years after Israel ethnically cleansed the 78% of Palestine it took over. Arab Jews were victims of Israel's founding. The creation of a self-styled "Jewish state" through mass land theft and expulsion of the native population generated intense anger throughout the Arab world, which led to Arab Jews eventually being expelled or pressured out of their home countries.
> The only places Jews can live safely in the Middle East are areas the IDF secures.
Not true at all. There are plenty of Jewish tourists in the Middle East. The only thing I'll grant you is that Israel pretending to act in the name of all Jews does generate a lot of antisemitism and make Jews less safe around the world.
> Arabs feel perfectly safe to live amongst Jews in Israel.
Tell that to the millions of Palestinians who live under Israeli military rule and who are constantly subjected to pogroms.
The person you are replying to isn't arguing in good faith. They are a loyal propagandist for Israel, and their ability to spit lies and misinformation exceeds the rate at which you can correct it. It's a losing game.
You are either extremely ignorant or a cynical sociopath only out to serve your own interests. You spout old stereotypical hasbara that no one falls for anymore because the genocide has led everyone to be educated on the history of the region.
History. Jews have lived in Israel for 3,500 years. They were forced out numerous times by numerous conquerors -- including the Islamic conquest of the 8th century -- but each time, Jews returned.
And there is no genocide taking place, just a war Hamas started and lost. The Gazan population has already rebounded since Hamas started the war in 2023. For comparison with a real genocide, the global Jewish population today has still not rebounded to pre-1939 levels[0].
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