You’re leaving a lot out. I don’t want to take anything away from the fact that there were Jewish terrorist groups because there absolutely were and they did awful things… but you’re painting this as one sided and starting in the middle of the story.

1940, the first date you mention, is 20 years after the founding of the first Jewish paramilitary group, called the Haganah, which translates to “defense.”

The Haganah was strictly defensive at the beginning, brought about by the increasing violence by Arabs towards Jews in places like Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Tel Hai.

If you check this list, you’ll find the Arabs almost exclusively in the “instigator” column until the mid 1930’s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_and_massacres_in_Mandatory_Palestine?wprov=sfti1#List_of_killings_and_massacres_committed_in_Mandate_Palestine

The Irgun was the best known of the actual terrorist groups and came about in 1931. The Lehi were the ones who actually tried to work with the Nazis against the British.

They subscribed to a sect of Zionism called “Revisionist Zionism” which was a far right wing movement in stark contrast to the left wing Practical or Labor Zionism.

With that bit of background, I need to make clear that you’re getting two things incredibly wrong in this article and completely missing the larger context:

First: You’re painting all Jews, Israelis, or even all Zionists with a single brush and doing that is as patently ridiculous as trying to do it in America.

For example, America has MAGA and MAGA does some awful things, and there are even subgroups like QAnon which are crazier and more dangerous than the larger group.

Except not all Americans are MAGA, are they? MAGA doesn’t even represent a majority of Americans.

Revisionist Zionism is the philosophy of the Likud party in modern Israel, and the one led by Benjamin Netanyahu. In the last election they got something like 21% of the vote and hadn’t even been able to form a ruling coalition prior to the 10/7 attack galvanizing the Israeli public.

Even after that, Netanyahu remains historically unpopular and is unlikely to even finish his term.

So “Israel has always been violent and racist” as the main point of your article is both inaccurate and reflects poorly on your worldview. I don’t see what you’re saying here any differently than a white supremacist pointing at inner city crime statistics and saying “gosh look at how violent black people are.”

Second: Pretending the Arabs weren’t equal or greater participants in the violence leading up to 1948 and were just innocent victims minding their own business prior to the Zionists arriving is also just plain silly.

In addition to that list I posted above, you can find instances of organized attacks by Arabs on Jewish communities in places like Safed and Hebron in years like 1834, 60 years before the term Zionist even existed.

Arabs were offered a partition plan in 1937 and rejected it, and started a period of armed violence against both the Jews and the British.

Yes, the Irgun and other Jewish paramilitary groups attacked the British, but so did the Arabs.

A Jewish extremist group that was disavowed by the rest of the Yishuv did try to align with the Nazis, but the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who had been held up as the potential leader of an unified Arab Government not only met with Hitler but actively worked with him to recruit Muslims to carry out the Holocaust. I note you left out that second part.

The Jews wanted the British to allow more immigration, the Arabs wanted it stopped and the Jews expelled. Both Jews and Arabs attacked the British quite regularly. If you’re going to tell this story, tell the whole thing instead of a curated narrative designed to make one side look bad.

From about 1936 on, you’ll find that the entire region was basically in a three way civil war. The British absolutely did not attempt to enforce the UN partition plan as by 1947/48 they were simply tired of the whole thing and stopped backing either side.

If you’re going to write about Israeli history and relate it to modern times, please actually learn about it.

This article presents a very reductive and frankly ignorant view of Zionism and history, and hand waves away violence and atrocities by the Arabs and British, to the degree it even acknowledges they happened.

There is plenty to condemn by the Zionists, Arabs, and British in the history of this region, but pretending only one side performed misdeeds does make you seem either badly ignorant of history or writing with malice towards one group.