Historical context of Israel's war on Gaza

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It seems to me that Hamas attack on Israeli was nothing more than a genocidal act of terrorism targeting both adult and children Israelis. I cannot fault Israeli for responding to that attack.

One thing that is interesting to me is that Israel is approximately 75% Jewish and 20% Arab. Hamas, on the other hand, is pretty much 99% Arab. That brings up a couple of obvious questions:
1) If Israel is genocidal, then when are they going to start murdering the 25% of Israelis who are not Jewish?
2) What would happen if a Jew attempted to join Hamas? It certainly seems possible that he might be murdered because of his race.

Trying to keep the thread Evidence of Israel's genocidal intentions toward Gaza? on-topic, I've created this separate thread for discussion of the historical context of Israel's war on Gaza.

I will ask the moderator(s) to move some off-topic posts from that thread to here. I will then reply to some of those posts.

I've already discussed some aspects of the historical context in the following threads:

- What life is like for Palestinians
- Israel/Palestine and settler-colonialism
- Palestine/Israel: 2-state solution vs. 1 binational state?
- Israel/Palestine -- how could a one-state solution work?
- Critiques of Zionism by Jews
- Palestinian Christians
- Christian Zionism
- Israeli settler support infrastructure here in the U.S.A.
- Changes in how Palestinians/Arabs talk about Jews
- Traditional anti-Jewish tropes and debunkings thereof

Everyone, feel free to discuss the historical context more generally here.

During the time I was creating the above-listed threads, I learned a lot about how awful the situation of Palestinians has been for lo these many decades. Here in the U.S.A., most people -- myself included -- have been pretty effectively shielded from learning about this throughout most of my lifetime.

You can't stand it if someone has a different opinion than yours?

Both the Palestinians and Israeli Jews have plenty of legitimate historical and recent reasons to assume the other party wants to cleanse/genocide them. That is all the context one needs to know.

One side probably does have more legitimate reasons to assume that about the other side and that is on topic for this thread.

So you justify the violent murder of non-combatants, including women and children, if they have somehow been wronged?

There was no excuse whatsoever for Hamas attack on Israelis.

I am fascinated by Jewish history especially the WWII era. First the US turned away 900 or so Jewish people who wanted to seek asylum from Nazi Germany. Otto Skorzeny ( the German who rescued Mussolini and was also known as the most dangerous man in WWII) established a special unit of the Waffen SS dealing with espionage and terrorism. He served 2 years in prison at the end of WWII and then was hired by the PLO to train its soldiers (including a young Yasser Arafat) . He then switched sides and was hired by the Israeli Mossad. The Mossad had put a death warrant on Skorzeny before hand when he was training the PLO. When Israel formed its own country in 1948 the Jewish families that had previously lived in Arab countries for generations were told they had to leave immediately and had to forfeit their lands. This is when I feel the hostilities between the Arabs and Israelis actually began. Both sides distrust each other and the Israeli invasion of Gaza is just the latest chapter.

In talking about events during the 1940s noted Israeli historian Benny Morris has said the Nabka was a mixture of ethnic cleansing and the typical refugees created by war.

He also claimed the cleansing was a uniform policy but on an ad hoc basis by individual commanders. The country is still often run on an ad hoc basis.