A great question, but not very relevant anymore. Let's set aside for a minute whether Israel should have been founded in that land in 1948 - it was founded there, and it's been 75 years. There are 9 million Israelis (or 7 million Jews if you want to break it down that way) that live there now. I was born here, my father was born here, my son was born here. Do I have less connection to the land, right now, than the million Gazans who are under the age of 18 and have never lived here? More importantly, what do you propose? That all 7 million Jews in Israel be relocated somewhere else? Where? Who would pay for moving an entire country elsewhere?
As for the question itself of why the Israeli state should be in Palestine, like I said, while I think it's relevant, it is a good question. Personally, I would've chosen to locate it elsewhere, but then I don't really care about religion or sentimentality "for the land" or anything like that. Practically, I don't think Jews really had another place to go - remember, most of the Jews of Israel were either fleeing Europe before the Holocaust, or were the survivors of the Holocaust, or were ethnically cleansed from surrounding Arab countries. It's not like they had anywhere else to go.
That said, I do question your premise:
> Approximately zero Israelis have a connection to Israel that wasn't created by immigration, invasion, and conquer in the last 100 years.
This is very wrong. For one thing, you're ignoring the 20% of Israelis that are Arabs/Palestinians, but I'll assume you meant the Jewish ones. There has been continuous Jewish habitation of Palestine for literally 2,000, since the Jews were forced out. If you look at the demographic history of Palestine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti...), you can see that roughly 100 years ago, 10% of the inhabitants of Palestine were Jewish. And IIRC, all of them got there by completely legal immigration, not "invasion" or "conquest".
> Practically, I don't think Jews really had another place to go - remember, most of the Jews of Israel were either fleeing Europe before the Holocaust, or were the survivors of the Holocaust, or were ethnically cleansed from surrounding Arab countries. It's not like they had anywhere else to go.
Not true. One proposal was the Kimberly plan, which received strong push back from proponents of Zionism that simply refused to settle for anything less than Palestine. Theresa very real case to be made that had there been stronger support from Jewish community as a whole that this may well have actually ended up being the outcome.
> This is very wrong. For one thing, you're ignoring the 20% of Israelis that are Arabs/Palestinians, but I'll assume you meant the Jewish ones. There has been continuous Jewish habitation of Palestine for literally 2,000, since the Jews were forced out
Not the person you're responding to, but personally I'd say that's largely irrelevant. Any perceived connection to a land that anyone has is something learnt from cultural context. There's nothing that empirically literary connects people to an arbitrarily divided portion of land. Countries are an abstractional fiction. Religions and cultures build stories upon these abstractions with varying levels of historic accuracy. Through exposure to these stories people develop a perceived connection with essentially no direct physical basis in reality. More succinctly - a person's perceived connection to the land depends almost entirely upon their exposure to certain cultural stories.
A small portion of the perceived connection to an area is obviously related to literal experience and exposure to said area. The fact that the is often mentally tied to back to an abstraction like a "country" implies that these experiences are secondary to the broader cultural stories.
In terms of immediate (non-cultural) connection, it seems pretty accurate to say that immigration and conflict is going to be a significant factor for everyone currently in Israel. Be they the descendants of immigrants, direct immigrants, or the descendants of people historically living in that area (having ancestors that lived there doesn't historically doesn't preclude them or their parents from being impacted by the creation of modern day Israel)
> Theresa very real case to be made that had there been stronger support from Jewish community as a whole that this may well have actually ended up being the outcome.
Maybe. I honestly don't know enough to say one way or the other, though I do know enough to say that most countries closed their doors to Jews during the Holocaust specifically, and I'd be rather astounded to discover a country that was willing to absorb millions of new people. E.g. I don't know anything about the Kimberly
plan except reading Wikipedia just now, but it seems like it was vetoed by the Australian government? Ironically, there are signs from European countries in the 1930s telling the Jews to "go back to Palestine".
> Through exposure to these stories people develop a perceived connection with essentially no direct physical basis in reality. More succinctly - a person's perceived connection to the land depends almost entirely upon their exposure to certain cultural stories.
Again, I'm probably not the best person to ask, but I couldn't care less about this specific land itself. I wouldn't have minded Israel being located somewhere else.
I do live here though, that's my connection to the land, as well as the connection that 9m other Israelis have to the land. We're not going anywhere.
(And neither are the Palestinians! If both sides just accepted the obvious reality that neither side is going to disappear, we could just divide up the land and sign a peace treaty already.)
> Be they the descendants of immigrants, direct immigrants, or the descendants of people historically living in that area
But, if I'm understanding you correctly... that's true of literally everyone everywhere. Everyone is a descendent of someone who at some point came to that land, and in many cases that's even fairly recent. Including many (though not all) Palestinians.
A great question, but not very relevant anymore. Let's set aside for a minute whether Israel should have been founded in that land in 1948 - it was founded there, and it's been 75 years. There are 9 million Israelis (or 7 million Jews if you want to break it down that way) that live there now. I was born here, my father was born here, my son was born here. Do I have less connection to the land, right now, than the million Gazans who are under the age of 18 and have never lived here? More importantly, what do you propose? That all 7 million Jews in Israel be relocated somewhere else? Where? Who would pay for moving an entire country elsewhere?
As for the question itself of why the Israeli state should be in Palestine, like I said, while I think it's relevant, it is a good question. Personally, I would've chosen to locate it elsewhere, but then I don't really care about religion or sentimentality "for the land" or anything like that. Practically, I don't think Jews really had another place to go - remember, most of the Jews of Israel were either fleeing Europe before the Holocaust, or were the survivors of the Holocaust, or were ethnically cleansed from surrounding Arab countries. It's not like they had anywhere else to go.
That said, I do question your premise:
> Approximately zero Israelis have a connection to Israel that wasn't created by immigration, invasion, and conquer in the last 100 years.
This is very wrong. For one thing, you're ignoring the 20% of Israelis that are Arabs/Palestinians, but I'll assume you meant the Jewish ones. There has been continuous Jewish habitation of Palestine for literally 2,000, since the Jews were forced out. If you look at the demographic history of Palestine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti...), you can see that roughly 100 years ago, 10% of the inhabitants of Palestine were Jewish. And IIRC, all of them got there by completely legal immigration, not "invasion" or "conquest".