With the recent plague of unwanted and mainly illegal immigrants from Mexico coming into the U.S., I think it may be instructive to compare this phenomenon with the influx of Zionists to the Holy Land* over the past 150 years.
As a host country, there are only a few things one expects (or demand) of immigrants. They should come in legally whether as documented immigrants or authorized guest workers obey the law when they get here, assimilate, and become productive citizens as quickly as possible, rather than being a drain on public resources.
If all Mexicans coming into this country followed those guidelines, they like other immigrant groups who preceded them would quickly become yet another demographic asset to the total American society.
Now for contrast, consider the Zionists emigration to the Holy Land.
They went there with no intention of assimilating. They obeyed the laws grudgingly, manipulating them to their advantage when possible, particularly in the area of land titles and deeds, which were rarely used before their arrival. Their intention from the beginning was not only to forge a new State, but to drive out as many of the original inhabitants as possible, and for those they couldnt drive out, to relegate the remaining Arab populations to less-than-second-class citizen status. Indeed, the indigenous population was (and is still) treated in Israel in a manner that is not unlike the black Africans were treated during the apartheid period in South Africa. There is essentially no mixing of Arab and Israeli in Israel, except to the extent that Arabs act as domestic servants and menial workers in the Israeli society.
The Zionists challenged the legitimacy of the existing government, referring to it as nothing more than an inconsequential outpost of the Ottoman Empire, and claimed not only a right to form their new State, but a right to designate it as a jewish state, formed solely for the benefit of the jewish people of the world (who chose to move there). These rights are, basically, based on an archaeologically-questionable history dating back thousands of years, and promises supposedly made to them by their god. These rights rather conspicuously ignore the most recent 1500 years, when Arab Muslims predominated and ruled. If you made this up, nobody would believe you.
Again and again, they have embarked on campaigns of ethnic cleansing and genocide, seeking to kill or remove or drive out all of the Arabs they could, destroying property (homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, etc), infrastructure, and then building roads, whole towns, and structures in place of those that they destroyed. Time after time, they have attacked their neighbors without legitimate cause, claiming in each case that they were merely defending themselves from attacks by Egypt and others. Both Israel and most of the rest of the world have adopted the rewritten history of these mythical acts of aggression against the jewish state.
In 1948, largely driven by sympathy for the Holocaust, the U.N. proposed partitioning the Holy Land into two separate states: a jewish state comprising 80% of the territory in question (for the 25% of the population that was Israeli), and 20% of the territory for the 75% of the population that was Arab. And the still-surviving Israeli myth is that the Arabs unreasonably refused this arrangement. Incredible, isnt it?
Since then, they have attempted to make impossible the ultimate creation of an Arab state by populating and placing settlements and infrastructure in large swaths of the territory supposedly set aside for the Arab state, leaving only territory that no rational person would want, in a broken up joke of a territory with no rational borders. Israel has in fact taken over all of the usable terrirory( except Gaza) where the Arab state could even hope to exist.
The Israeli state has a long list of demands for the ultimate resolution of the issues. Most perversely, there must be a perpetual right of return for anyone in the world having or claiming jewish lineage from thousands of years ago, while the topic of a right of return for the Arabs they have criminally driven out the actual PEOPLE, not their descendants - of the territory is off the table. Again, you couldnt make this up.
It is demanded that the leaders of the exiled Arab population acknowledge not only Israels right to exist, but its right to exist AS A JEWISH NATION, as a pre-condition to any settlement. Thus, the displaced Arabs could never hope to return as citizens. Really? Where does that right originate? In the U.N. charter? The Torah? Certainly not the Quran. What other country demands a right to exclude from government and even citizenship the rights and very existence of the people who actually came from that place? It is preposterous.
Israel claims to be a democracy, which is only arguably true if you DO NOT COUNT the millions of people who have been driven away by the Israelis, and are not permitted to live there or vote.
Getting back to our Mexican problem, many of us know that much of the territory that now comprises Arizona, New Mexico, California, Oregon, and Washington was once part of Mexico. What if our current Mexican immigrants proposed creating a new country in that territory, driving out as many as possible of those Anglos and Negros who live there now, and relegating the remaining ones to second-class citizenship? And what if they demanded a right for any Mexicans who chose to, to come to the new country (Aztlán) and be accepted immediately as citizens, while basically barring the return of anyone who had been driven out?
I would personally be fine with that, but most Americans would object. Certainly the people living in California would have a problem with it.
The current crisis in Gaza is just the latest manifestation of the refusal of those damned Palestinians to accept the oppression and crumbs from the Israelis table and BE SATISFIED WITH IT.
Why cant they just be reasonable and stop fighting Israel? Its a real mystery.
* I use the expression, Holy Land to avoid any distraction arguing about whether it is Israel, Palestine, Samaria, or whatever else it may be called.
