Holocaust survivors condemn Israel for 'Gaza massacre,' call for boycott

[oberliner]

33. This is not true

At least not at first. The original Zionists purchased land and settled in places that were not inhabited. They established small communities that did not impinge on the neighboring pre-existing communities.

You will note that there was no independent Palestinian state at the time of the early Zionist movement - the inhabitants there were living under Ottoman rule.

Initially, there was real hope that the ambitions of the Zionist movement and the growing Palestinian nationalist movement could have co-existed, and indeed helped one another to achieve their goals.

I would argue that were it not for a confluence of factors, this dream was not all that far fetched.