Kent: I criticized by excellent article, because it didn't start at the beginning; when the Zionist movement started to return large number of Jews to Palestine. I called that movement colonialism, but few recognized that colonialism was immoral at that time, including the US, which fought desperately to escape from the British Empire. While helping the Cubans to escape the grip of what was left of the Spanish Empire, we took over several Spanish colonies. I refuse to criticize the Zionists for doing things America also did. The Holocaust created a need for a safe homeland for the Jewish people.

By the end of WWII, the vast majority of the advanced countries no long accepted the morality of colonialism. One third of the people now living in Palestine were Jews and the British (and French) had returned to the new UN the Mandates they had been given by the League of Nations to govern areas of the former Ottoman Empire where Arabs dominated. The British had presided widely accepted local governments in many areas where one people dominated, but Palestine (with Jews and Palestinian Arabs already engaged in civil war), Lebanon (with Christians, and multiple Muslim sects competing for power) and the Kurds (the largest group to not rule a homeland) were problems that persist to this day (along with the British preference for monarchies). IMO, this fairly sets the stage for your history.

I objected (originally mildly) to your bringing the Jews who VOLUNTARILY fled Arab countries into an essay discussing those who have been displaced by war or whose lands had been lost (to Israel, Egypt and Jordan) in the 1947-8 war.