But I was really referring to the way that Zionism was a means to make the land "as Jewish as England is English" (Chaim Weizmann). And the words of early (pre-Holocaust) Zionist leaders and commenters:

When Theodore Herzl was writing in his diary about building a Jewish homeland, he wrote in his diary in 1895:

"When we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that receives us. We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly ... It goes without saying that we shall respectfully tolerate persons of other faiths and protect their property, their honor, and their freedom with the harshest means of coercion. This is another area in which we shall set the entire world a wonderful example ... Should there be many such immovable owners in individual areas [who would not sell their property to us], we shall simply leave them there and develop our commerce in the direction of other areas which belong to us"

Manahem Ussihkin in 1930: "We must continually raise the demand that our land be returned to our possession … if there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land. We have a greater and nobler ideal than preserving several hundred thousands of Arab fellahin."

Ben-Gurion in 1937: "We must expel Arabs and take their places… and, if we have to use force – not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places – then we have force at our disposal."

Yosef Weitz in 1938: "the transfer of the Arab population from the area of the Jewish State does not serve only one aim - to diminish the Arab population, it also serves a second, no less important aim which is to evacuate land presently held and cultivated by the Arabs and thus to release it for the Jewish inhabitants."

Jabotinksy in 1939: "There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs (to Iraq and Saudi Arabia)."

It goes without saying that we shall respectfully tolerate persons of other faiths and protect their property, their honor, and their freedom with the harshest means of coercion. This is another area in which we shall set the entire world a wonderful example ... Should there be many such immovable owners in individual areas [who would not sell their property to us], we shall simply leave them there and develop our commerce in the direction of other areas which belong to us"

This is why I omitted all quotes from after 1939, to be sure that it predated the Holocaust, and indeed public knowledge of it even among Zionists, and to avoid any overlap with the pre-Holocaust activities in Poland and other occupied countries.

Ray Jay wrote:The Soviet Union was no bargain either.

In any case, I did respond to your main point about Zionist writings before the Holocaust. They don't strike me as particularly abhorrent in the context of the times. Some of the sentiments are very noble. You had earlier discounted my earlier postings of what the Mufti of Jerusalem said and the Arab crowds that yelled death to the Jews. It seems like same old, same old to me. There are a range of views on both sides, but generally, the Jews want a country of their own and are willing to tolerate an Arab minority and many Arab countries nearby. The Arabs do not want there to be a Jewish country and many of them are much more extreme than that.

Your most important quote is from the father of Zionism. I repeat it here:

It goes without saying that we shall respectfully tolerate persons of other faiths and protect their property, their honor, and their freedom with the harshest means of coercion. This is another area in which we shall set the entire world a wonderful example ... Should there be many such immovable owners in individual areas [who would not sell their property to us], we shall simply leave them there and develop our commerce in the direction of other areas which belong to us"

What's wrong with that? The bulk of the conversation is about living in peace with Arab neighbors. There is some conversation about encouraging Arabs to move out of Palestine. There is less conversation about forcing Arabs to move out of Palestine.

Theodore Herzl wrote:When we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that receives us. We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly

Herzl was indeed the father of Zionism, but when it came to the reality of it, what happened was that land was purchased from feudal landlords and the people living there were evicted, with few places to go.

It may have been polite ethnic cleansing, but ethnic cleansing it was.

Jabotinksy in 1939: "There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs (to Iraq and Saudi Arabia)."

If the Jews were engaged in ethnic cleansing, it may have been the least efficient ethnic cleansing ever.

rickyp wrote:

Jabotinksy in 1939: "There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs (to Iraq and Saudi Arabia)."

ray

If the Jews were engaged in ethnic cleansing, it may have been the least efficient ethnic cleansing ever.

If your argument is that Jews in Israel possess a morally supperior position in their claim to land, and in their behaviours ....then the original language is very important. It represents the original goals and plans for the Zionist leaders.

After all when Hamas leaders talk about eradicating Israel you don't excuse them because they've done a lousy job at realizing their plan.

During the 1930s, Jabotinsky was deeply concerned with the situation of the Jewish community in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland. In 1936, Jabotinsky prepared the so-called "evacuation plan", which called for the evacuation of the entire Jewish population of Poland, Hungary and Romania to Palestine. Also in 1936, he toured Eastern Europe, meeting with the Polish Foreign Minister, Colonel Józef Beck; the Regent of Hungary, Admiral Miklós Horthy, and Prime Minister Gheorghe Tătărescu of Romania to discuss the evacuation plan. The plan gained the approval of all three governments, but caused considerable controversy within Polish Jewry, on the grounds that it played into the hands of Polish anti-Semites. In particular, the fact that the 'evacuation plan' had the approval of the Polish government was taken by many Polish Jews as indicating Jabotinsky had gained the endorsement of what they considered to be the wrong people. The evacuation of Jewish communities in Poland, Hungary and Romania was to take place over a ten-year period. However, the controversy was rendered moot when the British government vetoed it, and the World Zionist Organization's chairman, Chaim Weizmann, dismissed it. Two years later, in 1938, Jabotinsky stated in a speech that Polish Jews 'were living on the edge of the volcano' and warned that a wave of bloody super-pogroms would happen in Poland sometime in the near future. Jabotinsky went on to warn Jews in Europe that they should leave for Palestine as soon as possible. There is much discussion about whether or not Jabotinsky actually predicted the Holocaust. In his writings and public appearance he warned against the dangers of an outbreak of violence against the Jewish population of East Central Europe. On the other hand, as late as August 1939, he was certain that war would be averted.[18]

Jabotinsky was a complex personality, combining cynicism and idealism. According to the historian Benny Morris, documents show that Jabotinsky favored the idea of transfer of Arab populations if required for establishing a (still-proposed) Jewish state.[21] Jabotinsky's other writings state, "We do not want to eject even one Arab from either the left or the right bank of the Jordan River. We want them to prosper both economically and culturally. We envision the regime of Jewish Palestine [Eretz Israel ha-Ivri] as follows: most of the population will be Jewish, but equal rights for all Arab citizens will not only be guaranteed, they will also be fulfilled."[14] Jabotinsky was convinced that there was no way for the Jews to regain any part of Palestine without opposition from the Arabs. In 1934, he wrote a draft constitution for the Jewish state which declared that Arabs would be on an equal footing with their Jewish counterparts "throughout all sectors of the country's public life." The two communities would share the state's duties, both military and civil service, and enjoy its prerogatives. Jabotinsky proposed that Hebrew and Arabic should enjoy equal status, and that "in every cabinet where the prime minister is a Jew, the vice-premiership shall be offered to an Arab and vice versa."[22]

There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine
Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not
because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt.
Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly
impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting
"Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.

...

In the second place, this does not mean that there cannot be any agreement
with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the
Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up
this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a
rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital
character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they
can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist
leaders whose watchword is "Never!"

One side calls for murder; one side calls for transfer

Ben-Gurion in 1937: "We must expel Arabs and take their places… and, if we have to use force – not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places – then we have force at our disposal

You've claimed that both sides are equally morally repugnant.

In 1934, he wrote a draft constitution for the Jewish state which declared that Arabs would be on an equal footing with their Jewish counterparts "throughout all sectors of the country's public life." The two communities would share the state's duties, both military and civil service, and enjoy its prerogatives. Jabotinsky proposed that Hebrew and Arabic should enjoy equal status, and that "in every cabinet where the prime minister is a Jew, the vice-premiership shall be offered to an Arab and vice versa."[22]

from this its possible to envision Jabolinsky supporting the notion of two equal states existing side by side. A notion that the current Israelis government does not demonstrate a willingness to seriously undertake.

I agree; but you have to ask "why"

Your entitled to your view, but let's not distort the facts. Palestinians are not being ethnically cleansed by Israel.

The renowned Israeli historian revisits the formative period of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred, and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing".

Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel's founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the Middle East

Benny Morris proposed several interpretations. The conclusion of his main work on the topic The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (1989) is that the exodus was the "result of war, not intent". Nevertheless, he stated later that "[i]n retrospect, it is clear that what occurred in 1948 in Palestine was a variety of ethnic cleansing of Arab areas by Jews. It is impossible to say how many of the 700,000 or so Palestinians who became refugees in 1948 were physically expelled, as distinct from simply fleeing a combat zone."[9] In an interview to Ha'aretz in 2004, he also defended the idea that having performed an ethnic cleansing in 1948 had been a better choice for the Jews than living a genocide.[10] In his last book about the 1948 War: 1948: A History the First Arab-Israeli War (2006), he nuanced all this and stated that "[d]uring the 1948 War, (...) although there were expulsions and although an atmosphere of what would later be called ethnic cleansing prevailed during critical months, transfer never became a general or declared Zionist policy. Thus, by war's end, even though much of the country had been "cleansed" of Arabs, other parts of the country -notably central Galilee- were left with substantial Muslim Arab popultions (...).

Ashraf Madrasa, from the nearby village of Bardallah, showed Haaretz an ownership deed from 1961 for a 36-dunam tract of the land. He said the Israel Defense Forces seized the land, declared it a "military area," drove out the owners and ordered never to return.
A number of landowners were given alternative plots belonging to "absentee" Palestinians who fled during the 1967 Six-Day War. Sami Rajab, whose family farms in the area, said that in exchange for several plots in the area he was evicted from, his father received a tract that belonged to his uncle, who emigrated to Canada.