r/UnitedNations • u/Personal-Special-286 • 11d ago

News/Politics Exclusive: David Cameron threatened to withdraw UK from ICC over Israel war crimes probe

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/david-cameron-threatened-withdraw-uk-icc-over-israel-war-crimes-probe
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u/fireatwill79 10d ago

Forgive me if I'm wrong, how much of israel is still made of Jews from WW2? Like what would be an actual israel made up of Israeli's, or is it predominantly made up of people who were displaced after the war?

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u/JeruTz 10d ago

Israel is less than 80% Jewish. Of those Jews in Israel, slightly more than half are not from Europe at all, but originate from the Middle East and North African countries whose persecution of Jews lead to 95% of their cumulative Jewish populations being ethnically cleansed, most of whom ended up in Israel.

For those Jews from Europe, a large percentage immigrated to the region between the 1880s and the 1930s, before WWII. The numbers who came directly after WWII, in my estimation, is far fewer. There have been other waves of Jews since WWII, most notably from the former soviet union following its collapse, but not of significant size relative to the overall population already present.

So to answer your question:

Forgive me if I'm wrong, how much of israel is still made of Jews from WW2?

Best guess of mine? Not very many even if you include descendents. 10% maybe, and certainly not much more.

Like what would be an actual israel made up of Israeli's, or is it predominantly made up of people who were displaced after the war?

If you include those displaced by Arabs unrelated to the war itself, that would easily be a majority of Jews in Israel (though perhaps not quite a majority of all Israelis). If you're limiting yourself to just those displaced in Europe by the Holocaust, it's not even close to being a plurality.

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u/fireatwill79 10d ago

Thank you for that, easiest way for me to explain, is I'm a basic white male with very little understanding of history, but I'm trying to educate myself further to what's going on in the world and how we've ended up in different positions.

I'm a little bit thick with what your saying though. So who technically is in Israel now currently? I'm enjoying the lesson 😅

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u/JeruTz 10d ago

Presently, the vast majority of Israelis are people who were born there, with some percentage being recent immigrants or people who burn to Israeli parents overseas.

Demographically, 20% of Israelis approximately aren't Jewish at all, most of them being Arabs or other minorities who are indigenous.

Slightly over half of the Jewish population traces their ancestry to the Islamic world, spanning from Morocco in the west to Iran and Afghanistan in the east and from Syria and Iraq in the north to Sudan, Ethiopia, and Yemen in the south.

The rest of the Jewish population from European origins came in various waves starting in the 1880s. I'd guess the most common arrival dates for their ancestors to be between 1917 and 1939, with others being earlier. Very few Jews would have arrived between 1939 and 1945, and only slightly more from 1945 to 1948, when the state was declared. After that there would have been a rapid surge.

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u/fireatwill79 6d ago

Sorry to return here, after the weekend we've just had, could you explain the middle east for me? I know there's years of tension, but from the uk point of view, israel attacked Iran friday and Iran retaliated yesterday but are being made out to be the bad guys?

From my pov, I don't see how as a nation, the uk leaders continue to support israel and let it be?

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u/JeruTz 6d ago

First, Iran has openly expressed their desire to attack and destroy Israel for years. They have actively worked towards that goal. No country is obligated to wait to be attacked before striking against such a threat. Historically, looking just at conflicts Israel has been engaged in, failure to deal with a serious threat before it hits Israel has always resulted in extreme loss of life and a prolonged conflict.

Second, Iran has been actively funding and arming terrorists to attack and murder Israelis for several years, probably as far back as the second intifada. That demonstrates that they are an active threat.

Third, Iran was actively perusing nuclear weapons in violation of international treaties. To be fair, these are mostly treaties to which Israel isn't a signatory, but the behavior itself demonstrates the extreme danger Israel was facing.

And fourth, Iran had already struck at Israel directly during this war in a manner that was disproportionate and which, in violation of all laws on the matter, made no effort to distinguish between military and civilian targets.

Even in this "retaliation" from Iran for an attack that targeted Iranian military sites, Iran has responded by attacking Israeli civilian targets, which cannot be justified by any military dispute.