Also many more liberal Jews such as myself consider ourselves "pro-Israel" but feel that many actions that Israel has taken are wrong and actually hurt Israel's existence in the long run. I oppose far-right wingnuts in both Israel and America.

Have a nice 5775 in a month or so.

5775 actually starts in 10 months but I'll let it slide

Nuance, motivation, and degree are lost on a lot of folks.

Those issues are serious problems with the treatment of the Palestinian people...there are millions of displaced refugees in addition to the millions who live in territories occupied by Israel. These people have few rights and live in hopeless conditions, and while talk of a two-state solution is nice, it's patently obvious that at least a segment of the Israeli government wants only a single, Jewish state to exist between Jordan and the Mediterranean. What they plan to do with the Palestinians, who would outnumber the Israelis, is unclear.

Those issues have nothing to do with Jewish people in general, who I quite like.

Criticizing US politicians for their pro-Israel stance is also just fine.

OTOH, saying things like "Congress and the White House are controlled by Zionists" is anti-Semitic garbage.

I keep seeing that statement made by people who are afraid of being accused of being anti-Israeli, but I've never seen any legal basis for it.

I've heard various claims -- many of them from my father, who was being brainwashed by the ADL in his final years, when my mother was no longer around to provide a corrective. One is that the Rothschilds bought up massive amounts of land that formed the basis of modern Israel. Not so -- they did buy several large estates, but that's all.

Another is that Israel was largely depopulated territory in the 19th century and that the Palestinians are actually Arabs who showed up after the Jews did. That's not true either. The Palestinians have been there all along and many of them are probably direct descendents of the Jews of 2000 years ago.

Is the real claim that the British seized Palestine from the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I and then handed it over to the Jewish settlers? If it is, are there documents and treaties that back this up?

I'm curious about this because it seems to be accepted as a given. But in the end, I suspect it comes down to a matter of armed conquest. And that's a lot less legitimate-sounding than claiming ownership through ordinary commercial transactions.