Can you look at this map and say Israel does not systemically appropriate land?

Assuming you are not being antisemitic and are just honestly not aware of the facts and the implications. I think I mentioned this already several times: the reason Israel exists is because the Jews couldn't live normal lives in Europe, North Africa, Iran etc. You say it was peaceful. Well, not so much. Jews were taxed differently in Arab countries, they were murdered in Europe in large numbers even before the Nazis. That's one thing. The other thing is that region was kept calm by empires - the Ottoman Empire, the British empire etc. After empires leave - every region becomes insane. It takes time to calm down. You see now that Egypt, Syria, Iraq etc are fighting with no relation to Israel what so ever. Empires left, USSR disappeared, the US is making sounds of a big Switzerland. That's it - now the kids are fighting among themselves without any adult supervision. The establishment of Israel just happens to coincide with the end of colonization. So two points:

1) Israel is only a minor factor in this equation. The region will be crazy for a while with or without Israel.

2) Jews have no where else to go. You see this as a crazy region, the Israelis see that as the least of all evils. Sure, you have to fight a war every so many years when the next neighbor tries to annihilate you. But at least you can fight back. Everywhere else on the planet the Jews will be left alone to be murdered in cold blood - as it happened many times before.

I might also ask for your opinion on this:

Since Jews and their neighbors (with two exceptions that I can bring to mind) have never gotten along peacefully and well…

…is the fault for that lack of “getting along” always with the non-Jews. Are Jews always peaceful and friendly…and their neighbors always the ones who refuse to get along?

OK. Getting closer to good old antisemitism. So, your solution?

The Jews are doing just that - building a state away from all the people they kept annoying for years. Aren't you happy?

Frank Apisa wrote:

I might also ask for your opinion on this:

Since Jews and their neighbors (with two exceptions that I can bring to mind) have never gotten along peacefully and well…

…is the fault for that lack of “getting along” always with the non-Jews. Are Jews always peaceful and friendly…and their neighbors always the ones who refuse to get along?

Actually Frank, Jews and Moslems have got along quite well for a long time. My daughter's best friend is a Sephardic Jew from Israel. Actually, he's British, but that's where his roots lie. His family had lived in Israel for hundreds of years, peacefully with their Palestinian neighbours, then the Zionists from Europe and America turned up. His family left when Israel became a nation, the Sephardic Jews aren't treated that well by their fairer skinned brethren.

Observer kicked up a load of dust earlier on about Gibraltar. What he didn't mention is that Gibraltar has a large population of Sephardic Jews who want to remain British. As they're Jewish, they can go to live in Israel any time they want, but they don't, they'd rather stay British in Gibraltar.

Israel is about white European and American colonists riding roughshod over the darker skinned indigenous people, Christian, Moslem and Jew. It's the same as every other discredited colonial exercise. The only difference is that they can play the anti-Semitism card. South Africa couldn't, that's the only reason why Israel still gets away with it.

Israeli society in general – and Ashkenazi Jews in particular – have been described as holding discriminatory attitudes towards Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent, known as Mizrahi Jews, Sephardic Jews, and Oriental Jews. A variety of Mizrahi critics of Israeli policy have cited "past ill-treatment, including the maabarot, the squalid tent cities into which Mizrahim were placed upon arrival in Israel; the humiliation of Moroccan and other Mizrahi Jews when Israeli immigration authorities shaved their heads and sprayed their bodies with the pesticide DDT; the socialist elite's enforced secularization; the destruction of traditional family structure, and the reduced status of the patriarch by years of poverty and sporadic unemployment" as examples of mistreatment. In September 1997, Israeli Labor Party leader Ehud Barak made a high-profile apology to Oriental Jews in Netivot stating:
We must admit to ourselves [that] the inner fabric of communal life was torn. Indeed, sometimes the intimate fabric of family life was torn. Much suffering was inflicted on the immigrants and that suffering was etched in their hearts, as well as in the hearts of their children and grandchildren. There was no malice on the part of those bringing the immigrants here—on the contrary, there was much goodwill—but pain was inflicted nevertheless. In acknowledgement of this suffering and pain, and out of identification with the sufferers and their descendants, I hereby ask forgiveness in my own name and in the name of the historical Labor movement.
Barak's address also said that during the 1950s, Mizrahi immigrants were "made to feel that their own traditions were inferior to those of the dominant Ashkenazi [European-origin] Israelis [Alex Weingrod's paraphrase]." Several prominent Labor party figures, including Teddy Kollek and Shimon Peres, distanced themselves from the apology while agreeing that mistakes were made during the immigration period.

The cultural differences between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews impacted the degree and rate of assimilation into Israeli society, and sometimes the divide between Eastern European and Middle Eastern Jews was quite sharp. Segregation, especially in the area of housing, limited integration possibilities over the years. Intermarriage between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim is increasingly common in Israel, and by the late 1990s 28% of all Israeli children had multi-ethnic parents (up from 14% in the 1950s). A 1983 research found that children of inter-ethnic marriages in Israel enjoyed improved socio-economic status.

Although social integration is constantly improving, disparities persist. A study conducted by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS), Mizrahi Jews are less likely to pursue academic studies than Ashkenazi Jews. Israeli-born Ashkenazi are up to twice more likely to study in a university than Israeli-born Mizrahim. Furthermore, the percentage of Mizrahim who seek a university education remains low compared to second-generation immigrant groups of Ashkenazi origin, such as Russians. According to a survey by the Adva Center, the average income of Ashkenazim was 36 percent higher than that of Mizrahim in 2004.

Some claim that the education system discriminates against Jewish minorities from North Africa and the Middle East, and one source suggests that "ethnic prejudice against Mizrahi Jews is a relatively general phenomenon, not limited to the schooling process".

There was a case in 2010, when a Haredi school system, where Sephardi and Mizrahi students were sometimes excluded or segregated. In 2010, the Israeli supreme court sent a strong message against discrimination in a case involving the Slonim Hassidic sect of the Ashkenazi, ruling that segregation between Ashkenazi and Sephardi students in a school is illegal. They argue that they seek "to maintain an equal level of religiosity, not from racism." Responding to the charges, the Slonim Haredim invited Sephardi girls to school, and added in a statement: “All along, we said it's not about race, but the High Court went out against our rabbis, and therefore we went to prison."