Therefore, Israel is a settler-colonial state. The circumstances and motivations of the individual settlers are irrelevant when the outcome is the same. Knowing this yet still claiming that Israel is not a settler-colonial state is deceitful.

I think you're misunderstanding what I actually said. So let me be clear, what I'm saying is that Israel, like any other country, has a complex history that can't be oversimplified into a singular soundbite. What this means is that there is more nuance than any online narrative would have you believe. Like I said earlier, aspects of Israel's founding did in fact revolve around it being colonial settler state, that much is true and nobody is arguing otherwise. However, what I am arguing is that the country evolved to be more than just that with time, and I demonstrated this point by giving you the exodus of Jews from the muslim world as an example this.

The point is that countries aren't static, they continuously evolve and change. A lot of countries started out as colonial settler states, but ended up evolving into being something else. Turkey, Mexico, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, the US, and so many others fall under this category. Israel is not an exception even if some of the founding elements are still present. For example, Turkey is still colonizing and ethnically cleansing groups of people, the US is still an imperialist in its policy, Brazil still has a culture that's entrenched in racism, and so on. However, all these countries have different national identities from when they started, and Israel is no exception.

Wikipedia is not an ideal source of information, but that particular page cites more than enough quality sources that clearly show this to be the case.

The reason why I'm dismissive of Wikipedia as a source for this discussion is because this same article from a few years ago also had a lot quality sources to justify it, yet it was changed drastically nonetheless. What this implies is that are active campaigns to manipulate information on there. Regardless, the precise definition of Zionism is irrelevant to this conversation, so I don't really have much of an interest in arguing about Wikipedia.

Anyone with any sense understands that no group of people consists of identical individuals. You have made a lot of assumptions about my views. Just because I can see why something happened does not mean that I agree with it.

I originally interpreted your previous comments as tribalistic as it seemed like you were trying to push for a team rather than just making observations. However, If this is what you genuinely believe, then we're on the same page.

These issues and events existed well before Netanyahu, and whether or not the citizens like him is largely irrelevant when polls repeatedly show that the vast majority approve of the general treatment of Palestinians.

I disagree, I think Netanyahu is single handedly responsible for making things way worse. He greatly weakened Israel's democracy, he worked hard to erode the country's institutions, he went out of his way to incorporate radical fascists into his government, he aggressively pursued conflicts as a way to escape his trails, and the list goes on and on. His very presence in government does Israel a disservice as he is an icon for corruption inside and outside the country. His exit from politics will do wonders for the country and the region.

It's like Turkey with Erdogan or Hungary with Orban. There are a lot of protests and opposition there as there is in Israel against Netanyahu. Polls show whatever depending on how the questions are worded and how the results are interpreted, however, the one metric that is reliably consistent is people's confidence in the government. If people have no faith in their government then they fundamentally are at odds for what it stands for and they seek drastic change. Looking at what this current government stands for, a drastic change from is exactly what this country needs.

Will most of the major issues be solved with Netanyahu going away? Probably not, however, if he is replaced by his opposition, then that means you'll have a more sensible government in charge, and that alone is a huge change because it means that diplomacy has a real chance. When you show people a more peaceful, more reasonable path, they will always gravitate towards it. Netanyahu leaving politics is the first step to deradicalize, not just Israel but the whole damn region.

I don’t think the comment you’re referring to meant “peaceful coexistence” in the sense that there was absolutely no conflict (they did say “no major conflict”), but were more likely thinking along the lines of “peaceful enough to coexist”, whereas that is not how I would describe the current situation at all.

I feel like our conversation has split into two distinct topics. There's the topic about the evolution of Israel and the original topic of whether or not peaceful coexistence was a thing before the creation of the modern states. For the latter, I'm arguing that there wasn't. The type of discrimination, oppression, violence, war, and ethnic cleansing that we're seeing today has existed long before Israel was a thing. Just because this region was under the boot of the Ottoman Empire for centuries, that doesn't mean that things were peachy there. Can you even point to a sustained period of peace in this region that is free from the things I listed? Because no matter how far back I look, things were always tense. It's not just between Jews and muslims, but also with Christians. The point is that the people who are saying that things were better back then are referring to a time that's either undefined or doesn't exist. It's like the conservative types who say they want to make America great again, but can never define what time they want to make America back to.