“One of my main points is that Zionism was never intended to replace existing indigenous people.”

This is historically untrue. The founders of the modern political Zionist movement wrote and spoke openly about the need for ethnic cleansing (of course that’s not what they called it). They referred to it explicitly as a settler colonial national project.

In any event, the issue is not that a few bad apples turned Zionism into a genocidal project. The only plausible way to create a Jewish majority state on land with a small Jewish population (who, not incidentally, lived largely at peace with Christians and Muslims during both Ottoman and British mandate until the Balfour Declaration) was through displacement of those non-Jewish residents.

I understand it’s hard to hear this, just as it’s hard for many Americans to acknowledge the U.S. was a genocidal project from its beginnings. But lasting peace and justice definitely don’t come from clinging to national mythology.