> Yes, the Holocaust was horrible, but a Biblical mandate is not an effective foundation for a nation-state.

Aren't those two different things, on the one hand a political and historical reason and on the other hand a religious reason for zionism?

I am all for a sovereign state for jews/the people of Israel. And I don't think it's unreasonable to take a stance on the side of ethnical homogeneity in support of that - as long as that still includes keeping to the standards of human rights when it comes to treating those who are not to be considered citizens of Israel.

And I do think public international perception of the latter point is totally skewed anyway; too many national agendas. Germany, for instance, would feel so relieved if they could identify Israel as another nazi state.

It's important to point out, additionally, that Israel never has had any genocidal intentions towards the Palestinians - if they had wanted to wipe them out as an ethnical group, they could have done so long ago already. Vice versa the same does not seem to hold true, a lot of agendas of the terrorist palestinian organizations which received major support by the population explicitly stated that their goals included "driving the jews into the sea" and other ethnical cleansing terminology making clear that their intifadas weren't just about combatting Israel but wiping out all jews (at least on "their" territory of course) which practically served as a justification to include Israelian civilians as their targets.