The most striking comparison that I came across today, during my attendance at the conference, was that made by Derek Penslar: he spoke of Zionism as a kind of colonialism, and, for anyone who ever paid a smidgeon of attention in high school history classes, colonialism is a foul word the very sound of which should set our lips in a curl of the utmost disdain. Given that he did specify that there are many features of the Zionist movement that did set it out as a very idiosyncratic case, the very association of the two notions was--to me--a surprising and illuminating one. The story that I had tended to associate with the founding of Israel was more one of self-determination, of a nation of people gaining the right to exercise self-governance. This is why I was so taken aback by the comparability of Israel and Algeria or South Africa. Evidently, even when we think we are optimally placed as impassive observers (and often precisely because of the fact that we are so complacent in the fact that we could not possibly be held hostage by any specific ideology), the single explanation that we come to designate as the only objective account of facts eventually turns out to be wholly insufficient, to be unfair to some valid viewpoint or another.
On another note, there was a comment made in the aftermath of this presentation that I found very interesting--it was suggested that after five or six generations, the competing claims between Jewish and Arab people to their nativity would become irrelevant and fade away, seeing as everyone is now native. I was initially taken with the remark and felt decidedly more optimistic because of it, but upon reflection it seems to me that there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary that, even if we skip a few generations, the old prejudices do not tend to dissipate of their own accord, especially when the identities in question are so entrenched and so radically opposed. Take, for example, the situation in Tibet and Manchuria--these are regions that Han Chinese people have felt entitled to for several generations, having toiled to develop the land for agricultural and industrial uses, and yet there still exists a sharp demarcation between the ethic Tibetians and the Chinese-who-live-in-Tibet, just as there is a well-understood distinction between the Manchurians/ethnic Koreans and the Han Chinese who have evolved a distinct identity as the "North-Eastern Chinese". That is to say, both the Manchurians and the Han Chinese have occupied the same land for decades, and both have firmly established identities--any attempt to bestow primacy upon one or the other would surely end in great displeasure.