Solomon2
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Unlike the Manhattan deal the Jews paid very high prices - one American historian, Will Durant I think it was, wrote after his 1920s visit to Palestine that the price a Jew paid for land was forty times greater than the price an Arab would pay for the same plot.Tel Aviv was founded on territory purchased by Jews from Arabs. Much like New York City's Manhattan Island was purchased by the Dutch from the natives.
It seems this huge disparity attracted Arabs who preyed on their weaker fellows to sell them land that they then sold to Jews at great profit, and a small portion of such profits was used to propagate the idea that it was the Jews who "stole" land from their terrorized victims!
The spiritual claim is religious, that G-d commanded the Hebrews, former slaves in Egypt, to migrate to the lands of Canaan and settle there. ("Palestine" is a Roman name, not a Jewish or Arab one.) The moral claim is, of course, that Jews had their own state and were expelled their 2,000 years ago and that still being recognized as a distinct people by themselves and their enemies the "Jewish Question" could best be solved, like other peoples, through achieving their own nation-state.But how did they lay their "moral and spiritual" claim that way?
This was not an uncommon attitude after WWI when three empires were broken up into nation-states. The Romanians, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, Iraqis, Egyptians, Poles - they all got their own nation-states.
It's not the Israelis that are "hostile to all neighbors". The historical record clearly shows that it was the decision of the neighbors to maintain hostility towards Israel. As the Arab League put it," No peace with Israel; No recognition of Israel; No negotiations with Israel."That too, by being hostile to all neighbours?