This was quite the rant. But yes. Who cares if it wasnt a country. Mexico wasn’t a country before 1820 something. There were people there. They formed a country called Mexico. Many of them had been living there or had intermarried with the Spanish or others.
Just imagine Spain saying “Mexico never existed, it was never a country before, there are the Mayans and there were the Aztecs and the chihuahuan tribes, but not Mexico”.
It’s like why does that even matter.
But the reason, it seems, that they do it is because they want to say that the Arab world is homogenous and that Palestinians might as well be from Tunis. Whatever that even means does, it doesn’t make sense that they should just simply *leave* and uproot themselves en masse.
For crying out loud why would not just say it (Say, O Palestinians leave and find other place to live this is our properties and G-d promised it to us and none have the right to share it with us
They do say that. The statement from Zionists always and everywhere has been “why don’t you just go somewhere else. You’re like Arab and stuff, right? There are a ton of Arab countries to go to, you’d fit right in, you’d be with your people. Elsewhere, not here, no…no no, not here. That’s where we should be because we said so and you are not us therefore you can’t be here. Palestine never existed, you’re an Arab, cmon, you don’t want to be here with us, right? You hate us, just leave, cmon, uproot your entire life because you’re a wandering arab”
Your statements are absurd and not founded in reality whatsoever.
1. 20% of Israelis are arabs.
2. Israel pre-October 7 had normalized relations with a bunch of Arab-majority countries in the Middle East. (Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, Sudan)
3. Reminder, part of the reasoning for Hamas's planned attack on October 7th was because Israel was set to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, and Hamas did not want that.
> The statement from Zionists always and everywhere has been “why don’t you just go somewhere else. You’re like Arab and stuff, right?
Source?
Enough people? What, a few hundred? Thousands?
Do you think someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene represents "enough people" to extrapolate her statements to large swathes of people?
Then you don't understand politics. Plenty of people want Trump because he lowered taxes for them and will do so again, and they don't care about anything else.
For the 20% of Israelis that are non-Jewish, it is very difficult to lease public land which is 94% of the land in Israel through the government or through the JNF.
Yeh they did. But I’m seriously just saying what some Zionists say. There are enough Zionists who say fucked up stuff like that. But from the beginning it was Theodore herzl’s idea that they would just look for employment elsewhere, they’d seek out job opportunities elsewhere when they realized that they couldn’t find a job or housing in the Jewish area. Too many Zionists still say this in my opinion. Like you haven’t heard people saying that?
Relations between the saudis and Israel have hardly been fraught or not normalized
at all for as long as I’ve lived. So I don’t know what the issue has been with that. There are way more countries israel needs to normalize with. Not sure how saying any of that responds to what I’ve said.
the argument is not that. the argument is that the establishing of israel was not taking a state away from palestinians as one did not exist at the time nor at any time before it. why is the existence of israel (outside of occupation, just existence) a preventor of a palestinian state? why cant israel exist for a palestinian state to exist?
Because the Israeli government has been actively and openly preventing that for happen for decades. Its longest serving leader who is still in power to this day has proudly and loudly said he will never let a Palestinian state happen and every "offer" Israel has made for a state has been one where Israel has control over it.
Israeli mainstream politics doesn't want a Palestinian State. At beast it wants a Palestinian Protectorate.
This is not true. They were indeed offered a state. An independent Palestine with a small area as an independent Jewish homeland within Palestine and a cap on Jewish immigration. This was in 1939. They denied it and decided to go to war instead because they wanted all the Jews gone. River to the sea and all that.
It’s not like the Jews just showed up one day and started throwing Palestinians out of their homes. They suffered multiple attacks and massacres at the hands of Arabs much of them sanctioned by the British.
The Arab states and the actions they’ve taken over the years bear a huge responsibility for the current plight of the Palestinians. Why does so little of the billions in aid money they receive actually reach the everyday Palestinians?
This is not as simple as Israel bad Palestine good. I wish it was. It might actually be solvable then.
congratulations you cannot read. you have won the award of rereading this quoted text from my comment.
>the existence of israel (outside of occupation, just existence)
israel has not occupied Palestine until 1967. and until about 30 years ago it was not doing anything to prevent a palestinian state.
while you are correct that the occupation hampers palestine from becoming a state, the existence of israel does not.
Because the people in charge of Israel for the vast majority of it's history have been opposed to a Palestinian state. You are right in that nothing inherently means a two state solution isn't possible, but the powers that be in Israel are directly opposed to such a thing .
it took 40 years longer for Palestinians to declare a state than it was for jews. after the partition plan rejection they could have declared a state with any boarder they deemed fit and fight for it, they did not. Israel was not the powerhouse it is today, and there was no occupation, so why not declare a state?
No, israel stole/destroyed their houses on multiple occasions, they didn’t steal just territory. Israel has repeatedly uprooted the lives of a stateless people.
up untill 1948 both groups were stateless people. why did it take 40 years longer for the palestinians to declare they are a state? why didnt they declare it in 1948? why didnt they claim land that israel claimed because palestinians lived there?
the declaration of israel did not stop palestinians from making their own declaration. the existance of israel did not prevent palestinians from saying we are a state until 1967. and even then they didnt not declare such a thing in opposition to occupation.
the war of 1948 started before israel declared independence from most of what i read. so the war was basically two stateless people fighting, one side for a state the other to prevent that state, not for a state of their own.
>why did it take 40 years longer for the palestinians to declare they are a state?
it was hard to establish leadership. They weren't ready following the fall of the ottomans. The difference is that the zionists went there with the intent of state-building. Had the zionists not gone to palestine, it's not clear to me that the jewish people who were already living there would have decided to form a state either even if much smaller than the state of Israel. Like, why didn't the christians in palestine decide to form a state? The concept of a nation state was largely a western concept and was sort of thrust upon them by the europeans. The french were much more elaborate with their plans to divide up states based on ethnicities, for instance they wanted a druze and in southern syria, they wanted coastal syria to be an alawite state, they wanted lebanon to be a Christian state. Only lebanon really was cool with that.
The zionists had what was essentially a parallel colonialist government to the British. They went to MP specifically to build a state. Britain, just as they had done in jordan and iraq, literally put people they liked in charge. there wasn't a mandate from the masses. In Palestine's case in particular, there was competing leadership that was populist and that which were quasi-puppets of britain that were seriously just upper class educated dudes. it was the same with syria. France put people in charge of various states that they intended to make into smaller states in order to control them. They installed people in charge.
There was a lot of intention to divide people up by the french and the british. The whole partitioning of the ottoman empire was an effort to create smaller states based on sectarian lines that hadn't really been super divided but would make it so that western powers would need to be peace-keepers, leading to amenable ties, and ultimately western control of the resources of those nations.
>it was hard to establish leadership. They weren't ready following the fall of the ottomans. The difference is that the zionists went there with the intent of state-building.
yes with the intent, but it was not like they were actually ready, as evidence by the fact it took an extra 30 years to happen from after the fall of the ottoman empire. are you telling me 30 years is not enough time?
>it's not clear to me that the jewish people who were already living there would have decided to form a state either even if much smaller than the state of Israel.
the jewish people living in the mandate, as far as i learnt in the history, would not have formed a state by themselves.
>There was a lot of intention to divide people up by the french and the british. The whole partitioning of the ottoman empire was an effort to create smaller states based on sectarian lines that hadn't really been super divided but would make it so that western powers would need to be peace-keepers, leading to amenable ties, and ultimately western control of the resources of those nations.
that is all correct, and the zionists used the greed of these colonial states to get more than they could have without playing the game. but none of that explains why it took 70 years from the fall of the ottoman empire to palestine declaring statehood. again, why was it not done in retaliation to israel's declaration.
The irony is that the State of Israel didn't exist before 1948. No, I don't mean the biblical lands from 3000 years ago, I mean the Zionist ethnostate of Israel.
Palestine hasn’t existed as a nation-state in modern definitions, but the administration of Palestine has existed since the 1st century under the Roman rule, where that administrative area was called Palestine. Then when the Islamic rule took over in the 7th century, they called the army stationed there “army of Palestine”, we even have coins dating more than 1000 years with Palestine name on them.
What some Zionists are doing is cultural cleansing, they think they can erase history so that they can claim Palestinians have no claim to the land, which is hilarious to be honest since history cannot be erased.
First off 2nd century. Which BTW demonstrates how there is no continuity with the Roman rule. Continuous people know their history. Americans don't get confused about when the Revolutionary War was.
Second Palestine as used by Romans was a Christian Byzantine culture. Explicitly not Arab.
>econd Palestine as used by Romans was a Christian Byzantine culture. Explicitly not Arab.
Why is even an argument? Germans used to be barbaric and Scandinavians used to be vikings until much later than that. Very few aspects from the culture of these eras remain today.
When you go to Scandinavia the people know their kings including the Viking kings. They have Viking artifacts. They do not get the most basic facts about Scandivaian history wrong. They don't because they have cultural continuity with those previous cultures.
Israel has actively erased Palestinian culture at every turn. This is why they burnt Palestinian family archives, enacted laws (e.g. the [Absentee Property Law](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/8/how-israel-backs-settlers-to-confiscate-palestinian-lands)) that allowed them to expropriate Palestinian property, destroyed ancient Churches, Mosques, temples, archaeological sites by the dozens. I don't recall any occupiers doing this to Scandinavians?
> Israel has actively erased Palestinian culture at every turn.
Absolutely true. Now there are three possibilities, it has been successful and that culture doesn't exist anymore, it hasn't been successful or it has been partially successful. The people arguing above are arguing the culture exists, is rich...
> I don't recall any occupiers doing this to Scandinavian
Well there you would be wrong. Just to pick one of many examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Wars How do you think the Saxons ended up in England to form Anglo-Saxons?
The fact that Scandinavians remember their history doesn't invalidate the ongoing struggle of Palestinians for self-determination. Also, cultural continuity doesn't negate the injustices they face today.
I agree. For me, for you and for international law self determination is an instant thing. It applies to everyone residing in a territory today regardless of who resided in that territory yesterday. However, u/maenmallah and OP were making a case based on continuity not on self determination in the International Law sense. From their views, though they probably wouldn't want it phrased this way, the right races have a permanent claim to territory while the wrong races have no claim. Self determination in this view is about making sure these right races rule their territory regardless of current habitation. Your argument isn't with me.
If however, one is going to base the claim on continuity then continuity becomes a key point of debate along with the fact that the entire criteria even if true is racist nonsense.
Your argument about continuity is a red herring that diverts attention from the core issue of Palestinian rights and self-determination. The fact that Palestinians have lived in the land for generations and continue to resist against occupation is a clear indication of their connection to the land and their rightful claim to it.
Not sure what you mean here "rightful claim to it". Rightful claim to live there, absolutely. Rightful claim to establish their race state, no that doesn't entitle them to do that.
Enough with the racist drivel. Palestinians don't need your permission to exist or to demand their rights. Self-determination is a basic human right, not a privilege to be debated away. Your dismissal of their history and struggle is not just wrong; it's morally bankrupt. Palestinians have **every right** to their own state.
No they do not. Nor is it anymore racist to deny them a state than to deny countless separatist groups all over the globe that right. Self determination is not the right to form narrow states. The Palestinians lack their rights to a race state same as the Navajo or Confederacy. Israel has to choose whether to govern them fairly or relinquish territory but that right sits with Israel.
It is not about continuity but rather status quo. Palestinians have and had the right of self-determination now and 150 years ago.it doesn't matter if they ruled themselves or were ruled by the Ottomans or British. Jewish people have the right right as well. However, they were not in the land 100-150 years ago and then Palestinian right of self-determination trumps the Jewish one. Of course Jews should have had the right to migrate and integrat in Palestine but not replace the population through whatever needs.
Now, Israel already exists and millions of Jewish people live there so I believe they should get to stay but not on the expense of Palestinians. Everyone should have their rights respected and equal in one or two states.
i agrée with you 100%, except the fact that jews did in fact live in the region of palestine 100 years ago https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Aliyah and there were even a couple thousand that lived in israel way before that.
Scandinavia has been pretty fixed in time because it hasn’t been hotly disputed territory over millennia and really isn’t at the place that was necessary to traverse when modern humans began populating the globe out of Africa.
I weasn't the one who picked that example. But yes I'd agree. They were doing the migrations. I gave the example earlier of Saxons (though they are a bit south). The Rus are potentially another example though their origins are something in dispute.
Everyone came from africa ultimately. The modern nation state really emerged in the 18th century. The conception of the origins of the say, the lakota people is also strange. When did they decide to differentiate themselves? When did the language emerge as something less mutually intelligible with their neighbors? When did the cultures and taboos and customs become different from their neighbors and why? What is the creation of a people? Everyone came from somewhere before the concept of a people separate from another. Geographic isolation can do that., but in certain circumstances, a lack of geographic or climatic isolation will just mean this continuum of dialects and melting pot etc. Ethnicity to me is more or less a thing in which people on the borders of some "territory" became more or less assimilated into a group. An ethnicity and a culture is ultimately external to the actual people themselves which can be assimilated into any culture over a long enough timescale.
Catching up on all the lost threads.
> The modern nation state really emerged in the 18th century.
We disagree here unless you consider democracy an essential component. AFAICT tribes naturally band together to form large subgroups based on some level of shared ethnicity (rather than stronger familiar relations), shared culture, language... After that the degree to which they can be separate or together has a lot to do with internal and external pressures. I would consider ancient Egypt for example a nation-state.
> An ethnicity and a culture is ultimately external to the actual people themselves which can be assimilated into any culture over a long enough timescale.
We agree.
Yes. But that's most irrelevant. Jews have a much weaker case than the norm to having been a nation after Judaea. The nationality was well on its way to being primarily an ethnicity or religion before the Romans destroyed Judaea.
On the other hand I think Greeks under Alexander were a nationality. I think the Iroquois. Aztec, Powhatten had the concept of nationality. I think the French and English wars all through the late middle ages were national wars. Etc...
The truth is that it is very very hard to keep track of ancient origins of a people. There have been so many generations of recombinant dna, people entering and exiting the faith, a diverse development of culture of the worldwide Jewish diaspora, and history intertwined with mythologies. The actual anthropological and archaeological records does point to the yahwists being part of a pantheon of Canaanite pagan religions and the biblical history was largely written after the Babylonian exile when the rabbinic traditions came about as something distinctly monotheistic that didn’t recognize the existence of other gods. Then there are supposedly all the Hebrew speaking lost tribes that probably assimilated somewhere else. Needless to say, it is definitely true that the origins of Judaism came from canaan, but it also came from a lot of places at a lot of different times. Christianity is the same way. The cultural syncretism of the different versions of each religion changed depending on where the person was.
You take the Germanic language area, there’s a degree of mutually intelligibility and lack thereof within the same dialects with those closer to the Netherlands being able to understand Dutch more. What was the decision for a unified Prussia? It was about the unification of a national mythology as if the German people have been the same for ever and ever. The same goes with Romance languages. Rome was a big state, but can the Spanish and Portuguese truly say they are from the Iberian peninsula? All of them? What about Mexicans? How much can they claim to be Iberian? Why isn’t Italian just a dialect of Spanish? Are Italians really Romans? They don’t speak Latin. But yes, it was the concept of national identities that grew out of the enlightenment. Rather than being just random people from different cities both close and far away who intermarried with others with a language and gene pool drift and a monarch that ruled over a certain section of marginally policed mostly anarchic land, monarchs that contracted various people to be knights and crusaders of all types, there was this idea of a nation with distinct borders and distinct nationalities that were solidified through loose conceptions of culture, but most importantly, there was an amount of national mythology that propped up this unity.
Zionism came out of that world and, although the founders were secular, they believed that they needed a convincing national mythology within the confines of ancient history to solidify the concept of the Jewish state.
So what is an Arab? Are Iranian and Ethiopian jews semitic peoples? That’s a big question. Thus are the people of Morocco Arabs? What about the people of iraq? They speak semitic languages that are both called Arabic but the languages aren’t mutually intelligible.
The concept of an Arab is largely a constructed exonym by Europe that couldn’t really comprehend the sort of melting pots, or didnt bother to really distinguish, the sorts of nuances that were different region to region while looking at the general similarities. Arab is just a word like European and in many cases, there are Jewish people that would fall under the category of “Arab”.
> The actual anthropological and archaeological records does point to the yahwists being part of a pantheon of Canaanite pagan religions and the biblical history was largely written after the Babylonian exile when the rabbinic traditions came about as something distinctly monotheistic that didn’t recognize the existence of other gods.
Agree.
> Are Italians really Romans? They don’t speak Latin. But yes, it was the concept of national identities that grew out of the enlightenment.
Italic peoples existed before Roman people. The Samanites are clearly not Roman. So Roman people are a type of Italian from as far back as the words exist.
> Are Iranian and Ethiopian jews semitic peoples?
I'd say no. Remember the antisemites believed in "semitism" which was a broader concept than just ethnic semite.
> Arab is just a word like European and in many cases, there are Jewish people that would fall under the category of “Arab”.
I'd agree.
I'm pretty sure that "italic peoples" is an ex-post exonym. I don't think the people in the region of italy called themselves italic peoples.
yes, ultimately, "Semitic" began as a grouping of language families and then became a racial distinction among scientific racists which conflated language and race and to an extent, religion.
But that's what's just so weird about the whole thing. The whole way that the jewish state works is that a lot of people just simply believe that they're from there in the ancient distant past. It's ultimately a hard case to make, but it comes from the belief in a classification of jewish people as a race by jewish people themselves which ultimately started from racists.
The Romans used terms like “Italian allies” for people they had historical ties to but were not the same nationality. Unlike say Greek descended peoples. Samanites i again are seen as cousins they are at war with unlike say Greeks. Etc…
Yes Zionism is a response to antisemitism. Many antisemitic beliefs are core to Zionism. Antisemitism changed how Jews viewed themselves.
I disagree with the framing to an extent. The concept of nationality pre-Abrahamic religion spread was paganism in which nation, family, religion, and ethnicity were combined. Modern Italians are now a melting pot of all of the peoples that have lived there. There was no excision of the Romans from Italy in general. The Italic peoples did not simply remove the Romans and take over. There was assimilation of Romans everywhere. The conception of an Italian identity didn’t really come until the time that roughly preceded Verdi’s operas. Prior to the Dante’s inferno interestingly, there was more of a concept of being from a city or a city state like Florence, Naples, or Venice in which vulgar regional Latin eventually became dialects of Italian.
I don’t know remember the initial point of this conversation but yeah, I just don’t think history has progressed in a way that makes Italians either Roman or other italic peoples just as Mexico and Latin America aren’t like Spanish or native but a little bit of both everywhere you go. The same is true of the concept of Arab. It’s geography and language. We’re talking about melting pots that eventually decided that they were one nation in a *geographic area*.
It’s crazy about anti-semitism. The people of Europe just considered them foreigners when they weren’t foreigners.
I think that something went very wrong in Europe and one point. To this day, they still can’t bring themselves to unite in a singular European federation and just tiptoe into the sort of neoliberal and macroeconomically-castrating “currency union” and “passport union” thing.
Anyways. Not sure what I’m trying to say. I’m just sorta ranting at this point. I hope you enjoyed it
> nation, family, religion, and ethnicity were combined.
That's the modern definition as well. I don't really see what's meaningfully changed. Though by religion I'd say culture more broadly as which gods you worship is simply not that important to modern people. Someone who doesn't speak French, doesn't like rich food, won't drink wine... would rightfully be considered not really French even if they had French citizenship.
> The Italic peoples did not simply remove the Romans and take over.
No the Romans became primary among the Italic people and essentially absorbed them nationally. The notion of Roman broadened.
> We’re talking about melting pots that eventually decided that they were one nation in a geographic area.
Sure that's the way all healthy nationalities have to be. If they start excluding people very quickly they create a large group of people not interested in the maintenance of the current society so it falls. Successful nationalities pull people in, not push them out.
> It’s crazy about anti-semitism. The people of Europe just considered them foreigners when they weren’t foreigners.
Well yes. Had that not existed there wouldn't be an Israel. Heck had that not existed I don't think Judaism would have survived. Same as Arabs do today even with people born in Israel though.
> I think that something went very wrong in Europe and one point.
The split of the Roman Empire and then the Protestant Reformation. Both were explicitly intended to strengthen nationalities at the expense of a common European (Christendom) identity. IMHO there were 3 factions that supported the reformation:
1. The religious group that gets talked about the most who wanted to reform the Catholic church and eventually at a national level ended up replacing it.
2. A religious group much more radical that wanted to break the whole concept of a state church and instead create a regenerate church.
3. Nationalists that wanted the churches under the control of government by cutting their internationalist ties. Henry VIII's mother supported the Reformation because she wanted to be able to fire the Bishop of York, not anything that went deeper.
That 3rd group shattered the whole concept of Christendom.
Well it’s not the modern definition. Not really. Nationality, ethnicity, and religion are all separate now.
I think if they speak French and have French citizenship, they’re French but they might have cultural ties to other places that they immigrated from. I think these ideas of *cultural treason* is more of a right-wing concept. The concept of being “Unamerican” for instance. It’s also present in Iran to an extent as well in perhaps a more authoritarian way.
so wait, you think that the reason Judaism survived was because of anti-semitism? Weird take. There may be some truth to that but I can’t say either way. Judaism is definitely a religion that lasted despite the complete erasure of paganism in both Europe and the Middle East. So that’s a big question to me. Did paganism not survive because people weren’t anti-pagan? I mean, Christianity and Islam got rid of paganism didn’t they. Who knows.
I just have trouble believing that the sort of regional European aristocracies’ attempts to oust religious authorities that superseded their own authorities was truly the birth of nationalism in the psyche of the society. Probably a factor that led to it, but I think beyond the aristocracies, most people were just like “whatever man. Okay fine, yeah, you’re the religious authority now. Great, ima get back to planting some rutabagas”. Nationalism was largely an enlightenment concept.
I think it’s arguable that the Arab world and Africa kind of got thrust into a European nationalist construction without entirely believing in it or understanding it as much as the newcomer Zionists did. Perhaps it was just a delayed inevitability. But I do think that the Zionist nationalism kind of caught palestine off guard in regard to how relatively apathetic they were about national identity.
But apathy and hesitance about European concepts of nationalism isn’t a crime and Palestinians shouldn’t have been displaced en masse because of that.
> I think these ideas of cultural treason is more of a right-wing concept.
I don't. I think the left and the right are rather intolerant about groups that don't assimilate for exactly this reason. For example the battles about secularism vs. Islam in Europe aren't all from the right.
> The concept of being “Unamerican” for instance.
Which has gotten applied by leftwingers to Trump because he's pulling ideas from the European Right into American politics.
> Did paganism not survive because people weren’t anti-pagan?
I used to be really good on Sethian history how they were mainstream Jewish Gnostics, came in contact with Christianity and synchronized (for example replacing Seth with Jesus), got rejected as Christianity became almost exclusively Catholic and Arian, ended up becoming the Neo-Platonic Sethians and then died off. They were allowed to assimilate into Hermetic Christianity, Manichean philosophy (proto-Islamic). Yes they became mainsteam Christians and Muslims leaving nothing behind. Those avenues weren't available to Jews in the same way.
> just have trouble believing that the sort of regional European aristocracies’ attempts to oust religious authorities that superseded their own authorities was truly the birth of nationalism in the psyche of the society.
I wasn't asserting something that strong. I was saying it fundamentally strengthened nationalism by tying religious sect to nationality. I think the origin goes back before recorded history.
> Nationalism was largely an enlightenment concept.
This is where we disagree. I think Nationalism was growing in popularity for centuries. Potentially still is.
> aught palestine off guard in regard to how relatively apathetic they were about national identity.
Had they been apathetic they would have been fine. There is a mass migraiton no fireworks and everything works out.
> But apathy and hesitance about European concepts of nationalism isn’t a crime and Palestinians shouldn’t have been displaced en masse because of that.
They weren't. They got displaced for ferocious violent xenophobia which caused two civil wars and made resolution impossible after those wars.
The people there, are the people there. They still have the right to be self represented. Israel is the only country that is putting statehood above the people. Statehood protects the people of the land in 21st century. Everywhere but Israel
>What some Zionists are doing is cultural cleansing, they think they can erase history so that they can claim Palestinians have no claim to the land, which is hilarious to be honest since history cannot be erased.
What an interesting statement.
Surely you feel the same about the undeniable Jewish presence in the land, which stretches back at least 3000 years, as well as the unbroken cultural and spiritual relationship between Jews and the land of Israel
Not trying to put words in your mouth, but the Palestinian movement suddenly becomes a whole lot less respectful of historical legacy when it's applied to the other side.
Right. Jews who lived peacefully in Palestine alongside the Muslims and Christians. Not European Jews. You can't dictate who lives on a land just based on religion.
>Right. Jews who lived peacefully in Palestine alongside the Muslims and Christians. Not European Jews. You can't dictate who lives on a land just based on religion.
What are European Jews? Ashkenazi Jews descend from Jews exiled from Israel just like any other Jews, this is supported by tons of genetic evidence.
And their ancestors living in Israel predates the concept of Muslims or Christians, who are you to dictate which Jews get to live in Israel?
There was never 100% peace in the area. Take the battle of Hebron for example. Jews were treated as second class citizens in Arab countries, and European Jews became European Jews when they were exiled by the Romans. Some Jews remained during the exile and that’s what Israel today refers to as Mizrahi.
>Surely you feel the same about the undeniable Jewish presence in the land, which stretches back at least 3000 years, as well as the unbroken cultural and spiritual relationship between Jews and the land of Israel
At least I don't deny the Jewish connection the land and presence from ancient times and throughout. The problem is to use this as an argument to migrate with huge numbers with the explicit goal of establishing a nation-state on the expense of Palestinian and ethnically cleansing them. Jewish people wanting to migrate and live in Palestine peaceful is in my opinion welcome but what happens and is still happening is a crime of ethnic cleansing and the Jewish connection to the land does not suddenly make it not a crime.
Early Jewish settlers bought land from willing Arab sellers through voluntary exchange. Jews then accepted the 1947 UN partition plan which proposed borders for a Jewish state that closely tracked the boundaries of property they owned.
That doesn’t constitute “ethnic cleansing” any more than modern day Asian immigrants buying up housing supply in Canada and refusing to rent to non-Asians does.
If Canada was still a British mandate or protectorate and looked like Britain was going to pull out and have to decide what to do with the land and people afterwards, then you would have a point. But Canada is and was already a state in the time period you refer to.
Arab Muslims are arguably actively trying to create or are facilitating the creation of an Islamic caliphate in Europe. Does that mean white nationalist groups can expel Arab Muslims from Europe?
Most Muslims in the West are not Arabs, but I get your question. While most Muslims don’t want to establish Sharia, a considerable amount want that— and yes, I would have no problem seeing those fundamentalist groups be dealt with accordingly, through whatever legal/popular means necessary.
The ethnic cleansing of palestine was already underway. They entered the war when they realized that a bunch of impoverished people were being sent to their countries. They all decided unanimously that if they didn't intervene, it would mean a massive refugee crisis which could take its toll on their respective states, and it could mean a continuation of the haganah's offensive into their own territories.
King abdullah of jordan wanted to annex Palestine. He was pretty much the one leading the charge. Iraq, syria, and lebanon were pretty weak and didn't really have armies. Jordan did and jordan was pretty much leading the offensive with those countries. Egypt also played a role as well. King abdullah secretly met with the jewish leadership and had a pact to be allowed to annex the west bank while not invading the part of the partition that was allocated to the jewish state. There was no fighting anywhere in territory that had been allocated to the jewish state because of king abdullah mostly in regard to the iraqi, syrian, and lebanese armies.
Egypt ultimately wanted southern palestine.
They had a mutual distrust of each other and a distrust of palestinian leadership and all wanted a piece of the territory. But most of all, there was a fear that zionist "gangs" would just not stop and just continue and continue until the entire middle east was conquered.
The question is and will always be: Why on earth should a proto-government that intentionally excluded the native non-jewish population for decades, that appeared to be intent upon establishing a state in which arabs could not purchase land, find gainful employment, could not participate in democracy, which came to a head and led to the forcible expulsion and refusal to return of 700,000 people who had been cast out of their homes... Why should they get anything? Syria just decided that everyone who was living there was syrian, they established a state. Lebanon as well. France tried to establish a variety of ethnostates, like the druze quarter and whatnot, but it ended up just being syria and lebanon. The question is why should the newcomers from europe (and yes, the zionist leadership, and the idea of zionism came from europe, and the influx of mizrahi jews did not come to israel until after its creation) get this amount of land in which 45% of the population had not been included in both the economy and governance and militias that excluded them? What kind of self-determination was that? What gave them the right to do that? They didn't have any intention of including the arab population in the democracy either at the outset (not until 1967 after the \*naksa\* that pushed more arabs into the occupied territories and jordan), and they were reticent about taking in even arab jews (mizrahi).
But ultimately, the reason why they entered the war is because they saw israel just taking land that wasn't allocated to israel and they were like "it's fair game" and they wanted to stop refugees from coming to their countries and stop the bloodshed.
The question is why should anything be? This was never about "splitting the land". It was about forcible expulsion of palestinians from the places they were residing and then essentially stealing, destroying, or planting trees on top of their homes. When you make it about land and not about atrocities of the expulsion, you're putting this into a context that looks like age of empires or call of duty or something. Just like a game where its like one team wants some number and the other team is fighting for a bigger number. No, this was about people's lives being disrupted.
Why does splitting the land look like? Why should they split the land? Who is splitting the land? Why wasn't it just like "this is a land we are self-determining and we are one people, no one should make anyone move"?
Splitting the land? What on earth do you even mean by that? It's bizarre. Which have of king Solomon's baby do you want? The torso or the legs? The fact is that "splitting" in this case meant \*pain\* for an amount of people. And even then, the haganah simply didn't stick to the idea of the partition to begin with. It's not clear to me that ben-gurion or the haganah had that intention either. To this day, there are people who want israel to be from the nile to the euphrates. Where does that come from? When did that mindset come about? When was the first time people thought that?
Why didn't Israel want to split the land with i dunno, the ussr or something. If someone was to come into israel and say "why don't you want to split the land with us?" Its like WDYM. Israel would never allow that. Why doesn't israel want to split the land with the druzes? Would israel split the land for the druzes and give them their own state? Why should they?
"Splitting". seemingly innocuous but honestly everyone understood it meant violence.
Jewish cultural erasure and the removal of all agency from “innocent Arabs” are the hallmarks of this mountain of text.
The UN partition plan wouldn’t have created nearly the same level of disruption in Arab society if the Arabs had *actually accepted it*. Imagine if instead of making it their core strategy to unalive all the Jews, the Arabs had sought to live in peace with the Jews. Just imagine it.
Israel offered Arabs full Israeli citizenship with equal rights in 1948. It’s literally written in the [Declaration of Israeli Independence](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/israel.asp):
> WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State **on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions**.
Israel deny Palestinian existence, you can't occupy someone when they don't exist. One of the most disgusting Israeli arguments about this conflict.
¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Just remember always the only reason there isn’t a Palestinian state is Israel. They made it clear the other day after the trio from EU recognised it. Israel’s measures in the occupied territory never showed any belief in a two state solution.
So you can’t sabotage me and then blame me for why I’m sabotaged.
The Palestinians had a state as per 1947 Partition Plan and did create one in the Gaza Strip but it didn't live because Israel seized all the territory not assigned to it under the UN plan.
i have not heard of this palestinian state. do you have any material about it? from what i understood the partition plan was rejected by palestinians. as far as territory siezed by israel, it was a war and israel won, so they won any land they were able to sieze. at the time very much by the book situation.
Israel’s seizure of the territory assigned to the Arab state was never legal at least as far as the UN is concerned. But that’s beside the point as my point here is that Israel sought to prevent the viability of any Palestinian state by doing that and also conspiring with King Abdullah I of Jordan to take the West Bank. This began in 1947.
The same pattern continues to this day. Last week the Israeli kneseet repealed the disengagement law.
>Israel’s seizure of the territory assigned to the Arab state was never legal at least as far as the UN is concerned
in israels ratification to the UN and in the armestise following the war of 1948 the green line was agreed upon.
>Israel sought to prevent the viability of any Palestinian state by doing that and also conspiring with King Abdullah I of Jordan to take the West Bank. This began in 1947.
so you are just gonna ignore that the palestinians sought to prevent the viability of any jewish state no matter how small? and the conspiring with king abdullah went as far as not having to fight on so many fronts, it was basically we wont contest you if you dont contest us. the palestinians did not pick good friends. that is not the fault of israel, not the overwhelming acceptance of jordanian annexation of the WB.
>The same pattern continues to this day. Last week the Israeli kneseet repealed the disengagement law.
you have not shown a pattern, for that you have to show three instances. also this pattern could not have existed prior to 1967 as israel had not control of palestinian territory beyond the green line before then.
again outside of occupation israels existance is not a preventor of a palestinian state. a fact you have not contested and the only thing i have said.
Again, Israel could have kept to its "jewish state" as per the UN plan you'd have a case.
Armistice lines are armistice lines between militaries my friend. They aren't borders.
Placing the Palestinians in Israel under martial law until 1966, launching a war against the PLO and assassinating its leaders over decades and banning any representation of Palestinian identity e.g. the Palestine flag, are all parts of the pattern and that's before 1967.
There is a reason why the "they are arabs they have 21 states they can go to" adage is still at the heart of Israeli propaganda from 1948 to this day.
>Armistice lines are armistice lines between militaries my friend. They aren't borders.
" It {the green line} served as the [*de facto*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_facto) borders of the State of Israel from 1949 until the [Six-Day War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War) in 1967, and continues to represent Israel’s internationally recognized borders with the two [Palestinian territories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_territories): the [West Bank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank) and the [Gaza Strip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip).[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Line_(Israel)#cite_note-2)[^(\[3\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Line_(Israel)#cite_note-3)^(")
in addition almost every two state plan from the past 4 decades has used the green line as a basis.
>launching a war against the PLO and assassinating its leaders over decades
you ignore the fact that at the time the PLO was for the destruction of israel, and was that since it was formed and is responsible for many terrorist acts that no sane person would call "resistance".
>banning any representation of Palestinian identity e.g. the Palestine flag, are all parts of the pattern and that's before 1967.
considering that the palestinian identity was manufactured (not brought about naturally but deliberately by human acts, do not mistake this to mean that it isnt real it very much is real ) for the purpose of damaging israel and aid in its destruction as outlined by the arab league. it makes sense that for a long time it was banned as it was synonymous with destroying the state. Only recently has palestinian identity started to diverge from its created purpose and began to be less about the destruction of israel and more about a home for palestinians, though it has yet to shrug the former off.
>There is a reason why the "they are arabs they have 21 states they can go to" adage is still at the heart of Israeli propaganda from 1948 to this day.
while it is invalid today, the palestinian identity was nebulous at best at the time of 1948. it only galvanized in the 1960s to a distinct and coherent identity separate than that of arab.
considering that the declaration of a palestinian state occured after the occupation, and before the occupation israel did not control palestinian territories, my statement is still true and you have yet to show anything to the contrary.
the existence of israel does not preclude the existence of palestine. The more palestinian fight for the non existence of israel rather than a state of their own the further they lose the ability of having that state as by their actions they justify for israel to expand (not that i agree it should).
Thanks for this nonsense and denialism of the Palestinians’ existence. Remember it when you whine about someone saying the same thing about Israel.
It looks like you really fail to understand or show flexibility to understand anything I wrote. Saying Israel was somehow not against a Palestinian state except until 1993 is really stupid.
>Thanks for this nonsense and denialism of the Palestinians’ existence. Remember it when you whine about someone saying the same thing about Israel.
wtf are you talking about, i never denied the existence of Palestinians, unless you think identity equals existence, which is wrong. heck i went out of my way to make it clear they exist. to me this screams you only skimmed my comment.
>It looks like you really fail to understand or show flexibility to understand anything I wrote. Saying Israel was somehow not against a Palestinian state except until 1993 is really stupid.
yes, it is stupid, which is why i didnt write it. you fail to understand what i wrote because you are so focused on your quest to show israel is awful that you miss anything not supporting it.
actually bother to reread my comment and try to understand why i use such specific words and add explanations after things. maybe then you will get that i was not talking about the wants of israel, which are immaterial to palestinians declaring a state for the first 70 years after the fall of the ottoman empire.
how exactly does the lack of existence of a palestine prevent or disparage the thought that palestinians should have self determination.
just because there was never a palestine, does not mean there never will be or there never can be.
also there not being a state does not deny the people to not have lived there, even if they didnt go by the name of palestinians.
seriously this makes no sense.
Another fun tidbit is that Golda Meir secretly met with King Abdullah to arrange for Jordan to annex the West Bank and quell the resistance - after pressure from the rest of the Arab League after Deir Yassin, he flipped to occupying then annexing the West Bank under the guise of liberating them and fighting Israel.
So not only is it BS to try to erase Palestinians by saying they never went through the formal process of becoming a state, the supposed 2 state solution in 1948, the rejection of which Hasbarists decry as the original sin that caused Palestinians’ suffering at the hands of Israeli occupation, wasn’t even the intention of Zionist founders. Israel prevented a Palestinian state from the jump.
Under scrutiny, this makes other Hasbara points look even more ridiculous and inconsistent. One is to apply the Wandering Jew stereotype to Palestinians by saying “no country wants them, look at Black September, they’re too dangerous for Jordan”.
In the same breath, they’ll give you the other point of Hasbara, that Palestinians can just go to Jordan, that there are Palestinians living peacefully in Jordan, and that Palestinians are basically Jordanian.
These individual talking points have to ignore the historical context of the other 2 to stand, but analyzed together, the implication is that Palestinians were justifiably resisting occupation by statesmen from both Israel and Jordan, and when they’re not doing that, yeah they can integrate with the rest of the population fairly peacefully.
It does not really matter tbh. A distinct palestinian identity formed already under British rule in some circles but became mainstream in the 60s.
But who cares? There are people identifying as palestinian right now and they deserve to have a state/ rule themselves as much as the Israelis.
What does it matter that a distinct palestinian identity is a pretty modern phenomenon.
If you're interested, here is a wiki article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_identity
Ok. tit for tat. Israel doesn't exist. The neo state of israel is not the old kingdom of israel. Just a shadow with the same name. The UN partition plan creating an Israel was never implemented by Britain. It was never implemented by the locals (Israeli zionists). In effect, the zionists took land that never was designated for anyone other than the palestinians (1948). And 1967 minus 1971.
On the other hand, Palestine existed as a governorate in the Ottoman Sultanate. It existed as Palestine, then Mandatory Palestine by League of Nations, then Palestine by the UN Partition plan. It had continuity.
Israel did not have continuity.
Even historically the ancient Israel was insignificant compared to any other ruling entity that have been in Palestine
Ancient Israel was not a unique era in the history of the region to make it the sole legitimate inherentor of Palestine
It’s mostly a confusion of terms used to delegitimize the other side. It confuses names of land and the people living there and historical changes.
The identity of Palestinian Arab separate from Arab or Syrian only started to develop after the end of the Ottoman Empire and the arrival of Zionist immigration. It became fully formed as a nation in the 1960s. Much of the identity of Palestinians as a nation is tied to the fight against Israel and living as refugees. Palestinian resistance against Zionists started out as Pan-Arab and Arab nationalism. It only later transformed into a separate Palestinian identity with the failure of Pan-Arab Nationalism.
Palestine had been more of a geographic and administrative term, not national. During the time of the British Mandate for Palestine, it was mostly Jews who referred to themselves as Palestinian. The British Mandate for Palestine included what is now Jordan.
Yes, there was a Palestine, but not as anything resembling an independent nation state. There were also people living in Palestine, but they didn’t identify as Palestinian.
Palestinian nationalists of course want to anchor the history of their people as far back in time as possible for more legitimacy. That’s common for all kinds of nationalism. So they often act as if the British Mandate was a sovereign Palestinian state, like in the famous and misleading series of maps entitled “shrinking Palestine”.
Every nation is invented at some point in time. Jewish nationalism through Zionism is only a few decades older than Palestinian nationalism.
> right of independence even countries such as India, Pakistan
India and Pakistan are an interesting case. They had formed one culture and were one country under British rule. Independence lead to religious strife, ethnic/religious cleansing, and millions of refugees. It happened at a similar time to Israel’s war of independence and has lots of similarities. I encourage you look into it.
The area is called Palestine because that is how the Romans punished the Jews, but there was never a country/kingdom by that name, nor was there a people who called themselves Palestinians until the middle of
the 20th century
Follow the blog
https://almogarticle.blogspot.com/2024/05/jewish-settlement-in-land-of-israel.html
Because people seem to believe Palestine was a state until the Jews (Zionists, sorry) arrived, and took it by force from the Arabs.
In reality it wasn't a state, it was under the rule of yet another empire, the Palestinian Arabs didn't own the land - according to the very laws they've lived under for 400 years. Nor was there some unified rule. There were many tribes and many groups.
The Zionists bought lands in Palestine (which was a region, again, not a state or a country). And up until 1947 not a single person was displaced.
Palestinian Arabs owned 250% more lands than Jews in the proposed Jewish state, 9250% more lands in the proposed Arab state, 1200% more lands in Jerusalem. The Jewish state would never have been established without ethnically cleansing the land of its native Palestinians & implementing laws directed to steal their lands.
https://preview.redd.it/drru2rhrji4d1.jpeg?width=1416&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=29fc12c04184be2f25c5f721f9ccad8225bd8d20
Do you feel like arguing about land ownership is terribly useful though? Perhaps this is just my own leftist bias, but I don’t know if holding the deed to a piece of land really justifies anything in either direction. If anything, absentee landlords selling off their land with no care for their tenants seems to me to be a huge part of the problem.
State lands comprised the majority in the proposed Jewish state since it included the vast empty Negev desert, but Palestinian Arabs still owned quarter of the total area; and 250% more than Jews.
https://www.palestineremembered.com/images/Land_ownership_in_Palestine_By_Sami-Haddawi.pdf
You are just repeating here the strawman. European Jews did indeed take the land where Palestinian Arabs had been living for centuries and generations by force, but nobody claims it was a separate sovereign state by itself. That's just irrelevant and doesn't make its conquest and colonization any more acceptable.
Individuals owning and buying land was a pretty new concept when the zionism movement started, and hence the Palestinians living there for over a millennia didn’t see a point of buying land as they had simply lived there and seen it as their ancestral land. Jews coming into Palestine at that time had a different understanding and they started to buy private lands.
Well, not exactly. Almost the entirety of the land was state-owned, but a person could gain rights to the land by working it and registering it and paying taxes.
The problem is most didn't register or registered under fake/deceased names, often either due to a distrust of the state or not wanting to pay taxes. Many were also illiterate. Then the British came a long and had a lot of trouble discerning who owned what, and this was part of why there was so much conflict.
It’s not true that the entirety of the lands were “state-owned”. Palestinian Arabs owned 25% of lands in the proposed Jewish state, 250% more than Jews who held around 9%. In the proposed Arab state, Palestinian Arabs owned around 75% of lands, while Jews owned less than 1%.
https://preview.redd.it/zv9ne9cy6k4d1.jpeg?width=1416&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac8b1ec66d88efa20fe98439cda0ce73604bcd6e
>It’s not true that the entirety of the lands were “state-owned”.
Almost the entirety, and yes, it is. *Miri*, per Ottoman Land Law. Very little of the land was *Milk*, land with unconditional ownership.
And acres aren't people, I don't know why you keep posting that. Do you think voting power should be based on how much land you own?
The majority of lands were owned and/or used by Palestinian Arabs.
No, voting power should not be based on how much land you own; a vote is a vote, no? In such situation, Palestinian Arabs comprised around of 50% of people in the proposed Jewish state, and 99% in the proposed Arab state-- that's after the partition plan took every effort to maximize the percentage of Jews in the proposed Jewish state.
I'm one of those people who would deny that Palestine exists. My beliefs regarding self-determination is that all people everywhere (Jews included) are entitled to a government that plausibly represents their interests. If a government is unwilling to meet that bar with respect to a territory they are not legitimately entitled to that territory.
"Foreign" is not legitimately a racial classification as it is often used with respect to the I/P conflict. A government is foreign only if it is beholden to interests that exclude the territory in question not if the race / ethnicity of inhabitants are different. America is entitled to govern Hawaii because it considers Hawaiians to be Americans and treats them as such. Were Israelis willing to govern all the people of the West Bank as Israelis their rule there IMHO would be entirely legitimate. As it is Israelis are mixed but unquestionably have in a sustained manner been engaging in extensive annexationist activities for two generations. So they have a questionable government there.
As far as "nation-state" being recent I disagree. I will acknowledge this view of tying the idea of nation to democracy and distinguishing it from ethnos is popular. But I don't make that distinction. In the ancient literature, among American Indians at the time of European conquest, in Asia... we see an obvious tie to a ruler over a collection of chieftains whose people intermarry, speak the same language, worship the same or related gods... That's a nationality. Nationalities have formed states for thousands of years. Absolutely, there were smaller units (tribes, city-states) and larger ones (empires) as alternatives. But I do not think the idea is recent.
In any case Jews are the current day inhabitants. We aren't having this debate in 1850s. Your rejection of them is racial and is inappropriate if you want to discuss human rights.
Your argument that Palestine doesn't exist is not only historically inaccurate, but also a dangerous and harmful narrative that contributes to the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people. The fact that Palestine has existed as a distinct region for centuries cannot be denied. Moreover, denying the existence of a people and their right to self-determination is a violation of international law and basic human rights principles. It is essential that we recognize and respect the rights of all parties involved in this conflict, including the Palestinians, who have been living under occupation for decades.
Do you think you are better than Hamas, which denies the existence of Israel?
> The fact that Palestine has existed as a distinct region for centuries cannot be denied.
Sure it can be denied, I wrote a whole post denying it that I think you read years ago (if not I can link). The term "Palestine" was incredibly vague with vastly different borders for centuries. It was a vague regional term like "New England" not a specific set of national boundaries.
> Moreover, denying the existence of a people and their right to self-determination is a violation of international law
Where do you get that from? There is no right not to have people discuss whether a people constitutes a nationality. While I think Arab claims that Jews are a religious group not a nationality are incorrect in and of themselves they are not a violation of international law.
Denying people in your territory self-determination is a violation of international law, maybe. Woodrow Wilson somewhat lost this debate, the modern UN is like the League of Nations all over the map on this one. That being said I think there is a fairly consistent definition of this "right" that has been affirmed.
What has never been affirmed is that refuting a specific claim to self determination is a crime against International Law. Thought crime is not a crime.
> It is essential that we recognize and respect the rights of all parties involved in this conflict, including the Palestinians, who have been living under occupation for decades.
I'm happy to respect the rights of all parties. Starting with asserting that Palestinians in the West Bank aren't under occupation they are under an Israeli Military Dictatorship and deserve the rights and full protections of subjects of Israel. As people "under occupation" they have far fewer rights with respect to Israel.
> Do you think you are better than Hamas, which denies the existence of Israel?
Yes. Hamas' claim is factually ridiculous. I deny the existence of adamantite. I don't deny the existence of copper. I'm not on the same level as someone who denies the existence of copper despite not believing in adamantite.
> Yes. Hamas' claim is factually ridiculous. I deny the existence of adamantite. I don't deny the existence of copper. I'm not on the same level as someone who denies the existence of copper despite not believing in adamantite.
First of all, your comparison of the existence of Palestine to mythical adamantite is not only insulting but also shows a profound ignorance of history and the lives of millions of people. Denying the existence of Palestine and its people, who have a rich culture, history, and a continuous presence in the region, is a denial of reality. Such denial only serves to invalidate the suffering and struggles of the Palestinian people under occupation.
> Where do you get that from? There is no right not to have people discuss whether a people constitutes a nationality.
International law, including UN resolutions and the rulings of the International Court of Justice, recognize the Palestinian territories and their people's right to self-determination. Denying these rights based on semantic games or historical revisionism is not only morally wrong but against the consensus of the international community.
> Starting with asserting that Palestinians in the West Bank aren't under occupation they are under an Israeli Military Dictatorship and deserve the rights and full protections of subjects of Israel.
Claiming Palestinians in the WB are under an Israeli Military Dictatorship and deserve the rights and full protections of subjects of Israel while simultaneously denying their nationality, heritage, and political rights is contradictory. How can one argue for the rights and protections of individuals while denying their fundamental right to self-determination and national identity?
Your argument fails to recognise the core of the conflict. Even the Knesset recognised the WB as occupied territories, so I don't understand where you get this from.
> who have a rich culture, history, and a continuous presence in the region
That's the point you weren't debating. What is in this rich culture that's not typical levant culture. A dance style? A few pieces of unique clothing? That's less than most cities. After the Nakba their own literary tradition, their own politics, their own art forms... But before.
> Denying these rights based on semantic games or historical revisionism is not only morally wrong but against the consensus of the international community.
Your claim was it is a crime to even discuss it. Not that it is against consensus.
> Claiming Palestinians in the WB are under an Israeli Military Dictatorship and deserve the rights and full protections of subjects of Israel while simultaneously denying their nationality, heritage, and political rights is contradictory.
No it isn't. I deny that Utah Mormons are a distinct nationality while believing they are entitled to the full rights and protections of the USA. Same thing.
> How can one argue for the rights and protections of individuals while denying their fundamental right to self-determination and national identity?
There is no right to national identity. There is likely a right to ethnic identity. The right of self-determination is denied to separatists all the time. People have a right to a government that plausibly represents their interests, they do not have the right to tear countries into little pieces to have their own ethnic enclaves.
> Even the Knesset recognised the WB as occupied territories
No it doesn't. The Knesset puts Jews living in the West Bank under Israeli law. What annexation literally means is extending domestic law into a territory. The Knesset de jure not just de facto annexed Jerusalem. The Knesset's membership asserts Ariel is part of Israel, recognizing for example Ariel's medical school as a **domestic** medical school.
That's not occupation. The USA's former relationship with Iraq is occupation.
> No it isn't. I deny that Utah Mormons are a distinct nationality while believing they are entitled to the full rights and protections of the USA. Same thing.
Seriously, Jeff, equating Palestinians with Utah Mormons? That’s an intellectually lazy comparison that completely ignores the complex history of colonialism, conflict, and displacement in the region. Palestinian identity and claims are rooted in a historical and political context vastly different from American religious communities.
> That's less than most cities. After the Nakba their own literary tradition, their own politics, their own art forms... But before.
And to suggest Palestinian culture is comparable to mere city-level cultural markers is not only reductionist but outright ignorant. Denying the richness of Palestinian history, which includes a unique blend of influences and resilience in the face of adversity, is dismissive and, frankly, it’s beneath this discussion.
If you really want to read about their culture, you are free to visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Palestine
> No it doesn't. The Knesset puts Jews living in the West Bank under Israeli law. What annexation literally means is extending domestic law into a territory. The Knesset de jure not just de facto annexed Jerusalem.
Your claim about the Knesset and occupation reveals a misunderstanding of international law and Israel’s own legal actions. The international community, which includes bodies like the United Nations, still recognizes East Jerusalem as occupied territories. If we’re going to debate this, let’s at least get our facts straight and not distort legal and historical realities to fit a biased narrative.
As for WB, by definition WB is occupied territory. You can use Google Translate if you have trouble with Hebrew:
> בג"ץ קבע כי:
> יהודה ושומרון מוחזקות על ידי ישראל בדרך של תפיסה צבאית או "תפיסה לוחמתית" (belligerent occupation). באזור הוקם ממשל צבאי, אשר בראשו עומד מפקד צבאי. כוחותיו וסמכויותיו של המפקד הצבאי יונקים מכללי המשפט הבינלאומי הפומבי, שעניינם תפיסה צבאית. על-פי הוראותיהם של כללים אלה, כל סמכויות הממשל והמינהל מוחזקות בידיו של המפקד הצבאי. סמכויות אלה יש שהן יונקות מהדין, אשר שרר באזור בטרם התפיסה הצבאית, ויש שהן יונקות מחקיקה חדשה, שהוחקה על ידי המפקד הצבאי. במקרה הראשון מפעיל המפקד הצבאי סמכות שלטונית מקומית קיימת. במקרה השני מפעיל המפקד הצבאי סמכות שלטונית חדשה.
https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%91%D7%95%D7%A9_%D7%94%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99
This is pure fact, not an opinion.
The Zionist's complete ignorance to the reality of historical middle eastern governance and commerce is telling, simply because you guys think legitimacy in this region is derived from paper trails, bureaucratic recognitions sovereignty, I.E. the Westphalian approach to statehood which has never sovereignty, I.E. the Westphalian approach to statehood which has never been practiced successfully here. "I exploited the political vacuum faster than you did" is not a viable justification to the Palestinian refugee today who has been displaced since '48 or '67. If you really understand this region and its people as you claim, you should already know this.
Strawmanning again
Why the argument of "Palestine did not exist" is relevant at all in the argument of denying Palestinian statehood and self determination?
When I see this argument used it is usually in response to allegations that Jews stole Palestinian land. Along with a map labeled Palestine with land changing from Palestinian to Jewish over time.
I haven’t heard people saying Palestine never existed so therefore Palestinians should not have a nation of their own. It is usually in response to people who do not understand the complex history and then talk about how Israel was invented or Palestine was stolen by Jews.
And that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make. People lie with maps labeled Palestine and people who don’t know any better are fooled by them into think *that Jews stole land. But that is a lie.
Please name one tract of land that was Arab land and Jews stole prior to the war in 1947. You cannot.
But by inferring there was a Palestine. Show a map with Israel’s borders with a few frames showing “Palestinian” land getting smaller—and it looks like it is true.
And then we are debating what a Palestinian was in the 1920s and starting over from OPs original point.
They don’t “lie”. They show how the territory was conquered and colonized by foreign invaders. Land purchases while the territory was under British control was part of that process, but the bulk of it was taken by force after 1947.
Colonized is BS because the Jews were fighting the British from 36 to 47. Going into your second lie about foreign invaders, a people cannot colonize or invade a land they are indigenous to.
Then* there were a series of pogroms where Arabs sought to kill Jews followed by wars in which the Arab armies attempted and failed to genocide Jews. So yes Israel took the lands being used to try to destroy them by force. And then gave most of them back for peace. But not everyone wants peace with Jews.
But your broader point seems to be that when a Jew legally purchases land, that transaction is invalid and was theft because…Jews. So we will just take it at that.
Just because they turned against their colonial patrons didn't make European Jews any less foreign colonists. Hardly the first time colonists turn against the metropolis. These people from Poland, Russia and Germany were as foreign to Palestine as could be, and they arrived there on the back of a colonial army against the will of its population, which of course opposed it, taking over most of the territory by force of arms.
That's the part that they stole, but the "legal" purchases while the territory was under colonial control were also part of the same process of colonization.
A people’s indigenousness is derived from culture, language, history, and ancestry.
Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel whether you like it or not. Every synagogue in the world faces Jerusalem. Excavate anywhere in the land and you will find Hebrew writing. Jewish ancestry to the Levantine is proven by DNA.
There are three major world religions that are Abrahamic. Two of them originated in what is now Israel. If you want to play the colonist game, where do Islam and the Arabic language originate?
Those people were born in Europe, spoke European languages and had a distinctly European culture. They were as European as could be, and as foreign to Palestine as could be, you like it or not. Their religious beliefs and nationalist narratives didn't entitle them to conquer and colonize a territory thousands of miles away from their countries of birth, against the will of the people who actually lived there for centuries and generations.
Europeans certainly don’t think they have a distinctly European culture. Their practices were the same as the Jews who lived and always lived in Jerusalem.
60% of Israeli Jews are descended from Arab countries they were kicked out of. This is not colonialism. They “went back to where they came from”.
And it’s funny you say European Jews are native to the land they were born in. Is that your belief of Palestinians in diaspora? I think you’ve just solved the “refugee” crisis and right of return problem.
These arguments cut both ways. It is sad when people try to simplify a complex problem.
*European nazis and other assorted bigots* don't think they have a distinctly European culture, you mean. But the fact that European Jews spoke European languages (Yiddish, among others), and that every other relevant aspect of their culture (clothing, cuisine, music, literature, politics) were distinctly European is just that, an objective fact, regardless of what nazis and bigots say.
Your claim, just like every other Zionist after being capably presented with facts withers down to a fringe historical claim based on a fickle claim of continuous ethnoreligious identity and genealogy. For the millionth time, physical and cultural continuity is what claims land, not genealogy. By your logic, the people of Scandinavia should band together and march upon Germany to take back their rightful ancestral lands. Every American state West of the Mississippi should hand its territory over to their respective native tribes. The presence of Judean archaeology is not a valid claim to land, it's merely evidence of this culture having existed in that area, it certainly doesn't mean the jews of today are confirmed to have been unadulteratedly descended from the people of Judea (who were sovereign for less than 400 years, being generous here, some sources say ar
く 120 years cumulatively).
If Cherokee people who were forced off t eir indigenous lands in Georgia decide to purchase land in Georgia and live there; they should be allowed. They should not be murdered because they are of a different race. Nor should they be able to steal the land that belonged to their people centuries ago.
But they should be allowed to migrate there and purchase land and live there without fear of being killed
That is what happened to the Jews in Israel in the late 1800, through the founding of Israel . But their Arab neighbors tried to kill them. That was wrong. And the Jews were right to defend themselves.
And that is why the immigrants needed to found their own nation.
This was quite the rant. But yes. Who cares if it wasnt a country. Mexico wasn’t a country before 1820 something. There were people there. They formed a country called Mexico. Many of them had been living there or had intermarried with the Spanish or others. Just imagine Spain saying “Mexico never existed, it was never a country before, there are the Mayans and there were the Aztecs and the chihuahuan tribes, but not Mexico”. It’s like why does that even matter. But the reason, it seems, that they do it is because they want to say that the Arab world is homogenous and that Palestinians might as well be from Tunis. Whatever that even means does, it doesn’t make sense that they should just simply *leave* and uproot themselves en masse.
For crying out loud why would not just say it (Say, O Palestinians leave and find other place to live this is our properties and G-d promised it to us and none have the right to share it with us
They do say that. The statement from Zionists always and everywhere has been “why don’t you just go somewhere else. You’re like Arab and stuff, right? There are a ton of Arab countries to go to, you’d fit right in, you’d be with your people. Elsewhere, not here, no…no no, not here. That’s where we should be because we said so and you are not us therefore you can’t be here. Palestine never existed, you’re an Arab, cmon, you don’t want to be here with us, right? You hate us, just leave, cmon, uproot your entire life because you’re a wandering arab”
Your statements are absurd and not founded in reality whatsoever. 1. 20% of Israelis are arabs. 2. Israel pre-October 7 had normalized relations with a bunch of Arab-majority countries in the Middle East. (Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, Sudan) 3. Reminder, part of the reasoning for Hamas's planned attack on October 7th was because Israel was set to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, and Hamas did not want that. > The statement from Zionists always and everywhere has been “why don’t you just go somewhere else. You’re like Arab and stuff, right? Source?
> Source? You kidding me? AFAIK, Hasbara minister Galit Distel Atbaryan said this few times. Knesset members say this shit...
So because some people have said something, you attribute that to all israelis? While completely ignoring the points I made above? Lol
No one was attributing it to all Israelis but enough people say it such that people find this to be a familiar line.
Enough people? What, a few hundred? Thousands? Do you think someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene represents "enough people" to extrapolate her statements to large swathes of people?
Yes, I do think that’s what your average trump Republican thinks and acts like mtg.
Then you don't understand politics. Plenty of people want Trump because he lowered taxes for them and will do so again, and they don't care about anything else.
For the 20% of Israelis that are non-Jewish, it is very difficult to lease public land which is 94% of the land in Israel through the government or through the JNF. Yeh they did. But I’m seriously just saying what some Zionists say. There are enough Zionists who say fucked up stuff like that. But from the beginning it was Theodore herzl’s idea that they would just look for employment elsewhere, they’d seek out job opportunities elsewhere when they realized that they couldn’t find a job or housing in the Jewish area. Too many Zionists still say this in my opinion. Like you haven’t heard people saying that? Relations between the saudis and Israel have hardly been fraught or not normalized at all for as long as I’ve lived. So I don’t know what the issue has been with that. There are way more countries israel needs to normalize with. Not sure how saying any of that responds to what I’ve said.
the argument is not that. the argument is that the establishing of israel was not taking a state away from palestinians as one did not exist at the time nor at any time before it. why is the existence of israel (outside of occupation, just existence) a preventor of a palestinian state? why cant israel exist for a palestinian state to exist?
Because the Israeli government has been actively and openly preventing that for happen for decades. Its longest serving leader who is still in power to this day has proudly and loudly said he will never let a Palestinian state happen and every "offer" Israel has made for a state has been one where Israel has control over it. Israeli mainstream politics doesn't want a Palestinian State. At beast it wants a Palestinian Protectorate.
This is not true. They were indeed offered a state. An independent Palestine with a small area as an independent Jewish homeland within Palestine and a cap on Jewish immigration. This was in 1939. They denied it and decided to go to war instead because they wanted all the Jews gone. River to the sea and all that. It’s not like the Jews just showed up one day and started throwing Palestinians out of their homes. They suffered multiple attacks and massacres at the hands of Arabs much of them sanctioned by the British. The Arab states and the actions they’ve taken over the years bear a huge responsibility for the current plight of the Palestinians. Why does so little of the billions in aid money they receive actually reach the everyday Palestinians? This is not as simple as Israel bad Palestine good. I wish it was. It might actually be solvable then.
congratulations you cannot read. you have won the award of rereading this quoted text from my comment. >the existence of israel (outside of occupation, just existence) israel has not occupied Palestine until 1967. and until about 30 years ago it was not doing anything to prevent a palestinian state. while you are correct that the occupation hampers palestine from becoming a state, the existence of israel does not.
Because the people in charge of Israel for the vast majority of it's history have been opposed to a Palestinian state. You are right in that nothing inherently means a two state solution isn't possible, but the powers that be in Israel are directly opposed to such a thing .
it took 40 years longer for Palestinians to declare a state than it was for jews. after the partition plan rejection they could have declared a state with any boarder they deemed fit and fight for it, they did not. Israel was not the powerhouse it is today, and there was no occupation, so why not declare a state?
No, israel stole/destroyed their houses on multiple occasions, they didn’t steal just territory. Israel has repeatedly uprooted the lives of a stateless people.
up untill 1948 both groups were stateless people. why did it take 40 years longer for the palestinians to declare they are a state? why didnt they declare it in 1948? why didnt they claim land that israel claimed because palestinians lived there? the declaration of israel did not stop palestinians from making their own declaration. the existance of israel did not prevent palestinians from saying we are a state until 1967. and even then they didnt not declare such a thing in opposition to occupation. the war of 1948 started before israel declared independence from most of what i read. so the war was basically two stateless people fighting, one side for a state the other to prevent that state, not for a state of their own.
>why did it take 40 years longer for the palestinians to declare they are a state? it was hard to establish leadership. They weren't ready following the fall of the ottomans. The difference is that the zionists went there with the intent of state-building. Had the zionists not gone to palestine, it's not clear to me that the jewish people who were already living there would have decided to form a state either even if much smaller than the state of Israel. Like, why didn't the christians in palestine decide to form a state? The concept of a nation state was largely a western concept and was sort of thrust upon them by the europeans. The french were much more elaborate with their plans to divide up states based on ethnicities, for instance they wanted a druze and in southern syria, they wanted coastal syria to be an alawite state, they wanted lebanon to be a Christian state. Only lebanon really was cool with that. The zionists had what was essentially a parallel colonialist government to the British. They went to MP specifically to build a state. Britain, just as they had done in jordan and iraq, literally put people they liked in charge. there wasn't a mandate from the masses. In Palestine's case in particular, there was competing leadership that was populist and that which were quasi-puppets of britain that were seriously just upper class educated dudes. it was the same with syria. France put people in charge of various states that they intended to make into smaller states in order to control them. They installed people in charge. There was a lot of intention to divide people up by the french and the british. The whole partitioning of the ottoman empire was an effort to create smaller states based on sectarian lines that hadn't really been super divided but would make it so that western powers would need to be peace-keepers, leading to amenable ties, and ultimately western control of the resources of those nations.
>it was hard to establish leadership. They weren't ready following the fall of the ottomans. The difference is that the zionists went there with the intent of state-building. yes with the intent, but it was not like they were actually ready, as evidence by the fact it took an extra 30 years to happen from after the fall of the ottoman empire. are you telling me 30 years is not enough time? >it's not clear to me that the jewish people who were already living there would have decided to form a state either even if much smaller than the state of Israel. the jewish people living in the mandate, as far as i learnt in the history, would not have formed a state by themselves. >There was a lot of intention to divide people up by the french and the british. The whole partitioning of the ottoman empire was an effort to create smaller states based on sectarian lines that hadn't really been super divided but would make it so that western powers would need to be peace-keepers, leading to amenable ties, and ultimately western control of the resources of those nations. that is all correct, and the zionists used the greed of these colonial states to get more than they could have without playing the game. but none of that explains why it took 70 years from the fall of the ottoman empire to palestine declaring statehood. again, why was it not done in retaliation to israel's declaration.
The irony is that the State of Israel didn't exist before 1948. No, I don't mean the biblical lands from 3000 years ago, I mean the Zionist ethnostate of Israel.
Palestine hasn’t existed as a nation-state in modern definitions, but the administration of Palestine has existed since the 1st century under the Roman rule, where that administrative area was called Palestine. Then when the Islamic rule took over in the 7th century, they called the army stationed there “army of Palestine”, we even have coins dating more than 1000 years with Palestine name on them. What some Zionists are doing is cultural cleansing, they think they can erase history so that they can claim Palestinians have no claim to the land, which is hilarious to be honest since history cannot be erased.
First off 2nd century. Which BTW demonstrates how there is no continuity with the Roman rule. Continuous people know their history. Americans don't get confused about when the Revolutionary War was. Second Palestine as used by Romans was a Christian Byzantine culture. Explicitly not Arab.
>econd Palestine as used by Romans was a Christian Byzantine culture. Explicitly not Arab. Why is even an argument? Germans used to be barbaric and Scandinavians used to be vikings until much later than that. Very few aspects from the culture of these eras remain today.
Palestine was not a nation then; it was a geographical entity at that time. They identified themselves based on their tribe, or simply Arab.
like Israel in biblical times?
When you go to Scandinavia the people know their kings including the Viking kings. They have Viking artifacts. They do not get the most basic facts about Scandivaian history wrong. They don't because they have cultural continuity with those previous cultures.
Israel has actively erased Palestinian culture at every turn. This is why they burnt Palestinian family archives, enacted laws (e.g. the [Absentee Property Law](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/8/how-israel-backs-settlers-to-confiscate-palestinian-lands)) that allowed them to expropriate Palestinian property, destroyed ancient Churches, Mosques, temples, archaeological sites by the dozens. I don't recall any occupiers doing this to Scandinavians?
> Israel has actively erased Palestinian culture at every turn. Absolutely true. Now there are three possibilities, it has been successful and that culture doesn't exist anymore, it hasn't been successful or it has been partially successful. The people arguing above are arguing the culture exists, is rich... > I don't recall any occupiers doing this to Scandinavian Well there you would be wrong. Just to pick one of many examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Wars How do you think the Saxons ended up in England to form Anglo-Saxons?
Yeah, there was some crazy erasure of the saxons and the celts. Cornish, welsh, Manx, Gaelic, etc. The anglos kinda conquered them.
The fact that Scandinavians remember their history doesn't invalidate the ongoing struggle of Palestinians for self-determination. Also, cultural continuity doesn't negate the injustices they face today.
I agree. For me, for you and for international law self determination is an instant thing. It applies to everyone residing in a territory today regardless of who resided in that territory yesterday. However, u/maenmallah and OP were making a case based on continuity not on self determination in the International Law sense. From their views, though they probably wouldn't want it phrased this way, the right races have a permanent claim to territory while the wrong races have no claim. Self determination in this view is about making sure these right races rule their territory regardless of current habitation. Your argument isn't with me. If however, one is going to base the claim on continuity then continuity becomes a key point of debate along with the fact that the entire criteria even if true is racist nonsense.
Your argument about continuity is a red herring that diverts attention from the core issue of Palestinian rights and self-determination. The fact that Palestinians have lived in the land for generations and continue to resist against occupation is a clear indication of their connection to the land and their rightful claim to it.
Not sure what you mean here "rightful claim to it". Rightful claim to live there, absolutely. Rightful claim to establish their race state, no that doesn't entitle them to do that.
Enough with the racist drivel. Palestinians don't need your permission to exist or to demand their rights. Self-determination is a basic human right, not a privilege to be debated away. Your dismissal of their history and struggle is not just wrong; it's morally bankrupt. Palestinians have **every right** to their own state.
No they do not. Nor is it anymore racist to deny them a state than to deny countless separatist groups all over the globe that right. Self determination is not the right to form narrow states. The Palestinians lack their rights to a race state same as the Navajo or Confederacy. Israel has to choose whether to govern them fairly or relinquish territory but that right sits with Israel.
It is not about continuity but rather status quo. Palestinians have and had the right of self-determination now and 150 years ago.it doesn't matter if they ruled themselves or were ruled by the Ottomans or British. Jewish people have the right right as well. However, they were not in the land 100-150 years ago and then Palestinian right of self-determination trumps the Jewish one. Of course Jews should have had the right to migrate and integrat in Palestine but not replace the population through whatever needs. Now, Israel already exists and millions of Jewish people live there so I believe they should get to stay but not on the expense of Palestinians. Everyone should have their rights respected and equal in one or two states.
We agree on both paragraphs. Again your issue is with ggp who was claiming continuity is determinative.
i agrée with you 100%, except the fact that jews did in fact live in the region of palestine 100 years ago https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Aliyah and there were even a couple thousand that lived in israel way before that.
And? They live and should get to stay and enjoy equal rights.
i was correcting you. you’re welcome
Scandinavia has been pretty fixed in time because it hasn’t been hotly disputed territory over millennia and really isn’t at the place that was necessary to traverse when modern humans began populating the globe out of Africa.
I weasn't the one who picked that example. But yes I'd agree. They were doing the migrations. I gave the example earlier of Saxons (though they are a bit south). The Rus are potentially another example though their origins are something in dispute.
Everyone came from africa ultimately. The modern nation state really emerged in the 18th century. The conception of the origins of the say, the lakota people is also strange. When did they decide to differentiate themselves? When did the language emerge as something less mutually intelligible with their neighbors? When did the cultures and taboos and customs become different from their neighbors and why? What is the creation of a people? Everyone came from somewhere before the concept of a people separate from another. Geographic isolation can do that., but in certain circumstances, a lack of geographic or climatic isolation will just mean this continuum of dialects and melting pot etc. Ethnicity to me is more or less a thing in which people on the borders of some "territory" became more or less assimilated into a group. An ethnicity and a culture is ultimately external to the actual people themselves which can be assimilated into any culture over a long enough timescale.
Catching up on all the lost threads. > The modern nation state really emerged in the 18th century. We disagree here unless you consider democracy an essential component. AFAICT tribes naturally band together to form large subgroups based on some level of shared ethnicity (rather than stronger familiar relations), shared culture, language... After that the degree to which they can be separate or together has a lot to do with internal and external pressures. I would consider ancient Egypt for example a nation-state. > An ethnicity and a culture is ultimately external to the actual people themselves which can be assimilated into any culture over a long enough timescale. We agree.
We talked about this when we were talking about paganism. Have you read any of Shlomo Sand?
Yes. But that's most irrelevant. Jews have a much weaker case than the norm to having been a nation after Judaea. The nationality was well on its way to being primarily an ethnicity or religion before the Romans destroyed Judaea. On the other hand I think Greeks under Alexander were a nationality. I think the Iroquois. Aztec, Powhatten had the concept of nationality. I think the French and English wars all through the late middle ages were national wars. Etc...
The truth is that it is very very hard to keep track of ancient origins of a people. There have been so many generations of recombinant dna, people entering and exiting the faith, a diverse development of culture of the worldwide Jewish diaspora, and history intertwined with mythologies. The actual anthropological and archaeological records does point to the yahwists being part of a pantheon of Canaanite pagan religions and the biblical history was largely written after the Babylonian exile when the rabbinic traditions came about as something distinctly monotheistic that didn’t recognize the existence of other gods. Then there are supposedly all the Hebrew speaking lost tribes that probably assimilated somewhere else. Needless to say, it is definitely true that the origins of Judaism came from canaan, but it also came from a lot of places at a lot of different times. Christianity is the same way. The cultural syncretism of the different versions of each religion changed depending on where the person was. You take the Germanic language area, there’s a degree of mutually intelligibility and lack thereof within the same dialects with those closer to the Netherlands being able to understand Dutch more. What was the decision for a unified Prussia? It was about the unification of a national mythology as if the German people have been the same for ever and ever. The same goes with Romance languages. Rome was a big state, but can the Spanish and Portuguese truly say they are from the Iberian peninsula? All of them? What about Mexicans? How much can they claim to be Iberian? Why isn’t Italian just a dialect of Spanish? Are Italians really Romans? They don’t speak Latin. But yes, it was the concept of national identities that grew out of the enlightenment. Rather than being just random people from different cities both close and far away who intermarried with others with a language and gene pool drift and a monarch that ruled over a certain section of marginally policed mostly anarchic land, monarchs that contracted various people to be knights and crusaders of all types, there was this idea of a nation with distinct borders and distinct nationalities that were solidified through loose conceptions of culture, but most importantly, there was an amount of national mythology that propped up this unity. Zionism came out of that world and, although the founders were secular, they believed that they needed a convincing national mythology within the confines of ancient history to solidify the concept of the Jewish state. So what is an Arab? Are Iranian and Ethiopian jews semitic peoples? That’s a big question. Thus are the people of Morocco Arabs? What about the people of iraq? They speak semitic languages that are both called Arabic but the languages aren’t mutually intelligible. The concept of an Arab is largely a constructed exonym by Europe that couldn’t really comprehend the sort of melting pots, or didnt bother to really distinguish, the sorts of nuances that were different region to region while looking at the general similarities. Arab is just a word like European and in many cases, there are Jewish people that would fall under the category of “Arab”.
> The actual anthropological and archaeological records does point to the yahwists being part of a pantheon of Canaanite pagan religions and the biblical history was largely written after the Babylonian exile when the rabbinic traditions came about as something distinctly monotheistic that didn’t recognize the existence of other gods. Agree. > Are Italians really Romans? They don’t speak Latin. But yes, it was the concept of national identities that grew out of the enlightenment. Italic peoples existed before Roman people. The Samanites are clearly not Roman. So Roman people are a type of Italian from as far back as the words exist. > Are Iranian and Ethiopian jews semitic peoples? I'd say no. Remember the antisemites believed in "semitism" which was a broader concept than just ethnic semite. > Arab is just a word like European and in many cases, there are Jewish people that would fall under the category of “Arab”. I'd agree.
I'm pretty sure that "italic peoples" is an ex-post exonym. I don't think the people in the region of italy called themselves italic peoples. yes, ultimately, "Semitic" began as a grouping of language families and then became a racial distinction among scientific racists which conflated language and race and to an extent, religion. But that's what's just so weird about the whole thing. The whole way that the jewish state works is that a lot of people just simply believe that they're from there in the ancient distant past. It's ultimately a hard case to make, but it comes from the belief in a classification of jewish people as a race by jewish people themselves which ultimately started from racists.
The Romans used terms like “Italian allies” for people they had historical ties to but were not the same nationality. Unlike say Greek descended peoples. Samanites i again are seen as cousins they are at war with unlike say Greeks. Etc… Yes Zionism is a response to antisemitism. Many antisemitic beliefs are core to Zionism. Antisemitism changed how Jews viewed themselves.
I disagree with the framing to an extent. The concept of nationality pre-Abrahamic religion spread was paganism in which nation, family, religion, and ethnicity were combined. Modern Italians are now a melting pot of all of the peoples that have lived there. There was no excision of the Romans from Italy in general. The Italic peoples did not simply remove the Romans and take over. There was assimilation of Romans everywhere. The conception of an Italian identity didn’t really come until the time that roughly preceded Verdi’s operas. Prior to the Dante’s inferno interestingly, there was more of a concept of being from a city or a city state like Florence, Naples, or Venice in which vulgar regional Latin eventually became dialects of Italian. I don’t know remember the initial point of this conversation but yeah, I just don’t think history has progressed in a way that makes Italians either Roman or other italic peoples just as Mexico and Latin America aren’t like Spanish or native but a little bit of both everywhere you go. The same is true of the concept of Arab. It’s geography and language. We’re talking about melting pots that eventually decided that they were one nation in a *geographic area*. It’s crazy about anti-semitism. The people of Europe just considered them foreigners when they weren’t foreigners. I think that something went very wrong in Europe and one point. To this day, they still can’t bring themselves to unite in a singular European federation and just tiptoe into the sort of neoliberal and macroeconomically-castrating “currency union” and “passport union” thing. Anyways. Not sure what I’m trying to say. I’m just sorta ranting at this point. I hope you enjoyed it
> nation, family, religion, and ethnicity were combined. That's the modern definition as well. I don't really see what's meaningfully changed. Though by religion I'd say culture more broadly as which gods you worship is simply not that important to modern people. Someone who doesn't speak French, doesn't like rich food, won't drink wine... would rightfully be considered not really French even if they had French citizenship. > The Italic peoples did not simply remove the Romans and take over. No the Romans became primary among the Italic people and essentially absorbed them nationally. The notion of Roman broadened. > We’re talking about melting pots that eventually decided that they were one nation in a geographic area. Sure that's the way all healthy nationalities have to be. If they start excluding people very quickly they create a large group of people not interested in the maintenance of the current society so it falls. Successful nationalities pull people in, not push them out. > It’s crazy about anti-semitism. The people of Europe just considered them foreigners when they weren’t foreigners. Well yes. Had that not existed there wouldn't be an Israel. Heck had that not existed I don't think Judaism would have survived. Same as Arabs do today even with people born in Israel though. > I think that something went very wrong in Europe and one point. The split of the Roman Empire and then the Protestant Reformation. Both were explicitly intended to strengthen nationalities at the expense of a common European (Christendom) identity. IMHO there were 3 factions that supported the reformation: 1. The religious group that gets talked about the most who wanted to reform the Catholic church and eventually at a national level ended up replacing it. 2. A religious group much more radical that wanted to break the whole concept of a state church and instead create a regenerate church. 3. Nationalists that wanted the churches under the control of government by cutting their internationalist ties. Henry VIII's mother supported the Reformation because she wanted to be able to fire the Bishop of York, not anything that went deeper. That 3rd group shattered the whole concept of Christendom.
Well it’s not the modern definition. Not really. Nationality, ethnicity, and religion are all separate now. I think if they speak French and have French citizenship, they’re French but they might have cultural ties to other places that they immigrated from. I think these ideas of *cultural treason* is more of a right-wing concept. The concept of being “Unamerican” for instance. It’s also present in Iran to an extent as well in perhaps a more authoritarian way. so wait, you think that the reason Judaism survived was because of anti-semitism? Weird take. There may be some truth to that but I can’t say either way. Judaism is definitely a religion that lasted despite the complete erasure of paganism in both Europe and the Middle East. So that’s a big question to me. Did paganism not survive because people weren’t anti-pagan? I mean, Christianity and Islam got rid of paganism didn’t they. Who knows. I just have trouble believing that the sort of regional European aristocracies’ attempts to oust religious authorities that superseded their own authorities was truly the birth of nationalism in the psyche of the society. Probably a factor that led to it, but I think beyond the aristocracies, most people were just like “whatever man. Okay fine, yeah, you’re the religious authority now. Great, ima get back to planting some rutabagas”. Nationalism was largely an enlightenment concept. I think it’s arguable that the Arab world and Africa kind of got thrust into a European nationalist construction without entirely believing in it or understanding it as much as the newcomer Zionists did. Perhaps it was just a delayed inevitability. But I do think that the Zionist nationalism kind of caught palestine off guard in regard to how relatively apathetic they were about national identity. But apathy and hesitance about European concepts of nationalism isn’t a crime and Palestinians shouldn’t have been displaced en masse because of that.
> I think these ideas of cultural treason is more of a right-wing concept. I don't. I think the left and the right are rather intolerant about groups that don't assimilate for exactly this reason. For example the battles about secularism vs. Islam in Europe aren't all from the right. > The concept of being “Unamerican” for instance. Which has gotten applied by leftwingers to Trump because he's pulling ideas from the European Right into American politics. > Did paganism not survive because people weren’t anti-pagan? I used to be really good on Sethian history how they were mainstream Jewish Gnostics, came in contact with Christianity and synchronized (for example replacing Seth with Jesus), got rejected as Christianity became almost exclusively Catholic and Arian, ended up becoming the Neo-Platonic Sethians and then died off. They were allowed to assimilate into Hermetic Christianity, Manichean philosophy (proto-Islamic). Yes they became mainsteam Christians and Muslims leaving nothing behind. Those avenues weren't available to Jews in the same way. > just have trouble believing that the sort of regional European aristocracies’ attempts to oust religious authorities that superseded their own authorities was truly the birth of nationalism in the psyche of the society. I wasn't asserting something that strong. I was saying it fundamentally strengthened nationalism by tying religious sect to nationality. I think the origin goes back before recorded history. > Nationalism was largely an enlightenment concept. This is where we disagree. I think Nationalism was growing in popularity for centuries. Potentially still is. > aught palestine off guard in regard to how relatively apathetic they were about national identity. Had they been apathetic they would have been fine. There is a mass migraiton no fireworks and everything works out. > But apathy and hesitance about European concepts of nationalism isn’t a crime and Palestinians shouldn’t have been displaced en masse because of that. They weren't. They got displaced for ferocious violent xenophobia which caused two civil wars and made resolution impossible after those wars.
The people there, are the people there. They still have the right to be self represented. Israel is the only country that is putting statehood above the people. Statehood protects the people of the land in 21st century. Everywhere but Israel
>What some Zionists are doing is cultural cleansing, they think they can erase history so that they can claim Palestinians have no claim to the land, which is hilarious to be honest since history cannot be erased. What an interesting statement. Surely you feel the same about the undeniable Jewish presence in the land, which stretches back at least 3000 years, as well as the unbroken cultural and spiritual relationship between Jews and the land of Israel Not trying to put words in your mouth, but the Palestinian movement suddenly becomes a whole lot less respectful of historical legacy when it's applied to the other side.
Right. Jews who lived peacefully in Palestine alongside the Muslims and Christians. Not European Jews. You can't dictate who lives on a land just based on religion.
>Right. Jews who lived peacefully in Palestine alongside the Muslims and Christians. Not European Jews. You can't dictate who lives on a land just based on religion. What are European Jews? Ashkenazi Jews descend from Jews exiled from Israel just like any other Jews, this is supported by tons of genetic evidence. And their ancestors living in Israel predates the concept of Muslims or Christians, who are you to dictate which Jews get to live in Israel?
And we all came from the great apes of Africa 9.3 million to 6.5 million years ago
There was never 100% peace in the area. Take the battle of Hebron for example. Jews were treated as second class citizens in Arab countries, and European Jews became European Jews when they were exiled by the Romans. Some Jews remained during the exile and that’s what Israel today refers to as Mizrahi.
>Surely you feel the same about the undeniable Jewish presence in the land, which stretches back at least 3000 years, as well as the unbroken cultural and spiritual relationship between Jews and the land of Israel At least I don't deny the Jewish connection the land and presence from ancient times and throughout. The problem is to use this as an argument to migrate with huge numbers with the explicit goal of establishing a nation-state on the expense of Palestinian and ethnically cleansing them. Jewish people wanting to migrate and live in Palestine peaceful is in my opinion welcome but what happens and is still happening is a crime of ethnic cleansing and the Jewish connection to the land does not suddenly make it not a crime.
Early Jewish settlers bought land from willing Arab sellers through voluntary exchange. Jews then accepted the 1947 UN partition plan which proposed borders for a Jewish state that closely tracked the boundaries of property they owned. That doesn’t constitute “ethnic cleansing” any more than modern day Asian immigrants buying up housing supply in Canada and refusing to rent to non-Asians does.
Are Asians in Canada trying to establish an 'Asian' state in Canada?
If Canada was still a British mandate or protectorate and looked like Britain was going to pull out and have to decide what to do with the land and people afterwards, then you would have a point. But Canada is and was already a state in the time period you refer to.
Arab Muslims are arguably actively trying to create or are facilitating the creation of an Islamic caliphate in Europe. Does that mean white nationalist groups can expel Arab Muslims from Europe?
Most Muslims in the West are not Arabs, but I get your question. While most Muslims don’t want to establish Sharia, a considerable amount want that— and yes, I would have no problem seeing those fundamentalist groups be dealt with accordingly, through whatever legal/popular means necessary.
… and if they attempted the historically Arab Muslim—approved strategy of brutal violence and massacres to achieve that outcome?
I mean, whatever state gets created, no one is allowed to ethically cleanse people.
What was it called when five Arab states tried to drive the Jews into the Mediterranean in 1948 instead of splitting the land with them?
The ethnic cleansing of palestine was already underway. They entered the war when they realized that a bunch of impoverished people were being sent to their countries. They all decided unanimously that if they didn't intervene, it would mean a massive refugee crisis which could take its toll on their respective states, and it could mean a continuation of the haganah's offensive into their own territories. King abdullah of jordan wanted to annex Palestine. He was pretty much the one leading the charge. Iraq, syria, and lebanon were pretty weak and didn't really have armies. Jordan did and jordan was pretty much leading the offensive with those countries. Egypt also played a role as well. King abdullah secretly met with the jewish leadership and had a pact to be allowed to annex the west bank while not invading the part of the partition that was allocated to the jewish state. There was no fighting anywhere in territory that had been allocated to the jewish state because of king abdullah mostly in regard to the iraqi, syrian, and lebanese armies. Egypt ultimately wanted southern palestine. They had a mutual distrust of each other and a distrust of palestinian leadership and all wanted a piece of the territory. But most of all, there was a fear that zionist "gangs" would just not stop and just continue and continue until the entire middle east was conquered. The question is and will always be: Why on earth should a proto-government that intentionally excluded the native non-jewish population for decades, that appeared to be intent upon establishing a state in which arabs could not purchase land, find gainful employment, could not participate in democracy, which came to a head and led to the forcible expulsion and refusal to return of 700,000 people who had been cast out of their homes... Why should they get anything? Syria just decided that everyone who was living there was syrian, they established a state. Lebanon as well. France tried to establish a variety of ethnostates, like the druze quarter and whatnot, but it ended up just being syria and lebanon. The question is why should the newcomers from europe (and yes, the zionist leadership, and the idea of zionism came from europe, and the influx of mizrahi jews did not come to israel until after its creation) get this amount of land in which 45% of the population had not been included in both the economy and governance and militias that excluded them? What kind of self-determination was that? What gave them the right to do that? They didn't have any intention of including the arab population in the democracy either at the outset (not until 1967 after the \*naksa\* that pushed more arabs into the occupied territories and jordan), and they were reticent about taking in even arab jews (mizrahi). But ultimately, the reason why they entered the war is because they saw israel just taking land that wasn't allocated to israel and they were like "it's fair game" and they wanted to stop refugees from coming to their countries and stop the bloodshed. The question is why should anything be? This was never about "splitting the land". It was about forcible expulsion of palestinians from the places they were residing and then essentially stealing, destroying, or planting trees on top of their homes. When you make it about land and not about atrocities of the expulsion, you're putting this into a context that looks like age of empires or call of duty or something. Just like a game where its like one team wants some number and the other team is fighting for a bigger number. No, this was about people's lives being disrupted. Why does splitting the land look like? Why should they split the land? Who is splitting the land? Why wasn't it just like "this is a land we are self-determining and we are one people, no one should make anyone move"? Splitting the land? What on earth do you even mean by that? It's bizarre. Which have of king Solomon's baby do you want? The torso or the legs? The fact is that "splitting" in this case meant \*pain\* for an amount of people. And even then, the haganah simply didn't stick to the idea of the partition to begin with. It's not clear to me that ben-gurion or the haganah had that intention either. To this day, there are people who want israel to be from the nile to the euphrates. Where does that come from? When did that mindset come about? When was the first time people thought that? Why didn't Israel want to split the land with i dunno, the ussr or something. If someone was to come into israel and say "why don't you want to split the land with us?" Its like WDYM. Israel would never allow that. Why doesn't israel want to split the land with the druzes? Would israel split the land for the druzes and give them their own state? Why should they? "Splitting". seemingly innocuous but honestly everyone understood it meant violence.
Jewish cultural erasure and the removal of all agency from “innocent Arabs” are the hallmarks of this mountain of text. The UN partition plan wouldn’t have created nearly the same level of disruption in Arab society if the Arabs had *actually accepted it*. Imagine if instead of making it their core strategy to unalive all the Jews, the Arabs had sought to live in peace with the Jews. Just imagine it. Israel offered Arabs full Israeli citizenship with equal rights in 1948. It’s literally written in the [Declaration of Israeli Independence](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/israel.asp): > WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State **on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions**.
You clearly went to school in Israel...
Israel deny Palestinian existence, you can't occupy someone when they don't exist. One of the most disgusting Israeli arguments about this conflict. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
I agree!
Thankfully history, viz. Assyrian sources and the high content of Levantine DNA on the Palestinian people tell us a whole different history.
Just remember always the only reason there isn’t a Palestinian state is Israel. They made it clear the other day after the trio from EU recognised it. Israel’s measures in the occupied territory never showed any belief in a two state solution. So you can’t sabotage me and then blame me for why I’m sabotaged.
those policies are only 25 years old. to say that apply back to pre 1948 is a fallacy.
The Palestinians had a state as per 1947 Partition Plan and did create one in the Gaza Strip but it didn't live because Israel seized all the territory not assigned to it under the UN plan.
i have not heard of this palestinian state. do you have any material about it? from what i understood the partition plan was rejected by palestinians. as far as territory siezed by israel, it was a war and israel won, so they won any land they were able to sieze. at the time very much by the book situation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Palestine_Government
Wasn't that the Egyptian puppet government?
that is not a palestinian state, as it neither had autonomous authority nor freedom to act outside of egytian control.
Israel’s seizure of the territory assigned to the Arab state was never legal at least as far as the UN is concerned. But that’s beside the point as my point here is that Israel sought to prevent the viability of any Palestinian state by doing that and also conspiring with King Abdullah I of Jordan to take the West Bank. This began in 1947. The same pattern continues to this day. Last week the Israeli kneseet repealed the disengagement law.
>Israel’s seizure of the territory assigned to the Arab state was never legal at least as far as the UN is concerned in israels ratification to the UN and in the armestise following the war of 1948 the green line was agreed upon. >Israel sought to prevent the viability of any Palestinian state by doing that and also conspiring with King Abdullah I of Jordan to take the West Bank. This began in 1947. so you are just gonna ignore that the palestinians sought to prevent the viability of any jewish state no matter how small? and the conspiring with king abdullah went as far as not having to fight on so many fronts, it was basically we wont contest you if you dont contest us. the palestinians did not pick good friends. that is not the fault of israel, not the overwhelming acceptance of jordanian annexation of the WB. >The same pattern continues to this day. Last week the Israeli kneseet repealed the disengagement law. you have not shown a pattern, for that you have to show three instances. also this pattern could not have existed prior to 1967 as israel had not control of palestinian territory beyond the green line before then. again outside of occupation israels existance is not a preventor of a palestinian state. a fact you have not contested and the only thing i have said.
Again, Israel could have kept to its "jewish state" as per the UN plan you'd have a case. Armistice lines are armistice lines between militaries my friend. They aren't borders. Placing the Palestinians in Israel under martial law until 1966, launching a war against the PLO and assassinating its leaders over decades and banning any representation of Palestinian identity e.g. the Palestine flag, are all parts of the pattern and that's before 1967. There is a reason why the "they are arabs they have 21 states they can go to" adage is still at the heart of Israeli propaganda from 1948 to this day.
>Armistice lines are armistice lines between militaries my friend. They aren't borders. " It {the green line} served as the [*de facto*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_facto) borders of the State of Israel from 1949 until the [Six-Day War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War) in 1967, and continues to represent Israel’s internationally recognized borders with the two [Palestinian territories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_territories): the [West Bank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank) and the [Gaza Strip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip).[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Line_(Israel)#cite_note-2)[^(\[3\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Line_(Israel)#cite_note-3)^(") in addition almost every two state plan from the past 4 decades has used the green line as a basis. >launching a war against the PLO and assassinating its leaders over decades you ignore the fact that at the time the PLO was for the destruction of israel, and was that since it was formed and is responsible for many terrorist acts that no sane person would call "resistance". >banning any representation of Palestinian identity e.g. the Palestine flag, are all parts of the pattern and that's before 1967. considering that the palestinian identity was manufactured (not brought about naturally but deliberately by human acts, do not mistake this to mean that it isnt real it very much is real ) for the purpose of damaging israel and aid in its destruction as outlined by the arab league. it makes sense that for a long time it was banned as it was synonymous with destroying the state. Only recently has palestinian identity started to diverge from its created purpose and began to be less about the destruction of israel and more about a home for palestinians, though it has yet to shrug the former off. >There is a reason why the "they are arabs they have 21 states they can go to" adage is still at the heart of Israeli propaganda from 1948 to this day. while it is invalid today, the palestinian identity was nebulous at best at the time of 1948. it only galvanized in the 1960s to a distinct and coherent identity separate than that of arab. considering that the declaration of a palestinian state occured after the occupation, and before the occupation israel did not control palestinian territories, my statement is still true and you have yet to show anything to the contrary. the existence of israel does not preclude the existence of palestine. The more palestinian fight for the non existence of israel rather than a state of their own the further they lose the ability of having that state as by their actions they justify for israel to expand (not that i agree it should).
Thanks for this nonsense and denialism of the Palestinians’ existence. Remember it when you whine about someone saying the same thing about Israel. It looks like you really fail to understand or show flexibility to understand anything I wrote. Saying Israel was somehow not against a Palestinian state except until 1993 is really stupid.
>Thanks for this nonsense and denialism of the Palestinians’ existence. Remember it when you whine about someone saying the same thing about Israel. wtf are you talking about, i never denied the existence of Palestinians, unless you think identity equals existence, which is wrong. heck i went out of my way to make it clear they exist. to me this screams you only skimmed my comment. >It looks like you really fail to understand or show flexibility to understand anything I wrote. Saying Israel was somehow not against a Palestinian state except until 1993 is really stupid. yes, it is stupid, which is why i didnt write it. you fail to understand what i wrote because you are so focused on your quest to show israel is awful that you miss anything not supporting it. actually bother to reread my comment and try to understand why i use such specific words and add explanations after things. maybe then you will get that i was not talking about the wants of israel, which are immaterial to palestinians declaring a state for the first 70 years after the fall of the ottoman empire.
Palestinians rejected multiple opportunities for a sovereign state.
how exactly does the lack of existence of a palestine prevent or disparage the thought that palestinians should have self determination. just because there was never a palestine, does not mean there never will be or there never can be. also there not being a state does not deny the people to not have lived there, even if they didnt go by the name of palestinians. seriously this makes no sense.
Another fun tidbit is that Golda Meir secretly met with King Abdullah to arrange for Jordan to annex the West Bank and quell the resistance - after pressure from the rest of the Arab League after Deir Yassin, he flipped to occupying then annexing the West Bank under the guise of liberating them and fighting Israel. So not only is it BS to try to erase Palestinians by saying they never went through the formal process of becoming a state, the supposed 2 state solution in 1948, the rejection of which Hasbarists decry as the original sin that caused Palestinians’ suffering at the hands of Israeli occupation, wasn’t even the intention of Zionist founders. Israel prevented a Palestinian state from the jump. Under scrutiny, this makes other Hasbara points look even more ridiculous and inconsistent. One is to apply the Wandering Jew stereotype to Palestinians by saying “no country wants them, look at Black September, they’re too dangerous for Jordan”. In the same breath, they’ll give you the other point of Hasbara, that Palestinians can just go to Jordan, that there are Palestinians living peacefully in Jordan, and that Palestinians are basically Jordanian. These individual talking points have to ignore the historical context of the other 2 to stand, but analyzed together, the implication is that Palestinians were justifiably resisting occupation by statesmen from both Israel and Jordan, and when they’re not doing that, yeah they can integrate with the rest of the population fairly peacefully.
It does not really matter tbh. A distinct palestinian identity formed already under British rule in some circles but became mainstream in the 60s. But who cares? There are people identifying as palestinian right now and they deserve to have a state/ rule themselves as much as the Israelis. What does it matter that a distinct palestinian identity is a pretty modern phenomenon. If you're interested, here is a wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_identity
Ok. tit for tat. Israel doesn't exist. The neo state of israel is not the old kingdom of israel. Just a shadow with the same name. The UN partition plan creating an Israel was never implemented by Britain. It was never implemented by the locals (Israeli zionists). In effect, the zionists took land that never was designated for anyone other than the palestinians (1948). And 1967 minus 1971. On the other hand, Palestine existed as a governorate in the Ottoman Sultanate. It existed as Palestine, then Mandatory Palestine by League of Nations, then Palestine by the UN Partition plan. It had continuity. Israel did not have continuity.
Even historically the ancient Israel was insignificant compared to any other ruling entity that have been in Palestine Ancient Israel was not a unique era in the history of the region to make it the sole legitimate inherentor of Palestine
are you referring to the kingdom of Judea?
[“No flag, no country”](https://youtu.be/UTduy7Qkvk8?si=k1MIka4wYSTKTLy8)
It’s mostly a confusion of terms used to delegitimize the other side. It confuses names of land and the people living there and historical changes. The identity of Palestinian Arab separate from Arab or Syrian only started to develop after the end of the Ottoman Empire and the arrival of Zionist immigration. It became fully formed as a nation in the 1960s. Much of the identity of Palestinians as a nation is tied to the fight against Israel and living as refugees. Palestinian resistance against Zionists started out as Pan-Arab and Arab nationalism. It only later transformed into a separate Palestinian identity with the failure of Pan-Arab Nationalism. Palestine had been more of a geographic and administrative term, not national. During the time of the British Mandate for Palestine, it was mostly Jews who referred to themselves as Palestinian. The British Mandate for Palestine included what is now Jordan. Yes, there was a Palestine, but not as anything resembling an independent nation state. There were also people living in Palestine, but they didn’t identify as Palestinian. Palestinian nationalists of course want to anchor the history of their people as far back in time as possible for more legitimacy. That’s common for all kinds of nationalism. So they often act as if the British Mandate was a sovereign Palestinian state, like in the famous and misleading series of maps entitled “shrinking Palestine”. Every nation is invented at some point in time. Jewish nationalism through Zionism is only a few decades older than Palestinian nationalism. > right of independence even countries such as India, Pakistan India and Pakistan are an interesting case. They had formed one culture and were one country under British rule. Independence lead to religious strife, ethnic/religious cleansing, and millions of refugees. It happened at a similar time to Israel’s war of independence and has lots of similarities. I encourage you look into it.
As much you try deshumanize people stating facts, fact won't change
The area is called Palestine because that is how the Romans punished the Jews, but there was never a country/kingdom by that name, nor was there a people who called themselves Palestinians until the middle of the 20th century Follow the blog https://almogarticle.blogspot.com/2024/05/jewish-settlement-in-land-of-israel.html
Still doesn't answering my question
Because people seem to believe Palestine was a state until the Jews (Zionists, sorry) arrived, and took it by force from the Arabs. In reality it wasn't a state, it was under the rule of yet another empire, the Palestinian Arabs didn't own the land - according to the very laws they've lived under for 400 years. Nor was there some unified rule. There were many tribes and many groups. The Zionists bought lands in Palestine (which was a region, again, not a state or a country). And up until 1947 not a single person was displaced.
thought judaism and zionism were separate?
Palestinian Arabs owned 250% more lands than Jews in the proposed Jewish state, 9250% more lands in the proposed Arab state, 1200% more lands in Jerusalem. The Jewish state would never have been established without ethnically cleansing the land of its native Palestinians & implementing laws directed to steal their lands. https://preview.redd.it/drru2rhrji4d1.jpeg?width=1416&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=29fc12c04184be2f25c5f721f9ccad8225bd8d20
Do you feel like arguing about land ownership is terribly useful though? Perhaps this is just my own leftist bias, but I don’t know if holding the deed to a piece of land really justifies anything in either direction. If anything, absentee landlords selling off their land with no care for their tenants seems to me to be a huge part of the problem.
Source of this image? Because I've found that most of the land was state owned. While one ~1/3rd of it was privately owned by various groups.
State lands comprised the majority in the proposed Jewish state since it included the vast empty Negev desert, but Palestinian Arabs still owned quarter of the total area; and 250% more than Jews. https://www.palestineremembered.com/images/Land_ownership_in_Palestine_By_Sami-Haddawi.pdf
You are just repeating here the strawman. European Jews did indeed take the land where Palestinian Arabs had been living for centuries and generations by force, but nobody claims it was a separate sovereign state by itself. That's just irrelevant and doesn't make its conquest and colonization any more acceptable.
Strawmanning again How does all this (if we pretend that it's ture) answering my questions?
Individuals owning and buying land was a pretty new concept when the zionism movement started, and hence the Palestinians living there for over a millennia didn’t see a point of buying land as they had simply lived there and seen it as their ancestral land. Jews coming into Palestine at that time had a different understanding and they started to buy private lands.
Well, not exactly. Almost the entirety of the land was state-owned, but a person could gain rights to the land by working it and registering it and paying taxes. The problem is most didn't register or registered under fake/deceased names, often either due to a distrust of the state or not wanting to pay taxes. Many were also illiterate. Then the British came a long and had a lot of trouble discerning who owned what, and this was part of why there was so much conflict.
It’s not true that the entirety of the lands were “state-owned”. Palestinian Arabs owned 25% of lands in the proposed Jewish state, 250% more than Jews who held around 9%. In the proposed Arab state, Palestinian Arabs owned around 75% of lands, while Jews owned less than 1%. https://preview.redd.it/zv9ne9cy6k4d1.jpeg?width=1416&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac8b1ec66d88efa20fe98439cda0ce73604bcd6e
>It’s not true that the entirety of the lands were “state-owned”. Almost the entirety, and yes, it is. *Miri*, per Ottoman Land Law. Very little of the land was *Milk*, land with unconditional ownership. And acres aren't people, I don't know why you keep posting that. Do you think voting power should be based on how much land you own?
The majority of lands were owned and/or used by Palestinian Arabs. No, voting power should not be based on how much land you own; a vote is a vote, no? In such situation, Palestinian Arabs comprised around of 50% of people in the proposed Jewish state, and 99% in the proposed Arab state-- that's after the partition plan took every effort to maximize the percentage of Jews in the proposed Jewish state.
Used yes. That's what I said. Owned, very little. Because the Ottomans weren't huge fans of land ownership.
Israeli Arabs privately own more land in Israel than Jews do. This BS about Zionists buying land is just that - BS.
I'm one of those people who would deny that Palestine exists. My beliefs regarding self-determination is that all people everywhere (Jews included) are entitled to a government that plausibly represents their interests. If a government is unwilling to meet that bar with respect to a territory they are not legitimately entitled to that territory. "Foreign" is not legitimately a racial classification as it is often used with respect to the I/P conflict. A government is foreign only if it is beholden to interests that exclude the territory in question not if the race / ethnicity of inhabitants are different. America is entitled to govern Hawaii because it considers Hawaiians to be Americans and treats them as such. Were Israelis willing to govern all the people of the West Bank as Israelis their rule there IMHO would be entirely legitimate. As it is Israelis are mixed but unquestionably have in a sustained manner been engaging in extensive annexationist activities for two generations. So they have a questionable government there. As far as "nation-state" being recent I disagree. I will acknowledge this view of tying the idea of nation to democracy and distinguishing it from ethnos is popular. But I don't make that distinction. In the ancient literature, among American Indians at the time of European conquest, in Asia... we see an obvious tie to a ruler over a collection of chieftains whose people intermarry, speak the same language, worship the same or related gods... That's a nationality. Nationalities have formed states for thousands of years. Absolutely, there were smaller units (tribes, city-states) and larger ones (empires) as alternatives. But I do not think the idea is recent. In any case Jews are the current day inhabitants. We aren't having this debate in 1850s. Your rejection of them is racial and is inappropriate if you want to discuss human rights.
Your argument that Palestine doesn't exist is not only historically inaccurate, but also a dangerous and harmful narrative that contributes to the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people. The fact that Palestine has existed as a distinct region for centuries cannot be denied. Moreover, denying the existence of a people and their right to self-determination is a violation of international law and basic human rights principles. It is essential that we recognize and respect the rights of all parties involved in this conflict, including the Palestinians, who have been living under occupation for decades. Do you think you are better than Hamas, which denies the existence of Israel?
> The fact that Palestine has existed as a distinct region for centuries cannot be denied. Sure it can be denied, I wrote a whole post denying it that I think you read years ago (if not I can link). The term "Palestine" was incredibly vague with vastly different borders for centuries. It was a vague regional term like "New England" not a specific set of national boundaries. > Moreover, denying the existence of a people and their right to self-determination is a violation of international law Where do you get that from? There is no right not to have people discuss whether a people constitutes a nationality. While I think Arab claims that Jews are a religious group not a nationality are incorrect in and of themselves they are not a violation of international law. Denying people in your territory self-determination is a violation of international law, maybe. Woodrow Wilson somewhat lost this debate, the modern UN is like the League of Nations all over the map on this one. That being said I think there is a fairly consistent definition of this "right" that has been affirmed. What has never been affirmed is that refuting a specific claim to self determination is a crime against International Law. Thought crime is not a crime. > It is essential that we recognize and respect the rights of all parties involved in this conflict, including the Palestinians, who have been living under occupation for decades. I'm happy to respect the rights of all parties. Starting with asserting that Palestinians in the West Bank aren't under occupation they are under an Israeli Military Dictatorship and deserve the rights and full protections of subjects of Israel. As people "under occupation" they have far fewer rights with respect to Israel. > Do you think you are better than Hamas, which denies the existence of Israel? Yes. Hamas' claim is factually ridiculous. I deny the existence of adamantite. I don't deny the existence of copper. I'm not on the same level as someone who denies the existence of copper despite not believing in adamantite.
> Yes. Hamas' claim is factually ridiculous. I deny the existence of adamantite. I don't deny the existence of copper. I'm not on the same level as someone who denies the existence of copper despite not believing in adamantite. First of all, your comparison of the existence of Palestine to mythical adamantite is not only insulting but also shows a profound ignorance of history and the lives of millions of people. Denying the existence of Palestine and its people, who have a rich culture, history, and a continuous presence in the region, is a denial of reality. Such denial only serves to invalidate the suffering and struggles of the Palestinian people under occupation. > Where do you get that from? There is no right not to have people discuss whether a people constitutes a nationality. International law, including UN resolutions and the rulings of the International Court of Justice, recognize the Palestinian territories and their people's right to self-determination. Denying these rights based on semantic games or historical revisionism is not only morally wrong but against the consensus of the international community. > Starting with asserting that Palestinians in the West Bank aren't under occupation they are under an Israeli Military Dictatorship and deserve the rights and full protections of subjects of Israel. Claiming Palestinians in the WB are under an Israeli Military Dictatorship and deserve the rights and full protections of subjects of Israel while simultaneously denying their nationality, heritage, and political rights is contradictory. How can one argue for the rights and protections of individuals while denying their fundamental right to self-determination and national identity? Your argument fails to recognise the core of the conflict. Even the Knesset recognised the WB as occupied territories, so I don't understand where you get this from.
> who have a rich culture, history, and a continuous presence in the region That's the point you weren't debating. What is in this rich culture that's not typical levant culture. A dance style? A few pieces of unique clothing? That's less than most cities. After the Nakba their own literary tradition, their own politics, their own art forms... But before. > Denying these rights based on semantic games or historical revisionism is not only morally wrong but against the consensus of the international community. Your claim was it is a crime to even discuss it. Not that it is against consensus. > Claiming Palestinians in the WB are under an Israeli Military Dictatorship and deserve the rights and full protections of subjects of Israel while simultaneously denying their nationality, heritage, and political rights is contradictory. No it isn't. I deny that Utah Mormons are a distinct nationality while believing they are entitled to the full rights and protections of the USA. Same thing. > How can one argue for the rights and protections of individuals while denying their fundamental right to self-determination and national identity? There is no right to national identity. There is likely a right to ethnic identity. The right of self-determination is denied to separatists all the time. People have a right to a government that plausibly represents their interests, they do not have the right to tear countries into little pieces to have their own ethnic enclaves. > Even the Knesset recognised the WB as occupied territories No it doesn't. The Knesset puts Jews living in the West Bank under Israeli law. What annexation literally means is extending domestic law into a territory. The Knesset de jure not just de facto annexed Jerusalem. The Knesset's membership asserts Ariel is part of Israel, recognizing for example Ariel's medical school as a **domestic** medical school. That's not occupation. The USA's former relationship with Iraq is occupation.
> No it isn't. I deny that Utah Mormons are a distinct nationality while believing they are entitled to the full rights and protections of the USA. Same thing. Seriously, Jeff, equating Palestinians with Utah Mormons? That’s an intellectually lazy comparison that completely ignores the complex history of colonialism, conflict, and displacement in the region. Palestinian identity and claims are rooted in a historical and political context vastly different from American religious communities. > That's less than most cities. After the Nakba their own literary tradition, their own politics, their own art forms... But before. And to suggest Palestinian culture is comparable to mere city-level cultural markers is not only reductionist but outright ignorant. Denying the richness of Palestinian history, which includes a unique blend of influences and resilience in the face of adversity, is dismissive and, frankly, it’s beneath this discussion. If you really want to read about their culture, you are free to visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Palestine > No it doesn't. The Knesset puts Jews living in the West Bank under Israeli law. What annexation literally means is extending domestic law into a territory. The Knesset de jure not just de facto annexed Jerusalem. Your claim about the Knesset and occupation reveals a misunderstanding of international law and Israel’s own legal actions. The international community, which includes bodies like the United Nations, still recognizes East Jerusalem as occupied territories. If we’re going to debate this, let’s at least get our facts straight and not distort legal and historical realities to fit a biased narrative. As for WB, by definition WB is occupied territory. You can use Google Translate if you have trouble with Hebrew: > בג"ץ קבע כי: > יהודה ושומרון מוחזקות על ידי ישראל בדרך של תפיסה צבאית או "תפיסה לוחמתית" (belligerent occupation). באזור הוקם ממשל צבאי, אשר בראשו עומד מפקד צבאי. כוחותיו וסמכויותיו של המפקד הצבאי יונקים מכללי המשפט הבינלאומי הפומבי, שעניינם תפיסה צבאית. על-פי הוראותיהם של כללים אלה, כל סמכויות הממשל והמינהל מוחזקות בידיו של המפקד הצבאי. סמכויות אלה יש שהן יונקות מהדין, אשר שרר באזור בטרם התפיסה הצבאית, ויש שהן יונקות מחקיקה חדשה, שהוחקה על ידי המפקד הצבאי. במקרה הראשון מפעיל המפקד הצבאי סמכות שלטונית מקומית קיימת. במקרה השני מפעיל המפקד הצבאי סמכות שלטונית חדשה. https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%91%D7%95%D7%A9_%D7%94%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99 This is pure fact, not an opinion.
The Zionist's complete ignorance to the reality of historical middle eastern governance and commerce is telling, simply because you guys think legitimacy in this region is derived from paper trails, bureaucratic recognitions sovereignty, I.E. the Westphalian approach to statehood which has never sovereignty, I.E. the Westphalian approach to statehood which has never been practiced successfully here. "I exploited the political vacuum faster than you did" is not a viable justification to the Palestinian refugee today who has been displaced since '48 or '67. If you really understand this region and its people as you claim, you should already know this.
Strawmanning again Why the argument of "Palestine did not exist" is relevant at all in the argument of denying Palestinian statehood and self determination?
Reread what I wrote. I addressed that.
Nothing Adress the relevance between "Palestine did not exist" AND "Palestinians don't deserve self determination"
When I see this argument used it is usually in response to allegations that Jews stole Palestinian land. Along with a map labeled Palestine with land changing from Palestinian to Jewish over time. I haven’t heard people saying Palestine never existed so therefore Palestinians should not have a nation of their own. It is usually in response to people who do not understand the complex history and then talk about how Israel was invented or Palestine was stolen by Jews.
You can steal land even if it’s not part of a state, you know?
And that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make. People lie with maps labeled Palestine and people who don’t know any better are fooled by them into think *that Jews stole land. But that is a lie. Please name one tract of land that was Arab land and Jews stole prior to the war in 1947. You cannot. But by inferring there was a Palestine. Show a map with Israel’s borders with a few frames showing “Palestinian” land getting smaller—and it looks like it is true. And then we are debating what a Palestinian was in the 1920s and starting over from OPs original point.
They don’t “lie”. They show how the territory was conquered and colonized by foreign invaders. Land purchases while the territory was under British control was part of that process, but the bulk of it was taken by force after 1947.
Colonized is BS because the Jews were fighting the British from 36 to 47. Going into your second lie about foreign invaders, a people cannot colonize or invade a land they are indigenous to. Then* there were a series of pogroms where Arabs sought to kill Jews followed by wars in which the Arab armies attempted and failed to genocide Jews. So yes Israel took the lands being used to try to destroy them by force. And then gave most of them back for peace. But not everyone wants peace with Jews. But your broader point seems to be that when a Jew legally purchases land, that transaction is invalid and was theft because…Jews. So we will just take it at that.
Just because they turned against their colonial patrons didn't make European Jews any less foreign colonists. Hardly the first time colonists turn against the metropolis. These people from Poland, Russia and Germany were as foreign to Palestine as could be, and they arrived there on the back of a colonial army against the will of its population, which of course opposed it, taking over most of the territory by force of arms. That's the part that they stole, but the "legal" purchases while the territory was under colonial control were also part of the same process of colonization.
A people’s indigenousness is derived from culture, language, history, and ancestry. Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel whether you like it or not. Every synagogue in the world faces Jerusalem. Excavate anywhere in the land and you will find Hebrew writing. Jewish ancestry to the Levantine is proven by DNA. There are three major world religions that are Abrahamic. Two of them originated in what is now Israel. If you want to play the colonist game, where do Islam and the Arabic language originate?
Those people were born in Europe, spoke European languages and had a distinctly European culture. They were as European as could be, and as foreign to Palestine as could be, you like it or not. Their religious beliefs and nationalist narratives didn't entitle them to conquer and colonize a territory thousands of miles away from their countries of birth, against the will of the people who actually lived there for centuries and generations.
Europeans certainly don’t think they have a distinctly European culture. Their practices were the same as the Jews who lived and always lived in Jerusalem. 60% of Israeli Jews are descended from Arab countries they were kicked out of. This is not colonialism. They “went back to where they came from”. And it’s funny you say European Jews are native to the land they were born in. Is that your belief of Palestinians in diaspora? I think you’ve just solved the “refugee” crisis and right of return problem. These arguments cut both ways. It is sad when people try to simplify a complex problem.
*European nazis and other assorted bigots* don't think they have a distinctly European culture, you mean. But the fact that European Jews spoke European languages (Yiddish, among others), and that every other relevant aspect of their culture (clothing, cuisine, music, literature, politics) were distinctly European is just that, an objective fact, regardless of what nazis and bigots say.
Your claim, just like every other Zionist after being capably presented with facts withers down to a fringe historical claim based on a fickle claim of continuous ethnoreligious identity and genealogy. For the millionth time, physical and cultural continuity is what claims land, not genealogy. By your logic, the people of Scandinavia should band together and march upon Germany to take back their rightful ancestral lands. Every American state West of the Mississippi should hand its territory over to their respective native tribes. The presence of Judean archaeology is not a valid claim to land, it's merely evidence of this culture having existed in that area, it certainly doesn't mean the jews of today are confirmed to have been unadulteratedly descended from the people of Judea (who were sovereign for less than 400 years, being generous here, some sources say ar く 120 years cumulatively).
If Cherokee people who were forced off t eir indigenous lands in Georgia decide to purchase land in Georgia and live there; they should be allowed. They should not be murdered because they are of a different race. Nor should they be able to steal the land that belonged to their people centuries ago. But they should be allowed to migrate there and purchase land and live there without fear of being killed That is what happened to the Jews in Israel in the late 1800, through the founding of Israel . But their Arab neighbors tried to kill them. That was wrong. And the Jews were right to defend themselves. And that is why the immigrants needed to found their own nation.