a major difference between conquest and settler colonialism is that conquerors typically leave the existing population there instead of trying to murder or force the inhabitants out of the area.
Conflict between Palestine and Israel escalates
- Thread starter dreng3
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Are you aware of the muslim conquests and the crusades? What do you think happened in that region historically?
"In 638 CE, the Islamic Caliphate extended its dominion to Jerusalem. With the Arab conquest of the region, Jews were allowed back into the city."
The Palestinians are descendants of the ancient population of the area. It is dishonest to question this.
Conquerors come and go, but they hardly ever mass depopulate the area: that would leave no-one to rule over and tax. Generally, they just take a place over and impose an aristocracy that is just a tiny proportion of the total population (e.g. the Norman invasion of England). There are identifiable cases of mass migration e.g. the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, but even still modern studies show the genetic make-up of the English is more ancient Briton than Anglo-Saxon. The historical record does not support mass depopulation of Palestine at any point in the last 2000 years.
It's not just the historical record: genetic studies of Jews, Palestinians and other Middle Eastern groups readily vindicate the modern Palestinians as being indigenous to the area. Many Jews are very closely related to the Palestinians genetically, which makes sense when you consider their ancestors lived side by side 2000 years ago and where the diasporic Jews did relatively little interbreeding.
So Jews and Palestinians are very closely related, would you call the Jews settling in Israel an ancient community living on their ancestral land? Would you say the average Englishman is part of an ancient community because of their genetic makeup? Do you claim your land for your ancestors? If I moved to Ireland, do I deserve special land privileges because of my ancestry?
This isn't a racial question, people move. Something as simple as moving to a different house down the street is going to make you look silly if you start claiming it as the land passed down from your ancestors, but people move a lot further than that, particularly if you live in a place with an intense history of war. Like, you say conquerors hardly ever mass depopulate an area, but the region under Jewish and Christian rule ~2000 years ago had over a million people, and by the end of the Muslim conquests 80% of that population was gone. Do you imagine those who stayed and survived have very clean direct claims of lineage in specifically Gaza?
And then, of course, the same people who will try to tell you that the people of Gaza have been their for centuries, that the olive trees were planted by their ancestors 1000 years ago, and that the churches have been there even longer... the same people saying these things will immediately about-face and tell you that Palestinians are all in Gaza because they were kicked out of Israel by the Israelis in 1948, and that's why they deserve to retake all of Israel.
You realise this is one of the foundational concepts of Zionism, right?
Also, really seamless transition from "it's a fairy tale" to "it's true it just doesn't matter". Bravo.
In some way the Jews are the descendants of those who gave up their ancestral land to keep their religion while the Palestinians are the descendants of those who gave up their religion to keep their ancestral land.
Yes. Do you like Zionism?
There was no transition. I maintain my original point 100%. You just have literally no capacity for nuance.
Not immensely. I don't much like virtue judgements based on the actions or geography of someone's ancestors, though i recognise people can have a cultural and emotional connection to land-- and i find that more compelling for people who want to stay on land they and their parents grew up on, than i do for people who move to somewhere their ancestors haven't been for centuries.
Mostly I find it curious that the principle of ancestral claim is used to justify the establishment of an entire state, race-based law within that state, and a campaign of depopulation against the indigenous-- but the same principle is immediately dismissed when that indigenous population uses it to protest their own slaughter.
So when you said it's a "fairy tale", you weren't disputing it was true?
It sounds like you mean to say these are at odds, but where is the contradiction?
I don't particularly care for the principle in either case. But I also don't think you need the principle for either, people who want to go somewhere and build something and people who don't want to be pushed out or killed, neither need some divine, inviolable connection to the space.
I think you are just not considering what I called a fairy tale in specific. I am not saying people having ancestors from that area is a fairy tale, I'm saying the idea of spaces being maintained and passed down from parents to children over hundreds or thousands of years is the fairy tale. Most of the families there weren't in specifically Gaza until like 80 years ago. They are, like all of us, just in the space they have available to occupy.
The contradiction is with reality.
That much is true. I just find the double standard in wider discourse very questionable, and I when you disputed the principle you did so entirely on one side.
OK, but their lineages were in the wider area of Palestine, records attest. This seems a strange quibble, particularly since many of them will have been forcibly moved to where they now reside.
When asked what he thought the Jewish world would be like today had the Holocaust not happened, Wald answered that he was quite sure the State of Israel would not have been created. (In Gurock’s book, Israel exists, but it is less powerful and less allied to the US as is in reality).
“There would be no State of Israel, only a strong Jewish community in the Land of Israel,” Wald said. “I’m a Zionist, so it is not easy for me to say that.”
Ironically one of the the craziest twists of fate In history, considering what this event has ultimately enabled them to continue doing to their adversary today.
“There would be no State of Israel, only a strong Jewish community in the Land of Israel,” Wald said. “I’m a Zionist, so it is not easy for me to say that.”
Ironically one of the the craziest twists of fate In history, considering what this event has ultimately enabled them to continue doing to their adversary today.
You can see the importance of the distinction when you consider who is taking that general position, a person who does not care about the Palestinians beyond his desire for Israel to fall or at least be fully ostracized in order to weaker American international hegemony. "This is their ancestral land, the State of Israel robs them of their birthright and destroys history just by existing, therefore there can be no compromise" is a stance taken specifically because it disallows the peaceful existence of a US ally there.
If you say something like "there can't be peace while Israel is killing civilians", it implies that if they weren't killing civilians, Israel can stay. Hence, different arguments are made in order to reach more absolute conclusions.
If your argument is "It's the modern day therefore the Palestinians are not an ancient people", it's such a witless argument I'm not sure why you even bothered. I'll try to credit you with having some sort of useful meaning.
Perhaps you don't quite get it because your country is barely out of its nappies on a global scale, but actually the this stuff matters to people of countries old enough to have any. Stonehenge and Newgrange are important to the British and Irish respectively. The Syrians, Egyptians, Chinese and many others hold their ancient stuff as importan. It's part of their people's history and culture, even though it may also be so far removed.
My concern with where you're going here is to note that a major Israeli claim to the land is that it is allegedly theirs for historical reasons, even though their ancestors (mostly) voluntarily emigrated from it many centuries prior. But that claim has a problem when they expel people whose ancestors also lived on the land at the same time theirs did. Consequently, there has long been a trend for Israeli propaganda to pretend that the Palestinians are some sort of Arabic Johnny-come-latelies who don't have the heritage and connection that the Jews do. Hence also Israel's destruction of Palestinian historical sites, which is little different from why the Taliban or ISIS destroyed ancient sites and art. There shall be no art and culture but Israel's, and all the better to erase and sever Palestinians' connection to the land.
Let's be real, your primary concern with where I'm going is that I'm the one making the argument.
So it's rational to argue that Palestinians have a claim to the land for historical reasons because it's problematic to argue the Israeli's have claim to the land for historical reasons? I don't think that tracks.