Then clearly the moral thing to do would be for the Arab colonizers to return to their homelands so that Israel can be inhabited by its indigenous people, the Jews. Right?
Yes, the Romans were welcoming hosts to their Judean allies up until they decided they wanted to start acting like an independent kingdom again and not a client state. Stop me if “they welcomed the Jews until they didn’t” is one you’ve heard before.
I wasn’t aware that Ain al-Hilweh was in China.
And what about its indigenous people, the Palestinians?
That’s why Rome continued to have synagogues and a substantial free Jewish population after 70 AD, because the Romans just hated them so much…
I wasn’t aware that I was answering a question that mentioned Ain al-Hilweh. I answered only what I quoted.
Perhaps you should have read harder.
They should also be able to live in their indigenous homeland. How they and the Jews should be able to coexist in a peaceful manner has been a topic of some discussion in recent years, as I understand it.
The Bar Kochba rebellion wasn’t in 70.
Oh, I saw that separate question. I answered the one I quoted, though.
Which you’ve not replied to.
Well, then, no disagreement here.
So many rebellions leading to population displacement, I was picking the first major one. It continued to have them after 136 CE, as well.
If there was a substantial population that’s half-Palestinian and half-Chinese, and only speaks a dialect of Cantonese, and it was their long-attested cultural belief that they originated in Palestine and that their cultural practices were of Palestinian origin, and genetic research backed that up, then I would consider them Palestinian as much as I consider myself a proud Scot even though it’s been nearly 400 years since my Scottish forebears arrived on this continent, and I would consider that they might have a valid claim to having freedom and self-determination in the land of Palestine.
Even the Jews had mostly stopped speaking Hebrew by the time the diaspora started.
If we stipulate that the Jewish people have a right to the land they originated from, that would be Judea. After all, even today Samaritans (what few that are left) aren’t considered Jews. So should Jews be confined to their ancestral homeland and Samaritans should have ancient Samaria?
If we look to archeology we find that a lot of the glorious past of the Judeans (e.g. First Temple, conquest of Canaan) is, in a word, fiction. That’s not a smear. Most nations, even today, tend to use history quite liberally to invent a glorious past and sweep the more embarrassing facts under the rug. The national myths in my part of the world (Scandinavia) is about vikings and great victories during the 30-year war, as well as the battles fought by Charles XII. Our treatment of the Sámi is still under scrutiny today.
Israel today exists. There are certainly a lot of people who want that to end. Anti-semitism has a long and tragic history in Christian Europe (Hey, @Babale, white people blaming going on, you should pounce on that). A lot of other minorities have been persecuted as well. Yet there is, to my knowledge, no movement to grant the Romani a homeland in Punjab. There are many small and distinct ethnic groups that - sometimes forcibly - were lumped together during the 19th C to create the modern nation states and whose origins were suppressed and erased. I cannot see how it could be possible to “give back the land” to every group with a an old claim to a territory. It doesn’t matter if the claim is 1400 or 500 years old. Israel, as I said, exists. The flimsy motivations for “the right to exist” are based on fiction or delusion. A way forward is much more interesting.
@MrDibble I don’t know if you enjoy trading barbs with @Babale. You know of course that you will never convince him of anything, as he constantly dismisses cites, changes position and goal posts, accuses any opponent of being [insert Nazi, Self-Hating Jew, anti-semite, anti-zionist etc.] He sits in SoCal (AIUI) and claims to know the inner workings of everything that happens in Israel.
I realize that your writing is not for his benefit, but for other readers, but I have to say that I admire your tenacity.
IMHO as a prospective Reconstructionist convert, Samaritans are Jews and should be acknowledged as such.
I’m not saying the Jews have a right to Israel because YHVH promised it to Moses. I’m saying that their earliest written traditions, in the form of the Torah and the Deuteronomistic History, establish that at least by the tail end of the First Temple era they dwelled in Israel and had an oral tradition of having originated there.
What if they were a mix? Klezmer music and gefilte fish are European in origin, for instance.
but it doesn’t. You’re adding that in yourself. The genetics say they have equal ancestry.
I do not. I’ve avoided any personalization in my responses to him, I hope.
Thanks. My main concern is always what the actual history and data show, rather than the mythology.
People can be indigenous to more than one place. As far as recent family history and some genealogical research has managed to feel out, I am half-English, quarter-Scot, and quarter-Italian. What’s my indigenous homeland?
And if there are any Ashkenazi Jews out there who desire to think of their homeland as being in Poland or Germany of Russia, then I would support their aspirations as well.
No. Individuals can encompass multiple ethnicities, but ethnicity is not indigeneity.
I’m going to say you don’t have one. Not everyone does.
If you complete your conversion, is it suddenly going to be Israel?
I’d happily support their desire to return to the Rhineland.
If they want to displace the citizens of Köln to do so, that support vanishes immediately.
The two concepts are inextricably tied. You cannot have an ethnic group that does not identify with a specific homeland.
My indigenous homeland is America. Same as it is for lots of people of mixed ethnicity whose ancestors wound up here for one reason or another. Same as it is for the 20-something Israelis in the IDF for whom Eretz Yisrael is the land where they were born, and where their parents were born, and where their parents were born.
No. I will still be American, but I will hold a special kinship with the Jewish people. I’d like to visit Israel at some point, but I doubt I’d ever want to live there.
Of course you can. Roma, for instance, certainly don’t identify with Punjab at all.
You are not indigenous to America. It’s your homeland, but not an indigenous one.
I am not familiar with the traditions of the Roma and cannot speak as to where they consider themselves indigenous to.
The fuck I’m not. This is where I was born. It’s where I’ll probably die. It’s where my parents and grandparents were born and died. It’s the place I’ve sworn loyalty to for my entire life, where I exercise the franchise to determine who shall govern on the behalf of my people, and to which my fate is for better or for worse forever intertwined.
How dare you.
Indigenous means more than just “was born in” . Sorry that upsets you.
I’m not indigenous to South Africa, either, for that matter.
How dare I explain the facts to you? Quite easily, it turns out.
I guess I’m just some sort of stateless bastard, then. Like you seem to think the Jews ought to be.
There are distinctions to be made for a couple of concepts that kind of overlap: country, land, realm, state, nation. The slipperiest to define is nation. Quite a lot of brilliant people have been trying to do that for at least 150 years, and there doesn’t seem to be a consensus even today. Of course the concept of state carry dual meanings for countries that are federation, e.g. Germany, U.S. but depending on context it’s usually clear whether state refers to a part of the country or the whole entity.
A lot of Americans are the result of admixture. I’ve met so many who say that they are “German-Irish” or “Italian-Greek.” Where are they indigenous? Are ancestors of the Mayflower indigenous Americans? Again, how far back do we go to establish indigenous? Spain was Muslim far longer than it’s been Christian and it’s still a blind spot for them. Because “everyone knows” that Los Reyes Catolicos kicked out the “Moros.” That those that chopped wood and carried water simply changed from one version of God to another, when they finally found out that the old bosses were gone, is something many Spaniards are uncomfortable with.
With that said @Smapti: you are of course not stateless. Few people around the world are. Kurds, Western Sahara, Basques and yes Palestinians. A few hundred million at most. Whether you’re a bastard is something else. Does bastard mean mixed ancestry? Then yes. The connotation is much more negative though, but you brought up the term.
I have no idea of your parentage, but I’m assuming, based off your posting history, that you have American citizenship, so in which way are you stateless, please?
“The Jews” like @iiandyiiii or other American Jews here?
How do you imagine that bit changes anything? Do you think anyone denies that the origin of Afrikaners is Dutch people migrating to Africa?
The point is that now that they’ve been there for hundreds of years they are their own unique thing. Sort of like the Palestinians, who were descended from Levantine Arabs but are now Palestinian.
Yeah, just like someone can be a New Englander, or a Southerner.
But the idea that this refers to an ethnic group is preposterous.
Also, I think it’s quite telling that you want to say that Palestinians were their own ethnic group hundreds of years ago, but refuse to acknowledge that Afrikaners are their own ethnic group now. Your mask is slipping.