I have met Palestinians who were not exactly happy about how their parents or grandparents got displaced from their homes. I am sure they will be happy to know about how they have a right to live on the land. Do not tell them they should move to the West Bank, though, because would you? As for moving to Israel proper, based on personal experiences told me by even very non-Palestinian people from places like Czechia, Portugal, and Canada, they had the impression non-Jews were not welcome, at least if the ludicrous bureaucracy effectively barring them from citizenship is anything to judge by. [I also know a Lutheran who quite smoothly was able to immigrate to Israel because it turned out he had a Jewish grandfather, and I can tell you he in no way identifies as religiously, ethnically, or culturally Jewish, and is not going to. He still lives in Israel despite all the wars, a citizen by now I believe, and a productive member of society.]
That they’d have a right to live on the land, but they wouldn’t have the right to exclude the Ukranian diaspora from returning or setting up a polity for Ukranian self determination.
Returning - fine. That’s a great thing.
“A polity for Ukrainian self determination” - does that involve kicking the Russifieds out of their ancestral homes that happen to be in that new polity, maybe planting those reluctant to move under some beach resort parking lots, that kind of thing?
Israel is very much against Palestinian self-determination— they have said so and put their money where their mouth was, as it were— I am not sure what, if anything, will change after the next elections.
Ideally no, it does not. But if the newly Russified people react to the return of the Ukranians by declaring that “from the Steppe to the Sea, The Ukraine will be Russian” and launching war of annihilation after war of annihilation against the Ukranians, then they’d be fully justified in defending themselves.
Even if it has to be pre-emptive defense.
And the rape and child-killing, I’m sure those will be defensive rapes and child-killings, too.
Pre emptive? Are we just pretending that all of the prior attacks against Jews in the region just didn’t happen?
You’re saying the Palestinian melon sellers of Haifa managed to time travel and kill Jews a hundred years before? Sometimes disguised as Druze? How did they ever get Nakbaed, with such powerful technology at their disposal? When Jabotinsky said they were “500 years behind” the Jews, he must have meant it literally!
Of course, I will note that we’re skipping to “them” being the Jews who lived in the region continuously and were attacked, from “them” being mostly European Jews who primarily made up Irgun and did the all that “pre-emptiving” … and the defensive rape and child-killing, let’s not skip over all those “defensive” actions.
No, I’m saying that Arabs across the Levant killed Jews for hundreds of years despite being in total dominance over those Jews.
And one of the examples is the 1880s massacre of Jewish Zionists in Petah Tikvah. But I note you only clicked one of the links, so of course you wouldn’t know that.
Would this make the retaliatory massacres of Arab civilians okay?
The people doing the killing in 1834 and 1838 were not the same people who were in “total dominance” over the Jews at the time - that’s why they happened during peasant revolts and were put down - hard - by the actual (Muslim!) authorities.
The one the Zionists started by encroaching on others’ land? And “massacre”? One old lady died of a bad ticker 4 days later. That’s the total body count.
Maybe make better, more distinct, links? That don’t go to 403-Forbidden pages?
Catching up…
I dunno about you, but i identify primarily as American. And if you ask me about my ethnicity, I’ll say I’m an Ashkenazi Jew, or a Russian Jew. I think of my ancestors as coming from Europe. (Specifically, from the broader Russian empire: the places they fled were Russia and Lithuania when they left, but a lot of them left what is now Poland.)
Yup.
Thanks! I’ve always assumed that a large fraction of modern Palestinian genetics stems from conquered & converted Israelites. But no one ever mentions that.
I can’t tell you how heartily i agree with this.
I think modern Israelis should be able to live in Israel because most of them were born there, many had grandparents born there. I think modern Palestinians should be able to live in Palestine for the same reason. It would be nice they could agree on boundaries that worked for both groups. As a practical matter, none of them is likely to be safe if they didn’t have a border between them.
I know a surprising number of people who have claimed German citizenship based on records that Germany drove out their ancestors before the mass killings began. Some live in Germany, one lives in Denmark as a German citizen. None has attempted to displace the existing locals.
Note that by the time of the Arab conquests, most of them were already converted - to Christianity. And stayed that way for quite a bit after, too. Conversion to Islam wasn’t some instantaneous mass process there.
I identify primarily as Jewish, then Israeli, then American.
My ancestors spent some time in Europe too, but they certainly weren’t European. The Europeans made that very clear when they drove one side of my family out and into the Arab world in 1492, and when they killed almost all of the remaining ones about 350 years later.
And the Arabs made it very clear to the side of my family that ended up in the Arab world that they weren’t Arab, either, and that they were the lowest of the low, even lower than the Amazigh people they oppressed in the same time and place. So I don’t think of my ancestors as coming from Eastern Europe, nor North Africa, nor Spain. They passed through there, but they were never from there. They weren’t allowed to be.
As i understand it, my ancestors were members of the European oppressed underclass, much as Black Americans are American, even if they have often been treated badly, and even murdered and driven off their land from time to time.
No, they weren’t Russian, or Latvian, or Polish. But they were European Jews.
Black Americans are African Americans because when they were brought to America their enslavers intentionally, maliciously, and systematically destroyed any connection they had to their prior culture.
If enslaved Africans had been brought to the Americas but then left to live in their own communities with enough agency to maintain their original cultures - Wolof, Bakongo, Mbundu, etc - then they wouldn’t have been African Americans, they’d have been enslaved Wolof, Bakongo, Mbundu, etc.
NPR interviewed a WaPo journalist who was attacked by a bunch of settlers. She was filming them attack some Arabs trying to pick olives. They had Molotov cocktails and were setting the trees on fire.
She said the army was there, but they supported the settlers and did nothing. She was beaten until some Palestinians threw stones at her attackers, allowing the other journalists to haul her away to a hospital.
Israel doing their absolute best to confirm they are not our friend and they categorically do not respect human rights.