I didn’t say anything about political authority, only about location.
Also, I didn’t say that culture must have breaks (and I also didn’t say “especially meaningful” breaks) due to location, only that it can.
So, when you take away from your quote everything I didn’t actually say…what’s to be disturbed by?
(I’m really disturbed by your demand that Slovenians be removed from Montenegro…except you didn’t say that, so it’s okay.)
No. This has been debunked so many times, academically and genetically, and only shameless jackasses like Trinopus and Brazil84 still believe it. Don’t pretend that Ibn Warraq has been “corrected” on this, in the hope he won’t see it.
As I said earlier, this is not helpful for anyone who supports Israel, and at this point it is counterproductive. The days of unquestioned acceptance of misleading “hasbara” are over. The truth does not make Israel’s right to exist illegitimate, so why the desperate need to deny the Palestinians an identity?
‘‘Neither historiography nor the Zionist cause itself gains anything from mythologizing history.’’ - Prof. Yehoshua Porath of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem
They only give us an idea of where a line might be. I tend more to the lumper side, as much as anything because human lifespans are so long, but in following a single life one can often see where a culture began to diverge from his.
That’s why, in pursuit of my Anthropology degree, I concentrated more on archaeology than cultural. Trends rather than changes day to day. Lumping rather than splitting–that way madness lies.
But is she doing that? Instead, what I see her doing is promoting more of the “true in some ways” than you. You agree on a lot. You just disagree on degree.
I blame Terr. He doesn’t like liberals in general, so he’ll grab the tarbrush for any reason. IIRC (it was a long time ago), this thread was started as a reaction to that, in this case because accusing most American liberals of being anti-semitic is both offensive and inaccurate.
It has not been “debunked”. What do you think it means if there is a Palestinian clan “Al-Masri” (the Egyptian). Where do you think they came from?
The question of “subcultures” might be relevant. Are there such things? I can’t imagine anyone denying it. But what possible definition can, unfailingly, tell us whether a group is a “culture” or a “subculture.”
In some ways, groups as small as neighborhoods – five or six square blocks – can have “cultural identity” that distinguishes them from all others.
Within the West Bank, there are almost certainly some observable cultural differences between inhabitants of one city and another.
None of this ought to be controversial…
[Gomez Addams voice] And, ladies and gentlemen, I am that madman!
Fair enough. I’ll own up to a good measure of fault and guilt in the miscommunication that has occurred. On the other hand, this is the Pit, so I don’t feel obliged to live up to the academic standards found in GD. So there, neener neener, and that’s a really ugly necktie! 
I hate like poison those times that I am on the same side of a debate as Terr. It’s like those times I’m on the same side as Bricker. Any intellectual justification is negated by an intense feeling of nausea.
Subcultures? Do you now understand why I like my cultures to be like my people: dead and defleshed? 
There is a very good reason Cultural Anthropology is not a hard science. Fruitflies are what scientists study because they are pretty much all the same. Humans are all different, and they change from day to day. Actuaries, pollsters, and sabermetricians try to predict human behavior, but they aren’t that much better than Jimmy the Greek.
I don’t think Bricker and Terr are on the same level. Bricker is at least sometimes right for the right reasons. I don’t feel bad when I agree with him on gay marriage, for example.
Terr on the other hand only seems to be right when it furthers something else he believes that is horribly wrong. Like here, where his position is in furtherance of his idea that all liberals are antisemitic.
The only time I get that “nausea” with Bricker is when I’m defending his legalistic positions.
Nah, the BDS movement and the European leftists are not anti-Semitic, are they:
The formerly hasidic star was scheduled to perform on August 22 at the Rototom Sunsplash Reggae Festival in eastern Spain. But he had his show cancelled after he refused to release a public statement backing a Palestinian state, according to the Times of Israel.
Matisyahu is not Israeli. But the Times of Israel reported that the festival was pressured by activists from the BDS movement, which aims to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, and that other musicians threatened to cancel their performances unless Matisyahu made the declaration.
BigT, using the Dubya Test, I would enjoy having a beer with Bricker. We’d avoid politics, but laugh at lawyers and maybe talk some theology. Terr, I’m not so sure about. He seems so angry all the time. 
IIRC, I met Shayna once (I had been drinking a little, it was a long time ago, my memory is fuzzy. Might’ve been someone else.). I thought we had some online rapport, but IRL I don’t think she liked me. This happens. Haberdash is a non-entity to me; I have no sense that he’s real. I have nothing against you or Trinopus, though we don’t always agree, and I’m developing a bit of a crush on camille. 
Just a reminder that we US leftists don’t like being tarred with the same brush you use on the Yurpeens. Our cultures have diverged enough that we’re nearly different species, FFS.
Nonsense.
You cannot use surnames as irrefutable proof of descent, especially in a place that was subjected to numerous conquests and forced religious conversions. Compounding the problem is the exclusive use of patrilineal descent records in that time period.
I’ll use myself as an example. My mother is a French Jew, my father is Greek (mother) and Sicilian (father), but my Sicilian grandfather had a Greek surname, even though he was not Greek, and there is no record of Greek lineage in his family. I have that surname. What does it tell you about my lineage? There are Sicilians with the surname Russo, which means Russian. Are they Russian?
Show me a reputable cite that claims these surnames are evidence that it is impossible for the vast majority of Palestinians in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank to be the descendants of people who were there since ancient times.
I can’t resist a laid back pacifist-leftist with a sense of humor. Wish there were more like you.
Of course. Someone with a last name “Egyptian”, “Libyan”, “Syrian”, “Lebanese” etc. etc. etc. MUST be the descendant of people who were in “Palestine” since “ancient times”. Because camille wants it to be so. They just took those last names as some kind of whimsy, right?
How do you “know”, camille, that the Israelis are (all, I presume, since you didn’t specify) “technically the immigrants or descendants of immigrants”. There was an uninterrupted Jewish presence in the land, after all, for thousands of years. Longer than Arabs existed. Exactly how many generations back do your ancestors have to live in the land in order for you to stop being a “descendant of immigrants”?
Not what I said. You are making the claim, so cough up a cite. I’d really be interested.
I completely agree there was an uninterrupted Jewish presence there as well. In fact there is genetic evidence supporting the theory that many of today’s Palestinians are descendants of the Jews who were allowed to remain behind after the destruction of the Temple. In any case, the genetic similarities between the Jews and the Bedouin, Druze, and Palestinians show that they are all related. Of course there was some migration both ways, but these claims you make are based on a political agenda, and yes both sides are guilty of of that. But genes don’t lie.
This is fairly well known and accepted outside of politics. My ex-partners (Israeli Jew and Palestinian) literally presented themselves to me as “cousins” when we first met.
Am I just stoned, or is the surname thing a reeeeally thin reed that Terr’s grasping?
I know you don’t like it when I nitpick, but the surname Russo means “red haired”, not Russian.
No. Red haired is* capelli rossi* or capelli tizianeschi. Russo literally translates as Russian. Russo is a very common name in Sicily. Red hair is not. Of course it does not mean someone with that name is Russian. Some speculate it could have meant someone had a ruddy complexion, rather than olive skin. But you make my point: Names can be misleading.
Are you agreeing with Terr’s claim? Do you have a cite?
I don’t speak Italian or Sicilian. But:
Russo [ˈrusso] is an Italian surname meaning red-haired.
This famous surname is Roman (Latin) in origin. It derives from the word ‘rous’ meaning red, and describes somebody with red hair or a red complexion
Russo, with its Italian variant Rosso, is indeed one of the most common surnames in Italy, as often referring to red hair as a reddish complexion - and yes, it does mean Russian, though that isn’t how it found its way into Sicily.
… [and further on] Russo (red hair or reddish complexion)
=================================
Now maybe you can explain how “Masri” doesn’t really mean “from Egypt” and “Mughrabi” doesn’t mean “from Marocco”…
So it does mean Russian, doesn’t it? I said it could have referred to a reddish complexion. An Italian or Sicilian wouldn’t use russo to indicate red haired.
Maybe it’s up to you to prove your claim.
