# The Crane Brouhaha over Gaza, Pit edition

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [April 19, 2024, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742 "2024-04-19T08:11:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/41 "2024-04-23T22:28:16Z")

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As long as we’re able to keep the focus on who’s being antisemitic instead of what Israel is doing in Gaza, we’re all good.

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**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/42 "2024-04-23T22:32:26Z")

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> [@TroutMan](#):
>
> As long as we’re able to keep the focus on who’s being antisemitic instead of what Israel is doing in Gaza, we’re all good

Sorry, I didn’t realize we were in one of the dozen threads on the topic, I thought we were in the Pit thread, “What were you THINKING?”.

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**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/43 "2024-04-23T22:36:43Z")

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> [@TroutMan](#):
>
> what Israel is doing in Gaza

I’ve been lead to believe that discussing that is Blood Libel.

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**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/44 "2024-04-23T22:38:35Z")

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@ASL_v2.0, if you actually want to educate yourself on the topic of Jewish history from a secular/world history perspective, I can recommend the youtube channel by Sam Aronow, he has some excellent videos on the topic. It might help you understand why denying Jewish indigenousness is so offensive. I can also provide you with a number of articles on the topic, if that is more your style.

But I suspect that this is not something that interests you.

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**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/45 "2024-04-23T22:41:51Z")

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🙄

No matter how heinous Hamas acts, you’re going to (rightfully) call people out as racist assholes if they try to deny Palestinian indigenousness to the region.

And yet, that’s not a courtesy you extend to Jewish people, despite the history of precisely the supposed lack of a Jewish homeland serving as justification for the worst attrocities committed against Jews.

You sure are committed to this whole “social justice” thing, huh.

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**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/46 "2024-04-23T22:49:01Z")

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Here is just one of many articles that tries, with much more compassion than I could try and muster, to explain why denying Jewish indigenousness is so hurtful.

> **[Don't erase our history: The Jewish people are indigenous to the land of...](http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2021/06/dont-erase-our-history-the-jewish-people-are-indigenous-to-the-land-of-israel/)**
>
> The truth is that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is the agonizing struggle between not one, but two indigenous peoples fighting over the same homeland.

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**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/47 "2024-04-23T23:05:08Z")

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“Jewish people” is doing a lot of work. Some Jews have been indigenous to Israel, I don’t deny that and I should have thought it was obvious that I was referring to more recent arrivals to Israel under the banner of Zionism. To claim that the presence of some Jews in Israel going back centuries or millennia, even in an unbroken line to biblical times, justifies a whole lot more colonizing Israel from Europe or the US in the last century makes about as much sense as it does to say I have a right to colonize Ireland on account of my Irish ancestry.

Except of course my ancestors left Ireland a lot more recently than the Jewish families who are emigrating or have emigrated from Europe and the US left Israel before that.

Inasmuch as I am not a fan of ethnostates, I appreciate, as much as I can without being Jewish myself, the particular harm done to Jews in the Holocaust and countless pogroms before it. But to the extent a grave harm was done, the harm was, by and large, done by Europeans. It seems like if a remedy is to be had, and that remedy should consist of an ethnostate (and I do accept, inasmuch as I don’t care for, the reality that many states today have their root in ethnostates), then at the very least the place for that ethnostate is in Europe, where the harm was done.

But instead, what we got was Europeans carving up the Levant for largely, if not exclusively, the sins of various European states.

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**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/48 "2024-04-23T23:12:01Z")

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That’s what I thought. Deny our connection to the land; deny the very existence of a “Jewish” people with a common culture (whoch again betrays a deep ignorance of Jewish history, and the fact that the different centers of Jewish culture were never truly cut off from one another, except perhaps the really far flung communities like in Ethiopia, India, or China). All so you don’t have to apply your framework to us when it is inconvenient to do so. “Listen to Indigenous voices - unless they’re Jewish, they’re not Indigenous to anywhere”.

The Homeless Jew is one of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes, and also the one that carried the most weight with the Nazis. But Anti-Semitism is not a sickness unique to the Right.

Calling us “Europeans” betrays further ignorance, when half Israelis are brown people from Asia and Africa; and when the Europeans certainly didn’t see those of us unfortunate enough to live among them as “Europeans”.

Eta: and to top off the Trifecta of Ignorance, you seem to think that Zionism originated as a response to the Holocaust.

On the very off chance that you actually want to rectify that ignorance, I’ll again recommend Sam Aronow’s channel on YouTube.

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**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/49 "2024-04-23T23:14:52Z")

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I’m going to ask for the second or third time in the thread, that if you’re going to debate the validity of the current war to please do so in one of those threads, which we’ve linked to several times before, or in the related Pit thread.

Please and thank you.

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**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/50 "2024-04-23T23:24:15Z")

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> [@Babale](#):
>
> Eta: and to top off the Trifecta of Ignorance, you seem to think that Zionism originated as a response to the Holocaust.

No, actually I don’t, you disingenuous fuck.

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**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/51 "2024-04-23T23:29:39Z")

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> [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2634):
>
> > [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2632):
> >
> > Eta: and to top off the Trifecta of Ignorance, you seem to think that Zionism originated as a response to the Holocaust.
> 
> No, actually I don’t, you disingenuous fuck

And yet:

> [@ASL\_v2.0](#):
>
> Inasmuch as I am not a fan of ethnostates, I appreciate, as much as I can without being Jewish myself, the particular harm done to Jews in the Holocaust and countless pogroms before it. But to the extent a grave harm was done, the harm was, by and large, done by Europeans. It seems like if a remedy is to be had, and that remedy should consist of an ethnostate (and I do accept, inasmuch as I don’t care for, the reality that many states today have their root in ethnostates), then at the very least the place for that ethnostate is in Europe, where the harm was done.
> 
> But instead, what we got was Europeans carving up the Levant for largely, if not exclusively, the sins of various European states.

The Zionist project, for a Jewish homeland in Israel, was seen as necessary long before the Holocaust (by people who looked at trends and understood what could happen), and was in progress and thriving decades before the Holocaust. And yet, you try to paint the culmination of the Zionist project as “Europeans carving up the Levant for the sins of European states” and state that “it should exist in Europe where the harm was done”. These are common tropes used by anti-semites who want to delegitemize Israel by erasing Jewish indigenousness.

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**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/52 "2024-04-23T23:30:07Z")

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I’m going to remind you guys that you already have a dedicated pit thread with most of you hacking at each other right _there_:

> [@Reply to Babale re: Hamas and Israel](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reply-to-babale-re-hamas-and-israel/991469):
>
> I never once supported what Hamas did. You ascribed that to me, because you’re a piece of shit. I just pointed out that a lot of Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israel - over 21 times as many than have Israeli civilians been killed by Palestinians since 2008. I described what Hamas did as “heinous acts of evil”, while you described the many thousands of Palestinian civilians killed as “collateral damage”. Here’s a Newsweek piece discussing the editorial by Haaretz, the third-largest…

Almost all the same players and arguments. So, if you could just scooch over?

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**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/53 "2024-04-23T23:39:49Z")

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Dude, shut the fuck up. This has absolutely nothing to do with the current conflict. This is about @ASL_v2.0 hitting all of anti-semitism’s greatest hits, and me calling him out for it.

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**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/54 "2024-04-24T00:27:06Z")

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> [@ASL\_v2.0](#):
>
> Well now that is tricky. Is cultural heritage by itself enough to give rise to a legitimate claim to the land? Or is this just another example of people colonizing first, claiming title later, not unlike how indigenous peoples have been deprived of their land I’m the Americas and elsewhere.

Both sets of people have been there all along.

Or what @Babale said.

ETA: And yes, it is tricky. Many people aren’t happy at all admitting that there are situations that can’t be somehow rendered into a neat solution that everybody ought to automatically agree to.

> [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2627):
>
> I’ve been lead to believe that discussing that is Blood Libel.

Oh, bullshit. It’s been discussed up down and sideways in multiple fashions in multiple threads and very few of them have drawn accusations of Blood Libel.

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**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/55 "2024-04-24T00:42:39Z")

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> [@ASL\_v2.0](#):
>
> Except of course my ancestors left Ireland a lot more recently than the Jewish families who are emigrating or have emigrated from Europe and the US left Israel before that.
> 
> Inasmuch as I am not a fan of ethnostates,

You may not be a fan of ethnostates, but lots of them exist, and you probably CAN get the legal right to move to Ireland based on your family heritage.

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**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/56 "2024-04-24T01:58:28Z")

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Gee, thanks for selectively quoting me. What were _you_ thinking?

As for my eligibility to immigrate to Ireland based on my ancestry… I will admit that although I am an immigration attorney, I only practice US immigration law. But a quick review of the process to become a resident of Ireland strongly suggests that, no, just like about every country in the world, having distant ancestry to the place does not entitle me to an immigrant visa.

And it certainly doesn’t entitle me to setup a breakaway Republic of my very own, on top of Ireland and the UK, and then proceed to ghettoize the inhabitants of Northern Ireland as I seek to expand further into their territory just because I claim a deep, but distant, connection to Belfast.

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**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/57 "2024-04-24T04:11:22Z")

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> [@ASL\_v2.0](#):
>
> Some Jews have been indigenous to Israel

Huh? Some?

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**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/58 "2024-04-24T04:38:55Z")

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> [@What were you THINKING?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/2641):
>
> > [@ASL\_v2.0](#):
> >
> > Some Jews have been indigenous to Israel
> 
> Huh? Some?.

It’s a common (and anti-semitic) tactic to strip Jews of all indigenousness by pretending that (aside from the small minority that never left) they have no cultural ties to the land.

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**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/59 "2024-04-24T04:41:40Z")

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Yes, some. As in some Jews living in Israel today have roots in the region that go back centuries, not decades. As in they predate the effort by the US and Europe to create a colony for their own Jewish populations in a manner that bears certain unflattering similarities to the colonization of Liberia. Where, rather than assume the hard task of making their own societies more equitable and just such that theirJewish and other minority populations might finally feel welcome and at home after centuries of oppression, they (the people in power in Europe and the US) chose to pick out an already occupied spot of land and tell the minority population to go there instead, never mind what the people already living there thought.

The remedy for centuries of oppression in Europe and the Americas should be remediation of conditions in Europe and the Americas, not colonization somewhere else.

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**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-crane-brouhaha-over-gaza-pit-edition/1000742/60 "2024-04-24T04:46:38Z")

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> [@ASL\_v2.0](#):
>
> As in they predate the effort by the US and Europe to create a colony for their own Jewish populations in a manner that bears certain unflattering similarities to the colonization of Liberia

Fuck you, you antisemitic asshole. It’s not enough that you strip the Jewish people of indigenous status in their homeland, you also strip them of agency in their struggle for statehood.

The Zionist project long predates any American or European efforts to helo Jews in any way, and its success is the product of work by Jews; fuck you for trying to minimize and erase that.

Go fuck yourself. I’d say “go educate yourself”, but we both know you’re too self righteous to even notice how you’re shitting all over indigenous people, minimizing their experience, and shutting down their voices - all because Jews don’t fit your myopic fucking lens.

Get out of your fucking bubble and learn some history, and stop trying to erase the Jewish experience.

> [@ASL\_v2.0](#):
>
> As in some Jews living in Israel today have roots in the region that go back centuries, not decades.

You fucking ignorant piece of shit, all Jews have roots in the region going back millennia. Some Jews also have roots in either places. Both things can be true at once, even if your small, ignorant mind can’t comprehend that.

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