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Originally Posted by 1overcosc
Except when those people intermarried/converted to Judaism, they became part of the Jewish nation and thus Jewish history because their history too. Indigeneity isn't about DNA or bloodlines, it's about cultural heritage. By your logic, if enough white dudes raped enough Cree women for enough generations, Cree indigeneity is negated. Putting a person's genetic bloodline above their culture is racist. It's like saying Rishi Sunak can't be British because he's brown.
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When did I say they weren't Jewish? Your argument is akin to saying that the Quebecois have citizenship and land rights in France, and anyone who becomes Quebecois now or in the past does as well. It's almost a stronger claim since the Quebecois immigrated far more recently than 2000 years ago.
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Originally Posted by 1overcosc
Uh, no? The Jewish society in Israel before the Roman conquest had existed since pre-history; they originated as a tribal group of Canaanites in the Bronze age. Sure, it was underneath the Persian and Greek empires for a good chunk of time, but most North American indigenous nations never formed sovereign state governments either.
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I didn't say that was the only period Jewish people existed there. I referenced the last time they held power in that area, prior to modern Israel, from my understanding. The long and complicated history of the region includes many groups, of which Jewish people were only one. The last time they formed a majority was in the 300s. Palestinians were also Canaanites, as genetic studies show.
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Originally Posted by 1overcosc
The difference is that these places are not central our cultural and ethnic identities in the way that the Jewish origin in Israel is. Ever taken a good look at what Judaism is? Its literally a tribal folk religion reflecting Levantine pastoralism. My husband has among his ancestors a French Huguenot refugee who fled to England to escape religious persecution 4 centuries ago, but this is not relevant to my husband's cultural background, like, at all. We wouldn't even know about it if not for the meticulous genealogy records of the Brits. Jews, by contrast, continue to this day to hold a feast in January celebrating the flowering of olive trees, to bang together palm leaves and lemons at their harvest festival, to spend 7 weeks in spring (corresponding to the vegetative phase of cereal crops in the ME) praying for rain, and celebrate dates, figs, olives, and pomegranates as sacred fruits. These land-oriented traditions are almost comically out of place in Europe, yet they are kept.
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None of this justifies the current situation or the history of Israeli colonization. Ethnocentric beliefs motivate all sorts of things, from the Nazis to the war in Ukraine. They aren't valid justifications for committing atrocities.
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Originally Posted by 1overcosc
Again, what's happening in Gaza is atrocious. What has happened to the Palestinians going back to the 1920s has been atrocious. Nobody here is trying to paint making that point as anti-Semitic (I will concede that outside this site, there are plenty of people who are unfortunately trying to do that). Denial of Jewish roots in the region and painting Israel as a European settler society in the same bucket as America or Canada or Australia is what's anti-Semitic.
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The current Jewish state in Israel is the product of European colonization. It was literally given to them by Europeans to colonize. Nothing justifies what has transpired. I don't have the right to brutalize people living in a place my ancestors left 2000 years ago, no matter what my belief system is. Period.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1overcosc
Also interesting that you focus so much on "European Jews" when this demographic are a small minority of Israel's population, which consists mostly of Jews whose families lived elsewhere in the Middle East before moving to Israel. Pick an average Jew off the streets of an Israeli city and ask where their great-grandparents were born, and you're way more likely to hear Morocco, Iraq, or Yemen then you are to hear Poland or Russia. Contemporary Israeli culture is way more shaped by these Middle Eastern migrants than by the "European Jews". It's not really accurate at all to characterize Israel as a "European settler society" even if we accept your anti-Semitic negation of Jewish history as true, and classify Ashkenazi Jews as white Europeans.
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100 years ago the area was 10% Jewish. Whether people come from Europe and are therefore European or from Morrocco doesn't change the colonization narrative. European Jews are both white and European. And Jewish. Also, they are estimated to be 32% of the population, not a small minority as you say. Plus, that figure doesn't include the large number of people who came from the USSR.
The ideological backings of Zionism just don't add up. It was flimsy then and now. Many Jewish people agree with that and have since Israel's founding. Nevertheless, Jewish people have built lives there. I don't know what the answers are to these problems. I certainly don't promote that the Palestinians treat them as they have been treated, although I understand the sentiment. Using Zionist arguments to justify a colonial presence will never paper over these problems though. The reality of the past must be reckoned with.
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) the municipal mergers were seen as a mean PQ ploy to stick it to anglos by taking away the municipalities they controlled.
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