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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • The ancestors of the Jewish diaspora are too, just like the ancestors of Palestinians, but the Jewish diaspora been out of the state for at least over a 1000 years if not close to 2000, and that’s why Palestinians would experience their return and the creation of modern Israel as maybe what a Native American might have experience European colonization and the creation of the US and other modern North and South American countries.

    As I stated elsewhere, I don’t think Israel-Palestine should have been divided into two states, and that I think that since Israel is the home of Judaism, Jewish immigration should have been allowed, but the focus should have been as much on co-existing and equality as protecting the rights and lives of Jewish folk and making sure sure the constitution of this new one state never allowed anti-semitism. The division of the area into two states with an arbitrary border led to ethnic cleansing just like the creation of India and Pakistan led ethnic cleansing and the mess we have today. The creation of one non-colonial state with equal rights might not have.


  • Eh, I don’t think many societies besides America are as open as America to migration and immigrants (and we have strong anti immigrant streaks sometimes, but I think we’re more tolerant than most). Like Japan is an old society that’s just not used migration/immigration. Hell, the shogunate shut out people coming in or leaving for 200 or so years before 1850. And even old Western societies that have a colonial past and immigrants resulting from that are not as open to immigrants as the US (I mean that’s what Brexit’s about, right? And you saw how destabilizing Syrian and Libyan refugees have been to the EU, and how incompletely integrated Algerian immigrants are in France).

    Both Jews and Palestinians were first. At least some of their ancestors were chilling in the land as far back as the bronze age: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10212583/

    But Jews were expelled a long time ago from their home, and only started coming back with the Zionist movement. But with respect to the creation of modern Israel, obviously the Palestinians were there before the Zionist movement and the creation of modern Israel, and I think they might feel the same way about the creation of Israel as maybe Native Americans might feel about European colonization and the creation of the US.


  • There’s definitely been admixing with other populations (including Ashkenazi Jews with Europeans), but Palestinians are Canaanite/Levantine (just like the Lebanese and Jews and Jordanians) and form a Levantine cluster. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews#Comparison_to_non-Jewish_populations Meanwhile, Judaism is certainly from Israel (if the history didn’t already point to it, the archaeology of Israel does). But a large number of Jews/Israelites were expelled by the Romans in the first century CE, creating a Jewish diaspora that shows genetic evidence of admixing with local populations over 2000 years. And certainly before the modern state of Israel was created and Zionist Jewish folk started immigrating back into Israel-Palestine after 1800-1900 years, the Palestinians were there.

    Jewish people were persecuted in Christian nations because Christians started blaming Jews for Christ’s death. You can see evolution of this idea from being nearly non-existent in the earliest gospel, the Gospel of Mark, to the newest canonical Gospel the Gospel of John. And sentiment is argued to have risen from Christian anger at the failure of other Jews to accept Jesus as the messiah and convert. All these negative stereotypes started to develop. And with the Romans destroying Jerusalem (or at least the temple in Jerusalem) and scattering Jews, you had a group of people with a strong cultural group identity that was strongly monotheistic in a strange land, that was easily to cast as the other. It’s all bullshit.

    Anyways, Israel-Palestine is the home of Judaism, the descendants of Israelites, and Palestinians (who probably partially the descendants of Israelites or at least neighboring Canaanites, from whom Israelites became distinct by the development of their monidolatry and later monotheism).

    Also see this 2020 paper that compares the genetics of modern people living in this region (including Jews, Palestinians, Lebanese) with Bronze Age DNA from the region: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10212583/ (got this from an earlier section in the above Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews#2017–present

    So yeah, at least some of the ancestors of modern Palestinians were in Israel-Palestine in the Bronze Age (ie before the Babylonian Captivity).



  • I’m talking about the meaning of those statements to different different people. Take a look at this video interviewing Elisha Wiesel from the Elie Wiesel Foundation and Michal Cotier-Wunsh, Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQn5X4ra8KY

    She says that Anti-zionism is Anti-semitism. To many people, Anti-Zionism is a value statement on the history of the creation of the modern Israeli state by the British, the UN, and America in the 1940s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionism I think people who hold the view that creating a the modern state of Israel as a Western colonial action (one could have simply opened up immigration to Jewish folk and ensuring that one state guaranteeing the protection and safety of Jews and declaring it the ancestral home of Israelites and the Jewish religion and Palestinians (who are also Canaanites like the Lebanese) was created, as opposed to having some asshole somewhere else draw a border (like they did in India between India and Pakistan), and unleashing the subsequent ethnic cleansing that ensued (like it did in India and Pakistan)), but don’t hold Hamas’s views that Israel and Israelis should be driven off the land (or the equivalent that Pakistan or India should be destroyed and the subcontinent reunited) can be called anti-zionist but not anti-semitic.

    My point is that if we change the statement from Israel has the right to exist to Israel exists (like the US exists) and has the right to continue exist separates the folks who think the creation of Israel in its form was a historical mistake (mostly because of all the suffering that’s resulted from it) from the folks who think it and its people should be driven off the map. That statement that Israel has the right to continue to exist is something I think both Israelis and many Palestinians can agree on and can clarify what the goal of peace should be.

    The other thing in that video is declaring Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian American, blaming Israel for the bombing of the Gazan hospital based on early news report, as blood libel is weaponizing the label of anti-semitism against a person who I don’t believe is Anti-semetic (she’s not declaring the Jews are trying to replace us or creating space lasers or that they created covid, or engaging in millenia-old anti-semitic tropes) and is instead trying to protect her people from violence (like the folks in the video are trying to protect their people from Hamas violence), and trying to silence her and trying to silence criticism of Israel and the occupation and settlement of Palestinian land. And I think we while the evidence seems to be mounting that Hamas lied about scale of death and damage and who fired the rocket, it’s not completely crystal clear, and I think Tliab should be given more time to judge before being accused of blood libel and being an anti-semite who should be driven out of congress, eliminating one more voice that tries to bring balance to American policy to include Palestinian interests. Edit: Someone pointed out in a Majority Report clip that Israel and Biden initially claimed that Hamas beheaded babies and children. And they (I think it was a pro-Palestinian Israeli) called it blood libel too. I think it’s the fog of war, and we need to stop calling both people blood libelists, and focus instead on the reality of the situation and see what the best options are for saving lives, getting the hostages back, achieving peace, and getting justice.

    We can talk about offers after. But that’s not what the post was about. It’s about creating clarifying statements that clearly define peace and what peace will be while avoiding obfuscating value statements. Not only does it make discussion easier, but it also separates people who hate the history of what Zionism has created from the true anti-semites who want to wipe Israel and Israelis off the map.