Lol… Their ancestors only lived there after they ethnically cleansed the people who were already living there. They’ve been doing this crap for a long time.
Edit: to clarify, I’m talking about the Jewish people of Israel
When you say “they,” are you referring to all humans throughout all of human history? Not conquering/displacing people is a much more recent international norm
More of a recent virtue signal we’ve been propagandized to believe, while continuing the conquering and displacement without skipping a beat.
While the west was writing the UN declaration of human rights, they were hard at work creating the state of Israel, directly denying Palestine their right to democracy and displacing a million of them.
At the end of WW2 America, and the rest of the anglo-allies, assisted France in trying to reclaim their colonies, rejecting hundreds of millions their “basic human right” to democracy; all of this went on for decades after the declaration was ratified, as if that meant anything.
Human rights don’t apply as long as you are labelled a communist, terrorist, separatist, extremist, pedo, etc, etc. Then they can torture you in a black site all nice and legal.
Most of our history has been written by sociopathic criminals.
It’s not the first time that peace exists you know, and it’s an incredibly short span that you’re describing, one which I think everyone agrees is closer to its end than anything
Not true. At least not for the Muslim conquest of the Levant according to Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister:
“The fellahin are not descendants of the Arab conquerors, who captured Eretz Israel and Syria in the seventh century CE. The Arab victors did not destroy the agricultural population they found in the country. They expelled only the alien Byzantine rulers, and did not touch the local population. Nor did the Arabs go in for settlement. Even in their former habitations the Arabs did not engage in farming…their whole interest in the new countries was political, religious and material: to rule, to propagate Islam, and to collect taxes…the Jewish farmer, like any other farmer, was not easily torn from his soil…Despite the repression and suffering the rural population remained unchanged.” [7]
That’s breathtakingly untrue. I know it’s the sensational popular view of historical warfare but it’s just not true. Generally the worst thing that would happen is to be enslaved. But as time goes on and we develop different power structures after the Romans, decapitation of the government becomes far more preferred. So there’s a big battle, the loser leader gets killed, and the remaining nobles swear loyalty to the new leader. Trained people are simply too valuable to kill out of hand.
Of course we do have documented instances of genocide and mass destruction. Nobody is saying it didn’t happen. It just wasn’t the normal mode of operation.
This is fundamentally not true. Invading, looting then burning down entire towns, killing men, and raping and/or kidnapping women and children was practiced across the globe by many different cultures for thousands of years
You’re confusing the fact that stuff happened, with that stuff being the go to thing to do. Even the Mongols preferred to take towns with the populace intact so they could get taxes as soon as possible. Popular history blows the genocidal stuff way out of proportion.
Dude. I’m confusing “the fact that stuff happened” with the fact that stuff happened lmao
I don’t know what history you’re reading, but sexual violence and the destruction of towns and cities has been pervasive in war for millennia. Here’s a brief introduction for you
When you say “they,” are you referring to all humans throughout all of human history? Not conquering/displacing people is a much more recent international norm
Without bringing up a Wikipedia article about rape then you’ve already lost.
According to the Bible, yes. Which is most likely not true. Remember that Zionism started as a secular movement, with religious people getting more (very) on board relatively recently
The history has scant evidence, but we can discount the whole exile story. Slaves tend to be maltreated and are the last ones to be fed during famine, and that leaves physical evidence on their skeletons. We don’t have evidence of that in Egypt; for the most part, their monuments were built by farmers who didn’t have anything else to do when the Nile flooded. Also, a large nomadic group–which Israel would have been under Moses according to the Biblical account–should leave behind a lot of trash for archeologists to find today.
Fundie Christians like to say “Egypt wouldn’t have told stories about a time they lost”, but that doesn’t matter. First, you better bring some good evidence to say the Red Sea parted and people could walk on dry land. Second, as shown above, there should be physical evidence that we can find. It’s not there, and it’s hardly for a lack of trying. This is one of the most picked over parts of the planet by archeologists.
What seems to have happened is that they just came from there in the first place. Yahwah started as a war god among a larger pantheon. The people who later became the Hebrews worshiped that god as their primary; they didn’t discount the existence of other gods, but they worshiped this one as their primary one (still polytheism at this point). This later evolved into discounting the importance of other gods (henotheism), and much later disregarding the existence of other gods altogether (monotheism). That especially came into play with Persian Zoroastrian influence after the Babylonian Exile.
In short, it was a religion that evolved out of the beliefs of the people already living there, and they mostly stayed right there. The Egyptian slavery bits were probably from oral stories at a time when Israel had a conflict with Egypt.
There could have even been a smaller group of former Egyptian slaves that fled and settled in Israel with the people who already lived there and over time their religion/culture was adopted by more and more people until it became the dominant one.
Like a large group of people wandering a desert for 40 years doesn’t make sense, even if 40 years is just a metaphor for a long time and was just one full year. But a small group could have wandered and visited other settlements that might have helped them out but didn’t want them to settle down there, even for a long time.
Kinda like how most Christians today aren’t descendents of anyone who would have had anything to do with Jesus or even descendent from Jewish people who believed in the Christian predecessor religion. They were just people who at one point were told they had to convert by words, swords, or guns.
Just speculation based on thinking about the scenario and what cases might put the story somewhere between fiction and truth rather than just being entirely made up (which is also certainly possible).
Everything before the Babylonian Exile was made up, because the Babylonians sacked, well everything. They destroyed the First Temple, and took away the nobility and priests.
It was only after the Exile ended that the Hebrews became monotheistic… Sort of. There has been some noises before the Exile, but afterwards it was official.
It was also after the Exile that the stories of Noah and Moses were first added to the Torah.
As a note, the Epic of Gilgamesh has a flood story, and as an ancient Babylon story, would have been available for the hostages (the Hebrew priests and nobility) to read.
Not entirely made up. Some of the late first temple period can be verified. Such as the split between the northern and southern kingdoms, or the Assyrian invasion under Hezekiah. The further you go back, though, the worse the evidence gets. David and Solomon are questionable as historical figures, and anything before that, just forget it. The Egyptian exile never happened.
Made up, for a given value of made up. They weren’t completely inventing things whole cloth, and had some surviving material to work off of. That and Babylonian records. They had those too. Since Babylon was gone… Well, finders keepers.
The TLDR; no mentions of Moses in Egyptian or Persian texts until about the 4th century BCE. He may have been a Hebrew specific quasi mythic figure based on a possible real person. But there’s no evidence at all.
Which makes sense, because that’s the timeframe that the Achaemenid Empire conquered Babylon and started letting the exiles return to Judah. Exiles who compiled a new Torah from scraps they saved and from making shit up.
This is according to their own religious texts which can be found in the Bible as well. A religion of genocide that instructed on brutal racial slavery.
Americans conquered America from the aboriginals who were living there
Edit: Btw, if it wasn’t clear, I’m disagreeing with you, because by your logic we would also have to condemn:
Egypt who conquered Nubia, parts of the Levant, and various neighboring regions multiple times.
Babylon and Assyria dominated who Sumerian lands, various Mesopotamian city-states, and parts of the Levant.
The Persian Empire conquered most of the Middle East, Egypt, and parts of India, and later Central Asia.
Islamic Caliphates (Umayyad and Abbasid) who conquered parts of North Africa, Spain, the Levant, Persia, and more.
The Ottoman Empire that controlled large parts of Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
The Roman Empire that conquered Britain, France (Gaul), parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and much of Europe.
The Macedonian Empire (Alexander the Great) who conquered Persia, Egypt, parts of India, and Greece.
The Viking Conquests that involved colonization of parts of England, France (Normandy), Iceland, Greenland, and even North America. Napoleonic France conquered parts of Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and attempted to hold Egypt.
The British Empire colonized the Americas, Australia, India, parts of Africa, and various islands worldwide.
The Aztecs conquered neighboring Mesoamerican tribes before the Spanish conquest.
Incas who subjugated various tribes across the Andes, forming an extensive empire.
The Spanish Empire who conquered most of Central and South America, the Caribbean, and parts of North America.
The United States acquired Native American lands across the continent through treaties, purchases, and conquests (e.g., Mexican-American War for the Southwest).
Portuguese colonizers who took land from indigenous Brazilian tribes.
The Mongol Empire who conquered China, Persia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe.
The Chinese Dynasties (Han, Tang, Qing, etc.) that expanded China’s borders through conquests, including Tibet, Xinjiang, and Manchuria.
The Japanese Empire that colonized Korea, parts of China, Taiwan, and occupied Southeast Asia during World War II.
The Russian Empire/Soviet Union that expanded into Central Asia, Siberia, parts of Eastern Europe, and Alaska (later sold to the USA).
The Zulu Kingdom who expanded in Southern Africa, subjugating neighboring tribes.
The Ethiopian Empire that conquered various kingdoms within what is now Ethiopia.
The Colonial Powers (Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal) partitioned and ruled over nearly all of Africa.
Maori Tribes in New Zealand conquered and displaced other Polynesian tribes.
Polynesian Expansion colonized the Pacific islands, often displacing or assimilating previous inhabitants.
European Colonization of Australia: British settlers took land from Indigenous Australians.
Surely, it is impractical that we demand that current nations and peoples return land to those who lived there centuries or millennia ago. Modern borders are often built upon layers of historical migrations and conquests, making a clear-cut solution impractical. We can’t use moral rubrics of today to judge past (and that’s talking centuries an millenia ago) actions.
Depends on what you mean by condemn. All of those things were bad when they happened. But we can’t forever condemn the descendants of warlike people as tainted colonizers.
On the other hand, in the case of some of the more recent events, we still have people today who are marginalized, impoverished, and lack access to land as a result of those past atrocities. Most notably for the west, this includes native Americans and Palestinians, among others. This situation calls out for a just solution. The redistribution of land, extra services, reparations, etc. should all be on the table for the descendants of the colonized. But notably, the expulsion of the descendants of the colonizers should not be—this will just perpetuate a similar injustice into the future.
I 100% agree with you. Those things were bad in retrospect, but it’s not worth comparing actions of today to back then because the times have changed.
Also, there definitely should be a concerted effort to resolve the concerns of those who still suffer from those past atrocities. For the Israel-Palestine saga, that might well be a two state solution as many propose, but i know there will still be people willing to argue with and insult me for this position.
I think a two state solution is probably the most realistic one, even if it might not be my perfect ideal solution. But a big issue with it (at least as currently conceptualized) is that Israelis already occupy a large portion of the more valuable and productive land and water resources, while Palestinians have been pushed into marginal areas. So drawing up the boundaries where people currently live perpetuates this injustice.
Additionally, creating two hostile neighboring ethnostates creates a lot of future problems. Will these nations coexist more peacefully than in the past? That’s not totally clear but at least it will make the ongoing settlements and ethnic cleansing more politically complicated for Israel and give Palestinians more official recognition at the UN and elsewhere. Furthermore, it will also be very likely to result in the expulsion of some people from their homes and lands which I oppose in almost all circumstances.
All that said I don’t see how any other solution is really possible so if the parties could agree on it I would support it, imperfect though it may be. Peace is rarely perfectly fair but it is still worthwhile nonetheless.
Oh definitely, it’s not the best, but it’s the most that can be done. Especially with the point about hostility. I mean Israel already withdrew from Gaza before, and we know how that went, so there’s always that threat that’s going to be looming over their heads. Let’s just hope they can settle this soon.
Yes, it’s exactly the same as post-war Germany… if we ignore the bombings, indiscriminate murder, lack of productive capacity, lack of free movement, evictions and land theft, lack of democratic processes and institutions, and many other factors that have been imposed on them externally.
That’s a different point entirely. I was only disagreeing with the commenters comparison of what happened to the Canaanites thousands of years ago to what’s happening today with the Palestinians. What i think about giving the land back to the Palestinians doesn’t matter.
It’s a false equivalence. Yes, it’s a fact, but let’s not pretend like they weren’t trying to use the Canaan conquest example to put a bit more dirt on Israel’s name. Yes, they did it. But so was every other empire and nation back in the day. Context matters.
Edit: I didn’t realise the first commenter in this thread was you haha
Gotcha… I guess I interpreted it as simply replying to the question of who I was talking about initially (native Americans or Israelites).
I’d say yes everyone was doing it, but we don’t “give back” land that was conquered… Like, America is never going to give America back to the first people’s, and we’d be pretty pissed if the world tried to make us (which is why it’s understandable that the Palestinians are pissed too)
Not true, not all conquests involved erasing the indigenous peooples. At least not for the Muslim conquest of the Levant according to Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister:
“The fellahin are not descendants of the Arab conquerors, who captured Eretz Israel and Syria in the seventh century CE. The Arab victors did not destroy the agricultural population they found in the country. They expelled only the alien Byzantine rulers, and did not touch the local population. Nor did the Arabs go in for settlement. Even in their former habitations the Arabs did not engage in farming…their whole interest in the new countries was political, religious and material: to rule, to propagate Islam, and to collect taxes…the Jewish farmer, like any other farmer, was not easily torn from his soil…Despite the repression and suffering the rural population remained unchanged.” [7]
Fair enough. My point still stands though. The person i responded to’s comment can be applied to any number of these peoples, so it’s wrong to claim, “The Israelites have been doing this stuff”, when really, everyone was doing it
It would be impractical to undo every theft that has ever occurred, and yet we still condemn theft, work to prevent it, punish thieves for it, and try to undo what thefts we can.
You hit the nail on the head. I don’t know why people argue without considering context. It’s not like I’m disagreeing that Israel’s genocide is wrong, but we have to consider context when we compare this stuff to history.
They definitely took the land from someone. The funny thing is that it doesn’t even matter who “they” refers to in that sentence because it is universally true. Everyone is from somewhere else if you go back far enough. This whole thread is just different people picking different points in time to refer to as the original state of things, despite the fact that history is literally the study of the constant evolution of humanity.
Lol… Their ancestors only lived there after they ethnically cleansed the people who were already living there. They’ve been doing this crap for a long time.
Edit: to clarify, I’m talking about the Jewish people of Israel
When you say “they,” are you referring to all humans throughout all of human history? Not conquering/displacing people is a much more recent international norm
More of a recent virtue signal we’ve been propagandized to believe, while continuing the conquering and displacement without skipping a beat.
While the west was writing the UN declaration of human rights, they were hard at work creating the state of Israel, directly denying Palestine their right to democracy and displacing a million of them.
At the end of WW2 America, and the rest of the anglo-allies, assisted France in trying to reclaim their colonies, rejecting hundreds of millions their “basic human right” to democracy; all of this went on for decades after the declaration was ratified, as if that meant anything.
Human rights don’t apply as long as you are labelled a communist, terrorist, separatist, extremist, pedo, etc, etc. Then they can torture you in a black site all nice and legal.
Most of our history has been written by sociopathic criminals.
If you look at the entirety of human history, genocides and displacements have objectively been at an all-time low since the end of WWII
It’s not the first time that peace exists you know, and it’s an incredibly short span that you’re describing, one which I think everyone agrees is closer to its end than anything
if you look at the entirety of human history, since WWII is a blink of an eye
fight complacency.
Not true. At least not for the Muslim conquest of the Levant according to Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister:
Ben Gurion is quoted by Shlomo Sand in his book https://blogs.umb.edu/joinercenter/2012/10/09/review-of-shlomo-sand-the-invention-of-the-jewish-people-london-verso-2009-translated-by-yael-lotan/
The ancients very much understood the value in just changing leadership. So conquering yes, genocide? Usually only when religion is involved.
You live in lala land.
Losing a war meant death to all adult males and raping of the women. Not different then any other mammal on earth.
My genes, and my genes only!
That’s breathtakingly untrue. I know it’s the sensational popular view of historical warfare but it’s just not true. Generally the worst thing that would happen is to be enslaved. But as time goes on and we develop different power structures after the Romans, decapitation of the government becomes far more preferred. So there’s a big battle, the loser leader gets killed, and the remaining nobles swear loyalty to the new leader. Trained people are simply too valuable to kill out of hand.
Of course we do have documented instances of genocide and mass destruction. Nobody is saying it didn’t happen. It just wasn’t the normal mode of operation.
You are talking about a very recent history. Throughout most of human existence that was not the case.
This is fundamentally not true. Invading, looting then burning down entire towns, killing men, and raping and/or kidnapping women and children was practiced across the globe by many different cultures for thousands of years
You’re confusing the fact that stuff happened, with that stuff being the go to thing to do. Even the Mongols preferred to take towns with the populace intact so they could get taxes as soon as possible. Popular history blows the genocidal stuff way out of proportion.
Dude. I’m confusing “the fact that stuff happened” with the fact that stuff happened lmao
I don’t know what history you’re reading, but sexual violence and the destruction of towns and cities has been pervasive in war for millennia. Here’s a brief introduction for you
Stop. Just stop. If you can’t defend this-
Without bringing up a Wikipedia article about rape then you’ve already lost.
According to the Bible, yes. Which is most likely not true. Remember that Zionism started as a secular movement, with religious people getting more (very) on board relatively recently
Interesting… Is there more accurate information about how the Israelites ended up in that region? Did they just never do the whole Egypt thing?
The history has scant evidence, but we can discount the whole exile story. Slaves tend to be maltreated and are the last ones to be fed during famine, and that leaves physical evidence on their skeletons. We don’t have evidence of that in Egypt; for the most part, their monuments were built by farmers who didn’t have anything else to do when the Nile flooded. Also, a large nomadic group–which Israel would have been under Moses according to the Biblical account–should leave behind a lot of trash for archeologists to find today.
Fundie Christians like to say “Egypt wouldn’t have told stories about a time they lost”, but that doesn’t matter. First, you better bring some good evidence to say the Red Sea parted and people could walk on dry land. Second, as shown above, there should be physical evidence that we can find. It’s not there, and it’s hardly for a lack of trying. This is one of the most picked over parts of the planet by archeologists.
What seems to have happened is that they just came from there in the first place. Yahwah started as a war god among a larger pantheon. The people who later became the Hebrews worshiped that god as their primary; they didn’t discount the existence of other gods, but they worshiped this one as their primary one (still polytheism at this point). This later evolved into discounting the importance of other gods (henotheism), and much later disregarding the existence of other gods altogether (monotheism). That especially came into play with Persian Zoroastrian influence after the Babylonian Exile.
In short, it was a religion that evolved out of the beliefs of the people already living there, and they mostly stayed right there. The Egyptian slavery bits were probably from oral stories at a time when Israel had a conflict with Egypt.
There could have even been a smaller group of former Egyptian slaves that fled and settled in Israel with the people who already lived there and over time their religion/culture was adopted by more and more people until it became the dominant one.
Like a large group of people wandering a desert for 40 years doesn’t make sense, even if 40 years is just a metaphor for a long time and was just one full year. But a small group could have wandered and visited other settlements that might have helped them out but didn’t want them to settle down there, even for a long time.
Kinda like how most Christians today aren’t descendents of anyone who would have had anything to do with Jesus or even descendent from Jewish people who believed in the Christian predecessor religion. They were just people who at one point were told they had to convert by words, swords, or guns.
Just speculation based on thinking about the scenario and what cases might put the story somewhere between fiction and truth rather than just being entirely made up (which is also certainly possible).
Do you have any sources to start learning about/researching this? This is very fascinating and haven’t heard much, if any, of this before.
Religion For Breakfast is a pretty good YouTube channel for this. Would also recommend Bart Ehrman’s podcast.
This is great to know! Thank you
Everything before the Babylonian Exile was made up, because the Babylonians sacked, well everything. They destroyed the First Temple, and took away the nobility and priests.
It was only after the Exile ended that the Hebrews became monotheistic… Sort of. There has been some noises before the Exile, but afterwards it was official.
It was also after the Exile that the stories of Noah and Moses were first added to the Torah.
As a note, the Epic of Gilgamesh has a flood story, and as an ancient Babylon story, would have been available for the hostages (the Hebrew priests and nobility) to read.
Not entirely made up. Some of the late first temple period can be verified. Such as the split between the northern and southern kingdoms, or the Assyrian invasion under Hezekiah. The further you go back, though, the worse the evidence gets. David and Solomon are questionable as historical figures, and anything before that, just forget it. The Egyptian exile never happened.
Made up, for a given value of made up. They weren’t completely inventing things whole cloth, and had some surviving material to work off of. That and Babylonian records. They had those too. Since Babylon was gone… Well, finders keepers.
Makes sense with the flood story… I wonder where the Moses story came from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses#Historicity
The TLDR; no mentions of Moses in Egyptian or Persian texts until about the 4th century BCE. He may have been a Hebrew specific quasi mythic figure based on a possible real person. But there’s no evidence at all.
Which makes sense, because that’s the timeframe that the Achaemenid Empire conquered Babylon and started letting the exiles return to Judah. Exiles who compiled a new Torah from scraps they saved and from making shit up.
The tribes of Israel were most likely Canaanites that made up the whole came in and conquered everyone in the area after being slaves story.
That’s correct
This is according to their own religious texts which can be found in the Bible as well. A religion of genocide that instructed on brutal racial slavery.
If this even happened…
Pretty sure they believe it did
deleted by creator
What? Who are you talking about here?
The Israelites conquered Canaan from the Canaanites who were already living there.
I’m no historian, but I presume the Canaanites then moved to North America and founded Canaada
I think you’ve invented Mormonism
Americans conquered America from the aboriginals who were living there
Edit: Btw, if it wasn’t clear, I’m disagreeing with you, because by your logic we would also have to condemn:
Egypt who conquered Nubia, parts of the Levant, and various neighboring regions multiple times.
Babylon and Assyria dominated who Sumerian lands, various Mesopotamian city-states, and parts of the Levant.
The Persian Empire conquered most of the Middle East, Egypt, and parts of India, and later Central Asia.
Islamic Caliphates (Umayyad and Abbasid) who conquered parts of North Africa, Spain, the Levant, Persia, and more.
The Ottoman Empire that controlled large parts of Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
The Roman Empire that conquered Britain, France (Gaul), parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and much of Europe.
The Macedonian Empire (Alexander the Great) who conquered Persia, Egypt, parts of India, and Greece.
The Viking Conquests that involved colonization of parts of England, France (Normandy), Iceland, Greenland, and even North America. Napoleonic France conquered parts of Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and attempted to hold Egypt.
The British Empire colonized the Americas, Australia, India, parts of Africa, and various islands worldwide.
The Aztecs conquered neighboring Mesoamerican tribes before the Spanish conquest.
Incas who subjugated various tribes across the Andes, forming an extensive empire.
The Spanish Empire who conquered most of Central and South America, the Caribbean, and parts of North America.
The United States acquired Native American lands across the continent through treaties, purchases, and conquests (e.g., Mexican-American War for the Southwest).
Portuguese colonizers who took land from indigenous Brazilian tribes.
The Mongol Empire who conquered China, Persia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe.
The Chinese Dynasties (Han, Tang, Qing, etc.) that expanded China’s borders through conquests, including Tibet, Xinjiang, and Manchuria.
The Japanese Empire that colonized Korea, parts of China, Taiwan, and occupied Southeast Asia during World War II.
The Russian Empire/Soviet Union that expanded into Central Asia, Siberia, parts of Eastern Europe, and Alaska (later sold to the USA).
The Zulu Kingdom who expanded in Southern Africa, subjugating neighboring tribes.
The Ethiopian Empire that conquered various kingdoms within what is now Ethiopia.
The Colonial Powers (Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal) partitioned and ruled over nearly all of Africa.
Maori Tribes in New Zealand conquered and displaced other Polynesian tribes.
Polynesian Expansion colonized the Pacific islands, often displacing or assimilating previous inhabitants.
European Colonization of Australia: British settlers took land from Indigenous Australians.
Surely, it is impractical that we demand that current nations and peoples return land to those who lived there centuries or millennia ago. Modern borders are often built upon layers of historical migrations and conquests, making a clear-cut solution impractical. We can’t use moral rubrics of today to judge past (and that’s talking centuries an millenia ago) actions.
oh man, this post is great. i came in here to say basically the same thing but you illustrated the point so well.
it really doesn’t matter what our ancestors did. it’s today that counts. we start being good people today. if everyone could just do that…
This is exactly the point, but some people don’t mind twisting rhetorics and context when it benefits their argument. Truly annoying.
Yes, we should condemn all of that
Very well. I don’t disagree. But the commenter specifically made mention of how “Israel” has been doing this, while ignoring historical context.
Because we sit at the pinnacle of history, judging all the past generations who came before us. Holy Whig historiography Batman.
Depends on what you mean by condemn. All of those things were bad when they happened. But we can’t forever condemn the descendants of warlike people as tainted colonizers.
On the other hand, in the case of some of the more recent events, we still have people today who are marginalized, impoverished, and lack access to land as a result of those past atrocities. Most notably for the west, this includes native Americans and Palestinians, among others. This situation calls out for a just solution. The redistribution of land, extra services, reparations, etc. should all be on the table for the descendants of the colonized. But notably, the expulsion of the descendants of the colonizers should not be—this will just perpetuate a similar injustice into the future.
I 100% agree with you. Those things were bad in retrospect, but it’s not worth comparing actions of today to back then because the times have changed.
Also, there definitely should be a concerted effort to resolve the concerns of those who still suffer from those past atrocities. For the Israel-Palestine saga, that might well be a two state solution as many propose, but i know there will still be people willing to argue with and insult me for this position.
I think a two state solution is probably the most realistic one, even if it might not be my perfect ideal solution. But a big issue with it (at least as currently conceptualized) is that Israelis already occupy a large portion of the more valuable and productive land and water resources, while Palestinians have been pushed into marginal areas. So drawing up the boundaries where people currently live perpetuates this injustice.
Additionally, creating two hostile neighboring ethnostates creates a lot of future problems. Will these nations coexist more peacefully than in the past? That’s not totally clear but at least it will make the ongoing settlements and ethnic cleansing more politically complicated for Israel and give Palestinians more official recognition at the UN and elsewhere. Furthermore, it will also be very likely to result in the expulsion of some people from their homes and lands which I oppose in almost all circumstances.
All that said I don’t see how any other solution is really possible so if the parties could agree on it I would support it, imperfect though it may be. Peace is rarely perfectly fair but it is still worthwhile nonetheless.
Oh definitely, it’s not the best, but it’s the most that can be done. Especially with the point about hostility. I mean Israel already withdrew from Gaza before, and we know how that went, so there’s always that threat that’s going to be looming over their heads. Let’s just hope they can settle this soon.
The Palestinians have been given more money in real terms than Germany did post WW2.
The fact that they’re country is a shit tip of humanity is entirely on them.
Yes, it’s exactly the same as post-war Germany… if we ignore the bombings, indiscriminate murder, lack of productive capacity, lack of free movement, evictions and land theft, lack of democratic processes and institutions, and many other factors that have been imposed on them externally.
Yes, because Germany was never, ever bombed during the war.
Every single one of those actions have been taken because they continue to do everything that they can do to kill Israelis.
They’ve been offered statehood multiple times and turned it down every time
Their lack of elections is because they continue to support a terrorist organisation.
The bombings are because they continue to support a terrorist organisation
Everything is because they continue to hate.
Surely it’s impractical to continue supporting theft, genocide, kidnapping, torture, SA, etc.
Just because genocide has been “acceptable” in the past, that doesn’t mean we should support it now.
TBH it’s kinda gross and uber-privileged to suggest this.
If you go back and take a look at what i typed, i never said anything about supporting what Israel is doing today
So you’re agreeing that giving Palestine “back” to the Jews just because their ancestors lived there was stupid?
That’s a different point entirely. I was only disagreeing with the commenters comparison of what happened to the Canaanites thousands of years ago to what’s happening today with the Palestinians. What i think about giving the land back to the Palestinians doesn’t matter.
Who were you disagreeing with? The comment you replied to just stated a fact… I don’t see any of this comparison in that comment
It’s a false equivalence. Yes, it’s a fact, but let’s not pretend like they weren’t trying to use the Canaan conquest example to put a bit more dirt on Israel’s name. Yes, they did it. But so was every other empire and nation back in the day. Context matters.
Edit: I didn’t realise the first commenter in this thread was you haha
Gotcha… I guess I interpreted it as simply replying to the question of who I was talking about initially (native Americans or Israelites).
I’d say yes everyone was doing it, but we don’t “give back” land that was conquered… Like, America is never going to give America back to the first people’s, and we’d be pretty pissed if the world tried to make us (which is why it’s understandable that the Palestinians are pissed too)
Not true, not all conquests involved erasing the indigenous peooples. At least not for the Muslim conquest of the Levant according to Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister:
Ben Gurion is quoted by Shlomo Sand in his book https://blogs.umb.edu/joinercenter/2012/10/09/review-of-shlomo-sand-the-invention-of-the-jewish-people-london-verso-2009-translated-by-yael-lotan/
Fair enough. My point still stands though. The person i responded to’s comment can be applied to any number of these peoples, so it’s wrong to claim, “The Israelites have been doing this stuff”, when really, everyone was doing it
It would be impractical to undo every theft that has ever occurred, and yet we still condemn theft, work to prevent it, punish thieves for it, and try to undo what thefts we can.
So you are disagreeing with me how? You want to punish Israel for what they did thousands of years ago to the Canaanites?
Excellent comment, I frequently bring this concept to others attention when the term “colonizer” is used.
Arbitrary and selective use of the term to fit a specific narrative detracts from current day realities.
Somehow people seem to have forgotten that times of peace and respect for manmade borders and laws of sovereign nations are not the norm for history.
You hit the nail on the head. I don’t know why people argue without considering context. It’s not like I’m disagreeing that Israel’s genocide is wrong, but we have to consider context when we compare this stuff to history.
According to the bible, not history.
They definitely took the land from someone. The funny thing is that it doesn’t even matter who “they” refers to in that sentence because it is universally true. Everyone is from somewhere else if you go back far enough. This whole thread is just different people picking different points in time to refer to as the original state of things, despite the fact that history is literally the study of the constant evolution of humanity.
yay! biblical history! you know, those canaanites sacrificed children. it was not a good scene there.
… they’re eating the pets in canaan
Israel. According to the bible, the hebrews conquered the area and killed a lot of people living there
They’re referring to Native Americans
Are you a Mormon?
No need for insults
Lol, I’m referring to the Mormon belief that native Americans are the descendants of seafaring Jews.
…waaait a minute