#Arabic people are indigenous to Palestine

[aralintheobsessive]

Just unfollwed someone for reblogging an video saying this: Jews are direct descendants of Abraham, who was Arabic, and Abraham was there first, so Arabs were there first, so Jews are White Colonizers. DO YOU KNOW HOW ANCESTRY WORKS???? 'Oh yeah this Arab guy's great-grandkids? They have no claim to being Arabic. But his OTHER great-grandkids? Those are Arabs because he's their ancestor.' It could be argued if you follow Abrahamic geaneology that Ishmael's Arab descendants get their claim to that ethnicity through his mother Hagar, who was Egyptian (although at that time that could have been what we modern people would consider like three different ethnicities but whatever). However, if you are going to say (and he did) that Abraham was Arabic because he was born in the region that is now modern-day Iraq (not set in stone but a viable argument), then that makes ALL of his sons and their grandchildren Arabic! If you want to claim that Arabs were 'there first' because Abraham was Arabic, you then have to admit that all of his descendants are HIS DESCENDANTS

[safije]

Native Americans march in solidarity with Palestine

Denver, Colorado USA

© Malek Asfeer 

[attheexactlyrighttimeandplace]

[royalberryriku]

The more I learn about the history of the middle east in general, the more I realise that the "Israel-Palestine conflict" is actually just a group killing their own fellow shared ethnic group who are "too brown".

Hebrews and Arabs both originate from Phoenicians, aka "Abraham's descendents" according to their respective oral stories and passed on histories. They are from the same place and people. However, there is a narrative that twists this and claims that Arabs were "always an outside force that invaded", when the various groups within that ethnicity always had their share of cooperation and conflict in various stages of history. Just like, say, the various groups in France. They were of the same group and no particular ethnicity had no more of a "claim" to the land than the other, they just had their beef and eventually integrated.

So when I see "but the Arabs are colonisers" I can't help but ask; what is a colonisers to you? Seriously. If colonisation means "any conflict in the past between a shared group from the same place" every single group would be colonisers. There's no such thing as "an innocent conflict" where atrocities weren't committed by either side. So please get that out of your head if you want to say "but the Arabs did X, Y, Z to the Hebrews so it's colonisation and they don't belong in A, B or C areas". That's just not how colonisation works. It's like calling TERF or cis a slur when they're not. Conflict between the same people from the same area is, yeah, a conflict hit not colonisation. However, a people who are from a completely different place who want to erase an ethnic group and take over their culture, erase their history and get rid of their physical features? Yeah, that's what colonisation is. It's genocide with the aim to erase a specific group or culture and take it and the land over. For example, the British in the Middle East.

The problem with calling Arabs "colonisers" is not only is it completely historically wrong, they're from the same place and have the same origins as the Hebrews, but they (like Palestinian Jews) have been their since before the British came. Compared to European Jews who came later on after having lived in Europe (and became European as that is genuinely a part of their culture and ethnicity as well and shouldn't be erased or forgotten, that's also cultural erasure of Germanic, Polish, etc traditions passed on) and, sure, do have origins there *as well* but it needs to be understood that they, specifically Zionists, are a part of the British colonial project aimed at killing *both* Arabs and Jews. The point isn't to help Jews against a colonisers from the first few centuries (sorry to tell you everyone, but no, the Ottoman Empire, Baylon and the Pharaohs literally do not exist anymore, like how Italy isn't the Roman Empire by default because that's where Rome is), but a group of people who've just been living there for the past few centuries and generations who just want to live. The problem is, they haven't been allowed that and propaganda keeps being pushed that completely jumps around historical facts like, for example, Jews (ethnically speaking) were not always Jews but the Ancient Hebrews, aka, Phoenicians, aka where Arabs came from ethically. They are the same people, just who moved to different areas and developed different cultures and languages. Sort of like, you know, every other nation with specific dialects for specific regions and different cultures and folk stories depending on where you go.

The point is, so much of Jewish history is actively being erased to "protect the Jews" by...commuting cultural genocide of the Jews and Arabs. It ignores the actual impact of Nazism within Israel's formation and history, how much it influenced policy, how Jews who were "too visibly Phoenicians" aka appeared too Jewish or arabic or middle eastern in appearance were deemed as "weaker" and "lesser" for my surviving the holocaust and used as a reason to deny rights to both Jews and Arabs who were too visibly Semitic. It ignores how antisemetic Israel is towards Jewishness and how utterly antisemetic Islamophobia is because they are literally from the same origin and, yes, hatred and fear of one does carry into hatred and fear of the other. So much of the propaganda and denialism of history happening right now is a direct response to dear and hatred of "big noses", "brown skin" and people deemed as too middle eastern because they, just like in World War II, World War I and beforehand, antisemetism is the backbone of British imperialism and conquest of the middle east (yes, this also means a targeting of Arabs and Jews as people who look a specific way). And yes I'm annoyed and yes this is a ramble that's probably not very coherent, but damn I'm so sick and tired of misinformation and the twisting of everything to suit this narrative of "Arabs versus Jews" as if they aren't both just Semites who are being collectively oppressed, erased and reinvented by the west to suit western ends.

[autistic-katara]

u ever see a mildly iffy post and look at the comments and just think “wow, everyone here is so fucking unpleasant in their own special way”

[heartrender6]

one day im gonna make a masterpost of all the classic zionist bullshit my dad has said to me in arguments so yall can get ready to win arguments that im to afraid to 🗣️ 🗣️

[runalongprincevaliant]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by TMJ News (@tmjnewsnetwork)

[mossboys]

i think it is easy to project an american understanding of race/racism onto relations in other parts of the world (easy as in helps build solidarity) but i also think it would do all parties a great service to try and understand the history of racial and religious conflict in said region. and to also decenter american ways of thinking where they don’t always belong

[gothhabiba]

Some guides to thinking through & responding to Zionist talking points

Decolonize Palestine's list of myths and debunkings of them, including "Israel made the desert bloom," "all Jewish people are indigenous to Israel," and "Palestinians won't participate in the peace process"

Bo Forbes, "Talking Points Guide: Israel-Palestine" (2023)

Jared Sacks, "A 'Self-Hating' Jew’s Guide to Zionist Talking Points" (2014)

Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, "Talking points and messaging guidance for Palestinians and allies" (2023)

starbucks_red_cup on Reddit, "Some Zionist talking points and responses to them"; and comments (2023)

Middle East Policy Council, "The Original "No": Why the Arabs Rejected Zionism, and Why It Matters" (specifically a response to the "Palestinians are at fault for rejecting the 1947 partition plan" narrative)

If you prefer podcasts:

Citations Needed, "News Brief: Debunking the 5 Most Common Anti-Palestinian Talking Points" (2021)

[withbriefthanksgiving]

The director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN (UN OHCHR), Craig Mokhiber, has resigned in a letter dated 28 October 2023

the resignation letter can be found embedded in this tweet by Rami Atari (@.Raminho) dated 31 October 2023.

The letters are here:

Transcription:

United Nations | Nations Unies

HEADQUARTERS I SIEGE I NEW YORK, NY 10017

28 October 2023

Dear High Commissioner,

This will be my last official communication to you as Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

I write at a moment of great anguish for the world, including for many of our colleagues. Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it. As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a UN human rights advisor in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me.

I also worked in these halls through the genocides against the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi, and the Rohingya. In each case, when the dust settled on the horrors that had been perpetrated against defenseless civilian populations, it became painfully clear that we had failed in our duty to meet the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocites, of protection of the vulnerable, and of accountability for perpetrators. And so it has been with successive waves of murder and persecution against the Palestinians throughout the entire life of the UN.

High Commissioner, we are failing again.

As a human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units. Across the land, Apartheid rules.

This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What's more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations "to ensure respect" for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel's atrocities.

Volker Turk, High Commissioner for Human Rights Palais Wilson, Geneva

In concert with this, western corporate media, increasingly captured and state-adjacent, are in open breach of Article 20 of the ICCPR, continuously dehumanizing Palestinians to facilitate the genocide, and broadcasting propaganda for war and advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence. US-based social media companies are suppressing the voices of human rights defenders while amplifying pro-Israel propaganda. Israel lobby online-trolls and GONGOS are harassing and smearing human rights defenders, and western universities and employers are collaborating with them to punish those who dare to speak out against the atrocities. In the wake of this genocide, there must be an accounting for these actors as well, just as there was for radio Mules Collins in Rwanda.

In such circumstances, the demands on our organization for principled and effective action are greater than ever. But we phave not met the challenge. The protective enforcement power Security Council has again been blocked by US intransigence, the SG [UN Secretary General] is under assault for the mildest of protestations, and our human rights mechanisms are under sustained slanderous attack by an organized, online impunity network.

Decades of distraction by the illusory and largely disingenuous promises of Oslo have diverted the Organization from its core duty to defend international law, international human rights, and the Charter itself. The mantra of the "two-state solution" has become an open joke in the corridors of the UN, both for its utter impossibility in fact, and for its total failure to account for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people. The so-called "Quartet" has become nothing more than a fig leaf for inaction and for subservience to a brutal status quo. The (US-scripted) deference to "agreements between the parties themselves" (in place of international law) was always a transparent slight-of-hand, designed to reinforce the power of Israel over the rights of the occupied and dispossessed Palestinians.

High Commissioner, I came to this Organization first in the 1980s, because I found in it a principled, norm-based institution that was squarely on the side of human rights, including in cases where the powerful US, UK, and Europe were not on our side. While my own government, its subsidiarity institutions, and much of the US media were still supporting or justifying South African apartheid, Israeli oppression, and Central American death squads, the UN was standing up for the oppressed peoples of those lands. We had international law on our side. We had human rights on our side. We had principle on our side. Our authority was rooted in our integrity. But no more.

In recent decades, key parts of the UN have surrendered to the power of the US, and to fear of the Israel Lobby, to abandon these principles, and to retreat from international law itself. We have lost a lot in this abandonment, not least our own global credibility. But the Palestinian people have sustained the biggest losses as a result of our failures. It is a stunning historic irony that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in the same year that the Nakba was perpetrated against the Palestinian people. As we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the UDHR, we would do well to abandon the old cliché that the UDHR was born out of the atrocities that proceeded it, and to admit that it was born alongside one of the most atrocious genocides of the 20th Century, that of the destruction of Palestine. In some sense, the framers were promising human rights to everyone, except the Palestinian people. And let us remember as well, that the UN itself carries the original sin of helping to facilitate the dispossession of the Palestinian people by ratifying the European settler colonial project that seized Palestinian land and turned it over to the colonists. We have much for which to atone.

But the path to atonement is clear. We have much to learn from the principled stance taken in cities around the world in recent days, as masses of people stand up against the genocide, even at risk of beatings and arrest. Palestinians and their allies, human rights defenders of every stripe, Christian and Muslim organizations, and progressive Jewish voices saying "not in our name", are all leading the way. All we have to do is to follow them.

Yesterday, just a few blocks from here, New York's Grand Central Station was completely taken over by thousands of Jewish human rights defenders standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people and demanding an end to Israeli tyranny (many risking arrest, in the process). In doing so, they stripped away in an instant the Israeli hasbara propaganda point (and old antisemitic trope) that Israel somehow represents the Jewish people. It does not. And, as such, Israel is solely responsible for its crimes. On this point, it bears repeating, in spite of Israel lobby smears to the contrary, that criticism of Israel's human rights violations is not antisemitic, any more than criticism of Saudi violations is Islamophobic, criticism of Myanmar violations is anti-Buddhist, or criticism of Indian violations is anti-Hindu. When they seek to silence us with smears, we must raise our voice, not lower it. I trust you will agree, High Commissioner, that this is what speaking truth to power is all about.

But I also find hope in those parts of the UN that have refused to compromise the Organization's human rights principles in spite of enormous pressures to do so. Our independent special rapporteurs, commissions of enquiry, and treaty body experts, alongside most of our staff, have continued to stand up for the human rights of the Palestinian people, even as other parts of the UN (even at the highest levels) have shamefully bowed their heads to power. As the custodians of the human rights norms and standards, OHCHR. has a particular duty to defend those standards. Our job, I believe, is to make our voice heard, from the Secretary-General to the newest UN recruit, and horizontally across the wider UN system, incisting that the human rights of the Palestinian people are not up for debate, negotiation, or compromise anywhere under the blue flag.

What, then, would a UN-norm-based position look like? For what would we work if we were true to our rhetorical admonitions about human rights and equality for all, accountability for perpetrators, redress for victims, protection of the vulnerable, and empowerment for rights-holders, all under the rule of law? The answer, I believe, is simple—if we have the clarity to see beyond the propagandistic smokescreens that distort the vision of justice to which we are sworn, the courage to abandon fear and deference to powerful states, and the will to truly take up the banner of human rights and peace. To be sure, this is a long-term project and a steep climb. But we must begin now or surrender to unspeakable horror. I see ten essential points:

Legitimate action: First, we in the UN must abandon the failed (and largely disingenuous) Oslo paradigm, its illusory two-state solution, its impotent and complicit Quartet, and its subjugation of international law to the dictates of presumed political expediency. Our positions must be unapologetically based on international human rights and international law.

Clarity of Vision: We must stop the pretense that this is simply a conflict over land or religion between two warring parties and admit the reality of the situation in which a disproportionately powerful state is colonizing, persecuting, and dispossessing an indigenous population on the basis of their ethnicity.

One State based on human rights: We must support the establishment of a single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and, therefore, the dicmantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land.

Fighting Apartheid: We must redirect all UN efforts and resources to the struggle against apartheid, just as we did for South Africa in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s.

Return and Compensation: We must reaffirm and insist on the right to return and full compensation for all Palestinians and their families currently living in the occupied territories, in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and in the diaspora across the globe.

Truth and Justice: We must call for a transitional justice process, making full use of decades of accumulated UN investigations, enquiries, and reports, to document the truth, and to ensure accountability for all perpetrators, redress for all victims, and remedies for documented injustices.

Protection: We must press for the deployment of a well-resourced and strongly mandated UN protection force with a sustained mandate to protect civilians from the river to the sea.

Disarmament: We must advocate for the removal and destruction of Israel's massive stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, lest the conflict lead to the total destruction of the region and, possibly, beyond.

Mediation: We must recognize that the US and other western powers are in fact not credible mediators, but rather actual parties to the conflict who are complicit with Israel in the violation of Palestinian rights, and we must engage them as such.

Solidarity: We must open our doors (and the doors of the SG) wide to the legions of Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian human rights defenders who are standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine and their human rights and stop the unconstrained flow of Israel lobbyists to the offices of UN leaders, where they advocate for continued war, persecution, apartheid, and impunity, and smear our human rights defenders for their principled defense of Palestinian rights.

This will take years to achieve, and western powers will fight us every step of the way, so we must be steadfast. In the immediate term, we must work for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the longstanding siege on Gaza, stand up against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank (and elsewhere), document the genocidal assault in Gaza, help to bring massive humanitarian aid and reconstruction to the Palestinians, take care of our traumatized colleagues and their families, and fight like hell for a principled approach in the UN's political offices.

The UN's failure in Palestine thus far is not a reason for us to withdraw. Rather it should give us the courage to abandon the failed paradigm of the past, and fully embrace a more principled course. Let us, as OHCHR, boldly and proudly join the anti-apartheid movement that is growing all around the world, adding our logo to the banner of equality and human rights for the Palestinian people. The world is watching. We will all be accountable for where we stood at this crucial moment in history. Let us stand on the side of justice.

I thank you, High Commissioner, Volker, for hearing this final appeal from my desk. I will leave the Office in a few days for the last time, after more than three decades of service. But please do not hesitate to reach out if I can be of assistance in the future.

Sincerely,

Craig Mokhiber

End of transcription.

Emphasis (bolding) is my own. I have added links, where relevant, to explanations of concepts the former Director refers to.

[fairuzfan]

The thing that's never made sense to me is the "Holocaust inversion" talking point and the idea that we are "moralizing" the Holocaust as something you're supposed to learn from which like aside from the fact that israel's entire pr is that it needs to exist because of the Holocaust, I really don't understand how feeling empathy based on past experiences is like... a moralizing action?

Even those who don't feel empathy, they still like... have the universal idea that you shouldn't do bad things onto other people. When you consider that yeah, when you live in the world, you experience terrible things and you relate those terrible things to other terrible things happening in the world. That's just what everyone does. Whenever I hear things happening to indigenous Turtle Islanders I always relate it back to Palestine. When I hear about violence happening to Black people, I think "Ah it must be terrifying" and I think back to my own family members and friends who were killed by Israel. When i think of antiBlackness in arab spaces, i relate it back to the occupation and compare myself to the occupation on whether or not im inflicting the same pain i and my family endure onto others. It's just how you experience the world. No one is asking you to "learn" from the Holocaust, people are just asking you to apply empathy.

A universal example is that you don't really understand the grief of losing a loved one until you yourself lose a loved one. And when you encounter a person who lost a loved one as well, you relate to them in a unique way that you wouldn't have without having that experience of grief before. It's not a moralizing experience, it's just... an experience. An awful one but you don't *learn* anything from it.

So it always confounds me that there's such vehement pushback against the idea that what Palestinians are going through is similar to the Holocaust because it's not like we're making light of the Holocaust? It's that we are asking you, a zionist (in this case one who is Jewish specifically), to acknowledge that there are similarities between the way Palestinians are treated and the ways Jews, Roma, and multiple other people were treated during the Holocaust. It's that we're relegated to second class status, we are considered lesser, we are confined to ghettos, we have our livelihoods stolen from us, we have weapons tested on us, we're survielled like we are dangerous monsters and we experience systematic segregation. And now we are experiencing mass slaughter campaigns within our concentration camps. But what's the issue? Are you offended that Palestinians can even remotely understand the terrible violence that Jews experienced in the Holocaust? Or are you denying that Palestinians are experiencing those things??

People always bring up like "Oh you don't understand what exactly happened during the Holocaust, you're just using it as a stand in for "a very bad thing"" and that's like... never made sense either because what does that mean? I'm not... using the Holocaust out of nowhere, I'm using it because Israel tells US, PALESTINIANS, that we need to be kicked out and raped and tortured *because* of the Holocaust. When us, Palestinians, ask you to feel empathy for us based on what you experienced during the Holocaust, we aren't just pulling it out of thin air, we are using a zionist talking point and pointing out the flaws. "Does experiencing a Holocaust allow you to conduct massacres and unbelievable violence onto other people?" and "Why are we paying for the terrible crimes of Europeans? Why is this our fault that we must suffer for it, as you, a zionist, insist we must?"

It's just so confusing how people would take offense at feeling empathy for Palestinians. We aren't denying the awful, awful genocide of the Holocaust, nor are we "making light of it..." but if you believe that comparing what Palestinians go through is making light of the Holocaust, then you must think that what we are going through is not bad at all.

[infiniteglitterfall]

Someone on Reddit made the mistake of saying, "Teach me how this conflict came about" where I could see it.

Let me teach you too.

The common perception is that Jews came out of nowhere, stole Palestinian homes and kicked Palestinians out of them, and then bombed them for 75 years, until they finally rebelled in the form of Hamas invading Israel and massacring 22 towns in one day.

The historical reality is that Jews have lived there continuously for at least 3500 years.

There are areas, like Meggido iirc, with archeological evidence of continuous habitation for 7,000 years, but Jewish culture as we recognize it today didn't develop until probably halfway through that.

Ethnic Jews are the indigenous people of this area.

Indigeneity means a group was originally there, before any colonization happened, and that it has retained a cultural connection to the land. History plus culture.

That's what Jews have: even when the diaspora became larger than the number of Jews in Israel, the yearning to return to that homeland was a daily part of Jewish prayer and ritual.

The Jewish community in Israel was crushed pretty violently by the Roman Empire in 135 CE, but it was still substantial, sometimes even the majority population there, for almost a thousand years.

The 600s CE brought the advent of Islam and the Arab Empire, expanding out from Saudi Arabia into Israel and beyond. It was largely a region where Jews were second-class citizens. But it was still WAY better than the way Christian Europe treated Jews.

From the 700s-900s, the area saw repeated civil wars, plagues, and earthquakes.

Then the Crusades came, with waves of Christians making "pilgrimages to the Holy Land" and trying to conquer it from Muslims and Jews, who they slaughtered and enslaved.

Israel became pretty well depopulated after all that. It was a very rough time to live there. (And for the curious, I'm calling it Israel because that's what it had been for centuries, until the Romans erased the name and the country.)

By the 1800s, the TOTAL population of what's now Israel and Palestine had varied from 150,000 - 275,000 for centuries. It was very rural, very sparsely populated, on top of being mostly desert.

In the 1880s, Jews started buying land and moving back to their indigenous homeland. As tends to happen, immigration brought new projects and opportunities, which led to more immigration - not only from Jews, but from the Arab world as well.

Unfortunately, there was an antisemitic minority spearheaded by Amin al-Husseini. Who was very well-connected, rich, and from a politically powerful family.

Al-Husseini had enthusiastically participated in the Armenian Genocide under the Ottoman Empire. Then the Empire fell in World War One, and the League of Nations had to figure out what to do with its land.

Mostly, if an area was essentially operating as a country (e.g. Turkey), the League of Nations let it be one. In areas that weren't ready for self-rule, it appointed France or Britain to help them get there.

In recognition of the increased Jewish population in their traditional, indigenous homeland, it declared that that homeland would again become Israel.

As in, the region was casually called Palestine because that was the lay term for "the Holy Land." It had not been a country since Israel was stamped out; only a region of a series of different empires. And the Mandate For Palestine said it was establishing "a national home of the Jewish people" there, in recognition of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."

Britain was appointed to help the Arab and Jewish communities there develop systems of self-government, and then to work together to govern the region overall.

At least, that was the plan.

Al-Husseini, who was deeply antisemitic, did not like this plan.

And, extra-unfortunately, the British response to al-Husseini inciting violent anti-Jewish riots was to put him in a leadership role over Arab Palestine.

They thought it would calm him down and perhaps satisfy him.

They were very wrong.

He went on to become a huge Hitler fanboy, and then a Nazi war criminal. He co-created the Muslim Brotherhood - which Hamas is part of - with fellow fascist fanboy Hassan al-Banna.

He got Nazi Party funding for armed Muslim Brotherhood militias to attack Jews and the Brits in the late 30s, convincing Britain to agree to limit Jewish immigration at the time when it was most desperately needed.

He started using the militias again in 1947, when the United Nations voted to divide the mandated land into a Jewish homeland and a Palestinian one.

Al-Husseini wouldn't stand for a two-state solution. He was determined to tolerate no more than the subdued, small Jewish minority of second-class citizens that he remembered from his childhood.

As armed militias increasingly ran riot, the Arab middle and upper classes increasingly left. About 100,000 left the country before May 1948, when Britain was to pull out, leaving Israel and Palestine to declare their independence.

The surrounding nations didn't want war. They largely accepted the two-state solution.

But al-Husseini lobbied HARD. And by mobilizing the Muslim Brotherhood to provide "destabilizing mass demonstrations and a murderous campaign of intimidation," he got the Arab League nations to agree to invade, en masse, as soon as Britain left.

About 600,000 Arabs fled to those countries during the ensuing war.

Jews couldn't seek refuge there; in fact, most of those countries either exiled their Jews directly, confiscating their property first, or else made Jewish life unlivable and exploited them for underpaid or slave labor for years first.

By the time the smoke cleared and a peace treaty was signed, most of the Arab Palestinian community had fled; there was no Arab Palestinian leadership; many of the refugees' homes and businesses had left had been destroyed in the war; and Israel had been flooded with nearly a million refugees from the Arab League countries and the Holocaust - even more people than had fled the war.

That was the Nakba. The one that gets portrayed as "750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled!" in the hope that you'll assume they were expelled en masse, their beautiful intact homes all stolen.

Egypt had taken what's now the Gaza Strip in that war, and Jordan took what's now the West Bank - expelling or killing all the Jews in it first.

(Ironically, Jordan was originally supposed to be part of Israel. Britain, inexplicably, cut off what would have been 75% of its land to create Jordan.

Even more inexplicably, nobody ever talks about it. I've never seen anyone complain that Jordan was stolen from Palestinians. Possibly because Jordan is also the only country that gave Palestinian refugees full citizenship, and it's about half Palestinian now.

Israel is nearly 25% Arab Palestinians with full citizenship and equal rights, so it's not all that different -- but the fundamental difference of living in a country where the majority is Jewish, not Muslim, probably runs pretty deep.)

Anyway: that's why Palestine is Gaza and the West Bank, rather than being some contiguous chunk of land. Or being the land set aside by the U.N. in 1947.

Because Arab countries took that land in 1948, and treated them as essentially separate for 20 years.

Israel got them back, along with the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, in the next war: 1967, when Egypt committed an act of war by taking control of the waterways and barring Israel from them. It gave the Sinai back to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace accords between Egypt and Israel.

Israel tried to give back the Gaza Strip at the same time. Egypt refused.

Palestine finally declared independence in 1988.

But Hamas formed at about the same time. Probably in response, in fact. Hamas is fundamentally opposed to peace negotiations with Israel.

Again: Hamas is part of a group founded by Nazis.

Hamas has its own charter. It explains that Jews are "the enemy," because they control the drug trade, have been behind every major war, control the media, control the United Nations, etc. Basic Nazi rhetoric.

It has gotten adept at masking that rhetoric for the West. But to friendlier audiences, its leaders have consistently said things like, "People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels.  Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels."

(Palestinians were outraged by this speech. Palestinians, by and large, absolutely loathe Hamas.

It's just that it's not the same to say that to locals, as it is to say it where major global powers who oppose this crap can hear you.)

Hamas has stated from the beginning that its mission is to violently destroy Israel and take over the land.

It has received $100M in military funding annually, from Iran, for several years. Because Iran has been building a network of fascist, antisemitic groups across the Middle East, in a blatant attempt to control more and more of it: Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen.

Iran has been run by a very far-right, deeply antisemitic dictatorship for decades now, which pretty openly wants to take down both Israel and the U.S.

Last year, Iran increased Hamas's funding to $350M.

The "proof of concept" invasion of Israel that Hamas pulled off on October 7th more than justifies a much bigger investment.

Hamas has publicly stated its intention to attack "again and again and again," until Israel has been violently destroyed.

That is how this conflict came about.

A Nazi group seized power in Gaza in 2007 by violently kicking the Palestinian government out, and began running it as a dictatorship, using it to build money and power in preparations for exactly this.

And people find it shockingly easy to believe its own hype about being "the Palestinian resistance."

As well as its propaganda that Israel is not actually targeting Hamas: it's just using a literal Nazi invasion and massacre as an excuse to randomly commit genocide of the fraction of Palestine it physically left 20 years ago.

Despite the fact that Palestinians in Gaza have been protesting HAMAS throughout the war.

[boreal-sea]

So a common argument I see is that Jews use antisemitism as a bludgeon to shut down conversations and to avoid being called out for their own bigotry.

Anyone can be a bigot. Being from a marginalized identity does not insulate you from this. So can Jews be bigoted? Yep! Ben Shapiro exists, after all.

But the things I see people "calling Jews out" for, particularly claims of fascism, racism, and Islamophobia, just aren't.

Things that are not fascism, racism or Islamophobia:

Being Jewish

Being Israeli

Living in Israel

Calling out people's antisemitism in their pro-Palestine posts

Saying Jews are indigenous to the Levant

Supporting Jewish self-determination in their homeland

Calling Hamas a terrorist organization

Calling out Hamas for the atrocities it has committed for the past several decades against both Israelis and Palestinians

Calling Oct 7th an act of terrorism

Pointing out that the history of the Levant is complicated

Calling out the governments of surrounding Arab countries for their long history of antisemitism

Asking for safety on college campuses

[attheexactlyrighttimeandplace]

[pat-lechem]

"The notion of Palestine being Arab emerges, really, only in the 60s. because... what did Israelis do? the colonial era is over; the Ottoman Empire is gone, finally the British are gone, and the Jewish people finally, having outlived all these empires, going back to the Roman Empire, finally restore their sovereignty. What do they do? they do what every self-respecting people in history did when the colonial people were gone- they call the country by their name, right? so Siam becomes Thailand, and the Gold Coast becomes Ghana, and Palestine becomes Israel because Palestine was the colonial name and Israel is the original, indigenous name.

Once the Jews call the land Israel... in order to present the Jews as foreign, [...] thieves, interlopers, Arabs began to hijack the name Palestine, to say, actually we are Palestine, whereas previously everyone understood it was Jews. and I love it, because sometimes you see on the internet, oh look Palestine existed, and they show, like, the Palestine football team and if you look closely all the names are like [...] all Jewish [...] because this was the Jewish football team of the Jewish state in the making, and the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra was the orchestra of Jewish exiles that became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. So, this is a classis [...] hijacking of the Arabs of something that was very Jewish, in order to present the Jews as thieves, rather than the original owners."

-Einat Wilf (source)

[stopmakingliberalslookbad]

Principles that so-called "leftists" have abandoned since October 7th

Being against religious fundamentalism: You guys used to think that fundamentalism was a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, you still believe that OTHER religions that are fundamentalist are bad, but Muslim right wing religious fundamentalism is very much okay with you. When you express support for religious fundamentalist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Islamic Republic, you are supporting suppression against women, LGBT people, and Jews (though the latter doesn't bother you at all). These are not resistance groups, they are terror groups.

Anti-racism: Mocking Israeli accents is suddenly funny to you. Jews aren't oppressed any more and antisemitism isn't as important as other forms of ethnic hate. It's okay to discriminate against people based on where they're from (the treatment of twenty year old Eden Golan is a particularly disgusting example). Indigeneity expires if you're Jewish. You support land back efforts for everyone but Jews. You employ the noble savage stereotype against Palestinians, because "That's just their way!" Holocaust inversion and even denial? NBD. Jews are trying to take over the world and are bloodthirsty monsters who support genocide. And the blatant tokenization is horrific. Some of you have even used the expression "Good Jews".

Being against ethnic cleansing: You bleat about the non-existent "genocide" in Palestine (and it is NOT a genocide according the the actual definition of the word), but your only solution is to ethnically cleanse Jews from the Middle East instead of supporting the two state solution.

Anti-nationalism: Jewish nationalism is bad. Arab nationalism is good. There are 22 Arab states and over fifty Muslim states, but even the two state solution in which there would be 22 Arab states, over fifty Muslim states and one Jewish state isn't enough, because Jews bad. Arab and Muslim conquest and imperialism? It's a good thing, ackchuyally!

Belief in science: Genetic studies prove that all ethnic Jews (yes, that includes Ashkenazi Jews) are indigenous to the Levant, but you guys seem to believe that we fell out of the sky. Archaeology proves that Jews were there first, but those findings are "fake" according to you.

Once again, I am asking why are you guys willing to sacrifice your principles for Palestine?