#arab identity is not native to israel

[ace-hell]

Oh this makes me so fucking mad

So SO fucking mad

You mean israelites, hebrews ffs you mean CANAANITES

THERE WEREN'T PALESTINIANS 3,000 YEARS AGO

THERE WERE JEWISH KINGDOMS

If the tatreez originated 3,000 fucking years ago it makes it jewish, israelite. NOT palestinian

This horrendous cultural and historical erasure of a whole ass ethnic group is absolutely sickening

This accepted activity of rewriting and changing jewish history is so fucking disgusting

This is the kinda shit that makes it so hard for me to feel sympathy and accept the modern palestinian identity

ITS NORMAL FOR NEW IDENTITIES TO EMERGE AND BE BORN, BUT ITS NOT OK TO CHANGE HISTORY SO IT'LL LOOK LIKE YOU HAVE AN ANCIENT AND NATIVE IDENTITY!

I Just fucking hope for the sun to blow us all up soon ffs

[ace-hell]

I just literally saw a post where you support violence for the sake of "decolonization", expecting people to get murdered for the sake of "decolonization" while turning blind eye to all the damage they cause to other people and themselves and erasing native history, coloring arab colonizer identity as an indigenous one under a false name (who is originally an insult) and thinking that the actual natives-who were kicked out of their own homeland and came back-are colonizers.

Not only you do not know anything about history and the nativity of the middle east, you also don't even know the definition of colonialism, and im not even talking about the fact that you don't know the definition of zionism.

Yall screaming that there's genocide against palestinians after THEY started a war while 2 million palestinians in israel just.... Chilling, and some even serve the IDF and fighting in gaza, fully aware of the situation- better than yall pretenders. Yall know so little about israel and the way people live there and the whole ordeal that palestinian israeli just look at yall like you got severe brain damage.

If you think decolonization is violent then don't cry when jews finally stand up from themselves. If you think palestinians have "generational trauma" and have the right to act violently, then don't complain when jews, who have 3,000 years of generational ptsd, fighting for their homes, identity, language, religion, land and lives

Stfu, sincerely: a native jew to judea who's family got persecuted in the dhimni laws made by arab colonizers in our homalnd and the holocaust💖

The funny thing about Zionist propagandist accounts is that they're not even trying to pretend to be normal people. Every time a Zionist reblogs my posts and writes atrocious comments, their profiles are filled with them reblogging pro-Palestinian posts and writing awful things. They never actually post anything to support Israel or Zionism, which is quite hilarious. They're literally not even trying to hide that they're hired to do this. As I mentioned in previous posts regarding Zionists' comments, silence their voices by not interacting with them and simply block them. Focus your time and energy on boosting pro-Palestinian posts to amplify Palestinian voices and to keep draining the propagandists' money.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! 🇵🇸🍉

[raginghummingbird]

Guess we now know that native americans rank lower than muslims in the oppression totem pole.

[edenfenixblogs]

How do you know if you’re antisemitic?

Well, if a Jew telling you you’re antisemitic won’t make you believe it, here is a guide to help you figure it out yourself.

1. Do you think Jews, en masse, are ACTIVELY REPLACING/ATTEMPTING TO REPLACE some other group — especially a somehow more deserving group? (For example, White people, Black people, African people, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, indigenous people, etc.) Do you feel there are JUST TOO MANY JEWS IN A GIVEN LOCATION?

2. Do you think Jews are PRETENDING TO BE SOMETHING THAT THEY ARE NOT? (For example, White, PoC, “Real” Jews, Indigenous/Native, an Ethnic Minority, Devoted Citizens of [YOUR COUNTRY] etc.)?

3. Do you think Jews are CONTROLLING OR ATTEMPTING TO CONTROL SOME INTEGRAL ASPECT OF SOCIETY? (For example, the government, media, banks, business, medicine, etc.)

4. Do you think Jews that you criticize are UNIQUELY BLOODTHIRSTY OR GENOCIDAL — especially when hoping for personal achievement or cultural supremacy? (For example, trying to stage a global war so they can control the world; using/consuming blood of Christians and babies to do satanic rituals; sexually seducing non-Jews in order to contaminate bloodlines and erase other pre-existing identities; immigrating to a new location with the intention of murdering those who already exist there; desiring to murder Arabs, Muslims, or Palestinians in their homelands by means of genocide in order to control a region at the exclusion of other ethnicities, etc.)

5. Do you think Jews are APPROPRIATING A PRIVILEGE THAT THEY DO NOT DESERVE AND THAT DOES NOT BELONG TO THEM? (For example, freedom, wealth, power, whiteness, G-d’s favor, a safe home in the Levant, Arab land, colonial power, representation as a minority group, etc.)

6. Do you think Jews at large or the specific Jews you disagree with and who wield power in a way you disapprove of CAN BE COLLECTIVELY LABELED? (For example, might you call them slaves, vermin, insects, dirty, scheming, communists, fascists, Nazis, satanic, Zionists, scum, etc.)

IF YOU ANSWERED YES TO ANY OF THESE QUESTIONS YOU ARE AN ANTISEMITE. This is literally textbook antisemitism. If you answered, well yeah but only “the Jews in Israel” or “the ones who vote for Bibi” or the “ones who moved to my town/country/region” or if you saw something on one of the lists and think “well no fair! That one is actually true,” your exception isn’t exceptional. You haven’t found the one true bad thing that Jews ACTUALLY are. It’s not some conspiratorial propaganda to equate reasonable beliefs with hate. You’re just hateful. Some part of you hates Jews. And you have to confront what that part of you is and you have to destroy it if you want to engage in any conversations that impact Jewish welfare anywhere in the world.

One way to start deconstructing is to ask yourself “Why do I feel this way?” “From whom did I learn to think this way?” “Who in my life approves and supports me thinking this way?” “Am I comfortable telling a Jewish person I feel this way in person?” “How do I think a Jewish person will feel/What do I think a Jewish person will think if I tell them this?” “Do I care what they feel or think? Why or why not?” “How would I feel/what would I think if someone felt this way or thought this way about me or an identity I value deeply?”

[tamamita]

Can I ask why people are pretending Jewish people aren’t native to the Levant? “Genocide is unforgivable, apartheid ethnostates shouldn’t exist, and you don’t get to kick people out of their homes, even if their distant ancestors kicked your distant ancestors out of their homes” is a fine statement on its own, and ignoring the truth or lying about it weakens the pro-Palestine argument. Like it or not, it’s not a case where a native population is being oppressed by foreigners- Jewish people are the First Nations of the area. This doesn’t mean even slightly that anything Israel is doing is acceptable, which is why I don’t understand why more people trying to liberate Palestine try and frame it as “foreigners oppressing natives”.

Despite the fact that it's been 2000 years since then, Jewish people have managed to form their own identity, culture and heritage in many other parts of their world which many people take great pride in, and subsequently renounced Zionism, focusing on the idea of Doikiyat (to strenghten Jewish community wherever they live). The Arabs and Jewish people have lived in the Holy Land for 1400 years and intermingled, so a bunch of people from Europe and America can't just suddenly have the right to return and evict people from their home and commit one of the greatest displacement of people in modern history by the right of some Whites, who didn't want the Jewish people in their lands. Second, the idea of a Jewish state is built on the notion of Zionism, which is a white supremarcist and imperialist ideology that calls for the degredation and forceful eviction of the Arabs for the settlement of the Jewish people. Palestinians aren't even calling for the expulsion of Israelis. What they want is that the Settler colonial state is dismantled and that their people are allowed to return as well with equal rights that the Israelis get to enjoy, but there will be no ethnostate. Zionism is a fascist ideology and no matter how much you wanna argue in bad or good faith, it is inhuman and the occupation is a form of genocide. Decolonization will be violent, and much of the Israelis will voluntarily leave, since they don't see Palestinians as humans, as was the case with the Pied-noirs after the Algerians took back their lands.

Second, Jewish people are not the first nation there, historically and biblically speaking.

[jewishvitya]

hi riki! this is a bizarre question ngl, but im wondering if you could please tell me about why you are anti-Zionist? Since i have FRESHLY (last month!! Woohoo!!) become bat mitzvah, and I’m not going to beit Sefer every week now, I’m starting to realize that what I was told about Israel and zionism miiiight be innacurate. Please feel free not to, but I would personally feel more comfortable hearing about Antizionism from somebody who is for sure not hiding any antisemitic biases. Thanks and I hope it’s not a bother!

Mazal tov!

I was debating if I should reply to this and how. You're only one year older than my son and I never considered talking about this with a kid other than my own children. But if you're online reading and looking up information about this, I'll just answer the way I would for anyone. Like I said, I don't mind explaining. But I don't have the energy to collect sources for you. I'll do that later if you'd like. For now it'll be a bit of a rant.

Basically, if you ask different people what zionism is, you'll get different answers. Some people say that zionism is just the acknowledgement of our connection to this land. That's not what I'm going against. I'm not denying that this is our ancestral homeland. I've never known a different home, I grew up near Hebron. Our history means everything to me. So maybe you could create some definition of zionism that I wouldn't be against. But then I'll be against the use of the word because in practice, politically, the movement has been colonialist. And that reality is more important to me. So when I say I'm antizionist, I'm not talking about whatever pretty idea someone might have, I'm talking about things that to me are very concrete.

Zionism uses whatever political terminology is useful to it at the time. Currently, it tries to paint itself as a sort of landback movement, placing us as the indigenous population of this land. This is a distraction. If you mean "indigenous" as "this is where we originated" - both us and Palestinians are indigenous, which makes this term pointless to this situation. If you mean "indigenous" as "a local population facing colonization" - they're indigenous and we're the colonizers. That's the more politically useful distinction.

And the thing is, zionists knew they were colonizers. Ben Gurion was welcomed by the local population and expressed hope that they're nomadic and could be persuaded to leave. Ze'ev Jabotinsky argued that no land has been colonized with the consent of its natives, so we should just take what we want like other occupying forces did. They knew what they were doing. At the time, there wasn't the broad political pushback against colonialism that you see today, so they didn't really hide it. They saw themselves as the colonizing force and the Palestinians as the natives and this distinction had them placing themselves above the Palestinians.

When I was in school, I was made to believe that Palestine was never truly a country and the population here was never a cohesive nation. You might see questions like "Who were the Palestinian prime ministers and presidents? What was the Palestinian coin? What Palestinian wars were there before the creation of Israel?"

These questions tell you nothing other than the fact that Palestine has been under foreign occupation for a very long time. They try to lead you to believe that Palestine and the Palestinian identity are fictional constructs designed to deny us our place in this land.

But Palestinians have their own dialect of Arabic. They have their own varieties of Middle Eastern foods. They have their own clothing, their own embroidery patterns, their own dances. They have a very rich culture that wasn't just made up from nothing within the last century. I still have to battle against cognitive dissonance every time I find something of the sort, because Palestinian culture goes against everything I was taught.

The truth is, the British had no right to occupy Palestine, and they had no right to offer it to us. If we pretend there was no population that was wronged when we took Israel, we can be "the good guys" with Palestinians being a sinister plot to ruin us. This turns normal families, normal people, into a conspiracy made to hurt us. We're not fighting a military force - every Palestinian person is a threat to our legitimacy. Israelis don't even really use the term "Palestinians" - they're just Arabs, their individual identity is stripped from them. We pretend that they belong to other countries around us.

Israeli propaganda will tell you that we only ever act in self defense. It's in the name of our military, it's called a defense force. Israel boasts that it has the only ethical military in the world. The only defensive one. But like I said, we define threats very broadly. And we whitewash a lot of history. I was taught in school all our fighting was defensive - and then I spoke to an elderly man and he said "of course we killed whole villages, it was war, that's what you do." Only as an adult I found out about things like the Sabra and Shatila massacre and our involvement in it.

For the existence of Israel as an ethnostate, every Palestinian is a threat. A lot of people are all in favor of Israel, but against the government actions of ethnic cleansing. The truth is, the ethnostate is not sustainable without the ethnic cleansing. You can't accept one and expect it not to lead to the other. An ethnostate is never a justified goal, and that's always been the goal of zionism as a practical movement.

And I know why this exists. We've had two millennia of persecution. Antisemitism is one of the oldest forms of bigotry. And we just experienced an attempt to industrially exterminate us, we lost millions, including from my own family. We want shelter and safety and the ability to defend ourselves. I just can't see that as justification for what we did and continue to do.

You can look up our human rights abuses, but personally, there were moments that hit me. When I saw a whole warehouse of mail intended to reach Gaza, mail that's been kept from them for years, including items like wheelchairs, in such bad conditions that some envelopes got moldy. I still think of the people who spent all that money to get a wheelchair and were prevented mobility because we decided to hold their mail.

I watched the biggest apartment building in Gaza collapse under our bombs and I cried thinking about the people inside, and about the potential survivors and everything they lost.

I watched our people beat up the pallbearers at the funeral of Shireen Abu-Akleh, a Palestinian reporter. They almost dropped the casket from all those beatings. They were no threat. They just carried her. There was no reason to hurt them.

On the news, after Shireen Abu-Akleh died, the description of the Palestinian response to her death was that they're "חוגגים על המוות." The literal translation is that they're celebrating over the death, but that's not what it means. The meaning is that they're exaggerating their pain and their grief. They're acting, pretending, milking the injustice of it for show. And that's a common Israeli narrative, that Palestinians make a big deal out of things and pretend to suffer more just to make us look bad. We've dehumanized them to the point where we don't believe their grief.

And before all of this, growing up, I saw what the "us vs them" mentality caused in children. I grew up in Kiryat Arba and the population there is very strongly zionist. It's a settlement. It's largely Dati Leumi (national religious? I'm not sure how to translate, dati means religious and leumi means national). Over there I saw children as young as six cheerfully talk about joining the military and killing Arabs. I saw a kid throwing chocolate past the electric fence separating us from them, and laughing when a small Palestinian child went looking for that chocolate, calling her a pig. I saw my high school classmates questioning if they should help the family of a six-months-old baby, first demanding to know if the sick infant is Arab.

The Israeli left has a bit of a slogan. הכיבוש משחית. The occupation corrupts. It means that being an oppressive force changes what we are. It ruins us. And I truly believe that. It taints so much about us and our culture, about our compassion and our ability to have solidarity with other humans. Many principles that kept us safe in diaspora are used now to harm gentiles living under our control, and Palestinians suffer most of all.

So these are the reasons I'm antizionist. I hate what we do to Palestinians. I hate what it does to us. And more fundamentally, I'm against colonialism.

[perfectlyvalid49]

Sorry for grossing you out but uh, I have a complex claim to a lot of religions and cultures because of how colonialism (arguably Israel is a settler colony state so uh… hmmm) has impacted me.

As you’ve ascertained (correctly) I’m a non-Jewish American, only by technicality, because I haven’t found a rabbi that will even support the fact that I’m gay and the “three asks” thing feels like a troll move which feels… homophobic???

I need you to seriously consider how my life has been negatively influenced (hence the circumcision poll) by a bastardized JEWISH practice, and what the fuck that means for my identity as it feels like fate to some degree and a bit offensive that you would yuck my ability to find yum in Yhwh or w/e because I’m… too much of a faggoy? Idk man… just asking questions. I’d love to clarify your response in a dm since its… a lot. Not meaning to offend just sick of being put in a box because my circumcision and mother aren’t “right” enough to be in the in club because Hekate or Satan or whatever swooped in and said “NOPE” 🙃

Cheers

Trying to understand Israel through the lens of settler colonialism is a failing proposition. Consider the following:

Jews are indigenous to Israel. We have a historical record that says they’re from there in both the Greek and Roman written record. Like there is as much if not more evidence of Jews in Israel in Roman writing as there is of Julius Caesar being a real person. We also have archaeological evidence. Israel is covered with digs that find evidence of Jewish life dating back 2,000-3,000 years. We also have genetic evidence. DNA studies have shown that even super white looking Ashkenazi Jews have significant portions of DNA that are most closely related to other groups from the southern Levant.

So to call Jews settlers either denies all that evidence, insists that indigenous people can be settlers on their own land, or posits that indigenous people can somehow lose their status as indigenous if you wait long enough. The first is anti-intellectual and antisemitic, the second is ridiculous and the third is a dangerous line of thinking for all indigenous people. How long before Native Americans no longer have a claim to their land? How long before Maori no longer have a claim? It’s not really a place we want to go.

As for colonial, the definition of a colony is “a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that country.” So which country controls Israel? I think we’ve seen over the last year that it’s not the US given the way Bibi has repeatedly blown off Biden, so who is it? Which country is sending settlers to control the area? Again, it’s not the US. While some American Jews make Aliyah every year, the vast majority of Jews in Israel are either from Europe or the Middle East. To be a colony, you have to be a colony of some other power. What is the other power here?

So we can see that Jews are neither settlers nor colonizers. But you know who did colonize the area? Arabs. Arabs are indigenous to the Arabian peninsula, not Israel. And in the 7th century, Arabs came from the Arabian peninsula into Israel (and other places), conquered the locals and did their best to eradicate their cultures, forced conversions to the conquering religion, and settled in the new lands while being under the political control of the far away Caliphate. Sounds like settler colonialism to me. So if we must understand someone in the area as colonial (and I still don’t think it’s the best way to look at things, but if you do) then it’s the people that Palestinians are descended from.

Having said all that, just because colonialism has impacted you, it doesn’t mean you have a complex claim to Judaism. Here are ways you can have a complex claim to Judaism: 1) your father is Jewish and your mother is not, 2) you have Jewish ancestors who were forced to convert and you are now trying to reconnect with the religion that was taken from them. I don’t know your history, so it’s possible that one of those is true. But if you have no Jewish ancestry, then your claim is not complex, it’s non-existent, and if you do have Jewish ancestry but your ancestors willingly left the tribe, then you don’t really have much of a claim either. That doesn’t mean you can’t convert, but given that you seem to think you have claims on other aspects of Judaism as a non-Jew, my gut reaction is to be very doubtful toward your claim on Judaism in general.

If you can’t find a rabbi to support your conversion because you’re gay, you’re looking in the wrong places. The senior rabbi at my synagogue is gay, and we have several queer families as part of the congregation. There are literal signs on the door to the main office that say Trans and Queer Jews welcome here. This doesn’t mean that all congregations are welcoming, but lots are.

The three asks thing is a metaphor that some rabbis take literally. Converting to Judaism is a big decision. The three asks are to make sure that you’ve really thought about it and are really sure – that you’re taking it seriously and thought through all the consequences. If that feels like trolling to you, then maybe Judaism isn’t a good fit. Honestly, from my interactions with you this week, I would bet that the rabbis you’ve met with haven’t said no because you’re gay, they’ve said no because you don’t seem super interested in taking on Jewishness, you just want to take from it instead.

I don’t know what happened with your circumcision. If it went wrong and it was done by a mohel then you can feel angry toward the Jewish people I guess, but I would want to know why your parents had a bris for you if they weren’t planning on raising you Jewish. If you were just circumcised as a medical procedure, as many American babies are, then you may have trauma related to it, but you don’t need to be taking it out on the Jewish people, which is exactly what that poll was doing.

Don’t write down those four letters. Don’t try to pronounce them either. We have asked, repeatedly that people not do that, and once again, the fact that you are is super disrespectful to Jewish people. Write G-d, or God if you must, or even Hashem (I don't think goyim should, but it's better than what you did), but not those four letters. It’s not yucking your yum. You are allowed to enjoy what you want. But what you are doing here is the equivalent of coming into my house and saying that because my dinner looks delicious you can just reach onto my plate with your bare hand, scoop up some of what I’m eating, take a bite and throw the rest back. It’s disrespectful and offensive. I am not objecting to your joy, I’m objecting to your lack of respect to my culture.

Being Jewish is about more than just being circumcised and having the “right” mother. There is a culture here that you need to understand. If you are raised in it, then you get to join the club that way. If you’re not, then you can put in the work to learn it and learn to be respectful of it and join the club that way. So far, you haven’t been able to find a rabbi that thinks you’re willing to do that work, and from what I’ve seen, I’m willing to agree.

[fairuzfan]

academia is often used as the forefront of much of the violence inflicted on palestinians — for example in the library of congress, there is a collection called "the american colony of jerusalem" with racist photography and items that help visually perpetuate the "people without a land, land without a people" part of herzel's ideology, which itself is the forefront of much of zionist ideology. pointing out the systematic harm in academia is often considered "irrelevant" by zionists.... denies the origins of zionism as a political and academic ideology with physical consequences.

much of palestinian history throughout the last century has to do with erasure and silencing — that is how we got to this point. when i say no one listened to palestinians i mean NO ONE listened. they were ignored. all their demands were unreasonable. instead they get blamed for much of the world's unwillingness to listen. even my family members — i have stories of their work in academic resistance since '48. and some of them are well known contributions throughout euro-american and swana society. yet they're still ignored because of their palestinian origin.

"if you were just more reasonable" or "if you took the time to listen with compassion" or "you have to appeal to people's sense of reason" ignores the fact of the matter — this ideology's founding principals were built on "a people without a land for a land without a people." you cannot and should not ignore that. in order to complete the zionist ideology, you must remove the native population. therefore any subscribers to the idea of zionism are violent, whether they intend it or not.

and if it were true, that academia were irrelevant.... then that doesn't explain the systematic torture and imprisonment of writers and scholars, the exile of my family members who were journalists and activists, the captivity of friends for no other reason than they were deemed a threat by some list or the other.

oftentimes zionists, or zionist sympathizers, ignore our (diaspora's) material ties to the occupation and dismiss us as being "disconnected" from the "situation" in Palestine and "misunderstanding" or "misconstruing" israeli society. what am i misunderstanding exactly? that the origins of this "country" relies on violent displacement and exile? that for the past 75 years, that violence has not stopped once? that no matter what we say about the violence of zionism as an intrinsic aspect, it takes a secondary seat to the imagined realities of zionism?

therefore, anti-zionism is the logical conclusion for valuing palestinian lives. but what are the arguments against anti-zionism? that arab governments expelled jews from SWANA? do you think that's a result of anti-zionism? then you must not understand that palestinians are often treated poorly by the same governments that claim to have done this in the name of "anti-zionism," living in poverty in refugee camps, tortured and arrested, even in some cases exiled by governments. this also neglects to mention zionist collaboration with said governments to exile the jews of their lands.

so then, what?

if anti-zionism is the rejection of the settler colonial state of israel, which you must admit to be truly anti-zionist, then it is an exclamation of palestinian sovereignty and identity. so when you say anti-zionism and antisemitism are linked.... do you realize what you are implying? do you realize that zionism, the root cause of palestinian suffering, is the reason for our expulsion and displacement? so then when you write academic thinkpieces about the "complexity" of zionism, do you realize the harm you're doing? do you realize that this, in fact, is not a new or useful argument? that i've seen iterations of it for years and years? that at the core, the zionist ideology relies on this muddying of the waters for you to not do anything?

to be frank, your constant reminding of the complexity of zionism when people in palestine are suffering from the material effects of it only scream, to me, utter contempt and selfishness. zionism is violence, to me and my family. it is violence for every palestinian in this world. you must admit that to be a sincere advocate for palestinians, otherwise your words ring hollow. the present reality outweighs any possibilities.

[renegade-hierophant]

Before the British mandate there was no Palestine. The Ottomans ruled the territory split between various vilayets, sanjaks, or mutasarrifates, whether governed from Damascus, Beirut, Aleppo, or Jerusalem. The land as a whole was just thought of as southern Syria. Nobody used the word Palestine except Europeans, and during the British mandate the natives considered it a foreign word.

If Israel had lost in 1948 there wouldn't have ever been a Palestine. Syrians, Jordanians, and Egyptians would split it amongst themselves, and the Palestinian identity would've never even developed.

If a civil war broke out like in Syria now, hundreds of thousands of people could die and nobody in the West would care enough to protest or raise their voice, because Arabs killing Arabs is just fine. But if the Jews do it even in self-defense...

[lesbiskammerat]

A Zionist argument you might hear is that the Palestinian identity was only constructed very recently, either during the establishment of Israel or just prior, and that for this reason they're really just generic Arabs who could just move to other Arab countries. Palestinian historians have responded to this claim by looking for earlier signs of identification with Palestine, but regardless of how far back you can find these, it doesn't really matter when it comes to the question of what Israel is and what it's doing.

The issue of settler colonialism isn't about which people "belong" in a certain place or whether their people is "ancient" enough or have some "connection to the land" that gives them a right to live there. Settler colonialism means displacement and violence enacted on a group of people, and whether they previously identified as a singular people or many, they now share that common experience of being colonised. The category of "indigenous" or "native" is one that's constructed in the process of colonisation, not a natural category that someone belongs to by virtue of their ancient bloodline.

Even if people only began to identify as Palestinian in response to Israeli colonisation (which is not true, to be clear) it would not matter. Israel is enacting completely unjustified violence on innocent people. It has been displacing them since its inception (continuing the policy of the British colonial government which favoured European Jewish settlers and sold them land that was already inhabited) and is continuing to do so today, particularly in the West Bank. This isn't even getting into the treatment of those who live within the official borders of Israel.

The name for this is settler colonialism. It's completely unjustified, as every case of settler colonialism is, and it does not change character because of the historical identities of the colonisers or the colonised. Plenty of Jewish people have connections to the land, either recent or ancient, but it does not give them a "right" to engage in colonialism. Nobody "belongs" anywhere; people should be able to move and live where they want, but this does not justify the continuous, violent displacement of innocent people.

The only way to stop this violence is the dismantling of Israel and the creation of an independent, secular Palestine, with reparations for the displaced Palestinians, and equal political status for all, regardless of religion or ethnicity.

[ace-hell]

JUST WITNESSED THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD

This is amazing lol. If the land name was changed by colonizers then that means its the native name and a real identity 🤔💀

[ace-hell]

ARABIC IS LITERALLY A COLONIZERS LANGUAGE??? ARABIC NAMES ARE COLONIZED NAMES

ARABIC IS NOT NATIVE TO THE LAND

LIKE ENGLISH ISN'T NATIVE TO NORTH AMERICA AND AUSTRALIA

ARAMAIC AND HEBREW IS NATIVE LANGUAGE

MODERN HEBREW IS JUST MODERN ARAMAIC

THE NAMES ARE NATIVE STOP PUSHING COLONIZERS AGENDA JUST BC THESE COLONIZERS ARE NOT WHITE

ARABIC IDENTITY IS NOT NATIVE TO CANAAN STOP FORCING IT

ARAB IDENTITY IS A COLONIZERS IDENTITY

ARAB IDENTITY IS NATIVE TO ARABIA PENINSULA AKA SAUDI ARABIA THEY LITERALLY FUCKING COLONIZED THE WHOLE OF MENA STOP REWRITING HISTORY

IF ARAB IDENTITY IS NATIVE TO ISRAEL BC "THEIR GRANDMA WAS BORN THERE" THEN WHITE AMERICANS ARE ALSO NATIVE BC THEY HAVE BEEN LIVING THERE FOR THE PAST 500 YEARS. If you disagree with americans being native then you should appose arab colonialsm, a lot of native groups in the whole of MENA are suffering from people arabizing them STOP. IT.

JUST LEARN JTS NOT THAT FUFKING HARD

Here's a map of the original names of Palestinian cities before its colonization.

Why does it matter to know this? Because changing the names as part of colonialism is not new in history.

Learning about the history of colonialism and imperialism is important. When we say educate yourself on these matters, it's because you need to learn to recognize patterns and prevent them from reoccurring.

The idea of the West being civilized is all a sham. The idea of Arabs being terrorists is a mere lie similar to the endless lies that have been told about Native Americans and many other indigenous groups.

If you're going to use the word 'terrorist', it's about time you use it on the real enemy.

Free Palestine.

[ayin-me-yesh]

I'm not going to reblog the post, but I am once again going to fight people who use the Roman period as the evidence that all Jews, in modern times, are colonised people and Indigenous to Palestine

like, ok... Jews established kingdoms in Palestine as far back as the Bronze Age. the kingdom of Judah was then crushed by the Neo-Babylonian Exile, and many Jews were brought eastward in the Babylonian exile.

the conquest of Alexander the Great allowed a new kingdom, of Judea, to be established with its capital in Jerusalem. but not all Jews returned from the east, and Jews under Hellenistic rule also spread westward into Hellenized Egypt and northward into the Balkans. this was the situation when Rome conquered the Judean kingdom.

during the Roman period, Jews spread further into North Africa and Europe, establishing communities throughout the Roman Empire. when Judea was eventually crushed by the Romans and its citizens expelled, there was already an extant international Jewish community. the eastern community I mentioned from the Babylonian captivity had already existed for 500 years.

when Jews were expelled from Judea, many also eventually returned. a major community was almost immediately established in Tiberias, for instance. Jews would even resettle in Jerusalem. the Jerusalem Talmud was compiled a couple hundred years after the Roman expulsion.

so we start seeing these unique and widespread Jewish communities with their own minhagim (customs) and centuries to eventually millennia-long histories in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Jews were part of established pan-ethnic groups in these regions, so, for instance, there are Amazigh Jews, Arab Jews, Persian Jews, Russian Jews, French Jews, etc.

some of these communities in Africa and Asia would also go on to be colonised by European powers, such as France and the UK. colonisers like the French made distinctions between French Jews and native North African Jews.

Jews largely share common origins from the Near East, and there were Jewish kingdoms in Palestine whose histories are part of our religious identities, but we do not belong exclusively or even generally in Palestine more than wherever we found ourselves in the world. some of us are the colonised, but generally the displaced colonised of other parts of West or Central Asia or North Africa. others of us have been colonisers in those very same regions or elsewhere.

TL;DR Jews are diverse. we have a long history and geographically vast history that encompasses but is also much more than the Biblical narrative.

"Indigenous" in a political sense is not just being from somewhere, but having a relationship with a colonising power. and with that being said, Palestinians, the people being colonised by Israel, are Indigenous to Palestine.

[weemietime]

Happy Hanukkah! Hope you're doing well

Would you say being a zionist or supporting zionism is "picking a side" in the war? Sorry if it's a silly question, but I've noticed a lot of Palestinian or people related to palestinians on this site are understandably antizionist, even when they aren't antisemitic. I've been told I'm being somewhat hypocritical by claiming to be neutral and supporting zionism(which btw i only meant in a non-extremist way) . So I just wanna clear it up, bc I am against Israel's actions too.

I would say it's complicated. Zionism itself must be defined before you can say you do or do not agree with that term as applied to you. So, in general, Zionism is very broad. Quite simply it boils down to the recognition of Jews as the indigenous people of Israel and the right of said people to self-determine in their communities within their native land.

With regard to the war, I actually do not view Zionism as taking a side for or against Palestinian self-determination, freedom and dignity. I am a Zionist because I am a Jew, a part of the indigenous tribe of people connected for thousands of years to this land and this place.

But I acknowledge that whilst Palestinians are a recent identity and whilst they didn't undergo ethnogenesis in Israel, they've lived there for a long time and it's silly to expect that they wouldn't consider it their homeland as well. And I support that, I think that's OK -- IF it's not being levied as a supercessionist attempt to claim Arabs are the real indigenous peoples of Israel and Jews are just European invaders.

But Palestinians are our neighbors, for better and for worse. And we must find a way to coexist and live in peace, because we want an ally by our side, not an enemy at the gates. And unfortunately, our conduct has been veering hard from the precepts that tie our people together since we accepted the Torah at Sinai.

Yes, "El" was originally the "God of Banners." There is a lot of rhetoric in the Torah that approves of "crushing your enemies." But, as a people, as we moved toward Rabbinic Judaism, we must follow the lead of our forefathers and shed the harmful impetus of vengeance. There are also many verses in the Torah that promote compassion and good-will even toward an enemy.

I don't view Palestinians as my enemy. I view them as my neighbors. And I want to be a good citizen and advocate for prosperity and wellbeing for all who live in and around Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, and indeed in every place on Earth.

There is plenty of room within the confines of Zionism to condemn the actions of the Israeli government. Zionism does not mean that we unconditionally support the government. Zionism is about all of us Jews, as a whole entire people. So bad actors like Netanyahu are fundamentally acting against the interests of Zionists and Jews everywhere by causing harm and suffering where it is not warranted.

And that, along with forced military conscription in general, is a searing wound that has been inflicted on us and continues to be inflicted. And we are feeling those reverberations. It's spiritually harmful. (And chag sameach to you and yours!!! Happy Honk!)

[psychotrenny]

Self-Indigenisation is something that I brought up on an earlier post and I think it’s something more people should be aware of. It describes the way that Settler populations will claim Indigenous identities for themselves in order to justify their presence on the land and mistreatment of actually Indigenous populations. This can include using tenuous or even outright fabricated Lineal connections to indigenous peoples in order to claim membership to a group they have no social or cultural ties to. The most well-known example in North America are USAmericans who claim that their grandmother was a “Cherokee Princess” or something of the like in an attempt to buttress their identity as being in some way more impressive or “authentic”. Another example I’ve read about is White Quebecois (who at most might have a very distant indigenous ancestor, and sometimes not even then) with no connection to Indigenous communities claiming indigenous identity in order to launch lawsuits over land rights, sometimes even to the direct detriment of actually indigenous communities. Self-Indigenisation can also include claims that a particular settler population itself has some deep enough connection to the land that it can be considered indigenous. In South East Australia in the 1930s you had locally born Settlers explicitly assert themselves as the original inhabitants of the land and the actual indigenous peoples as nothing more than peripheral transients. The idea of US Appalachian settler populations being some sort of indigenous people has become a recurring one in scholarship and activism in the region and serves as way to assert the rightfulness of their ownership of the land even in a progressive and supposedly anti-colonial context. I haven’t personally read it myself but apparently the book Distorted Descent by Darryl Leroux does a pretty good job of exploring Self-Indigenisation in contemporary Canada.

While most of the literature on the subject I could find focused on North America*, this process if far from unique to that region. Indeed, Self-Indigenisation is one of the major rhetorical strategies used to justify the continued existence of Israel especially in more “progressive” spaces. Like hell even just being active on tumblr recently is going to expose you to numerous Zionist claiming that the Israelis are the true natives of Palestine and that the Palestinian Arabs are merely “squatters”. “Zionism means Landback” and other such nonsense. To be clear there is very much an indigenous Jewish population in Palestine, the “Old Yishuv” Shepardim, but the Settlers who established the state of Israel are very not much it not it no matter how much they try and construct such an identity (such as by suppressing traditionally spoken Jewish languages like Yiddish and replacing them with a reconstructed for of Hebrew) or repute the identity of indigenous Arabs. Essentially self-indigenisation is an especially heinous tool that Settler populations use to evict indigenous peoples on a spiritual level in order to maintain their physical displacement. Such rhetoric must be resisted and discredited as much as possible lest it’s able to have its intended effect

*I suppose it makes sense given that I was only looking at English-language literature and that region is home to the most populous of Anglo settler states

[girlactionfigure]

zionistscientist

If you like facts and evidence you should follow @zionistscientist for more posts like this. This is a brand new page, so please consider supporting by following/engaging/sharing this post and others.  ——— We have focused a lot on DNA in previous posts, but as you can see, DNA actually has nothing to do with indigeneity, and blood quantum is not, nor should be part of the conversation.  The definition of indigenous peoples typically refers to groups with a deep historical connection to a specific territory PRIOR to colonization or outside influence, and where groups set up their cultural practices.  Being Arab or Muslim—which were both set up in what is present-day Saudi Arabia and brought over to the Levant— in the land of Israel (or anywhere in the Levant) IS colonization, not indigeneity.  Arabic is the language of the colonizers. Islam is the religion of the colonizers.  Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish people, the Jewish religion, the Hebrew language.  Before anyone tries to make an argument that Palestinians are distinct people from other Arabs (they aren’t) because they have their own dialect or regional specifics of their culture, consider this: People living in the US from north, south, east, and west have different accents/dialects, eat different regional foods, and have different cultures, but still belong to the same group. Regional differences are natural, all Arab groups differ in that way.  Indigenous refers to where a distinct group established their identity as a people, whereas native are those with longstanding presence but do not have ancestral ties to the land. They are not the same.  Jews are the indigenous people of Israel-Palestine. Not Palestinians. It does not mean Palestinians can’t live in the land too (if they can compromise and share,) but a step in the direction towards peace is acknowledging the truth.  עם ישראל חי