#jews are native to those lands

[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?”

[xclowniex]

I got this comment on one of my other posts where I talk about how antizionists who claim they want to deradicalize zionists fail to do so and with their current approach are far more likely to "radicalize" jews.

Whilst this type of set up for a post usually leads into something negative, the comment isn't and I agree with it, I just wanna turn the idea I had of a response into its own post lol

On its own, it is not a radical idea, however it is radical in the sense of it forces a lot of western leftists to either reevaluate their ideas surronding colonialism, indigenousness, peace and justice, or ignore any opportunities of reflection and be bigoted. And obviously one is a lot easier than the other.

Jews and Palestinians don't fall into the classic colonizers vs. colonized categories as well, our history is different than in the west. Palestinians were not originally arab and were arabinzed through consensual and non-consensual means, and jews have been forcibly removed from the region from multiple groups. It does not play into the dichotomy of "white people came to the land, were violent and gained control and oppressed the native population" which is the overly simplified version of what has happened in the majority of western countries.

In the west, to achieve true peace and justice, you have to hand over control either fully or in part to indigenous folk. But because jews and Palestinians don't fall into western understanding of colonization, peace and justice doesn't look like that. It looks like coexistence with both groups holding power and self determination simultaneously.

Then you have the western view of race also in play. Jews don't fall into the western view of race and ethnicity. Because of multiple exoduses, jews come in a wide range of colors. We aren't just white or brown. Jew as an ethnicity comes from the middle east and is not a European ethnicity. Then wherever jews ended up after being forced out of the land complicates things. If they ended up in Africa, you get black jews like those from Beta Israel (in Ethiopia), if they ended up in other parts of the middle east you get Mizrahi jews (some people consider jews from beta Israel also Mizrahi and some don't, as I am not from beta Israel it is not a conversation I need to be a part of). You also have Sephardic jews, and ofc Ashkenazi jews. You have jews from all parts of Asia. Then you have mixed race/interfaith relationships too, which is how you get black folk in the US who are Ashkenazi jewish or Māori who are Ashkenazi like Taika Waititi.

And the whole forcing western ideals surrounding race, history, etc, onto non western countries, is problematic.

Whilst I'm definitely not the first to call it this in this sense, it is western leftism. It may even fall under white leftism.

And to those in which their belief system is entrenched in western and/or white leftism, the idea that jews don't fall into it, is radical to them.

(Tagging the person who made the addition is screenshotted as I feel weird if I don't @boreal-sea

[jewish-sideblog]

I think it's very funny when people on tumblr tell me that "decolonisation is not a metaphor". Because, uh, yeah. I know that. My ancestors were colonised and stripped of our native lands, forced to assimilate and lose our culture, forced to convert and lose our religion. Every day I work to undo that damage. Every day I study Hebrew because my family could not do so safely under colonialism. Every day I pray to a G-d that my people could not safely worship under colonialism. Every day I study and embrace ancient Jewish ways of learning, thinking and being that were lost because of colonialism. I share this knowledge with my family, with my friends, and with my community. As an academic, I am actively involved in attempting to unmake the violent and continued coloniality of my people's homeland, hoping to undo the damage caused by Brits, Romans and Turks. I do that for the benefit of native peoples in the land-- all of them. Jews, Arabs, Druze, Samaritans and Bedu all deserve equality and peace. Decolonization isn't a metaphor to me. It's a constant way of life.

And what are you, non-indigenous American goy on tumblr, doing for your decolonization? Are you learning the Cherokee language? Sioux? Muscogee? Do you spend your spare time meeting with the indigenous tribes local to your area? Do you push your representatives to help those tribes have greater access to land, healthcare, and autonomy? Can you even list the names of the native peoples whose land you walk on without looking them up?

Or does your "decolonisation" look like an occasional land acknowledgement, reblogging lip-service posts about the plights of indigenous communities, and using your political views to justify attacking Jews on the internet? 'Cause patting yourself on the back for that sure looks like a metaphor to me.

[matan4il]

Have you noticed how almost everything that the anti-Israel crowd accuses people who simply recognize Israel's right to exist of, is (in additional to usually being false) stuff they're guilty of themselves?

"You support ethnic cleansing!"

What do you think it means, when you chant the English translation of "From water to water, Palestine will be Arab"?

"You support an ethno-state!"

Do you call for the destruction of every single nation state, such as Germany, Japan, France, and so on? No? Then so do you. Have you called for the establishment of a Palestinian state? Then, so do you. Between Hamas ruling Gaza and being genocidal when it comes to Jews, and Mahmoud Abbas (president of the Palestinian Authority) stating no Israelis will be allowed in the State of Palestine (and by "Israelis" we all know he doesn't mean the Arab citizens of Israel, he's talking about Jews) that's going to be an ethno-state, too. Oh, you meant a "pure" ethno-state. Those don't exist in today's reality, and Israel, with 27% of its citizens being non-Jews, is no exception.

"Oct 7 didn't happen in a vacuum, you're ignoring the context of the past 75 years!"

You are ignoring big chunks of anti-Jewish violence during these 75 years, you're ignoring the expulsion of almost 900,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, you're ignoring the anti-Jewish violence and persecution that preceded the establishment of the Land of Israel, and you're ignoring all 3,500 years (at least) of Jewish existence in and connection to our ancestral homeland, Israel.

"You support collective punishment!"

The same way you do, when you chant, "When people are occupied, resistance is justified"? Because that's what it means, that for the sin of Israel supposedly being a colonial state (a false claim, since Jews are native to Israel), you're justifying raping 13 year old girls, shooting them in the head, murdering Holocaust survivors, burning babies alive... what's that if not supporting collective punishment? (that's before we get into the fact that Israel not surrendering in a war started by Hamas is NOT collective punishment, or else we would have to define the allies not surrendering to the Nazis in WWII as collective punishment of the Germans)

"You suppor apartheid!"

All Israeli citizens have the same civil rights. Apartheid in South Africa was a system where citizens of the country had their rights limited based on skin color/ancestry. The issue in South Africa wasn't that racism existed (IDK a single country where racism doesn't), it's that it was codified into law, and used against the rights of that country's own citizens. Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs have the same rights. Non-Israeli Palestinians not having the same rights as Israelis, including as Israeli Arabs, is the same as French Canadians not having the same rights in the US as French Americans. It is NOT proof the US is applying a system of apartheid unto French people. And if it were, then I have news for you, every country applies different rights to citizens vs not citizens, so every country would be an apartheid state by this criterion. Which would make the word meaningless, and it would diminish the suffering of non-whites under South Africa's apartheid (as some young black South Africans who have actually been to Israel now point out). Meanwhile, I'll point back up to where Mahmoud Abbas said no Israelis (i.e Jews) will be allowed in Palestine, and that under the Palestinian Authority, a Palestinian can be jailed or executed for selling land to Jews, which means the PA demolishes the right to property (of Jews to own it, and of the PA's Palestinian citizens to sell it as they see fit) based solely on the ancestry of the buyer... And you support the PA, right?

"You deny the Nakba!"

I had never encountered any Israeli denying that roughly 850,000 Arabs fled Israel due to the War of Independence. Pointing out that the Arabs are the ones who started that war isn't the same as denying it happened. Meanwhile, the people who make this accusation, largely deny the expulsion of the Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, deny the suffering, discrimination, expulsions and massacres Jews had endured for centuries under Arab and Muslim regimes, and deny the atrocities of Oct 7.

"You support colonialism!"

Say the people who deny the native rights of the Jews, who act as if these rights are limited by time (as if such a limitation benefits anyone other than actual colonizers), who ignore the fact that Palestinians wouldn't exist here without Arab colonialism, or who wish to confer a native status unto them by virtue of... being settler colonialists for a "long time" (to be clear, the way the UN's definition of a Palestinian refugee works, it only requires a person to have been an Arab* settler colonialist in Israel during the 2 years prior to the founding of the Israeli state, to be recognized as a Palestinian. To become a US citizen, in addition to other requirements, you have to live in the US for at least 5 years, 3 if married to an American citizen. That means in June of 1946, it was easier to become a Palestinian "native" in the eyes of the UN, than an American citizen). Don't get me wrong, Palestinians have a right to live in the place where they were born. I can both recognize that they're here due to Arab colonialism, AND be okay with them living here. Just like I can recognize that no Americans today deserve to be displaced, even though the majority of them are there thanks to colonialism. And I don't have to pretend like Americans of European descent have suddenly become native (something that if I did, would probably hurt actual Native Americans), in order to recognize their right to live where they were born. It's just ironic that if we took the logic of the anti-Israel crowd when it comes to native Jews, and applied it to all native peoples, this would harm the natives, erase their rights, recognize their colonizers as natives, and generally help colonialism.

There's probably more, but I think this is demonstrative enough.

* Technically, the UN didn't specify ancestry. As an idea, you could be Arab, Jewish, a Polish Catholic priest living in a convent in the Land of Israel from Jun '46 to May '48, and you'd be recognized as a Palestinian by the UN, but in reality this definition ended up favoring all non-Jewish colonizers of the land. In 1952, Israel said, "It's okay, we'll take care of the Jewish refugees displaced by the War of Independence. No need for the UN to do so. This is what we set up a Jewish state for." This is in addition to Israel taking care of the Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries, and Jewish Holocaust survivors. And for Israel's show of responsibility, the now-Israeli Jewish refugees have been punished. They don't get recognized as existing, as having been displaced by, and having suffered due to the war the Arabs started in the Land of Israel against its Jewish communities. "Palestinian" refers to non-Jews only from the second The British Mandate in Palestine's Jews became Israeli Jews, but that doesn't stop the anti-Israel crowd from falsely claiming there are Palestinian Jews today... even though since May of 1948, there aren't, and before that, those Palestinian Jews were British subjects, not the citizens of an Arab independent state called Palestine (something that has never historically existed). Thanks to the exclusion in practice of Jews from the definition of Palestinian refugee, the UN agency for taking care of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA became a tool of spreading anti-Jewish hate.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[redditantisemitism]

Love the person who said Henry Ford's The International Jew was "real" antisemitism unlike the talking points coming from Hamasniks, because I've READ excerpts from The International Jew and uh...

Ford: "This propaganda of pogroms... thousands upon thousands of Jews killed... amounts to nothing except as it illustrates the gullibility of the Press... No one believes this propaganda and governments regularly disprove it."  Where have I heard this recently??? 🤔 Ford: "The Zionist propaganda has always been accepted on the assumption that Palestine is the Jews’ land and that they only need help to go back. It is an historical and political fact that Palestine has not been the Jews’ land for more than 2,000 years... Yet, as the result of a war bargain, it is handed over to them as regardless of the native inhabitants as if Belgium had been handed over to Mexico. Many of the natives are Semites, like the Jews, but they do not want the Jews among them. That is a strange fact for those who use the term “anti-Semitism”; why do real Semites also dislike the Jews? Surely Semites are not victims of “anti-Semitism.”

Ford: "Take anti-Semitism. That is a label which the Jews have industriously pasted up everywhere. If ever it was an effective label its uses are over now. It doesn’t mean anything. Anti-Semitism does not exist, since the thing so named is found among the Semites, too. Semites cannot be anti-Semitic."

And this??? 🤔🤔

Ford: "It is worth while observing the contrasts and similarities between the Gentile and Jewish reaction to this alleged movement to establish a Jewish imperialism over the world. Jewish publicists first deny it without qualification. It is all false, all a lie, all hatched up by enemies of the Jews in order to stir up hatred and murder." And this??? 🤔🤔🤔

Ford: "Anyone who essays to discuss the Jewish Question in the United States or anywhere else must be fully prepared to be regarded as an Anti-Semite, in high-brow language, or in low-brow language, a Jew-baiter... Anti-Semitism is a term which is bandied about too loosely. It ought to be reserved to denote the real anti-Jewish temper of violent prejudice. If used indiscriminately about all who attempt to discuss Jewish characteristics and Jewish world-power, it may in time arrive at the estate of respectability and honor... "

And this??? 🤔🤔🤔🤔

"Henry Ford's work is REAL antisemitism" - like yeah it is, but then why you sound just like him??????

Gasp. You’re telling me antisemitism didn’t begin and end with the shoah???? Wild

[gothhabiba]

For the Zionist movement going as far back as the early 20th century, the construction of a food culture mirrored that of a nation. It was meant to breathe into the Zionist identity in Palestine a sense of historical connection to the land.

In an effort to establish themselves as the "natives", European Jewish settlers adopted the cultural characteristics and customs of Palestine’s local population.

[...] [B]eginning in the 1920s, Jewish settlers embraced the culinary symbols and practices of the native Palestinians. The list was extensive, from Sabra (from the Arabic sabr, prickly pear, appropriated to mean the "new Jew" in Palestine) to Jaffa oranges, all the way to falafel, tahini and hummus. All are representative of the Palestinian production cycle, life and culture. 

Unlike European Zionists, Palestinians could anchor their national identity in an existing society that, among other things, had its own cuisine and was deeply entwined with the region’s culture and history. 

That provided Zionism with a set of native recipes - literally - to facilitate the construction of an "indigenous identity" for European Jews with varied cultural backgrounds, none of which organically linked to the region. 

A settler-colonial endeavour, the Zionist notion of "nativisation" inevitably changed from adopting the local culture, including the food, to claiming it as its own. 

In the first Zionist cookbooks from the 1930s onwards, Palestinian dishes were referred to as "Israeli". When the evidence was lacking, as always is, they were attributed to Mizrahi Jews who arrived in the Zionist state from Arab countries.   

To establish historical legitimacy, some of the culinary appropriation was justified as another "return". The return this time is not only to the so-called ancestral land of Eretz Yisrael after two millennia of exile, but to the ancient Jewish/Biblical customs that Palestinian Arabs have preserved since the 6th century. 

For instance, hummus, goes the claim, was an ancient Biblical dish and has roots in the Biblical words hamits and himtsa (chickpeas). The words, however, are likely a reference to a blend of fermented chickpeas used as animal fodder in ancient Canaan.    

Moving from adopting the local culture to appropriating it could not have been done without the denial of the culture’s originators.

Native Palestinians were erased both physically and symbolically from the Jewish state’s collective memory and public spaces.

Those who resisted the erasure and remained in their land now face dispersion and control. 

As such, the acknowledgement of a rooted Palestinian culture, let alone admitting that Zionism needed that culture to build a separate political entity and identity in Palestine, is threatening to Israel’s assumed historical entitlement and claims of indigeneity.

That dynamic has also created a painful paradox where the Zionist superior and racist attitude towards Palestinians had to go hand in hand with the adoption of their "inferior" culture, including their local cuisine.  

— Emad Moussa, "The politics of hummus: Israel's search for cultural identity," 2023.

[tikkunolamresistance]

the concept of an ancestral homeland is not inherently nationalist and is the foundation of land back initiatives around the world. indigenous groups who have maintained a cultural identity and connection to their ancestral homelands deserve to be able to live and have self determination there. this doesn’t mean that the people living on those lands now don’t have a connection or a right to live in freedom either, simply that various indigenous groups have been forced into diaspora and should be allowed to return

agreed. anti indigenous rhetoric has steeped so deeply into peoples perceptions of zionism that they aren’t seeing the danger and hypocrisy of these beliefs.

there is something to be gained by denying jews are indigenous to our homeland, the levant: a countdown timer until other native groups are denied the same.

personally i don’t view that as a gain for anyone else other than extremists like islamists and white supremacists, who i’m sure would love to be able to say indigenous groups lose claims to self determination because an arbitrary amount of time has past since the natives controlled the land.

[slyandthefamilybook]

the whole "Israelis steal Arab culture" thing has many prongs and they're all fucking stupid

1. The idea that people will steal native culture to make themselves seem more indigenous or "ethnic" isn't how colonization works, and certainly not how European colonization has worked. The British didn't come to Turtle Island and start naming themselves Black Elk or Lone Horn; they started naming the indigenous people Joseph and Abraham. Colonizers see the culture of the colonized as inferior and dirty. They try to destroy it, not adopt it

2. Borders weren't always where they are now. A dish could've been created in what is now Lebanon but would be today considered an Italian dish because it was invented by a Roman. People move around, irrespective of borders, and they take their culture with them

3. When you see Jews eating what looks like Arab food, or singing what sounds like Arab-style songs, it's because they're Mizrahim—refugees from Arab countries. In many cases their families lived in those countries for centuries. Over time, they started to assimilate and adopt the culture of the place they lived in, and molded it to fit their Judaism. That's how cultural exchange works and it's a normal thing. It's the same reason we have Yiddish, which is a mix of Hebrew and German. If you're gonna call Israelis eating shakshuka and falafel cultural appropriation you have to say the same about schnitzel and borscht

4. Getting mad at Jews for "stealing" Arab culture is wild when you consider the number of cultures that Arab imperialism has absorbed, destroyed, or is in the process of destroying

5. Maybe Middle Eastern Jews would've had more time to formulate their own unique culture if people hadn't been colonizing our land every 5 minutes

[weemietime]

1. there's no such thing as a soul and 2. why does israel specifically need to be where it is now? israel has not even existed for a century. many different people have inhabited the land for thousands of years, mostly arab. is the only argument for the current geographic location of israel a religious argument? why can't it be anywhere else? if it's not a religious argument, why is the land so important if the it was jewish land thousands of years ago? is america justified in its existence despite having killed dozens of millions of native americans? WHY CANT ISRAEL ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD? WHY IS ISRAEL EXPANDING INTO LEBANON AND WHY IS IT BUILT UPON THE EXPULSION OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PALESTINIANS? Religious arguments should not be taken seriously in the current day. The only other argument i've heard from zionists is one of racial superiority. Zionism boils down to white supremacy and Judaism/Jewish people are completely separate from that. The original zionists claimed to be secular marxists. How can you reconcile these inconsistencies and expect people to not think you're genocidal???

Good l-rd, the Kremlin-Hamas propaganda pipeline workin overtime. *Pats trunk* I can fit so much Nazi gibberish in this bad boy. 1) I don't give a shit that you don't respect my traditions and my beliefs, we already know you have no respect whatsoever. Cool.

2) Israel is where it is now because it is Israel, you deranged fucking lunatic. No, the people who have lived there over the last centuries have NOT been Arabs. There is ZERO archaeological evidence to back up a claim that Palestinian Arabs have been in Israel from the same time as Jews.

3) Point blank, everything you've built up here is a Nazi lie. this is false. A lie. We Jews dig up thousands years old shit from our culture in Israel. Not Arab/Islamic culture. It isn't there. You know your little al aqsa flood operation as Hamas calls it. Arabs built Al Aqsa over our most precious Beit hamikdash. Just for spite by the way. Muhammed hated Jews, ask the Jews of Medina how he handled them. Oh you can't they all got beheaded and enslaved.

Then turn around and call us colonizers when we return street names to their ORIGINAL Hebrew. You're ignorant as fuck of history, "dismantle colonialism" but simps for Hezbollah, the long arm of the IRGC who colonized Iran from the native Persian population. Do you know how many countries Arabs conquered? You don't know shit about the Middle East, keep us out of your fucking mouth.

This is called DARVO and its a tool of colonizers to suppress indigenous history and tradition and overwrite what really happened. And y'all are mad about it because Jews won't let it happen. We won't let you gas light and manipulate us and say see we're the indigenous ones when Arabs were the ones who rolled in and stole our land in the first place.

Arab migrations happened and the Arabs who lived there knowingly lived in stolen land, that is not our fucking problem. I would be content to live in peace with Arabs. I would respect moderate Islam. I would even say sure you can call Israel your homeland even though it's not, whatever.

By the way when Israel declared independence Israelis didn't force Arabs out of their homes. The Arabs all ganged up on Israel and attacked. The Arab league told those people leave your homes, we will kill all the Jews then you can come back. Welp they lost. Tel Aviv wasn't there before 1920s, dipshit. Most of Israel has been build on ceded, legally purchased land.

The amount of private land that was taken from innocent people occurred as insulation from terrorism from a war six other fucking countries started at once. Israel is genocidal huh, Israel has never once fired the first shot in any war its ever been in. Think on that you limp ugly bitch.

We're a community, a family. That's what Judaism is. By the way, that's what the people in those kibbutzim were doing too. They were peace activists, pro Palestinian peace activists, lol. They tricked them for twenty years, multiple generations, being their friends.

But Hamas doesn't want peace and they openly say it over and over and over again to you dumb fucking imbeciles, over and over and over. No peace, no compromise, no ceasefire. They want total annihilation of Israel and Jews world wide. That's their agenda. Don't even fucking come back if you can't acknowledge that this is what they want to do.

Palestinian Arabs can't even pronounce the word Palestine in Arabic lmao. It's not got any Arabic etymology. It was a slur to mock US, THE JEWS, by the romans. Can you pickup a G-d damn history book and read for once in your piss baby life?

[puppypalice]

Where would you deport Israeli Jews too? Many are Indigenous to the Middle East but have fled surrounding countries that expelled them. Where would they go? What about the tens of thousands of Muslim and other non Jewish Israelis? Not all of them are Palestinian or Indigenous to Israel. Would you deport them? I mean you’ve got to or your policy is just blatantly antisemitic and hypocritical

You obviously can’t deport them to America, that would just be furthering colonialism in America. Europe? To the countries that exterminated them? What about those who aren’t European at all?

Also it’s insanely callous and racist to say that genocide and colonialism against indigenous Americans is in the past

This has a few layers, it’s not about deporting Jews, it’s about deporting Israelis in the illegal settlements, others Israelis would be allowed to stay as long as they become citizens of Palestine and accept the Palestinian states.

For native Americans I never said colonization is in the past, I said that the circumstances really aren’t comparable. The primary difference is that native Americans have mostly been killed, be it through plague or outright murder while most Palestinians have been expelled. Most Palestinians live outside Israel after they were expelled and this just isn’t a reality for America. Then their are African Americans and Latinos which adds even more complexity.

For Palestine the solution is simple, dissolution of Israel as a state, expulsion of all those in the illegal settlements, right to return for Palestinians expelled from their homes, the execution of this plan may be more complicated but solution itself is very straightforward. For America there are many more factors that have to be considered and beyond reparations and land back idk what the path would be going forward.

[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

[heating-element]

I always notice that the "from the river to the sea" people never seem to have any ideas about what's meant to happen after. So the Jews aren't allowed to live in the land they come from for the benefit of those who lived there after it was stolen. The past 2000 years are a very clear lesson that Jews cannot trust gentile states to not massacre them. So where do the Jews go? Not to someone else's native land, obviously. Somewhere where no one else lives? Antarctica? Fire them into the sun?

Of course the actual answer is they'd rather just get rid of all Jews and not have to worry about that question

[xclowniex]

why do you only criticize the left on your blog. Aren't nazis and white supremists also bad.

The reason why I criticize the left so much is for two reasons.

1. I am a leftists

2. The left is being very hypocritical about jews

To elaborate on those points, you should always call out those within your own political side. You can't just go "right wing people don't care about minorities" whilst not saying anything about the people on the left don't care about a minority.

It's hypocritical to criticize others when your group does the same thing.

All that does is say one of 3 things about you. That you either think that being bad towards a minority is excused because of your political opinion, the minority at hand and the discrimination they face is not as important as other minorities or isn't bad or that you just don't care about the minority at hand.

Going into how the left is hypocritical about jews, the left frequently is against civilians being held accountable for the actions of their government. Yet Israelis are being held accountable by them for their governments actions. Diaspora jews aka jews outside of Israel also get frequently held responsible for a government which isn't even theirs.

Leftists are against the collective punishment of Gazan citizens yet collectively punish Israeli and Jewish folk socially.

Then you have people talking about how a minority doing a bad thing doesn't take away from the need to respect their identity. Such as how you shouldn't misgender a trans person if they do a bad thing as that's transphobic but as soon as they find out that a Jewish person is a zionist, antisemitism is now okay.

You've got jews currently who have seen the lefts ideas and agreed with them. We agree that collective punishment is bad. We agree that a minority doing something bad doesn't take away from the respect they deserve for their identity. We have supported land back movements for the native folk of whatever country we live in.

Yet none of those actions are happening for us. Instead antisemitic tropes are used to blame us for everything.

I could go on about how the lefts actions in the West further fuel the right wing parties in Israel. How they view it as "see no jews are safe outside of Israel. We need to be more violent to secure Israel's safety for jews internationally.

I could go on about how the lefts actions are forcing jews out of the left and are making jews more likely than before to become right wing.

But none of that matters because what should be in the forefront, is a leftist ideal of discrimination based on religious, ethnicity/race, sexual orientation or gender, is bad.

Yet that completely escapes people when it comes to jews and antisemitsm.

[jewish-sideblog]

What is Zionism? What is anti-Zionism? These are genuine, serious questions, because everybody seems to have a different answer and those different answers are causing a lot of trouble.

Zionism used to have a clear message. “The ethnic group of the Jewish people should have the right to self-determination in our own country.” That was it. Theodor Herzl didn’t even specify that the country in question should be based in our historical homeland. At the time, anti-Zionism was simply a clear opposition to the ideal of Jewish self-determination.

Now Israel does exist. It’s now a fact, not a hope. So what does Zionism look like now? Some people think it means “Some kind of Jewish state should continue to exist,” and some people think it means “All Palestinians should die.” There are a million different interpretations of modern Zionism between those two extremes.

Revisionist Greater Israel Zionists want Israel conquer and expand, eventually taking over the entire Levant. Labor Zionists prefer a peace solution with Palestinians and Arab nations, and want to establish a socialist Jewish worker’s community in Israel. Christian Zionists want all the Jews in the world to go to Jerusalem so that Christ can come back and smite us all for being nonbelievers. Reform Zionists want to establish a more tolerant, inclusive, and pluralistic society for all within Israel. Is opposition to any of those ideologies “anti-Zionism”? I think it would be difficult to fully agree or fully disagree with every single one of those movements. Many of them contradict each other. Plenty forms of Zionism are even antithetical to each other.

It’s far simpler for the undereducated who aren’t connected to the people or the land to define Zionism as “Jews who support the genocide of Palestinians” and define anti-Zionism as “Any and all support for Palestinians”. But that’s exactly the mentality that leads ostensible leftists to parrot actual Nazi propaganda and recycle ancient antisemitism.

There are similar issues to defining Zionism as “Not wanting the all Jews in Israel to be mass-slaughtered by Arab supremacists” and defining anti-Zionism as “Wanting the all Jews in Israel to be mass slaughtered by Arab supremacists”. That mentality leads to unfair and violent practical treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and it leads to unfair conceptions of what Palestinian self-determination means to those living abroad.

Both Zionism and anti-Zionism are being used as tools for political gain. Both have been used as tools to justify death, persecution, and oppression. Zionists cannot erase the overwhelming number of Islamophobic Christian supremacists that identify with and act in the name of “Zionism”. And anti-Zionists cannot erase the overwhelming number of antisemitic supremacist groups that identify with and act in the name of “anti-Zionism”.

So genuinely— and I know I’m inviting a flame war here— what is Zionism to you? What is anti-Zionism to you? I honestly believe that most people are decent-minded, and that those who are decent-minded believe in peace and self-determination for all the native peoples in the Levant. And I think we can come to more meaningful solutions when we have genuine conversations with each other and better understand how the terminology is failing us.

[matan4il]

Passover is the Jewish festival of freedom.

Israel has 133 hostages, alive and dead, still held in captivity. I'm grateful for each one released, but as long as some of our people, Jews and non-Jews alike, are hostages, we all are. Also, yesterday alone, Israel saw no less than 6 terrorist attacks (attempted or thwarted) with zero casualties, and I'm grateful no one got hurt, but what kind of freedom do we have, when this is our daily reality, and it's not even recognized?

At the end of every Passover Seder, for 2,000 years now, Jews have concluded the holiday feast with, "Le'shana ha'baa bi'Yerushalayim (לשנה הבאה בירושלים)," next year in Jerusalem.

(here's a Passover Hagaddah from Casablanca, in Morroco, with this phrase and a drawing of the Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem -)

Passover is the festival of freedom, the story of a nation breaking its bonds of enslavement, it's a story of emancipation, and as such, it is a beacon of hope and a reminder that freedom is possible for all those who yearn for it. That's why slaves in the US south adopted this language, and expressed their hopes for freedom through the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

But the story doesn't end as soon as the Israelites have left Egypt, it doesn't end in the desert. Achieving freedom is a process. That ancient story demonstrates that, but we have other, more recent examples. Jews liberated from the Nazi camps were still re-living the horrors of the Holocaust every night, if not more often than that. The hostages who have been released from their captivity at the hands of murderous, rapist Hamas terrorists are still working to recover. Freedom is a process. And in the story of the exodus from Egypt, which Jews have been re-telling annually for thousands of years, guiding our thoughts and understanding of what our freedom is, the story doesn't end when our ancestors left Egypt. The final note of the story defines our freedom as only being fully achieved after going through the journey in the desert, the process, when we are once more living freely in our ancestral, promised land, when we return to our holy city. And no matter where we live, we express this idea in Hebrew, our native, ancestral language.

(here's another Passover Hagaddah, this one from 1940's Cairo, in Egypt of all places, with this same phrase -)

Poet Amnon Ribak (whose career was originally in hi-tech before he started delving into what his Judaism means to him) once wrote, "Every man needs some sort of an Egypt, to deliver himself from its house of slaves, to leave in the middle of the night into a desert of fears, to walk straight into the waters and see it parting in front of him." He takes the Jewish exodus and turns it into a metaphor for personal challenge and growth. And how does he finish this poem? (my emphasis) "Everyone needs an Egypt, and a Jerusalem, and one long journey to remember forever through the feet."

Here's the poem composed as a song (composing poems is an Israeli tradition. And while we're at it, this is a reminder that the biggest center of original Jewish culture and art in the world today is Israel):

This Passover, we will be remembering and re-telling the story of our ancestors' exit from Egypt, we will collectively yearn for Jerusalem again, we will do our best to learn from this ancient story as if each of us has been personally delivered from Egypt, we will cherish the freedoms that we have, and keep in mind the ones we still have to fight for, first and foremost the literal freedom of our hostages. Please, if you celebrate Passover, consider leaving an empty chair at your Seder table for all the people who are not yet free.

And may we all have a happy and meaningful Pesach! <3

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[opencommunion]

"My father was born in 1905 in Bethlehem as an Ottoman citizen with Ottoman identification papers. As a teenager he witnessed the Ottomans being replaced by the British, and suddenly, almost overnight, he became a citizen of Mandate Palestine with a Palestinian passport issued by the British Mandate government. In 1949, when Bethlehem became part of Jordan, he became suddenly a citizen of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. And when he died in 1975, he died under Israeli occupation with an ID card issued by Israel. But he was the same person throughout those geo-political vicissitudes and had no choice but to adjust to changing political and imperial realities.

Throughout Palestinian history empires have occupied the land for a certain number of years but were then forced to leave. Most of the time an empire departed only to make space for another empire. The majority of the native people of the land seldom left. Throughout history and starting with the Assyrian Exile, only a small minority was deported, and only a small percentage decided to leave. The vast majority of the native people remained in the land of their forefathers (2 Kgs 25:11). They remained the Am Haaretz, the native 'People of the Land,' in spite of the diverse empires controlling that land. This is why in this book I choose the people of the land as the description for the native inhabitants throughout history, for it is they who are the enduring continuum.

Their identity, however, was forced to change and develop according to the new realities and empires in which they found themselves. They changed their language from Aramaic to Greek to Arabic, while their identity shifted from Canaanite, to Hittite, to Hivite, to Perizzite, to Girgashite, to Amorite, to Jebusite, to Philistine, Israelite, Judaic/Samaritan, to Hasmonaic, to Jewish, to Byzantine, to Arab, to Ottoman, and to Palestinian, to mention some. The name of the country also changed from Canaan to Philistia, to Israel, to Samaria and Juda, to Palestine. ... And yet they stayed, throughout the centuries, and remained the people of the land with a dynamic identity. In this sense Palestinians today stand in historic continuity with biblical Israel. The native people of the land are the Palestinians. The Palestinian people (Muslims, Christians, and Palestinian Jews) are a critical and dynamic continuum from Canaan to biblical times, from Greek, Roman, Arab, and Turkish eras up to the present day. They are the native peoples, who survived those empires and occupations, and they are also the remnant of those invading armies and settlers who decided to remain in the land to integrate rather than to return to their original homelands. The Palestinians are the accumulated outcome of this incredible dynamic history and these massive geo-political developments."

Mitri Raheb, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible Through Palestinian Eyes (2012)