Listen, all you Anglophone leftists who think about the world in post-colonial terms:
Palestinians are not "indigenous". There are no indigenous people in the Jordan valley, the regionhas been colonised again and again by one empire after another for thousands of years, dating back to the late Stone Age. Jews and Palestinians are close cousins, you can see in their genetic markers that today's Jews aren't very different from other inhabitants of that region.
🧵 #MiddleEast#Israel#Palestine
Now when the Romans colonised the region, the Jews were quite renitent and seemed impossible to keep under control, so they eventually destroyed the temple and drove the Jews out of their land, forcing them to live elsewhere. For other ethnic groups, such measure would amount to cultural genocide, leading to their disappearance over a few generations, but not so for the Jews because of their religion. Judaism evolved to keep the culture and the people alive in the diaspora. (2/x)
Meanwhile, the Romans changed the name of the land from Galilaea and Iudaea to Palaestina, meaning "Land of the Philistines", to add insult to injury. The Philistines, ancient enemy of the Israelites, were the leftovers of an earlier attempt at colonisation, probably descended from Minoan Greeks of the Bronze Age. And the Romans also did other things to make the Jews uncomfortable, like banning circumcision in many cities. (3/x)
The Palestinians were those inhabitants of the land who didn't follow Judaism but other religions. They changed their religion again and again as times and rulers changed. Some of them were originally Jews who converted to other religions. Christianity emerged in the region, and later Islam, and the entire land was colonised by Arab Muslims, Euopean Christians, and Tukish Muslims, again and again and again. Meanwhile, there always was a small remnant Jewish population that just wouldn't go away
Now whereever the Jews went, there were people who hated them for being different. Especially the Christians hated them because they couldn't accept that their own religion was basically just a mutated Jewish sect. Over centuries, Jews had to flee from prosecution and hatred again and again. When all kinds of nationalisms became popular in Europe, the Jews were often seen as the enemies of all nations due to their cosmopolitan networks and them just being different. (5/x)
When Zionism emerged, it did so as a reaction to nationalist antisemitic movements. It was a dream of being free from hatred and murder back in a land run by the Jews for the Jews. Meanwhile, the British Empire managed to acquire Palestine from the Ottomans, and the Brits promised both Zionist groups and Arab Nationalists to give them the land. Meanwhile, my own people, the Germans, decided to rid the planet of Jews once and forever, creating the greatest mass murder industry ever. (6/x)
After the end of WW2, there were many, many Jewish refugees that couldn't find any place where they felt safe, and to them, Zionism was a beacon of hope, so they went to Palestine. The founding of Israel as a state had basically become inevitable, and what was hope for the Jews turned into despair for the Palestinians. The newly founded UN tried to negotiate a plan to split the land in two, but the Arabs ignored it and attacked the new Israeli state. (7/x)
The Arabs lost all of their wars against Israel, and now it was the Israelis who didn't want to hear anything about dividing the land. Instead of annexing the West Bank outright, radical Zionists switched to a piecemeal strategy, the results of which have been horrible. However, treating Israel as just another colony is just nonsense, the situation is far more complicated and utterly fucked up. In short, it's two clashing nationalisms laying claim to the same land. (8/x)
Those who think of Israel as a European Colony usually think of Jews as Ashkenazim. However, there also the Mizrahim, or Arab Jews, who have been living in the Middle East and North Africa before coming to Israel, and who are definitely not strangers from far away.
There are no easy solutions. And there isn't much to gain from picking sides. What the IDF is doing in Gaza is horrible, what the IDF and Zionist settlers have been doing in the West Bank is horrible. (9/x)
What Hamas and other Palestinian militants and extremists have been doing is also horrible. There are many innocent vicitims on both sides, but also many who are far from innocent. But it is nothing new, the small strip of land between the Jordan valley and the Mediterranean has seen violence and mass murder again and again for thousands of years. And you cannot stop it from the outside.
@LordCaramac I'm 53 and my entire life I've heard nothing good come out of the Middle East and Isreal. It's an endless stream of violence and bullshit. The only reason the rest of world cares is oil. This includes Isreal. If there was no oil in the region, Isreal would be S.O.L.
@mina@shanesemler Some of the first kingdoms of the late Stone Age emerged in the Jordan valley, some of the first state wars between professional armies (as opposed to tribal wars between traditional warriors) happened there. Archaeologists have found stockpiles of spearheads, arrowheads, and slingshot bullets made from stone, in the region. I think it's just the geography--a river valley near the coast in a very arid region, of course everybody wants to rule it.
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