this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
-20 points (35.7% liked)
Showerthoughts
29739 readers
1695 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics
- 3.1) NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
- 3.2) Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
- 3.3) Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This question shows a fundamental misunderstanding. Before the establishment of the modern Israeli state, most of the Arabs living in the region were actually of Egyptian or Jordanian descent. There was no Palestinian people group until after that so as to identify the displaced Arabs as one group.
Jewish people, however, have lived in and been associated with the land for thousands of years. Palestinians are categorically not the same as native Americans.
There must be a separate, sovereign Palestinian state - because that would be most just and fair. There must also, however, be a sovereign Israeli state because of the historical ties to the land and the fact that for millennia the Jewish people have been persecuted wherever they go. I honestly don't know why, but they have.
There's definitely been admixing with other populations (including Ashkenazi Jews with Europeans), but Palestinians are Canaanite/Levantine (just like the Lebanese and Jews and Jordanians) and form a Levantine cluster. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews#Comparison_to_non-Jewish_populations Meanwhile, Judaism is certainly from Israel (if the history didn't already point to it, the archaeology of Israel does). But a large number of Jews/Israelites were expelled by the Romans in the first century CE, creating a Jewish diaspora that shows genetic evidence of admixing with local populations over 2000 years. And certainly before the modern state of Israel was created and Zionist Jewish folk started immigrating back into Israel-Palestine after 1800-1900 years, the Palestinians were there.
Jewish people were persecuted in Christian nations because Christians started blaming Jews for Christ's death. You can see evolution of this idea from being nearly non-existent in the earliest gospel, the Gospel of Mark, to the newest canonical Gospel the Gospel of John. And sentiment is argued to have risen from Christian anger at the failure of other Jews to accept Jesus as the messiah and convert. All these negative stereotypes started to develop. And with the Romans destroying Jerusalem (or at least the temple in Jerusalem) and scattering Jews, you had a group of people with a strong cultural group identity that was strongly monotheistic in a strange land, that was easily to cast as the other. It's all bullshit.
Anyways, Israel-Palestine is the home of Judaism, the descendants of Israelites, and Palestinians (who probably partially the descendants of Israelites or at least neighboring Canaanites, from whom Israelites became distinct by the development of their monidolatry and later monotheism).
Also see this 2020 paper that compares the genetics of modern people living in this region (including Jews, Palestinians, Lebanese) with Bronze Age DNA from the region: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10212583/ (got this from an earlier section in the above Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews#2017%E2%80%93present
So yeah, at least some of the ancestors of modern Palestinians were in Israel-Palestine in the Bronze Age (ie before the Babylonian Captivity).
Thanks for the clarification. I think it's still fair to say that the original question is simply wrong/misleading. Palestinians are not equivalent to native americans - or, if they are, so are Jews.
The ancestors of the Jewish diaspora are too, just like the ancestors of Palestinians, but the Jewish diaspora been out of the state for at least over a 1000 years if not close to 2000, and that's why Palestinians would experience their return and the creation of modern Israel as maybe what a Native American might have experience European colonization and the creation of the US and other modern North and South American countries.
As I stated elsewhere, I don't think Israel-Palestine should have been divided into two states, and that I think that since Israel is the home of Judaism, Jewish immigration should have been allowed, but the focus should have been as much on co-existing and equality as protecting the rights and lives of Jewish folk and making sure sure the constitution of this new one state never allowed anti-semitism. The division of the area into two states with an arbitrary border led to ethnic cleansing just like the creation of India and Pakistan led ethnic cleansing and the mess we have today. The creation of one non-colonial state with equal rights might not have.
P.S. If Jewish people have the right of return to Israel today after Rome performed an ethnic cleansing of Jewish folk in Israel in the first century CE, then Palestinians refugees and their descendants have the right of return to Israel-Palestine after the ethnic cleansings that have happened since the 20th century.