@histodons@israel@palestine re-watching “The Oslo Diaries” (2018), there’s a feeling of missed opportunity shared by many liberals, both Israeli and #Palestinians: If it wasn’t for the extremists, on both sides, peace was achievable. But was it really?
The idea that the Palestinians need to negotiate clawing back parts of their homeland (in whichever geopolitical circumstances led to them losing it), is passible an explanation why such negotiations were doomed from the start. It was negotiated by Israeli and Palestinian liberal intellectuals, not particularly representing the tolerance for compromise of their respective communities, on the premise that an undeniable right of Jews to settle in Palestine.
Was wondering, what if next round should start with which parts of pre-1948 Ottoman Palestine should the Palestinians give to an Israeli state, if at all? Just saying 🙄
@oatmeal@histodons@israel@palestine Sorry, the "right" of Jews to settle in Palestine is just a cover for another colonial project, this time not a European nation is behind it, but a particularly European ideology - Zionism.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas: #Ashkenazi Jews 'are NOT Semites'
Zionist leader Arthur Ruppin: German #Jews are NOT Semites but Aryan.
Yet Abbas in an antisemite, even though this idea is not really new (research: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3543), while Israel is naming buildings after the #Zionist leader Ruppin, who personally met with Himmler's mentor, Hans F. K. Günther.
Arthur Ruppin's Concept of Race
In: Amos Morris-Reich, Israel Studies , Fall, 2006, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Fall, 2006), pp. 1-3.
@oatmeal@histodons@israel@palestine I would be interested in your assessment of the oft-made point that Jews are not Semites, or indeed any specific ethnicity, any more than Christians are a single racial group. Surely the presence of Ethiopian, Indian, European and Levantine & Arab Jews (ditto for Christians) means that "anti-Semitism" is a rather loose label for those who criticize Jews for being Jews? Perhaps some other term is more accurate?
@KarunaX@histodons@israel@palestine I think it'd be very difficult to claim it's a "race" indeed, for the reasons mentioned, or an even an ethnic group. Many converted to Judaism along the way, like they did to Christianity. As a secular Israeli, I feel more familiar with an Israeli-Palestinian than a with a Haredi, or an ultra-Orthodox Jew living in Brooklyn.
Yet there are some commonalities between certain groups of Jews, like Tunisian Jews (Djerba considered one of the oldest communities outside the Hoyland), or the Nash Didan community (who maintained their Aramaic for centuries in the diaspora). Both are claimed to be direct descendants of the Jews of the Babylonian exile or prior. Not sure how much of it is based in scientific research.
The real problem, I think, is Israel insisting on taking ownership of Jews and Judaism, and claiming to represent them, or protect them from anti-Semitism, while its own actions are clearly the problem. It's been the problem since its inception with the aid of a colonial power,. Ethnic cleansing of Palestine was very much part of the bigger plan of people like Ben Gurion.
@oatmeal@histodons@israel@palestine Thanks for that reply. While I lack your expertise concerning the various ancestral threads of modern Jewry, in my time living in Israel I was aware of the distinct racial differences amongst the Israeli population. At the time I thought little of it other than to applaud the (then) open-ness of Israel to a variety of ethnicities. Today it seems Israel wants to conceal these differences to further some distorted narrative.
@KarunaX@histodons@israel@palestine interesting reply and it’s wonderful that you can talk from experience. But it’s important to remember that Jewish existence in the Holyland predates the arrival of pogrome refugees from Eastern Europe (retroactively called 1st alya) in the 2nd half of the 19th century. If there’s any “openness” it’s of native Jews and Muslims living in Palestine accommodating what turned out to be an invasion of sorts (of alien people (to the region and it’s history) backed by cynical colonial arrangements.
@oatmeal@histodons@israel@palestine I agree totally. Until the European invasion that began in the early 20th C there were no issues between the major religious and ethnic groups in Palestine. The ideology of Zionism, allied with European colonial mentality, is what perverted normal life in Palestine.
Semites or not (probably more Slavic), they were labelled as such and massacred for this.
The state of Israel is an existing fact, created for the survivors, regardless of theories of relation to ancient tribes.
It was irrelevant to rely on these alleged ties one hundred years ago as a Zionist, and it is irrelevant to rely on them today as an anti-Zionist.
@inquisitormundi@palestine@histodons@israel “created for them”, stated nonchalantly, it is really disturbing. The idea of some sort of Jewish supremacy, which pushes aside everybody else’s history and rights, is such a pathology still, btw even with Israeli liberals, it’s really astonishing.
Also, by whom and of course why should the Palestinians, who’s land is already occupied by Britain, pay the price of the crimes committed by Europeans on European soil? Shouldn’t have the Jews resettled in their respective homelands first and than let them decide what to do?
Very few Jews wanted to immigrate to Palestine before the holocaust because the idea of a Jewish state did not appeal to them. Europe after WWII was even more antisemitic than it was before the war. And even then, some in my family, who survived the camps and went back to the Netherlands, didn’t want to go to Israel after its establishment. The ones who did arrive had really no choice.
@tzafrir@oatmeal@histodons@israel@palestine All countries have experienced violence in isolated pockets, even those in the ME during the relatively peaceful Ottoman era. The institutionalised violence we witness against Palestinians today has its origins in the early 20th C.
@tzafrir@KarunaX@histodons@israel@palestine Throwing a list of massacres or random acts of violence against Jews (and conveniently Christians, to make sure we know who the real enemy is I suppose) is a practice suitable to the Hebrew Wikipedia. Events picked up randomly in the “what about” genre of trolling, is still silly. Why not go back to the crusaders and the massacre of all the Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem by Christians?
Pre nation-state Palestine was no better or worse than any other place around the Ottoman Empire. Conflict arose often due to western capitulations imposed on the ottomans by Europeans (and also Russia), which privileged some religious groups and created friction. Same pattern follows everywhere, as in North Africa for example.
@oatmeal@KarunaX@histodons@israel@palestine
Right. Everything was good under the Ottoman (an empire of Turks from Mid-Asia). That period is simply not as well documented, but you have some stories of how this village came to be after a group of people had to run away from a vendetta in another place. Peaceful it was not.
@tzafrir@oatmeal@histodons@israel@palestine The Ottoman era was indeed a relatively peaceful time. That there were occasional eruptions of violence during its 600 years of existence does not negate this fact. Humans will always find a way to violence.
Exactly.
Had no choice.
I seemed like a paradise compared to what was before.
It’s easier to criticise retroactively what was wrong in the process.
Did they have the Palestinian people in mind when left their left their land?
Exactly.
Had no choice.
It seemed like a paradise compared to what was before.
It’s easier to criticise retroactively what was wrong in the process.
Did they have the Palestinian people in mind when they left Europe?
TIL that the term "Mizrahi" is a reclaimed term, originally a racist term and slurrish, it's since been reclaimed by those Jews as a way to self-identify, especially for those Jews who live in Israel.
I've only heard it in the context of its reclaimed use, but knowing the history is important.
@serge the therm #Mizrahi is in fact a repurposed term, #Ostjuden, used by #Ashkenazi Jews to refer to #Yiddish speaking Jews in Eastern Europe. The preferred term by some Israelis (and non Israelis) these days is #ArabJews, as in European Jews etc.
Further education, if I may:
How the Polish Peddler Became a German Intellectual: Orientalism, Jewish Identity, and the Antecedents to Social Closure in Israel