Today being #Thanksgiving, we can enjoy being treated to a host of historical commentaries & corrections
Gifted for you from behind the paywall, this important piece from 2021
Thanksgiving anniversary: Wampanoag Indians regret helping Pilgrims 400 years ago: Long marginalized and misrepresented in U.S. history, the Wampanoags are bracing for the 400th anniversary of the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving in 1621 Washington Post
And, keeping it here in Massachusetts, from our friends at WBUR :
Beyond turkey: How to start a conversation with children about Thanksgiving
A #NativeAmerican children’s book author who often goes to #schools to talk about gratitude has advice about how parents can reframe the story of Thanksgiving for their young children.
We revisit a conversation Here & Now’s Deepa Fernandes had last year with Traci Sorell, author of “We are Grateful: Otsaliheliga."
#Massachusetts again: my colleague Professor Emerita of Photography Sandra Matthews & Nolumbeka Project President David Brule recently published their Occupying Massachusetts: Layers of History on Indigenous Land a photobook of historical & contemporary structures to make us think about the land of the Commonwealth
Teaching about #Thanksgiving & the #Pilgrims & #Puritans epitomizes the goals @AHAHistorians set for #history students, e.g. learning to see people of the past as both like us & very different, the latter demanding an act of sensitive imagination
NYT video about the Palomares nuclear accident over Spain in 1966.
A US h-bomber was refueling in mid-air over Southern Spain. Both exploded and four h-bombs fell onto a small Spanish beach town (2 into the Mediterranean). This film examines health consequences to the clean up crew.
Re: authentic & fake #Jews: the tragic #Gaza war has predictably led to bad #history going viral:. European Jews are descendants of medieval #Turkic converts--#Khazars-- thus have no #historical & #genetic connection to the land of #Israel
A myth, promoted by a combination of the cynical or stupid, sadly embraced by the naive & uninformed
Sadly relevant, as I will give a virtual talk about this at Indiana Uni this week.
As far as I can tell, the virus of the #Khazar myth leaped from the US far right to the #Arabs thanks to the obsessive activity of the wacko Jewish soap maker, apostate, & #Holocaust denier, Benjamin Freedman. Tragically, they thought he would help them spread their message in the US on the eve of #Palestine Partition debate at the UN
As far as I can tell, the virus of the #Khazar myth leaped from the US far right to the #Arabs thanks to the obsessive activity of the wacko Jewish soap maker, apostate, & #Holocaust denier, Benjamin Freedman. Tragically, they thought he would help them spread their message in the US on the eve of #Palestine Partition debate at the UN
The Arab--+ some other nonwestern--delegates to the UN deployed the #Khazar argument against #Palestine#Partition & the creation of #Israel, though no one took it seriously, & as the eloquent Arab spokesman Cecil Hourani later noted, "It was only on closer contact with him that I came to realize he was less motivated by a love for the Arabs than by an obsessive hatred of Russian & Polish Jews,” “an ancient prejudice which was in fact a form of racism.
The #Arab League basically abandoned use of the #Khazar myth after 1948--tho cranks such as Saudi UN envoy & histrionic windbag Jamil Baroody periodically trotted it out.
Its recurrence is therefore cause for deep concern: 1) a sign of dangerous regression to zero-sum game: denying opponent's identity does not induce him to compromise 2) technique is same: historical distortion disingenuously citing scholarship from the opponent's community. Cheap trick.
Here are some examples of the current weaponization of the #Khazar Myth--from Indonesia -via GoogleTranslate
Note the strategy: suggest dark secret repressed by sinister forces, cite seemingly respectable sources from the community of the enemy , if possible cite natural science
The scholarly community resoundingly rejected both Koestler's amateur historical argument & Elhaik's genetic work
So, after all that historical-scientific background, we return to the present to find (random example) people in Indonesia (of all places) promoting this nonsense:
So, after all that historical-scientific background, we return to the present to find (random example) people in Indonesia (of all places) promoting this nonsense
Again, note strategy:
Bold assertion of sinister suppression of dark secret, buttressed by citation of supposedly authoritative sources that reader (at least here) is in no position to evaluate (& reader, trusting source, does not go on to scrutinize)
Good to be cautious about that source (I am a fan of Wikipedia: it's just that one needs to know how to evaluate it, esp. when controversial subjects provoke editing wars). Anyway, I spend way too much time reading about genetics, but that is a basically accurate characterization. A prominent interpretation is that, although both males and females came to Europe, male intermarriage with local females created the genetic profile. Main point here, tho, is Mideast ancestry
Indeed. When I teach about this stuff I do note the irony of use of genetic research among minority populations. But as I explain: it is so important to Jews & African Americans because their histories were taken away: lives and written records destroyed, so genetics fills in these historical gaps.
It is a historical-scientific research tool. Religion and identity will always remain personal and cultural. But one needs to have a brain in order to grasp this.