I agree with you about the injustice that Palestinians face, but I think you have been taught incorrectly about "the native population which Jewish immigrants displaced" in a way that rings of anti-Semitism (e.g. the alt-right's calls that "Jews will not replace us," etc). About half of Israel's Jewish population is "Mizrahi," which refers to Jews native to the Middle East, many of whom predate Arab colonization of the Middle East. I know this is a contentious topic in general and I don't think you're intentionally being anti-Semitic, nor do I think all criticism of Israel's treatment of Palestinians is anti-Semitic! But it's easy to also accidentally fall into anti-Semitism when criticizing Israel, since anti-Semitism is so endemic to Western culture, and I think you accidentally did here.
When I said natives I meant Palestinians who were forcefully displaced from their lands. Those lands then turned into colonies which are occupied to this days by Jewish immigrants from Europe, North Africa, and other regions in the Middle East (Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, and Lebanon).
I’m not sure how I could have phrased this better to make sure I steer clear of any potential offense.
In this conflict the narrative defines your position. A Jewish person might say those people occupied my historical homeland to which they have no right to and from which I've been forcefully removed. A Palestinian can say the Jewish people displaced my ancestors from my home by force. They're both right (to some degree) and both positions are not useful to actually getting a peaceful resolution, they are typically used to justify non-peaceful actions. There's also a lot more detail/colour to those statements and history than meets the eye, some agreed to facts and a lot of historical debates.
I would also add to that that IMO the specific criticism of Jewish people borders on antisemitism. There are very few people on this planet who live on land that was not taken by force from someone at some point, sometimes in very recent history (is there a statue of limitation on this stuff?). There are also many people who immigrated in recent history from one place to another. At the same time there's certainly much to be critical of. I would also say the characterization above of "turned into colonies" is factually wrong. Even if we look at it solely from the Palestinian narrative I think you want to tread pretty carefully, especially if you want someone to listen to your position/argument and maybe change their minds.
All that said, we have to move forward (both in Israel and the rest of the world) through some sort of reconciliation that can acknowledge the wrongs and make amends while at the same time realizing we can't turn the clock backwards. Clearly (to me) there are win-win solutions that are much preferable to the ongoing conflict.
EDIT: I find this story very inspirational and something that hopefully can show everyone that despite all the challenges it is possible to move forward to a better place.
I agree about the narratives. That being said, the recent events — those in the historical record of these lands — should not be dismissed simply because “everyone lives on land taken by someone”. I mean, are you proposing to ignore the nakba?
In my opinion, it is one thing to say we that should move on from what happened centuries ago to indigenous populations in the Americas and another thing entirely to say let’s ignore a settler colonial movement which operates in the modern era.
Regarding what you mentioned on the anti-semitism of criticizing Jewish people: what should the approach be for good-faith critics? Say I want to criticize the modern day policies of the Israeli military/government which create a reality of Jewish supremacy in the occupied territories, how do I do it? This is the unfortunate reality of today and we should be able to speak out against it without being labeled as anti-semites.
I don't think there's a problem with you being critical of any specific action without being labelled an anti-semite. Some things are just plain wrong. Some things are more nuanced so it's nice to acknowledge this nuance, e.g. "I disagree that X is a good reason for Y" rather than saying "I condemn Y". Sweeping generalizations are probably less useful.
That said, if one's focus is 100% on "things that Jews do wrong" .. maybe that's something else.
Also indigenous populations in the Americas are still being wronged today!
I posted a longer comment elsewhere in this thread, but in short: prior to the 20th century, everyone in the Middle East were Ottoman citizens, had been for hundreds of years, and the "other [countries] in the Middle East" you reference didn't exist even as provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Mizrahi Jews were Middle Eastern native Jewish citizens of the Ottoman Empire and had lived in the region for thousands of years, predating the Ottoman Empire, and there had not been a meaningful distinction between "Palestine" and "not Palestine" in the empires that ruled there since the fall of the Jewish kingdom (or to some degree the fall of the Roman Empire, when still none of the people you term "native" yet lived there). Palestine was created in the 20th century by the British and existed for less than a few decades as a British colony; effectively no one is a native of "Palestine," they are natives of the region and empires that predated the British, which includes the Jewish natives of the region and empire that predated the British. After the new territories were carved up post-WWI, (some) of those native Jews moved to Israel (although some were already living there and had been for thousands of years) due to persecution, but calling them "immigrants" is about as sensible as calling someone who moves from Connecticut to Massachusetts an "immigrant" — or in fact even less so, because "Palestine" hadn't existed in the Ottoman Empire, and it makes about as much sense as calling someone who moves from one Bay Area city to another an "immigrant." They also didn't move in order to replace Palestinians; they were fleeing extreme anti-Semitic violence from the neighboring (newly created) countries.
Your comment seemed to differentiate "Jews" and a "native population," with the non-native Jews having "displaced" the natives. If that's not a distinction you intended to draw, then I think your intentions were totally fine — although your phrasing was easily misinterpreted. If that is the intention you meant to convey, I believe you are in a large part incorrect — the largest subgroup of Israeli Jews are native to the Middle East and have been for thousands of years — and your initial comment (hopefully unintentionally) drew on anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish interlopers and replacers, which are about as old as Western society, on the basis of largely arbitrary, briefly enforced territorial lines drawn up by a European colonial power that had little reflection of the people it attempted and failed to rule.
Again, none of this excuses Israeli treatment of their former neighbors. It's atrocious and deserves to be called out. I just want to avoid anti-Semitism when we do so (as I have tried to also do in this thread).
It’s the first time I ever came across the opinion that anyone in the Middle Eastern region is considered native to historical Palestine because of Ottoman citizenship. At best, this is technically correct but practically useless. What would you say if a bunch of bedouins from the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula decided in 1948 that they were sick of the desert and went to conquer Palestine displace its present inhabitants?
Anyone in the Middle Eastern region is considered native to historical Palestine because of Ottoman citizenship.
That's not quite what I said. Palestine was a British colony on a fractured sliver of a former empire that existed for less than 30 years. Unless you consider native status to be determined by where you lived for a 30 year period, there's no "historical Palestine" for someone to be native to: Palestine was not a region in the empire that preceded the brief British rule, and people's identity was not distinguished on the basis of Palestinian borders. They would have been considered Jewish or Muslim or Christian, and lived in one city or another in nearby areas, but wouldn't consider someone to be an "immigrant" if they moved cities, as you've previously described Jews in Israel: some of whom are in fact literal natives and have lived within those borders for hundreds or thousands of years, and some of whom lived in nearby cities but not technically within the boundaries of Palestine (which again, at the time, didn't exist as a meaningful concept).
What would you say if a bunch of bedouins from the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula decided in 1948 that they were sick of the desert and went to conquer Palestine
Um, first of all, the British mandate of Palestine was in large part a desert. So, bad move on their part if they were "sick of the desert." Second of all, the Bedouins do currently live in the deserts of Israel, as they also have for thousands of years; they are not confined to the Arabian Peninsula as it seems you're claiming (they do in some sense come from the Arabian Peninsula, just as the Palestinians do — although in fact the Bedouins arrived thousands of years before the Palestinians did). So I'm not sure where you're going with this; they were also inhabitants and would not be some non-native interlopers, as you're claiming they would be? And as you're claiming Jews are?
Jews, like Bedouins, have been native to the region for thousands of years. They were also native to the region you call Palestine — there are synagogues hundreds of years old in Safed, Jerusalem, and other Israeli cities — but the boundaries of that region were not historically meaningful, and they were spread out throughout the surrounding area as well, as a small but meaningful minority. After WWI they faced massive repression in the new Muslim countries and consolidated in the boundaries of what is now Israel, but previously was also not meaningfully separated from the surrounding countries. Referring to them as "immigrants" is disingenuous: there was no country they were "immigrating" from or to that existed for more than a handful of years, and the previous longstanding country was one they were already citizens of and had been for its entire existence; they were native to it, and to the region it occupied. They predated almost anyone in the region by millennia.
Also, I just want to say that if a Mizrahu finds himself Palestine/Israel today born or after decades of immigration to simply go back to Morocco. Practically speaking that is ridiculous. Israel/Palestine is now his home.
Okay now it just seems like you are arguing for the sake of argument. I know you know that the land of milk and honey has copious areas rich in greenery and water. Yet you act like it’s equivalent to the deserts of Saudi Arabia?
And also, while I’m here, we don’t define “historical Palestine” by some maps. We can define it very clearly by a
Jews were native to the Middle East! Nobody is disputing that. What people are disputing is your claim that a Morrocan, born and raised in Morocco to parents born and raised in Morocco has the right to displace some Palestinian villagers just because he thinks his ancient homeland is from the time of after Joseph and Moses because of his ancestors.
By the way, for your information, my friends tell me that in their neighborhood they had a “harat al sumarah” which is translated neighborhood of the simarians. These people never accepted Israel and refused to move. My friends also tell me the IDF hate them because they both resist the occupation and are considered anciently Jewish so the IDF is not allowed to kill them. That is just what I hear from them, but I bring it up so you know that there are some people of ancient Jewish lineage who are still living in Palestine alongside Palestinians.
I know you know the land of milk and honey has copious areas rich in greenery and water
Ok, I think you are very misinformed by Biblical quotes from thousands of years ago, when the climate of Mesopotamia was very different. Israel is considerably more than 50% desert or "arid steppe." The rest is either dry, temperate, and hot, or dry, temperate, and warm (with a tiny mountain peak defined as dry, temperate, and cold). [1] Rain does not fall at all for over half of the year. There is only a single major source of above-ground freshwater, the Kineret lake (also called the "Sea of Galilee"), which wasn't even fully in Israel until 1967, is at "dangerously low levels at times," and which continues to exist in part thanks to Israel pumping freshwater from its seawater desalination plants into the lake to refill it since 2018. [2][3]
The Negev desert [4] covers over half of the state of Israel. The Negev Bedouins live in the Negev. [5]
I am not joking, and hopefully these Wikipedia links can convince you that you have been misinformed.
What people are disputing is your claim that a Morrocan, born and raised in Morocco
Not all Mizrahi Jews are from Morocco, and you have chosen the farthest point in the Ottoman Empire to make your point. Morocco is not even in the Middle East, which is the region we're talking about. While perhaps one could view Moroccan Jews migrating to Israel as immigration, I think it is much more nuanced in the parts of the former Ottoman Empire that were actually in the Middle East. The Jewish communities of Cairo, for example, were about as far from the modern state of Israel as Boston is to New York. The distance from Damascus, the home of another large Mizrahi Jewish community, to the modern state of Israel is half that. They were part of the same country, and were in cities that were extremely close to each other, in the same region. I don't dispute that the Israelis had no right to kick out Palestinian villagers, but I do dispute your definition of Jews as non-natives due to borders that existed for less than 30 years and were imposed by the British (and which some Jews fell inside anyway, e.g. in Jerusalem.)
[The Samaritans] are considered anciently Jewish so the IDF is not allowed to kill them.
There are no laws in Israel that I know of that determine whether or not the IDF can kill someone based on their religion. It would be helpful if you could cite some sources here.
(I think your friends mean that they hold Israeli citizenship? Which probably means they can more easily pass border checkpoints traveling to and from the Palestinian territories and Israel. There are a group of Samaritans that hold dual Israeli/Palestinian citizenship that live in Qiryat Luza. For reference, there are also millions of Muslim Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship and live inside Israel; what is unique about that group of Samaritans is they hold both Israeli and Palestinian citizenship, whereas the Israeli Arabs are simply Israeli and not Palestinian. The situation in Palestine is super messed up either way and I don't condone the Israeli government's actions towards the Palestinians, though.)
This is all fine and accurate but it seems like you are not addressing my point. First, for the purposes of my analogy the relevant detail is that Israel/Palestine has substantially more fresh water then Saudi Arabia. So now, applying your logic from above it would be justified for the Saudis to come and displace Israelis/Palestinians. Why? Because they used to be under Ottoman rule. See why your remark justifying colonization of Palestinian is absurd?
You know, I wish that a reality can be realized where everyone coexists happily. But when a people have been harmed so directly and for so long acknowledging these points is the only way towards that reality. If we keep arguing then things will never change.
The fundamental fact is hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were wronged. Today millions are victims. We can’t just ignore that or marginalize it via debate.
You can drop the term "colony", or "colonizer" et cetera. At this point the term means nothing more than "person who deserves to be displaced owing to his ethnicity and present ___location."
Modern Israel is absolutely a colonizer state. At around the same time that Western empires were dissolving, mostly Western mostly white settlers colonised a piece of the Middle-East by force. I know the situation is complicated, but this is an accurate description, from a dispassionate point of view.
There you go. Rationalizing an intent to subject people to ethnic based displacement. (People who at this point are of mixed descent of every Jewish community, including those displaced INTO Israel from the Arab world)
But Celts have settled the land that is now my country since before Christians conquered the peninsula and established the kingdom that would become my country. By your argument, should the Irish have the right to kick me out, or at least carve a piece of my country for themselves and their ethnic group?
The Irish literally did kick the UK out and carve a piece back for themselves in 1937, which is around the same timeframe we're talking about Israel in the Middle East. That's why Ireland is an independent country from the UK, and they're still in the EU while the UK isn't. So, er, yes, I suppose by my argument, it was valid for the Irish to do so. Great point on the parallel there.
(I think you are possibly misunderstanding what "Mizrahi" refers to. Mizrahi Jews are native to the Middle East and never left and were living there at the time of Israel's founding, as they had been for thousands of years.)
Mizrahi does not refer to 2nd generation immigrants [1]; it refers to descendants of local Jewish populations in the Middle East. While the Wikipedia demographics link you posted is technically accurate (the best kind of accurate), it doesn't correctly capture Mizrahi Jews, because Mizrahi means native to the Middle East, not specifically to the region called "Palestine," the modern borders of which were defined by the British after WWI. Those borders also include much, much more than just the "Palestine" you're referring to — it includes all of Jordan and part of Syria.
Prior to the British occupation, the entire region was part of the Ottoman Empire and had been for hundreds of years; the modern borders and boundaries of various countries were largely invented during the 20th century after the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the Allied Powers. When Israel was founded, most Mizrahi Jews moved to Israel due to extreme persecution in the Muslim-majority countries, which were mostly also all new countries carved up from the remains of the Ottoman Empire. Prior to the borders of the 20th century, these Jews were citizens of the Ottoman Empire just like everyone else in the region, and were native to the Middle East. (The Ottoman empire did have provinces, but they don't match the British borders or the post-British borders.)
Mizrahi Jews make up 3.2 million of Israel's Jewish inhabitants [1]. Israel's total Jewish population is 6.7 million [2], so they're about half.
Edit: Since this is frequently a contentious topic, I want to reiterate that I do not support the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians. Israel's treatment of Palestinians is terrible. This post is meant to counter anti-Semitism, not criticism of Israel. In most of my posts in this thread I have also criticized Israel for its treatment of Palestinians. The fact that many Jews are native to the Middle East does not justify depriving Palestinians of land or self-determination. However, I think it's useful in these discussions to not rely on anti-Semitic tropes e.g. the idea that Jews are non-natives and of Jewish replacement. Jews are in fact natives of the Middle East and have been so longer than anyone else (well, ethnic Lebanese people actually give Jews a run for their money, but those are the two longest-dwelling ethnic groups in the region).
Edit 2: Since it looks like you're getting downvoted — FYI I didn't downvote you and I think your question was legitimate and wasn't ill-intentioned.
To quote the first Wikipedia link I posted in the comment that you're replying to, yes. "From 1948 to 1980, over 850,000 Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews were expelled, fled or evacuated from Arab and Muslim countries."
Hajj Amin al Huseini supposedly influenced the persecution of Mizrahi Jews all around the Middle East? That doesn’t seem very plausible, what real power and authority did this guy have over peoples outside of Palestine?
He was funded and supported by the Nazis to build up pan-Arab support for Jewish genocide, and lived in a variety of places both inside and outside of Palestine, including Germany and Egypt. He met with Adolf Hitler himself. In the late 1930s while living in Beirut he put a bounty on the head of any Jew, paying 10 pounds per murdered Jew. Here is the Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husseini
A choice quote, of which there are many: "On 1 March 1944, while speaking on Radio Berlin, al-Husseini said: 'Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you.'"
Note that the calls for genocide started well before 1948. He was fomenting genocide the entire time. His messages during WWII were extremely popular in the Arab world and upon his return to Palestine after the war "Arab leaders rushed to greet him ... and the masses accorded him an enthusiastic reception."
One does not so much "fall into it" so much as one is accused of it whenever one's opinion about political or military actions runs counter to Zionism.
I would love it if your response addressed the points in my comment, but it seems like you're deliberately ignoring them.
Again, I agree that the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians is abhorrent. That's not an anti-Semitic opinion! Claiming that Jews are not native to the Middle East and are an attempt to replace Palestinians is factually wrong, though, and does rely on anti-Semitic tropes.
Yes, Jews are native to the Middle East, specifically the area of Israel/Palestine. But why should that make Palestinians who lost their land feel any better? It's irrelevant.
It shouldn't, and it doesn't. I agree that it doesn't and that Israel's treatment of Palestinians is terrible. My point is we can have this discussion without also (incorrectly) relying on anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish replacement.
(I am Jewish, but I do not support the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians.)
> Claiming that Jews are not native to the Middle East and are an attempt to replace Palestinians is factually wrong, though,
You stuck an 'and' between two ideas there. Native? Sure. Not an attempt to replace Palestinians? That's an uphill argument you've carved off for yourself that runs counter to all observable facts.
May as well just fall back on the classic "it was our land first" and have done with, since honestly you're not going to come up with any moral justification that holds up any better.
Exactly. Israel and its supporters have successfully weaponized accusations of antisemitism to make political attacks.
It's actually quite rare to see genuine antisemitism these days. Most of what we see claimed as "antisemitism" is just vague insinuations and associations, or inventing supposed "antisemitic tropes" in what people have said.
In fact it's got to the point now where if someone is accused of antisemitism, it's best just to assume it's a malicious accusation with no substance behind it.
I mean, when you have the Zionists accusing people like Noam Chomsky and Bernie Sanders of antisemitism, you just know it's a bad faith exercise.
Truly, we live in fascinating times. One amazing thing is that if you had the exact same politics and policies as a Zionist but for any other cause, the same elite Americans who support Zionism would lambaste you as a maniac.
