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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 b

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.

ocschwar 6y ago
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."
- andrepd 6y ago
  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.
  - ocschwar 6y ago
    "mostly Western mostly white settlers" 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)
reissbaker 6y ago
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).
- DSingularity 6y ago
  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?
  - reissbaker 6y ago
    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.
YZF 6y ago
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.
- DSingularity 6y ago
  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.

ocschwar 6y ago

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."

andrepd 6y ago
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.
- ocschwar 6y ago
  "mostly Western mostly white settlers" 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)

reissbaker 6y ago

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).

DSingularity 6y ago
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?
- reissbaker 6y ago
  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.

YZF 6y ago

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.

DSingularity 6y ago
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.