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#“a homeland for the Jewish people” at the expense of an indigenous population
chaosordoffl · 5 months
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evangelicalism is a mental disease what do you mean "god promised them that land" so the occupation is fine
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thetwistedrope · 2 months
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Starting after World War I, the dismantling of indigenous Palestinian society was set in motion by the large - scale immigration of European Jewish settlers supported by the newly established British Mandate authorities, who helped them build the autonomous structure of a Zionist para - state. Additionally, a separate Jewish - controlled sector of the economy was created through the exclusion of Arab labor from Jewish - owned firms under the slogan of “ Avoda ivrit ,” Hebrew labor, and the injection of truly massive amounts of capital from abroad. 16 By the middle of the 1930s, although Jews were still a minority of the population, this largely autonomous sector was bigger than the Arab - owned part of the economy.
The indigenous population was further diminished by the crushing repression of the Great 1936 – 39 Arab Revolt against British rule, during which 10 percent of the adult male population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled, 17 as the British employed a hundred thousand troops and air power to master Palestinian resistance. Meanwhile, a massive wave of Jewish immigration as a result of persecution by the Nazi regime in Germany raised the Jewish population in Palestine from just 18 percent of the total in 1932 to over 31 percent in 1939. This provided the demographic critical mass and military manpower that were necessary for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. The expulsion then of over half the Arab population of the country, first by Zionist militias and then by the Israeli army, completed the military and political triumph of Zionism.
Such radical social engineering at the expense of the indigenous population is the way of all colonial settler movements. In Palestine, it was a necessary precondition for transforming most of an overwhelmingly Arab country into a predominantly Jewish state. As this book will argue, the modern history of Palestine can best be understood in these terms: as a colonial war waged against the indigenous population, by a variety of parties, to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will.
-Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
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eretzyisrael · 3 years
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Keeping the Jewish State
For the first time in its history, Israel’s government includes an Arab party.
Arabs have sat in the Knesset since Israel’s founding, both as members of primarily Jewish parties and as representatives of various Arab parties. From time to time Arab MKs have kept a government in office by supporting it from outside the coalition, as happened in 1993 when the Oslo Declaration of Principles was approved. But no Arab party has ever been member of the governing coalition until now.
Some people think this is wonderful. The Arabs are 20% of our population, so why shouldn’t they have a commensurate role in government? Mansour Abbas is a pragmatist who just wants the best for his constituents, they say. Others think it is a disaster. The Arab parties are all anti-Zionist and in some cases disloyal. What will happen when there is an operation against Hamas? Mansour Abbas represents an Islamist party that is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent of Hamas!
My view is that I honestly have no idea how this will work out, even assuming that the new government lasts more than a few weeks. But one thing is absolutely clear: putting an Arab party in the coalition brings the question of the relationship of the Jewish state to its Muslim Arab citizens front and center in a way that it heretofore hasn’t been.
Indeed, it’s one of those elephants in the room that we have been carefully ignoring for years. But since the formation of the new government that elephant has been tromping around and bumping into things. It can’t be ignored any longer.
Although the law requires that any candidate for the Knesset not “negate” the Jewish and democratic character of the state, the Supreme Court has required a very high standard of proof in order to disqualify an Arab candidate, and has several times overturned the decision of the Knesset’s Elections Committee to do so (the law also bans “incitement to racism,” and this has been invoked several times against Jewish candidates, including of course Meir Kahane’s Kach party).
This is in keeping with the extremely weak interpretation of “Jewish state” that was propounded by the influential former President of the Court, Aharon Barak, in whose opinion a “Jewish” state is little more than one whose values are “universal values common to members of democratic society, which grew from Jewish tradition and history.” The absurdity of this view is evident (it makes the US, for example, a Jewish state), but it is popular among those, Arabs and Jews alike, who are made uncomfortable by either Judaism or Jewish nationalism.
In 2006, a group of Israeli Arab intellectuals (I use this term although some prefer “Palestinian citizens of Israel”), under the auspices of the Arab heads of local authorities, produced a document called “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel” in which they declare themselves “the indigenous peoples, the residents of the States of Israel, and an integral part of the Palestinian People and the Arab and Muslim and human Nation,” and call for Israel to relinquish its Jewish character and become a binational state. It accuses the “Zionist-Jewish elite in Europe” of settler-colonial oppression of the indigenous “Palestinian People.” It calls for equal representation of Jews and Arabs in the government, and the recognition of the Arabs as an “indigenous cultural national group” with international protection. “[A]ll forms of ethnic superiority, be that executive, structural, legal or symbolic” must be removed. There is a great deal more, including the placing of all “Islamic holy sites” (which naturally include all the Jewish ones) in Arab hands.
If anything “negates” the Jewish character of the state, this does. And yet, several of the participants in the development of that document, including Ayman Oudeh, the head of the Joint List of Israeli Arab parties in the Knesset, Aida Touma-Sliman, and Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi, currently serve in the Knesset.
One of the reasons that the Nation-State Law was passed was in response to this. It states that “the actualization of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” and even specifies the flag, the national anthem, and the symbol of the state. The Basic Law (part of what serves Israel for a constitution), which was passed by a majority of Knesset members, is nevertheless controversial. The Jewish Left subjects itself to cognitive dissonance, insisting that it still believes in Zionism while wanting a “state of its citizens” (see the self-contradictory Meretz platform here) and opposing the Nation-State Law.
Jewish Israelis need to face this issue head-on and stop pretending that it does not exist. Our state – our state – was created explicitly as a Jewish state because the founders were Zionists who believed that Jewish survival depended upon the existence of a sovereign state of the Jewish people. The evidence of the past 73 years of Israel’s existence, especially the burgeoning of Jew-hatred in the 21st century, has only strengthened my belief that they were entirely correct.
Some think that all that’s necessary for Israel to be a Jewish state is that it have a Jewish majority and a Law of Return for Jews. This ignores the real connection that most Israeli Jews have to the ancient homeland of their people, without which there is no reason for a Jewish majority, and no justification for a Law of Return. Possibly “religious” people find this easier to grasp, but it’s not necessary to be observant to see yourself as part of a historic people, a people with a land, a language, a religion, and a culture.
If the Jews of Israel give up the idea of the connection of the people to the land, if they decide to emphasize democracy at the expense of Jewishness, if they stop believing that there is great value in having their capital in Jerusalem instead of Tel Aviv, if they give up their control of Jewish holy places (because, in the words of Moshe Dayan, “who needs all that Vatican?”), they will soon find that there is no longer a Jewish majority in the Land of Israel, and indeed that the Jewish people are again wanderers in foreign lands.
The Muslim Arabs understand this quite well, and the imperatives of their religion drive them to struggle relentlessly to get control back over the entire Land of Israel, which they consider a Muslim waqf, land that permanently and irrevocably must be under Muslim control. This is why they struggle to conquer not only the physical land and temporal assets in the hands of the Jews, but to obtain symbolic and spiritual control. This is why Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are often the focus of their violence. This is why they will never give up.
Mansour Abbas may be a pragmatist in the short term, but he is also an Islamist, which implies the longest of terms. If the Jews are to prevail in the struggle for this land, they too need to understand the limits of pragmatism. They need to learn how to draw lines and stick to them, to understand the importance of symbolism, everywhere in the country, from the Galilee to the Negev. But especially now, they need to wrest control of the Temple Mount and the Old City back from the Arabs, who have systematically undercut Jewish sovereignty there since June of 1967.
We have the power and the resources to do this. Do we also have the spiritual strength, the perseverance, and the ability to sacrifice that will be required?
Abu Yehuda
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menalez · 3 years
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Why are you opposed to Zionism though? Isn't that just a movement for a Jewish homeland? Israel is wrong for bombing schools and kids, but how can you spread lies like calling Israelis colonialists, when they were literally refugees at the end of WW2 returning to the land after having been subjected to violence and expulsions everywhere else, including in Israel- Palestine region by the Arabs even in early 20th century. Also, why aren't other middle eastern countries accepting and naturalizing Palestinian refugees who have been there for half a century or more? Unlike Jewish people who're treated like shit everywhere else but especially in middle East it's easier for Palestinians to integrate in other countries that are sympathetic to their cause. And supporting a right wing terrorist organisation like Hamas isn't a good look on Palestine supporters.
colonizer/ˈkɒlənʌɪzə/
noun
noun:
coloniser
1.a country that sends settlers to a place and establishes political control over it.
.a person who settles among and establishes political control over the indigenous people of an area.
here is what it means to be a coloniser. fun fact: but entering a country and forcefully taking land from the population, expelling the existing population and killing the existing population, isn’t what refugees tend to do. that’s what colonisers do. the unfortunate circumstances used to justify this form of colonisation doesn’t change what it is.
i’m not opposed to zionism as in opposed to the idea of a jewish state nor opposed to a jewish homeland being created. i’m opposed to a certain form of zionism as it exists TODAY, which is not about estabilishing a homeland but rather stealing one from others. let me highlight in the current definition of zionism what exactly i oppose:
1.a movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl, and was later led by Chaim Weizmann.
i oppose the idea that because a population needs somewhere safe to be and a place where they are accepted, that it somehow means that what is necessary is to harm and oppress another population. there are countless parts of the world where there are hardly any inhabitants, and the establishment of a jewish state could’ve been done in numerous ways which do not involve invading a country [after its population did not agree to giving most of their land to a smaller foreign population from europe], nor does it necessitate stealing land, and killing the existing population. i oppose the zionist idea that because a jewish state would be good for jewish people, that it must be created by taking over palestine and that it should be done at the expense of palestinians. that’s what i oppose. 
you’re moving goalposts by saying “welll.... its bad but... the people behind it weren’t privileged and have been persecuted! so its somehow ok and actually, the responsibility is on the rest of the middle east to help israel kick out the native population of the land theyre stealing.” here. none of what you’ve stated are particularly good arguments. they should not be doing this to begin with, full stop. they should not be stealing land and expelling people from their homes and pushing them out of their country. end of sentence, end of argument. the things you’ve brought up are justifying actions which you admit are wrong as well as calling for others to work around these actions, ie putting the responsibility on everyone else rather than the perpetrators. why do they need to steal land and push people out of their homes to begin with? why do they need to expel a population from their country? why did they need to take that particular land? why do they need to kill people and persecute them? why do you expect the rest of the middle east to work around that, instead of expecting the israeli government to stop doing such things?
also lol i have not supported hamas at any point. but you supporting a terrorist government like israel’s isn’t a good look for your cause either btw 
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