#there is no ethnic cleansing—israel is not trying to get rid of arab people in general they are trying to get rid of the ones who kill us | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jechristine · 6 months

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No one in the world was an absolute exaggeration but you know that and you know what I mean. Im having trouble understanding your point because it is coming across as yes Palestinians are being displaced and ethnically cleansed but lets not call the Jewish settlers colonizers?

This is from the other day, but I just have time now to revisit. Sure I’ll try to clarify.

Colonizer usually refers to a foreign, imperial power that is looking to expand its empire by raiding natural resources, by establishing new military/economic bases, and by forcibly spreading its language, religion, and other parts of it culture among indigenous populations. Resistors are murdered and displaced.

By now in the 21c, we see that the way to correct colonization to expel the colonizer and its regime. The premise is that the colonizer does not belong and must leave.

The word doesn’t fit the Jews who came to the Levant in the 20c for a variety of reasons. For one, Jews have an ancient connection to the land, from which they’d mostly (but not completely) been exiled and in diaspora for thousands of years. I think it’s worthwhile to note that Jews had always maintained a presence in the area, too, especially in Jerusalem. For two, Jews didn’t come as ambassadors from an imperial power but as refugees from an industrial campaign to extinguish them in Europe, and as immigrants fleeing centuries of oppression through the Middle East and Northern Africa. For three, Jews are not an evangelizing people; they are insular and don’t spread their language, religion, and culture among non-Jews (this is the source of most antisemitic distrust of them, I think). For three, the original plan among most Jews wasn’t to exclude or displace people but to live with Arabs in a multiethnic state. To this day, over 1 in 5 Israelis are Arab.

20c Jews getting the support of the imperial European powers—who werent too upset to be rid of the Jews themselves—does not make the Jews themselves colonizers. No more so than the Palestinians getting the support of the Arab powers, five of whom attacked Israel in 1948 and would have displaced Jews if they had won the war.

The reason I’m so fixated on this word “colonizer” is that it’s a word that houses antisemitism. By insinuating that Jews were an imperial power themselves, colonizer in this context erases the Jews’ millenia of marginalization and subjugation in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. By implying that Jews don’t belong in the Levant, the word colonizer erases Jews’ indigeneity to their homeland, and as such to any homeland because that’s the only one. The word attacks Jews’ right to exist in Israel and claims that they must leave.

I know some who say “colonizer” may intend to mean only “people who displace other people,” but they don’t seem to realize the word’s full connotations or they believe that somehow they can redefine the word individually. But words are social and carry meanings that every user may not be aware of or intend in every context.

NOW as I’ve said I think that Israeli policy over the last decades, led by the terrible Netanyahu and his ultra right-wing government, especially the settlements in the occupied West Bank and the cruel blockade of Gaza is reprehensible and must be defeated. I think Israel has become an oppressor of Palestinians. I support those urgently advocating for a change in Israel’s behavior and policy and relationship to Palestinians, and I call on my own American government to support those changes and to withold aid if they aren’t made.

In a better world, I’d advocate for a multiethnic democracy, a one-State solution.

#israel hamas war

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palestinianliberator · 3 years

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People are acting as if the latest surge in Israeli hate crimes and calls for “death to Arabs” [they can’t even bring themselves to acknowledge us as Palestinians when they’re calling for our deaths, no less] is something new, something that’s the result of current Israeli leadership, the current political climate, etc. People are trying to understand where this surge in hate has come from, and all refuse to believe that, as in the US, this hatred isn’t new - it has always been there. Israel was founded on the hatred of the Palestinian people. Israel was founded on our ethnic cleansing and dispossession. Israel has maintained a brutal military occupation in the West Bank and controlled every aspect of Palestinian life for decades with absolutely no relent.

This hatred has always been there, this hatred has always been on display for all to see. These marches aren’t new, these attacks against Palestinians is nothing new, these home demolitions and takeovers are nothing new. This isn’t a matter of “racists feeling emboldened by the current climate” - this is literally no.change.

The only difference, it seems, is that these acts of terror and the sheer brutality of Israel is being caught on more and more cameras and becoming more and more difficult for people to ignore. This has been the reality of life as a Palestinian for as long as any of us remember.

This is why we resist. This is why armed resistance is not only justified, but inevitable.

I’m so sick of these headlines, social media posts, armchair commentators who are all commenting on how surprised they are over the “surge” in hate crimes, I’m so sick of hearing about “most Israelis oppose this!!”. Bull. Shit. If “most Israelis opposed” what’s going on, what has BEEN going on, things wouldn’t continue to get worse for Palestinians both within Israel proper and those within Palestinian territory. But instead, every single Israeli election sees the political climate surge further right.

I do not care for any Israelis who claim to be opposed to what’s going on. I do not care for any self-described Zionists who claim to be opposed to what’s going on.

“What’s going on” is nothing more, nothing less, than the manifestation of the Zionist project.

Israel has engaged in a long, drawn-out ethnic cleansing campaign. Those who support Israel will cry out “how is it ethnic cleansing if your numbers are going up?? If Israel wanted you out, they’d just get rid of you all easy anyways!”

What else do you call the forced displacement of people? The destruction of their history, the appropriation of their traditions, the criminalization of their culture, an outright refusal to even call the people by what they are, using the homogenizing, identity-stripping “Arabs” rather than “Palestinians”, as if to lump us as some monolithic, interchangeable group? What else do you call a system where a family can move from the US, where they’ve lived their entire lives, to a home built on land recently stolen from a Palestinian family, who themselves had lived on said land their entire lives?

This isn’t “getting crazy”. This isn’t a “surge” in attacks and racism amongst Israeli society. This is the norm. It seems people are just now finally tuning in.

#Palestine #Israel #Vent #If I see one more post anywhere about how shocked people are #I'm going to sigh

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sarenstuff · 6 years

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Israel and the Palestinians, part 2

@angrybell So, picking up from where we last left off:

The League of Nations granted mandates to the British and the French. The Mandates required them to exercise control until they could grant independence to new countries. Among those, they decided that one of the territories would be a Jewish National Home.

And what right did they have to give the ancestral homeland of the Palestinian people to people who didn’t even have any provable ancestral connection to the land? Please explain.

What we are left with is this: Israel’s control of Judea and Samaria is entirely legal.

So all of the UN resolutions passed declaring the occupation completely illegal have nothing to them, then? They’re all bullshit?

Until the Arabs and Israel arrive at a settlement on the territory Israel is willing to give to a new Arab state

There isn’t going to be any “settlement” as long as Israel chooses to exist as a Jewish state. There can’t be any settlement unless Israel agrees to respect the three basic rights of the Palestinian people as set forth by the BDS movement.

there are no de facto or de jure borders for the mythical “Palestine”, but there are for the State of Israel.

No, there aren’t. Israel has no borders. It doesn’t recognize its own borders. Doing so would mean recognizing the complete illegality of its settlements in the West Bank, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights.

Now, if Israel was truly eradicating all signs that Arabs had been living in the region, why would Arabic be on the road signs?

Non-Jewish Palestinian citizens of Israel don’t have the same rights as Jewish citizens do. Israel has recently been making efforts to make Arabic a lower status than Hebrew across the entire country.

And why would [the Dome of the Rock] be allowed to remain if Israel was actually destroying Arabic connections to Israel?

Because there’s only so much that even Israel could get away with. If they did that, even the US wouldn’t be able to protect them.

However, you cannot ignore that Israel is an inclusive society, despite what some fringe elements call for, which has not erased the connection of the Arabs to the region.

No, it is not an inclusive society:

Also, are you familiar with these lovely statements from Israeli leaders and founders?

“Palestinians are beasts, they are not human.” - Deputy Minister of Defense, Eli Ben-Dahan

“The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more.” - Ehud Barak, when he was Prime Minister of Israel

“The Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs.” - Menahim Begin, Former Prime Minister of Israel

“When we have settled the land, all the Palestinians will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.“ - Rafael Eitan, Former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces

”We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel… Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.“ - Rafael Eitan, Former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces

“There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed.” -Golda Maier, Former Israeli Prime Minister

“We shall reduce the [Palestinian] Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters.” - Uri Lubrani, Former Israeli Prime Minister’s special adviser

“We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.” - Shlomo Lahat, former mayor of Tel Aviv

“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its [Palestinian] Arab population.” -Yosef Weitz, a former director a the Jewish National Fund in the 1940s, a group that’s responsible for organizing Zionist settlements

And that doesn’t even include Ayelet Shaked’s infamous “little snakes” comment. So, yeah: please explain how it is an “inclusive society”?

But according to you, that’s stealing.

No, according to me, the Nakba was stealing (and ethnic cleansing, and mass murder).

So how good was the economic conditions? By far, the Mandate territory had the best per capita income and daily wages in the region. It was causing a flood of illegal immigration.

Palestinians are not illegal immigrants:

http://jurhfalastini.tumblr.com/post/162977518288/hey-you-know-angrybell-has-claimed-that-most

Under your thesis, Arabs and Muslims get a pass because, after blowing their chance to ethnically cleanse and create apartheid states of their own, they now seek to smear Israel with the crimes that they they attempted. And that this somehow differentiates their anti-semitism from the Nazis and others.

No, under my thesis, the Palestinians were resisting Zionist colonization, whereas the Nazis just wanted to straight-up fucking murder every single Jew in the world.

It does not matter whether the person trying to extirminate the Jews from some part of the globe wears a swastika, crescent moon, or a funky looking cross. The methods they use may be different, but in the end, they are fundamentally the same: they are antisemites.

No, they are not. Anti-Zionism will never, ever, ever be antisemitism, no matter how much you fucking screech about it!

And then there was the Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, who proclaimed,

“This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.”

Kinda sounds like they wanted to exterminate all the Jews in Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azzam_Pasha_quotation

Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism. Its simple.

No, it isn’t.

You are denying Jews the right to their ancestral homeland for one simple reason: they are Jews.

There’s not a Jew on the planet who can trace his or her ancestry back to the Ancient Hebrews. I think that Jews belong in the countries in which they are born. I believe that a Swedish Jew is a Swede and an American Jew is an American. You Zionists don’t. You believe that Jews will forever be strangers in their actual homelands!

You can criticize Israel and not be anti-Semitic.

Yeah? That’s exactly what I’ve been doing all along!

However, to attack Zionism is to effectively deny Judaism because so much of Judaism is wrapped up in the idea that someday all the Jews will be back in Israel. It is part of our prayers. It is part of festivals and holidays. It is part of our scripture.

I don’t care. You do not get to ethnically cleanse an entire population and steal their land based on what your religion tells you. If the Zionists had merely immigrated, that would not have been a problem. The problem is what they did to the Palestinians in 1948.

And to you, Jews exercising their freedom of speech is the same as declaring war.

No, to me, ZIONISTS committing ETHNIC CLEANSING is the same as them committing ethnic cleansing.

Then you claim that the BDS movement is the best representative of the Arab people in the disputed territories.

Yeah, it is. Without a doubt.

These are the same people who forced the closure of businesses in PA controlled territory that provided the best salaries, working conditions, and benefits by far.

Yawn! Palestinian civil society - when they called for a global boycott - already decided that this is a very small price to pay in order to achieve their freedom. Oh, and also:

https://palestinianliberator.tumblr.com/post/140378641412/the-independent-jew-jewishwarriorprincess

Anything else?

But hey, creating discontent and discord is good if you want to keep the fighting going.

Israel created discontent and discord, not BDS.

Preventing Israel from creating bridges and harmony with the Arabs is the priority.

Oh, just fuck off! The only necessary bridges already exist: the bridges leading from Jordan into the West Bank. They’re the bridges which I expect the Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Syria will use when they finally get to go home.

But I guess living in Sweden, you could care less about the plight of the Arabs because you can assuage your feelings by knowing that you are morally pure by supporting BDS.

What does me living in Sweden have to do with anything?

By the way, are you using a computer with an Intel processor? Perhaps you use Bing or Google for your searches?

All developed in Israel.

I don’t think you understand what BDS actually means. Also, would you be okay with someone throwing you out of your house and living in it instead, as long as they invented some stuff while they were there?

Then you go on to say that Hamas has suddenly decided to not want to destroy Israel because of making one statement.

They do want to destroy Israel - but not Israelis.

Well, Ras al-Naqurah is a town on the border with Lebanon. Umm al-Rashrash is Eilat, the southern tip of Israel. The River Jordan is pretty self explanatory as is the Mediterranean. So basically, Hamas is still claiming all the land that is Israel.

Yep. Because that is their ancestral homeland.

So Hamas is not in a struggle with Jews, just Zionists, but almost all the Jews who live in Israel are considered Zionists. Great. So a fraction of Israel is now safe from the depredations of Hamas.

Do you expect them to not be in conflict with the people who have been oppressing them for seven decades?

To you,the answer to all the problems is simple: Zionism is the problem. Well, does history back that up? Absolutely not. The Arabs have been regularly conducting pogroms and massacres of Jews long before Herzl ever started the Zionist movement. There was, and this is not the full list, the

1834 Looting of Safed (Arabs attack and looted Safed’s Jewish community)

1838 Safed attack (Again, the Jews are attacked and robbed)

1847 Jerusalem pogrom (started because of a blood libel rumor)

1850 pogrom Aleppo (Eretz Israel was at that time part of the Syria Vilayet)

1848 Damascus pogrom

1862 Beirut pogrom (Again, this was part of Syria Vilayet)

1875 Beirut pogrom

1875 Aleppo pogrom

1890 Damascus pogrom

But hey, Zionism was responsible, right? Or maybe its because the Arabs anti-Semites who can’t stand to live with Jews.

That was antisemitism. What has happened between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea since the passing of the criminal and immoral Balfour Declaration, however, is because of Zionism.

You claim that the Arabs had access to all the land that held by the government prior to Israel’s independence. I have seen nothing that supports that. Some of the areas, probably. All of it? No. And even if you were right, which I do not believe, that did not create ownership rights for them. If it did, I would have ownership rights to several interstate highways because I travel on them regularly.

I don’t own all of Sweden. Yet I have access to the entire country - my home country (which incidentally is also the home country of about 18,000-20,000 Jews).

Furthermore, the Arabs, like every other country, wish to control who can enter their land. To that end, they have banned Jews with certain exceptions. So why then is it wrong for Israel to not allow foreign Arabs to freely roam land that is within Israel’s borders? Oh that’s right, its because they are Jews and Jews are not allowed the same rights as everyone else.

LOL, “foreign Arabs”…

Then you make the claim that Israel never existed before. To an extent, this is true. A nation called Israel did not exist. However, a Jewish political entity did. There was the confederation of the tribes. There was Kingdom of Israel. This was broken up by civil war into the Kingdom of Israel (aka Northern Kingdom of Israel) and Kingdom of Judah. Eventually it was reunited, and it was the Hasmonean Kingdom.

And the Palestinians are the direct descendants of those people - Muslims, Christians and Jews alike.

So “the State of Israel” did not exist. But as a political entity, the Jewish nation did and does exist. Hence why it is Israel’s independence is a reestablishment of the Jewish state.

I don’t follow your logic here.

And then you dodge the question of proof. You make the assertion that the reestablishment of Israel did not have the support of the Jewish community. Its a statement you have made time and again without giving any support. Prove it. Otherwise, its as false as the rest of your drivel.

Are you dense? I’ve already told you that I’m not going to prove a negative! Once again: the burden of proof is entirely on you. You have to prove that most Jews did support a Jewish state in Palestine at the point of Israel’s creation or in the preceding decades. But you won’t be able to do that, because they didn’t.

Then, because you don’t like DNA studies, claim that Jews cannot be related because we do not look like each other.

They can be related in the sense that they might have had a common ancestor, but they are not in any way, shape or form a single people. They lived thousands of kilometers apart, in different countries, on different continents, speaking different languages and eating different foods - and yes, they also looked completely different.

The Jewish people were exiled from their home in Eretz Yisrael. And quite literally we were scattered to the four corners of the planet. So yeah, I’m not going to look like a Cochin Jew. Hell, even though I am Ashkenazi, I don’t look like any other Ashkenazi Jew. But that does not matter.

Nonsense. Why would the Roman Empire have expelled an entire population after the Bar Kokhba revolt instead of keeping them on the land and taxing them? It makes no sense. A land without a people is worthless as a province.

That means “I am a Jew.” And the studies show that the Jews come from Israel. So whether I look like Jackie Mason, Paul Newman, or Peter Sellars, is irrelevant. I am Jewish. I am part of the tradition, religion, and nation that goes back five millennia, just as anyone else who joined up along the way is.

What studies? And do those same studies also show that Palestinians don’t come from that same area?

The Tsar’s subjects, the Roman soldiers, Nazis, and the Arab terrorists never cared about how far back my family goes in the community. They attacked us all the same. So I do the same when I consider whether someone is “Jewish enough”. Its an in or out thing which someone like you does not get to decide.

When did I ever try to decide that?

As far as Rafeef Ziadah is concerned, I suspect she supports terrorism. After all, this is a woman who has no trouble avoiding directly answering her family’s history.

What about her family history? Why should she even have to answer that?

She also has promoted the lie, which has long since been debunked, that the IDF regularly rapes Arab women and attempts to harvest Arab organs for sale.

Why do Palestinians have to be infallible to you in order to speak for their own liberation?

She has been calling for the repudiation of the Oslo Accords.

Of course she has. The Oslo Accords are completely unjust.

#jews #israel

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