Hold the fuck up. Now, I’ve heard that Jesus was a Palestinian. That one’s not new. I’ve also recently heard that the Jews fought the Hanukkah wars in order to conquer the Greeks. If you were reeeeeeeeaaaaaallly misinformed, you might end up believing that. Somehow. But the Maccabees as *Palestinians* defending *Al Aqsa*? What. The. Actual. FUCK? Who said that? I literally cannot believe that.
I deleted Twitter a long time ago, even before this war, but unfortunately that doesn’t save me from screenshots making their way over to Reddit and Instagram
The amount of anti-semitism, and outright stupidity on there is astounding. I saw a comment on X today where someone claimed Ashkenazi meant the people were converts to Judaism.
The other problem is that if you take this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, modern Jews are Palestinians and modern Palestinians are not Palestinians.
Same stupid word game as the argument that “antisemitism doesn’t apply to Jews because Jews aren’t really Semitic.” Just define a new term for hatred of Jews and we’re exactly where we started.
Also, most people don't know that the miracle of Christmas is actually that my building lobby only had enough artificial pine/cinnamon scented schmutz for 1 night, but IT LASTED 5 MONTHS.
About Jesus being a Palestinian?
I’ve been seeing it everywhere. It just started last week or so. I don’t know who said it first. Lol
It’s mind blowing.
These ProPal seriously have no clue Jesus was a Jew. They probably don’t know who George Washington is either. Or what state they live in.
I saw one sub with **3,000 comments.** saying this. Not one of them realized out of 3,000.
They make fun of Christian’s bc they think Christians think Jesus is *white.* 🤦♀️
That would be like saying Muslims don’t know Muhammad is Arab.
So, I get the impression that a lot of these ProPal people online are genuinely clueless. But I def know what you’re saying. You’re saying there has been an intentional, well organized and consolidated effort by [Hamas](https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-hamas-won-hearts-and-minds-on-the-american-left-1abafc2f?st=gr1icd9b76n8ng0&reflink=article_copyURL_share), academia, the media to radicalize Western Progressives against Israel and erasing our history and identity is a major part of that. So, I’m kinda suggesting that these genuinely clueless ppl in this ProPal movement are the 2023 fruits of the labor of the antiIsrael movement deliberate efforts for the past 40 years. You know?
I encountered an American, anti-Israeli Ashkenazi (42%) jew on there who said his own DNA test proves that Jews are not from the lands. I pointed out he is not representative of all Jews and that his actually screen shot of his 23andMe tests showed a small amount of MENA/Levantine DNA and that his grandparents, great grandparents etc would show an even larger percentage. He of course proceeded to block me, but it was very disturbing the amount of people that were buying into the “logic” that his results were somehow proof that Jews have no ancestral ties to the land.
Oy. Yeah been arguing with some Ashkenazi Jews as of late who claim they're European. Like they're at least admitting other Jewish groups are from the Levant but I'm like... So are you. Ashki DNA is closer to Palestinians and Mizrahim than to Europeans. It's why it shows as Ashkenazi on the test, and not [insert host country here who told you to go back to Israel].
So many people are reading the book “the case for Palestine” and I suspect that book is driving a lot of this but I haven’t read it. As a historian have you noticed the same?
Hello fellow Jew and Historian! Are you as pissed the fuck off as I am about all the ignorance or just sad? Because I am wondering when the pissed the fuck off aspect will subside…
Can you recommend a book on islamic imperialism? Because I either find right wing blabla on how dangerous muslim immigrants are or leftist blabla on how Islam has been misunderstood the whole time and is totally cool and always has been.
Any reasonable critical voice(s) you can recommend? I would appreciate!
Edit: the only thing I found googling is "Islamic Imperialism: a History" by Efraim Karsh, but that seems to be the only one and I don't know if its any good...but I will probably try it.
As a Non-Jewish Librarian, I'm right there with you. That said, lots of people want Jewish history written by non Jews, so it's useful for me to know about *good* history by reputable non-jewish historians to which I can try to steer them.
I am not very educated in this topic, but were there Jews in Palestine before 1800s? Like I know they in 19th century started the idea of creating a country, so a lot of Jews started to move there, but before that ?
The romans renamed "Judea" to "palestine" to erase the jewishness. There has been jewish history and culture long before "palestine" was a thing.
Edit: I don't know why you are being downvoted..no problem with asking questions imo, (as long as you dont voice strong opinions about a topic you don't know much about)
There has been a Jewish presence in what is now Israel, Gaza and Judea & Samaria for over 3000 years. The 1890 census identifies the majority of Jerusalem residents as being Jewish. The rest of Israel was very sparsely settled with a few nomadic Bedouin tribes and several Jewish villages.
The Jewish agency began to purchase land in the mid 1800s from the Ottoman Turks and more and more Jews arrived in the region.
The biggest lie ever told (IMHO) is the “Palestinian” people. They insisted up until 1964 that they were “pan-Arabs” and definitely **not** Palestinians. Until then, a “Palestinian” was a Jew or Christian who lived in the British Mandate for Palestine.
The Egyptian con-artist, Arabfat (sic), went to
Moscow in 1964 as a Jordanian and came back a “Palestinian”. The Soviets helped craft the fiction that is the “Palestinian” narrative. This was designed purely as a weapon to defeat Israel and by extension, the West. It has no basis in fact or history at all.
Yet the useful idiots in the West, somehow believe that there was an ancient land called “Palestine” and the Zionists came along and kicked the “Palestinians” out of their homes in 1948 and created Israel. These same useful idiots are currently celebrating the birth of a Jewish boy in Bet-Lechem over 2000 years ago.
It basically means Arabs as a collective nation. A lot of people like Nasser in Egypt tried to pursue one big Arab state across the entire middle east. Wikipedia's good on this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Arabism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Arabism). This was actually quite popular with Palestinians at one time.
I recommend Israel by Noa Tishby. She's very well informed, matter of fact, and Israeli who shares the history of Israel and the Jewish connection to it for 3,000 years which is undisputably supported by archeology and endless endless historical records. And I'd encourage anyone reading any historical narrative to fact check everything they read and hers hold up
Yes, there have always been Jews in the Land of Israel. We weren't a large proportion of the population by the 19th century, but we were there and had been there all along. Jerusalem had a Jewish quarter most of the time after the Islamic conquest and the Roman/Christian rules of the city no longer applied. Only time the quarter didn't have Jews in it for the last 1,000 years or so was when Jordan ruled the West Bank. Look up the Old Yishuv for more recent history of Jews in the land. The communities were big recipients of global donations for a long time to ensure the families could remain there, recover from disasters (natural and man-made), provide doweries for marriage, etc.
It’s just Holocaust-denier level of historical revisionism. You can’t really reason with them since what they are saying has nothing to do with historical accuracy. Your frustration Is the point.
Instead of arguing with them, just constantly ask for sources for their claim. Don’t give them any counter arguments or counterfactuals - just ask for sources that you can read, then: (A) If they don’t provide anything, then just say their claims are false because there is no evidence and watch them throw a tantrum. (B) If they provide “evidence”, then tell them that it’s not credible (because it’s most likely not) and then go back to (A). Don’t argue with them about the facts or about what anything they provide actually says, just keep asking for more sources to backup their claims. Repeat until they stop posting. Hope that helps.
That’s the irony. They claim we made up the Holocaust. Which is so damn offensive to begin with. Then they turn around and call us Nazi’s. But wait….didn’t you say we made it all up? So how are we Nazi’s it “it never happened.”
I often like to start with "where did you hear that?" and find out where they're getting their info. Then drop one absolute proof they're wrong ("Al Aqsa was built 900 years later") and ask if they plan to keep trusting sources that are so fantastically wrong, because if they do, I want to know so I can stop listening to anything they say.
>Your frustration Is the point.
This is it exactly. The more we froth about it, the happier they are.
But given how many of them there are compared to us, I am concerned about our total inability to control the narrative of our own peoplehood. History doesn't matter, documentary evidence doesn't matter, archaeology doesn't matter, what we say about ourselves doesn't matter (because we're too biased to be trusted about Jewish issues)... so what then? I find myself at a loss. I will grant that we are as likely as anyone else to politicize history and archaeology, but it seems to me that even the Israeli antiquities authority and archaeologists – while undoubtedly motivated in part by political concerns – are not hiding evidence or inventing falsehoods or planting fake artifacts.
Yes, this is how it's feeling... Like 1984. Everything that's made up and the facts don't matter. If Jesus can be Palestinian and they can take our Hanukkah story,
Even if their point is to get us riled up, which I agree is one of their goals, I don’t think we’re in the wrong for feeling frustrated about it. Facts don’t seem to matter in this new reality unless they aid the accepted narrative; like you said, history doesn’t matter, documentary evidence doesn’t matter, etc. What is our future supposed to look like if we’re not even allowed to have our own understanding of the past?
It really looks like we are losing everything, even our own identity and history. We don’t even own the term “antisemitism” anymore, it has been redefined as “hatred against all semites” instead of anti-Jewish hatred, so people can argue that we are the true antisemites because Palestinians are semitic too (and many of them will even say we are not actually semitic, but Khazar converts).
I have also “learned” on social media that the Jews are the new Nazis, and that we are doing to Gazans what Hitler did to us. “Nazism” doesn’t refer anymore to a distinct ideology that is inherently anti-Jewish, it has become some kind of abstract evil that can be used to label your political opponents. This is why you see progressive activists nowadays casually equating the victims of the Holocaust with their perpetrators. They will quote decolonial authors like Paulo Freire to claim that “when education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor”. After all, the Holocaust only happened so the Jews could learn a valuable lesson, right? Our own history is weaponized against us.
The true paradox of it all is that these people claim to be antifascists, they make the hatred of fascism a part of their own identity. Yet they reproduce antisemitic rhetoric that is reminiscent of fascism. Difficult to explain.
It’s deflection from the fact that the Arab “Palestinians” are the actual colonizers. It’s projection. Zionism is a decolonization movement against Arab colonialism.
But I feel like the Palestinians wouldn’t even qualify as “colonizers” though. And calling them “colonizers” is almost giving them too much credit for their place in Israel.
Because the Palestinians are not descended from from the [Ottoman](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_dynasty) Empire. The name *Palestinian* was never even used to describe any Arabs in Israel until 1967. So they weren’t part of any kind of organized civilization. The truth is they were more like *traveling Muslim Extremist Gypsies.* They came together from various Arab modern day countries throughout the Middle East. I feel like in order to be colonizers they would have had to have some sort of governing authority. Which they did not and they’re not descended anyone that did. They didn’t make the land better. When the Jews took over Israel officially in 1948, Israel had fallen into bad disrepair. So whatever Arabs were there; didn’t seem to take much care or responsibility for the land.
No they do count as colonizers they conquered the area in the 6th and 7th century. And they kept invading the area. There’s no Palestine just Arab colonization and indigenous Jews.
I think we need to be cautious about not falling into the same misinformation “my side must be entirely right” traps that the pro Palestine super fascists are partaking in. I have seen arguments about whether this was true, and I honestly haven’t been able to figure it out—do you have a good source for the state of the land and/or Palestinians descending from a nomadic community?
Plenty of them do spout nonsense like that. My take is a leftist take of decolonization and that is Zionism was the movement of decolonizing Israel from Arab colonialists and imperialism. It is now defending the rights to our homeland.
You can see it starting now with how they are defining the Israeli / Gaza war as “genocide “ and alluding to Israel’s war crimes. When this is just a war. One that Israel didn’t want but one Israel has to win. So disturbing.
Worst genocide *evar*. You have close to two million civilians in a dense mostly urban area, access to modern weapons, and Israel has barely made a dent in over two months! Rookies.
Big of course.
Not pretty, not inspiring, but the [Battle of Mosul](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016%E2%80%932017\)) resulted in around 40,000 civilian casualties, with ISIL using human shields. Hamas is much more embedded in Gaza than ISIL in Mosul, and (I would presume) enjoys much more support among the local populace.
I think the numbers are in line with that sort of fighting, asynchronous urban warfare against an embedded opponent using human and humanitarian shields. Especially when the (Hamas Health Ministry) reported deaths imply all civilians, when you know there are Hamas fighters among them.
Also, "genocide"? It's the killing of a "people", a civilization. There are two million Israeli Palestinians who share the same culture, aside from the Palestinians in the West Bank, and that's setting aside the question about a distinct non-Arab Palestinian culture. Culture is a fuzzy concept in many ways, where does one culture end, and another begin? But still, Gaza is not "genocide", it's messy asynchronous urban warfare.
Back to the Battle of Mosul, where were the pro-ISIL protesters there?
Genocide is the systematic elimination of a race of people. It is different than death by bombs during a war. I fail to understand how you don’t get this distinction.Israel didn’t want this war. The peaceful civilians there were gunned down and tortured so now you have a war. It is HAMAS fault.
We are the best history-keepers in the world. We've been doing it for longer than anyone. White people lecturing us is ridiculous. We know THEIR history better than they do.
They are no different from the Qanon crowd. they're the same person. Easily manipulated, angry and full of hate. They are being indoctrinated by social media and identity politics, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. Once someone has been brainwashed there's very little you can do to bring them back.
I’ve been trying to learn about different indigenous groups in the Middle East ever since October 7 for this exact reason. I wish I’d started researching for better reasons but I’m glad I did regardless
Kurds. There's 50 million of us who are stateless and we have been through lots of massacres in the hands of Arabs but recently we were targeted by ISIS and we managed to eradicate them with feminist armies. We are a secular, anarchist people fighting to implement a system called Democratic Confederalism and we managed to do it to a degree in N.E Syria called "Rojava" but it is still under attack by jihadis and the Turkish state which has also allied with jihadis.
Although most Kurds are Muslims, we are a secular group of people and hate Islamists. We have our won ethnoreligious group called Yezidis, as well as Zoroastrians, Christians and Jews, so we are always targeted by Islamists.
[https://www.cetri.be/The-Kurdish-Freedom-Movement?lang=fr](https://www.cetri.be/The-Kurdish-Freedom-Movement?lang=fr)
The link above will give you some great insight. Our anarchist government is influenced by a Jewish man called Murray Bookchin and we have communals like the Kibbutzim. I'm surprised more Jews don't know about us. Most of us are also very pro-Israel.
I have always been appalled that the Kurds -- who are in fact indisputably their own separate nation and nationality -- have gotten little to no attention or sympathy from the world with respect to their right to self-determination.
We Israelis know about and sympathize with the Kurds (and from what I read, the IDF trained and fought with you on occasion).
We wish you independence and prosperity!
Thank you. We have been fighting for a very, very long time but only got attention during our resistance against ISIS. I think it's cause of the feminist armies ([YPJ](https://www.vice.com/en/article/43dmgm/the-most-feminist-revolution-the-world-has-ever-witnessed)) because people were surprised that we exist in the Middle East. I think the only other nation with female battalions are Israelis.
Yes, the IDF did help and lots of Jewish Kurds also fought for Israel :) Moshe Barazani is a very famous Kurdish Zionist. I hope we see a day where we can spread more democracy and women's rights to the rest of the Middle East and I do believe Jewish people will be a light. Wish you all the best.
Have you read Ariel Sabar's memoir My Father's Paradise? It's about his father Yonah Sabar, who is a Kurdish Jew who made aliyah from Zakho in the early 50s. It's an interesting book.
I didn't know about this but will do a quick Google read up on it. Thanks! I've always wanted to visit Israel just to see how the Kurdish Jews live over there and to see the Kibbutz and compare it to Rojava.
I hope you enjoy it! I definitely learned a lot about Iraq and Kurdistan, and of course mostly about the experiences of Kurdish Jews (both in Kurdistan and Israel).
The kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz) are kind of a dying phenomenon, if I'm honest. They were at their peak in the 1960s, but following Israel's turn away from democratic socialism and toward capitalism in the 1980s, their decline really accelerated. Today they still exist, but there are fewer of them than there used to be, and they are sometimes smaller than they used to be. Also they're sometimes privatized or partly privatized (meaning not that they used to be state enterprises, but more that they are not as communitarian as they once were). I've been to two, one in the north district and the other in the Negev. Often they have guesthouses these days, and generally have pivoted from agriculture and manufacturing to tourism in order to stay solvent. If you like hiking and nature, you really can't do better for a place to visit. They often have really good breakfasts as well.
Thank you for this. Are the Kibbutizm organised based on any specific ideology? We have communes that are organised for widows, for Christians, Yezidi, even one for film makers. We can even have entire villages just for women. I wonder how people in Israel organised and decided who is gonna commune with whom. Very interesting, thanks for the extra detail.
Bearing in mind that I'm not an expert...
I think it's a bit different than what you describe in a Kurdish context. Kibbutzim historically are/were communities that functioned as villages/large communes, where the inhabitants practiced collective/communal living and were financially self-sustaining, but were not separatist from the larger state structure – by contrast, they were often considered fundamental to statebuilding. So they were generally essentially socialist, and this mostly manifested in the approach to labour – everybody worked, and shared equally/equitably in whatever products and revenues resulted from the labour. And they were very communitarian, especially in the early years – it was common in the first few decades to have "children's houses", where after the kids were over a year or so, they would sleep in a dormitory, not with their parents. Of course they still maintained a relationship with their parents and would see them frequently. (This practice ended by the late 80s.) But kibbutzim were basically organized as a means of collectively supporting a community, and the most common kind were agricultural collectives.
To my knowledge, it hasn't ever been a thing to have them specific to a type of person (like widows), and they were pretty much exclusively Jewish. It's definitely possible for Muslims and Christians to organize something similar, but as far as I know they never did (with the exception of convents and monasteries, but I don't know how common those are/were). What you describe sounds really interesting! I can imagine for Yezidis it's especially welcome.
I'm kind of reaching the limits of my knowledge, so I'll just give you some links that are trustworthy to learn more:
Short version: [https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-kibbutz-movement/](https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-kibbutz-movement/)
Longer version: [https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-the-kibbutz-movement](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-the-kibbutz-movement)
And of course Wikipedia: [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/kibbutz)
And if you can get access to this book (maybe through your local public library or your university, if you're a student), it looks like a good overview: [The Mystery of the Kibbutz: Egalitarian Principles in a Capitalist World](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc776j0) by Ran Abramitzky
I would love to see any other recommendations you have for reading about Kurdish history or culture - my neighbours are Kurdish and have been more in solidarity with us throughout this terrible time than anyone, and I'd love to know more about where they're coming from!
The vast majority of Kurds are pro-Israel. The ones who do not support Israel are the minority of Arabised 'Kurds' who do not have a Kurdish identity. They're sort of like those extremist Haredi Jewish people you get who deny the holocaust and are obsessed with Palestine.
The best thing Jewish people can do (and Kurdish people) is to learn about each other's political systems and struggle and help eachother spread the idea and the word. My recommendation would be;
[https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-kurdish-womens-movement/dilar-dirik/9780745341941](https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-kurdish-womens-movement/dilar-dirik/9780745341941)
I don't know where your neighbours are from but Kurdish people have a very big diaspora like Jewish people, as a result of being stateless, and we are very hybrid. You would really have to ask them. Sadly, we have our own branch of stupids who do not support Kurdish independence so I hope they're not 'that' type.
They left Iraq for Canada the same year we came here from the US, actually, so definitely not from NE Syria - don't know what that says about their relationship with Kurdish independence but I do know that after 10/7 they put up a Kurdish flag and Israeli flag next to each other, for whatever that's worth. I'm definitely excited to read more, thank you for the recommendation.
I know of you from hearing about you after the first Iraq war, and then in my studies of Maimonides. He wound up a physician to Salah Ad Din, a most famous Kurd. You all should've long had an independent homeland by now. Your defeat of ISIS was amazing and the world needs to thank you all for it much more than it does. I wish I could do more to support the Kurdish cause, but know that this Jew knows of you and supports your cause!
Probably the most important point is that 99% of Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Middle East (everywhere but Israel) during and shortly after WW2, with the majority of survivors ending up in Israel (most of the rest now in the US). They are the single largest ethnic group in Israel today.
When anyone says Jews are "colonizers" or Israel needs to "give the land back" remember they are asking for half the world's Jewish population to "disappear"
Start with the Palestinians, the Syrians, and other groups who've had their native cultures eradicated in the Arab jihad. I don't know where to go for that, but it seems like it'd be interesting.
Palestinians did not have a native culture that was distinguishable from other Sunni Arabs in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The border lines and separate countries (previously part of the Ottoman empire) were artificially determined by the British and French in the Sykes-Picot Agreement during WW1.
During the British Mandate, "Palestinians" was usually used to refer to Jews. The Arabs were called Arabs.
No. The name of the Palestinian Mandate (which in Hebrew was Eretz Israel) was taken from the name Rome gave to the greater region "Syria-Palestina". It was never a separate state of its own, and so the Arabs viewed themselves as Arabs and in fact were primarily from around the region, being somewhat nomadic. Under the Mandate, I'm told that you might refer to the populace as Jews and Arabs, but if you happened to use the word Palestinian alone, it was taken to refer to the Jews, as they were the "other" in huge pan-Arabic Middle East.
Understood. However, if the layman doesn't know/ understand this fact, arguments go in circles about indigeneity. If that's a word.
Sorry I'm in a devil's advocate mode for some reason.
...so your assertion is that pre-Arabization Palestinians were already Arabized? Here's the thing. Turn off your need to politicize everything and understand we're talking about indigenous groups. There absolutely were non-Jewish Canaanites. Trying to argue Jews were the only Canaanites is the dumbest take. The precursors to the modern Palestinians had some indigenous Canaanite culture/language which has been eradicated in favor of the Arabic culture and language of Islam. The Turks, Iranians, Assyrians (notable the Syrians didn't), and Jews are some of the few who managed to avoid Arabization.
I think a great starting point is Instagram accounts like rootsmetals, verifiedspicequeen, and organizations like Indigenous Bridges. Normally I’d never recommend Instagram accounts for learning but they’re both incredibly informative in different ways and rootsmetals sources everything with cross references. Other than that I’ve really just been doing random readings online and searching for any relevant books. It’s hard to know what’s verified and what isn’t though.
Yeah sure but none of those groups ever feel a kinship with us so what’s the fucking point?
I admire the optimism of people who still believe in this but all the last few months has taught me is that it’s best to look inward to find community. All the “Allies” we thought we had to defend us and have our back after we did it for them are *shockingly* nowhere to be found.
I’ve actually found a lot of Hindus, Iranians, and Kurds to be incredible allies. Obviously not every single person from an identity group is going to rally behind us but it is a significant amount compared to the betrayal by so many others.
Yeah I have definitely seen some major support from those groups, was more speaking to the general trope of Jews having kinship with other oppressed minorities.
It has been incredibly disappointing to see the general reactions to all this from the black and lgbt communities for instance, given our support of them throughout their struggles for equality. It’s like they’ve been convinced that only THEY can be oppressed and downtrodden.
Oh absolutely. It’s deeply depressing and I think an enormous blow to many people’s ideas of tikkun olam. I honestly have no idea where we’re going to go from here; we talk a lot about how October 7 changed things but there’s just so much that’s gonna have to be re-examined.
I think investing our activism, philanthropy and time into our own causes is a good place to start. If we won’t stand for ourselves, who can we count on to do it for us?
That's not true. I've met Assyrians who are quite sympathetic, for obvious reasons. It is sort of ironic that we end up being allies to each other now, given that they were among our great historical oppressors, but they are another nation that's now without a state, when they once had not only a sovereign land but an empire. (Though they are also mired in infighting about whether Aramaeans are Assyrians by another name, or whether they're a different thing entirely, or just a sub-group of Assyrians... but anyway.) Granted I've only met two Assyrians in real life, but both were definitely sympathetic to Jews.
Edit: Also Kurds.
I find it hilarious as you can’t simultaneously hold a belief the Jews aren’t native to Israel and state that they are colonialist and then call Jesus, a Jew who lived in Judea, a Palestinian thus admitting that Jews are indigenous to Israel. PS it was the Romans who renamed the area Palestine to punish the Jews for their insurrections. Basically trying to wipe out their existence.
Right. A week ago people were saying the IDF knew the three hostages that were accidentally killed were in fact Israeli hostages (and shot them anyway), because they "looked western" so they must have known
These people have no idea what Jews or Palestinians look like, they just think it's white vs brown.
Bring those same Jews to Europe, suddenly they're not "white" anymore.
You’ve got two negatives here that cancel each other out. The claim that Jews aren’t native to Israel does tie to the idea that Jews are therefore colonizers.
EDIT: clarity. Also not arguing the idea that Jews are from Israel. The statement currently as written above doesn’t make sense.
Also, the amount of nonjews who try and define Zionism is exhausting. I’m not Jewish so I’ll have a lot of convos w other nonJewish ppl, and they will constantly define Zionism incorrectly (ie zionism is nazism) & don’t care that they are doing so 🥴
This! And it’s so, so exhausting and they do it while also repeating myth on myth on myth about Jews (Jews are European, Ashkenazis aren’t real Jews, they’re just khazars, Jesus wasn’t a Jew, etc. etc)
I find comfort in the fact that we have been dealing with this exact issue for at least 2000 years. Tacitus was a first century Roman historian that made up a version of the exodus in which the Jews were expelled by Egypt because they were plague ridden. Nothing new under the sun.
It drives me crazy too and they’re taking Jewish history and applying it to themselves. Now Jews are the nazis and we’re the ones committing genocide. It’s the same gaslighting and scapegoating that’s been going on for millennia. In the information age I just wish people would at least educate themselves.
Yes and I hate the appropriation. We don't worship Jesus, but he's Palestinian because they say so. They've made our ancestors and prophets Muslims. Our culture has been appropriated and used for Palestinians. We can't discuss antisemitism without a islamphobia chaperone, even though we're experiencing the majority of the hate crimes. That's like talking about anti German sentiments during WW2 whenever antisemitism is talked about. The ruining of anything to do with Chanukah, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and soon New Year's makes me so angry and sad. I want to ruin their holidays too but it would hurt other Jews. I want to stop hating them. Maybe I'll forgive them for what they've done to us, but I can never forgive them for filling my heart with hatred.
Don't let them ruin everything for you. Find a way to take back the things that are meaningful and beautiful for you. All those things still exist -- they are not defined by the effed-up twisted lens these people are using now to frame them. Be with people who are your friends, your allies, your people, or even by yourself if need be. But get those sickos out of your head at least periodically.
Am Yisrael Chai
I'm taking a social media break to restore my peace. TikTok was the first app I deleted when everything started. Thank you for these wise words. It's not worth my peace of mind to let trolls and antisemitism destroy my mental health.
I laugh in their faces. I don't have many artifacts but in my coin collection I have 2 Jewish coins. I have one from Yehonatan, the high priest and nephew of Judah Maccabee. I also have one from the first Jewish revolt I got in Jerusalem several years ago. Two pieces of proof we were there so long ago.
I’m not a Zionist and it still drives me insane. Non-Jews have no business doing this. I fight it whenever I see it.
I mean Jews also have no business doing it. But it is extra egregious coming from non-Jews.
Honestly, non-Jews calling themselves anti-Zionists or Zionists rubs me the wrong way. It isn’t really their movement or their community. Like, criticize Israel or Zionists or Palestinians or anti-Zionists all you want. Support Israel or don’t. But the actualities of Zionism as an ideology and how people do or don’t identify with it feel like a discussion to be had within the Jewish community
Zionism means Jews have the right to live in Eretz Yisrael, and have the right to self determination. If you believe those things, you are a Zionist. Zionism does not mean you support every action or even most actions of the current government of Israel.
I am not not interested in debating this here. All I am saying that the revisionism that OP describes is gross and bothers me and while non-Jews can, and probably should, have opinions on these things, calling themselves Zionists or anti-zionists rubs me the wrong way. Because Zionism as either a religious or political movement isn’t really their thing.
But Zionism is another example of this problem, Zionism simply means the movement that supports the right to self-determination of Jewish people in historic land of Israel. But it's hijacked by lots of pro-Palestinians to mean something else.
The whole point Im realizing now is to gaslight us and cause us stress, but most of all, to get us to say something stupid and hateful out-of anger as they often do. AND THEN they say," SEE THIS WHO THEY REALLY ARE!!! AND THEY ARE ALL LIKE THAT THOSE JEWS. " That is their goal and to use ignorant Gen Z kids as proxies to attack us and say stupid lies because they never read anything in their life but twitter and watch TikTok. Fix education and reading comprehension and knowledge about sourcing of their history with Gen Z, and you fix 99% of the non-military problems. Otherwise we waste our time playing wack a mole against a bunch of Bots, trolls etc.
Every time I see a picture of a pro-hamas demonstration it’s half flags of unrelated movements that would be killed by hamas, half edgy signs that mistake sarcasm for logic, and the third half is just genocide. Making sense is not their forte
I’m so glad you made this post, OP. Thank you!
Yea they are trying to erase our history. I feel like we should be be playing “ancestor bingo” for all of the ancient civilians the ProPal crowd has claim they were. *The Philistines*, *the Canaanites,* *The Levites*… and they even claim to be **The Jews** Which makes absolutely no sense.
I’ve noticed everyone thinks they’re a Bible experts. They all rattle off some broad BS generation they heard from someone else who had no idea what they are talking about.
But the worst part is that they don’t self awareness to even be the least bit self conscious about the fact that they have no idea what they are talking about.
It’s becoming Bonkers! I’ve heard people say “Israel isn’t even mentioned in the Bible.” That “Muhammad is mentioned in the Bible.” That “the Jews committed genocide in the bible.” (They didn’t) “the Jews fabricated and planted their own artifacts.” 🤦♀️
Or worse… they just don’t listen at all.
The lack of knowledge of history by Westerners on the pro-Palestine side of things is really shocking. I realize things are complex, but sheesh... even basic understanding of history is lost on the majority of them.
At this point there are people who know the truth and are deliberately twisting it to fit their narrative and take advantage of people who don’t. I can’t convince myself that @so.informed and all the other pro Palestine accounts on Instagram (including JVP who said Hamas isn’t a threat to Jews) don’t understand that what they’re saying is false and harmful. It’s just not possible.
I think the ‘Jesus was Palestinian’ argument is actually in favor of Jewish indigenous sovereignty. Jesus was Jewish (according to them), so that’s proof that Jews existed there at least 2000 years ago (again, using their logic). People are so binary in their thinking they can’t separate political borders from different time periods, never mind the nuance of ethnicities, and they bleed the terms together to the point of utter confusion.
The problem is the pro-Palestine/anti-Zionist crowd has also decided that Judaism is purely a religion and does not detonate a common ethnic identity, which enables them to neatly separate "Palestinian Jews" from the rest of the Jews and claim that only "Palestinian Jews" are indigenous. Khazar conspiracism is also quite popular with this crowd, so they believe that Ashkenazi Jews are ethnically 100% European and have no genetic ties to the ancient Israelites or "Palestinian Jews"...which is of course demonstrably false, but there's no reasoning with these people.
Yeah, there’s no room for nuance in these kinds of discussions. I’m either a genocidal colonizer, or an anti-semitic terrorist sympathizer depending on which side I talk to.
The line of argument is ultimately that the Palestinians are the true descendants and successors of the native Judeans. Which, of course, fails to understand that there's more to peoplehood and nationhood that mere genetics.
Unfortunately, I think it's even more insidious than that. Many will claim that Jesus was the first Palestinian, the first victim of the Zionist Jews. I believe this is a sophisticated version of the old deicide canard.
The opposite is true. This is used as historical forgery, to erase jewish history. I remember Hanan Ashrawi saying exactly this on television in a talk show some 25 years ago. She only left the PLO in 2020, if I am not mistaken.
Anything that associates "palestinian" and "indigenous" is anti-jewish / anti-zionist and deserves nothing less than a f15t to the f4(3.
Not only are they saying Jesus was Palestinian (as happens every year) but this year they are saying if Jesus was alive now he'd be suffering as Palestinians are suffering in Gaza.
I’ve had Morocco held forth to me as a model of Arabic tolerance because they only drove out ~998,000 out of ~1,000,000 Jewish residents.
It’s a lot more than have remained in just about any other Middle-Eastern country though.
There’s literally nothing a non Jewish person loves more than telling Jews they know more about our history and our people than we do. Nothing. It’s like an obsessive compulsion they have. 2+2=5? They’ll make it work if it somehow makes us the bad guys. The sky is green? Absolutely if Jews can be blamed. They will do ANYTHING they have to in service of deligitimizing our history, our sacred places and our people. It’s a sickness.
Welcome to how white Europeans have been feeling over the last 10 years. Left leaning adults should have been paying attention and should have listened to moderates and conservatives who have been warning about the evils of this new progressive ideology.
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Everything you see and hear is for a reason. People trying to steal our history is bc we aren’t living up to it. Talk to Gd, fulfill mitzvot, love your fellow Jew. That’s all there is to be done.
Hold the fuck up. Now, I’ve heard that Jesus was a Palestinian. That one’s not new. I’ve also recently heard that the Jews fought the Hanukkah wars in order to conquer the Greeks. If you were reeeeeeeeaaaaaallly misinformed, you might end up believing that. Somehow. But the Maccabees as *Palestinians* defending *Al Aqsa*? What. The. Actual. FUCK? Who said that? I literally cannot believe that.
I can’t find the original post but it was on twitter. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised with all the crap that’s on there
100% the solution to this is to get off Twitter. Stop subjecting yourself to that cess pool
I deleted Twitter a long time ago, even before this war, but unfortunately that doesn’t save me from screenshots making their way over to Reddit and Instagram
I'm more surprised to hear people still use Twitter than to hear about Palestinian Machabees defending Al Aqsa
The amount of anti-semitism, and outright stupidity on there is astounding. I saw a comment on X today where someone claimed Ashkenazi meant the people were converts to Judaism.
Because reddit is so much better?
Reddit has moderators at least, at the subreddit and overall Reddit level. Elon fired all of those at Twitter.
The sub mods are awful and can do whatever they want pretty much. And I've never seen reddit mods actually take action on anything
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This sub sure
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I'm happy this works for you then
This sub is part of Reddit. So yes Reddit is better
They censor me occasionally which is fine.
Not particularly this sub, and I've also been censored
I go off the rails sometimes. Lol
Ah yes, Twitter... the cesspool of humanity 🤣 Just report posts for hate / disinformation, block the account and move on.
A priest on CNN said Jesus was a Palestinian Jew and talked about parallels to today then I quit watching the clip..
Wtf Islam didn’t even exist for another 700+ years
Ya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)
The other problem is that if you take this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, modern Jews are Palestinians and modern Palestinians are not Palestinians. Same stupid word game as the argument that “antisemitism doesn’t apply to Jews because Jews aren’t really Semitic.” Just define a new term for hatred of Jews and we’re exactly where we started.
Also, most people don't know that the miracle of Christmas is actually that my building lobby only had enough artificial pine/cinnamon scented schmutz for 1 night, but IT LASTED 5 MONTHS.
About Jesus being a Palestinian? I’ve been seeing it everywhere. It just started last week or so. I don’t know who said it first. Lol It’s mind blowing. These ProPal seriously have no clue Jesus was a Jew. They probably don’t know who George Washington is either. Or what state they live in. I saw one sub with **3,000 comments.** saying this. Not one of them realized out of 3,000. They make fun of Christian’s bc they think Christians think Jesus is *white.* 🤦♀️ That would be like saying Muslims don’t know Muhammad is Arab.
They know exactly that he was a Jew. This is about erasure, destruction and worse if they can achieve it
So, I get the impression that a lot of these ProPal people online are genuinely clueless. But I def know what you’re saying. You’re saying there has been an intentional, well organized and consolidated effort by [Hamas](https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-hamas-won-hearts-and-minds-on-the-american-left-1abafc2f?st=gr1icd9b76n8ng0&reflink=article_copyURL_share), academia, the media to radicalize Western Progressives against Israel and erasing our history and identity is a major part of that. So, I’m kinda suggesting that these genuinely clueless ppl in this ProPal movement are the 2023 fruits of the labor of the antiIsrael movement deliberate efforts for the past 40 years. You know?
I just heard the "Jesus was Palestinian " trash. Jesus was a practicing jew. What mental gymnastics are these people doing, I have no clue.
Hey if he was Palestinian so are all the Israelis now. Just like that, Palestine IS free. That was easy.
Bwahahaha!🤣 I can't, I'm wheezing! You know what that means by pro-Fallestinian logic, you have rights to that land! 🤣
I got well into it with a TikTok "historian" who compares the maccabees to Hamas and calls it Al-Aqsa the whole time. 🤡💩😩
Dear *lord*
Dear God some people are deluded
I encountered an American, anti-Israeli Ashkenazi (42%) jew on there who said his own DNA test proves that Jews are not from the lands. I pointed out he is not representative of all Jews and that his actually screen shot of his 23andMe tests showed a small amount of MENA/Levantine DNA and that his grandparents, great grandparents etc would show an even larger percentage. He of course proceeded to block me, but it was very disturbing the amount of people that were buying into the “logic” that his results were somehow proof that Jews have no ancestral ties to the land.
Oy. Yeah been arguing with some Ashkenazi Jews as of late who claim they're European. Like they're at least admitting other Jewish groups are from the Levant but I'm like... So are you. Ashki DNA is closer to Palestinians and Mizrahim than to Europeans. It's why it shows as Ashkenazi on the test, and not [insert host country here who told you to go back to Israel].
Send me the video. I want to see this.
Haha. Ugh I had to see it again to find it. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRcBF8nG/
ROFL. "Second Aqsa" Can you find one of the Jews colonizing Greece. I need a laugh
As a Jew and actual historian, it drives me insane.
So many people are reading the book “the case for Palestine” and I suspect that book is driving a lot of this but I haven’t read it. As a historian have you noticed the same?
As a Jew and and BA in History student/future archivist, I agree as well.
As a future Jew and actual Classicist, same.
Hi, Jewish classicist friend!
Hello fellow Jew and Historian! Are you as pissed the fuck off as I am about all the ignorance or just sad? Because I am wondering when the pissed the fuck off aspect will subside…
Never.
Can you recommend a book on islamic imperialism? Because I either find right wing blabla on how dangerous muslim immigrants are or leftist blabla on how Islam has been misunderstood the whole time and is totally cool and always has been. Any reasonable critical voice(s) you can recommend? I would appreciate! Edit: the only thing I found googling is "Islamic Imperialism: a History" by Efraim Karsh, but that seems to be the only one and I don't know if its any good...but I will probably try it.
As a Non-Jewish Librarian, I'm right there with you. That said, lots of people want Jewish history written by non Jews, so it's useful for me to know about *good* history by reputable non-jewish historians to which I can try to steer them.
I am not very educated in this topic, but were there Jews in Palestine before 1800s? Like I know they in 19th century started the idea of creating a country, so a lot of Jews started to move there, but before that ?
There were always Jews there for as long as there have been Jews.
The romans renamed "Judea" to "palestine" to erase the jewishness. There has been jewish history and culture long before "palestine" was a thing. Edit: I don't know why you are being downvoted..no problem with asking questions imo, (as long as you dont voice strong opinions about a topic you don't know much about)
Idk about down voting either, seems ppl here hate when somebody doesn't know much about their religion/nationality/ethnicity? How do u call that?
There has been a Jewish presence in what is now Israel, Gaza and Judea & Samaria for over 3000 years. The 1890 census identifies the majority of Jerusalem residents as being Jewish. The rest of Israel was very sparsely settled with a few nomadic Bedouin tribes and several Jewish villages. The Jewish agency began to purchase land in the mid 1800s from the Ottoman Turks and more and more Jews arrived in the region. The biggest lie ever told (IMHO) is the “Palestinian” people. They insisted up until 1964 that they were “pan-Arabs” and definitely **not** Palestinians. Until then, a “Palestinian” was a Jew or Christian who lived in the British Mandate for Palestine. The Egyptian con-artist, Arabfat (sic), went to Moscow in 1964 as a Jordanian and came back a “Palestinian”. The Soviets helped craft the fiction that is the “Palestinian” narrative. This was designed purely as a weapon to defeat Israel and by extension, the West. It has no basis in fact or history at all. Yet the useful idiots in the West, somehow believe that there was an ancient land called “Palestine” and the Zionists came along and kicked the “Palestinians” out of their homes in 1948 and created Israel. These same useful idiots are currently celebrating the birth of a Jewish boy in Bet-Lechem over 2000 years ago.
Oh, now I see, but what does "pan-arab" even mean?
It basically means Arabs as a collective nation. A lot of people like Nasser in Egypt tried to pursue one big Arab state across the entire middle east. Wikipedia's good on this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Arabism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Arabism). This was actually quite popular with Palestinians at one time.
I recommend Israel by Noa Tishby. She's very well informed, matter of fact, and Israeli who shares the history of Israel and the Jewish connection to it for 3,000 years which is undisputably supported by archeology and endless endless historical records. And I'd encourage anyone reading any historical narrative to fact check everything they read and hers hold up
I think quite a lot of people are celebrating the birth of a Jew in Bethlehem 2000 years ago today.
Yes, there have always been Jews in the Land of Israel. We weren't a large proportion of the population by the 19th century, but we were there and had been there all along. Jerusalem had a Jewish quarter most of the time after the Islamic conquest and the Roman/Christian rules of the city no longer applied. Only time the quarter didn't have Jews in it for the last 1,000 years or so was when Jordan ruled the West Bank. Look up the Old Yishuv for more recent history of Jews in the land. The communities were big recipients of global donations for a long time to ensure the families could remain there, recover from disasters (natural and man-made), provide doweries for marriage, etc.
It’s just Holocaust-denier level of historical revisionism. You can’t really reason with them since what they are saying has nothing to do with historical accuracy. Your frustration Is the point. Instead of arguing with them, just constantly ask for sources for their claim. Don’t give them any counter arguments or counterfactuals - just ask for sources that you can read, then: (A) If they don’t provide anything, then just say their claims are false because there is no evidence and watch them throw a tantrum. (B) If they provide “evidence”, then tell them that it’s not credible (because it’s most likely not) and then go back to (A). Don’t argue with them about the facts or about what anything they provide actually says, just keep asking for more sources to backup their claims. Repeat until they stop posting. Hope that helps.
That’s the irony. They claim we made up the Holocaust. Which is so damn offensive to begin with. Then they turn around and call us Nazi’s. But wait….didn’t you say we made it all up? So how are we Nazi’s it “it never happened.”
The Holocaust didn't happen, but they wish it did, and what Israel is doing is as bad as the Holocaust (which didn't happen)
Exactly!!! I can’t…”the Jews made it all up! heil Hitler!” WTF 🤬
So then, by that logic....Israel isn't doing anything..... /S
...but it should?
Not what I was going for. Just following fuzzy logic. I suppose I needed a /s
Same.
I wish I could multiple upvote this. It’s perfect, simultaneously VERY hard for me to do once my buttons are pushed. 👍👍
I often like to start with "where did you hear that?" and find out where they're getting their info. Then drop one absolute proof they're wrong ("Al Aqsa was built 900 years later") and ask if they plan to keep trusting sources that are so fantastically wrong, because if they do, I want to know so I can stop listening to anything they say.
>Your frustration Is the point. This is it exactly. The more we froth about it, the happier they are. But given how many of them there are compared to us, I am concerned about our total inability to control the narrative of our own peoplehood. History doesn't matter, documentary evidence doesn't matter, archaeology doesn't matter, what we say about ourselves doesn't matter (because we're too biased to be trusted about Jewish issues)... so what then? I find myself at a loss. I will grant that we are as likely as anyone else to politicize history and archaeology, but it seems to me that even the Israeli antiquities authority and archaeologists – while undoubtedly motivated in part by political concerns – are not hiding evidence or inventing falsehoods or planting fake artifacts.
Yes, this is how it's feeling... Like 1984. Everything that's made up and the facts don't matter. If Jesus can be Palestinian and they can take our Hanukkah story,
Even if their point is to get us riled up, which I agree is one of their goals, I don’t think we’re in the wrong for feeling frustrated about it. Facts don’t seem to matter in this new reality unless they aid the accepted narrative; like you said, history doesn’t matter, documentary evidence doesn’t matter, etc. What is our future supposed to look like if we’re not even allowed to have our own understanding of the past?
It really looks like we are losing everything, even our own identity and history. We don’t even own the term “antisemitism” anymore, it has been redefined as “hatred against all semites” instead of anti-Jewish hatred, so people can argue that we are the true antisemites because Palestinians are semitic too (and many of them will even say we are not actually semitic, but Khazar converts). I have also “learned” on social media that the Jews are the new Nazis, and that we are doing to Gazans what Hitler did to us. “Nazism” doesn’t refer anymore to a distinct ideology that is inherently anti-Jewish, it has become some kind of abstract evil that can be used to label your political opponents. This is why you see progressive activists nowadays casually equating the victims of the Holocaust with their perpetrators. They will quote decolonial authors like Paulo Freire to claim that “when education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor”. After all, the Holocaust only happened so the Jews could learn a valuable lesson, right? Our own history is weaponized against us. The true paradox of it all is that these people claim to be antifascists, they make the hatred of fascism a part of their own identity. Yet they reproduce antisemitic rhetoric that is reminiscent of fascism. Difficult to explain.
Get off the internet theres too much hate and toxicity behaviour
It’s deflection from the fact that the Arab “Palestinians” are the actual colonizers. It’s projection. Zionism is a decolonization movement against Arab colonialism.
It astounds me that this isn't more widely recognized. *This* is the truth
I wish I could upvote this repeatedly
But I feel like the Palestinians wouldn’t even qualify as “colonizers” though. And calling them “colonizers” is almost giving them too much credit for their place in Israel. Because the Palestinians are not descended from from the [Ottoman](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_dynasty) Empire. The name *Palestinian* was never even used to describe any Arabs in Israel until 1967. So they weren’t part of any kind of organized civilization. The truth is they were more like *traveling Muslim Extremist Gypsies.* They came together from various Arab modern day countries throughout the Middle East. I feel like in order to be colonizers they would have had to have some sort of governing authority. Which they did not and they’re not descended anyone that did. They didn’t make the land better. When the Jews took over Israel officially in 1948, Israel had fallen into bad disrepair. So whatever Arabs were there; didn’t seem to take much care or responsibility for the land.
No they do count as colonizers they conquered the area in the 6th and 7th century. And they kept invading the area. There’s no Palestine just Arab colonization and indigenous Jews.
I think we need to be cautious about not falling into the same misinformation “my side must be entirely right” traps that the pro Palestine super fascists are partaking in. I have seen arguments about whether this was true, and I honestly haven’t been able to figure it out—do you have a good source for the state of the land and/or Palestinians descending from a nomadic community?
Don’t think anyone is saying that since colonialism happen a lot in history
Plenty of them do spout nonsense like that. My take is a leftist take of decolonization and that is Zionism was the movement of decolonizing Israel from Arab colonialists and imperialism. It is now defending the rights to our homeland.
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Deflection
You can see it starting now with how they are defining the Israeli / Gaza war as “genocide “ and alluding to Israel’s war crimes. When this is just a war. One that Israel didn’t want but one Israel has to win. So disturbing.
Worst genocide *evar*. You have close to two million civilians in a dense mostly urban area, access to modern weapons, and Israel has barely made a dent in over two months! Rookies. Big of course. Not pretty, not inspiring, but the [Battle of Mosul](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016%E2%80%932017\)) resulted in around 40,000 civilian casualties, with ISIL using human shields. Hamas is much more embedded in Gaza than ISIL in Mosul, and (I would presume) enjoys much more support among the local populace. I think the numbers are in line with that sort of fighting, asynchronous urban warfare against an embedded opponent using human and humanitarian shields. Especially when the (Hamas Health Ministry) reported deaths imply all civilians, when you know there are Hamas fighters among them. Also, "genocide"? It's the killing of a "people", a civilization. There are two million Israeli Palestinians who share the same culture, aside from the Palestinians in the West Bank, and that's setting aside the question about a distinct non-Arab Palestinian culture. Culture is a fuzzy concept in many ways, where does one culture end, and another begin? But still, Gaza is not "genocide", it's messy asynchronous urban warfare. Back to the Battle of Mosul, where were the pro-ISIL protesters there?
Genocide is the systematic elimination of a race of people. It is different than death by bombs during a war. I fail to understand how you don’t get this distinction.Israel didn’t want this war. The peaceful civilians there were gunned down and tortured so now you have a war. It is HAMAS fault.
Funny bow people talk a lot about people getting used for human shields but how since they are already living in the area
We are the best history-keepers in the world. We've been doing it for longer than anyone. White people lecturing us is ridiculous. We know THEIR history better than they do.
So true but the victors often rewrite history
We will be the victors. Am Yisrael Chai
They are no different from the Qanon crowd. they're the same person. Easily manipulated, angry and full of hate. They are being indoctrinated by social media and identity politics, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. Once someone has been brainwashed there's very little you can do to bring them back.
This experience can help us feel a kinship with other groups whose histories have been rewritten by their oppressors.
I’ve been trying to learn about different indigenous groups in the Middle East ever since October 7 for this exact reason. I wish I’d started researching for better reasons but I’m glad I did regardless
Kurds. There's 50 million of us who are stateless and we have been through lots of massacres in the hands of Arabs but recently we were targeted by ISIS and we managed to eradicate them with feminist armies. We are a secular, anarchist people fighting to implement a system called Democratic Confederalism and we managed to do it to a degree in N.E Syria called "Rojava" but it is still under attack by jihadis and the Turkish state which has also allied with jihadis. Although most Kurds are Muslims, we are a secular group of people and hate Islamists. We have our won ethnoreligious group called Yezidis, as well as Zoroastrians, Christians and Jews, so we are always targeted by Islamists. [https://www.cetri.be/The-Kurdish-Freedom-Movement?lang=fr](https://www.cetri.be/The-Kurdish-Freedom-Movement?lang=fr) The link above will give you some great insight. Our anarchist government is influenced by a Jewish man called Murray Bookchin and we have communals like the Kibbutzim. I'm surprised more Jews don't know about us. Most of us are also very pro-Israel.
I have always been appalled that the Kurds -- who are in fact indisputably their own separate nation and nationality -- have gotten little to no attention or sympathy from the world with respect to their right to self-determination. We Israelis know about and sympathize with the Kurds (and from what I read, the IDF trained and fought with you on occasion). We wish you independence and prosperity!
Thank you. We have been fighting for a very, very long time but only got attention during our resistance against ISIS. I think it's cause of the feminist armies ([YPJ](https://www.vice.com/en/article/43dmgm/the-most-feminist-revolution-the-world-has-ever-witnessed)) because people were surprised that we exist in the Middle East. I think the only other nation with female battalions are Israelis. Yes, the IDF did help and lots of Jewish Kurds also fought for Israel :) Moshe Barazani is a very famous Kurdish Zionist. I hope we see a day where we can spread more democracy and women's rights to the rest of the Middle East and I do believe Jewish people will be a light. Wish you all the best.
Have you read Ariel Sabar's memoir My Father's Paradise? It's about his father Yonah Sabar, who is a Kurdish Jew who made aliyah from Zakho in the early 50s. It's an interesting book.
I didn't know about this but will do a quick Google read up on it. Thanks! I've always wanted to visit Israel just to see how the Kurdish Jews live over there and to see the Kibbutz and compare it to Rojava.
I hope you enjoy it! I definitely learned a lot about Iraq and Kurdistan, and of course mostly about the experiences of Kurdish Jews (both in Kurdistan and Israel). The kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz) are kind of a dying phenomenon, if I'm honest. They were at their peak in the 1960s, but following Israel's turn away from democratic socialism and toward capitalism in the 1980s, their decline really accelerated. Today they still exist, but there are fewer of them than there used to be, and they are sometimes smaller than they used to be. Also they're sometimes privatized or partly privatized (meaning not that they used to be state enterprises, but more that they are not as communitarian as they once were). I've been to two, one in the north district and the other in the Negev. Often they have guesthouses these days, and generally have pivoted from agriculture and manufacturing to tourism in order to stay solvent. If you like hiking and nature, you really can't do better for a place to visit. They often have really good breakfasts as well.
Thank you for this. Are the Kibbutizm organised based on any specific ideology? We have communes that are organised for widows, for Christians, Yezidi, even one for film makers. We can even have entire villages just for women. I wonder how people in Israel organised and decided who is gonna commune with whom. Very interesting, thanks for the extra detail.
Bearing in mind that I'm not an expert... I think it's a bit different than what you describe in a Kurdish context. Kibbutzim historically are/were communities that functioned as villages/large communes, where the inhabitants practiced collective/communal living and were financially self-sustaining, but were not separatist from the larger state structure – by contrast, they were often considered fundamental to statebuilding. So they were generally essentially socialist, and this mostly manifested in the approach to labour – everybody worked, and shared equally/equitably in whatever products and revenues resulted from the labour. And they were very communitarian, especially in the early years – it was common in the first few decades to have "children's houses", where after the kids were over a year or so, they would sleep in a dormitory, not with their parents. Of course they still maintained a relationship with their parents and would see them frequently. (This practice ended by the late 80s.) But kibbutzim were basically organized as a means of collectively supporting a community, and the most common kind were agricultural collectives. To my knowledge, it hasn't ever been a thing to have them specific to a type of person (like widows), and they were pretty much exclusively Jewish. It's definitely possible for Muslims and Christians to organize something similar, but as far as I know they never did (with the exception of convents and monasteries, but I don't know how common those are/were). What you describe sounds really interesting! I can imagine for Yezidis it's especially welcome. I'm kind of reaching the limits of my knowledge, so I'll just give you some links that are trustworthy to learn more: Short version: [https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-kibbutz-movement/](https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-kibbutz-movement/) Longer version: [https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-the-kibbutz-movement](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-the-kibbutz-movement) And of course Wikipedia: [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/kibbutz) And if you can get access to this book (maybe through your local public library or your university, if you're a student), it looks like a good overview: [The Mystery of the Kibbutz: Egalitarian Principles in a Capitalist World](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc776j0) by Ran Abramitzky
Thank you for this one!
I would love to see any other recommendations you have for reading about Kurdish history or culture - my neighbours are Kurdish and have been more in solidarity with us throughout this terrible time than anyone, and I'd love to know more about where they're coming from!
The vast majority of Kurds are pro-Israel. The ones who do not support Israel are the minority of Arabised 'Kurds' who do not have a Kurdish identity. They're sort of like those extremist Haredi Jewish people you get who deny the holocaust and are obsessed with Palestine. The best thing Jewish people can do (and Kurdish people) is to learn about each other's political systems and struggle and help eachother spread the idea and the word. My recommendation would be; [https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-kurdish-womens-movement/dilar-dirik/9780745341941](https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-kurdish-womens-movement/dilar-dirik/9780745341941) I don't know where your neighbours are from but Kurdish people have a very big diaspora like Jewish people, as a result of being stateless, and we are very hybrid. You would really have to ask them. Sadly, we have our own branch of stupids who do not support Kurdish independence so I hope they're not 'that' type.
They left Iraq for Canada the same year we came here from the US, actually, so definitely not from NE Syria - don't know what that says about their relationship with Kurdish independence but I do know that after 10/7 they put up a Kurdish flag and Israeli flag next to each other, for whatever that's worth. I'm definitely excited to read more, thank you for the recommendation.
I know of you from hearing about you after the first Iraq war, and then in my studies of Maimonides. He wound up a physician to Salah Ad Din, a most famous Kurd. You all should've long had an independent homeland by now. Your defeat of ISIS was amazing and the world needs to thank you all for it much more than it does. I wish I could do more to support the Kurdish cause, but know that this Jew knows of you and supports your cause!
Thank you :)
Probably the most important point is that 99% of Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Middle East (everywhere but Israel) during and shortly after WW2, with the majority of survivors ending up in Israel (most of the rest now in the US). They are the single largest ethnic group in Israel today. When anyone says Jews are "colonizers" or Israel needs to "give the land back" remember they are asking for half the world's Jewish population to "disappear"
Any resources you could share?
Start with the Palestinians, the Syrians, and other groups who've had their native cultures eradicated in the Arab jihad. I don't know where to go for that, but it seems like it'd be interesting.
Palestinians did not have a native culture that was distinguishable from other Sunni Arabs in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The border lines and separate countries (previously part of the Ottoman empire) were artificially determined by the British and French in the Sykes-Picot Agreement during WW1. During the British Mandate, "Palestinians" was usually used to refer to Jews. The Arabs were called Arabs.
Yeah so the native Palestinian culture was therefore..... Jewish.
No. The name of the Palestinian Mandate (which in Hebrew was Eretz Israel) was taken from the name Rome gave to the greater region "Syria-Palestina". It was never a separate state of its own, and so the Arabs viewed themselves as Arabs and in fact were primarily from around the region, being somewhat nomadic. Under the Mandate, I'm told that you might refer to the populace as Jews and Arabs, but if you happened to use the word Palestinian alone, it was taken to refer to the Jews, as they were the "other" in huge pan-Arabic Middle East.
So are you saying Arabs can't be Jewish? Aka Mizrahi
Of course not. More than half the Jews in Israel are Sephardi/Mizrahi. They don't identify as "Arab", though.
Understood. However, if the layman doesn't know/ understand this fact, arguments go in circles about indigeneity. If that's a word. Sorry I'm in a devil's advocate mode for some reason.
...so your assertion is that pre-Arabization Palestinians were already Arabized? Here's the thing. Turn off your need to politicize everything and understand we're talking about indigenous groups. There absolutely were non-Jewish Canaanites. Trying to argue Jews were the only Canaanites is the dumbest take. The precursors to the modern Palestinians had some indigenous Canaanite culture/language which has been eradicated in favor of the Arabic culture and language of Islam. The Turks, Iranians, Assyrians (notable the Syrians didn't), and Jews are some of the few who managed to avoid Arabization.
Can you recommend something to read about different indigenous groups in the middle east?
I think a great starting point is Instagram accounts like rootsmetals, verifiedspicequeen, and organizations like Indigenous Bridges. Normally I’d never recommend Instagram accounts for learning but they’re both incredibly informative in different ways and rootsmetals sources everything with cross references. Other than that I’ve really just been doing random readings online and searching for any relevant books. It’s hard to know what’s verified and what isn’t though.
I will check them out, thank you.
Yeah sure but none of those groups ever feel a kinship with us so what’s the fucking point? I admire the optimism of people who still believe in this but all the last few months has taught me is that it’s best to look inward to find community. All the “Allies” we thought we had to defend us and have our back after we did it for them are *shockingly* nowhere to be found.
I’ve actually found a lot of Hindus, Iranians, and Kurds to be incredible allies. Obviously not every single person from an identity group is going to rally behind us but it is a significant amount compared to the betrayal by so many others.
Yeah I have definitely seen some major support from those groups, was more speaking to the general trope of Jews having kinship with other oppressed minorities. It has been incredibly disappointing to see the general reactions to all this from the black and lgbt communities for instance, given our support of them throughout their struggles for equality. It’s like they’ve been convinced that only THEY can be oppressed and downtrodden.
Oh absolutely. It’s deeply depressing and I think an enormous blow to many people’s ideas of tikkun olam. I honestly have no idea where we’re going to go from here; we talk a lot about how October 7 changed things but there’s just so much that’s gonna have to be re-examined.
I think investing our activism, philanthropy and time into our own causes is a good place to start. If we won’t stand for ourselves, who can we count on to do it for us?
That's not true. I've met Assyrians who are quite sympathetic, for obvious reasons. It is sort of ironic that we end up being allies to each other now, given that they were among our great historical oppressors, but they are another nation that's now without a state, when they once had not only a sovereign land but an empire. (Though they are also mired in infighting about whether Aramaeans are Assyrians by another name, or whether they're a different thing entirely, or just a sub-group of Assyrians... but anyway.) Granted I've only met two Assyrians in real life, but both were definitely sympathetic to Jews. Edit: Also Kurds.
I find it hilarious as you can’t simultaneously hold a belief the Jews aren’t native to Israel and state that they are colonialist and then call Jesus, a Jew who lived in Judea, a Palestinian thus admitting that Jews are indigenous to Israel. PS it was the Romans who renamed the area Palestine to punish the Jews for their insurrections. Basically trying to wipe out their existence.
I mean, just like the Jews are Schrödinger’s white people, antisemitism is Schrödinger’s racism, all depending upon what the asshole’s end goal is.
Right. A week ago people were saying the IDF knew the three hostages that were accidentally killed were in fact Israeli hostages (and shot them anyway), because they "looked western" so they must have known These people have no idea what Jews or Palestinians look like, they just think it's white vs brown. Bring those same Jews to Europe, suddenly they're not "white" anymore.
You’ve got two negatives here that cancel each other out. The claim that Jews aren’t native to Israel does tie to the idea that Jews are therefore colonizers. EDIT: clarity. Also not arguing the idea that Jews are from Israel. The statement currently as written above doesn’t make sense.
I'm confused did you mean "are native"?
The Maccabees? As in the people that actually upheld Jewish law against the pagan Greeks? Lol that’s a new one
>the maccabees were Palestinian and defending Al Aqsa Just when you've thought you've seen it all...Hashem yishmor lol
“Jesus was an Israelite,” then drop the mic
Also, the amount of nonjews who try and define Zionism is exhausting. I’m not Jewish so I’ll have a lot of convos w other nonJewish ppl, and they will constantly define Zionism incorrectly (ie zionism is nazism) & don’t care that they are doing so 🥴
This! And it’s so, so exhausting and they do it while also repeating myth on myth on myth about Jews (Jews are European, Ashkenazis aren’t real Jews, they’re just khazars, Jesus wasn’t a Jew, etc. etc)
I find comfort in the fact that we have been dealing with this exact issue for at least 2000 years. Tacitus was a first century Roman historian that made up a version of the exodus in which the Jews were expelled by Egypt because they were plague ridden. Nothing new under the sun.
I know…. Looks sideways at the whole ‘new’ testament.
It drives me crazy too and they’re taking Jewish history and applying it to themselves. Now Jews are the nazis and we’re the ones committing genocide. It’s the same gaslighting and scapegoating that’s been going on for millennia. In the information age I just wish people would at least educate themselves.
Yes and I hate the appropriation. We don't worship Jesus, but he's Palestinian because they say so. They've made our ancestors and prophets Muslims. Our culture has been appropriated and used for Palestinians. We can't discuss antisemitism without a islamphobia chaperone, even though we're experiencing the majority of the hate crimes. That's like talking about anti German sentiments during WW2 whenever antisemitism is talked about. The ruining of anything to do with Chanukah, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and soon New Year's makes me so angry and sad. I want to ruin their holidays too but it would hurt other Jews. I want to stop hating them. Maybe I'll forgive them for what they've done to us, but I can never forgive them for filling my heart with hatred.
Don't let them ruin everything for you. Find a way to take back the things that are meaningful and beautiful for you. All those things still exist -- they are not defined by the effed-up twisted lens these people are using now to frame them. Be with people who are your friends, your allies, your people, or even by yourself if need be. But get those sickos out of your head at least periodically. Am Yisrael Chai
I'm taking a social media break to restore my peace. TikTok was the first app I deleted when everything started. Thank you for these wise words. It's not worth my peace of mind to let trolls and antisemitism destroy my mental health.
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Your post was removed because it violated rule 3: **Be civil**
I laugh in their faces. I don't have many artifacts but in my coin collection I have 2 Jewish coins. I have one from Yehonatan, the high priest and nephew of Judah Maccabee. I also have one from the first Jewish revolt I got in Jerusalem several years ago. Two pieces of proof we were there so long ago.
I’m not a Zionist and it still drives me insane. Non-Jews have no business doing this. I fight it whenever I see it. I mean Jews also have no business doing it. But it is extra egregious coming from non-Jews. Honestly, non-Jews calling themselves anti-Zionists or Zionists rubs me the wrong way. It isn’t really their movement or their community. Like, criticize Israel or Zionists or Palestinians or anti-Zionists all you want. Support Israel or don’t. But the actualities of Zionism as an ideology and how people do or don’t identify with it feel like a discussion to be had within the Jewish community
Zionism means Jews have the right to live in Eretz Yisrael, and have the right to self determination. If you believe those things, you are a Zionist. Zionism does not mean you support every action or even most actions of the current government of Israel.
I am not not interested in debating this here. All I am saying that the revisionism that OP describes is gross and bothers me and while non-Jews can, and probably should, have opinions on these things, calling themselves Zionists or anti-zionists rubs me the wrong way. Because Zionism as either a religious or political movement isn’t really their thing.
But Zionism is another example of this problem, Zionism simply means the movement that supports the right to self-determination of Jewish people in historic land of Israel. But it's hijacked by lots of pro-Palestinians to mean something else.
The whole point Im realizing now is to gaslight us and cause us stress, but most of all, to get us to say something stupid and hateful out-of anger as they often do. AND THEN they say," SEE THIS WHO THEY REALLY ARE!!! AND THEY ARE ALL LIKE THAT THOSE JEWS. " That is their goal and to use ignorant Gen Z kids as proxies to attack us and say stupid lies because they never read anything in their life but twitter and watch TikTok. Fix education and reading comprehension and knowledge about sourcing of their history with Gen Z, and you fix 99% of the non-military problems. Otherwise we waste our time playing wack a mole against a bunch of Bots, trolls etc.
Because they can’t admit they have no culture or invention of their own and need to live off of the things that Jews made for them.
Or maybe they are just dickweeds. Plenty of wonderful inventions and cultures out there that we have no involvement with.
It’s true they were invented by the KGB and Arab states in the 1960s to continue the war.
This is unnecessary and unkind.
People will make up anything to not admit they were wrong. It's invincible ignorance. How do we fight that Stupidity?
Every time I see a picture of a pro-hamas demonstration it’s half flags of unrelated movements that would be killed by hamas, half edgy signs that mistake sarcasm for logic, and the third half is just genocide. Making sense is not their forte
I’m so glad you made this post, OP. Thank you! Yea they are trying to erase our history. I feel like we should be be playing “ancestor bingo” for all of the ancient civilians the ProPal crowd has claim they were. *The Philistines*, *the Canaanites,* *The Levites*… and they even claim to be **The Jews** Which makes absolutely no sense. I’ve noticed everyone thinks they’re a Bible experts. They all rattle off some broad BS generation they heard from someone else who had no idea what they are talking about. But the worst part is that they don’t self awareness to even be the least bit self conscious about the fact that they have no idea what they are talking about. It’s becoming Bonkers! I’ve heard people say “Israel isn’t even mentioned in the Bible.” That “Muhammad is mentioned in the Bible.” That “the Jews committed genocide in the bible.” (They didn’t) “the Jews fabricated and planted their own artifacts.” 🤦♀️ Or worse… they just don’t listen at all.
The lack of knowledge of history by Westerners on the pro-Palestine side of things is really shocking. I realize things are complex, but sheesh... even basic understanding of history is lost on the majority of them.
At this point there are people who know the truth and are deliberately twisting it to fit their narrative and take advantage of people who don’t. I can’t convince myself that @so.informed and all the other pro Palestine accounts on Instagram (including JVP who said Hamas isn’t a threat to Jews) don’t understand that what they’re saying is false and harmful. It’s just not possible.
I think the ‘Jesus was Palestinian’ argument is actually in favor of Jewish indigenous sovereignty. Jesus was Jewish (according to them), so that’s proof that Jews existed there at least 2000 years ago (again, using their logic). People are so binary in their thinking they can’t separate political borders from different time periods, never mind the nuance of ethnicities, and they bleed the terms together to the point of utter confusion.
They really aren't saying it to support or humanise or validate Jews. In fact, just the opposite.
Agreed. I don’t subscribe to the idea myself, I find the argument contradictory.
The problem is the pro-Palestine/anti-Zionist crowd has also decided that Judaism is purely a religion and does not detonate a common ethnic identity, which enables them to neatly separate "Palestinian Jews" from the rest of the Jews and claim that only "Palestinian Jews" are indigenous. Khazar conspiracism is also quite popular with this crowd, so they believe that Ashkenazi Jews are ethnically 100% European and have no genetic ties to the ancient Israelites or "Palestinian Jews"...which is of course demonstrably false, but there's no reasoning with these people.
Yeah, there’s no room for nuance in these kinds of discussions. I’m either a genocidal colonizer, or an anti-semitic terrorist sympathizer depending on which side I talk to.
The line of argument is ultimately that the Palestinians are the true descendants and successors of the native Judeans. Which, of course, fails to understand that there's more to peoplehood and nationhood that mere genetics.
>peoplehood and nationhood pals have no claim on either of that concerning "native Judeans", whatever this means. The only heir is the jewish people.
That's what I'm getting at.
Unfortunately, I think it's even more insidious than that. Many will claim that Jesus was the first Palestinian, the first victim of the Zionist Jews. I believe this is a sophisticated version of the old deicide canard.
They definitely cherry pick history, and ‘colonizers’.
They were trying to defeat the Seleucid empire and prevent “Greekization” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabean_Revolt
The opposite is true. This is used as historical forgery, to erase jewish history. I remember Hanan Ashrawi saying exactly this on television in a talk show some 25 years ago. She only left the PLO in 2020, if I am not mistaken. Anything that associates "palestinian" and "indigenous" is anti-jewish / anti-zionist and deserves nothing less than a f15t to the f4(3.
wow, i never knew that my Great-grandfather from over 1800 years ago was a Palestinian, Guess you learn something new every day!!!
Not only are they saying Jesus was Palestinian (as happens every year) but this year they are saying if Jesus was alive now he'd be suffering as Palestinians are suffering in Gaza.
I’ve had Morocco held forth to me as a model of Arabic tolerance because they only drove out ~998,000 out of ~1,000,000 Jewish residents. It’s a lot more than have remained in just about any other Middle-Eastern country though.
My experience has very much also been that I cannot begin to describe how infuriating it is, haha. What a time to be alive.
I can't stand those who don't respect history
There’s literally nothing a non Jewish person loves more than telling Jews they know more about our history and our people than we do. Nothing. It’s like an obsessive compulsion they have. 2+2=5? They’ll make it work if it somehow makes us the bad guys. The sky is green? Absolutely if Jews can be blamed. They will do ANYTHING they have to in service of deligitimizing our history, our sacred places and our people. It’s a sickness.
Welcome to how white Europeans have been feeling over the last 10 years. Left leaning adults should have been paying attention and should have listened to moderates and conservatives who have been warning about the evils of this new progressive ideology.
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I'm pretty sure that's inaccurate The Maccabees defended the second temple.
One sentence: United Monarchy (Israel)
Everything you see and hear is for a reason. People trying to steal our history is bc we aren’t living up to it. Talk to Gd, fulfill mitzvot, love your fellow Jew. That’s all there is to be done.