Lol… Their ancestors only lived there after they ethnically cleansed the people who were already living there. They’ve been doing this crap for a long time.
Edit: to clarify, I’m talking about the Jewish people of Israel
When you say “they,” are you referring to all humans throughout all of human history? Not conquering/displacing people is a much more recent international norm
More of a recent virtue signal we’ve been propagandized to believe, while continuing the conquering and displacement without skipping a beat.
While the west was writing the UN declaration of human rights, they were hard at work creating the state of Israel, directly denying Palestine their right to democracy and displacing a million of them.
At the end of WW2 America, and the rest of the anglo-allies, assisted France in trying to reclaim their colonies, rejecting hundreds of millions their “basic human right” to democracy; all of this went on for decades after the declaration was ratified, as if that meant anything.
Human rights don’t apply as long as you are labelled a communist, terrorist, separatist, extremist, pedo, etc, etc. Then they can torture you in a black site all nice and legal.
Most of our history has been written by sociopathic criminals.
If you look at the entirety of human history, genocides and displacements have objectively been at an all-time low since the end of WWII
…they were hard at work creating the state of Israel, directly denying Palestine their right to democracy and displacing a million of them.
There was no Palestinian sovereign state prior to Britain’s decision to establish a Jewish homeland in the region. It was briefly under shared British and French control following a revolt against the Ottoman Empire during WWI; then the League of Nations assigned Britain control over the region as “Mandatory Palestine”.
Mandatory Palestine was explicitly intended to be temporary, with Britain providing “administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone”. Additionally, it was always intended to provide a home for the Jewish people without displacing Palestinian Arabs. Of course, this didn’t really work out. There was a lot of conflict between the Palestinian nationalists and the Jewish nationalists.
The UN’s action in 1947 was to partition the region into separate Jewish and Palestinian sovereign states. The reason this didn’t actually happen was because Arabic leaders both within the region and nearby rejected the idea of a sovereign Jewish state in the region. Israel declared independence anyway, and as the Palestinian Mandate expired, the 1948 Arab-Israeli war began as an effort to destroy the newly formed Israel. But of course Israel got support from other countries, and the war ended with Israel controlling most of Palestine and believing its neighbors to be a constant existential threat.
The Palestinians did not declare an independent, sovereign state until 1988, at which point they actually declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Palestine. There has never been a proposal for a two-state solution that Palestinian leaders have endorsed.
Not true. At least not for the Muslim conquest of the Levant according to Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister:
“The fellahin are not descendants of the Arab conquerors, who captured Eretz Israel and Syria in the seventh century CE. The Arab victors did not destroy the agricultural population they found in the country. They expelled only the alien Byzantine rulers, and did not touch the local population. Nor did the Arabs go in for settlement. Even in their former habitations the Arabs did not engage in farming…their whole interest in the new countries was political, religious and material: to rule, to propagate Islam, and to collect taxes…the Jewish farmer, like any other farmer, was not easily torn from his soil…Despite the repression and suffering the rural population remained unchanged.” [7]
Ben Gurion is quoted by Shlomo Sand in his book https://blogs.umb.edu/joinercenter/2012/10/09/review-of-shlomo-sand-the-invention-of-the-jewish-people-london-verso-2009-translated-by-yael-lotan/
The ancients very much understood the value in just changing leadership. So conquering yes, genocide? Usually only when religion is involved.
This is fundamentally not true. Invading, looting then burning down entire towns, killing men, and raping and/or kidnapping women and children was practiced across the globe by many different cultures for thousands of years
According to the Bible, yes. Which is most likely not true. Remember that Zionism started as a secular movement, with religious people getting more (very) on board relatively recently
Interesting… Is there more accurate information about how the Israelites ended up in that region? Did they just never do the whole Egypt thing?
The history has scant evidence, but we can discount the whole exile story. Slaves tend to be maltreated and are the last ones to be fed during famine, and that leaves physical evidence on their skeletons. We don’t have evidence of that in Egypt; for the most part, their monuments were built by farmers who didn’t have anything else to do when the Nile flooded. Also, a large nomadic group–which Israel would have been under Moses according to the Biblical account–should leave behind a lot of trash for archeologists to find today.
Fundie Christians like to say “Egypt wouldn’t have told stories about a time they lost”, but that doesn’t matter. First, you better bring some good evidence to say the Red Sea parted and people could walk on dry land. Second, as shown above, there should be physical evidence that we can find. It’s not there, and it’s hardly for a lack of trying. This is one of the most picked over parts of the planet by archeologists.
What seems to have happened is that they just came from there in the first place. Yahwah started as a war god among a larger pantheon. The people who later became the Hebrews worshiped that god as their primary; they didn’t discount the existence of other gods, but they worshiped this one as their primary one (still polytheism at this point). This later evolved into discounting the importance of other gods (henotheism), and much later disregarding the existence of other gods altogether (monotheism). That especially came into play with Persian Zoroastrian influence after the Babylonian Exile.
In short, it was a religion that evolved out of the beliefs of the people already living there, and they mostly stayed right there. The Egyptian slavery bits were probably from oral stories at a time when Israel had a conflict with Egypt.
Everything before the Babylonian Exile was made up, because the Babylonians sacked, well everything. They destroyed the First Temple, and took away the nobility and priests.
It was only after the Exile ended that the Hebrews became monotheistic… Sort of. There has been some noises before the Exile, but afterwards it was official.
It was also after the Exile that the stories of Noah and Moses were first added to the Torah.
As a note, the Epic of Gilgamesh has a flood story, and as an ancient Babylon story, would have been available for the hostages (the Hebrew priests and nobility) to read.
The Israelites conquered Canaan from the Canaanites who were already living there.
I’m no historian, but I presume the Canaanites then moved to North America and founded Canaada
Americans conquered America from the aboriginals who were living there
Edit: Btw, if it wasn’t clear, I’m disagreeing with you, because by your logic we would also have to condemn:
Egypt who conquered Nubia, parts of the Levant, and various neighboring regions multiple times.
Babylon and Assyria dominated who Sumerian lands, various Mesopotamian city-states, and parts of the Levant.
The Persian Empire conquered most of the Middle East, Egypt, and parts of India, and later Central Asia.
Islamic Caliphates (Umayyad and Abbasid) who conquered parts of North Africa, Spain, the Levant, Persia, and more.
The Ottoman Empire that controlled large parts of Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
The Roman Empire that conquered Britain, France (Gaul), parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and much of Europe.
The Macedonian Empire (Alexander the Great) who conquered Persia, Egypt, parts of India, and Greece.
The Viking Conquests that involved colonization of parts of England, France (Normandy), Iceland, Greenland, and even North America. Napoleonic France conquered parts of Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and attempted to hold Egypt.
The British Empire colonized the Americas, Australia, India, parts of Africa, and various islands worldwide.
The Aztecs conquered neighboring Mesoamerican tribes before the Spanish conquest.
Incas who subjugated various tribes across the Andes, forming an extensive empire.
The Spanish Empire who conquered most of Central and South America, the Caribbean, and parts of North America.
The United States acquired Native American lands across the continent through treaties, purchases, and conquests (e.g., Mexican-American War for the Southwest).
Portuguese colonizers who took land from indigenous Brazilian tribes.
The Mongol Empire who conquered China, Persia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe.
The Chinese Dynasties (Han, Tang, Qing, etc.) that expanded China’s borders through conquests, including Tibet, Xinjiang, and Manchuria.
The Japanese Empire that colonized Korea, parts of China, Taiwan, and occupied Southeast Asia during World War II.
The Russian Empire/Soviet Union that expanded into Central Asia, Siberia, parts of Eastern Europe, and Alaska (later sold to the USA).
The Zulu Kingdom who expanded in Southern Africa, subjugating neighboring tribes.
The Ethiopian Empire that conquered various kingdoms within what is now Ethiopia.
The Colonial Powers (Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal) partitioned and ruled over nearly all of Africa.
Maori Tribes in New Zealand conquered and displaced other Polynesian tribes.
Polynesian Expansion colonized the Pacific islands, often displacing or assimilating previous inhabitants.
European Colonization of Australia: British settlers took land from Indigenous Australians.
Surely, it is impractical that we demand that current nations and peoples return land to those who lived there centuries or millennia ago. Modern borders are often built upon layers of historical migrations and conquests, making a clear-cut solution impractical. We can’t use moral rubrics of today to judge past (and that’s talking centuries an millenia ago) actions.
yay! biblical history! you know, those canaanites sacrificed children. it was not a good scene there.
