Where do you think Jewish people come from?

No, it already exists. See also Australia, the Americas, etc. Historical events can't be undone. This doesn't mean they were right, couldn't have been done better, or that it's advisable to perpetuate them.

You won't ever get them to outright admit to that. These protestors would rather carry banners saying Free Palestine with a virtuous derrmined look on their faces. How Palestine is going to be freed is an insight insigificant detail, so long as Israel doesn't exist.

Oh, that's a good point! They're framing the original forced expulsion of Jews from the Holy Land as decolonisation. Yikes.

Also, wtf is to 'recolonise'?
They're desperate to stick the white colonisers label somehow...

@GarlicSomething ,

‘The idea that any people should have the right to re-colonise the place where their ethnic identity was formed is absurd. You could even apply it to the descendants of the Canaanite, Hittite, Jebusite and other population groups the Hebrews killed and put to rout when conquering the area they named Judaea (according to their own historical accounts).’

See my above post (and many others on here).

Israel coming into being was a messy compromise and, in my opinion, the right thing to do after the Holocaust.

Having said that, many Palestinians did suffer and this needs to be addressed.

However, questioning the State of Israel’s right to exist, as you seem to be doing, does seem to be antisemitic. Would you question America or Australia? They both had native populations and the settlers all believed that their religion (Christianity in those cases) gave them a right to take the land.

Oh you were very much mocking. Haha, jews just randomly rocked up with some tenuous claim and chucked everyone out. Even logically that doesn't make any sense Jews were not the governing power.

The actual extant residents were forcibly displaced and came back to their original homeland.

No one needed to be displaced at this point. The displacement happened later - on both sides by the way - due to the refusal to recognise any jewish rights.

So your understanding of what happened in Palestine/Israel is completely flawed as is your understanding of what colonialism is.

You need to read some history

I'm not aware of any Canaanite, Hittite, Jebusite populations, especially ones that have remained in their communities original location? Maybe I'm just ignorant.

The phrasing of your post suggests that there were no Jews there before modern Israel; this is false.

The idea that any people should have the right to re-colonise the place where their ethnic identity was formed is absurd.

So you think the existence of Israel is absurd - so what now? You want it to stop existing?

All humans did. We all came from the same place, originally. You seem to be choosing when to start the clock because it suits your religion. That is what everyone is saying is confusing, because it makes your posts sound as though somehow Jews are different from everyone else on the planet. It is a divisive viewpoint.

I was referring to you as the OP, which was clear when I quoted you, I thought.

@BlessedIsTheFruit ,

‘The sarcastic posts about everyone coming from Africa are disgusting actually.’

Why are they disgusting? I think they do ask a legitimate question about how many generations is it ok to go back and claim that you have a right to land.

I do think Israel is a legitimate state, but that is more to do with the Shoah and the issues of antisemitism than a biblical or genetic claim to the land. Which is also why I believe that it needs to remain Jewish. However, I am a strong believer in a two state solution and for Jerusalem to be a shared heritage site.

Once you go down the road of G_d promised you the land, you also go down the road of racism, and you start to think your religious claim is more valid than someone else’s legal claim.

So you are a black Russian Jewish lesbian who married her partner in America, had a child and, it seems but I might be wrong, right wing?

I am struggling with where you are in the world. I can imagine you might feel persecuted in Russia.

I'm not mocking it.

These atrocities having happened - as they have throughout history, to many peoples in many places - do not, in my opinion, confer the right to move into a country and displace the extant residents. That's also happened throughout history; we normally call it 'conquering' or colonisation.

The idea that any people should have the right to re-colonise the place where their ethnic identity was formed is absurd. You could even apply it to the descendants of the Canaanite, Hittite, Jebusite and other population groups the Hebrews killed and put to rout when conquering the area they named Judaea (according to their own historical accounts).

If histories are to be accepted as conferring right to reside, then yes, I do have the right to settle in Northern Germany. Yes, it is ridiculous.

So unless you witness something with your own eyes you don’t consider it real? How bizarre.

I just ignored this one. Maybe the poster isn’t Jewish so it’s not happened to them so therefore never happens? I too have never heard of someone attacking me for being Russian. Or black. Or anything really except being Jewish (and a woman I suppose).

Amazing to come from such a place of blinkered privilege that you can so easily mock the horrors of millenia of violent displacement, persecution, harassment, rape and genocide that the Jews have been through as a result of having lost their homeland.

That wasn't the point that came across.

One of the reasons people talk about the history is because so many people have portrayed Israeli Jews as alien to the land who should be removed, when there is clear archaeological and historical evidence that this is false.

If you're intent is seriously to support people living in harmony then I'd recommend not supporting such a hateful narrative, intentionally or otherwise.

Do you mean in your immediate surroundings?
Because surely you must have heard of the recently foiled antisemitic terror attack in Manchester, or the one a year ago, or the attack on Jewish ambulances in Golders Green, or the foiled attack in Manchester that was targeting a march against antisemitism and a Jewish neighborhood, or that couple killed in Washington D.C. for being Jewish, or the attack on Bondi beach, or… the list is endless, really.
You haven’t heard of any of that?

As an Anglo-Saxon, I'm off to claim my ancestral rights to a place in Germany. I'll let you know how it goes.

My point was really that looking back into history to see who should be allowed to live where is unhelpful.

We all need to find common ground, live peacefully and stop divisive politics, hatred and violence, wherever we are in the world.

I don’t understand how you arrived at that take, though. The Romans didn’t forcibly move the local population out of the country. They sent legions to conquer, and rule. To appropriate the spoils. Then when the power of the Roman Empire faded, it just meant the Romans buggered away, and the local population didn’t have to bow to Rome any longer. No real shift in population.

We all come from Ethiopia, if you want to go back even further.

I am a Mizrahi Jew. I can trace my maternal lineage in what is now called Israel through multiple generations. My paternal lineage is Kurdish but still very much Middle Eastern. As a family we speak both Hebrew and Arabic and have many Muslim family members too. This has not stopped the ‘antizionists’ labelling me a ‘white coloniser’ though.

I also have Ashkenazi family by marriage and their DNA has as much in common as mine as it does with Europe. I have mixed feelings about the right of return (I used to be very against it but seeing the rise of antisemitism in the west I now think it’s necessary to ensure our survival, with the caveat that I still have some ethical questions over it).

Palestinians and Jews share a lot of Canaanite DNA. But Palestinians also have large amounts of Arab DNA and ethnic and cultural ties to the surrounding countries such as Egypt and Jordan. I struggle with the fact that often it’s the same people denying that Jews are indigenous to Israel because they define Ashkenazis as Europeans who refuse to recognise that Palestinians also have a mix of DNA. We both have deep historic religious and cultural ties to this land.