Where do you think Jewish people come from?

[BlessedIsTheFruit]

Antisemitism is at full volume at the moment and I caveat this post with saying that I have absolutely no wish to make Jewish MNers feel uncomfortable but as an an atheist with no connection to Israel this really makes my blood boil.

I see so many SM posts about the Jews having 'colonized' Israel and Judea & Samaria, not having any claim to the land, not being indigenous and of course being 'Europeans settlers'.

They can't answer where they actually come from though so I thought anyone on here who shares their views might be able to give an answer and how they came to that conclusion.

I understand that Jews are an ethnicity with Judaism as their religion. Being Jewish is not a religion. Jews are still today spread out all over the world with the majority living in Israel and the US.

This has come into focus since the UK Government sanctions on Jewish businesses in Judea & Samaria recently with Jewish communities living there classed as 'illegal settlers'.

It's almost as if Jews and Judea have no connection at all.

So AIBU to ask where the Jews originated from if not from there?

I don't feel this belongs on the CITME board as although the war in Gaza has amplified beliefs, this not directly about that.

"We don’t normally go round allocating land on the basis of who lived there 2000 years ago" but what you most certainly did do was constantly somewhere - for the entirety of that 2000 years - persectute, harrass, rape and genocide a vulnerable minority and refuse them refuge when they did try to escape to the point that they HAD NO CHOICE but to go back to their own homeland to get away from you all, a place they had always yearned to go back to and where there had always been a Jewish presence.

Currently there are more Arabs living in Israel (enjoying an egalitarian society where women and queer people can do whatever they want and full voting rights and representation in the Knesset) than there are Jews living in the entirety of the 52 Muslim countries surrounding them. Israel has certainly done what it can to encourage peaceful coexistence by having it right there. The Muslim countries systematically kicked out their Jewish population over the last 50-100 years. Still not convinced Israel is the problem here.

Most of them are not 'originally from here'. People went to the USA from all over Europe and beyond, not just the UK. I'm quite sure that the First Nation Americans hoped that the colonisers would give them their land back and bugger off.

They didn't all leave, there has always been a population of Jews in the region.

Exactly. Read Simon Schama's books and his account of what happened to Jews of Yemen. It's total BS this love and harmony in the Arab world. There were good times ocassionally under tolerant and enlightened rulers. But, as ever, Jews were vulnerable to the foibles and whims of these rulers, just like in Europe.

My mother’s great grandparents were German immigrants. Does that mean I have the right to return and settle in Germany? Even further back we have some Icelandic ancestry, does that mean I should be permitted to erect a settlement in the centre of Reykjavik? Israel was a colonial project, which isn’t to say that it should cease to exist anymore than Nigeria should cease to exist…but the idea that Israelis have a right to settle any occupied land because they’re Jewish is obviously batshit unless you are claiming Jewish exceptionalism, which is also a colonial mindset.

The archaeology also shows the Canaanite kingdoms that existed prior to the migration of the Jewish peoples to the region. Even the capital city- Jerusalem was originally a Canaanite city called by the Egyptians Rusilamum. It is mentioned often in the Amarna letters when Canaanite kingdoms were client kingdoms under Egypt.

King David conquered the Canaanites and captured Jerusalem around 1000BC for the Israelites who were just then giving up their nomadic lifestyle but we were not yet monotheistic Jews. The shift to worshipping only Yahweh started under King Josiah in the 700s BC.

The Koran was written in the late 600s AD, almost a thousand years after we had conquered Canaan and established the Jewish kingdoms.

Did you not do sex ed at school… same place you came from…

Anyway you’d have to track back and if you go biblical Jesus was Jewish so where did he come from, or go back further to the reason for Passover, slaves being freed and crossing the desert, escaping being slaves in Egypt … that’s if you use religious tracking.

Israel is the ultimate decolonization.. Anyway RTFT. Your ridiculous point has been answered already.

The only "evidence" of this I have seen has been thoroughly debunked (including doctors pointing out that an x-ray showing a bullet cannot be possible as there was no other damage) unless you've got a reliable source you can share? Its bad enough when children are hurt and injured without making up more extremes to fit a certain narrative.

I don’t think anyone thinks that. There have always been Jews in Israel (Levant) since 1500BC. But it is true that there has also been a mass immigration of Jews from around the world that carry with them the genetic signatures of where they settled after the diaspora as well as the genetic signatures from the Levant. It’s why we are an ethnicity and a religion. The thing is that most Palestinian Christians and Muslims are also indigenous to the Levant with generic signatures going back to Canaanites and Israelites. Some of the Jewish people who stayed will have converted to the religions of each wave of conquerers. Genetically, Palestinians and Israelis are the closest of all the variants in the Levant. Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians all are less alike. This is a conflict of cousins.

It’s not decolonisation because the Palestinians being displaced are not colonists.

Yep.

India was decolonized and yet non colonialists were displaced during that process.

From their mother’s vagina, or c-section. Same as everyone else.

The actions of the IDF speak otherwise. The opposite, in fact.

British colonial rule of India was a direct rule model where no masses of British colonists were sent to settle down and populate the country as with the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. They merely sent officials and administrators to govern the indigenous population.

If you are referring to the partition of India, that was not a decolonisation.

Exactly this. I think you have successfully won the debate.

Yeah, Brits (and Ottomans before them) did exactly the same in mandartory Palestine. They didn't populate it either, just administrated it. The only difference with India was that it was officially a mandate for Palestine and not a colony.

No, the partition wasn't decolonization but it was a consequence of it through the establishment of India (and Pakistan) .

What debate?

Well, applying the same logic, the Palestinian refugees in Gaza, WB, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and elsewhere no longer have a claim or any right of return. Since as soon as you leave where you lived for more than one generation, you lose all rights to that place.

The problem is both sides have a legitimate claim to the land. Jews have always been there, but as an ethnic minority in a land mainly populated by Arabs.

It's like two people fighting over one football. The only solution is to share it, but that can't happen because too much hatred has built up. And so it goes on.

When did Israel legalise gay marriage?

‘I don't give a damn where your religion came from, I care that you're brutally murdering, torturing and raping people including children’

Ive not murdered, tortured or raped anyone ever. Are Russian people living in the UK accused of murdering innocent Ukrainian civilians including babies? No. Because they aren’t responsible for the mad dictator invading Ukraine. There are so many people saying Jews deserve to be attacked, abused and persecuted because of the civilian deaths in Gaza. My family have spent their working lives in the UK in the caring professions. We are in the main
, health care workers and teachers. We are not responsible for what is going on in Gaza.