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.

So you, yourself, don't have an intelligent answer to the pp's point.

Haha, now we're descending into the bit where you critcize tone and style as well as my character and intelligence because you can't actually answer the points I've made with any substance.
The Jews weren't forcibly displaced from Judea very nicely either. In fact, i would say it was quite a bit worse from them from the historical records.

You may not (they do cut off somewhere), but she probably would. Most countries do give ancestral visas or passports to those with at least one grandparent who was proveably from there.

Well the state can’t because neither Jewish nor Muslim nor Christian religious leaders (in Israel) will perform them. But once married, gay couples (or intermarried couples who also can’t marry there. In fact my parents had to fly to the states to get married as they couldn’t provide proof that they were both Jewish. They needed their parents’ marriage certificate and my father’s parents couldn’t provide that due to a complicated and boring story) have all the same rights and responsibilities as anyone else, including being able to adopt children etc.

The latest Jewish thread on AIBU contains the usual ignorant details (or lack of it).

@ginkhao ,

‘If you were brought up Jewish, then you would know that the ties to Israel are not because that's where our genes origanted from 2000 years ago.
Did you fast on tisha b'av to remember the destruction of the temple? Did you break a glass at your wedding to remember the destruction of Jerusalem at your happiest monent? Did you turn towards Jerusalem when you said the Amida? Did you sing "Next year in Jerusalem" at your seder?

It's only people with a passing knowledge of Judaism who would claim that the Jewish connection to their homeland is just about genes.’

I find that post somewhat problematic.

I am a secular Jew, agnostic (towards atheist) by belief. However I am genetically 100% Jewish and I grew up in a fairly Jewish community, so I have spent Seder dinners with friends and know of the ‘Next Year in Jerusalem’ toast from spending Rosh Hashanah in Israel with relatives when I was much younger. I am sorry if I am not a good enough Jew for you, but I am Jewish and have as much right to a view on Israel as you do.

(And genes really matter when you test for genetic disorders!)

Jewish people (very rightly) object to being conflated with Israelis or being pro Netanyahu and picked on because of the actions of Israel. Equally, though, the diaspora do have a responsibility to condemn the actions of Israel when they are wrong.

The problem with the Jewish peoples ‘unique’ connection to the holy land is that, in one day, in Jerusalem, you can (as I did) walk the stations of the cross and visit Temple Mount and see the Haram Al-Sharif, the third holiest place in the world for Muslims in the same place as where Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac and Solomon built the first temple! Religion creates way too many conflicts.

I was quite shocked at the Moslem community’s response to 9/11 at the time, and some after 7/10. So I think the same applies to Israel’s annexation of Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Too many within the Jewish community won’t unequivocally condemn racists like Smotrich and Ben G’vir (despite Ben G’vir having a criminal conviction in Israel for racism).

Indeed. It's complicated.

And on that basis England really belongs to Italy.

May I be the first to welcome our Italian overlords.

And if the italians had originally come from the UK and maintained a population here since then, you may have a point.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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).

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

Who is 'they'?

I think my point was pretty clear.

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

Would Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese, Russian, Brazilian, or Middle Eastern Arab migrants answer 'African' in response to being asked what their heritage was?

Why do those posters think Jews should?

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 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.

@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.

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.

Another one trying to get the thread pulled.

I've seen you on the CITME board so it's unsurprising considering your views.

Explain how this thread is disingenuous? I KNOW where the Jewish people originate from but it seems many don't.

What valid points have been made?.

This thread was not about the war in Gaza, the debate in the thread has been raised because of it, but it's not about that, it's about the Jewish people themselves who are not all Israeli but it didn't take long for it to descend into rants about 'baby killers', ' genocide' 'racism', 'white/religious supremacy', Jews thinking they had more rights to the land than the Arabs, etc.

That reflects on the posters who engaged in that, not me.

You're basically saying no one should talk about the Jewish people or the irrational and evil hatred they face because it creates 'conflict and trouble'.

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?