The historical record of Nablus, Jenin, Jericho, and Jerusalem being continuously occupied by an indigenous population for the past 3,000-6,000 years or so, and the records of the various religious communities within them growing, shrinking, and changing over time are evidence.
Again, I asked for genetic studies. Showing that a place was occupied for a long time does not show who occupied it.
There's also the DNA evidence of close family connections between Palestinian Jews and their Christian and Muslim neighbors, and the families own oral histories of Jewish ancestors.
I have posted links to multiple genetic studies over the years. I don't have time right now to dig them all up again but you can find them if you look.
Here's a sample:
Yes, I have read that too. What I wanted to know particularly is comparing how similar Jews are to Palestinians vs. other Arabs vs. how similar Palestinians are to the other neighboring Arab groups like Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians. I.e. what is the quantitative data.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples includes a definition of 'indigenous peoples'. That is the definition I'm using.
That definition relies a lot on "self-identification", which makes it nigh useless - typical of UN. Also, why can a Palestinian self-identify as "indigenous" but a Jew can't?
Again, UN rules for refugees only require a 2 year residence in "historic Palestine". Do Arab immigrants who came in the first half of the 20th century count as "indigenous" in your book? Is Yasser Arafat "indigenous" given his Egyptian mother and birth place? Or is he indigenous as long as he says he is?
Not at all. The DNA evidence and historical records are clear on that point. European Jews are descended from the Semitic people of Palestine, although most have European ancestors, too.
I have consistently argued against their having an exclusive ancestral claim, and against the absurd proposition that Jerusalem means more to Jews in the diaspora than it does to the people who actually live there.
Jerusalem was the capital of ancient Israel and is Israeli capital again. Islam always takes over symbols of other religions in other to dominate them. Temple Mount is not the only example of this. Hagia Sophia, which was a Byzantine church before it was islamicized when Muslims conquered Constantinople, is another, as is the Cathedral in Cordoba, Spain. Hell, even the Kabaa in Mecca is an example of this cultural imperialism inherent in Islam.
Muslims only want Jerusalem because it is holy to Jews. They are the toddlers of religion.
Only if they want it to. But if they want to go back to the homes they were driven out of at gunpoint, then that's what should happen.
No, it should not. It would mean the end of Israel given that Palestinians (especially in Gaza) have gazillion children each and thus there is now millions of people claiming this bogus "right". Many Jews were driven out of Arab countries and have settled in Israel. Palestinians should do the reverse.
Same for the Jews driven from their homes, and the Rohingya driven from theirs,
There aren't enough Jews to take over Arab countries demographically. But there are enough Arabs whose ancestors lived in "historic Palestine" for at least two years between 1946 and 1948 to take over Israel and make it yet another Arab/Muslim state in the Middle East.
By the way, that is the same danger that Rohingyas pose. Rohingya girls usually marry well before 18 and have a lot of children, which poses a demographic threat to Burmese, who practice sensible family planning.
In a decade or two, Europe will face the same problem, exacerbated by the fact that Europeans tend to have too few children.
and the Bosnian Muslims and the Albanians
Both groups are examples of Islamic expansionism in Europe.
Interesting.
Do Europeans who illegally immigrated to Jerusalem on May 31st 1946 count as Israelis? Because if so, I wonder what point you're trying to make.
Israel has the law that Jews may legally immigrate into Israel. They are a sovereign state and can pass immigration laws that work for them.
A future State of Palestine can likewise pass a law that all the "Palestinian refugees" may immigrate into Palestine. However, they should not be able to dictate to Israel that they must take in millions of Palestinian Arabs.
True, that whole 'united we stand, divided we fall' philosophy was popular in North Africa and the Middle East as it was quite obvious European nations were conspiring to screw them out of wealth, power, and resources. But it was not universally accepted, and it certainly didn't erase the religious, ethnic, and cultural differences. The Druze of Lebanon didn't see themselves as the same as the Sunni and Shiite Lebanese, much less the Egyptian Coptics and North African Berbers.
That's my point. Druze of Lebanon are different because they are Druze, not because they live in the territory drawn as "Lebanon".
Individuals might own houses, livestock, and other property, but the clans owned the communal resources like wells and pastures. That's the kernel at the base of Loren's claims that the majority of the property Israelis stole was 'government owned'. The grazing land was owned by the clans and managed for the benefit of the entire community.
Do you have evidence for that? My understanding was that the land was owned by the Ottoman Turks who maybe leased it to the Arab clans.
Perhaps you are with unter and do not distinguish "possession" and "ownership" of an asset.
The abrupt transition from tribal/clan identity to nationalism in the Middle East at the beginning of the 20th century is a fascinating historic period and I'd be happy to discuss it with you if you're interested. Lawrence of Arabia figures into it, and how cool is that?
I saw the movie a very long time ago.
In any case, Israel will not dissolve voluntarily. If Palestinian Arabs want to conquer it, it will be a bloodbath. Therefore, there must be a peaceful settlement that does not include silly demands like "right of return".
They have their olive orchards with trees hundreds of years old that were planted by their great-great-grandfathers.
[citation needed]
Not so much the age of the tree, but the identity of the planter.
They have their cemeteries near Rachel's Tomb and Joseph's Tomb, the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Temple Mount and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Bethlehem and Nazareth and the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, and all that means to them. They have their pastures and farms and houses that have been in the family for centuries. They have oral histories and church records and municipal files and maps and pictures and newspapers that document their lives and that of their ancestors.
It's their homeland. They don't need more of a connection than that.
So what now? Israel should just dissolve itself and let Arabs control everything? It reminds me of the Biblical story of King David being rebuked by Nathan.
2 Samuel 12 said:
Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. And he came to him and [a]said,
“There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor.
2 “The rich man had a great many flocks and herds.
3 “But the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb
Which he bought and nourished;
And it grew up together with him and his children.
It would eat of his bread and drink of his cup and lie in his bosom,
And was like a daughter to him.
4 “Now a traveler came to the rich man,
And he [c]was unwilling to take from his own flock or his own herd,
To prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him;
Rather he took the poor man’s ewe lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”
5 Then David’s anger burned greatly against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, surely the man who has done this [d]deserves to die. 6 He must make restitution for the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and had no compassion.”
Arabs have dozens of homelands, and yet they demand Israel as well. Jews only have the one, and should not have it?
He was born in Cairo to a Palestinian merchant family of the Gaza branch of the al Husseini clan.
His mother was Egyptian. Don't know much about the ancestry of this "al Husseini" clan though.
It's an appeal to prejudice, religious bigotry, and racial/ethnic supremacism with a heaping helping of fatuousity. Also, it's anti-Semitic.
It's neither of those things. It's simply rejection of cultural relativism.
Israel did not find a desert. Israel was built upon the existing infrastructure of a Palestinian society that had developed under centuries of largely peaceful Ottoman rule into what was then a modern, if somewhat small and only moderately wealthy region.
Major port city of Ashdod was a mere village before Israel was founded. Tel Aviv was literally a barren hill before Zionists settled there in 1909. Just two examples.
Read some history. Read what Ben Gurion, Dayan, Sharett, Weitz, and their contemporaries wrote about seizing land and manufacturing facilities. And get rid of that silly 'magical Jews' thinking. They didn't make the desert bloom, they stole productive agricultural land and seized the ports so they could sell the crops in European markets for the cash they needed to fund their war. It was all very practical.
Nobody said it was magical. It's "practical" that I underline here. Gaza could have developed similar to the cities further up the coast if not for continuous terrorism. When Israel withdrew in 2005, Gaza had a chance. Had they had "practical thinking", they could have developed. Instead, they chose to use the new-found autonomy to unleash a barrage of rockets and mortars at Israel and elected Islamofascist terrorist group Hamas.
Going back a few years before then, Gaza Strip even had an airport before Hamas and other radical groups started the 2nd Intifada and started murdering scores of Jews for no logical reason.
Secular in some ways, religiously oppressive in others. Religious laws are foundational, and religious bigotry is integral to it's functioning.
Compared to Palestinian territories, Israel is Richard Dawkins.
Ye gods, not this stupid appeal to emotion again.
And your appeal to old olive trees is not?
Jews can have a Jewish State where everybody wants a Jewish State and everybody agrees what it means to be Jewish and how one's Jewishness is measured or determined or recognized if they want. But they're not allowed to make one by stealing other people's stuff and driving non-Jews out of their homes. And they're not allowed to cry about how mean everyone is for saying they're being assholes when they really are being assholes.
So what solution do you propose?
