"The Palestinians were there first ".... a response to my dear Lechuza

[plural]

your words

"Recall, please:
The Palestinians were there first.
The only Israeli claim to the region is religious,
which is crap. No offense to anyone so inclined religiously.
That renders the argument moot for me."

when?
the Jewish claim to the land
has religious basis
but it also has historical basis
my people have inhabited the land
for five thousand years

sure we have been occupied
and foreign governments have ruled us
but
honey that land has switched hands
so many times in the past 5000 years
no one could have a claim based on rulership

Most recently it is the Israelis who control the land

before Israel it was the British

before the British it was the Ottomans

before the Ottomans it was the crusaders from Europe

before the crusaders it was Omar, the Second Caliph of Islam

before Omar it was the Romans

before the Romans it was the Jews

before the Jews it was the Greeks

before the Greeks it was the Jews

before the Jews it was the Babylonians

before the Babylonians it was the Jews

before the Jews it was the Canaanites

and that's just what
three thousand years of history tells us
fact, documented history, not religious texts

if you follow the old testament
which is accepted by both the Jews and the Muslims
the pattern continues for another
two thousand years

the simple fact is
that there have been Jews living in israel
for the past five thousand years

the governments have changed
the populations have changed
but there have always been Jews
yearning for a Jewish state
and around the world
in every country
in every year
my people wished
to go home

In the celebration of passover
which has just recently passed
it is said
as it has been for two thousand years

"Le shana haba beh yerushaliem"

"Next year may we be in Jerusalem"

You say that the palestinians
were there first
and all other arguments become moot

but they were not there first
because quite simply
they didn't exist

the Palestinians were created as a people
by the British government circa the 1930s

how can they lay claims of precedence going back
five thousand years?

before the 1930s there was no Palestine
there were no Palestinians

there were Jews and there were Arabs

no Israelis,
no Palestinians

there were also

Druse
Turks
Persians
Greeks
Christians

but if you look
throughout history
not religion or tales
but historical facts

verified by multiple independent sources

there is one group of people
who have consistently lived in Judea
who have ruled Judea more frequently
than any other

from the beginning of our historical records

and that is the Jews

so while that may not be enough
to lay claim to the land in the modern day

your argument of Palestinian precedence is simply
incorrect and unsubstantiated by fact

the first Jew

Abraham

five thousand some years ago
travelled to where Jerusalem would one day stand
climbed the hill and lay his son down on a stone
to be sacrificed to his god
it was there that the story of the burning bush occurred
it was that same stone that Mohammed ascended to heaven
three thousand years later

in america we claim the land we live upon
it is ours
we purchased it and have right to it
based on our inhabitance
[depending on where you live]
of less than two hundred years
even if you live in Boston or Virginia
[two of the oldest settlements]
you can only claim three or four hundred years

yet my people have lived
in Judea for five thousand years
and you claim that we have no right to be there?

you live on land that was bought with
treachery and deceit
atrocity and cruelty

our government made treaties with the Indians
and then broke them
time and time again

when the Indians protested
we slaughtered them

before you plaster my people
with accusations un-based in fact
and making uneducated statements

perhaps you should start by looking at
the place you rest your head
the land you live on
and the blood of innocents
that purchased it

please do not take this
as a personal attack
i am not meaning to insult you
or degrade you

but i have heard
this argument made
too many times
by sympathetic Americans
who know little about the situation there
[or our own history as well]
and
it is difficult for me to respond
without emotion

i was born in America
raised in America
but every time i go to Jerusalem
stand before the wailing wall
the last remaining wall of our sacred temple
deep in my soul
i know i have come home

i do not expect you to value
this internal emotion of mine
or even to understand it
[as i hardly understand it myself]

but it is there
my blood and my soul
are deeply connected to that place

that is why
even when haunted and consumed by nightmares
and daylight visions
i cannot banish from my mind

i still believe
and still will fight
for our right to live in our home

i may not change your mind
but perhaps you will understand where i come from
and understand the historical clusterfuck that exists there

Comments

[plural.livejournal.com]

if i was to apply your standard then
the mass exodus of palestinians
during the 1948 war
created the opportunity for Israelis
to settle in the spaces left
and the palestinians
can go to the end of the line

there are two problems with that
one it is ridiculous to compare
waiting in line at the post office
with the future of any group of people

secondly you are insinuating that
the palestinians have a right to return
[but at the same time saying the jews do not]
and that the mass exodus of jews
from the land was willing
as if our nation just stood up
and said fuck it lets move to club med

the romans created the disapora
[what we call the jewish exile from israel]
the made us slaves and sent us
to every corner of their empire
we could live anywhere but in israel

There are those who would say
that the palestinians had the same circumstances
that they were forced out
and that is the basis for their demanding
the right of return

but history and modern reality
betray that claim

in 1948 the palestinians chose to leave
yes it is true
that they were genuinely frightened
but without true cause

their leaders had spoken out so often
and so loudly about exterminating the jews
who lived there when the glorius Arab armies
defeated the jews

that the arabs could not imagine
that the jews would do any less to them
in the event of a jewish victory

today there are arabs,
cousins to the palestinians
in the refugee camps
who live, work and vote in israel
they hold citizenship own land
and run businesses

they are

[city-glitter.livejournal.com]

Oh, and before I forget...

I could go into about how I feel about Native rights, but my friends are tired of hearing it.

[plural.livejournal.com]

*grins*

i understand
see here in america
it is easy to distinguish
the history is recent
our methods of documenting it are advanced

we can see what we have done
to the natives
and reflect upon it

imagine if the US was conquered
and the invading tribe
did to us what we did to the Indians
and then a few hundred years later
Another Tribe invaded and did the same thing
to this latest tribe
and so on
and so on
for five thousand years

whos land is it then?
is it the indians land?
is it american land?
does it belong to whomever lives there now?

what if a people have occupied it
for the last thousand years
sure they didnt steal it from the indians
we did
and someone else stole it from us
and someone else stole it from them
etc
etc

but the fact of the matter
is that the land was originally stolen
from the indians

if my car is stolen
and then it is stolen from the car theif
who owns the car?
me or the car theif?

the problem here becomes even more complex
because the indians didnt own the land
didnt have the concept of ownership

to them the land owned them
not the other way around

if i am walking around the woods
and i see a diamond on the ground
you are standing next to it
so i ask you
is this your diamond?
and you say no
because you dont believe you can own that diamond
is it stealing if i pocket it?

how can i steal from you
what you do not own?

i realize that many of these examples
do not hold true when applied to the
higher standard of the life of a

[9thmoon.livejournal.com]

I feel compelled to point out that you scoff at the anology of getting out of line at the post office, and then proceeded with your own analogy, comparing american's treatment of natives to a car theif having his stolen car stolen from him.
This seems a little incongruous to me.

[plural.livejournal.com]

ack
as you may have noticed
that comment was cut short
a flaw i suppose
in the email response system

however i remind you
that my last statement was
that the examples which i gave
were not expandable to the scope
that we are talking about
i.e. i agreed with your point
and were not comparible to the situation as a whole

i was knowingly oversimplifying
and i stated that fact

i will attempt to reconstruct
the remainder of that comment
and it was a minor point and one
which was not being used to prove the overall point
but illuminate the greater question
which i was asking

[kingnixon.livejournal.com]

comments are restricted to a certain length. if your comment is too long, it will be snipped. last i checked,t hat happens whether you comment by the site or by email, and you aren't warned either way. not the best system, certainly, but i don't think it's a flaw, just sloppy setup

[city-glitter.livejournal.com]

I believe that I own what I've purchased with my own money or what has been given to me by others, assuming they were in a position of authority sufficient to sell/give it to me to begin with.

Furthermore, my Native rights battle cry has less to do with land ownership than it does with their lamentable treatment and rights. All the land in the world is nothing if you don't have the same opportunities as your neighbor. Especially in this country, where indiviudal achievements and the employment market mean so much.

It wouldn't be okay if they had these rights and opportunities, because we brutalized them and that's a fact that will always remain. But it'd be more okay.

[kingnixon.livejournal.com]

if he didnt believe he owned the diamond, but did believe he coudlnt be excluded from its use? (which is my admittedly piss-poor understanding of the indian relationship to the land)

but if he steals the diamond, and leaves it for his son in his will. his son has no idea how he got it, but has no reason to assume it was stolen, then it gets muddier. at that point, if the original owner demands it back from the son, it's a 'sins of the fathers' type situation, where he will lose his property because of his father's actions.

politics has gotten entirely too stodgy. they wouldnt have put up with this shit in midieval times. not that i advocate violence, but it's all been going on entirely too long and too much crap from both sides, and someone needs to smack them both upside the head and tell them to shut the hell up and settle it already

this is not a very well pondered comment, it being 4:30am and me being in a pissy mood. so ya know.

[lique.livejournal.com]

I remain curious as to why those looking to point a finger (which, I'll note, I still say is a far bigger problem than anything else ... all the finger pointing going on all around the world, it's only natural a few eyes get poked out), but, amongst those looking to point fingers, willing to go back through the wars in the sixties and the forties and earlier still, who was awarded what, who won what, who lived where, who deserves greater pity, blah blah blah, no one ever mentions the action, inaction, and general territorial pissing match that was the british and to a lesser extent the french, the league of nations, and the u.n., on top of anything having to actually do with jewish immigrant and arabs of any particular background -- why it's always purely a matter of "natural claim to the land" and never the series of political blunders that it was, and often, continues to be. hm.

(I will, though, note a slight disturbance at the idea that a people must be a recognized nation by the rest of the world to have any right to be where they're at. Mostly because, we reject that idea when it comes to most every other part of the modern world. Termed Palestinian as a citizenship or just a random group of Arabs inhabiting a land, counterpoint generally is, there were people there who rejected the idea of a state of Israel being formed overtop of them from the start. Back to the political blunders.)

[city-glitter.livejournal.com]

(Note that I was displeased with my original reply and deleted it.)

Your people have always inhabited the land in some number. That's because the Jewish religion is quite indomitable and will never be annihilated despite the best attempts of the more rabid anti-Semitics. I'm glad for it, if you must know.

However, it's important to note that there have been mass exodi (is that a word?) of Jews from the region in the past for assorted reasons. Just like the European pogroms and the encouraged migrations pre-World War 2.

If I leave my place in line at the post office, I have to go to the back. That's the way it is. That's what I see as being fair. And because to me, no man owns the land or the Earth or the Universe, the same thing applies there. The Palestinians have taken their place on land that once belonged to Israelis because they too need a place to set up camp and raise their children. If the Jews wanted to keep it so badly, they should have stayed and fought and maybe died for it.

The history of occupation in the Middle East is a long and tiresome one with which we're all familiar. There's always some military jihad or Crusade going on. Personally, I'd rather live here than there and I have friends who will attest to my eagerness to get out of the United States if you don't believe me.

No, I do not follow the Old Testament. I'm an agnostic to whom organized religion has value only because it has value to others, who I don't generally seek to offend. I do not believe that religious texts are an acceptable guide for policy, which is what makes American support of the Israelis so infuriating to me, as you might have read in my LJ a few days ago. And in case you're wondering, yes, I have read the Bible. And the Talmud. And the Quo'ran.

There have been Jews in the region for a very long time. But when did the serious conflict start? As near as I can tell, it was early in the twentieth century. Why? Because there was a mass return of Jews to the area. That hits the nail on the head right there.

I can see why your people would want to go "home." The treatment of Jews abroad (here too) has been utterly reprehensible in the past. But here's the deal:

My family comes from Saxony, in northern Germany. What do you suppose would happen if I came in and tried to convince the local burgess or whoever that I should get a currently inhabited farm in the area because that's where I'm from originally? I think you know the answer.

I also believe you know to what I refer when I say "Palestinians." If Texas were to suddenly become a part of Mexico again, I'd be obliged to call myself a Mexican, wouldn't I?

I am skeptical of the existence of Abraham and of many of the other, if not all, characters in the Bible and related works.

I feel passionately about the situation of the Natives here. I'm not even going to go into it, because it sends me into a rage.

I understand your feelings of connection to the region. I cannot, however, sympathize.

This post is badly-written and badly-organized because it's an outpouring. I hope it's readable.

[sickboy.livejournal.com]

I've pondered for eons on this particular issue and I like you feel like the solutions being used currently might not be the best but also that I couldn't possibly suggest anything better.
For me, I think it's now less about land and occupation of such land and more about those that have been bred with a hatred and taught to think a certain way.
Is it possible that people will tire of living their lives in fear and full of hatred and will just resign to share? I highly doubt it but it is a possibility as I see nothing else changing in the near future.
It's easy for me as an outsider to say that everyone should just let it be but neither side seems to want to let it be unless they are the victor and the losing side will always want to avenge the horrible atrocities and right the wrongs done by them.
It's probably just too basic an idea to be effective.