Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

The land of Israel…. And a nation numbering less than 13.2 million people. What other small group of individual could amass more hate and suspicion? The piece of land in question has been called a lot of things; we'll use "the Southern Levant," since that's probably the least contentious nomenclature.

This bit of land, from about 5,000 years ago has been a crossroad between world powers. The Mesopotamia and Egypt on either side, the Greeks, Hittites, or Elamites all fought for this space like dogs over a juicy bone. It had strategic and economic value. It was not fertile or productive enough to support an empire. So the jackals fought over it time and time again, much the pity for the poor saps that lived there.

And who were these saps, well it was Israel/Judah. The ones who adopted a singular God, the Hebrew. They actually had a foothold for many years and bullied their neighbors for a few centuries. But, eventually the big guys rolled in and smashed these funny looking and worshiping people. Assyria smashed in and depopulated Israel, turning Judah into a vassal state, and when they collapsed Egypt and Babylon went to war over the Judean leftovers. This resulted in a “population transfer” Babylon captured prominent citizens and took them home, and not for traditional home cooking unless you consider that they were often the main course. The many who were left over, they wound up as slaves in Egypt.

And you really do have to go that far back to understand Jews' relationship to the Southern Levant. Their religion said that their deity led them to that piece of land and promised that they'd always rule it. It was also really important that they observe religious rituals at the temple in Jerusalem. Then, oopsie, they aren't ruling it anymore and their temple is a smoking heap (not for the last time). Some went back to the Southern Levant after Persia conquered Babylon and said the Jews could go home, but many stayed in their new cities -- all the while retaining their identity as a Levantine people, a people whose native home would be ruled by foreigners for thousands of years.

The diaspora only increased in the following centuries. Where Alexander and Hellenism went, Judaism went. Same thing in the Roman Empire. There were Jews in Rome and Jews in India 2000 years ago.

Oh yeah, something else happened about 2000 years ago. Christianity had an unpleasant impact on the Levant: It brought new world powers into the jackal-fight. Now, this little strip of land was not only economically and strategically valuable -- it was spiritually valuable. To more people with armies. You see where this is going. And then, things got EVEN BETTER when Islam emerged, and decided they ALSO thought Jerusalem was kind of a big deal. By the time Europe re-civilized itself, it decided it would be a great idea to go head-to-head with the Muslims over the Holy Land. This was not a super brilliant plan since the Fatimids and Seljuks had a home field advantage and cross-continental supply lines were somewhat lacking.


Guess who's coming to dinner?

But hey, the Europeans had so much fun slaughtering Jews in the Levant that they decided to bring this new pastime home. European anti-Semitism really kicked into high gear in the Middle Ages, kept going strong during the Renaissance, and had a certain retro allure by the 19th century. European Jews were hanging in there, strengthening ties with each other while trying to avoid attracting the ire of nearby Christians, but life could really suck. Jews were actually doing better in Muslim lands for most of this period. If you consider that the term “better” is relative. If your idea of better is that they provided protection, then yes. It was better. But, at what price? For Islam, the price the Jew paid was their subordination to Muslim law and accepting the lowest social status within the framework of the “peaceful Islamic” order. And yes, this was a step up from Christendom, where the Jew were positioned outside of protective boundaries of religious and secular law. The less “civilized” approach applied to the Jews within the domain of Christendom was based on the lack of clearly stated and divinely ordained rules toward the Jews. Thus, positioning them outside of the protection of regular law exposed them to the arbitrary decisions of unpredictable rulers. To make the contrast sharper, the Islamic “peaceful strategy” has been compared to the Ashkenazi status, as they were considered ‘outsiders’ along with ‘pagans, unbelievers, heretics, and lepers.’


Of course, Muslim lands were shrinking as the Ottoman Empire "slowly collapsed like a flan in a cupboard". Geopolitics had gotten quite complicated by this point. If you thought the growing secularity of the 18th and 19th centuries would lessen interest in the Levant, boy, were you wrong! England, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria were terribly interested in strategic waterway access -- um, I mean, the fate of the poor Christians living under Muslim rule. Sure. That sounds good. Every time the European powers got into a tiff, somebody would suggest a nice friendly plan to divvy up the Ottoman Empire amongst themselves. Then they'd turn around and pledge to protect the Ottoman Empire's territorial integrity.

The Ottoman Empire was pretty badass, actually.


Aside from schizophrenic obsession with Ottoman lands, the other growing trend in the region was nationalism. Nations had changed, and so had ideas about nations. People were no longer primarily loyal to their regions and cities; nor were they content to be ruled by a far-off empire. They liked the idea of organizing into ethnically and linguistically homogenous countries. The Greeks wanted independence from the Ottomans, the Czechs wanted independence from Austria, Bismarck unified the Germans, Italy came together, and Arabs began to discuss "throwing off the yoke of the Turks."

Jews also got nationalism fever, but there was a problem: They weren't concentrated in one region that could announce its independence and organize itself into a Jewish state. They were scattered inside other ethnic groups' nations -- and those nations made it pretty clear that the Jews were interfering with their shiny happy patriotic ethnic unity. Anti-Semitic violence kicked into high gear in Europe. So when Jewish thinkers started talking about moving back en masse to the Southern Levant (which had been called Palestine for centuries), Europeans were ready to throw a festive going-away pogrom.


We look favorably upon you getting the hell out.

This is the beginning of modern Zionism ("Zion" being an old Hebrew name for Jerusalem). The return of the Jews to Palestine was enthusiastically supported by British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who -- in a surprise twist that will shock you silly -- imagined that Britain would provide "guidance" to the new nation. Which obviously had nothing to do with Britain's strategic interest in strengthening its influence in the Middle East and checking Russian designs on Afghanistan. Totally altruistic. With help from donors, a steady trickle of European Jews began to immigrate to the Southern Levant.

Now, so far I've been talking about Jews but not Palestinians. That's because, according to most scholars, Palestinian national identity didn't really exist until the 19th century. People had been living in the Southern Levant all those centuries -- some Jews, but more Arab Muslims and Christians -- but they didn't see themselves as Palestinians per se until they, too, got swept up in nationalism and rebelled against the Ottomans. Unsurprisingly, their Palestinian identity solidified even further as a bunch of European Jews suddenly started moving into town. Locals vs. Interlopers is the oldest one in the book. Folks got along well enough at the turn of the century, but tensions were simmering. By the eve of World War I, Arab Palestinians were complaining about the Ottomans' unwillingness to check the foreign immigration and expressing concern about the social changes that would come from land sales to foreigners.

But hey, don't worry about the Ottomans, guys! World War I finally dealt the killing blow to the "sick man of Europe," and the Great Powers finally got the partition they'd been salivating over for a hundred years. This is where the map of the Middle East starts to look like the one we know today.



Totally reasonable borders that the locals just loved.

See, the newly created League of Nations said all the world's peoples had the right to self-government ... and then carved out a bunch of colonies euphemistically called "mandates," wrapped them up in bows, and exchanged them as Christmas presents. You got me Syria? How did you know! The Southern Levant ended up as the British Mandate of Palestine. Zionists were happy about this turn of events. After all, Britain had issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which clearly and unequivocally said that the Zionists had the green light and Britain had their back.

Here's another shocking twist: It said nothing of the sort. One of the most impressively vague documents in history, the Balfour Declaration does not promise to support the creation of a Jewish nation in the Southern Levant. It is simply "in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." What, you don't know what a "national home" is? Good! That's the idea! Because at the same time, Britain was making other vague promises to the Sharif of Mecca, things that kinda sounded like "You guys can have Palestine" but included a good deal of wiggle room. In other words, they were saying anything and everything to secure the support of whoever seemed important at the time -- good, solid European diplomacy. When Sharif Hussein learned of the Balfour Declaration at the end of the war, he thought little of it. So some Jews want to move back into Palestine. Sure. No prob. There's not too many of them, right? The locals still get to run things? Great.

It became clear pretty quickly that that would not be the case. By 1920, Jews comprised about 10 percent of the population of Palestine and the numbers were growing. Their influence over the British administration was considerable. Local Arabs believed that the British were favoring the Jewish newcomers over the existing Arab population and the end result would be Jewish political and economic domination of the area. Which was, in fact, the goal of the Zionist leadership: "There can only be one National Home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish preponderance as soon as the numbers of the race are sufficiently increased." Many Palestinians decided they were being conquered yet again. Groups of Arabs rioted in 1920 and 1921, prompting the British to arm the Jewish settlers. They began to worry about what exactly they'd gotten themselves into.

During the 1930s, it got real. An Arab nationalist militant group called the Black Hand began attacking Jewish settlers and destroying property. Meanwhile, believing that the best defense is a good offense, hard-liners broke off from the Jewish defensive militia, the Haganah, to form the more aggressive Irgun. Their logo was a fist holding a rifle with the slogan "Only Thus." Friendly guys. Worsening economic conditions for the Palestinian lower class made them more ready for general rebellion. The revolt started in 1936 and continued right up to the beginning of World War II. It's in this period that the familiar patterns of modern asymmetrical levantine warfare emerge: bus and train attacks, pipeline sabotage, civilian murders, collective punishment, torture, curfews, checkpoints, and the wholesale destruction of villages suspected of harboring combatants. All participants -- the British, the Arab rebels, and the Haganah and Irgun forces -- behaved barbarically. In the end, the revolt hurt the Arabs more than the Jews, and pushed the two sections of the population further apart. The prospects for coexistence did not look good.

During the revolt, Britain had for the first time proposed a "two-state solution" to the conflict. Nobody liked that. Britain backed off from that in 1939, instead suggesting one nation that could be home to Jews and Arabs. This did not satisfy the Zionists, but Britain had decided it didn't care about pissing off the Zionists because Arab support would be more important during World War II. Once again, Europe was playing strategic games with the Levant to protect its own military interests.

Loo

Cut along the dotted line: Instant partition.

Britain also limited Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1939. Bad timing. Only 15,000 Jews were allowed into Palestine per year, but hundreds of thousands of Jews were trying to flee the Nazis -- and it may surprise you to learn that the other nations of the world were not exactly eager to accept these refugees! If any Zionists were still unsure about the necessity of establishing their own nation that they controlled, the Holocaust fixed that. Jews clearly could not count on other nations. Toward the end of the war, the Irgun and other Jewish militants announced an open revolt against the British mandate. Britain just wanted out. After the war, they handed the problem over to the newly formed United Nations. We made a mess, guys. Clean it up. You have until May of 1948, when we're packing up and leaving.

Once again, partition was proposed. The Palestinian Arabs and the member nations of the Arab League hated the idea. Most of the Jews in Palestine were fine with it, though Irgun was not. The UN approved the recommendation, and the Arab League began preparing for war. In the months leading up to the British withdrawal, a civil war broke out between Jews and Arabs, and the writing was on the wall: The partition plan would not be peacefully adopted. Truman tried to stall for time, suggesting that the UN establish a "trusteeship" over Palestine, essentially taking over the mandate and delaying the creation of any independent states in the region. But in May 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the state of Israel. The Arab League announced that this was illegal and invalid because it did not have the support of the local Arab majority, and thousands of troops from the surrounding Arab nations invaded "to restore law and order."

As wars go, the 1948 Arab-Israeli war didn't last long -- about 9 months. Israel won a resounding military victory. It signed treaties with its neighbors to establish its borders, which were better than the original UN partition plan. There were around 20,000 deaths.

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

Part 2.
The real impact, however, was demographic: Over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes. Whenever anyone is trying to be neutral about this, they will say "fled or were expelled." Because that disagreement -- whether the Palestinians left voluntarily or were driven out -- is right at the heart of the problem today. Palestinians today call this event "al Nakba," the catastrophe. This created a horrifying refugee crisis. Most of Israel's Arab neighbors didn't welcome the refugees with open arms and offer them citizenship, ostensibly to help them retain their Palestinian identity. They also didn't help them establish a Palestinian state. That was never their priority. And Israel wouldn't let the refugees come back, ostensibly because it feared that the returning population would include would-be insurgents who would plot a civil war. Meanwhile, over the next few decades, about 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel from the surrounding Arab nations -- again, "fled or were expelled." Overall, I suppose you could call this "population exchange," which was all the rage in the 20th century. Greece and Turkey, Italy and Austria, all over Central Europe -- jump on the bandwagon, Middle East! Force people to go live with their own kind and reap the rewards of ethnic unity! Now we call this sort of thing "ethnic cleansing" and frown vigorously in its general direction.

During the 1950s, the Palestinian fedayeen emerged -- freedom fighters to some, terrorists to others -- killing and wounding hundreds of Israelis between 1951 and 1956. The Israeli Defense Forces retaliated with extreme prejudice, massacring civilians in some cases and hoping to "prove that the price for Jewish blood is high." A Cold War pissing contest turned into the Suez Crisis, with Israeli, French, and British forces invading the Sinai peninsula. It almost blew up into a full-scale confrontation between NATO and the Soviet Union, since the world powers were once again playing the region like a chessboard. Anti-Western and anti-Israel sentiment in the Arab world only increased.

In the 1960s, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) formed, its stated goal the dissolution of the state of Israel and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. The Six-Day War was another decisive military victory for Israel in 1967, expanding its borders to include all of mandatory Palestine, the Sinai peninsula, and the Golan Heights, which had been Syria's. Anticipating international pressure to give these occupied territories back, Israel promptly began settling Jewish families there. The international community considers these settlements to be in violation of the Geneva Convention, but does nothing to back that up aside from vigorous frowning.


They got a lot done in six days.

The 1970s marked the beginnings of what we now call "the peace process." Mighty slow process, ain't it. Various proposals have come and gone, with different suggested borders for Israel and disagreements about whether or not an independent Palestinian state should exist. Should Israel give back the land it annexed in 1967? Maybe just some of it? If one wants to negotiate with the Palestinians, with whom does one negotiate? For years, the Israeli right wing said it would never negotiate with the PLO because of its guerrila/terrorist tactics, and the PLO stalwartly refused to acknowledge Israel's right to exist. Israel and the PLO finally sat down together in the early 90s and set a timetable for forging a solution, but in 2000, it became clear that the differences between them were too great. Both sides said they wanted peace, but each had a very different idea of an acceptable peace.

Peace for our time! Or not.

Over the last decade, the prevailing vision for the peace process has been the "Road Map to Peace." Phase I, which called for an end to Palestinian violence, Palestinian political reform, and Israeli withdrawal and settlement freeze, was initially projected for 2003 or 2004. It's 2012 and it hasn't happened. Israel keeps building settlements, the Palestinian political parties Fatah and Hamas fought a civil war, and there's been plenty of violence back and forth. Interest in a one-state solution has reemerged, but very few Israelis support that. They know full well that if the refugees' descendants get full citizenship and full voting rights, Jews will no longer control Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert predicted that the outcome would resemble South Africa. Possibly not the most flattering comparison for you, Ehud, but okay. And that's basically where we are today: Completely stalled.

Nickolai

An estimated 100 million people liven in the Americas when Columbus landed on the Island of Hispaniola in 1492 they had been living here for 15,000 years 10, 0000 before Abraham migrated to the Levant by your criteria shouldn't they be given rights to all the property in the Americas ???

The Canaanites were in the land when Abraham arrived. Human fossils found in Israel indicate that the first homo sapiens to arrive in present day Israel occupied the area 100,000 years ago

fidelis

Ppenny, you certainly stirred it up, THANK YOU, I admire your knowledge and means of conveying without confrontation. I myself am so lacking and so needing exposition of the Talmud to explain the gospels. G*D bless and keep you and may HIS face continually shine on you and yours.

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

No.... bones were discovered in Israel that date about 177,000 to 200,000 years ago. Meaning that "out of Africa" theory may be wrong. It also means the antisemitic site you copy and paste from needs to update their "stuff."

One more thing, the Canaanites have a Jewish start. Read Genesis and you will see that Ham was the grandson of Noah (and Noah was the first, after Adam, to talk with G*d and considered "righteous" in the eyes of our Father), and he, Ham, was the father of the Canaanites. Additionally, they did not occupy what is now Israel, they occupied Lebanon, parts of Turkey and Syria. Their record is not just in the Hebrew bible, but can be found in fragments of a letter found at the site of Mari, a city located in modern-day Syria. And on statue of Idrimi, located in Turkey. "A batch of texts that mentions Canaan comes from the site of Amarna, in Egypt. Amarna was constructed as the capital of Egypt by the pharaoh Akhenaten (reign ca. 1353-1335 B.C), a ruler who tried to focus Egypt's polytheistic religion around the worship of the "Aten," the sun disk. The texts consist of diplomatic correspondence between Akhenaten (and his immediate predecessors and successors) and various rulers in the Middle East. Modern-day scholars often call these texts the "Amarna letters." (https://www.livescience.com/56016-canaanites.html).... Although Canaanites were encountered on the way to the Holy Land, they did not live in Southern Levant.

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

Biz hundert un tsvantsik! You are very kind, thank you so much.

Nickolai

The first five books of the old testament have been exposed as fiction by Professor Israel Finkelstein of the University of Tel Aviv that there is no historical or archeological evidence to support any of it

Nickolai

I didn't copy and past anything The period of the oldest Human fossil ( 100,000 ) found in the Land of Israel is from a documentary film by evolutionary biologist, biological anthropologist Alice Roberts. It is a five episode science documentary film. She tracks the incredible journey of man to every corner of the globe. The evidence says that was a died end humans did not advance further and died out The Exodus that led to us was by a small group of no more than probably 100 that crossed at the Gulf of Aden and eventually spread to every corner of the earth from Australia to Terra del Fuego at the tip of South America thousands of years before the wheel was invented

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

You are correct, "Yet all agree that the Pentateuch is not a single, seamless composition but a patchwork of different sources, each written under different historical circumstances to express different religious or political viewpoints.” ― Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Isreal and the Origin of Sacred Texts. His words do not say that the bible in whole or part is "fiction."

I agree with him, you see the English version of the bible has quite a few issues with translations. Meaning that some events have been simply misinterpreted. Also, do note that the people who originally authored the bible lived thousands of years ago... and no one will say that it does not have parables, stories told to cement laws or traditions in the minds of children or adults. However, the vast majority of events contained in those books are supported with archaeological, anthropological, and petrology.

Mr. Israel Finkelstein is a fine person and brilliant. None of my comment is intended as an affront to him or his conclusions.

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

I am not saying that fossil you reference was not discovered. I am saying that there are others... and most recently as published in Science, Jan 2018, if my mind is working correctly the find was described on page 389 or may have been page 456 (my memory sometimes forgets the page number).

Sicilianthing

>>>>

But what fossils is the Vatican really hiding ?

JoyV

The Hebrews were closely related to the Canaanites, if not a direct offshoot. Archaeological digs often have difficulty distinguishing Canaanite settlement from Hebrew settlement. Especially their temples. While the settlements of the Philistines of the same time periods were very distinctly different than the other two. Now we have genetic comparisons which indicate Jews are descended from Canaanites more so than are any other people are. Can you say that Abraham's ancestors weren't Canaanite? Or that both didn't descend from the same ancestors? Another possibility would be frequent cross mating. But the latter has never been the common case with Jewish populations inside other nations.

As for my people (I am Nagala), if we had been living for thousands of years away from our homeland yet remaining a distinct ethnic group. Then came back to Mah Rah Kah; then we should not be prevented from returning and making a small portion our own. Comparing the amount of area which is Israel from the amount of area of all the surrounding Muslim lands; it would be a small bit indeed. See map.

The Nagala actually have a rather different history than found elsewhere. Our myths say we came to Maraka (Land of the fire serpent) long ago by sea during the time of big ice. The great serpents were not a snake as it is depicted with feathers and it flies. There were people already living here. We called them Nagaka or Nagaraka (short translation serpent people) and ourselves Nagala (Serpent children). We did not carve out a territory but rather a niche within the existing communities. WE became the recorders of history and teachers. We existed as families within the cities, clans, and tribes of the others. We retained our own language which only the women spoke. Children grew up with the children of our hosts and girls who were taught the ancient knowledge. Boys became part of the culture of our hosts. We were never numerous but today we number in only a handful. Only two are left of the family which was attached to the Lakota. I lost track of a cousin who lived in TX and had 3 kids. Don't know if any were girls or if she taught them our knowledge. She was a hermaphrodite who escaped forced sterilization. My twin was a hermaphrodite who died after forced sterilization. I and my sister were single sexed. She never had children. I had 1 child which was a boy. So I am one of a very small number of the last generation of Nagala.

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

I do not have a clue to what you may be thinking about. Care to enlighten us?

Sicilianthing

>>>>

Oh forget it, I’m too tired tonight, gnite.

More later.

Nickolai

https://youtu.be/O5RfScpEcZ8
The 100 million inhabitants is an estimate as is being broadcast on the PBS series Native Americans . Modern archaeology de bunks the old testament and if that been de bunked science debunks the whole of the bible