Ziontruth
Continuing on the theme of the inherent racism of anti-Zionism, when the Progressive-Left anti-Zionists are not busy with the particulars of the “settlements,” the “apartheid wall” and the rest, or with the role of the “Jewish lobby” (be afraid, be very afraid, muhahahaha!) puppet-mastering American policies (OMG! ZOMG! ZOG!), they find leisure to talk about deeper stuff like the rights the Jews don’t have to Palestine, and the clemency the “Palestinians” ought to magnanimously show them as part of a goodwill gesture (after the Jews have given up just about everything, of course).
One of the claims I always get a kick out of on Progressive-Left sites, even on image-conscious ones like Daily Kos, is their discussion of genetics and the claim to the land. We already know they think Zionism is a White Colonial thing, but what they think of the local Arabs (whom you can’t call that—it’s either “Palestinians” or repeated troll-rate and ban) is no less interesting. They are “the lineal genetic successors of the Canaanites,” no less, and sometimes one of the anti-Zionists chimes in with the sage observation that “some of them are actually descended from Jews.” That changes everything then, huh?
I have already laid out the genetics-agnostic Jewish national definition. Not that the Jewish people has nothing to offer even in that department: The DNA evidence for the singular ancestry of the kohanim, Jewish priests, descendants of Aaron, is well-known, and also serves as one of the refutations of the Khazar Hypothesis. But there's an angle on this from outside the Jewish point of view, looking at it universally.
First of all, the obsession with genetics on sites that call themselves Progressive is ironic. The claim that DNA should determine rights to the land is not only ironic, but carries dark echoes. Simply put, there is another website where the obsession with genetics and the contention that DNA should dictate policy is de rigueur; the name of that site begins with a “Storm” and ends in a “front.” The observation that politics is a circle where Far Left and Far Right end up being the same is relevant here.
But what of the claim that DNA matters so strongly? Does it have merit? Is the possession of genes alone a sufficient link to some heritage? Looking at the present-day Egyptian people, the answer is instructive.
The original Egyptians of Pharaonic times never went away. None of the successive invaders of Egypt implemented a policy of ethnic displacement; even the Arab influx of the 7th century, strong enough to effect a linguistic change on the Egyptians, had the settlers absorbed in the population. Genetically speaking, therefore, the modern Egyptians are the heirs of the Pharaonic ones.
Does that genetic inheritance form a real link with the past? It doesn’t look like it at all. The modern Egyptians are linguistically, religiously and culturally Arab; they have no sentiments toward the rich heritage they have on their soil, and with the recent intensification of Islamic fervor the artifacts of the Pharaonic times are more and more imperiled. (I was going to write that those artifacts in British museums were the only safe ones, but that is no longer true for the United Kingdom either.)
The only visible link to the past remaining in Egypt is the Coptic language, the liturgical language used by the Copts in their Christian worship. It is a descendant of the ancient Egyptian language. Given that the Copts are in a situation little better than the Jews were in the 1930s—surrounded by enemies, unarmed, and confronted with a world that is interested in keeping the peace with those very enemies for the sake of a smooth flow of oil—it looks as if this last surviving link is no safer than the Pharaonic artifacts. Were the Pyramids to disappear, it would take an Indiana Jones going to the depths of forbidden realms to tell that a non-Arab, non-Islamic culture once held sway in that land.
The modern-day Egyptian is Egyptian by the happenstance of being born in Egypt. Culturally an Arab, and now increasingly seeing himself as part of the Muslim worldwide collective first, his genetic relation to the ancients has no significance. The conclusion is that genetics alone has little to contribute to national definition.
So, when we get to the local Arab colonists within the Land of Israel a.k.a. Palestine, what does genetics give us? The Progressive-Left myth of a unified brown-skinned “Palestinian people” is just that: a myth. Because the Land of Israel is situated at the passage between Asia and Africa, it has known countless invasions and population displacements. Hence, the genetic diversity of the local Arabs, with nearly all colors of skin, hair and eyes found. Genetics has even less of a chance of being significant than for the Egyptians.
The Arabs in Palestine had not thought of Palestine as a separate entity until Greater Syria was split between Britain and France in 1920, giving Palestine as the southern part. The only nation that had ever according Palestine special status before that is the Jewish nation. Even if we could somehow accept a lineal descent from the Canaanites and lost Jews, the fact is the Arabs residing in Palestine are culturally Arab, at most Levantine. The language on their shop signs is Arabic like everywhere else in the Arab world; their music is Arab music; the costumes they parade in “Palestine Heritage Festivals” are not particular to Palestine, but Levantine in general, meaning they’re found in Lebanon, Syria and the south of Turkey as well. Their claim to be “indigenous Palestinians” has no objective basis to rely upon. But, it serves an anti-Jewish purpose so well, so it’ll do.
What about the Jews? What is it that not only ties the Jews to the Land of Israel, but makes them the one and only true Palestinian nation?
Culture. Real, visible culture. An objective linkage for all to see, and for denialists to deny by using far-fetched fictions.
The Hebrew language: The only language nearby that doesn’t come from the Arabian Peninsula.
The Hebrew calendar: The only one that reflects the effects of the seasons on this land of all lands. Succot, Pesach and Shavuot: Harvest, ripening, planting. In the farthest ends of the earth, Jews have celebrated according to the seasons of the Land of Israel.
And there are more. Those are real things, unlike the irrelevant fact of genetics, whose only effect in the real world is on the bodies of the individuals; much less the total fictions used to artificially connect the local Arab settlers to this land, the land they had never accorded significance to until recent times, the land they would rather see nuked than continue to be held by the Jews. Shades of King Solomon’s sentence, anyone?
Let the arguments from DNA be left to the Progressive-Left anti-Zionists and their neo-Nazi counterparts; the Jewish claim to the land is the strongest, the only tenable one, flowing from the real, objective, visible cultural connection the Jewish people—and only the Jewish people—has to the Land of Israel of all lands. The case for the rightness of Zionism is ironclad, and by dint of logic, so is the fact of the inherent injustice of anti-Zionism, the struggle to prevent the one and only true Palestinian nation from exercising their right of self-determination on their own land.
I had a conversation with a buddy of mine over cocktails a few weeks ago in which he kept insisting that Jews and "Palestinians" are closely genetically related.
ReplyDeleteI kept telling him that the entire notion is irrelevant.
Of course it's irrelevant. As is who has lived on the land longer.
DeleteStuart, am I to understand that you, as a Jewish person, think that 4,000 years of Jewish history on the land where our ancestors came from is somehow irrelevant?
DeleteEven despite the long history of Jewish persecution on that land?
I have to say, when I look at Jewish history, and then look at the modern state of Israel, what I see is redemption.
I suspect that you do not agree.
Am I wrong?
Michael, we live in a big complicated world. It's too big and too complicated for anybody's ancestral land claims to take precedence. As Jews, we're unique in that we can trace our history back to this piece of land. But I don't doubt that others who still live in the region also have ancestors who lived there, they simply don't have the cultural continuity and written history that Jews have. Is it meaningful that most of our ancestors left, undoubtedly some by choice, some by force? Is it meaningful that some Arab populations may have lived on that land uninterrupted, very possibly since before Joseph got sold into slavery in Egypt? Do our rights to that land increase because our ancestors were persecuted? Should the Arab's rights to those lands be diminished because their ancestors did the persecuting?
DeleteI think those are all meaningless questions.
We will continue to argue, both among ourselves, and with those whose greatest dream would be to drive every Jew into the Mediterranean, about the correct path to a lasting peace. But whether we have a valid claim to the land is moot in the true sense of the word. It's an intellectual jerk off. Israel exists, and has for three generations.
Stuart,
DeleteMichael, we live in a big complicated world. It's too big and too complicated for anybody's ancestral land claims to take precedence.
Does that include the French? Do the French not have ancestral land claims to France? Y'know if I thought for one second that the majority population of the Middle East was willing to allow the Jewish minority to live in freedom then I would be far more disposed toward relinquishing nationalism, but that is not what I see. Not even close.
As Jews, we're unique in that we can trace our history back to this piece of land. But I don't doubt that others who still live in the region also have ancestors who lived there, they simply don't have the cultural continuity and written history that Jews have.
We know the history pretty well, Stuart. The Jews have been on that land for something around 4,000 years. The Arabs showed up in the 7th century as a warrior-imperialist army and took control not only of the entire Middle East, but they came exceedingly close to conquering Europe, as well. Given Sharia law, I can only thank our lucky stars that they did not succeed because I feel reasonably confident that had they done so we would not be alive today, nor would even remote ancestors of ours have lived.
Do our rights to that land increase because our ancestors were persecuted? Should the Arab's rights to those lands be diminished because their ancestors did the persecuting?
The answer to that question, as a matter of social justice, is "yes." The Arab residents of Israel, who as a rule are exceedingly hostile to the Jewish people and have been since Muhammed's days, owe it to us to allow us our sovereignty and freedom on Jewish land. The fact that the Jewish people of the Middle East lived for thirteen of the last fourteen centuries under the oppressive system of dhimmitude means exactly that. Perhaps we, and they, should consider Israel a form of moral recompense.
We will continue to argue, both among ourselves, and with those whose greatest dream would be to drive every Jew into the Mediterranean, about the correct path to a lasting peace. But whether we have a valid claim to the land is moot in the true sense of the word. It's an intellectual jerk off. Israel exists, and has for three generations.
I disagree. Three generations is virtually nothing. I do not believe that the question of Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land is moot, at all. Maybe this what is at the true crux of our disagreement.
What I see is a much larger majority population that is generally opposed to Jewish sovereignty on our land and their leadership has vowed for many decades to destroy that sovereignty and, perhaps, drive the Jews into the sea. I take this threat very seriously, particularly given the fact that S'derot and Ashkelon remain under fire.
If I thought for one second that the Arab world had reconciled itself to the Jews among them then I would feel differently. Sadly, however, they have not.
Until the majority population in the Middle East is accepting of the Jewish minority then we must remain both strong and vigilant.
My father's side of the family was taken out by the Nazis.
Perhaps if they had gone to Israel when they had the chance they might have survived... but they didn't.
The only reason that I live is because my grandfather in the Ukraine had foresight. I wish to G-d that his brothers and cousins had the same.
Mike,
Delete"I kept telling him that the entire notion is irrelevant."
Yep. I'd also have added saying to him that an obsession with genetics is the hallmark of a certain political stream he's unlikely to wish to be associated with. The meeting of Left and Right at their extreme ends, as I wrote.
Stuart,
"As is who has lived on the land longer."
The above article of mine does not make such a claim. The argument is that the Jews have an exclusive right to the Land of Israel by virtue of their unique cultural tie to it.
"we live in a big complicated world."
Not as complicated as you think. The argument against Zionism is built on very simple, binary, Manichean lines: "Zionists colonist invaders, therefore bad; Palestinians indigenous, therefore good." Every other argument, elaborate as it might be, is nothing but an offshoot of this simple proposition.
"others ... simply don't have the cultural continuity and written history that Jews have."
If so then they don't have any meaningful connection to this land, only happenstance. That's exactly my argument. Now, when I believed the land could be shared between Jew and Arab, I didn't press this point, but ever since I recognized Arab imperialist absolutism I've made it a point to respond to it with the equal force of Jewish nationalist absolutism. I have no choice but do so, otherwise the arguments are unequal.
"Do our rights to that land increase because our ancestors were persecuted?"
No. Zionism isn't about redress of past wrongs, it's about the return of the Jews to the one and only piece of land in the world that belongs to them. It's about justice for the indigenous Palestinians—the Jews and only the Jews.
"Should the Arab's rights to those lands..."
None exist. The Arab nation has rights to the Arabian Peninsula as the indigenous of that land, plus acceptance after the fact of having outstretched from Morocco to Iraq. But because the indigenous Palestinians—the Jews—still exist, their claim takes natural precedence to that of the Arab invaders.
"I think those are all meaningless questions. ... But whether we have a valid claim to the land is moot in the true sense of the word."
Have you been under a rock for the past four decades or so? The question of claims to the land is THE centerpiece of this conflict. Everything revolves around it. All the unfair treatment dished out on the Jewish State, whether by the Arabs, the U.N. or certain academics and scientists of renown, is rooted in the idea that Israel is in the wrong, that the Jews are land-thieves in Palestine. From the answer as to how you view the conflict—Jews as colonists or indigenous—flows the entire way of thinking about every particular fact of the conflict, and therefore, challenging it is the key to reversing the delegitimization of the Jewish State.
"Israel exists, and has for three generations."
That's not an argument, just a statement of fact. Anti-Zionism is about undoing this fact, "justified" by the argument that the Jews have no rights to the Land of Israel. This is from the charter of Hamas, the Islamonazi organization whose rear ends the Progressive-Left anti-Zionists lovingly kiss: "Israel will exist until Islam obliterates it." Without presenting our arguments, we will only see the world march inexorably toward the view that such a statement is "resistance" rather than naked imperialist aggression. Your faux-pragmatic view ("moot in the true sense of the word") is, in effect, a call to lay down our moral arms.
Ernst Frankenstein, a British authority on international law said, for example, that the Jewish people have a right to their ancestral homeland and ancient capital city in Jerusalem based on the fact that the Jewish people never relinquished their historic claims to the area.
DeleteFurthermore, Frankenstein claimed that Roman, Byzantine, and other successors lacked a “continuous and undisturbed presence” in Israel that would dispossess the Jewish claim to the land. In fact, the Ottoman Turks, who owned the Land of Israel prior to WWI and the British Mandate, renounced their claim to all of the land of Israel in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. When the Balfour Declaration was drafted there was no Palestinian "nation." In 1919, Palestine was a sparsely populated land where Lord Balfour claimed that only 700,000 Arabs lived, of whom a large number migrated within recent history.
In contrast, there were far more Jews in the world in need of a homeland in 1919 than there were Arab residents in Israel and there existed a significant Jewish minority that continued to live in Israel. As the Blackstone Memorial, signed by Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Melville Fuller, proclaimed in 1891, Israel, which included Jerusalem, is the “inalienable possession” of the Jewish people “from where they were expelled by force.”
The Balfour Declaration was drafted with the goal of establishing a Jewish national home in the Land of Israel. The “civil and religious” rights of the Arabs were to be respected, yet politically, the country was supposed to belong to the Jews. The Balfour Declaration was ingrained into international law at the San Remo Conference. Through San Remo, “The Jewish people have been given the right to establish a home, based on the recognition of their historical connection and the grounds for reconstituting this national home,” Jacques Gauthier, an expert on international law, had explained.
http://www.jewishpress.com/blogs/united-with-israel/by-the-law-among-nations-jerusalem-belongs-to-us/2013/05/08/0/?print