this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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Lol... Their ancestors only lived there after they ethnically cleansed the people who were already living there. They've been doing this crap for a long time.
Edit: to clarify, I'm talking about the Jewish people of Israel
When you say "they," are you referring to all humans throughout all of human history? Not conquering/displacing people is a much more recent international norm
More of a recent virtue signal we've been propagandized to believe, while continuing the conquering and displacement without skipping a beat.
While the west was writing the UN declaration of human rights, they were hard at work creating the state of Israel, directly denying Palestine their right to democracy and displacing a million of them.
At the end of WW2 America, and the rest of the anglo-allies, assisted France in trying to reclaim their colonies, rejecting hundreds of millions their "basic human right" to democracy; all of this went on for decades after the declaration was ratified, as if that meant anything.
Human rights don't apply as long as you are labelled a communist, terrorist, separatist, extremist, pedo, etc, etc. Then they can torture you in a black site all nice and legal.
Most of our history has been written by sociopathic criminals.
If you look at the entirety of human history, genocides and displacements have objectively been at an all-time low since the end of WWII
if you look at the entirety of human history, since WWII is a blink of an eye
fight complacency.
It's not the first time that peace exists you know, and it's an incredibly short span that you're describing, one which I think everyone agrees is closer to its end than anything
There was no Palestinian sovereign state prior to Britain's decision to establish a Jewish homeland in the region. It was briefly under shared British and French control following a revolt against the Ottoman Empire during WWI; then the League of Nations assigned Britain control over the region as "Mandatory Palestine".
Mandatory Palestine was explicitly intended to be temporary, with Britain providing "administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone". Additionally, it was always intended to provide a home for the Jewish people without displacing Palestinian Arabs. Of course, this didn't really work out. There was a lot of conflict between the Palestinian nationalists and the Jewish nationalists.
The UN's action in 1947 was to partition the region into separate Jewish and Palestinian sovereign states. The reason this didn't actually happen was because Arabic leaders both within the region and nearby rejected the idea of a sovereign Jewish state in the region. Israel declared independence anyway, and as the Palestinian Mandate expired, the 1948 Arab-Israeli war began as an effort to destroy the newly formed Israel. But of course Israel got support from other countries, and the war ended with Israel controlling most of Palestine and believing its neighbors to be a constant existential threat.
The Palestinians did not declare an independent, sovereign state until 1988, at which point they actually declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Palestine. There has never been a proposal for a two-state solution that Palestinian leaders have endorsed.
Not true. At least not for the Muslim conquest of the Levant according to Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister:
Ben Gurion is quoted by Shlomo Sand in his book https://blogs.umb.edu/joinercenter/2012/10/09/review-of-shlomo-sand-the-invention-of-the-jewish-people-london-verso-2009-translated-by-yael-lotan/
According to the Bible, yes. Which is most likely not true. Remember that Zionism started as a secular movement, with religious people getting more (very) on board relatively recently
Interesting... Is there more accurate information about how the Israelites ended up in that region? Did they just never do the whole Egypt thing?
The history has scant evidence, but we can discount the whole exile story. Slaves tend to be maltreated and are the last ones to be fed during famine, and that leaves physical evidence on their skeletons. We don't have evidence of that in Egypt; for the most part, their monuments were built by farmers who didn't have anything else to do when the Nile flooded. Also, a large nomadic group--which Israel would have been under Moses according to the Biblical account--should leave behind a lot of trash for archeologists to find today.
Fundie Christians like to say "Egypt wouldn't have told stories about a time they lost", but that doesn't matter. First, you better bring some good evidence to say the Red Sea parted and people could walk on dry land. Second, as shown above, there should be physical evidence that we can find. It's not there, and it's hardly for a lack of trying. This is one of the most picked over parts of the planet by archeologists.
What seems to have happened is that they just came from there in the first place. Yahwah started as a war god among a larger pantheon. The people who later became the Hebrews worshiped that god as their primary; they didn't discount the existence of other gods, but they worshiped this one as their primary one (still polytheism at this point). This later evolved into discounting the importance of other gods (henotheism), and much later disregarding the existence of other gods altogether (monotheism). That especially came into play with Persian Zoroastrian influence after the Babylonian Exile.
In short, it was a religion that evolved out of the beliefs of the people already living there, and they mostly stayed right there. The Egyptian slavery bits were probably from oral stories at a time when Israel had a conflict with Egypt.
There could have even been a smaller group of former Egyptian slaves that fled and settled in Israel with the people who already lived there and over time their religion/culture was adopted by more and more people until it became the dominant one.
Like a large group of people wandering a desert for 40 years doesn't make sense, even if 40 years is just a metaphor for a long time and was just one full year. But a small group could have wandered and visited other settlements that might have helped them out but didn't want them to settle down there, even for a long time.
Kinda like how most Christians today aren't descendents of anyone who would have had anything to do with Jesus or even descendent from Jewish people who believed in the Christian predecessor religion. They were just people who at one point were told they had to convert by words, swords, or guns.
Just speculation based on thinking about the scenario and what cases might put the story somewhere between fiction and truth rather than just being entirely made up (which is also certainly possible).
Do you have any sources to start learning about/researching this? This is very fascinating and haven't heard much, if any, of this before.
Religion For Breakfast is a pretty good YouTube channel for this. Would also recommend Bart Ehrman's podcast.
Everything before the Babylonian Exile was made up, because the Babylonians sacked, well everything. They destroyed the First Temple, and took away the nobility and priests.
It was only after the Exile ended that the Hebrews became monotheistic... Sort of. There has been some noises before the Exile, but afterwards it was official.
It was also after the Exile that the stories of Noah and Moses were first added to the Torah.
As a note, the Epic of Gilgamesh has a flood story, and as an ancient Babylon story, would have been available for the hostages (the Hebrew priests and nobility) to read.
Not entirely made up. Some of the late first temple period can be verified. Such as the split between the northern and southern kingdoms, or the Assyrian invasion under Hezekiah. The further you go back, though, the worse the evidence gets. David and Solomon are questionable as historical figures, and anything before that, just forget it. The Egyptian exile never happened.
Makes sense with the flood story... I wonder where the Moses story came from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses#Historicity
The TLDR; no mentions of Moses in Egyptian or Persian texts until about the 4th century BCE. He may have been a Hebrew specific quasi mythic figure based on a possible real person. But there's no evidence at all.
Which makes sense, because that's the timeframe that the Achaemenid Empire conquered Babylon and started letting the exiles return to Judah. Exiles who compiled a new Torah from scraps they saved and from making shit up.
The tribes of Israel were most likely Canaanites that made up the whole came in and conquered everyone in the area after being slaves story.
That's correct
This is according to their own religious texts which can be found in the Bible as well. A religion of genocide that instructed on brutal racial slavery.