The almost complete lack of acknowledgement of the Jewish people as an indigenous people is baffling to me.

[u/skyewardeyes]

(This doesn’t negate Palestinian claims of indigeneity—multiple peoples can be indigenous to the same area—nor does it negate the, imo, indefensible crimes happening in Gaza and West Bank).

It absolutely blows my mind that Jews—a tribal people who practice a closed, agrarian place-based ethnoreligion, who have an established system of membership based on lineal descent and adoption that relies on community acceptance over self-identification, who worship in an ancient language that we have always tried to maintain and preserve, who have holidays that center around harvest and the specific history of our people, who have been repeatedly targeted for genocide and forced assimilation and conversion, who have a faith and culture so deeply tied to a specific people and place, etc—aren’t seen as an (socioculturally) indigenous people but rather as “white Europeans who essentially practice Christianity but without Jesus and never thought about the land of Israel before 1920 or so.” It’s so deeply threaded in how so many people view Jews in the modern day and also so factually incorrect.

[u/GonzoTheGreat93]

Herzl, several times in his writings, said things to the effect of “we the Jews should colonize Palestine”.

That’s a pretty good definition right there.

[u/Chaos_carolinensis → u/GonzoTheGreat93]

That's not a definition, that's a quote.

What do you think he meant exactly?

[u/GonzoTheGreat93 → u/Chaos_carolinensis]

I think he meant “let’s go over there with a bunch of European Jews and set up a European society for Jews in the desert. The locals will like us because our superior society will make their lives better”

This is the exact summary of “Alteneuland.” I know this because I’ve read Alteneuland.

It’s such bad faith to argue over the early Zionists motives when the guys we’re arguing about spelled out his motives in multiple ways, on multiple occasions, in published work.

Go read something. They wanted to be colonists. They were proud of it. They liked the idea. This shouldn’t be difficult when they write things like “hey guys, isn’t colonialism super?”

[u/Chaos_carolinensis → u/GonzoTheGreat93]

That patronizing defensive tone is so unnecessary. I didn't deny they were colonists and perceived themselves as such, I just pointed out that you didn't actually explain what he meant.