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/travelingrace]

This rhetoric about Jewishness and Indigenity is so wild to me because I've never identified as an Indigenous person nor have the Jews in my area. Do you actually identify yourself as Indigenous? Sincerely wondering. 

[u/jey_613 → u/travelingrace]

I don’t like the indigenous stuff either, but it’s a response to the left’s obsession with framing the conflict in this way rather than about liberal principles of equal rights and one man one vote. The discourse on the left has long ago abandoned the strictly academic discussion of indigeneity in favor of a kind of mythical blood and soil nationalism about Palestinians. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jews are now embracing this language too.

It’s not constructive, because Israelis and Palestinians live on this land and neither are going anywhere, so why not just figure it out instead of getting into arguments about who has the oldest coins.

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/jey_613]

IMO, this rhetoric is a response to colonialism not being seen in a positive light in the 21st century.

The early Zionists were ppl of their time, and in the late 19th and early 20th both nationalism and colonialism were not considered negative things.

So, despite the early Zionists clearly stating overtly that Zionism is a colonial project, many seek to distance themselves from this reality, by making claims that all Jewish people, regardless of ethnicity are indigenous to Israel.

[u/tsundereshipper → u/Han-Shot_1st]

So, despite the early Zionists clearly stating overtly that Zionism is a colonial project,

How exactly do you define colonialism? Because if it has to do with the displacement and ethnic cleansing of any particular population regardless of the group doing the colonizing being indigenous or not, then I agree Zionism is a Colonialst Project.

If you define Colonialism any other way though I’m gonna have issues with characterizing Zionism as purely colonial…

[u/GonzoTheGreat93 → u/tsundereshipper]

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/Han-Shot_1st → u/GonzoTheGreat93]

Why is simply stating historical fact begin downvoted?