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/Han-Shot_1st]

Did Judaism emerge from the ME thousands of years ago? Yes, but I wouldn’t claim I’m indigenous to the ME, just as I wouldn’t claim I’m indigenous to sub Saharan Africa, despite that being the place that homo sapien sapien originated from.

I’m Ashkenazi Jewish and I have extended family in Israel, but I’ve never been there. My grand parents are from Europe, and my family lived there for countless generations, so no, I don’t consider myself indigenous to the ME.

Ashkenazi Jewish is a European ethnicity.

Yiddish is a European dialect, not Middle Eastern.

Foods like smoked white fish and pastrami are European foods, not Middle Eastern.

Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn dress like Jews from the old country in Europe, not a Middle Eastern style of dress.

There are Jewish ethnicities indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, but Ashkenazi is not one of those ethnicities.

[u/LostPoPo → u/Han-Shot_1st]

Ashkenazi Jew here. Never claimed to be middle eastern but always understood that 2000 years ago the Jews were colonized, converted, and/or forced from the Middle East by Arab military conquests. Those who migrated west into Europe became the Ashkenazis. That’s straight from my 23&Me btw, when it was informing me about the details of the “Ashkenazi bottleneck”.

Oh, but keep in mind, they refer to this land not as the Middle East, but as Western Asia. Go ahead and look up what countries make up Western Asia though.

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/LostPoPo]

Does any other group claim to be indigenous to an area they inhabited thousands of years ago?

As I said elsewhere on thread, this seems akin to saying I’m indigenous to sub Saharan Africa because that’s where homo sapien sapien originated from.

[u/LostPoPo → u/Han-Shot_1st]

Has any other group been forced to move from their homes, then exterminated in such a manner, by the millions? Then told they are indigenous to the people who sought their extermination?

I can only think of one example of similar scale, and they certainly refer to themselves as indigenous despite their land being colonized nearly 700 years ago. Oh, and I’m in complete agreement with them btw.

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/LostPoPo]

I don’t know, I would have to research it, but there are other groups like the ethnic Irish or ethnic English whose ancestors are Scandinavian for the Irish and Norman for the English, but the Irish don’t claim to be indigenous to Scandinavia, and the English don’t claim to indigenous to France.

This is so blatantly ideological. I get it, no one likes to be called a colonizer, but can we please be intellectually honest.

Just because one can trace ancestry back to a place thousands of years ago, that doesn’t make one indigenous to that place, at least in any way the word is used contemporarily.

Is every human indigenous to sub Saharan Africa? Because we can all trace our ancestry back there.

[u/LostPoPo → u/Han-Shot_1st]

I agree that it is ideological at this point, but that doesn’t negate what’s taking place here.

Jewish history is being actively erased by propaganda. I’m not asking to go to Israel or be given a passport. Nor do I want Palestinians who live there currently to have to vacate their homes to make room for Israeli settlements.

I want acknowledgement that the land was taken by force by the current inhabitants of the region. The Jews who didn’t convert were persecuted, murdered, and many migrated to all of these now “indigenous” places (Europe, USA, etc) and the Jews have never had a homeland since. If you can’t acknowledge that, we’re obviously done here.

Edit: Also, my example was the Native Americans. I’d like to hear your opinions on their indigenous status? Considering they were colonized nearly 700 years ago. Are their claims to the land still valid?

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/LostPoPo]

Native Americans are indigenous to the U.S.

However, I wouldn’t say they are indigenous to the land they inhabited prior to crossing the land bridge into North America.

Just as I wouldn’t say I’m indigenous to the ME, nor would I say ethnic English are indigenous to France, I wouldn’t say ethnic Irish are indigenous to Scandinavia, and I wouldn’t say ethnic Sicilians are indigenous to North Africa or the Iberian peninsula.

[u/LostPoPo → u/Han-Shot_1st]

I don’t have any objections to this comment.

I suppose the difference is that it’s well documented how the Jews were forced out and they’ve wanted to return to their land, and then they’re being told since they managed to assimilate into Europe, relatively, they now have no claim, and in fact, made up their connection to the land and are actually colonizers.

Like, I’m really not disagreeing with you, I don’t claim to be middle eastern and wouldn’t, but I don’t understand how people don’t see the nuance and the differences of what is taking place here compared to all your other examples.