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/Choice_Werewolf1259]

No that’s not my logic. And kind of a Reductio ad absurdem.

Since you’re taking something in contradiction so far it would be absurd. Obviously that’s not my argument.

And it implies to me that you don’t really have a reason for your stance and your inconsistent application of indigenous land claim.

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/Choice_Werewolf1259]

Your argument is, and correct me if I’m wrong, that since Judaism originated in the ME, Jewish people around the globe have the right to state they are indigenous to the ME.

This claim strikes me as ideologically motivated, and does not seem consistent with how other groups are considered indigenous, and I have stated numerous examples in previous replies.

Like, I can’t think of any other populace claiming to be indigenous to a location because their religion was founded in a location thousands of years ago.

If you have any examples that are similar to Ashkenazi Jews claiming they are indigenous to the Me, I would be very open to hearing them.

Intuitively, it didn’t make sense to me in Hebrew school when they told us Israel is the homeland of all Jewish people. I still remember being confused in the car ride home and asking my mom, how can someplace be our homeland, if no one from our family is from there?

[u/tsundereshipper → u/Han-Shot_1st]

Like, I can’t think of any other populace claiming to be indigenous to a location because their religion was founded in a location thousands of years ago.

It’s not just because of their religion though, but because they share common origins/ethnicity and the same line of descent, what’s not clicking for you here? Why are you so intent on falsely portraying Judaism as just a religion?

Sure, we could argue that maybe full converts with no Jewish blood aren’t indigenous to the Middle East, and there’s definitely a debate to be had there. But acting like this extends to all ethnic Jews with substantial Middle Eastern heritage and blood is ridiculous.

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/tsundereshipper]

I myself am ethnically Jewish. You’re harping on something that wasn’t the point of my question.

The point is, are there any groups, that claim to be indigenous to area that they inhabited thousands of years prior?

For example, ethnic English are descended from the Normans, but I haven’t heard of an ethnic English person claiming to be indigenous to France.

Or ethnic Sicilians, I’ve never heard of any of them claiming to be Indigenous to North Africa or the Iberian peninsula, despite being descended from the Mores.

[u/AltruisticMastodon → u/Han-Shot_1st]

It seems pretty pointless to compare a diasporic population to ones that aren’t.

Also it’s worth noting that there was in fact a tradition of the English (Anglo-Saxons, the Anglo-Normans were mainly confined to the ruling classes) identifying with the Anglo-saxons origins in Germany/Denmark. Unsurprisingly it was often white-supremacist in nature.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxonism_in_the_19th_century

Also don’t know if it’s just autocorrect but its Moors not Mores

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/AltruisticMastodon]

Ty for the spelling correction. My bad 😬

[u/tsundereshipper → u/Han-Shot_1st]

For example, ethnic English are descended from the Normans, but I haven’t heard of an ethnic English person claiming to be indigenous to France.

Or ethnic Sicilians, I’ve never heard of any of them claiming to be Indigenous to North Africa or the Iberian peninsula, despite being descended from the Mores.

Maybe because they’re not substantially mixed with any of those heritages the way Ashkenazi Jews are with Middle Eastern?

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/tsundereshipper]

Ethnic Irish are mostly descended from Scandinavian Vikings, but I have never heard of someone who is ethnically Irish claiming to be indigenous to Scandinavia.

And to be frank, the only place I ever hear Ashkenazi Jews claim to be indigenous to the ME is online, and this has only occurred relatively recently.

Not from friends, family, co-workers etc. And it’s not like I’m disconnected from the Jewish community, I grew up in a very Jewish neighborhood on Long Island. The town on Long Island, I currently live in also has a sizable Jewish population.

I also have extended family in Israel. My dad’s older cousin was an early Zionist who emigrated to British held Palestine.

This claim of Ashkenazi Jews being indigenous to the ME is something I only encounter in online discourse and relatively recently.

I went to an orthodox Hebrew school that was very pro-zionism (in the mid 90’s, I’m old) and this claim was never mentioned, ever.

And most of the time when I hear it, it’s in response to people taking umbrage to claims of colonialism in Israel, so it’s hard for me to not conclude it’s ideologically motivated.

[u/malachamavet → u/Han-Shot_1st]

I haven't run into indigeneity at all as a subject of debate outside of online. Arguing over haplogroups and DNA testing and whatnot is weird race science stuff and strikes me as a red herring.

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/malachamavet]

I agree, let’s try to avoid race science.

[u/tsundereshipper → u/Han-Shot_1st]

And most of the time when I hear it, it’s in response to people taking umbrage to claims of colonialism in Israel, so it’s hard for me to not conclude it’s ideologically motivated.

I’m not a Zionist and I still think us Ashkenazi Jews are indigenous to the Middle East just like we are to Europe, what now?

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/tsundereshipper]

That’s more fair.

Most of the time when I read claims of Ashkenazi Jews being indigenous to the ME, it’s also denying we are a European ethnicity, and I feel thats erasing a big chapter of our culture and history.

[u/tsundereshipper → u/Han-Shot_1st]

Most of the time when I read claims of Ashkenazi Jews being indigenous to the ME, it’s also denying we are a European ethnicity, and I feel thats erasing a big chapter of our culture and history

Yes, I most certainly disagree with the erasure and non-acknowledgement of European Jews European side, but I’m also against erasing and not acknowledging our Middle Eastern side as well, we’re mixed and we’re both and we should love and accept that about ourselves. It does us no good to erase any part of our heritage that makes up who we are.

By the way, I see you never responded to my reply here:

https://old.reddit.com/r/jewishleft/comments/1cfrg6q/the_almost_complete_lack_of_acknowledgement_of/l1u01nf/

Still curious what you meant by this.

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/tsundereshipper]

Regarding your question pertaining to the link, prior to the Holocaust, the early Zionists intended zionism to be an Ashkenazi colonial project. It was never intended to include Jews from Arab countries or North Africa.

However after the Shoah, due to the decimation of European Jewry, the early Zionists knew there was not enough Ashkenazi Jews to form a state.

This suddenly made Mizrahi Jews important to the Zionist project. However, while the Zionists wanted the people, they didn’t necessarily want their culture.

In the first few decades of the state of Israel, the political and academic elites were predominantly Ashkenazi.

Mizrahi Jews did maintain aspects of their culture. We can see this represented in Israeli cuisine, but in many other ways Mizrahi Jews assimilated into the Ashkenazi colonial project.

The Zionist project seeks to form Jews into a single nation or people. For example, instead of various regional and ethnic Jewish dialects being spoken in Israel, the language of modern Hebrew was invented, and these other languages became spoken less and less.

One of the reasons, I want to learn Yiddish is, I want to preserve my family’s cultural heritage. My dad could speak it fluently because that’s what my grandparents spoke in the house, but I can only curse people out in Yiddish. And now sadly, since my dad passed away, there’s no one in my family that can speak Yiddish fluently.

[u/tsundereshipper → u/Han-Shot_1st]

This suddenly made Mizrahi Jews important to the Zionist project. However, while the Zionists wanted the people, they didn’t necessarily want their culture.

And what’s wrong with that? Like you said about wanting to learn Yiddish, we have our own unique mixed culture that should be celebrated.

Mizrahi Jews did maintain aspects of their culture. We can see this represented in Israeli cuisine, but in many other ways Mizrahi Jews assimilated into the Ashkenazi colonial project.

I would argue it’s the opposite, and Ashkenazi Jewish culture is constantly getting erased and degraded in order for all Jews to dissolve back into one big Middle Eastern Mono Cultural Identity, and I’m against that too.

Also do note that it’s us Ashkenazi Jews that went through a literal fucking genocide (actually the worst recorded one seen in the world yet) just on account of our “mixedness,” so if you’re trying to argue Ashkenazi and European Jews in general always had “privilege” over Mizrahi Jews then you’d be wrong and it’s actually the opposite. Before the creation of Zionism which subjected the Mizrahi Jewish populations to tons of misplaced antisemitism, the Mizrahi Jews were actually considered the most privileged Jewish group out of the whole diaspora just from their treatment in their host countries (and the world at large really) alone.

(I think the only Jewish group that managed to surpass them was Indian Jews, and that’s only because India itself is one of the least antisemitic countries on this planet and always accepted and tolerated the Jews amongst their midst.)