Special from The Wild Wild Left
OpEds
By Diane Gee
This is almost always followed by the lie that the Palestinians are an “Invented People,” and that Arab peoples are “recent immigrants.” Which is doubly amusing when they quote the old testament – you know, the book that says they themselves left Egypt, came to the land of milk and honey and stole it from the indigenous people?
This rebranding is but an excuse to continue to ethnically cleanse the land of Palestinians, something Israel is not only doing by codifying apartheid, but in creating “facts on the ground” – trying to increase the population of Jews in Palestine to the point that there is no way that Palestine can ever have final borders and self-determination.
LIE ONE: PALESTINIANS ARE NOT A PEOPLE!
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Umm, yeah, they are, just as much as you are. Worse yet, they are your relatives.
Starting with the “historical claim” of one people over another – science proves that all the inhabitants of the middle east are very closely, and recently, related. Cousins, if you will, who were likely one until the three branches started arguing over which of them their sky-daddy loved best. The triplet bastard sons of Abraham, now locked in an endless struggle of bloody alpha posturing and clannishness in the worst family feud known to mankind.
They were descendants of a core population that lived in the area since prehistoric times. And in a recent study of 1371 men from around the world, geneticist Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona in Tucson found that the Y chromosome in Middle Eastern Arabs was almost indistinguishable from that of Jews.
A more recent study by Eran Elhaik, an Israeli molecular geneticist, points to quite a different genetic past.
Elhaik says he has proved that Ashkenazi Jews’ roots lie in the Caucasus – a region at the border of Europe and Asia that lies between the Black and Caspian seas – not in the Middle East. They are descendants, he argues, of the Khazars, a Turkic people who lived in one of the largest medieval states in Eurasia and then migrated to Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. Ashkenazi genes, Elhaik added, are far more heterogeneous than Ostrer and other proponents of the Rhineland Hypothesis believe. Elhaik did find a Middle Eastern genetic marker in DNA from Jews, but, he says, it could be from Iran, not ancient Judea.
This, of course, has been highly controversial. The narrative has always been that the Jewish people left, mixed with European gene lines, and then came back, a little “diluted” in the bloodstream. If the Khazars themselves converted? It explains the strong European DNA trail in the genetic make up of so many modern Jews. In fact, Elhaik was told he could only use other data from a peer if he met the standard, “Criteria for reviewing include novelty and strength of the proposal, non-overlap with current or planned activities, and non-defamatory nature toward the Jewish people.“
It seems even the scientific community itself is trying to keep a bias in place – to match the Zionist narrative.
Whether or not this new data is ever accepted? The scientific fact that the peoples of greater Palestine/Israel are related is irrefutable by any standards. They share DNA.
If you were only to take Biblical references, the charter myth of Israel and the Exodus – please explain to me who the Canaanites were? Were they ancient Palestinians? Did they too have historical rights to the land, or was that lost with the trumpets sounding around Jericho? The Bible is rife with stories of land theft and conquering, never once seeing the injustice to the people defending their lands.
Who were the Philistines, if not ancient Palestinians?
Lets face it – traveling back in History that far – all people were tribal, keeping smaller identities (like the 12 tribes of Israel) – into ofttimes nomadic groups. This particular group of indigenous people became largely Muslim by the 7th century, though Druze, Christian, Samaritan and Jewish Palestinians still exist.
It is utter fallacy to try and describe the Palestinians as an “invented people.” They share DNA, culture, history and ancient ties to the land.
The history of any present State – Ireland, Italy, England, has similar primal roots. Tribal people that unified to become one. Can you righteously say they are not a people?
NEGATING A PEOPLE’S IDENTITY IS NOTHING MORE THAN AN ATTEMPT TO DEHUMANIZE THEM, AND DE-LEGITIMATIZE THEM. IT IS A LIE, AND IN THIS CASE, A LIE MADE TO EXCUSE GENOCIDE AND APARTHEID. IT IS THE WORST KIND OF RACISM.
LIE TWO: OPPOSITION TO THE SETTLEMENTS IS REVERSE RACISM.
The false narrative is hideous. This is not a case of blocking a nice Jewish family from moving into your subdivision, when they only want to be friends with you. This is not a case of them joining your neighborhood watch and barbequing together and ride-sharing the kid’s soccer games. This framing makes it sound like that is what the Palestinians and their supporters are doing. It is not only patently false, it is a mockery of the brutal and racist land theft settlers are doing. Friendly neighbors do not point guns at you and bar you from using their roads. They do not throw rocks at your children while they walk to school. They do not raze your family home to the ground, destroy your well, and then build on it – keeping you off your land with walls and barbed wire.
“Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean there will be 1 nation with sovereignty, and that is Israel,” Bayit Yehudi minister says.The Jordan Valley Regional Council has a 10-year plan to triple its population to help ensure that its date farms and hilltop communities won’t be handed over to the Palestinians as part of a final-status agreement for a two-state solution.
In complete betrayal of the Peace process, rather than pause the settlements, an unprecedented 14,000 new settlements were approved during the talks.
Israeli settlement watchdog, Peace Now, which issued its report on Tuesday, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “broke all construction records in the settlements” in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“This is an unprecedented number representing an average of 50 housing units per day or 1,540 per month,” the left-wing NGO said.
Now the “narrative” goes for the hardline right-wing Zionists, is that it is racist to even call it the West Bank – they would have you call it “Judaea” or “Samaria” – ironically enough, the name Samaria refers to Samarian Palestinians who never embraced the Jewish religion. I suppose we should go back to calling Lake Superior “Gitchagoomi” and San Francisco “Chutchui” or “Ohlone.”
This is land that was agreed upon as belonging to the Palestinians, and bit by bit seized by Israelis, not settling as neighbor, but creating walled, guarded Jewish-only encampments where the indigenous Palestinians may not set foot. These hard-line settlers are so extremist, they not only attack and sometimes kidnapPalestinian children on their way to school, descrate and attack Mosques, bulldoze olive orchards – but they have attacked Israel’s own soldiers… they have gotten so out of control even Israel is considering classifying them as terrorists.
It is not only the Muslim population they are targeting, but Christians as well.
Calls are mounting for hardline Jewish settlers to be classified as terrorists after a spate of attacks on Palestinian property in the West Bank and Israel, and threats of violence towards Israeli soldiers.Last week, the justice minister, Tzipi Livni, and the internal security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, both argued that rightwing extremists should be classified as terrorists following attacks on soldiers at the hardline West Bank settlement of Yitzhar.
And on Friday, the Israeli prize laureate author Amos Oz described the hardline Jewish settlers that carry out so-called “price tag” attacks on Palestinians as neo-Nazis.
“Our neo-Nazi groups enjoy the support of numerous nationalist or even racist legislators, as well as rabbis who give them what is in my view pseudo-religious justification,” the 75-year-old said at an event in Tel Aviv.
It is not the first time that politicians and public figures in Israel have called for the branding of rightwing settlers as terrorists, but recent events have coalesced into something of a perfect storm.
A spate of vandalism in Jerusalem and Galilee has seen rightwing groups target Christians ahead of the visit of Pope Francis, including a graffiti attack on the Vatican building where he is due to stay later this month.
Now tell me who is racist here?
The people razing homes owned generationally by Palestinians, or the Jewish settlers who make their Jewish-only neighborhoods on that land, with Jewish-only roads to get there?
Lets go back to definition 2: “a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.”
It is the Israeli Government, IDF army and legal system in charge. Israeli Jews get preferential treatment. Even in Palestinian Lands, they maintain their supremacy, talking the best land, all the water and keeping an unarmed civilian population living in fear of them.
It is IMPOSSIBLE for the victims of this system to be guilty of reverse-racism for not wanting to be abused. Just as US White Supremacists break out this canard to say the Blacks get preferential treatment over them for trying to even the playing field of white privilege? It is absurd.
Israeli Jewish settlers will NEVER submit to a Palestinian Government – they have not in practice already. They bow (when it suits them) only to the “Jewish State of Israel” that sends soldiers to keep their neighborhoods “Arabrein”!
The difference is obvious. If Palestinians object to Jewish-only neighborhoods in what is to become their State, neighborhoods protected by, and bowing ONLY to Israeli Law – they are called racist? Tell me where in Israel proper there are similar Palestinian settlements?
THERE IS NO EQUIVALENCE
It is not, and never has been about “telling Jews where they may or may not live,” it is about telling Palestinians that they have NO RIGHTS on their own ancestral lands, and telling them “where they may or may not live.” In other words, if an Israeli Jew wants your land, your claim is forfeit.
The “tiny minority” of “Jews under seige” meme negates the fact that they are the sole non-signatory nuclear power in the region, with the financial backing to the tune of 11 million dollars a DAY by the United States, the sole super-power left in the world.
They are hardly the “underdog” here. They are not “poor, besieged, victims of racism” – though that is the new propaganda push.
They are a Rogue Nation supported by the US as another Rogue Nation, abusing a minority, erasing and rewriting history, colonizing by force, who have created an apartheid state.
They are the Racists, pure and Simple.
They can claim no reverse racism.
I wish, truly, the 3 bastard clans of Abraham would get over their Daddy issues and live in Peace. If there is a God/Allah/Yahweh then fuck him for letting it get to this.
Palestinians are not guiltless – the result of being oppressed is wanting to kill your oppressors. But there are many Jewish/Palestinian groups that are working together for Peace… including BDS. Innocents must not be grouped in with the guilty in some retaliative extremist reaction. In short, everyone needs to calm the fuck down.
The big lie and rebranding of “reverse racism” to justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians must not stand. Speak truth to power.
CALLING IT REVERSE RACISM TO OBJECT TO BEING DISPLACED, DISABUSED, BEING TREATED LIKE ALIENS ON YOUR OWN LAND IS HEINOUS.
In the end, Israel cannot lay claim to being the “Only Democracy in the Middle East” while keeping half their population as second class citizens, and stealing what is left of their land…
