In the war between Israel and Hamas, there have been far too many casualties­—thousands of innocent civilians have died, primarily in Gaza. But this war has another less visible casualty: the hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants to Israel from the Middle East and North Africa known as Mizrahi, whose history is being erased from the popular narrative about Israel. My community is among them.

When angry protesters hurl charges of apartheid and colonialism at Israel, they are, knowingly or not, repudiating the truth about Israel's origin and the vast racial and ethnic diversity of its nation.

I was born and raised in Iran in a family of Jewish educators. I came of age during the tumultuous years of the Iranian revolution, just as Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power in 1979, and soon thereafter, annihilated his opposition­—feminists, leftists, even the Islamic Marxists who had long revered him as their spiritual leader. Until 1979, if anyone had told my observant Jewish family that we would someday leave Iran, we would have laughed. In fact, at our Passover seders, the words "next year in Jerusalem," were always followed by chuckles and quips, "oh, yeah, sure, Watch me pack!" all underlining our collective belief that we were exactly where we intended to remain. We loved Israel, but Israel was a Nirvana­—a place we revered but never expected to reach.

The 30 years preceding the Islamic revolution had led the Jewish community to believe that the dark days of bigotry were behind them. And for good reason! When my father was a schoolboy in the late 1930s, he was not allowed to attend school on rainy days. In the highly conservative town where he grew up, in Khonsar, his Shiite neighbors considered Jews "unclean," or Najes. They barred them, among other things, from leaving their homes on rainy days, lest the rainwater splashed off the bodies of the Jews and onto the Muslim passersby, thus making them "unclean," too. Yet, that same boy grew up, left the insular town, attended college in Tehran, earned a master's degree, and served in the royal army as a second lieutenant. (To his last day, my father's photo in military uniform was among his most prized possessions.) After service, he became the principal of a school, purchased a home in what was then a relatively upscale neighborhood of Tehran. The distance between my father's childhood and adulthood far surpassed two decades. It was the distance between two eras­—between incivility and civility, bigotry and tolerance.

Yet, as if on cue, the demon of antisemitism was unleashed again. The 1979 Islamic revolution summoned all the prejudices my father thought had been irretrievably buried. One day, on the wall across our home, graffiti appeared, "Jews gets lost!" Soon thereafter, the residence and fabric store my aunt and her extended family owned in my father's childhood town were set on fire after a mob of protesters looted it. Within days, she and her family, whose entire life's savings had burned in that fire, left for Israel. As young as I was, I could see that the regime was indiscriminately brutal to all those it deemed a threat to its reign, especially secular Muslims. But the new laws were specifically designed so that non-Muslims, and women, all but became second-class citizens. Members of religious minorities, especially the Baha'i, could no longer eye top jobs in academia, government, the military, etc. Restaurateurs had to display signs in their windows making clear that "the establishment was operated by a non-Muslim." In a court of law, members of religious minorities could offer testimony in criminal trials, but theirs would only count as half that of a Muslim witness. Jews were once again reduced to Dhimmis­—tax-paying citizens who were allowed to live, but not thrive. Then came a handful of executions of prominent Jewish leaders in the early months after the revolution, which sent shockwaves through the community. Jewish schools were allowed to operate, but under the headmastership of Muslims who were officially appointed.

Within a few years after the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to power, the Jewish population of Iran, which once stood at 100,000, shrank to a fraction of its size. Today, of the ancient community whose presence in Iran predates that of Muslims, only 8,000 remain. For centuries, Iran has been home to the most sacred Jewish sites in the Middle East outside of Israel. But those monuments have either fallen into disrepair or are targets of regular attacks by antisemitic mobs. Only last week, the tomb of Esther and Mordecai­—the memorial to the heroine and hero from the Book of Esther who saved the Jews from being massacred in ancient Persia, was set on fire.

How is it that the 90,000-plus who left Iran, many for Israel, are now deemed as occupiers? How do Iranian refugees fleeing persecution become "colonizers" upon arrival in Israel? These families, my aunt among them, were not emissaries of any standing empire, nor were they returning to a place where they had no history. For them, Israel was not a home away from their real homeland. It was their only homeland. The vitriolic slogan that appeared across my home in 1979 demanded that we "get lost!" In 2024, once again, the same Jews are being called upon to leave, this time Israel. Where, then, are Jews allowed to live?

Iranian Jews were not alone. Jews from Iraq, especially in the aftermath of the 1941 pogrom called Farhood, similarly fled their homeland. So did the Jews of Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Morocco, Algeria, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, etc. All, destitute and dejected, they took refuge in Israel. Today, they make up nearly 50 percent of Israel's population. To call such a nation colonial GRAVELY misrepresents the facts about Jews and Israel.

In his timeless essay, Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell said that in the Spain of 1937, he "saw history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various 'party lines.'" With the alarming rise of antisemitism around the world, and in light of the bloody attacks on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, the greatest massacre of Jews since World War II, 2024 bears an uncanny resemblance to Orwell's 1937. But perhaps in no way more ominously than the way truth has been upended to serve an ideological narrative­—one in which Jews, who have lived uninterruptedly in that land for more than two millennia, are cast as white non-indigenous interlopers, with no roots in what has always been their ancient homeland.

A public scholar at the Moynihan Center (CCNY), Roya Hakakian is the author of several books including, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran (Crown, 2005).

Dropout Antisemitism - This one has me flabbergasted

I am watching in real time the Dropout palestine channel state that Arabic is the original language of Israel/Palestine... It begins with one user saying that they've noticed that Arabic is "slowly being erased" due to language exchange between Hebrew and Arabic. They also state that this is happening because Israel uses Hebrew on its major documents, signs, etc...

Fig. 1. User who begins the Arabic language erasure conversation. This person is not a usual poster in the channel. This is followed by one of the common users in the channel saying that they need to refer to places by their Arabic names.

Fig. 2. Frequent user saying to refer to places by Arabic names. However, one user then states that they refer to Mt. Rushmore as Six Grandfather due to the USA's cultural erasure of the original name. This is absolutely wild to me because they are insisting on using the Arabic names...you know...the names that came about after Arab Colonization of the region? They are outright denying that the Hebrew names of certain cities are the original indigenous names. It's also astounding that people can support one cause of indigeneity, but not another.

Fig. 3. User equates referring to cities with post Arab colonization names to calling Mt. Rushmore by its indigenous name - Six Grandfathers.

But we all know why that is...they don't view Jews as indigenous to the region. I'm absolutely astounded that this level of erasure is just being allowed on the official Dropout Discord. This is blatant antisemitism and Jewish historical erasure. Edit: If more gets posted I will add to this. I doubt anyone in the channel is going to point out that Hebrew is the original language for a majority of these locations.

actually, no. antizionism is antisemitism. zionism, by definition, is believing in the jewish people's right to live in their home land.

you do not have to be an antizionist to be against israel's government, just like any citizen of any country can be against something their government is doing and not hate the country they live in. shocker, isnt it?

you do have to be an antisemite to claim that we have no ties to the land or our historic holy sites (as the UN does. look it up. unfortunately bbc was the only non-jewish news site i could find that even spoke about the erasure of our history).

tell me, in what way is antizionism not antisemitism? because i havent seen anything that separates the two - in fact, the more i see that thrown around, the more i see the inherent antisemitism.

i hope that all of you well meaning individuals (cough, goyim) will reblog this and truly reflect on what you are marching for. ask questions. study our history. maybe learn about how israel is the only democratic state in the region (ever since tunisia's downgrade to a hybrid regime), and ask yourself and others why. ask, in what way is your antizionism not antisemetic?

what are you marching for?

We as a collective need to stop referring to it as The Middle East. We should be calling that part of the world Western Asia and North Africa. The whole reason it is called The Middle East in the first place is because of British colonization in 1800s and it erases and messes with the identities of people with that ancestry and history.

Hey, would you consider taking down this post: https://www.tumblr.com/accessible-art/733352422469156864

The phrase "from the river to the sea" is an antisemitic phrase. That phrase is about the forceful expulsion of Jews from every land and into the sea to die off. It is very unfortunate that it's being used unwittingly by well meaning people to rally support for Palestine and their suffering (which we should do! Please don't misunderstand). That phrase is too loaded.

hello there anon, i am going to word this as gently as i can. i myself am jewish, and i will not be taking down the post as i fundamentally disagree that "from the river to the sea" is antisemitic. the saying is not to do with expelling jews from anywhere, much less killing us all. it is referring to the fact that israel is a settler colonial state on land that palestinians (of all religions - including jews) have inhabited for thousands of years. from the river to the sea is a reaffirmation of this land-history and a call to action against the ethnic cleansing, genocide, and erasure that palestinians have faced under israeli apartheid/governance. saying that the restoration of palestinian land to the palestinian people would result in jewish genocide is a baseless projection. do not get me wrong, there are absolutely people using the pro-palestine movement as a mask for their antisemitism, but this phrase did not originate with them. the reason this phrase is so divisive is the same reason "landback" is so divisive. settler-colonialism is so pervasive in the west that the idea of indigenous people seeking sovereignty over their land without violently dispossessing all others who live on the land is unfathomable, no matter how many times indigenous people have made it clear that they have no desire to do so. to put it bluntly, that phrase is only "too loaded" if you do not recognize palestinians as indigenous to their land, at which point whatever support you're "rallying" would be rendered useless.

you are welcome to unfollow us if this explanation does not satisfy you, but we will not be taking down our pro-palestine content.

~ mod elya

I don’t trust anyone (including other Jews) who won’t or are afraid to acknowledge Jewish history, our specific Peoplehood, and the ways our culture has to do with our ancestral homeland.

If you see these things as antithetical to your politics then that is telling.

Bluntblackjew via Instagram: "Jamaican Jewish history is so extensive that this post would, instead of 7 slides, probably extend to 30 or more. That is what I love about the history of Jamaica, and the fact this is history is living history. This condensed version is how Jamaican Jews came as refugees and became one of the many people on the island to directly influence history "Jews in the Caribbean, especially Safardi Jews, never disappeared. We continue to exist, and I hope this post educates and removes the erasure of our history that we continue to see."

Let's talk about Israeli cuisine.

Unfortunately, I have less experience with it than I should, as it looks absolutely delicious, but I've never had any. Diaspora Jew in a place with few Jews or Israelis moment :(. And I'm talking less about Israeli cuisine and more about how it's perceived--namely how it's taken from Israelis, denigrated as 'not Israeli', as having been 'stolen' from Arab cuisine as a part of a broader project of 'cultural conquest'. Looking at you, Joseph Massad.

This assertion is not only a bald-faced lie, it is also deeply antisemitic. People have the right to make food. Nobody's going to call a non Italian racist for making or eating Italian food. Nor would an Italian be culturally appropriating if they eat sushi. Yet Jews and Israelis are stealing if they make Middle Eastern food?

More than that, though, it ignores Jewish history. Jews have lived in the Middle East for... as long as homo sapiens have lived in the Middle East? Mizrahim, who make up most of Israel's population, did not grow out of the ground in Israel from 1948-1979. They were expelled, violently chased out of the Muslim-majority countries they had lived for millennia. Before then, they sustained themselves on falafel, couscous, hummus, tahini, halva, shawarma, and every Middle Eastern food under the sun. If there were such a thing as the 'right' to make food, they'd absolutely have it.

But it's instead 'colonization', 'cultural appropriation', and 'cultural conquest'? To bring the culinary practices they and their ancestors had been practicing since Judaism began to the only country that had thrown open their doors to them? After experiencing pogroms, riots, anti-Jewish legislation, the world once sat by and did nothing to stop it. Again. And then members of these countries have the gall--the audacity and sheer disrespect--to accuse them of pilfering their own fucking culture?? After violently kicking them out???

Like, it blows my mind how many injustices Israelis are subjected to by moronic protestors who think 'Zionism is racism' or whatever. Every time someone posts about Zionist colonization of Palestinian food and culture, they're ironically themselves indulging in cultural erasure. The fact that Palestinians often make the same foods isn't indicative of a supposed Zionist plot to exterminate Palestinians and steal their culinary practices, but rather reflective of their shared origins as being Middle Eastern. But these online 'activists' don't care--nor do they care that the implied 'Zionist plot' that runs through their claims is textbook antisemitism.

Middle Eastern food is widespread in Middle Eastern countries. When Middle Eastern people get kicked out of Middle Eastern countries and go to another Middle Eastern country, they make... Middle Eastern food. Shocking, I know.

It isn't stealing. It isn't cultural appropriation.

Now, gut shabbos everyone.

Stranger Things and Netflix are trying to capitalize off the Holocaust.

No, this is not a joke. This is not a stretch of the imagination. And no, I’m not putting a read-more on this post because it deserves a full look-through. This is happening in Lithuania, right now, where Netflix has turned a former Nazi prison into a Stranger Things themed hotel.

Yes, you read that right. Just a quick Google search will confirm its existence. The Lukiškės Prison in Vilnius, Lithuania is a former Nazi prison. In a country that already tries to erase it’s involvement with the Holocaust (I’m still talking about Lithuania), this offense is particularly egregious.

Here’s the change.org petition that @chaosklutz​ sent me that first alerted me to this abhorrent, insensitive bullshittery: https://www.change.org/p/hold-netflix-and-stranger-things-accountable. 

Copy-pasted below is the description from the petition.

It has come to the attention of the Jewish and Rroma community that the new season for Stranger Things was filmed in the Lukiškės prison in Lithuania. Though having functioned as a prison centuries before, it became notorious during WWII for it's Nazi involvement and the kidnapping, imprisonment, and torture of about 100,000 Jews, Rroma, and political prisoners.

To make matters worse, Stranger Things and Netflix have both agreed to turn Lukiškės into a fully functioning hotel, ran by Airbnb, where visitors can spend the night in themed cells, tour the Stranger Things themed building, and make waffles. The price ranges from about €104-114 a night and it was said to start it's function June 4th.

Fans of Stranger Things are now getting numerical tattoos on their arms because they are inspired by the show, the Stranger Things Instagram has even reposted photos their fans have submitted; thus encouraging their behavior. Not only does this mock the shared trauma of the Jewish and Rroma community, but it further desecrates the living memories of Holocaust survivors (a significant portion are alive today) and their descendants.

Lithuania is already known for their outright denial of their participation in the Holocaust and their allyship with the Nazis. Lithuania turned Seventh Fort, a concentration camp responsible for one of the worst mass killings in Lithuanian history, into a wedding venue. A Nazi prison where Jews, Rroma, and political kid prisoners were kidnapped, starved, imprisoned, and tortured is now a wedding venue.

We refuse to let this continue.

We, Jews and Rroma, call you to sign this petition and hold Stranger Things and Netflix accountable for their Holocaust erasure. Money earned from this season should be put back into the Jewish and Rromani communities of Lithuania as reparations for the damage this season is causing and a public apology from Airbnb, Netflix, and Stranger Things should be issued immediately with a full understanding as to how this adds to the erasure of the victims of the Holocaust and the ongoing persecution of Romani communities.  We also demand the immediate shut down of the Airbnb.

We will not be erased. The Holocaust is not for the entertainment industry to build wealth off of and turn into theatre. It is our genocide and for Rroma it is ongoing.

We hope to reach out to current Jewish and Rroma communities in Lithuania in hopes of help for accountability. Either way, sharing this petition, signing it, and donating to the Jewish and Romani organizations and charities below would be a great help! Thank you!

TO CONTACT US PLEASE EMAIL: [email protected]

WAYS TO SUPPORT THE JEWISH AND RROMA COMMUNITIES:

LIETUVOS ZYDU (LITVAKU) BENDRUOMENÈ (Lithuania Jewish Community): donations accepted! https://www.lzb.lt/en/

ERRC (European Rroma Rights Center): A perfect tool to learn, volunteer and donate http://www.errc.org/get-involved/donate

Domari Society: Rroma in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip! Donate, learn about them and support their businesses! https://www.sunbula.org/en/article/10/Domari-Society-of-Gypsies-in-Jerusalem The Jewish Center for Community Development: https://www.jdc-iccd.org/#about

ERGO (European Rroma Grassroots Organization): donate, learn, volunteer, and support their projects! https://ergonetwork.org

Memorial Museum of Holocaust in Lithuania and Vilna Ghetto: https://www.jmuseum.lt/en/about-the-museum-3/i/220/memorial-museum-of-holocaust-in-lithuania-and-vilna- ghetto/

Again, here is the petition link: https://www.change.org/p/hold-netflix-and-stranger-things-accountable.

Please sign and share the petition, and donate if you can. The signature goal is 7.5k - they’re almost there! We can surpass that goal!

This kind of behavior is utterly disgusting and those at fault need to be held accountable. If your blood isn’t boiling after reading about this, read again.

(alt included in all images)

Another thread by Senator Ben Ray Luján here.

A book on the subject (haven't read it myself):

One of the sources in another one of Alisa's furiously impassioned twitter threads have been debunked, so I didn't include that. But she claims that her own family was caught in the fallout zone when her mother was a baby, which eventually led to her and large numbers of her community developing cancer. It's human for that kind of grief to be caught up in inaccuracies. People are already being ghastly and racist to Hispanos and Indigenous people criticizing the hype for the movie. They're not attacking Oppenheimer for being Jewish, they're criticising the erasure of the human cost of these bombs and the continued valorisation of the U.S military's actions in World War II as some kind of moral saviourism.

While Oppenheimer himself believed that the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were morally justified (they had planned to drop them on Germany except they surrendered before they could), he also felt had blood on his hands and regretted his role as the "Father of the Atomic Bomb". He spent the rest of his career vehemently opposing further development of thermonuclear weapons and the hydrogen bomb accurately predicting the concept of mutually assured destruction. This eventually made him a victim of Senator McCarthy's Red Scare and his clearance was revoked. I haven't seen the movie (Christopher Nolan is the kind of casual white racist I avoid on principle) but people who have seen it say that it doesn't glorify nuclear weapons and depicts the man himself with the complex moral nuance that seems to be accurately reflective of his real life.

The backlash to Indigenous and Hispanos people's criticisms and to people pointing out that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were genocides is also frustrating because...both world wars were a clash of genocidal empires. The reason they were world wars is because the countries colonized by Japan, China, the European powers and the US were all dragged into it, whether they wanted to or not. Jews were one of the many colonized peoples that suffered in that time, who were left to die by everyone until they could be used to frame the Allied powers as moral saviours, establishing a revisionist nostalgia for heroism that powers the US military industrial complex to this day.

As early as May 1942, and again in June, the BBC reported the mass murder of Polish Jews by the Nazis. Although both US President, Franklin Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, warned the Germans that they would be held to account after the war, privately they agreed to prioritise and to turn their attention and efforts to winning the war. Therefore, all pleas to the Allies to destroy the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau were ignored. The Allies argued that not only would such an operation shift the focus away from winning the war, but it could provoke even worse treatment of the Jews. In June 1944 the Americans had aerial photographs of the Auschwitz complex. The Allies bombed a nearby factory in August, but the gas chambers, crematoria and train tracks used to transport Jewish civilians to their deaths were not targeted.

(Source)

Uncritical consumption of World War II media is the reinforcement of imperialist propaganda, more so when one group of colonized people is used to silence other colonized peoples. Pitting white Jewry against BIPOC is to do the work of white supremacy for imperialist colonizers, and victimizes Jews of colour twice over.

Edit: friends, there's been some doubt cast on the veracity of Alisa's claims. The human cost to the Hispanos population caught downwind of the nuclear tests is very real, as was land seizure without adequate compensation. However, there's no record I can yet find about Los Alamos killing livestock and Hispanos being forced to work for Los Alamos without PPE. There is a separate issue about human testing in the development of said PPE that's not covered here. I'm turning off reblogs until I can find out more. Meanwhile, here's another more legitimate article you can boost instead:

For the Zionist movement going as far back as the early 20th century, the construction of a food culture mirrored that of a nation. It was meant to breathe into the Zionist identity in Palestine a sense of historical connection to the land.

In an effort to establish themselves as the "natives", European Jewish settlers adopted the cultural characteristics and customs of Palestine’s local population.

[...] [B]eginning in the 1920s, Jewish settlers embraced the culinary symbols and practices of the native Palestinians. The list was extensive, from Sabra (from the Arabic sabr, prickly pear, appropriated to mean the "new Jew" in Palestine) to Jaffa oranges, all the way to falafel, tahini and hummus. All are representative of the Palestinian production cycle, life and culture. 

Unlike European Zionists, Palestinians could anchor their national identity in an existing society that, among other things, had its own cuisine and was deeply entwined with the region’s culture and history. 

That provided Zionism with a set of native recipes - literally - to facilitate the construction of an "indigenous identity" for European Jews with varied cultural backgrounds, none of which organically linked to the region. 

A settler-colonial endeavour, the Zionist notion of "nativisation" inevitably changed from adopting the local culture, including the food, to claiming it as its own. 

In the first Zionist cookbooks from the 1930s onwards, Palestinian dishes were referred to as "Israeli". When the evidence was lacking, as always is, they were attributed to Mizrahi Jews who arrived in the Zionist state from Arab countries.   

To establish historical legitimacy, some of the culinary appropriation was justified as another "return". The return this time is not only to the so-called ancestral land of Eretz Yisrael after two millennia of exile, but to the ancient Jewish/Biblical customs that Palestinian Arabs have preserved since the 6th century. 

For instance, hummus, goes the claim, was an ancient Biblical dish and has roots in the Biblical words hamits and himtsa (chickpeas). The words, however, are likely a reference to a blend of fermented chickpeas used as animal fodder in ancient Canaan.    

Moving from adopting the local culture to appropriating it could not have been done without the denial of the culture’s originators.

Native Palestinians were erased both physically and symbolically from the Jewish state’s collective memory and public spaces.

Those who resisted the erasure and remained in their land now face dispersion and control. 

As such, the acknowledgement of a rooted Palestinian culture, let alone admitting that Zionism needed that culture to build a separate political entity and identity in Palestine, is threatening to Israel’s assumed historical entitlement and claims of indigeneity.

That dynamic has also created a painful paradox where the Zionist superior and racist attitude towards Palestinians had to go hand in hand with the adoption of their "inferior" culture, including their local cuisine.  

— Emad Moussa, "The politics of hummus: Israel's search for cultural identity," 2023.

Dropout has an antisemitism problem (mini post)

I have more screen caps showing other occurrences, but this one just happened and I’m absolutely floored.

One of the core members of the channel posted this. This person regularly posts Al Jazeera propaganda. This is also the person that regularly calls the mods if the narrative of the channel is threatened at all.

Fig. 1. User stating that AJ is using the indigenous names of places.

I’m holding my breath to see if anyone points out that the Hebrew names predate the ones they claim are indigenous by a thousand years or so. I don’t think anyone will due to how this particular person throws a tantrum and gets people banned each time. It’s also important to note that they have repeatedly denied Jewish history in the channel and this is not the first occurrence of this particular ahistorical narrative.

an anon literally just sent me links to the fucking "hasbara" manual and the opinions of a british muslim (who is not connected to palestine at all) who actively erases jewish history in saying that we're not native to the Land

if youre going to literally be sending conspiracy theories and jewish erasure, maybe put a bit more effort into realizing what youre sending before you send it to someone who WILL do research on your thinly veiled antisemitism <3

go read a book- how about "historical atlas of the jewish people", edited by eli barnavi?

(oh, and maybe turn off anon, if you arent ashamed of yourself)

Happy New Year!

Here is your periodic reminder James Buchanan Barnes in the MCU is based off Arnie Roth, a gay Jewish man and Steve Roger's childhood best friend/protector in the comics as well as a revolutionary character in the superhero genre, and all "evidence" for him liking women is taken from Arnie Roth pretending to be a ladies' man to appear straight, when in reality it was all an act.

Both intersecting identities are essential to fully understanding him as a character.

Just because the MCU can get away with erasing and ignoring his sexuality and ethnoreligious identity, as well as not compensating the creator of Arnie (who has openly talked about them never crediting him and their blatant use of his character being used to create the very foundation of the character in the films), or for comic Bucky's sexuality being understandably interpreted a lot of different ways and for him being read as religiously neutral, does not mean it's okay to knowingly fuel the erasure of MCU Bucky's true identity as a gay Jew while actively benefiting from other parts of his history, especially his childhood with Steve (instead of as an army brat who met Steve during the war).

hei. i enjoy your blogs, i hope you could clear something up for me., i just saw someone claim to be "zionist as in i believe jewish people have the right to self determination in their indigenous homeland",, ive actually seen the claim that jewish ppl are indigenous to israel and are somehow denied that identity as a form of anti semitism and erasure of jewish experience multiple times.. and it always confused me so much cuz like israel was set up as this nationalist project in 1948, before the region was a mess mostly under the rule of the ottomans, but the palestinian culture and ppl were always there. how can someone be indigenous to a region if they werent there before? is there any truth to the claim or is it just co-opting leftist language again?

its so evil how the state of israel could jist completely legitimize itself by co-opting jewish culture and pretending like being in support of it is a fundamental part of jewishness :(

Thank you!! I'm glad you do.

I can try, but I'm not sure how good I'll be at explaining this. Maybe someone else can add to this. If I repeat things I said before, I apologize.

That is a definition of zionism used by many zionists who lean politically to the left. I don't subscribe to these softer definitions of zionism because saying it's just "the right to Jewish self determination in our ancestral homeland" ignores that in practice over the last century the next words are "to the exclusion of others." I define zionism through its practical outcome - which is what we did to Palestinians.

Jewish people originate here. Our religious laws and practices (many of which are regularly disregarded by Israel and by settlers when they do things like destroying olive trees and water sources) are tied to this specific land. There are holidays and religious rituals that are either fundamentally changed or can't be practiced at all if we're anywhere else in the world. Culturally most branches of Judaism maintained this connection throughout our history. And we didn't leave willingly. An empire expelled us from the place that was our land. When the point of indigeniety comes up, this is why. You'll see arguments like - when does indigeniety expire? How many generations until you no longer have a claim to the ancestral homeland you were driven away from?

So this is the cultural context for Judaism. This is something that I also can't really ignore. I can't pretend I don't care about this land and the connection we always had to it.

That said, I still see this as using leftist terminology inappropriately.

To talk about Israel, a lot of us talk about colonialism, and specifically settler colonialism. I lived in the West Bank settlements so to me this really resonates. The argument I get at that point is that an indigenous group can't colonize their own land.

And this is why I'm saying it's a misuse of terminology. We're using that label to absolve ourselves. As if the word "indigenous" is a stamp of approval we get to apply to our actions while we repeat the violence of colonizing forces in history.

Ethnic cleansing, occupation, building settlements - and now also genocide. The tools we use resonate with indigenous people all over the world, because they suffered through similar kinds of oppression. Always with differences and different contexts, these things are never 1:1, but there's a reason indigenous groups around the world are in solidarity with Palestinians. I shared about a video from a Korean person talking about how colonialism by Japan broke the thread of their history - old buildings that had to be rebuilt instead of being preserved, historical cultural practices and art forms being lost or changed due to the loss of artisans. These are things Israel is doing now.

So to me, this is using the word "landback" and "liberation" for a violent takeover of land from an indigenous group. You mentioned the Ottomans - Palestine has been conquered over and over throughout history. Those regimes, sure, fighting them off can be liberatory, if the intent isn't to become the conquerors in their place. But there's nothing to liberate from Palestinians, because they're not colonizing anything. They belong in this land.

I'm really angry that so many of us try to deny the Palestinians their own connection. They have roots here, a long and rich history shaped by life in the land. While we destroy so much and say our claim is so strong we get to kill or drive them away for it.

[“The Nazis’ adoption of the US pseudoscience of eugenics has been well documented. They borrowed US race laws and also the US strategy of continental imperialism, ethnically cleansing the land in order to populate it with white settlers, what the Nazis called Lebensraum. Less well known is Nazi officials’ interest in US racially determined immigration laws and citizenship requirements.

Writing four years after the 1924 immigration act, Adolf Hitler, in the unpublished 1928 sequel to Mein Kampf, admiringly characterized the United States as “a race-state,” referring to the US racist immigration measures that began with Chinese exclusion in 1882 and expanded to other nationalities in 1924. Hitler wrote, “American immigration policies provide confirmation that the previous ‘melting pot’ approach presupposes humans of a certain similar racial basis,” and that approach “immediately fails as soon as fundamentally different types of humans are involved.”

When the Nazi lawyers began studying US race laws in depth in 1936, they were surprised that racial exclusion dated to the founding, one remarking that such was not common at the time. Yale law professor James Q. Whitman writes in his important book Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, “The two new Nazi anti-Jewish measures that we remember today as the Nuremberg Laws . . . were the product of many months of Nazi discussion and debate that included regular, studious, and often admiring engagement with the race law of the United States.”

In a global history for German readers published in 1934, Nazi historian Albrecht Wirth hailed the founding of the United States: “The most important event in the history of the states of the Second Millennium . . . was the founding of the United States of America. The struggle of the Aryans for world domination received thereby its strongest prop.” Another Nazi-era book in 1936, the translated title of which was The Supremacy of the White Race, characterized the US founding as “the first fateful turning point” in the worldwide rise of white supremacy, informing readers that the United States had assumed “the leadership of the white peoples” after World War I, without which “a conscious unity of the white race would never have emerged.”]

roxanne dunbar-ortiz, from not a nation of immigrants: settler colonialism, white supremacy, and a history of erasure and exclusion, 2021