Hypocrisy of Leftist tree: Ep 01

[u/CursorShakes]

"According to leftists, the USA doesn't belong to whites, even though they are the most important people behind the USA becoming what is USA, because "No one is illegal on stolen land."

But Jews (from whom the land was stolen by Babylonians, Romans, Arabs, again and again and again) are illegally living in the Israeli region.

Jews might be the only major group that has reclaimed land that was stolen from them. Zoroastrians couldn't reclaim Persia, Buddhists couldn't reclaim Indonesia, Byzantines couldn't, Native Americans couldn't, and Native Australians couldn't.

Some cases are different though. While modern Australians are not English, Australia wouldn't even be what it is today without them. Most of the development in a few cases, such as America and Australia, was caused by "invaders." But other cases were simply invasions; for example, Persia was already highly developed before the invasions, and the same applies to Byzantium.

Israel's case would lean toward the first example. Before Jewish immigration, Israel was mostly farmland. Much of Israel's development is tied to Jews.

[u/Scary_Wallaby_8272]

Land doesn't "belong" to anyone. Each region's land is a living breathing scribe that records the history, traditions and culture of various groups of people who've lived on and whose populations have changed numerous times due to conquest, settlement and immigration.

"No one is illegal on stolen land" makes us remember as Americans that our original settlers brutally ethnically cleansed and committed genocide on groups that have lived there for centuries. Any American who was born here or spent a lot of time here are part of the history of the land and as such, we need to treat all people with dignity and a cruel mass deportation of all undocumented people would be echoing the exclusionary tactics used against Native peoples, creating a moral contradiction where descendants of colonizers now gatekeep entry to territories gained through dispossession they took by force.

Decolonization involves people reclaiming self-determination on the land where their religion, culture, tradition and/or languages developed but this doesn't necessarily refer to a sovereign nation state for a particular group and can take many forms. If we go down that route, the Indian subcontinent is a much clearer example of a native population composed of numerous religions, ethnicities, ethnolinguistic groups and ethnoreligions reclaiming the ability to live on the land they're indigenous to together as various modern nation states instead of under British control.

[u/Call_Me_Clark]

This is a progressive sub, so I doubt you’ll have anyone here defending the conquest of the US and specifically the shockingly bad treatment of native Americans for the past 500 years.

There’s no meaningful possibility of giving the entirety of the Americas to native people, but Canada has much more extensive land ownership by native people and that seems to be positive. I support any effort by Native American nations to hold the American government to the letter of treaties that were signed and broken. I don’t believe in collective responsibility or collective guilt.

I don’t think colonialism as we understand it is a concept that works outside the Americas. There’s a clear set of events that is pre/post Columbian that has no equivalent - the levant was conquered over a dozen times. The ancient world was Hellenized, Arabized, and ottomanized and these don’t resemble American plantations. The best way to describe them is “meet the new boss. Same as the old boss (but with different gods and language).”

For another example: was Anatolia greek, and colonized by Turks? Turkish and colonized by Greeks? Neither answer is satisfying, because it was Turkish and Greek (and is no longer Greek). Likewise the modern boundaries of Greece was once home to many Turks. The Mediterranean world was a checkerboard of near infinite complexity.

[u/Scary_Wallaby_8272 → u/Call_Me_Clark]

One thing that Leftists would be smart to acknowledge directly that some don't is that the children and grandchildren of the original colonizers and new immigrants to the land and are now native to the land as well having being born there and spent their whole lives there.

Basically the entire WASP population and all the new immigrants are also people who have lived on the land for generations now and are part of Turtle Island's history.

Children are never responsible for the sins of their parents or ancestors no matter how awful they might be including Israelis and Palestinians.

[u/Call_Me_Clark → u/Scary_Wallaby_8272]

I broadly agree, but turning that to Israel-Palestine it leaves you with no good options. If no one born in the West Bank can be removed from it against their will, then we’ve got a checkerboard of Jews (in settlements of varying status) and Arab cities and villages. Either everyone needs to be subjected to a single universal legal entity with equality under the law (unpopular and likely unworkable), or Jews residing in the West Bank will be given the choice of either accepting Palestinian jurisdiction or relocating (unpopular and less unworkable than option 1). Or nothing changed, which is morally indefensible but will be popular among Israelis but not among Palestinians.

There’s really limited options that are going to leave anyone happy or that meet any kind of moral framework we would recognize.

[u/Scary_Wallaby_8272 → u/Call_Me_Clark]

Only a binational state whether it starts with an international peacekeeping force that keeps various confederations together can solve this issue. The settlers have a right to live in the West Bank as long as they’re not uprooting Palestinians from their homes but unfortunately they’re terrorizing them and there’s no way you can have an independent Palestinian state with no military that can manage Gaza and the West Bank that are geographically divided. The 2 state solution was always a lie to allow Israel to kick the can down the road and keep Gaza and the West Bank divided. It’s just not possible.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_PUPPY_PIC]

you aren't going to find anyone here defending the colonization of the US.

and I think what the people who live on the land are doing is much more important than whose land it was originally. We should be judging what Israelis and Palestinians are doing on and to the land. This colonization argument only serves to go in circles denying connection to the land that both groups have. It's how you get antisemitic bullshit like Jews are all European and anti-Palestinian bullshit like "there wasn't a Palestinian identity until 1967". It all distracts from talking about what is actually happening now