/townhall/ - Townhall

>What Is a "Homeland"?

A delusion

>>12719

I don't know a lot about the conflict, but I was reading a bit about Judaism and watched a short video about the history of the conflict.

Judaism is one of the oldest religions (4,000 years old according to the internet? - I thought I read 6,000...) And they were the first to establish a collective identity that went beyond mere tribal identity. They have a long history of persecution from the religion's inception.

According to my analysis, the State of Israel was established (by Britain?) in order to protect the Jews from the persecution they had experienced since ancient times. I think it was established in Israel, due to its religious significance?

And from the video I watched, the Palestinians/Arabs (?) were just random groups of people who happened to be in the area after all the major fighting in the world began to cease (around the 1700s - early 1900s (?)), with no real cohesive identity at the time, who wanted independance from colonial rule?

(It would be interesting to trace the history of the Arabs/Palestinians back several hundreds or even thousands of years.)

This being the case, I don't see why they couldn't make peace. They both appear to have been persecuted... why not just work something out?

As far as what is considered a "homeland," this would be harder to answer, due to all the fighting between different country and people in the previous centuries. I believe the Palestinians were against giving the Jews Israel because they considered it a continuation of colonialism, but having just experienced the Jewish Holocaust, everyone in the international community believed it necessary to protect them. I think the Palestinians wanted independence, but a good question would be why the Palestinians didn't like the original 1947 UN proposal.

According to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYZjOuUnlU, after rejecting the proposal, the Palestinians (and other Arab countries? - what does that mean?) fought a war and lost, eventually resulting in Palestinian territory becoming increasingly taken over, over the years until, after more fighting, some peace groups came up with the Oslo Accords, which worked for a little while maybe, but now there is more fighting, it seems.

The simplest definition of homeland in this case, I think, would be what was established in 1947 by the UN (but we would need to take into consideration other factors (i.e.: time lived on the land, location of family, and so on) in deciding what presently constitutes homeland.)

I think things would be clearer if we had more information. This seems to be a complicated subject.

>>12723
Why do you say that?

>>12725
If you've no background in studying the geographical area at all, it probably would be best to read something in depth beyond just watching short documentaries, although it does indeed sound like what you linked is helpful.

A lot of interesting books involving the history of Israel as a political entity exist, with maybe "The Much Too Promised Land" and "Righteous Victims" standing out to me. By Aaron David Miller and Benny Morris, respectively. The first is from an American perspective (which is psychologically removed from the conflict via huge distance) and the second is from an Israeli perspective (which is naturally far more intense). I'd recommend a book written by an Arabic author, but I'm kind of tired at the moment and can't recall things too well.

>>12726
>Why do you say that?

Because no land was created for anyone or any group in particular. Identities associated with particular homelands are often the product of historical revision or in some cases are just purely mythological. Cultures and ethnicities evolve over time like species and like species,  cultures split off from each other and the dividing line where one culture ends and another begins is often arbitrary and in many cases not even universally recognized between cultures. The idea that any "homeland" "belongs" to any one culture, especially very old cultural identities with old historical narratives about origins in a particular place denies the possibility that other separate cultural identities may historically share the same land as their place of origin as well. Not to mention cultures that may no longer exist after splitting into multiple other cultures who might have come before.

>>12729
I'm heavily sympathetic to this view.

A "homeland" likely only has a limited practical and ethical meaning while there's no or almost no legal meaning.

People have natural human rights no matter where they happen to live.

Most things in life are not black and white, this is not one of them. Palestine has always (and shall remain) been the "homeland" of Palestinians. Israel has a long history of trying to use genocide to rid the country of the Palestinians, but because they themselves lives through a genocide they are just allowed to go off.

>>12719
Homeland is simply the known or accepted point of origin.
For example the homeland of the Burgundians (east central France) is often considered to be the Scandinavian island of Bornholm.
The homeland of the Rus (including Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians) is Sweden.

Muslim Arabs did not originate in Palestine, thus it is not their homeland.

That isn't to say that Palestinians have no claim to the area.  it's more to say that the question of homeland is less relevant now than ever.  For example, if we cared only about homelands, then the modern day Rus would have claim over Sweden.

As much as i don't like ethnonationalism, i begrudgingly acknowledge that without it, you have an inherent problem.

Say you have 2 societies, one is functional, one is not. By functional, i mean people have high standards of living, there's little violence, people live a long time, democracies or republics vs. oligarchies or dictatorships religious government or whatnot. What happens over time? Well, people flee the non-functional societies for the functional ones, but then something funny happens. Despite leaving one country for another, because the one you left sucks, you still bring the ideals of your old country with you. I'm not an immigrant, so i don't really know why this happens, but we have pretty clear records of this being the case.

So over time, as those immigrants politically participate, they end up, through political action, reproducing the very conditions that they fled from in the first place, and then if that collapses, off they go to another society that will accept them in and be willing to integrate, and you see where this is going...

And shit, either nobody gets one of everyone gets one. I'm pretty tired of all the double standards around white people, where we have to share all of our places, but apart from the jews, all the other races get to have a place that people accept as "theirs". If they want to go to a country where they're ethnically dominant, it's understood that that's good and ok, but white people are expected to give up any homelands they may have once had on the alter of inclusion and diversity. It's a quiet, gentle genocide of the white race by any fair and rational reading. And no, i don't mean America. If anything, the fate of the native americans is exactly the sort of cautionary tale for the potential for racial destruction through immigration and loss of homeland that I'm talking about.

Overall, yeah, the concept of a homeland is important. It gives a way for cultural and political concepts to find a foothold, and one should be cautious of non-integrating immigrants.

>>12747
>but we have pretty clear records of this being the case

Examples?

>>12748
I suppose there's been stuff in the news about mostly muslim people protesting LGBTQ stuff in Western nations like Canada or Europe.

https://www.macnet.ca/2023/official-statements/joint-statement-sept18/

>>12735
lol we're probably the worst people to commit genocide in history
fucked em up so bad they're population keeps multiplying

>>12747
There's quite a lot of illogical and simply not factual aspects of the view of the world that you're describing, honestly. So many that I can't really go into them all. Two stick out to me in particular, though, as pretty bad.

First, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and almost all of the Anglosphere that the majority of the white people who speak English live in on this planet were very obviously not initially populated by white people. And ethnic nationalism in these nations is going to result in a kind of 'death spiral logic'. It could result in a)the indigenous minorities of brown and black skin tones kills off or expels the white majority, which not only is horrifying morally but seems clearly not possible in practical way because of the gigantic differences in numbers. Left-wing identity politics spiraling off into insanity.

Alternately, you could b)have the descendants of immigrant groups decide that native peoples can't live in their own lands anymore because God supposedly says so or whatever. This is not only also obviously immoral but is patently ludicrous from a rational perspective because "I want something more than you, therefore I get it!" is a quasi-argument that leads to sheer bloody chaos. Right-wing identity politics spiraling off into insanity. I know that you mentioned just the U.S., in passing, but this really applies to almost all of the Anglosphere.

Second, immigrant communities appear to generally, at least in some countries, consist of those with seething hatred of their native lands' governments. Irish-Americans who've despised the successful efforts by the English to hold up their domination over Ireland for the past two centuries and more are a key example. So are the massive groups of Russians who've passionately hated both the Soviet regime and, more recently, the weirdly shameless neo-Soviet regime of Vladimir Putin once he took the metaphorical gloves off mid-2010s. Looking back a bit more, German-Americans have often been the least likely to support either the Kaiserreich in WWI or the Nazis in WWII. Hell, come on, a good portion of them fled for the U.S. exactly because they dreamed of turning Germany somehow into a clone of America with constitutional republican values and a more limited state, which weirdly enough happened after WWII when American basically colonized western Germany and made a post-Nazi government in our image. Cuban-Americans and Venezuelan-Americans with their general disdain for communism also come to mind.

Ethnic nationalism seems to me to be just factually false. An incorrect way to view the world the same sort of way as claiming that literally making everything required to be free gets held up as ideal economics. Or the healthcare doctrine that everybody could live forever if they only used new age spirituality around magical crystals or something. It's all just so illogical.

>>12719

it could be anything, like people evolved in africa, so that is humanity's homeland. but animals were there first, so maybe not really? other than that, i guess it's whoever is the first group of humans to stick a flag in the ground who are willing to fight other humans who get there later (assuming there were no betrayals in the journey to stick the flag in the ground, which is likely). but then that is might makes right, which is bad, so i don't know - maybe we should share because sharing is caring and we all get more berries that way ok. thx. bye.

I don't support palestien or Israel, but the Palestien people have more of a claim to that land than Israel.

With that said, Israel has already has the land for a while

With that said as well, Israel stealing land and giving it away to Americans is evil

That also being said: I don't really feel bad for the Palestinians

>>12771
I thought from the thumbnail that Hagrid was yelling "But I am also a scientist!".

And, to be honest, I like that idea more.

Scientist Hagrid spin-off AU when?

I also think it's fucking stupid that other countries have to get involved.

Let nature take its course.

>>12773
It's from my immortal

>>12774
Yes, but I still like the other idea about Hagrid.

fyi i bombed farah last week
sucks to suck