Thank you so much for presenting what is a difficult and complex history/theology of a people rooted in this particular place on planet earth. I wonder how you understand the whole matter of the "settlements" built on "occupied territories" and the matter of Jewish settlers? The past 75 years seem to need explication. When stitched together with the horrors of pogroms and the horrors of WW2 and the many other violent atrocities perpetrated by one or another group of people on another group labels of any kind are not helpful. There is a very important conversation however going on related to the matter of colonialism, past and present, where one group displaces another. The term "settler colonialism" is a term used by Native Americans to describe how the lands they occupied for millennia before European colonists arrived on these lands. Maybe we cannot dispense totally with the concept "settler colonialism", which describes a current reality affecting descendants of all those Palestinians who were dispossessed beginning in 1948. What keeps surprising me is that Palestinians are adherents of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. I would imagine there are some Palestinians who would say they are secular and belong to no religious group. This article is so rich, I need to read it a couple more times to digest it. My personal hope is that from this terrible horror of 7 October and all the violence and revenge that has followed a way will be found out of the terrifying wilderness of pain .,loss, and hatred.
Settlement is a fraught subject and complicated, as you say. It's probably too complicated to go into here but I'm sure I will have an opportunity in the coming months since the most aggressive leaders of the post-67 settler movement are doubling down and now calling for settling on the ruins of Gaza. I find it ironic that the destroyed/disappeared Kingdom of Israel was today's West Bank. Given the fate of that kingdom you'd think modern-day Israelis would not be interested in risking the state over violent re-settlement of the area. But they are.
Blood for land. River to the sea. Whose slogans are these? Could go either way.
The End of Biblical Studies by Hector Avalos gives a different perspective on Biblical wisdom. Bart Ehrman disassembles the New Testament fairly decisively and the constant haggling over Old Testament does an even better job of self immolation than real academic study might. The Bible Uneathed answers many questions of Biblical history with a negative. The Israeli government has worked tirelessly to find proof of the stories in the Old Testament with little to show. Yes, there is a history of many Jewish settlements in this area but the veracity of heroic or outlandish oral histories are rightly questioned.
These are asides to the issue of why the use of force to expel people from their homes is accepted without question in the modern era. Creating a Jewish homeland in Poland or Germany or Russia was as awkward in 1946 as it is today. Montana was out of the question. The Shoah now has a long dark shadow in the land claimed by God for arguing. Many hearts have been blackened by the bloodthirsty grip of various monotheisms. The Koran offers little hope. Israel and Palestine have become definitions for argument and disagreement for the world, unfortunately. Perhaps the Saudis will guilt/whitewash finance a new Palestine. Not. Nothing new here.
Us antitheists need to stick apart, as always. Take care Michael.
Thank you for this, and the preceding columns. They are helping me to understand some of the subtitles of this whole disaster. Thank you as well for mentioning what's happening on the West Bank, as that seems to be largely ignored.
What I struggle with (I'm a small town Canadian kid, so my history knowledge is thin at best.) is how the Israelis can claim that this region "belongs" to them when they hadn't controlled, or even really lived there for a stretch of something like 2000 years. Certainly it was a convenient place to move Jewish people at the end of World War 2, and obviously a lot of Jewish people embraced the narrative about a return to their homeland, but isn't there a point where it should been "use it or lose it?"
From where I sit it feels as if the Palestinians (and other non-Jewish groups) have at least an equal claim to these lands.
Am I missing something?
Beyond that though is the question of the term "genocide." I understand what you're saying, but I also am watching an entire national entity (country? region? I don't know the right term) being bulldozed into nothing, and seeing something more than 25,000 people, reportedly including a large proportion of civilians and children, killed. To me it seems so very disproportionate, and I truly expect that at the end of this the entire Palestinian population will have been moved to somewhere outside of the boundaries of Israel.
I have no solutions, but thank you for the time and energy to explain much of this history to us.
Barry
ps - thank you for the alternate history of “From the River to the Sea”. Yes. I smiled.
No easy answers here, Barry. But here are two reading suggestions on the basic questions of Israel's origins and the question of the Occupied Territories: One Palestine Complete by Tom Segev. My Promised Land by Ari Shavit. Both are descended from earliest Zionists--meaning forebears arrived in Ottoman times. they are thoughtful and sceptical and their books are well worth your time. Best, Michael
I copied this phrase: "the idea that Jews are settler colonialists," and then read the previous comments and answers. Thanks! But I still want to ask, what other nation-state is based on a single religion? (remembering that Netanyahu has stated that Israel is a Jewish state.) I'm thinking of the genesis of Buddhism now being declared a Hindu state, with settler Muslims being shunted aside? or how about Jerusalem, for the same reason, being declared Christian?
Modi's BJP in India would claim India is a Hindu state, King Charles is head of the church in England making Britain a Christian country, Saudi Arabia's ruler is called the keeper of the Holy Mosques and so Saudi is a Muslim state as is Pakistan. Israel is the Jewish state but it has a 20% Arab population most Muslim, some Christian, Bedouin, Druze.
I copied this phrase: "the idea that Jews are settler colonialists," and then read the previous comments and answers. Thanks! But I still want to ask, what other nation-state is based on a single religion? (remembering that Netanyahu has stated that Israel is a Jewish state.) I'm thinking of the genesis of Buddhism now being declared a Hindu state, with settler Muslims being shunted aside? or how about Jerusalem, for the same reason, being declared Christian?
Thank you so much for presenting what is a difficult and complex history/theology of a people rooted in this particular place on planet earth. I wonder how you understand the whole matter of the "settlements" built on "occupied territories" and the matter of Jewish settlers? The past 75 years seem to need explication. When stitched together with the horrors of pogroms and the horrors of WW2 and the many other violent atrocities perpetrated by one or another group of people on another group labels of any kind are not helpful. There is a very important conversation however going on related to the matter of colonialism, past and present, where one group displaces another. The term "settler colonialism" is a term used by Native Americans to describe how the lands they occupied for millennia before European colonists arrived on these lands. Maybe we cannot dispense totally with the concept "settler colonialism", which describes a current reality affecting descendants of all those Palestinians who were dispossessed beginning in 1948. What keeps surprising me is that Palestinians are adherents of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. I would imagine there are some Palestinians who would say they are secular and belong to no religious group. This article is so rich, I need to read it a couple more times to digest it. My personal hope is that from this terrible horror of 7 October and all the violence and revenge that has followed a way will be found out of the terrifying wilderness of pain .,loss, and hatred.
Settlement is a fraught subject and complicated, as you say. It's probably too complicated to go into here but I'm sure I will have an opportunity in the coming months since the most aggressive leaders of the post-67 settler movement are doubling down and now calling for settling on the ruins of Gaza. I find it ironic that the destroyed/disappeared Kingdom of Israel was today's West Bank. Given the fate of that kingdom you'd think modern-day Israelis would not be interested in risking the state over violent re-settlement of the area. But they are.
Blood for land. River to the sea. Whose slogans are these? Could go either way.
The End of Biblical Studies by Hector Avalos gives a different perspective on Biblical wisdom. Bart Ehrman disassembles the New Testament fairly decisively and the constant haggling over Old Testament does an even better job of self immolation than real academic study might. The Bible Uneathed answers many questions of Biblical history with a negative. The Israeli government has worked tirelessly to find proof of the stories in the Old Testament with little to show. Yes, there is a history of many Jewish settlements in this area but the veracity of heroic or outlandish oral histories are rightly questioned.
These are asides to the issue of why the use of force to expel people from their homes is accepted without question in the modern era. Creating a Jewish homeland in Poland or Germany or Russia was as awkward in 1946 as it is today. Montana was out of the question. The Shoah now has a long dark shadow in the land claimed by God for arguing. Many hearts have been blackened by the bloodthirsty grip of various monotheisms. The Koran offers little hope. Israel and Palestine have become definitions for argument and disagreement for the world, unfortunately. Perhaps the Saudis will guilt/whitewash finance a new Palestine. Not. Nothing new here.
Us antitheists need to stick apart, as always. Take care Michael.
Michael,
Thank you for this, and the preceding columns. They are helping me to understand some of the subtitles of this whole disaster. Thank you as well for mentioning what's happening on the West Bank, as that seems to be largely ignored.
What I struggle with (I'm a small town Canadian kid, so my history knowledge is thin at best.) is how the Israelis can claim that this region "belongs" to them when they hadn't controlled, or even really lived there for a stretch of something like 2000 years. Certainly it was a convenient place to move Jewish people at the end of World War 2, and obviously a lot of Jewish people embraced the narrative about a return to their homeland, but isn't there a point where it should been "use it or lose it?"
From where I sit it feels as if the Palestinians (and other non-Jewish groups) have at least an equal claim to these lands.
Am I missing something?
Beyond that though is the question of the term "genocide." I understand what you're saying, but I also am watching an entire national entity (country? region? I don't know the right term) being bulldozed into nothing, and seeing something more than 25,000 people, reportedly including a large proportion of civilians and children, killed. To me it seems so very disproportionate, and I truly expect that at the end of this the entire Palestinian population will have been moved to somewhere outside of the boundaries of Israel.
I have no solutions, but thank you for the time and energy to explain much of this history to us.
Barry
ps - thank you for the alternate history of “From the River to the Sea”. Yes. I smiled.
No easy answers here, Barry. But here are two reading suggestions on the basic questions of Israel's origins and the question of the Occupied Territories: One Palestine Complete by Tom Segev. My Promised Land by Ari Shavit. Both are descended from earliest Zionists--meaning forebears arrived in Ottoman times. they are thoughtful and sceptical and their books are well worth your time. Best, Michael
Note that there is not archeological evidence for enslavement in Egypt, or 40 years of wandering.
Yes, oral traditions collated by Deuteronomists. Presumably they celebrated Passover and thought the story was real.
Of course, Immanuel Velikovsky had his theories to explain what might have gone on in that time when nothing was written down.
I copied this phrase: "the idea that Jews are settler colonialists," and then read the previous comments and answers. Thanks! But I still want to ask, what other nation-state is based on a single religion? (remembering that Netanyahu has stated that Israel is a Jewish state.) I'm thinking of the genesis of Buddhism now being declared a Hindu state, with settler Muslims being shunted aside? or how about Jerusalem, for the same reason, being declared Christian?
Modi's BJP in India would claim India is a Hindu state, King Charles is head of the church in England making Britain a Christian country, Saudi Arabia's ruler is called the keeper of the Holy Mosques and so Saudi is a Muslim state as is Pakistan. Israel is the Jewish state but it has a 20% Arab population most Muslim, some Christian, Bedouin, Druze.
Many insist America is a Christian nation too, tho I still prefer the notion of religious freedom.
I copied this phrase: "the idea that Jews are settler colonialists," and then read the previous comments and answers. Thanks! But I still want to ask, what other nation-state is based on a single religion? (remembering that Netanyahu has stated that Israel is a Jewish state.) I'm thinking of the genesis of Buddhism now being declared a Hindu state, with settler Muslims being shunted aside? or how about Jerusalem, for the same reason, being declared Christian?