If you don’t care what is happening in Palestine/Israel because it is not your problem, then I encourage you to pay attention to it for a very different reason.
No, not in method. I would not. But in intent yes. The intent was to take someone else's land. Though in Hitler's case he was seeking to reclaim lost Prussian territory, to re-establish a collapsed empire. But his intent was to take the land, just as the settlers of the US or Australia did. And I would compare it in result, or at least desired result. The desired result was the subjection of other peoples and their land. Hitler failed, spectacularly of course.
His method was very different. He tried to take established lands from armed peer states. Something which could only cause massive war. The colonists in the colonies took land slowly and methodically, only fighting when their opponents, the indigenous, fought back. Which was not always. Indigenous Australians barely put up a fight. Even native Americans sometimes just left to ho to other lands, rather than fight. That does change the fact that they were conquered. It just means the methods were not the same.
I'd put forward the US army strategy of annihilating the buffalo herds to starve the native Americans and force them to surrender as a keen example of how severe the people conquering America could be. And it is an example of siege warfare like any other.
It is true that peoples and countries have been invaded over the millennia and it is happening even today in the Ukraine. However, the land set aside for Israel in 1947 by the UN is only a portion of the land that God allocated to the Israelites in Numbers 34. The Canaanites had been the original inhabitants before hand, but had been set for destruction because of their sinfulness. Galilee was part of the land allocated to the tribe of Naphtali. It was devastated along with the rest of the Northern Kingdom during the Assyrian invasion of 721BC (2Kings15:29). Its population taken away into Assyria and repopulated by others from Assyria. That is why Isaiah refers to 'Galilee of the Gentiles' (Is 9:1), the only time that term is used in the OT. That in no way negates Jews regarding Galilee as part of their ancestral land. Also though they had Gentiles living amongst them doesn't mean Israel isn't their country, just as they do today.
Of course in 1947, there were people living in that region already, but not in large numbers. The Jews didn't steal any land, they bought often marginal land from willing sellers. The 'Palestinians', as they refer to themselves these days, are descended from the Muslim Arabs who invaded the Holy land in the 7th century, displacing the Jewish and Christian communities that existed there at the time. The Palestinians objected to the UN attempt at a two state division of the land then and refused several offers since. Instead they want all the land from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean coast, i.e. the complete destruction of Israel and (in Hamas' view) the death of every Jew in Israel. The Israelis have always accepted the presence of an Arab population in Israel. Some 1 million live peacefully with full citizen rights in Israel today, something journalists and news commentators rarely acknowledge. If only Hamas and other Palestinian leaders spent their tens of millions on infrastructure and their people instead of guns and missiles, they would have prosperous and dignified lives.
It's a myth that Palestinians are all Arabs. I don't make any claim I can't substantiate, they are indigenous to the land,
"Archaeologic and genetic data support that both Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites, who extensively mixed with Egyptians, Mesopotamian, and Anatolian peoples in ancient times. Thus, Palestinian-Jewish rivalry is based in cultural and religious, but not in genetic, differences. The relatively close relatedness of both Jews and Palestinians to western Mediterranean populations reflects the continuous circum-Mediterranean cultural and gene flow that have occurred in prehistoric and historic times."
I may address some of your other points today. But if you look up Israel on my page you'll find I've already covered some of them. On my blog I've covered all of them.
But note in Judges 2 God told the Israelites that because of their unfaithlesslness he will not let then drive out all the inhabitants of the land. But they will forever be there as a snare (Judges 2:1-5). So the Bible agrees with DNA research. They are at least in large part indigenous.
The land was never Israel's, it was always God's (Lev. 25:23). It was only given to them as a stewardship for those who obeyed God's word. They did not. Nor does modern Israel.
When their Lord came, our Lord Jesus Christ, he fulfilled the Old Testament and superseded it. He is the fulfillment. So using an obsolete covenant (Hebrew 8:13) to justify people following a religion that Moses never taught anyway (The Talmud, the religion of modern Jewish people, is not the Bible, but contradicts it), just does not fly.
I don't think we can compare the conquest of America or Australia with what is happening in Gaza / Palestine. My ancestors went East and killed lots of Asians to conquer land that the Communists took away from them just a few decades later. I accept that as part of my heritage but I won't judge my ancestors for it. Europe was overcrowded in the 1600-1800s which is why people either went West or East where there were vast amounts of land that was inhabited by a few nomadic peoples who were very little in number but claimed a lot of land at the same time. What happens when famers settle in nomads' land? War breaks out until a settlement is agreed.
What the State of Israel has been doing in Palestine is something entirely different. Nobody forced the Jews or Zionists to go to that specific geographic area. They chose to go there even though they've got an autonomous 'Oblast' in Russia that could house everyone of them. I assume the USA, Australia, and Canada would give them similar amounts of land with the option to establish an independent government as well. Instead, they chose Palestine, and they've been investing lots of time and resources into this endeavor starting in the 19th century if not earlier. My ancestors didn't do such things, did yours?
Another aspect is that Palestinians aren't nomads. Our ancestors might've been a bit naive to think they could settle in lands that were frequented by a tribe for a few weeks per year. They might've thought that those 'savages' wouldn't mind them building houses, fences, and churches because there was still a wide range of land left for them. Palestinians, on the other hand, have built cities and villages in that area a long time ago. It's not like they're only at home for two weeks a year. You have to push them away, out of their homes. You have to destroy their homes. This is a whole different issue than claiming and defending an uninhabited area.
Another crucial point that makes this hard to compare is that Palestine is being used by the Islamic world to point the finger at another evil. Islam dictates that Muslims have to flee when they're being persecuted and threatened with death. The Jews / Zionists know that and the Muslim world knows that. Why doesn't the latter just evacuate those people? They're all Muslims and probably Arabs, so what's the problem? The Jews / Zionists say "Look, that's their law! Why do they stay there? It's their own fault!" The Arabs / Muslims say "Look what the evil Jew does with us! Give us weapons and accept our people and religion invading your lands!"
I doubt that our ancestors used Talmudic and Islamic laws or victim consciousness to justify their conquest. The 'Indians', or 'indigenous people' in general, should finally accept what happened and stop whining and complaining. Everyone has suffered and everyone will suffer. That is the nature of this world. We Christians have been shown and told this by our Lord. Should we whine and complain about the Jews and Romans torturing and eventually killing our Lord as well? Or should we encourage those people to lose their victim consciousness?
I understand where you are coming from mate. I have made similar arguments myself in the past. But I have changed my mind, mostly because of what is happening with immigration in the West today. The West is being colonized, and we are now in the position of being increasingly sidelined in our own land. The mechanisms are not always exactly the same, but the intention (to take land) and the result (land is taken) are the same. So, I will make a few comments in response.
This is not about blame, just about acknowledging what happened. I am not saying we should try and reverse our situation here, that will just make things worse, and this is a cycle of this world anyway. People have lost their lands throughout history, continually. Just look at the Chinese finding Celtic people buried deep in their territory, because that was one their land, or how the native people of Japan, the Ainu, who are almost gone, or how Europeans once dominated in northern Africa for millennia, and countless examples. It is not about blame, it is about relentless honesty.
Saying the land was largely empty is something Zionists say a well. It is a common argument made by colonists. Are you not aware of this brother? Whenever my Australian friends try to argue that Palestine was empty and this justifies it being taken to create Israel, I look at them with a sideways glance and say, “You realize you are justifying someone coming and taking our country because it is mostly empty.” To which they usually don’t know what to say. I find it to be a strange argument. A land being largely empty means a people have a lot of room to spare, not that they should have it take from them.
Overpopulation? In the 17th century Europe had about 120 million people, now it has over 740 million people, and there is still heaps of room to spare. I have been to Europe, I have seen the beautiful forests and large open spaces. Many Europeans are concerned they have a population decline issue today, but they have far more people than they did in those previous eras, and still much room to spare for much larger growth. So, 120 million was not an overpopulation issue. The issue was the class systems of Europe made it easier for people to build wealth in the vast wildernesses of the Americas and other colonies, and the people there were often less capable of defending their land. So people went where they could take what they could not take in Europe.
Not all native American tribes were nomads. Many, even in North America, were settled peoples. There are even ruins of cities and temples in the southern states of the USA. The largest killer of native Americans was the diseases brought by accident by European peoples. Estimates of the native population range from the 60 million (the most accepted) to 112 million (more contentious), but by 1650 there were about 6 million. This rapid population decline broke entire civilisations in the Americas, and some of these were not discovered until relatively recently when their ruins were found in the vast Amazon jungles. Many primitive tribes have been found to be survivors of once relatively large and complicated societies. Some of these nations had terrible practices, I am not mourning their collapse, just noting what happened.
While they did not use the Talmud to make their justifications, Europeans used similar bad ideas to justify them taking the land from others. For example, the English justified their conquests with Locke’s theories of property and dispossession. This is just one example. Other countries had other similar arguments, some admitted it was just raw power like the Spanish which justified it. So, they used very similar spurious arguments to make their cases for colonization. Nothing is new about what is happening there.
I am not condemning all of these guys. It is a complicated web of events, history and conquest, and it did bring progress to much of the world. And this is one of the ways the world has progressed throughout history, through conquest and war. But it did happen, and often serious crimes were committed against far weaker peoples by European powers just because they could and no one could stop them. Just as crimes were committed against Europeans by the Ottomans when they were strong enough to do so. Or against the Eastern Europeans by steppe nomads for centuries.
My point in posting this article is for westerners to recognize what is happening to our own nations right now, they are being colonized. One day people might be saying how we didn’t really deserve our lands for a host of reasons as well, if we don’t stop this mass immigration issue.
No, not in method. I would not. But in intent yes. The intent was to take someone else's land. Though in Hitler's case he was seeking to reclaim lost Prussian territory, to re-establish a collapsed empire. But his intent was to take the land, just as the settlers of the US or Australia did. And I would compare it in result, or at least desired result. The desired result was the subjection of other peoples and their land. Hitler failed, spectacularly of course.
His method was very different. He tried to take established lands from armed peer states. Something which could only cause massive war. The colonists in the colonies took land slowly and methodically, only fighting when their opponents, the indigenous, fought back. Which was not always. Indigenous Australians barely put up a fight. Even native Americans sometimes just left to ho to other lands, rather than fight. That does change the fact that they were conquered. It just means the methods were not the same.
I'd put forward the US army strategy of annihilating the buffalo herds to starve the native Americans and force them to surrender as a keen example of how severe the people conquering America could be. And it is an example of siege warfare like any other.
But the methods are not exactly the same. No.
It is true that peoples and countries have been invaded over the millennia and it is happening even today in the Ukraine. However, the land set aside for Israel in 1947 by the UN is only a portion of the land that God allocated to the Israelites in Numbers 34. The Canaanites had been the original inhabitants before hand, but had been set for destruction because of their sinfulness. Galilee was part of the land allocated to the tribe of Naphtali. It was devastated along with the rest of the Northern Kingdom during the Assyrian invasion of 721BC (2Kings15:29). Its population taken away into Assyria and repopulated by others from Assyria. That is why Isaiah refers to 'Galilee of the Gentiles' (Is 9:1), the only time that term is used in the OT. That in no way negates Jews regarding Galilee as part of their ancestral land. Also though they had Gentiles living amongst them doesn't mean Israel isn't their country, just as they do today.
Of course in 1947, there were people living in that region already, but not in large numbers. The Jews didn't steal any land, they bought often marginal land from willing sellers. The 'Palestinians', as they refer to themselves these days, are descended from the Muslim Arabs who invaded the Holy land in the 7th century, displacing the Jewish and Christian communities that existed there at the time. The Palestinians objected to the UN attempt at a two state division of the land then and refused several offers since. Instead they want all the land from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean coast, i.e. the complete destruction of Israel and (in Hamas' view) the death of every Jew in Israel. The Israelis have always accepted the presence of an Arab population in Israel. Some 1 million live peacefully with full citizen rights in Israel today, something journalists and news commentators rarely acknowledge. If only Hamas and other Palestinian leaders spent their tens of millions on infrastructure and their people instead of guns and missiles, they would have prosperous and dignified lives.
It's a myth that Palestinians are all Arabs. I don't make any claim I can't substantiate, they are indigenous to the land,
"Archaeologic and genetic data support that both Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites, who extensively mixed with Egyptians, Mesopotamian, and Anatolian peoples in ancient times. Thus, Palestinian-Jewish rivalry is based in cultural and religious, but not in genetic, differences. The relatively close relatedness of both Jews and Palestinians to western Mediterranean populations reflects the continuous circum-Mediterranean cultural and gene flow that have occurred in prehistoric and historic times."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11543891/
I may address some of your other points today. But if you look up Israel on my page you'll find I've already covered some of them. On my blog I've covered all of them.
But note in Judges 2 God told the Israelites that because of their unfaithlesslness he will not let then drive out all the inhabitants of the land. But they will forever be there as a snare (Judges 2:1-5). So the Bible agrees with DNA research. They are at least in large part indigenous.
The land was never Israel's, it was always God's (Lev. 25:23). It was only given to them as a stewardship for those who obeyed God's word. They did not. Nor does modern Israel.
When their Lord came, our Lord Jesus Christ, he fulfilled the Old Testament and superseded it. He is the fulfillment. So using an obsolete covenant (Hebrew 8:13) to justify people following a religion that Moses never taught anyway (The Talmud, the religion of modern Jewish people, is not the Bible, but contradicts it), just does not fly.
This is pretty basic biblical theology.
I don't think we can compare the conquest of America or Australia with what is happening in Gaza / Palestine. My ancestors went East and killed lots of Asians to conquer land that the Communists took away from them just a few decades later. I accept that as part of my heritage but I won't judge my ancestors for it. Europe was overcrowded in the 1600-1800s which is why people either went West or East where there were vast amounts of land that was inhabited by a few nomadic peoples who were very little in number but claimed a lot of land at the same time. What happens when famers settle in nomads' land? War breaks out until a settlement is agreed.
What the State of Israel has been doing in Palestine is something entirely different. Nobody forced the Jews or Zionists to go to that specific geographic area. They chose to go there even though they've got an autonomous 'Oblast' in Russia that could house everyone of them. I assume the USA, Australia, and Canada would give them similar amounts of land with the option to establish an independent government as well. Instead, they chose Palestine, and they've been investing lots of time and resources into this endeavor starting in the 19th century if not earlier. My ancestors didn't do such things, did yours?
Another aspect is that Palestinians aren't nomads. Our ancestors might've been a bit naive to think they could settle in lands that were frequented by a tribe for a few weeks per year. They might've thought that those 'savages' wouldn't mind them building houses, fences, and churches because there was still a wide range of land left for them. Palestinians, on the other hand, have built cities and villages in that area a long time ago. It's not like they're only at home for two weeks a year. You have to push them away, out of their homes. You have to destroy their homes. This is a whole different issue than claiming and defending an uninhabited area.
Another crucial point that makes this hard to compare is that Palestine is being used by the Islamic world to point the finger at another evil. Islam dictates that Muslims have to flee when they're being persecuted and threatened with death. The Jews / Zionists know that and the Muslim world knows that. Why doesn't the latter just evacuate those people? They're all Muslims and probably Arabs, so what's the problem? The Jews / Zionists say "Look, that's their law! Why do they stay there? It's their own fault!" The Arabs / Muslims say "Look what the evil Jew does with us! Give us weapons and accept our people and religion invading your lands!"
I doubt that our ancestors used Talmudic and Islamic laws or victim consciousness to justify their conquest. The 'Indians', or 'indigenous people' in general, should finally accept what happened and stop whining and complaining. Everyone has suffered and everyone will suffer. That is the nature of this world. We Christians have been shown and told this by our Lord. Should we whine and complain about the Jews and Romans torturing and eventually killing our Lord as well? Or should we encourage those people to lose their victim consciousness?
I understand where you are coming from mate. I have made similar arguments myself in the past. But I have changed my mind, mostly because of what is happening with immigration in the West today. The West is being colonized, and we are now in the position of being increasingly sidelined in our own land. The mechanisms are not always exactly the same, but the intention (to take land) and the result (land is taken) are the same. So, I will make a few comments in response.
This is not about blame, just about acknowledging what happened. I am not saying we should try and reverse our situation here, that will just make things worse, and this is a cycle of this world anyway. People have lost their lands throughout history, continually. Just look at the Chinese finding Celtic people buried deep in their territory, because that was one their land, or how the native people of Japan, the Ainu, who are almost gone, or how Europeans once dominated in northern Africa for millennia, and countless examples. It is not about blame, it is about relentless honesty.
Saying the land was largely empty is something Zionists say a well. It is a common argument made by colonists. Are you not aware of this brother? Whenever my Australian friends try to argue that Palestine was empty and this justifies it being taken to create Israel, I look at them with a sideways glance and say, “You realize you are justifying someone coming and taking our country because it is mostly empty.” To which they usually don’t know what to say. I find it to be a strange argument. A land being largely empty means a people have a lot of room to spare, not that they should have it take from them.
Overpopulation? In the 17th century Europe had about 120 million people, now it has over 740 million people, and there is still heaps of room to spare. I have been to Europe, I have seen the beautiful forests and large open spaces. Many Europeans are concerned they have a population decline issue today, but they have far more people than they did in those previous eras, and still much room to spare for much larger growth. So, 120 million was not an overpopulation issue. The issue was the class systems of Europe made it easier for people to build wealth in the vast wildernesses of the Americas and other colonies, and the people there were often less capable of defending their land. So people went where they could take what they could not take in Europe.
Not all native American tribes were nomads. Many, even in North America, were settled peoples. There are even ruins of cities and temples in the southern states of the USA. The largest killer of native Americans was the diseases brought by accident by European peoples. Estimates of the native population range from the 60 million (the most accepted) to 112 million (more contentious), but by 1650 there were about 6 million. This rapid population decline broke entire civilisations in the Americas, and some of these were not discovered until relatively recently when their ruins were found in the vast Amazon jungles. Many primitive tribes have been found to be survivors of once relatively large and complicated societies. Some of these nations had terrible practices, I am not mourning their collapse, just noting what happened.
While they did not use the Talmud to make their justifications, Europeans used similar bad ideas to justify them taking the land from others. For example, the English justified their conquests with Locke’s theories of property and dispossession. This is just one example. Other countries had other similar arguments, some admitted it was just raw power like the Spanish which justified it. So, they used very similar spurious arguments to make their cases for colonization. Nothing is new about what is happening there.
I am not condemning all of these guys. It is a complicated web of events, history and conquest, and it did bring progress to much of the world. And this is one of the ways the world has progressed throughout history, through conquest and war. But it did happen, and often serious crimes were committed against far weaker peoples by European powers just because they could and no one could stop them. Just as crimes were committed against Europeans by the Ottomans when they were strong enough to do so. Or against the Eastern Europeans by steppe nomads for centuries.
My point in posting this article is for westerners to recognize what is happening to our own nations right now, they are being colonized. One day people might be saying how we didn’t really deserve our lands for a host of reasons as well, if we don’t stop this mass immigration issue.
Let's be honest here: Would you compare Hitler's conquest for the 'Lebensraum im Osten' to the conquest of America or Australia?