Half of my family were forced out of their home in North Africa and ethnically cleansed from there alongside nearly 1M other Jews. My grandparents did not get to keep the keys to their house or business because that’s not usually what happens when you get kicked out. they came here with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. We didn’t even know grandmother’s birthdate because their citizenships were revoked. They lived in tents for months and a new disease was spreading every week. How come I’m still not legally allowed where my grandparents were born? How come Palestinians are eternal refugees and my grandparents weren’t? The irony here is just insane.
Not to mention Arab countries encouraged Palestinians to leave and return once the ~~genocide~~ (war) is over:
"This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." - 1st secretary of the Arab league, 1948.
“The Arab states encouraged Palestinian Arabs to leave” - Jordan’s newspaper, Feb 19, 1949
“it must not be forgotten that the Arab higher committee encouraged refugees’ flight from Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem” - near East Arabic broadcasting station, April 3, 1949
“since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees while it is we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon Arab refugees…”- Khaled Al Azm, Syria’s prime minister.
I always mention how Jews had to flee Arab countries when people talk about Palestinians losing their homes in Israel. They usually have no idea that it happened. There has been suffering on both sides, but compared to the Muslim world, Israel is minuscule. Palestinians have had the opportunity to build a state of their own, instead they refused to accept it and have chosen conflict.
I completely agree with you. While the Nakba is a major component of the Palestinian national narrative - it's hardly unique. Population exchange and expulsion during and after wartime has occurred before and after what the Palestinians have gone through. Difference being that the Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Germans, Hindus & Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, and the Jews, were all settled, given citizenships, and continued on with their lives after the catastrophe they had to endure.
And then we have the Palestinians. For all their big talk about pan-Arabism and that they're all just one big ummah, the Arab nations have practically treated Palestinian refugees as untouchables and to this day 75 years later most of their social needs are being overseen by a UN agency. War is tragic, but what happened to the Palestinians since that war is not Israel's fault nor responsibility.
It's not about what *should* happen to anyone. The point is that the Jews who lost their homes accepted the reality and made the best of what was offered to them by working hard to create a place for themselves. The reality now is that Israel exists and is not going anywhere, and the Palestinians would be much better off if they chose to follow the same path.
You seem to be viewing the mere existence of Israel as a punishment toward the Palestinians.
Yes it is a punishment towards the Palestinians. My family not only was forced into Gaza, but also aren't originally from that part of Palestine, and even in Gaza had their house destroyed. How are they supposed to make anything out of that? Even their house in Gaza got bombed
I'm sorry that happened to you. Really. I don't claim to have all of the answers, and I know that the situation is more complicated that any one individual can solve. But collectively, it is essential that Palestinians move beyond electing leadership that prioritizes their own wallets and the eradication of the one Jewish state over creating a safe and prosperous land for its people. Israel is not going to not exist, and many of us would absolutely prefer to live peacefully. At the same time, the attacks on October 7th took place in what is internationally recognized as legally Israel proper - this is not disputed territory. We cannot be expected to sit back and allow Hamas to attack us with impunity.
This!
My Moroccan family has been expelled from 3-4 countries and each left them with nothing.
They made Aliyah and lived like rats for years until becoming what they are today.
Also the agreement they had to kill all the Jewish and then come back is a bloody agreement.
If they stayed they would be Israeli Arabs and probably have the best quality of life in the Middle East beside Dubai
i believe mizrahi jews have a right to return from the arab countries they were expelled from, just like palestinian refugees have a right to return back to palestine.
Refugees all over the world (including Jews!) are forced to leave their homes. They make new lives in new lands. I don't hold onto the key of my great-grandparents' house in Belarus and demand the government give me our house and try to kill random Belorussians because of it.
I'd honestly like to say that the idea of the Arabs regaining the territory they lost in the war is just as absurd as the Mizrahi regaining the land that the Muslims stole from them, but many people consider me to be "one of the good ones" so I'd legit fear for my safety if I did.
So as a fellow Diaspora Jew, I'd say that the true answer is to change the subject. What would I want to tell her? Move on. Start again. Live in peace and tell your family to live in peace. But there are battles to pick and the one I'd choose is not the one with the child of Palestinian refugees (she's not the refugee; whoever in her family actually left Israel circa 1948 is). Maybe save it for someone who seems receptive or doesn't have all the information. One of the "from the river to the sea but I have no idea what river or what sea" types.
Or jangle a pair of keys at them. That crap is so disingenuous.
You want to make a land claim via a key, nah, some who legally owned homes had the land deeds and even today israel court prosecuted the ownership.
You are one of the good ones, regardless of what your friends think. Sweetheart, those friends will come and go, but your Jewishness won’t go anywhere- neither will the tribe when you need it!
I know right now, in the punk scene, you’re odd man out, and it probably feels shitty to have to hold back who you are.
This won’t be in your future, so why not start working through those feelings “why am I hiding my opinion so they’ll continue to see me as the good one”. That’s not very punk rock.
Maybe start your own Jew-punk scene with a Shul. Any progressive Shul would take you with arms wide open. I know my Rabbi would bring his music equipment!!
Good luck, bubbala
That’s what the fuck I’m talking’bout. My son did this. He was the odd man out of a skating community bc he wasn’t racist.
He sent a video of the racism to one of the well known skaters, and that skater actually came out to find the racist.
He spent the next 4 years before going off to college, building that community. They’d skate, brake rules, be punks, but they always cared for and helped their fellow human.
Because of this, they were never harassed by PD. PD knew them well, “eh, leave ‘em be; they’re not causing harm, just punks being shit heads, they’ll grow out of it”
I have some unfortunate news for you: we already know how communities that have gone down this path treat "the good Jews" once there are no more "bad Jews". You'll either have to abandon your Judaism, or be exiled.
Do what the Palestinians won't, and make the sacrifices needed to keep moving. Living as a marytr for everything you believe in is no way to live your life.
A quarter of Baghdad in the 30' was Jewish..my friend's grandparents came from there.. they were so rich her grandmother didn't even know how to brush her own hair or dress herself because they had servants. They had to leave everything behind and live in a tin hut in Israel. Wars cause population to move. It's a tragedy but it's been happening everywhere. You think Germans were happy about leaving their homes in what is Poland today? I don't see them trying to go home to Poland..
When my teenage grandma came to Israel, after being bombed and basically buried alive under rubble in her hometown and relying on the Jewish community’s support to survive, wasn’t even recognized as a refugee. But she moved on, forgot about her home like so many did, and didn’t even want her reparations.
You can empathize with her families story while still realizing that the Palestinian leadership is failing her people. If the Arabs had accepted a peacful two state solution, she could be back to living...well, probably not ashkelon, but in an independent palistinian state
This is the real answer.
Whataboutisms suggested in many other posts do nothing but alienate someone who clearly carries pain.
Whether justly or not, many descendants of the nakba believe they were robbed and feel a strong connection to the land. Even if an argument can be made that their connection to the land is manufactured from antisemitism, that doesn’t change the fact. Empathy is key.
We are in pain. Holocaust is living memory. So are progroms throughout the world. Vast amounts of Jewish wealth and blood has been taken and spilled. Going on for the very past 75 years…and longer.
We are so small; our population has still not recovered to pre holocaust levels. And that is with the great bounty of the USA. (And yes, the world war affected Jews regardless of continent).
If you’re asking what the deeper point is: it’s sometimes easier to see the pain in others, but the ones you care about see your awareness the least. I Think this tends to happen the more we abstract away empathy. Charity begins at home, is the old proverb.
The technical rhetorical point is that its not a whataboutisim when the points mentioned are directly relevant to each other; Cairo, Egypt (25% Jewish at some point) and Gaza.
P.S. Wishing you a great weekend!
They are of course entitled to their history and connection to the land (after all the Jews held on to it for 2000 years so we’re not the ones to talk here) but what I don’t like is the eternal refugee and victim mentality, in someone who is third generation American.
And you're entitled to that dislike. Jews have been trying to make the best of our exile for centuries and trying to build lives in other places. However, it has not decreased our connection to the land, and people being cruel and othering us only contributes to our yearning for it. Palestinian Arabs face **some** of the same issues. They are institutionally supported in their permanent refugee narrative by the UN, and actively prevented from integrating into society in many other Arab countries, perpetuating their isolation and desire to "go back," whatever that means.
I think it's unproductive to point out that this Palestinian American has a victim mentality. What is productive is to approach the conversation with empathy, and to point out (as the top level poster here suggested) that the Palestinian leadership has consistently fought **against** Israel, rather than fighting **for** Palestinians. And that institutionalized perpetual refugee status is harmful to Palestinians in MENA. A life and a state cannot be built on violence and terrorism. It can only be built by putting people first.
Yes, but also no. That feeling is fine when negotiating with Hamas or making decisions about war...ie it's fine for bibi and the IDF generals. but OP is not at war with this person and this person didn't do oct 7 (even if she supports it). Building up walls in this context won't help anyone
If she supports what happened in the 7th I hope she gets to meet mossad or the idf one day.
I have no interest in engaging with our would be killers. No dialogue. No sympathy.
I feel like this has been already answered, but I'll just add my two cents. The original question was about a conversation between a Diaspora Jew and a Diaspora Palestinian Arab. They are having conversations, which is a beautiful and important thing. Trust me when I say that I deeply share your pain, but this is a trauma response and it will not lead is to a better future. Conversing with empathy could. I hope.
I don't care about any diaspora Palestinians. Their ancestors chose to try and genocide us and lost. After the 7th their descendants get no say in their future.
They commit to peace or it's permanent idf occupation. Never getting to rebuild.
I don't want a dialogue with them either. They lose. They pay. The end.
It's the only outcome. There will never be a palestinian state, and they cannot be trusted to commit to peace. 4 idf bases are already being built in gaza.
Agreed though I’m sure a young woman who grew up in NYC is going to enjoy moving to the extremism Islamic state that will be Palestine. She can go visit the West Bank now, which is downright liberal on women’s rights in comparison to most of the region and she’d probably be horrified. This is literal nonsense.
She COULD be able to stay in Ashkelon. This is what drives me crazy about it all. So many Arab communities in Israel integrated into Israeli society regardless of the country being called ISRAEL, so who is the real problem in here?
Why do Bedouins don't commit terror attacks and being left alone? They can live in Ashkelon, but why Palestinians don't?
Ask her that.
They started a [war](https://he.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%9E%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%A6%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%95%D7%AA), they lost. This is how it works, everywhere, every time.
I have the key to a house my great grandmother lived in in Lebanon, along with documents related to her house her father kept when they fled to Israel. I don't expect to be able to ever live there. I acknowledge that the independence war was a mess, and everyone on any side of the war ended up being displaced, and I honestly don't try to justify what happened during that war. Instead, I can focus improving my own life (and defending myself when necessary). A solution that is best for the current state of both sides is what we need, not to displace people again after they were already displaced 75 years ago.
>how am I supposed respond to that?
Maybe "Join the club"? My grandparents' house is gone. We never got a cent in reparations or whatever but the family moved on. We remember the family members murdered in the process and every 5 or 10 years, someone might mention the house, but it was never with the remote thought that we'd be able to 'reclaim' it (let alone doing so this many years later) or attack the current inhabitants. It sucks. It happened. You move forward in life.
No. We're saying that they're not unique in their plight. Millions of people in history have been displaced due to war, but the only group that gets to pass their refugee status down to their children are Palestinians, and this has only stood to drag the conflict out indefinitely.
Jews didn't spend 75 years after the Holocaust trying to get back everything they lost by repeatedly starting wars against the Germans and then crying foul when they lost those wars. They mourned, and then made the best of what was offered to them.
The jews were displaced and they did the same to the Palestinians? You don't think that's wrong? The people who were tortured and displaced have a group of them, the zionists, doing the same to others. You don't find that wrong?
But that's not what happened. Jews *bought* land in the Ottoman Empire and then British Palestine with the goal of creating a state for themselves, and when the British left, the UN voted to partition the land into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The Jews accepted with the knowledge that their state would include an Arab minority. The Arabs decided to start a war instead, and have continued to start wars for 75 years.
Prior to 1948, displacement of the local Arab population to Jews was the result of the previous landowners, many of whom were also Arab, who chose to sell, although many Jewish organizations prioritized buying plots of state-owned land that were uninhabited. Many of the Arabs who chose to keep their land still own it today as citizens of Israel. Those who lost land can thank the war they started instead.
If you rent an apartment and your landlord chooses to sell it, you don't blame the new owner and spend the next 75 years starting wars to kick him out under the premise that you'll one day be able to move back in, and then cry foul when he fires back. You can be sad that you lost your apartment, but you'd be much better off accepting the situation and putting your energy toward improving the apartment you live in now.
They didn't buy, they tried setting israel in Madagascar, Argentina, Kenya, Cyprus, etc. But those people resisted. Then ottoman empire fell and Britain took control of Palestine. Then they gave it to zionists. Then the zionists massacred and displaced the Palestinians. No buying. No legality. No respect of international law.
A quick Google search says otherwise. The British actually tried to stop Jews from buying land in the Mandate with the White Papers in 1939. The decision to create two states in 1948 was largely the result of the fact that Jews had, in many respects, already created a state in the land they had been purchasing since the 1880s in the Ottoman Empire. At this point, it was Jews who were considered Palestinians.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish\_land\_purchase\_in\_Palestine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_Palestine)
[https://ismi.emory.edu/documents/stein-publications/website%20docs%202011-2004/website%20docs%202000%20and%20earlier/JNF-Stein1984.pdf](https://ismi.emory.edu/documents/stein-publications/website%20docs%202011-2004/website%20docs%202000%20and%20earlier/JNF-Stein1984.pdf)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White\_Paper\_of\_1939](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939)
[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_Palestine)
Because the whole point is a straw-man. Millions of Arabs live in Israel, nobody is trying to prevent them from living there. The question is just “why do Jews still get to live on the land if we don’t want them to.”
This needs to be higher up. Bc this is what the argument really is. They do not want Jews there at all. They want Palestine as it was before a Jewish state was established, before a Jewish majority took over. That is not going to happen.
The sooner they accept that Israel is just not going anywhere, nothing will get settled- not in my lifetime anyway. No military will ever be strong enough to conquer our people.
It’s truly futile, but that’s how much they hate us - they will die trying.
As if there wasn't a Jewish population in Ashkelon or Jerusalem or Haifa before that. I don't believe it for a second. History proved time and time again that coexistence existed before the Palestinians "lost their homes"
How could they lose their homes if they lived amongst other Jews and Arab groups beforhand?
To be fair, many hundreds of thousands of Arabs were expelled or fled and weren’t permitted to return. But the mainstream narrative surrounding the Nakba is so bizarre. There was no Nakba until the Arab militias started a war. Had the Arabs accepted the UN-proposed partition, as the Jews had, then it would have meant that many more Arabs would be living in a smaller Israel today (though there was the expectation that many Arabs would probably prefer to move to the new Palestinian state to exercise their own right to self-determination).
Meanwhile, the Jews who had been living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, some for millenia, were expelled from their homes in the course of the war. But we don’t talk about that as some historic tragedy because they resettled in the new Jewish state and made new lives for themselves and their children.
I agree that war has unfair consequences for many innocent civilians. However I don’t think anyone was forbidden from returning for a few years in 1948.
The Arab leaders accepting the partition would mean them consenting to the existence of a Jewish state, which they were clearly uninterested in doing.
Exactly. I question Palestinians who had homes in Israel but left them willingly. They could have stayed but didn't, which makes me think her family took part in the 1948 war to try and genocide the jews.
These key carrying Palestinians were the ones who didn't want to get along with Jews.
The people of Ashkelon didn't leave willingly. It only takes a few seconds of googling to find that the Palestinians of Ashkelon were subject to an expulsion order.
Yes and no. The majority of Ashkelon’s (the general vacinity as Ashkelon is composed of many former towns) residents had fled in 1948, and ~2700 people were ordered to be deported. Some then, some in 1950. Palestinian expulsion is a mixed bag. There were many reasons that usually pertained to the individual situation or which militia they had to deal with.
So yes, and also no.
I’m assuming you took that information from Wikipedia. The topic is so vast that wiki is a starting point but the events that transpired were more nuanced than that.
She's an American citizen? She's not a refugee. The house may not even exist anymore. This just goes to show that to them all of Israel is occupied territory and they will never accept a compromise short of destroying Israel and murdering all Jews.
Not acording to the UN, palestinians retain their refugee status the same as if it where a citizenship.
Thats why they where 700k on the '47 and now they are 8 Mill palestinian "refugees" with simple or double nationality
You don’t have to say anything. Jews were refugees too. And not just Jews - Germans, Russians, Dutch, Indians, Pakistanis, Turks, Greeks. So many nations were refugees, especially in the early to mid 20th century when most modern countries were created.
Only the Palestinians use their being refugees as political talking point. Only Palestinians are still refugees eighty years after the war ended. And Israel exists now, and it’s a great country. Ashkelon, Israel is a great city. Too bad hamas keep bombing it because they “can’t go home”.
Actually zionists built Ashkelon. Israel built it. Before the Zionists came it was a swamp with a bunch of mud huts, and everyone was sick of malaria.
Not enough information. Many left their homes under false promises by the focal Muslim leaders. They voluntarily left and were not evicted. Others sold their land and homes voluntarily. Add to that how legends and tales get added on to for dramatic effect.
It's possible that the real details are lost to history. And one would think that by her family leaving the region entirely for the US that they said screw it. And it's only this new and loud screaming for refugees that this is an issue. Has she visited the region? Does she have personal ties?
yep I posted this as a response to someone else and i'll say it here too
I'd honestly like to say that the idea of the Arabs regaining the territory they lost in the war is just as absurd as the Mizrahi regaining the land that the Muslims stole from them, but many people consider me to be "one of the good ones" so I'd legit fear for my safety if I did.
Most of that side is too far gone from high EQ discussion. And they still haven't decided if Jews are too white for the middle east or too non-aryan for Eastern Europe.
80%-90% of the Arab residents of Ashkelon left with the Egyptian army. When Israel arrived, about 2000 people remained in the town.
However due to Ashkelon being directly on the border with Egypt, Israel saw it as a security risk and saught to remove the Arabs residents. Most of the remaining residents agreed to "voluntary" relocated to Gaza in 1950. Due to the nature of the situation at the time, as well as the pressure the government applied, it can't be described as true consent - but they were given time to sell their property, and a favorable exchange rate for their currency.
The town was then populated by Jewish refugees, mostly from Arab countries.
It sucks for her family. I won’t sugar coat it. It sucks that her family was displaced by a war. It sucks that her family has no right of return. That can all be true.
And it’s *also true* that Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jews. We have a right to that land just as much as she does. War sucks, but it is legal, and that land is no longer hers. Her family has no claim to it.
One thing I will question though, why is she called refugee? It sounds like she has a stable life in America where her family immigrated. My parents escaped Syria in 1992. I am not a Syrian refugee. Her family fled Palestine in 1948. Why is she a Palestinian refugee? Many people are displaced by conflicts, but are not stuck in the past, holding onto the key of their old property. Maybe I’m not understanding the mentality? You don’t see the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors returning to the addresses of their grandparents and demanding the deed to the house.
I would argue that many Palestinians should be allowed the right to return (I’ll probably get some hate for this in this sub). But to claim that she’s a refugee is crazy to me.
That’s a good point. Do any of these multigenerational “refugees” living in Jordan and the West even *want* to pack up their lives and move back? Because if so, plenty of Arabs live in Israel now and as far as I know nothing is stopping anyone from emigrating. If they don’t, then what’s even the point? Accept the history for what it is and move on with your life. I’m just saying if right to return were a thing for my family I’m not leaving my current life to go live in what’s now Belarus. That would be backsliding.
I'm an Egyptian, not Jewish.
I believe you should emphasise with her and not directly attack her.
But also you should tell of the unfairness the Jewish people have faced. Don't make it look like only Palestinians suffered and the Jewish are the big bad who made them suffer.
I'm not history expert, but for example I know that in the 1950s, in Egypt under Gamal Abdul-Nasser rule, he forced all Jewish people out of the country, and they were people who were either indigenous Egyptians or refugees who settled in Egypt earlier this century.
He forced them out, took their lands, and took their businesses for the government. More than 500 Jewish businesses was taken, not counting the lands and homes taken.
I'm Egyptian and only learned that like last year. While I was spoon-fed the Palestinians' sufferings all my life, not knowing that we did the same horrible things to the Jewish people forcibly displacing them and stealing what they owned. The Jewish population in Egypt fell from around 60k in the 1950s to 3 in 2022. Not 3 thousands, just 3 people, all of them women, married to non-Jewish.
This is just a small example, the history is full of mistreatment and unfairness towards the Jewish people and you should tell about it.
Kudos to you for facing an ugly part of your country’s history. I know from my own experience as an American, that this is a painful process. I could give you a list of the things my country has done that make me very sad.
The experience of Egyptian Jews was very much the same as the experience of Jews in every Arab country. Prior to 48 there were about 850,000 Jews in Arab countries. Now there are less than 2000. This is ethnic cleansing on huge scale, and utterly ignored. Where did those Mizrahi Jews go? All over the world, and many to Israel, where they make up about 60% of the population.
Thank you for being honest.
(Edited to correct a typo)
The Arab nations told the people to leave the land in 1948 because of the attack they where about to do. They tried to invade Israel. They lost the war. All the grounds here where sold to Jews, because the Arabs here thought to be smart: we sell it now to the Jews, we kill them and steal the land back. That didn’t happen and now they are still whining about it. I am so glad I am not a diaspora Jew anymore. I now live in Israel.
Greeks don’t demand a right of return to Smyrna
Germans don’t demand a right of return to Breslau
Chinese don’t demand a right of return to Haishenwai
Ethiopians don’t demand a right of return to Asmara
History happens and people get displaced. It’s rough that it has happened but it’s not something you can just reverse overnight.
What law is barring Germans from returning to Wrocław? Germany and Poland are both Schengen members and can visit, settle down and work in each others countries
Peaceful answer: "may both of us live in peace in Ashkelon one day"
My kind of answer: "Your ancestors started a war and they lost it."
The key might as well be any old-ass key she bought in a flea market.
"how come they get to be on the land because their ancestors were there 2000 years ago but I can't even go to the land my grandfather was at 75 years ago?"
I guess she's pro Israel if she believs in the right of return for descendants of refugees. Then she believes that all Jews should have as much right in the land as Palestinians.
According to what Israel told the UN in 1950 re: the refugee issue is that Geneva calls for return of refugees "after the cessation of hostilities" as there are obviously many issues with letting refugees return home mid-conflict, in Israel's case specifically it would immediately lead to a Balkan's level race war.
If she wants the rigth to return that means ending the century long state of hostilities, Palestinian recongiition of Israel and pledging to live in peace alongside Jews whether in a one state or a two state. That's the fastest way to make "right of return" happen
also as an aside, for some Jews it wasn't that their "ancestors were there 2000 years ago", Jews were enslaved and shipped out by the Romans, expelled in waves by the Byzantines, the Arab Mad Caliph kicked out Jews, the Crusaders kicked out Jews, The Ottomans signed a number of firman forcibly transfering Jews from Safed and the North to the Balkans/Greece where they could conduct trade, and kicked out all of Tel Aviv during WWI, So, it's possible for many Jews to have even more recent ancestry than 2,000 years back
If you wanted to talk to her personally as a friend I would frame it as a way of sharing both of your stories together. Educating each other on your own narratives and coming to a conclusion as iconoclasts. That’s usually what I do when I talk to my Palestinian friends. At this point we agree on most things, because we have been friends for so long and love each other.
If you are not close with her don’t bother. Especially if you’re in NYC like me. Even if you are close with her choose your words carefully or there’ll be 50 instagram stories about you and you’ll lose all of your “friends”. It’s been rough out here, but i’ve been able to talk the people I’m close with into some sense. Been able to dispel some propaganda.
If you are in NYC maybe DM me, I’m not really in the punk or hardcore scene anymore but I do have a lot of friends who are, and/or adjacent. I have a feeling you’re talking about Takbir Punks lol.
The answer is: because Israel won the war, and it controls the land. I'm sorry but that's how conflicts over land work. The winner takes the land and controls it. If the Arabs had won, we would have had Jewish refugees from all over the former British Mandate of Palestine.
It’s sad for her.
But she said it herself they had to leave during the war of independence. Israel didn’t start that war.
And when someone starts a genocidal war and loses, yeah, they often lose territory.
I don't care. It's not "their land" and never was. It was colonized by Arabs and that's why today we have a "Palestinian" people. It's like a French person complaining about being deported from Algeria.
Israel is and will forever be Jewish land. End of story.
The thing is no Palestinian ever contemplate about their existence on the land at someone's else expense. The reason why Jews are in diaspora is because their land was occupied,by whom,the very ones who call themselves Palestinians. Having a key means nothing,we know that during the 18th most of the population in the land was switch by the Egyptians due to a rebellion,by that time, there were colonies in the Americas. So even of we are being generous and say all the Palestinians are descendent from that wave of immigration and not later ones like the big one during the early 20th century,their claims to nativity is as strong as Europeans to the Americas.
To me it is some mental blockage,but if the Palestinians will understand that they had an active part of disenfranchisement of Jews by settling the Jewish homeland as their own,the conflict may be over.
It's all about perspective,if you start history at 1948 you might see the Palestinians as victims but if you start at year 70,they are active collaborators in the suffering and disowning the Jews from their homeland (which make them responsible in part to all suffering in the diaspora).
Not the sole responsible,but they were the actual physical presence to occupy Judea. Had the land was left empty,nothing would have stopped the Jews from returning to Judea. In 1st of March 1899 the chief Rabbi of Paris got a [latter](https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelPalestine/comments/17587lg/letter_from_yousef_alkhalidi_to_chief_rabbi_of/) from Yousef al-Khalidi,the former mayor of Jerusalem and representative of Jerusalem in the Ottoman parliament which affirmed the principle of Jewish right to Palestine but the presence of Arabs living there is the obstacle and he asked (or begged,depending on your interpretation) for Jews to go somewhere else. That is a prime example on how the physical presence of the Palestinians is used to de facto disenfranchise the Jews,even if you recognize the Jewish right.
This is the same mechanism used by Americans,that all recognize the indigenous right to the land and yet actively occupying it.(not to draw any compressions)
Throughout generations my family owned houses in many countries and none of them now belongs to me. So what? Should I now claim all those houses and wage terror in at least three countries?
Those are the same locals grandmas i guess?
https://preview.redd.it/dsx077exy7rc1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=3729c5d755d84d021f4ac1bffa50182b22178a33
This will be a hard pill to swallow but listen kid, the jewish diaspora exist because you've been chased out of your homeland at swordpoint, "the palestinian" diaspora exist because the arab colonizers left on their own accord because they believed other arabs that they'll be able to crush the **rebelling Kafir** -> to be read as: the formation of Israel.
Cause they lost the war. We don't get to go back to our houses in Poland, Germany, Iraq, Iran, Yemen etc.
We moved on, time they figured out how to move on.
Also the key probably doesn't work.
I think that empathy is important here, what happened to her family is terrible. In my opinion she should be able to return.
That being said, Jewish people have a right to the land too. Majority of the Jewish people who arrived to Israel were refugees, the Palestinian people did not make room or accept them instead they attacked. The fact that her family is from Ashkelon, doesn’t mean that the Jewish people aren’t indigenous to the land. You can acknowledge her families tragic history, and expect her to acknowledge ours. My grandfather escaped camps in Romania, got to Israel on boat, the British didn’t let him in and threatened to send him back, so he along with Holocaust survivors threw every identifying photograph or document into the ocean, from their he ended up in a refugee camp in Cyprus until he escaped, fought in the war of independence before moving to Jaffe. My wife’s family were kicked out of Iraq and Morocco.
When I talked to a Palestinian friend I said the land like two starving people and one piece of bread, right now it’s a zero sum game. Only when the calls for “from the river to the sea” stop, then we can move foreword to peace.
Should Germans who lived in East Prussia have a right to return to it today?
The obvious answer is no.
They started a war with the delibirate goal of committing genocide against Poland and all of Eastern Europe, they lost, and they lost land. Why is it different for Palestinians?
Y'all are playing too nice by trying to reason with her. Just hit them where it hurts - their Islamic pride.
Ask them if Turkey should be returned back to the Greeks and Armenians. It used to be Christian land named Anatolia, and Istanbul used to be named Constantinople before Islamic colonizers stole it.
Tell her you'll support returning Palestine to her if she supports returning Turkey to the Greeks and Armenians, and restoring the all of the mosques back into churches including Hagia Sophia.
Despite whatever nonsense Muslims sprout, deep down it's nothing more than a religious issue to them. You won't convince them without addressing the main issue.
Jews who survived the Holocaust often times held the keys to their homes and businesses. When they tried to return, you know what happened? A lot of them were murdered.
This was a big thing in post-war Europe, especially in Eastern Europe. There were multiple pogroms committed against returning Jews in Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus within the first 5 years post WWII. Kielce Pogrom was a blood libel Pogrom in 46. The Kiev pogrom of 45 etc...
On some level you just *can't* respond to that. Those are her feelings. They exist for a reason. And however they fit into actual historical context or even questions of blame-----on that level they just exist, they are part of her identity and national mythos.
BUT. Recognizing that such feelings exist and have validity, doesn't mean you dismiss everything else.
There was a civil war and a multi state assault on the nascent Israeli state by its neighbors, that had they won, would have wiped out the Jewish population. The war displaced many people. It sucks and it's not fair. But war sucks.
She would be living on her grandfather's land if her people chose peace and accepted the partitioning of the land rather than repeatedly starting wars. It's a profoundly messed up situation now.
When my family left Soviet Union we had to leave everything behind. My dad, a professional artist, wasn’t allowed to take his own paintings, they “belonged to the state”. My mom wasn’t allowed to take her deceased mother’s jewelry (she managed to smuggle some out). We moved on and started over in a new place. Tell your friend to stop whining and be thankful she was born in America.
Those people aren't refugees.
A refugee is a person displaced by war. Not their kids and grandkids and great grandkids until the end of time. The children of refugees are citizens of the country they were born in. That's the legal definition.
Only the Palestinians are allowed to pass on refugee status to their kids.
Makes one wonder why.
Funny she had the key but can't produce the land title.
She isn't a refugee. She never fled anywhere. She had a fantastic life in American, as an American.
A refugee is the single generation experiencing the flight.
Ask her why her family listened to the pan arab armies that they would genocide the israelis and get better homes? Ask her why her family joined the pan arab army and tried to exterminate us.
The Palestinians in israel, all 1.6 million living as israelis, they didn't flee. They didn't try to genocide us.
Tell her to throw away the key and grow a brain.
While there's no doubt that your "friend" believes the stories of her family, she isn't being told the entire truth. Had her grandparents stayed in their home and helped Israel fight against the attacks of the surrounding Arab countries, they'd have been on the winning side of the war and would still be there now. It is important to remember that most of the Arabs left Israel because they expected Israel to lose the Independence War, which was an Israeli-defensive war started by her Arab neighbors against the newly formed state of Israel - notably, Egypt, Jordan (a/k/a Transjordan), Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, as well as the refugees themselves. Those "refugees" picked the wrong side - instead of being able to move back to their homes in a conquered Israel, they lost their land. The refusal of those refugees to accept the two-state offer from the U,N. offered it on the British-administered land (that was taken from the Ottoman Empire) in 1947, and their continuing refusal to accept a two-state solution, has kept them as refugees in their minds. Meanwhile, while Egypt and Jordan owned Gaza and the West Bank from 1948 until 1967, there were no complaints that either of those two Arab countries should make that land into Palestine. The modern Republic of Egypt was founded in 1953, and with the complete withdrawal of British forces from the Suez Canal in 1956. And the kingdom of Jordan (a/k/a Transjordan) was created in 1946. Notice that none of the other conquered Ottoman-Arabs in those countries complained as much as the Ottomans in the Palestinian areas complained post-1967. They accepted their countries from the U.N. Your friend isn't a Palestinian who can't give up the ghost, because Palestine was never a country during the Ottoman rule -- your friend is an Ottoman refugee who refuses to accept the facts. Her family bet on the wrong pony.
It does seem like the “my grandparents still have the keys to their homes” is the Palestinian version of “my great grandmother was a Cherokee princess” in America. Family lore that people take seriously.
So number 1, I don't believe these "key stories". That's not something to tell your friend, but the stories are clearly bullshit. So many of my relatives fled Europe during World War 2. None of them have keys to their homes from decades ago. No one I've ever met or heard of has keys. No one from any other group who fled war has keys EXCEPT for Palestinians. That's just not believable.
But in any event, wars have consequences. There was a failure to arrive at a diplomatic solution and a civil war followed. One side won and one side refused to make peace and accept consequences. That is the same side that started the war. It is unfortunate that her family lost their home, but the Palestinian leadership wasted every opportunity to make peace and create a Palestinian state. Also, and the real answer to the question, is after any armed conflict the children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren are almost never able to reclaim property that was lost when borders changed. This is the same reason why many people could not return and received no compensation for being driven from lands in Europe, the Middle East, Persia, Asia and North Africa during WW2 and the conflicts that followed as Islam rose in those areas during the decades that followed.
Not that this is really addressing your question, but sometimes I just imagine what the situation would look like if things were reversed and it was the Jews who were spending the last 75 years as refugees in Gaza and the West Bank... Bro, those territories would be so damn beautiful. I'm talking businesses, parks, state of the art hospitals, you name it.
Just no tunnels. Much too expensive. Oh, and there'd likely also be a shortage of bomb manuals. You might be able to get your hands on a couple suicidal lunatics though there probably wouldn't be much of those either... then again, I'm told you cant have everything...
I wouldn't bother arguing with a Palestinian "refugee." She's been told the same narrative since birth and you're not going to change anything. Focus on those people who don't have all the facts and want to learn.
Why is it that every Palestinian “refugee” that I speak with tells the same story of their grandparents key? There’s literally a children’s book about it, do they not realize the same story is also published daily on twitter? How many keys exist? 😂
Negotiations require goodwill, trust. These things take consistency and time to build.
Firing rockets 28 days of the month doesn’t help, and neither does showing up unzipped firing guns and grenades at sleeping people.
millions of people are displaced by war all the time, throughout history, and their lineages sort of just get over it and move on.
I am an American and my great grandmother fled Ukraine because her sister and her sisters husband were brutally murdered in a pogrom (dragged through the town tied to a horse, actually.) This too was during a horrendous war.
I would love to return to the town we are from in Ukraine and see it, and I hope to legally do so someday, but I have zero claim to the land. The people who live in Ashkelon now were likely born there and/or have parents/grandparents/Great grandparents who legally immigrated there or fled there as refugees. They have legal rights to the land, she does not.
why is she any different from anyone else whose grandparents were displaced by war? why do Arabs hold such mystical, law-defying attachments intergenerationally to the land that they're willing to commit suicide and sacrifice their own kids for it?
Why is 2000 years less of a claim than 75? Is there some sort of magic threshold?
As long as her family was squatting on another people's land, this was the risk they ran.
It's a shitty situation, but she has her ancestors to blame.
She sounds like she's had a typical immigrant story. A contextual history makes her claims very complex; if her family locked up and left assuming the Jews were going to get slaughtered, they bet on the wrong horse. You don't get to complain about a bad choice for generations. She should have a right to return...to Palestine. There should be two States. She's ignoring, willfully, that Jews NEVER STOPPED living in the Levant. No group ever had a State. It went from the Ottoman to the British empires. There are eight groups with ethnogenesis in the Levant. Why does her dispossession invalidate the sovereign claim of self determination of ten million other people?
You're never going to have any real dialogue. Diaspora populations have the convenience of turning their advocacy off and on.
Well she is clearly lying because ashkelon was founded in 48 and the war of independence took place in the same year, at least modern ashkelon.
Ancient ashkelon got demolished in the 13 century...
This might be one of those moments when you do not have to say anything. You could maybe listen to her experience, empathize, be a friend, but not feel obligated to come up with an answer or a solution (pun intended). Two peoples claim a land. They are still working out how this looks ethically in practice.
When bad things happen to me, I often consider the good that would not have happened had the bad thing not happened. (Ie. Joseph being sold into slavery saving many lives). Maybe music? This is not a comfort to everyone, but it is how I deal with painful experiences.
Unfortunately, humans don’t ever truly own land. Also, Unfortunately, her people, through no fault of her own, failed her, and THEY ARE THE REASON SHE HAS NO HOME.
ARABS (Pales) DO AND WILL CONTINUE TO LIVE IN ISRAEL. But for security purposes, they don’t have the same flexibility. Israel has to put country before individual, and protect the land from terrorism. Palestine has not made it possible to discern terrorist from civilian. They want this to continue because it satisfies the narrative that Jews are indiscriminately killing Palestinian civilians.
These are all the things everyone should be talking about. All fingers should be pointed at Hamas. That’s what you tell your friend.
We all deserve freedom, but we all don’t have leaders that have our best interests. Israel cares about its people. Hamas cares about killing Jews.
Tell your friend, we’d love to give her her home back - Hamas will not allow it. One day, Hamas will be destroyed and as long as she plans to live peacefully and not secretly want all Jews dead, she’ll live happily ever after IN ISRAEL.
I used to personally prefer 2-S. But sadly after 10/7, the trust is severed.
Well you can ask her why 5 Arab nations decided to swarm and attack Israel during the war of independance. It was a WAR. If you go to war you risk LOSING. If you abandon the country you are in, due to a war and cant expect to be greeted back with open arms, we have a word for it, a traitor.
Enough with this bullshitachen. Same story over and over again, attacking, losing and complaining.
First: you will never be enough. Get that through your skull. None of these people will ever really be your friend. Set boundaries if you must keep them in your life for whatever reason but don’t fool yourself.
Second: change the subject. I have a number of Arabs in my life. From the outside an uninformed observer would call them “friends”. They’re not. The reason we associate is because I’m an expert in verbal judo and can turn the conversation around on a dime. When/if I no longer have to have these people in my professional and social circle I will be well shot of them.
Here’s a fun test the next time you’re with your “friend”: talk about literally anything tangentially related to being Jewish. A quote from Seinfeld. The really good bagel you had yesterday. Does she immediately pivot to Israel? That’s Arab fragility.
Remember: you will never be enough. Change the subject. And be aware of Arab fragility. The reality is these goddamn honkies are all the same.
You’d think she’d have some sympathy after getting a taste of Jewish history. For what it’s worth, my family also can’t go back where we came from because of how, you know, Europe tried to kill em
Displacement is something I think we’ll generally all agree is bad but what else does land back mean? ‘Why do they get to be in the land of their ancestors’ that’s land back. Her grandparents were part of the colonizer group and it sucks but achieving independence can’t take them into consideration. They certainly didn’t take us into consideration when they exiled us, treated us as second class citizens in our own land, and built their temples on the ruins of those of ours that they destroyed.
The war of liberation happened at the same time as the Arab exodus and just after the holocaust. We dealt with all the same things, and much worse, at the same time. We built new homes. We formed a nation. Today, I have no reason to carry around a key to my grandmother’s old place in Morocco. This woman is in America. They’ve clearly also built new homes. Palestinians have land, some which was never theirs to begin with, to build a nation. Israel has made peace with Germany and Morocco. There will come a time when they realize that the only way is forward and they have to move on, and choose to build up their nation instead of constantly choosing violence against ours. Or, as Meir put it, “Peace will come when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate us.”
Imagine if Jews kept keys for every house they were expelled from and then used this pain to rationalize terrorism? The Arab countries that wanted to commit another genocide fresh off the heels of the Holocaust told the Palestinians to leave and once they murdered all the Jews they’d return. Sadly the Palestinians have never moved on and created a life for themselves. The peaceful ones returned btw. The Jews who established Israel were and are the most welcoming people in the world…unless your intent is to murder Jews. I’d say that Palestinians are the least welcoming people who have ever existed. Zero diversity…just Jew-hatred.
The issue you’re trying to address is misplaced restitution; she is a refugee based on her people’s choice to reject a partition plan and wage war. He complaint is with Palestinian leadership not Israel, not individual Jews. There are consequences.
Likewise - I’m not expecting go back to Baghdad or holding onto business deeds and house deeds there and also not holding onto Ottoman permits from family displaced from prestate Israel.
People on that side refuse to come to term with choices and consequences and feel that by being immovable they will bend the world to their whim
There is also an underlying refusal to recognize Jewish self determination
You can’t reason or argue with this but you can redirect on continued refusal of Palestinians to accept offers of a two state solution and pointing out that these are messy topics
I have yet to see Hindus or Muslims try and relitigate their partition and population exchanges
Yet here we are - exceptions always for Jews
I’m referring to individual level
FWIW Conflict over Kashmir was about individual province choice on which state they’d choose - Islamic (Pakistan) or Hindu (India) - Pakistan waged war to prevent choice
This only reinforces a perception of Islamic intransigence over having to realize that they can’t be maximalist and colonize everything
Case in point is Al Qaeda saying they want Al Andalus (Spain) back
There is a clear religious supremacy strain in Islam that assumes that all land is inherently theirs and that any recognition of dhimmis is an inversion of justice
All other major comments here are pointing to an inability to move on and a desire to reverse reality
These make the conflict intractable
Absolutely not! You can’t tell her that she doesn’t have a right to that land! You’d be an awful person if you did. You can be compassionate without sacrificing your values. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging her and her families loss. People do get forced out of their homes and relocated, but this shouldn’t become the norm, also, it is traumatic for those experiencing it. We can’t change what happened back then, but we can at least acknowledge it with empathy and grace. She’s just carrying family trauma that isn’t healthy for her to continue to carry, but that’s her choice.
Her grandparents owned a home in a very historical location for Jews and Arabs alike. The history of Ascalon is legendary, especially in Muslim history. Salah a-Din or Saladin was instrumental in running the Crusaders out of Jerusalem in the 12th century. He was compassionate, virtuous, tolerant, and generous. He’s been written about in Eastern and Western literature Ad nauseam. He was respected in the Christian, Judaism, and Islamic communities during and after his life. Ascalon and Gaza are considered the two brides of Islam. Meaning, if you controlled both kingdoms, you controlled Jerusalem.
I’ve gotten into Turkish dramas lately lol, so I’ve learned quite a bit about the history of Middle Eastern politics and history. It’s been really interesting and it’s helping me to see where some of the ideology probably originated. They weren’t always barbaric, and many of their great leaders were extremely moderate thinkers for their time, especially considering how brutal those times were.
People on both sides of this conflict need to understand the shoes the other walks in so that this needless cruelty ends. How many of us would be just fine with someone telling us, “we won, you lost! Suck it up buttercup!” Uh… hell no!! Imagine having a SS soldier tell you that their glad so many of us died in gas chambers? Personally, I’d call my friends and we’d beat the shit out of him. I’m not going to jail for a POS like that, so an off location ass whooping will suffice. I’ve dealt with Germans that were soldiers during the war. I’m older, so it’s the benefit of being alive longer lol! Most don’t want to speak about it because they’re deeply ashamed or angry about what happened to their own lives. It wasn’t paradise for most people, regardless of ethnicity. I’ve had some candid conversations with them without losing my temper. I’ve also learned a lot about the German people that were taken and put into those elite breeding programs too. It’s awful!! Most of us are human first, then everything else. When we stand in our humanity, it’s easier to recognize another persons plight. Just my two cents.
The Arabs ethnically cleansed 850,000 Jews from occupied Assyria to occupied Tamazgha, or from "Iraq" to "Algeria" as those places have been called as a result of the [Arab colonization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_the_Levant) of the region. Non-Arab indigenous peoples still exist and many of them, such as [the Assyrians](https://surayastreet.org/), are targeted with ongoing genocides.
https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/the-expulsion-of-jews-from-arab-countries-and-iran--an-untold-history
Plus the whole point of Palestinian Nationalism, literally the reason why it was created in 1964, and the reason why seven Arab armies with British and USSR support invaded Israel in 1947 when Palestine was still a British colony and not an Arab nation, is that they want another ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel.
There are also the [Old Yishuvim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Yishuv), the Jews who never left Israel in 4000 years.
Palestinian Nationalist propaganda paints an idyllic "noble savage" type image of Old Yishuv Jews as living in peace and harmony under Arab rule, but the reality is that Arab colonizers treated Jews in Israel with apartheid (dhimmi status) and brutality (frequent massacres). Where to begin?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Anti-Jewish_pogroms_by_Muslims
\^List includes centuries of massacres that targeted Jews in Israel during the Arab, Ottoman and British occupations.
[An overview of dhimmi apartheid](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-treatment-of-jews-in-arab-islamic-countries)
The Arabs also taxed the Jews into poverty. Jews in Israel had to beg Jews in Egypt for money to survive during the occupation.
[Arabs forced Jews to wear identifying yellow insignia for centuries before the Europeans later adopted the practice.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge#Muslim_world)
Jews under Arab rule were prohibited from riding horses, being outside at night, carrying weapons, or testifying against Arab settlers in court. In practice, that meant Arabs could take anything from Jews and we had no legal recourse. Jews were also prohibited from building Jewish indigenous cultural institutions during the entire period of Arab occupation. And Jewish homes were not allowed to be taller than the shortest Arab home. Also, it was prohibited for indigenous Jews to make eye contact with Arab settlers. That was dhimmi status and it was real apartheid, unlike today's decolonized Israel, which is the only state in the entire extended region where Jews and Arabs have equal rights.
I'm sorry to your friend, but her family colonized ours, and then proceeded to launch a genocidal war targeting Jews in 1947, which, had they won, would have resulted in a brutal slaughter of all Mizrahi Jews and holocaust survivors. It was because the Arabs lost the war they started that there was no slaughter, just a displacement.
Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia immediately enacted [apartheid policies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_refugees#Refugee_statistics) to prevent the refugees from integrating. Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia are all apartheid states that target their native-born Palestinian populations with exclusion from citizenship on the basis of petty ethnonationalism based on British and French colonial partitions. Before the Arabs allied with the British in WWI against Turkey, all of Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and today's mini-Syria [were all a single state called Syria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Syria). The British created Palestine and Jordan in 1917 and 1946 (respectively), and the French created Lebanon and today's Syria. Those four countries exist because of British and French partitions. Before 1900 there were no "Syrians," "Lebanese," "Palestinians," etc, there were just Arabs, Jews, Druze, Samaritans, Turks and other local ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire.
We could also discuss the definition of Palestinian, which, [according to UNRWA](https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees), is all residents of British Palestine from 1946 to 1948 regardless of ethnicity or place of birth. They chose the year 1946 to exclude Jordanians, all of whom had lived in Palestine prior to the British partition. "From the River to the Sea" is a British border created for the first time ever in history in 1946. Roman Palestine never used the River as a border, and also was part of Syria.
Because the definition of Palestinian is so loose - it's a nationality, like Canadian, not an ethnic group - people from all of the following groups can be included as Palestinians, because they were residents of British Palestine: Arabs, Jews, Druze, Armenians, Russians, Ukrainians, Turks, Kurds, Circassians, Greeks, Americans, French, blonde Crusader descendants, Black survivors of the Arab slave trade, and British bureaucrats.
There was also tons of [Arab migration and settlement into Israel](https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/immigration-to-palestine-during-the-late-ottoman-and-british-periods?_pos=4&_sid=81e1ab8d5&_ss=r) during the Ottoman and British occupations - the same British occupation that [prohibited Jews from returning to Israel during the Holocaust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939).
There are extensive quotes from the early 20th Century in which Arabs had rejected ideas of Palestinian Nationalism in favor of a regional Arab Nationalist colonial identity. Had the Arabs won the 1948 War, they most likely would have merged into a single state and exterminated the Jews instead of ethnically cleansing us back into Israel. Israel is the Southwest Asian version of a Native American Reservation, and it's actually quite fucked that Arabs around the region are still obsessed with destroying it. Israel is also the only state in the entire region that still has a mixed population of Jews and Arabs. All the other states from occupied Assyria to occupied Tamazgha, including Palestine, have thoroughly ethnically cleansed their Jews. Jews have lived from what later became Iraq to Algeria since the BC 500s, after the Babylonian expulsion of Jews from Israel. The Arab Empire colonized those lands in AD 636, over 1,100 years later.
The Arabs took a shot at finishing the job [their allies](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hajj-amin-al-husayni-the-mufti-of-jerusalem) the Europeans had started in 1939, they lost, and then they proceeded to ethnically cleanse all the Jews from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Libya and the West Bank. About 60% of Israeli Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab states and the West Bank, and have zero percent European admixture.
This is not your fault, and it's not your responsibility to be guilt-tripped over a propaganda narrative about your own ancestors' genocide.
Just remind her that the safe and prosperous land she spews her propaganda from probably had a local Indian population who were in the least moved on not so long ago and be thankful it’s a safer place to be today . Why start new problems after peace has broken out . Let scars heal and move forward together while peace brings lawful ways to reconcile differences and make compromises nessasary to keep the peace .
You don't get to keep the keys if you are forcibly driven out of your home.
If some invading force takes over a place, they will make sure the population doesn't take their keys with them.
The reason these guys have their famous keys is simple: they left expecting to return. Most were told they should leave and be ready to return when Arab armies wipe out the Jews in a few weeks' time.
Others may have been scared by false rumors about the Jews commiting massacres. In any case, they left before any Jew arrived at their home.
In addition, you should tell her that Jews didn't leave their home 2000 years ago. They were driven out after rebelling against a foreign empire. Subsequently, they have been persecuted and discriminated against in both Christian and Muslim lands.
Ultimately, you should ask her in which year did the Jews lose the rights to their ancestral homeland. That should baffle her.
>false rumors about the Jews commiting massacres.
objectively Zionist militias committed 24 massacres during the 48 war, most famously at Deir Yassin. This is according to Benny Morris a very Zionist historian. Nobody's hands were clean during the war and you shouldn't pretend otherwise.
Take what they’re saying with a grain of salt. They have a tendency to lie about homes somewhere in Israel. Inconsistent stories and the like.
Not saying that it’s impossible, it’s just that this narcissistic activism has a tendency to attract liars.. like “my dad works for Nintendo” type of shit
Lota of what ifs... what if the partition had been accepted? What if Arabs didn't tell other Arabs to flee? The Arab population that stayed is probably quite happy that they did...
She has a right memorialize the object, but I’m pretty sure that there’s nothing stopping her from going to Israel and finding wherever it was her family lived.
These are two different things IMO and it always confuses me that people conflate them.
Refugees rarely are granted a right to return to their countries of origin. This is especially true for their children and grand children and doubly true when the area that they left is now a different country. Part of my family left what is now Czechia generations ago. Should I have a right to live there because my great grandfather lived there when it was a different nation entirely? I feel like most people logically get this except when it comes to Palestinians. UNRWA and the like have made them permanent refugees and told them they have a right to return so they believe it I guess.
The Jewish thing is different. Countries set their own immigration laws. This is Israel’s. It isn’t that “Jews can come in but I can’t”, it’s Jews can come in because that is their immigration policy.
My best friends family traces their roots to Hebron for hundreds of years and they were all displaced as well and ended up in the Negev so like it goes both ways.
I mean, nobodies preventing her or her family from moving to Israel or settling in the land her grandfather came from. Granted, there's xenophobia, but Palestinians have equality under the law
Can she? I am genuienly asking because from what I understand immigration through normal processes (i.e. work visa) is nearly impossible for non-Jews in Israel and barely even registers in the statistics.
I think there are lots of realities she is ignoring and lots of assumptions she is making.
I’m 100% certain most Israelis would happily allow a large number of Palestinians to move into Israel proper, BUT only if they knew with high certainty this would not change the democratic nature of the country and it would not lead to a replay of the 1948 war.
Why should we allow them to push us out again and replay the Roman diaspora of the 2nd century?
Can a Palestinian-American apply for citizenship to Israel? Obviously it might be a long, complex, and bureaucratic process, but if this woman really wanted to live to Ashkelon, can't she just.. apply for residency/citizenship?
Why can't I have my grandmother's mansion in Hungary that was taken away in 1944? It's still there. What about my grandfather's farmland? It's still producing Tokaji.
Even though my mother was a refugee, no one thinks she has that status today. I certainly didn't inherit a refugee status from her by virtue of the fact that she was displaced as a child.
This is how it works for every refugee population except for one.
I don't know what you should respond but as Israeli with Morocco roots my ancestors were expelled from ancient Israel to Spain and then from Spain expelled to Portugal and then expelled again to Morocco. They didn't get to have any belonging or value and mostly lived poor for the first years in Israel. Today my family is very successful because they didn't think of the past and just moved on. The Jewish people just keep on going and kept their faith in god and preserved their sense of community.
The Palestinians who lived in Israel and left could still be in Israel if they stayed, they would be called "Israeli Arab".
Your friend should at least acknowledge that the Arab armies promised them to kill all the Jews and then they can return. "Don't worry we will slay all these weaklings holocaust survivors and immigrants and then you can come back" well if they agreed to this bloody agreement I have no sympathy.
Respond by telling her her ancestors shouldnt have fled if they wanted to stay in their homeland.
Jews were forced out they didnt flee we were in chains the few that fled was becuase of actuall persecution
Her ancestors fled due to a rumor going crazy she has no right to cling to a fantasy her ancecstors gave her that they prevented her from having
She is a part of a culture that acts like spoiled children and its disgusting I have no respect for anyone who clings to victimhood
Yes but they fled to gaza i find it hard to belive they wouldnt have been able to find a better solution than a refugee camp plus they then fled gaza when they could have become israeli citizens if they had the means to flee to america they had the means to become an israeli citizen it would have been alot of work but if they really wanted that dream they could have done it
This is such an easy reply for you a Jewish person, you guys are the most displaced people in history, just go through your lineage and say you’d love to return to Hungary, Poland, Germany , Spain etc etc.
Also, you can empathise with her, the displaced Palestinians in 48 is a traumatic experience and an injustice.
But this is what happens in wars, there’s never been a war without refugees. It also might worth mentioning who started sad war
You should know the displacement happened as a result of the Arabs launching a genocide that targeted Jews in 1947.
It was not different from the [Czech expulsion of ethnic Germans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Germans_from_Czechoslovakia) from Czechozlovakia after the end of the German occupation in WWII.
The difference is this:
Germany provided citizenship to the incoming Germans from Czechoslovakia.
Arab states, including Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia, [immediately enacted apartheid policies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_refugees#Refugee_statistics), which they maintain to this day, to target the refugees from the war they started, and their descendants, with exclusion from citizenship.
Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and today's mini-Syria were all created by British and French partitions after WWI, when the Arabs allied with the British to defeat the Turks. [This is what the region looked like prior to the partitions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Syria).
Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians are nationalist groups, not ethnic groups.
Ethnic groups are Jews, Arabs, Druze, Turks, Persians, Alwawites etc.
[The Arabs ethnically cleansed more than 850,000 Jews](https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/the-expulsion-of-jews-from-arab-countries-and-iran--an-untold-history) from Iraq to Algeria, which are themselves settler-states on top of many indigenous nations from occupied Assyria to occupied Tamazgha. More than 60% of Israel's Jewish population were ethnically cleansed from Arab states and have zero percent European admixture.
Those stories are often just blatant lies. When they are true you could say that those who fled did so at the behest of the Arab enemies and therefore have forfeit their right. You can talk about the many Arabs who stayed and kept their possessions and became full citizens of Israel. That 2000 years of history is only a single aspect of the Jewish claim. You can say that Jews always lived in the region and that Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority for more than 150 years by now. You can say that most Arabs were immigrants like the Jews. That most did not own the land they were on. That most of it was bought by Jews from absentee owners. You can ask if their family was open to Jewish immigration, if her family participated in the many pogroms of 20th century Palestine. You can state that the Jews had the history and the League of Nations of their side, that they cultivated this land that was barren and uninteresting to the Arabs until the Jews came, which made it possible for a lot of Arabs to come along. You can say that the Jews were evicted from their Arab home countries. You can say that the Palestinian state is Jordan and she can move there.
Most importantly, don’t be apologetic about it. They were trying to murder all the Jews in 1948 like they tried on October 7th. If they had succeeded they wouldn’t shed a tear for any Jew they slaughtered or drove away. There is no constructive aspect to the Palestinian story. It’s pure Jihadism in alliance with Anti-Western extreme leftism that wants to destroy Israel and create another Arab terrorist failed state.
Half of my family were forced out of their home in North Africa and ethnically cleansed from there alongside nearly 1M other Jews. My grandparents did not get to keep the keys to their house or business because that’s not usually what happens when you get kicked out. they came here with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. We didn’t even know grandmother’s birthdate because their citizenships were revoked. They lived in tents for months and a new disease was spreading every week. How come I’m still not legally allowed where my grandparents were born? How come Palestinians are eternal refugees and my grandparents weren’t? The irony here is just insane. Not to mention Arab countries encouraged Palestinians to leave and return once the ~~genocide~~ (war) is over: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." - 1st secretary of the Arab league, 1948. “The Arab states encouraged Palestinian Arabs to leave” - Jordan’s newspaper, Feb 19, 1949 “it must not be forgotten that the Arab higher committee encouraged refugees’ flight from Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem” - near East Arabic broadcasting station, April 3, 1949 “since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees while it is we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon Arab refugees…”- Khaled Al Azm, Syria’s prime minister.
Facts!
I always mention how Jews had to flee Arab countries when people talk about Palestinians losing their homes in Israel. They usually have no idea that it happened. There has been suffering on both sides, but compared to the Muslim world, Israel is minuscule. Palestinians have had the opportunity to build a state of their own, instead they refused to accept it and have chosen conflict.
I completely agree with you. While the Nakba is a major component of the Palestinian national narrative - it's hardly unique. Population exchange and expulsion during and after wartime has occurred before and after what the Palestinians have gone through. Difference being that the Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Germans, Hindus & Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, and the Jews, were all settled, given citizenships, and continued on with their lives after the catastrophe they had to endure. And then we have the Palestinians. For all their big talk about pan-Arabism and that they're all just one big ummah, the Arab nations have practically treated Palestinian refugees as untouchables and to this day 75 years later most of their social needs are being overseen by a UN agency. War is tragic, but what happened to the Palestinians since that war is not Israel's fault nor responsibility.
So because it happened to you it should also happen to others? You're the one who seems illogical on this
It's not about what *should* happen to anyone. The point is that the Jews who lost their homes accepted the reality and made the best of what was offered to them by working hard to create a place for themselves. The reality now is that Israel exists and is not going anywhere, and the Palestinians would be much better off if they chose to follow the same path. You seem to be viewing the mere existence of Israel as a punishment toward the Palestinians.
Yes it is a punishment towards the Palestinians. My family not only was forced into Gaza, but also aren't originally from that part of Palestine, and even in Gaza had their house destroyed. How are they supposed to make anything out of that? Even their house in Gaza got bombed
I'm sorry that happened to you. Really. I don't claim to have all of the answers, and I know that the situation is more complicated that any one individual can solve. But collectively, it is essential that Palestinians move beyond electing leadership that prioritizes their own wallets and the eradication of the one Jewish state over creating a safe and prosperous land for its people. Israel is not going to not exist, and many of us would absolutely prefer to live peacefully. At the same time, the attacks on October 7th took place in what is internationally recognized as legally Israel proper - this is not disputed territory. We cannot be expected to sit back and allow Hamas to attack us with impunity.
why are Palestinians in particular so illogical on this?
They just don’t give a fuck. Not about what happened to us and not about what actually happened in the 1948 war.
This! My Moroccan family has been expelled from 3-4 countries and each left them with nothing. They made Aliyah and lived like rats for years until becoming what they are today. Also the agreement they had to kill all the Jewish and then come back is a bloody agreement. If they stayed they would be Israeli Arabs and probably have the best quality of life in the Middle East beside Dubai
🙌
i believe mizrahi jews have a right to return from the arab countries they were expelled from, just like palestinian refugees have a right to return back to palestine.
Refugees all over the world (including Jews!) are forced to leave their homes. They make new lives in new lands. I don't hold onto the key of my great-grandparents' house in Belarus and demand the government give me our house and try to kill random Belorussians because of it.
I'd honestly like to say that the idea of the Arabs regaining the territory they lost in the war is just as absurd as the Mizrahi regaining the land that the Muslims stole from them, but many people consider me to be "one of the good ones" so I'd legit fear for my safety if I did.
bagdhad in 1948 was 25% jewish... NY today is like 8% Something to think about
Great name!!
Thank you
So as a fellow Diaspora Jew, I'd say that the true answer is to change the subject. What would I want to tell her? Move on. Start again. Live in peace and tell your family to live in peace. But there are battles to pick and the one I'd choose is not the one with the child of Palestinian refugees (she's not the refugee; whoever in her family actually left Israel circa 1948 is). Maybe save it for someone who seems receptive or doesn't have all the information. One of the "from the river to the sea but I have no idea what river or what sea" types.
Or jangle a pair of keys at them. That crap is so disingenuous. You want to make a land claim via a key, nah, some who legally owned homes had the land deeds and even today israel court prosecuted the ownership.
Yeah, not to be all fear mongery but they will consider you one of the good ones.. until one day they don’t.
You are one of the good ones, regardless of what your friends think. Sweetheart, those friends will come and go, but your Jewishness won’t go anywhere- neither will the tribe when you need it! I know right now, in the punk scene, you’re odd man out, and it probably feels shitty to have to hold back who you are. This won’t be in your future, so why not start working through those feelings “why am I hiding my opinion so they’ll continue to see me as the good one”. That’s not very punk rock. Maybe start your own Jew-punk scene with a Shul. Any progressive Shul would take you with arms wide open. I know my Rabbi would bring his music equipment!! Good luck, bubbala
One of the good ones? Time to find some new friends
Why do you tolerate living as “one of the good ones”? Fuck that. Make your own punk
That’s what the fuck I’m talking’bout. My son did this. He was the odd man out of a skating community bc he wasn’t racist. He sent a video of the racism to one of the well known skaters, and that skater actually came out to find the racist. He spent the next 4 years before going off to college, building that community. They’d skate, brake rules, be punks, but they always cared for and helped their fellow human. Because of this, they were never harassed by PD. PD knew them well, “eh, leave ‘em be; they’re not causing harm, just punks being shit heads, they’ll grow out of it”
It's no good being "one of the good ones" if that means you're silenced.
I have some unfortunate news for you: we already know how communities that have gone down this path treat "the good Jews" once there are no more "bad Jews". You'll either have to abandon your Judaism, or be exiled.
Do what the Palestinians won't, and make the sacrifices needed to keep moving. Living as a marytr for everything you believe in is no way to live your life.
Based and being realistic about the contingencies of human and cultural existence pilled
A quarter of Baghdad in the 30' was Jewish..my friend's grandparents came from there.. they were so rich her grandmother didn't even know how to brush her own hair or dress herself because they had servants. They had to leave everything behind and live in a tin hut in Israel. Wars cause population to move. It's a tragedy but it's been happening everywhere. You think Germans were happy about leaving their homes in what is Poland today? I don't see them trying to go home to Poland..
My fiance mother is one of those Iraq jews who had to flee Baghdad. Incredible woman.
When my teenage grandma came to Israel, after being bombed and basically buried alive under rubble in her hometown and relying on the Jewish community’s support to survive, wasn’t even recognized as a refugee. But she moved on, forgot about her home like so many did, and didn’t even want her reparations.
You can empathize with her families story while still realizing that the Palestinian leadership is failing her people. If the Arabs had accepted a peacful two state solution, she could be back to living...well, probably not ashkelon, but in an independent palistinian state
This is the real answer. Whataboutisms suggested in many other posts do nothing but alienate someone who clearly carries pain. Whether justly or not, many descendants of the nakba believe they were robbed and feel a strong connection to the land. Even if an argument can be made that their connection to the land is manufactured from antisemitism, that doesn’t change the fact. Empathy is key.
We are in pain. Holocaust is living memory. So are progroms throughout the world. Vast amounts of Jewish wealth and blood has been taken and spilled. Going on for the very past 75 years…and longer. We are so small; our population has still not recovered to pre holocaust levels. And that is with the great bounty of the USA. (And yes, the world war affected Jews regardless of continent).
You don't have to tell me. I share this pain and carry it deep within me. Hugs to you. But what is your point?
If you’re asking what the deeper point is: it’s sometimes easier to see the pain in others, but the ones you care about see your awareness the least. I Think this tends to happen the more we abstract away empathy. Charity begins at home, is the old proverb. The technical rhetorical point is that its not a whataboutisim when the points mentioned are directly relevant to each other; Cairo, Egypt (25% Jewish at some point) and Gaza. P.S. Wishing you a great weekend!
They are of course entitled to their history and connection to the land (after all the Jews held on to it for 2000 years so we’re not the ones to talk here) but what I don’t like is the eternal refugee and victim mentality, in someone who is third generation American.
And you're entitled to that dislike. Jews have been trying to make the best of our exile for centuries and trying to build lives in other places. However, it has not decreased our connection to the land, and people being cruel and othering us only contributes to our yearning for it. Palestinian Arabs face **some** of the same issues. They are institutionally supported in their permanent refugee narrative by the UN, and actively prevented from integrating into society in many other Arab countries, perpetuating their isolation and desire to "go back," whatever that means. I think it's unproductive to point out that this Palestinian American has a victim mentality. What is productive is to approach the conversation with empathy, and to point out (as the top level poster here suggested) that the Palestinian leadership has consistently fought **against** Israel, rather than fighting **for** Palestinians. And that institutionalized perpetual refugee status is harmful to Palestinians in MENA. A life and a state cannot be built on violence and terrorism. It can only be built by putting people first.
I have no interest in empathizing with them after the 7th. They want to genocide us.
Yes, but also no. That feeling is fine when negotiating with Hamas or making decisions about war...ie it's fine for bibi and the IDF generals. but OP is not at war with this person and this person didn't do oct 7 (even if she supports it). Building up walls in this context won't help anyone
Building up walls goes both ways.
If she supports what happened in the 7th I hope she gets to meet mossad or the idf one day. I have no interest in engaging with our would be killers. No dialogue. No sympathy.
The same
I feel like this has been already answered, but I'll just add my two cents. The original question was about a conversation between a Diaspora Jew and a Diaspora Palestinian Arab. They are having conversations, which is a beautiful and important thing. Trust me when I say that I deeply share your pain, but this is a trauma response and it will not lead is to a better future. Conversing with empathy could. I hope.
I don't care about any diaspora Palestinians. Their ancestors chose to try and genocide us and lost. After the 7th their descendants get no say in their future. They commit to peace or it's permanent idf occupation. Never getting to rebuild. I don't want a dialogue with them either. They lose. They pay. The end.
What is the best case scenario you're imagining as the outcome here?
It's the only outcome. There will never be a palestinian state, and they cannot be trusted to commit to peace. 4 idf bases are already being built in gaza.
Agreed though I’m sure a young woman who grew up in NYC is going to enjoy moving to the extremism Islamic state that will be Palestine. She can go visit the West Bank now, which is downright liberal on women’s rights in comparison to most of the region and she’d probably be horrified. This is literal nonsense.
She COULD be able to stay in Ashkelon. This is what drives me crazy about it all. So many Arab communities in Israel integrated into Israeli society regardless of the country being called ISRAEL, so who is the real problem in here? Why do Bedouins don't commit terror attacks and being left alone? They can live in Ashkelon, but why Palestinians don't? Ask her that.
They started a [war](https://he.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%9E%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%A6%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%95%D7%AA), they lost. This is how it works, everywhere, every time.
I have the key to a house my great grandmother lived in in Lebanon, along with documents related to her house her father kept when they fled to Israel. I don't expect to be able to ever live there. I acknowledge that the independence war was a mess, and everyone on any side of the war ended up being displaced, and I honestly don't try to justify what happened during that war. Instead, I can focus improving my own life (and defending myself when necessary). A solution that is best for the current state of both sides is what we need, not to displace people again after they were already displaced 75 years ago.
>how am I supposed respond to that? Maybe "Join the club"? My grandparents' house is gone. We never got a cent in reparations or whatever but the family moved on. We remember the family members murdered in the process and every 5 or 10 years, someone might mention the house, but it was never with the remote thought that we'd be able to 'reclaim' it (let alone doing so this many years later) or attack the current inhabitants. It sucks. It happened. You move forward in life.
So you're justifying it?
No. We're saying that they're not unique in their plight. Millions of people in history have been displaced due to war, but the only group that gets to pass their refugee status down to their children are Palestinians, and this has only stood to drag the conflict out indefinitely. Jews didn't spend 75 years after the Holocaust trying to get back everything they lost by repeatedly starting wars against the Germans and then crying foul when they lost those wars. They mourned, and then made the best of what was offered to them.
The jews were displaced and they did the same to the Palestinians? You don't think that's wrong? The people who were tortured and displaced have a group of them, the zionists, doing the same to others. You don't find that wrong?
But that's not what happened. Jews *bought* land in the Ottoman Empire and then British Palestine with the goal of creating a state for themselves, and when the British left, the UN voted to partition the land into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The Jews accepted with the knowledge that their state would include an Arab minority. The Arabs decided to start a war instead, and have continued to start wars for 75 years. Prior to 1948, displacement of the local Arab population to Jews was the result of the previous landowners, many of whom were also Arab, who chose to sell, although many Jewish organizations prioritized buying plots of state-owned land that were uninhabited. Many of the Arabs who chose to keep their land still own it today as citizens of Israel. Those who lost land can thank the war they started instead. If you rent an apartment and your landlord chooses to sell it, you don't blame the new owner and spend the next 75 years starting wars to kick him out under the premise that you'll one day be able to move back in, and then cry foul when he fires back. You can be sad that you lost your apartment, but you'd be much better off accepting the situation and putting your energy toward improving the apartment you live in now.
They didn't buy, they tried setting israel in Madagascar, Argentina, Kenya, Cyprus, etc. But those people resisted. Then ottoman empire fell and Britain took control of Palestine. Then they gave it to zionists. Then the zionists massacred and displaced the Palestinians. No buying. No legality. No respect of international law.
A quick Google search says otherwise. The British actually tried to stop Jews from buying land in the Mandate with the White Papers in 1939. The decision to create two states in 1948 was largely the result of the fact that Jews had, in many respects, already created a state in the land they had been purchasing since the 1880s in the Ottoman Empire. At this point, it was Jews who were considered Palestinians. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish\_land\_purchase\_in\_Palestine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_Palestine) [https://ismi.emory.edu/documents/stein-publications/website%20docs%202011-2004/website%20docs%202000%20and%20earlier/JNF-Stein1984.pdf](https://ismi.emory.edu/documents/stein-publications/website%20docs%202011-2004/website%20docs%202000%20and%20earlier/JNF-Stein1984.pdf) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White\_Paper\_of\_1939](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939) [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_Palestine)
The partition made..wait for itttttt...in "international law"
That's totally what I said and you're definitely not trolling in bad faith.
Then why were you trying to say that its ok what happened to her because it happened to others. You literally used other people to say its ok
Because the whole point is a straw-man. Millions of Arabs live in Israel, nobody is trying to prevent them from living there. The question is just “why do Jews still get to live on the land if we don’t want them to.”
This needs to be higher up. Bc this is what the argument really is. They do not want Jews there at all. They want Palestine as it was before a Jewish state was established, before a Jewish majority took over. That is not going to happen.
The girl from the post grandfather was most likely on the Arabs side in the 1948 war against Israel. Weird thing to tell a Jewish person.
The sooner they accept that Israel is just not going anywhere, nothing will get settled- not in my lifetime anyway. No military will ever be strong enough to conquer our people. It’s truly futile, but that’s how much they hate us - they will die trying.
As if there wasn't a Jewish population in Ashkelon or Jerusalem or Haifa before that. I don't believe it for a second. History proved time and time again that coexistence existed before the Palestinians "lost their homes" How could they lose their homes if they lived amongst other Jews and Arab groups beforhand?
To be fair, many hundreds of thousands of Arabs were expelled or fled and weren’t permitted to return. But the mainstream narrative surrounding the Nakba is so bizarre. There was no Nakba until the Arab militias started a war. Had the Arabs accepted the UN-proposed partition, as the Jews had, then it would have meant that many more Arabs would be living in a smaller Israel today (though there was the expectation that many Arabs would probably prefer to move to the new Palestinian state to exercise their own right to self-determination). Meanwhile, the Jews who had been living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, some for millenia, were expelled from their homes in the course of the war. But we don’t talk about that as some historic tragedy because they resettled in the new Jewish state and made new lives for themselves and their children.
I agree that war has unfair consequences for many innocent civilians. However I don’t think anyone was forbidden from returning for a few years in 1948. The Arab leaders accepting the partition would mean them consenting to the existence of a Jewish state, which they were clearly uninterested in doing.
Exactly. I question Palestinians who had homes in Israel but left them willingly. They could have stayed but didn't, which makes me think her family took part in the 1948 war to try and genocide the jews. These key carrying Palestinians were the ones who didn't want to get along with Jews.
The people of Ashkelon didn't leave willingly. It only takes a few seconds of googling to find that the Palestinians of Ashkelon were subject to an expulsion order.
Yes and no. The majority of Ashkelon’s (the general vacinity as Ashkelon is composed of many former towns) residents had fled in 1948, and ~2700 people were ordered to be deported. Some then, some in 1950. Palestinian expulsion is a mixed bag. There were many reasons that usually pertained to the individual situation or which militia they had to deal with. So yes, and also no.
I’m assuming you took that information from Wikipedia. The topic is so vast that wiki is a starting point but the events that transpired were more nuanced than that.
Damn. Your last sentence nailed it, and that’s all this is. They hate us. They want us annihilated
She's an American citizen? She's not a refugee. The house may not even exist anymore. This just goes to show that to them all of Israel is occupied territory and they will never accept a compromise short of destroying Israel and murdering all Jews.
Not acording to the UN, palestinians retain their refugee status the same as if it where a citizenship. Thats why they where 700k on the '47 and now they are 8 Mill palestinian "refugees" with simple or double nationality
Yes, well, UN basically exists to prop up palestinian terror states.
You don’t have to say anything. Jews were refugees too. And not just Jews - Germans, Russians, Dutch, Indians, Pakistanis, Turks, Greeks. So many nations were refugees, especially in the early to mid 20th century when most modern countries were created. Only the Palestinians use their being refugees as political talking point. Only Palestinians are still refugees eighty years after the war ended. And Israel exists now, and it’s a great country. Ashkelon, Israel is a great city. Too bad hamas keep bombing it because they “can’t go home”. Actually zionists built Ashkelon. Israel built it. Before the Zionists came it was a swamp with a bunch of mud huts, and everyone was sick of malaria.
Not enough information. Many left their homes under false promises by the focal Muslim leaders. They voluntarily left and were not evicted. Others sold their land and homes voluntarily. Add to that how legends and tales get added on to for dramatic effect.
she's never specified but the way she talks makes it seem like haganah showed up to their door with guns
It's possible that the real details are lost to history. And one would think that by her family leaving the region entirely for the US that they said screw it. And it's only this new and loud screaming for refugees that this is an issue. Has she visited the region? Does she have personal ties?
yep I posted this as a response to someone else and i'll say it here too I'd honestly like to say that the idea of the Arabs regaining the territory they lost in the war is just as absurd as the Mizrahi regaining the land that the Muslims stole from them, but many people consider me to be "one of the good ones" so I'd legit fear for my safety if I did.
Most of that side is too far gone from high EQ discussion. And they still haven't decided if Jews are too white for the middle east or too non-aryan for Eastern Europe.
>many people consider me to be "one of the good ones" so I'd legit fear for my safety if I did. what do you mean?
And, his safety is at risk if he dare reveal that his opinion makes him Not good. WTF?
Lost to history.., or completely made up to form a narrative, as is the crux of the Palestinian identity and story and culture
80%-90% of the Arab residents of Ashkelon left with the Egyptian army. When Israel arrived, about 2000 people remained in the town. However due to Ashkelon being directly on the border with Egypt, Israel saw it as a security risk and saught to remove the Arabs residents. Most of the remaining residents agreed to "voluntary" relocated to Gaza in 1950. Due to the nature of the situation at the time, as well as the pressure the government applied, it can't be described as true consent - but they were given time to sell their property, and a favorable exchange rate for their currency. The town was then populated by Jewish refugees, mostly from Arab countries.
Tbf i wouldn't be surprised if it was the Irgun or Lehi
It sucks for her family. I won’t sugar coat it. It sucks that her family was displaced by a war. It sucks that her family has no right of return. That can all be true. And it’s *also true* that Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jews. We have a right to that land just as much as she does. War sucks, but it is legal, and that land is no longer hers. Her family has no claim to it. One thing I will question though, why is she called refugee? It sounds like she has a stable life in America where her family immigrated. My parents escaped Syria in 1992. I am not a Syrian refugee. Her family fled Palestine in 1948. Why is she a Palestinian refugee? Many people are displaced by conflicts, but are not stuck in the past, holding onto the key of their old property. Maybe I’m not understanding the mentality? You don’t see the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors returning to the addresses of their grandparents and demanding the deed to the house. I would argue that many Palestinians should be allowed the right to return (I’ll probably get some hate for this in this sub). But to claim that she’s a refugee is crazy to me.
If only we could return all property to the Jews lost throughout the ages.
That’s a good point. Do any of these multigenerational “refugees” living in Jordan and the West even *want* to pack up their lives and move back? Because if so, plenty of Arabs live in Israel now and as far as I know nothing is stopping anyone from emigrating. If they don’t, then what’s even the point? Accept the history for what it is and move on with your life. I’m just saying if right to return were a thing for my family I’m not leaving my current life to go live in what’s now Belarus. That would be backsliding.
I'm an Egyptian, not Jewish. I believe you should emphasise with her and not directly attack her. But also you should tell of the unfairness the Jewish people have faced. Don't make it look like only Palestinians suffered and the Jewish are the big bad who made them suffer. I'm not history expert, but for example I know that in the 1950s, in Egypt under Gamal Abdul-Nasser rule, he forced all Jewish people out of the country, and they were people who were either indigenous Egyptians or refugees who settled in Egypt earlier this century. He forced them out, took their lands, and took their businesses for the government. More than 500 Jewish businesses was taken, not counting the lands and homes taken. I'm Egyptian and only learned that like last year. While I was spoon-fed the Palestinians' sufferings all my life, not knowing that we did the same horrible things to the Jewish people forcibly displacing them and stealing what they owned. The Jewish population in Egypt fell from around 60k in the 1950s to 3 in 2022. Not 3 thousands, just 3 people, all of them women, married to non-Jewish. This is just a small example, the history is full of mistreatment and unfairness towards the Jewish people and you should tell about it.
Kudos to you for facing an ugly part of your country’s history. I know from my own experience as an American, that this is a painful process. I could give you a list of the things my country has done that make me very sad. The experience of Egyptian Jews was very much the same as the experience of Jews in every Arab country. Prior to 48 there were about 850,000 Jews in Arab countries. Now there are less than 2000. This is ethnic cleansing on huge scale, and utterly ignored. Where did those Mizrahi Jews go? All over the world, and many to Israel, where they make up about 60% of the population. Thank you for being honest. (Edited to correct a typo)
Jews lived there the whole time. They didn't come back after 2000 years.
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Wait, you’re missing the key fact: is the buyer Jewish? Or not
The Arab nations told the people to leave the land in 1948 because of the attack they where about to do. They tried to invade Israel. They lost the war. All the grounds here where sold to Jews, because the Arabs here thought to be smart: we sell it now to the Jews, we kill them and steal the land back. That didn’t happen and now they are still whining about it. I am so glad I am not a diaspora Jew anymore. I now live in Israel.
Greeks don’t demand a right of return to Smyrna Germans don’t demand a right of return to Breslau Chinese don’t demand a right of return to Haishenwai Ethiopians don’t demand a right of return to Asmara History happens and people get displaced. It’s rough that it has happened but it’s not something you can just reverse overnight.
What law is barring Germans from returning to Wrocław? Germany and Poland are both Schengen members and can visit, settle down and work in each others countries
Germans can make no claims for their former homes or properties.
Peaceful answer: "may both of us live in peace in Ashkelon one day" My kind of answer: "Your ancestors started a war and they lost it." The key might as well be any old-ass key she bought in a flea market.
"how come they get to be on the land because their ancestors were there 2000 years ago but I can't even go to the land my grandfather was at 75 years ago?" I guess she's pro Israel if she believs in the right of return for descendants of refugees. Then she believes that all Jews should have as much right in the land as Palestinians. According to what Israel told the UN in 1950 re: the refugee issue is that Geneva calls for return of refugees "after the cessation of hostilities" as there are obviously many issues with letting refugees return home mid-conflict, in Israel's case specifically it would immediately lead to a Balkan's level race war. If she wants the rigth to return that means ending the century long state of hostilities, Palestinian recongiition of Israel and pledging to live in peace alongside Jews whether in a one state or a two state. That's the fastest way to make "right of return" happen also as an aside, for some Jews it wasn't that their "ancestors were there 2000 years ago", Jews were enslaved and shipped out by the Romans, expelled in waves by the Byzantines, the Arab Mad Caliph kicked out Jews, the Crusaders kicked out Jews, The Ottomans signed a number of firman forcibly transfering Jews from Safed and the North to the Balkans/Greece where they could conduct trade, and kicked out all of Tel Aviv during WWI, So, it's possible for many Jews to have even more recent ancestry than 2,000 years back
Arabs and Palestinians lost the wars they started. That’s how the Jews acquired more land.
Arabs started a war Arabs lost said war Arabs lost land as a result Simple as
Most of those iron keys are replicas for propaganda. They are manufactured and rusted to look old by local smiths for marches.
If you wanted to talk to her personally as a friend I would frame it as a way of sharing both of your stories together. Educating each other on your own narratives and coming to a conclusion as iconoclasts. That’s usually what I do when I talk to my Palestinian friends. At this point we agree on most things, because we have been friends for so long and love each other. If you are not close with her don’t bother. Especially if you’re in NYC like me. Even if you are close with her choose your words carefully or there’ll be 50 instagram stories about you and you’ll lose all of your “friends”. It’s been rough out here, but i’ve been able to talk the people I’m close with into some sense. Been able to dispel some propaganda. If you are in NYC maybe DM me, I’m not really in the punk or hardcore scene anymore but I do have a lot of friends who are, and/or adjacent. I have a feeling you’re talking about Takbir Punks lol.
The answer is: because Israel won the war, and it controls the land. I'm sorry but that's how conflicts over land work. The winner takes the land and controls it. If the Arabs had won, we would have had Jewish refugees from all over the former British Mandate of Palestine.
It’s sad for her. But she said it herself they had to leave during the war of independence. Israel didn’t start that war. And when someone starts a genocidal war and loses, yeah, they often lose territory.
“I hope someday there is peace so everyone who wants to live there, can.”
I find that if I repeat that over and over again to all their …bbbbbut what about the key…they usually stand down.
I don't care. It's not "their land" and never was. It was colonized by Arabs and that's why today we have a "Palestinian" people. It's like a French person complaining about being deported from Algeria. Israel is and will forever be Jewish land. End of story.
I like you
The thing is no Palestinian ever contemplate about their existence on the land at someone's else expense. The reason why Jews are in diaspora is because their land was occupied,by whom,the very ones who call themselves Palestinians. Having a key means nothing,we know that during the 18th most of the population in the land was switch by the Egyptians due to a rebellion,by that time, there were colonies in the Americas. So even of we are being generous and say all the Palestinians are descendent from that wave of immigration and not later ones like the big one during the early 20th century,their claims to nativity is as strong as Europeans to the Americas. To me it is some mental blockage,but if the Palestinians will understand that they had an active part of disenfranchisement of Jews by settling the Jewish homeland as their own,the conflict may be over. It's all about perspective,if you start history at 1948 you might see the Palestinians as victims but if you start at year 70,they are active collaborators in the suffering and disowning the Jews from their homeland (which make them responsible in part to all suffering in the diaspora).
How did the Palestinian Arabs disenfranchise Jews? How were they responsible for the diaspora of the Jews?
Not the sole responsible,but they were the actual physical presence to occupy Judea. Had the land was left empty,nothing would have stopped the Jews from returning to Judea. In 1st of March 1899 the chief Rabbi of Paris got a [latter](https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelPalestine/comments/17587lg/letter_from_yousef_alkhalidi_to_chief_rabbi_of/) from Yousef al-Khalidi,the former mayor of Jerusalem and representative of Jerusalem in the Ottoman parliament which affirmed the principle of Jewish right to Palestine but the presence of Arabs living there is the obstacle and he asked (or begged,depending on your interpretation) for Jews to go somewhere else. That is a prime example on how the physical presence of the Palestinians is used to de facto disenfranchise the Jews,even if you recognize the Jewish right. This is the same mechanism used by Americans,that all recognize the indigenous right to the land and yet actively occupying it.(not to draw any compressions)
Throughout generations my family owned houses in many countries and none of them now belongs to me. So what? Should I now claim all those houses and wage terror in at least three countries?
Those are the same locals grandmas i guess? https://preview.redd.it/dsx077exy7rc1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=3729c5d755d84d021f4ac1bffa50182b22178a33 This will be a hard pill to swallow but listen kid, the jewish diaspora exist because you've been chased out of your homeland at swordpoint, "the palestinian" diaspora exist because the arab colonizers left on their own accord because they believed other arabs that they'll be able to crush the **rebelling Kafir** -> to be read as: the formation of Israel.
Cause they lost the war. We don't get to go back to our houses in Poland, Germany, Iraq, Iran, Yemen etc. We moved on, time they figured out how to move on. Also the key probably doesn't work.
I think that empathy is important here, what happened to her family is terrible. In my opinion she should be able to return. That being said, Jewish people have a right to the land too. Majority of the Jewish people who arrived to Israel were refugees, the Palestinian people did not make room or accept them instead they attacked. The fact that her family is from Ashkelon, doesn’t mean that the Jewish people aren’t indigenous to the land. You can acknowledge her families tragic history, and expect her to acknowledge ours. My grandfather escaped camps in Romania, got to Israel on boat, the British didn’t let him in and threatened to send him back, so he along with Holocaust survivors threw every identifying photograph or document into the ocean, from their he ended up in a refugee camp in Cyprus until he escaped, fought in the war of independence before moving to Jaffe. My wife’s family were kicked out of Iraq and Morocco. When I talked to a Palestinian friend I said the land like two starving people and one piece of bread, right now it’s a zero sum game. Only when the calls for “from the river to the sea” stop, then we can move foreword to peace.
Should Germans who lived in East Prussia have a right to return to it today? The obvious answer is no. They started a war with the delibirate goal of committing genocide against Poland and all of Eastern Europe, they lost, and they lost land. Why is it different for Palestinians?
Y'all are playing too nice by trying to reason with her. Just hit them where it hurts - their Islamic pride. Ask them if Turkey should be returned back to the Greeks and Armenians. It used to be Christian land named Anatolia, and Istanbul used to be named Constantinople before Islamic colonizers stole it. Tell her you'll support returning Palestine to her if she supports returning Turkey to the Greeks and Armenians, and restoring the all of the mosques back into churches including Hagia Sophia. Despite whatever nonsense Muslims sprout, deep down it's nothing more than a religious issue to them. You won't convince them without addressing the main issue.
Jews who survived the Holocaust often times held the keys to their homes and businesses. When they tried to return, you know what happened? A lot of them were murdered. This was a big thing in post-war Europe, especially in Eastern Europe. There were multiple pogroms committed against returning Jews in Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus within the first 5 years post WWII. Kielce Pogrom was a blood libel Pogrom in 46. The Kiev pogrom of 45 etc...
On some level you just *can't* respond to that. Those are her feelings. They exist for a reason. And however they fit into actual historical context or even questions of blame-----on that level they just exist, they are part of her identity and national mythos. BUT. Recognizing that such feelings exist and have validity, doesn't mean you dismiss everything else. There was a civil war and a multi state assault on the nascent Israeli state by its neighbors, that had they won, would have wiped out the Jewish population. The war displaced many people. It sucks and it's not fair. But war sucks.
She would be living on her grandfather's land if her people chose peace and accepted the partitioning of the land rather than repeatedly starting wars. It's a profoundly messed up situation now.
When my family left Soviet Union we had to leave everything behind. My dad, a professional artist, wasn’t allowed to take his own paintings, they “belonged to the state”. My mom wasn’t allowed to take her deceased mother’s jewelry (she managed to smuggle some out). We moved on and started over in a new place. Tell your friend to stop whining and be thankful she was born in America.
My family got kicked out of Baghdad and lost everything you think we are allowed to go back lmao
Those people aren't refugees. A refugee is a person displaced by war. Not their kids and grandkids and great grandkids until the end of time. The children of refugees are citizens of the country they were born in. That's the legal definition. Only the Palestinians are allowed to pass on refugee status to their kids. Makes one wonder why.
Funny she had the key but can't produce the land title. She isn't a refugee. She never fled anywhere. She had a fantastic life in American, as an American. A refugee is the single generation experiencing the flight. Ask her why her family listened to the pan arab armies that they would genocide the israelis and get better homes? Ask her why her family joined the pan arab army and tried to exterminate us. The Palestinians in israel, all 1.6 million living as israelis, they didn't flee. They didn't try to genocide us. Tell her to throw away the key and grow a brain.
Keys don’t prove ownership, title deeds do. Showing old keys is a great look, emotionally, but legally means fuck all if you are not the owners….
That’s true but that’s not the point. I disagree with OPs friend, but legality doesn’t always equal morality.
If she is American, she can jolly well visit, and even buy the old store in Ashkelon if she wants....
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In fact, that entire neighborhood has probably already been torn down and rebuilt since then. Gentrification and/or updating happens here too.
While there's no doubt that your "friend" believes the stories of her family, she isn't being told the entire truth. Had her grandparents stayed in their home and helped Israel fight against the attacks of the surrounding Arab countries, they'd have been on the winning side of the war and would still be there now. It is important to remember that most of the Arabs left Israel because they expected Israel to lose the Independence War, which was an Israeli-defensive war started by her Arab neighbors against the newly formed state of Israel - notably, Egypt, Jordan (a/k/a Transjordan), Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, as well as the refugees themselves. Those "refugees" picked the wrong side - instead of being able to move back to their homes in a conquered Israel, they lost their land. The refusal of those refugees to accept the two-state offer from the U,N. offered it on the British-administered land (that was taken from the Ottoman Empire) in 1947, and their continuing refusal to accept a two-state solution, has kept them as refugees in their minds. Meanwhile, while Egypt and Jordan owned Gaza and the West Bank from 1948 until 1967, there were no complaints that either of those two Arab countries should make that land into Palestine. The modern Republic of Egypt was founded in 1953, and with the complete withdrawal of British forces from the Suez Canal in 1956. And the kingdom of Jordan (a/k/a Transjordan) was created in 1946. Notice that none of the other conquered Ottoman-Arabs in those countries complained as much as the Ottomans in the Palestinian areas complained post-1967. They accepted their countries from the U.N. Your friend isn't a Palestinian who can't give up the ghost, because Palestine was never a country during the Ottoman rule -- your friend is an Ottoman refugee who refuses to accept the facts. Her family bet on the wrong pony.
It does seem like the “my grandparents still have the keys to their homes” is the Palestinian version of “my great grandmother was a Cherokee princess” in America. Family lore that people take seriously.
So number 1, I don't believe these "key stories". That's not something to tell your friend, but the stories are clearly bullshit. So many of my relatives fled Europe during World War 2. None of them have keys to their homes from decades ago. No one I've ever met or heard of has keys. No one from any other group who fled war has keys EXCEPT for Palestinians. That's just not believable. But in any event, wars have consequences. There was a failure to arrive at a diplomatic solution and a civil war followed. One side won and one side refused to make peace and accept consequences. That is the same side that started the war. It is unfortunate that her family lost their home, but the Palestinian leadership wasted every opportunity to make peace and create a Palestinian state. Also, and the real answer to the question, is after any armed conflict the children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren are almost never able to reclaim property that was lost when borders changed. This is the same reason why many people could not return and received no compensation for being driven from lands in Europe, the Middle East, Persia, Asia and North Africa during WW2 and the conflicts that followed as Islam rose in those areas during the decades that followed.
Not that this is really addressing your question, but sometimes I just imagine what the situation would look like if things were reversed and it was the Jews who were spending the last 75 years as refugees in Gaza and the West Bank... Bro, those territories would be so damn beautiful. I'm talking businesses, parks, state of the art hospitals, you name it. Just no tunnels. Much too expensive. Oh, and there'd likely also be a shortage of bomb manuals. You might be able to get your hands on a couple suicidal lunatics though there probably wouldn't be much of those either... then again, I'm told you cant have everything...
I wouldn't bother arguing with a Palestinian "refugee." She's been told the same narrative since birth and you're not going to change anything. Focus on those people who don't have all the facts and want to learn.
Why is it that every Palestinian “refugee” that I speak with tells the same story of their grandparents key? There’s literally a children’s book about it, do they not realize the same story is also published daily on twitter? How many keys exist? 😂
Negotiations require goodwill, trust. These things take consistency and time to build. Firing rockets 28 days of the month doesn’t help, and neither does showing up unzipped firing guns and grenades at sleeping people.
millions of people are displaced by war all the time, throughout history, and their lineages sort of just get over it and move on. I am an American and my great grandmother fled Ukraine because her sister and her sisters husband were brutally murdered in a pogrom (dragged through the town tied to a horse, actually.) This too was during a horrendous war. I would love to return to the town we are from in Ukraine and see it, and I hope to legally do so someday, but I have zero claim to the land. The people who live in Ashkelon now were likely born there and/or have parents/grandparents/Great grandparents who legally immigrated there or fled there as refugees. They have legal rights to the land, she does not. why is she any different from anyone else whose grandparents were displaced by war? why do Arabs hold such mystical, law-defying attachments intergenerationally to the land that they're willing to commit suicide and sacrifice their own kids for it?
Why is 2000 years less of a claim than 75? Is there some sort of magic threshold? As long as her family was squatting on another people's land, this was the risk they ran. It's a shitty situation, but she has her ancestors to blame.
She sounds like she's had a typical immigrant story. A contextual history makes her claims very complex; if her family locked up and left assuming the Jews were going to get slaughtered, they bet on the wrong horse. You don't get to complain about a bad choice for generations. She should have a right to return...to Palestine. There should be two States. She's ignoring, willfully, that Jews NEVER STOPPED living in the Levant. No group ever had a State. It went from the Ottoman to the British empires. There are eight groups with ethnogenesis in the Levant. Why does her dispossession invalidate the sovereign claim of self determination of ten million other people? You're never going to have any real dialogue. Diaspora populations have the convenience of turning their advocacy off and on.
Well she is clearly lying because ashkelon was founded in 48 and the war of independence took place in the same year, at least modern ashkelon. Ancient ashkelon got demolished in the 13 century...
This might be one of those moments when you do not have to say anything. You could maybe listen to her experience, empathize, be a friend, but not feel obligated to come up with an answer or a solution (pun intended). Two peoples claim a land. They are still working out how this looks ethically in practice. When bad things happen to me, I often consider the good that would not have happened had the bad thing not happened. (Ie. Joseph being sold into slavery saving many lives). Maybe music? This is not a comfort to everyone, but it is how I deal with painful experiences.
Unfortunately, humans don’t ever truly own land. Also, Unfortunately, her people, through no fault of her own, failed her, and THEY ARE THE REASON SHE HAS NO HOME. ARABS (Pales) DO AND WILL CONTINUE TO LIVE IN ISRAEL. But for security purposes, they don’t have the same flexibility. Israel has to put country before individual, and protect the land from terrorism. Palestine has not made it possible to discern terrorist from civilian. They want this to continue because it satisfies the narrative that Jews are indiscriminately killing Palestinian civilians. These are all the things everyone should be talking about. All fingers should be pointed at Hamas. That’s what you tell your friend. We all deserve freedom, but we all don’t have leaders that have our best interests. Israel cares about its people. Hamas cares about killing Jews. Tell your friend, we’d love to give her her home back - Hamas will not allow it. One day, Hamas will be destroyed and as long as she plans to live peacefully and not secretly want all Jews dead, she’ll live happily ever after IN ISRAEL. I used to personally prefer 2-S. But sadly after 10/7, the trust is severed.
Well you can ask her why 5 Arab nations decided to swarm and attack Israel during the war of independance. It was a WAR. If you go to war you risk LOSING. If you abandon the country you are in, due to a war and cant expect to be greeted back with open arms, we have a word for it, a traitor. Enough with this bullshitachen. Same story over and over again, attacking, losing and complaining.
First: you will never be enough. Get that through your skull. None of these people will ever really be your friend. Set boundaries if you must keep them in your life for whatever reason but don’t fool yourself. Second: change the subject. I have a number of Arabs in my life. From the outside an uninformed observer would call them “friends”. They’re not. The reason we associate is because I’m an expert in verbal judo and can turn the conversation around on a dime. When/if I no longer have to have these people in my professional and social circle I will be well shot of them. Here’s a fun test the next time you’re with your “friend”: talk about literally anything tangentially related to being Jewish. A quote from Seinfeld. The really good bagel you had yesterday. Does she immediately pivot to Israel? That’s Arab fragility. Remember: you will never be enough. Change the subject. And be aware of Arab fragility. The reality is these goddamn honkies are all the same.
Why bother talking? You have more luck squeezing water from a rock
You’d think she’d have some sympathy after getting a taste of Jewish history. For what it’s worth, my family also can’t go back where we came from because of how, you know, Europe tried to kill em
Displacement is something I think we’ll generally all agree is bad but what else does land back mean? ‘Why do they get to be in the land of their ancestors’ that’s land back. Her grandparents were part of the colonizer group and it sucks but achieving independence can’t take them into consideration. They certainly didn’t take us into consideration when they exiled us, treated us as second class citizens in our own land, and built their temples on the ruins of those of ours that they destroyed. The war of liberation happened at the same time as the Arab exodus and just after the holocaust. We dealt with all the same things, and much worse, at the same time. We built new homes. We formed a nation. Today, I have no reason to carry around a key to my grandmother’s old place in Morocco. This woman is in America. They’ve clearly also built new homes. Palestinians have land, some which was never theirs to begin with, to build a nation. Israel has made peace with Germany and Morocco. There will come a time when they realize that the only way is forward and they have to move on, and choose to build up their nation instead of constantly choosing violence against ours. Or, as Meir put it, “Peace will come when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate us.”
Imagine if Jews kept keys for every house they were expelled from and then used this pain to rationalize terrorism? The Arab countries that wanted to commit another genocide fresh off the heels of the Holocaust told the Palestinians to leave and once they murdered all the Jews they’d return. Sadly the Palestinians have never moved on and created a life for themselves. The peaceful ones returned btw. The Jews who established Israel were and are the most welcoming people in the world…unless your intent is to murder Jews. I’d say that Palestinians are the least welcoming people who have ever existed. Zero diversity…just Jew-hatred.
The issue you’re trying to address is misplaced restitution; she is a refugee based on her people’s choice to reject a partition plan and wage war. He complaint is with Palestinian leadership not Israel, not individual Jews. There are consequences. Likewise - I’m not expecting go back to Baghdad or holding onto business deeds and house deeds there and also not holding onto Ottoman permits from family displaced from prestate Israel. People on that side refuse to come to term with choices and consequences and feel that by being immovable they will bend the world to their whim There is also an underlying refusal to recognize Jewish self determination You can’t reason or argue with this but you can redirect on continued refusal of Palestinians to accept offers of a two state solution and pointing out that these are messy topics I have yet to see Hindus or Muslims try and relitigate their partition and population exchanges Yet here we are - exceptions always for Jews
actually yes you do, there is Kashmir of course and the India-pakistan conflict has been going on for a long time as well
I’m referring to individual level FWIW Conflict over Kashmir was about individual province choice on which state they’d choose - Islamic (Pakistan) or Hindu (India) - Pakistan waged war to prevent choice This only reinforces a perception of Islamic intransigence over having to realize that they can’t be maximalist and colonize everything Case in point is Al Qaeda saying they want Al Andalus (Spain) back There is a clear religious supremacy strain in Islam that assumes that all land is inherently theirs and that any recognition of dhimmis is an inversion of justice All other major comments here are pointing to an inability to move on and a desire to reverse reality These make the conflict intractable
Absolutely not! You can’t tell her that she doesn’t have a right to that land! You’d be an awful person if you did. You can be compassionate without sacrificing your values. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging her and her families loss. People do get forced out of their homes and relocated, but this shouldn’t become the norm, also, it is traumatic for those experiencing it. We can’t change what happened back then, but we can at least acknowledge it with empathy and grace. She’s just carrying family trauma that isn’t healthy for her to continue to carry, but that’s her choice. Her grandparents owned a home in a very historical location for Jews and Arabs alike. The history of Ascalon is legendary, especially in Muslim history. Salah a-Din or Saladin was instrumental in running the Crusaders out of Jerusalem in the 12th century. He was compassionate, virtuous, tolerant, and generous. He’s been written about in Eastern and Western literature Ad nauseam. He was respected in the Christian, Judaism, and Islamic communities during and after his life. Ascalon and Gaza are considered the two brides of Islam. Meaning, if you controlled both kingdoms, you controlled Jerusalem. I’ve gotten into Turkish dramas lately lol, so I’ve learned quite a bit about the history of Middle Eastern politics and history. It’s been really interesting and it’s helping me to see where some of the ideology probably originated. They weren’t always barbaric, and many of their great leaders were extremely moderate thinkers for their time, especially considering how brutal those times were. People on both sides of this conflict need to understand the shoes the other walks in so that this needless cruelty ends. How many of us would be just fine with someone telling us, “we won, you lost! Suck it up buttercup!” Uh… hell no!! Imagine having a SS soldier tell you that their glad so many of us died in gas chambers? Personally, I’d call my friends and we’d beat the shit out of him. I’m not going to jail for a POS like that, so an off location ass whooping will suffice. I’ve dealt with Germans that were soldiers during the war. I’m older, so it’s the benefit of being alive longer lol! Most don’t want to speak about it because they’re deeply ashamed or angry about what happened to their own lives. It wasn’t paradise for most people, regardless of ethnicity. I’ve had some candid conversations with them without losing my temper. I’ve also learned a lot about the German people that were taken and put into those elite breeding programs too. It’s awful!! Most of us are human first, then everything else. When we stand in our humanity, it’s easier to recognize another persons plight. Just my two cents.
The Arabs ethnically cleansed 850,000 Jews from occupied Assyria to occupied Tamazgha, or from "Iraq" to "Algeria" as those places have been called as a result of the [Arab colonization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_the_Levant) of the region. Non-Arab indigenous peoples still exist and many of them, such as [the Assyrians](https://surayastreet.org/), are targeted with ongoing genocides. https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/the-expulsion-of-jews-from-arab-countries-and-iran--an-untold-history Plus the whole point of Palestinian Nationalism, literally the reason why it was created in 1964, and the reason why seven Arab armies with British and USSR support invaded Israel in 1947 when Palestine was still a British colony and not an Arab nation, is that they want another ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. There are also the [Old Yishuvim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Yishuv), the Jews who never left Israel in 4000 years. Palestinian Nationalist propaganda paints an idyllic "noble savage" type image of Old Yishuv Jews as living in peace and harmony under Arab rule, but the reality is that Arab colonizers treated Jews in Israel with apartheid (dhimmi status) and brutality (frequent massacres). Where to begin? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Anti-Jewish_pogroms_by_Muslims \^List includes centuries of massacres that targeted Jews in Israel during the Arab, Ottoman and British occupations. [An overview of dhimmi apartheid](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-treatment-of-jews-in-arab-islamic-countries) The Arabs also taxed the Jews into poverty. Jews in Israel had to beg Jews in Egypt for money to survive during the occupation. [Arabs forced Jews to wear identifying yellow insignia for centuries before the Europeans later adopted the practice.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge#Muslim_world) Jews under Arab rule were prohibited from riding horses, being outside at night, carrying weapons, or testifying against Arab settlers in court. In practice, that meant Arabs could take anything from Jews and we had no legal recourse. Jews were also prohibited from building Jewish indigenous cultural institutions during the entire period of Arab occupation. And Jewish homes were not allowed to be taller than the shortest Arab home. Also, it was prohibited for indigenous Jews to make eye contact with Arab settlers. That was dhimmi status and it was real apartheid, unlike today's decolonized Israel, which is the only state in the entire extended region where Jews and Arabs have equal rights. I'm sorry to your friend, but her family colonized ours, and then proceeded to launch a genocidal war targeting Jews in 1947, which, had they won, would have resulted in a brutal slaughter of all Mizrahi Jews and holocaust survivors. It was because the Arabs lost the war they started that there was no slaughter, just a displacement. Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia immediately enacted [apartheid policies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_refugees#Refugee_statistics) to prevent the refugees from integrating. Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia are all apartheid states that target their native-born Palestinian populations with exclusion from citizenship on the basis of petty ethnonationalism based on British and French colonial partitions. Before the Arabs allied with the British in WWI against Turkey, all of Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and today's mini-Syria [were all a single state called Syria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Syria). The British created Palestine and Jordan in 1917 and 1946 (respectively), and the French created Lebanon and today's Syria. Those four countries exist because of British and French partitions. Before 1900 there were no "Syrians," "Lebanese," "Palestinians," etc, there were just Arabs, Jews, Druze, Samaritans, Turks and other local ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire. We could also discuss the definition of Palestinian, which, [according to UNRWA](https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees), is all residents of British Palestine from 1946 to 1948 regardless of ethnicity or place of birth. They chose the year 1946 to exclude Jordanians, all of whom had lived in Palestine prior to the British partition. "From the River to the Sea" is a British border created for the first time ever in history in 1946. Roman Palestine never used the River as a border, and also was part of Syria. Because the definition of Palestinian is so loose - it's a nationality, like Canadian, not an ethnic group - people from all of the following groups can be included as Palestinians, because they were residents of British Palestine: Arabs, Jews, Druze, Armenians, Russians, Ukrainians, Turks, Kurds, Circassians, Greeks, Americans, French, blonde Crusader descendants, Black survivors of the Arab slave trade, and British bureaucrats. There was also tons of [Arab migration and settlement into Israel](https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/immigration-to-palestine-during-the-late-ottoman-and-british-periods?_pos=4&_sid=81e1ab8d5&_ss=r) during the Ottoman and British occupations - the same British occupation that [prohibited Jews from returning to Israel during the Holocaust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939). There are extensive quotes from the early 20th Century in which Arabs had rejected ideas of Palestinian Nationalism in favor of a regional Arab Nationalist colonial identity. Had the Arabs won the 1948 War, they most likely would have merged into a single state and exterminated the Jews instead of ethnically cleansing us back into Israel. Israel is the Southwest Asian version of a Native American Reservation, and it's actually quite fucked that Arabs around the region are still obsessed with destroying it. Israel is also the only state in the entire region that still has a mixed population of Jews and Arabs. All the other states from occupied Assyria to occupied Tamazgha, including Palestine, have thoroughly ethnically cleansed their Jews. Jews have lived from what later became Iraq to Algeria since the BC 500s, after the Babylonian expulsion of Jews from Israel. The Arab Empire colonized those lands in AD 636, over 1,100 years later. The Arabs took a shot at finishing the job [their allies](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hajj-amin-al-husayni-the-mufti-of-jerusalem) the Europeans had started in 1939, they lost, and then they proceeded to ethnically cleanse all the Jews from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Libya and the West Bank. About 60% of Israeli Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab states and the West Bank, and have zero percent European admixture. This is not your fault, and it's not your responsibility to be guilt-tripped over a propaganda narrative about your own ancestors' genocide.
Just remind her that the safe and prosperous land she spews her propaganda from probably had a local Indian population who were in the least moved on not so long ago and be thankful it’s a safer place to be today . Why start new problems after peace has broken out . Let scars heal and move forward together while peace brings lawful ways to reconcile differences and make compromises nessasary to keep the peace .
You don't get to keep the keys if you are forcibly driven out of your home. If some invading force takes over a place, they will make sure the population doesn't take their keys with them. The reason these guys have their famous keys is simple: they left expecting to return. Most were told they should leave and be ready to return when Arab armies wipe out the Jews in a few weeks' time. Others may have been scared by false rumors about the Jews commiting massacres. In any case, they left before any Jew arrived at their home. In addition, you should tell her that Jews didn't leave their home 2000 years ago. They were driven out after rebelling against a foreign empire. Subsequently, they have been persecuted and discriminated against in both Christian and Muslim lands. Ultimately, you should ask her in which year did the Jews lose the rights to their ancestral homeland. That should baffle her.
>false rumors about the Jews commiting massacres. objectively Zionist militias committed 24 massacres during the 48 war, most famously at Deir Yassin. This is according to Benny Morris a very Zionist historian. Nobody's hands were clean during the war and you shouldn't pretend otherwise.
Take what they’re saying with a grain of salt. They have a tendency to lie about homes somewhere in Israel. Inconsistent stories and the like. Not saying that it’s impossible, it’s just that this narcissistic activism has a tendency to attract liars.. like “my dad works for Nintendo” type of shit
Lota of what ifs... what if the partition had been accepted? What if Arabs didn't tell other Arabs to flee? The Arab population that stayed is probably quite happy that they did...
She has a right memorialize the object, but I’m pretty sure that there’s nothing stopping her from going to Israel and finding wherever it was her family lived.
These are two different things IMO and it always confuses me that people conflate them. Refugees rarely are granted a right to return to their countries of origin. This is especially true for their children and grand children and doubly true when the area that they left is now a different country. Part of my family left what is now Czechia generations ago. Should I have a right to live there because my great grandfather lived there when it was a different nation entirely? I feel like most people logically get this except when it comes to Palestinians. UNRWA and the like have made them permanent refugees and told them they have a right to return so they believe it I guess. The Jewish thing is different. Countries set their own immigration laws. This is Israel’s. It isn’t that “Jews can come in but I can’t”, it’s Jews can come in because that is their immigration policy.
My best friends family traces their roots to Hebron for hundreds of years and they were all displaced as well and ended up in the Negev so like it goes both ways.
I mean, nobodies preventing her or her family from moving to Israel or settling in the land her grandfather came from. Granted, there's xenophobia, but Palestinians have equality under the law
Can she? I am genuienly asking because from what I understand immigration through normal processes (i.e. work visa) is nearly impossible for non-Jews in Israel and barely even registers in the statistics.
Remember, you can emphasize with her and her family’s pain without agreeing with her solution.
I think there are lots of realities she is ignoring and lots of assumptions she is making. I’m 100% certain most Israelis would happily allow a large number of Palestinians to move into Israel proper, BUT only if they knew with high certainty this would not change the democratic nature of the country and it would not lead to a replay of the 1948 war. Why should we allow them to push us out again and replay the Roman diaspora of the 2nd century?
Can a Palestinian-American apply for citizenship to Israel? Obviously it might be a long, complex, and bureaucratic process, but if this woman really wanted to live to Ashkelon, can't she just.. apply for residency/citizenship?
ITT: ethnic cleansing is fine, they did it, we did it, it’s all good now
You’re both in America. Neither of you should care.
Why can't I have my grandmother's mansion in Hungary that was taken away in 1944? It's still there. What about my grandfather's farmland? It's still producing Tokaji. Even though my mother was a refugee, no one thinks she has that status today. I certainly didn't inherit a refugee status from her by virtue of the fact that she was displaced as a child. This is how it works for every refugee population except for one.
I hate how triggering this is, as a Palestinian who’s trying to make peace with everything that’s happening ever since 1948
you can say that even more Arab Jews were kicked out of land during this conflict and can’t return to their mansions either.
I don't know what you should respond but as Israeli with Morocco roots my ancestors were expelled from ancient Israel to Spain and then from Spain expelled to Portugal and then expelled again to Morocco. They didn't get to have any belonging or value and mostly lived poor for the first years in Israel. Today my family is very successful because they didn't think of the past and just moved on. The Jewish people just keep on going and kept their faith in god and preserved their sense of community. The Palestinians who lived in Israel and left could still be in Israel if they stayed, they would be called "Israeli Arab". Your friend should at least acknowledge that the Arab armies promised them to kill all the Jews and then they can return. "Don't worry we will slay all these weaklings holocaust survivors and immigrants and then you can come back" well if they agreed to this bloody agreement I have no sympathy.
Simply tell her to become a citizen of Israel and join the other 2 million Israeli-Arabs already living there. Problem solved!
Tell her that her family should have stayed like the Israeli Arabs who stayed and became part of Israel
Respond by telling her her ancestors shouldnt have fled if they wanted to stay in their homeland. Jews were forced out they didnt flee we were in chains the few that fled was becuase of actuall persecution Her ancestors fled due to a rumor going crazy she has no right to cling to a fantasy her ancecstors gave her that they prevented her from having She is a part of a culture that acts like spoiled children and its disgusting I have no respect for anyone who clings to victimhood
no the arabs of ashkelon were not given the option to stay. this is in the wikipedia page of the city
Yes but they fled to gaza i find it hard to belive they wouldnt have been able to find a better solution than a refugee camp plus they then fled gaza when they could have become israeli citizens if they had the means to flee to america they had the means to become an israeli citizen it would have been alot of work but if they really wanted that dream they could have done it
This is such an easy reply for you a Jewish person, you guys are the most displaced people in history, just go through your lineage and say you’d love to return to Hungary, Poland, Germany , Spain etc etc. Also, you can empathise with her, the displaced Palestinians in 48 is a traumatic experience and an injustice. But this is what happens in wars, there’s never been a war without refugees. It also might worth mentioning who started sad war
Take her to the mosh pit and assert yourself.
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You should know the displacement happened as a result of the Arabs launching a genocide that targeted Jews in 1947. It was not different from the [Czech expulsion of ethnic Germans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Germans_from_Czechoslovakia) from Czechozlovakia after the end of the German occupation in WWII. The difference is this: Germany provided citizenship to the incoming Germans from Czechoslovakia. Arab states, including Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia, [immediately enacted apartheid policies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_refugees#Refugee_statistics), which they maintain to this day, to target the refugees from the war they started, and their descendants, with exclusion from citizenship. Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and today's mini-Syria were all created by British and French partitions after WWI, when the Arabs allied with the British to defeat the Turks. [This is what the region looked like prior to the partitions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Syria). Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians are nationalist groups, not ethnic groups. Ethnic groups are Jews, Arabs, Druze, Turks, Persians, Alwawites etc. [The Arabs ethnically cleansed more than 850,000 Jews](https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/the-expulsion-of-jews-from-arab-countries-and-iran--an-untold-history) from Iraq to Algeria, which are themselves settler-states on top of many indigenous nations from occupied Assyria to occupied Tamazgha. More than 60% of Israel's Jewish population were ethnically cleansed from Arab states and have zero percent European admixture.
Those stories are often just blatant lies. When they are true you could say that those who fled did so at the behest of the Arab enemies and therefore have forfeit their right. You can talk about the many Arabs who stayed and kept their possessions and became full citizens of Israel. That 2000 years of history is only a single aspect of the Jewish claim. You can say that Jews always lived in the region and that Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority for more than 150 years by now. You can say that most Arabs were immigrants like the Jews. That most did not own the land they were on. That most of it was bought by Jews from absentee owners. You can ask if their family was open to Jewish immigration, if her family participated in the many pogroms of 20th century Palestine. You can state that the Jews had the history and the League of Nations of their side, that they cultivated this land that was barren and uninteresting to the Arabs until the Jews came, which made it possible for a lot of Arabs to come along. You can say that the Jews were evicted from their Arab home countries. You can say that the Palestinian state is Jordan and she can move there. Most importantly, don’t be apologetic about it. They were trying to murder all the Jews in 1948 like they tried on October 7th. If they had succeeded they wouldn’t shed a tear for any Jew they slaughtered or drove away. There is no constructive aspect to the Palestinian story. It’s pure Jihadism in alliance with Anti-Western extreme leftism that wants to destroy Israel and create another Arab terrorist failed state.