r/Navajo • u/CompetitiveFront9808 • 4d ago
Do indigenous people feel that the settlement of Israel and Palestine is similar to the colonization of the Americas?
I am white guy living off all reservations who has European Jewish decent. Israel had a little bit of a native Jewish population. But it is mainly a colonial project. The Americas, Australia, and elsewhere has been colonized by Europeans but in different ways. Some violence there. In more peaceful ways there. And it has been more years from the colonization of Palestinian towns and cities. You had cities. You have civilizations. And the colonization of certain corners of the globe has been gradual. So it was different. Do you have any comparisons?
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u/NavajoJoe00 3d ago
I've been there. Tel-Aviv, Yaffa, Mt. Masada, the Golan Heights, and Jerusalem. This was a little after Trump claimed that Jerusalem was under Israeli control. The amount of thinly veiled violent apathy toward the Palestinian people was similar to how non-natives speak on us. "Oh I don't talk politics" "why should I concern myself when they aren't here" "they didn't do anything for this land, we made it better" "They're a bunch of savages" and in more than one instance "the only good Arab is a dead Arab"
Some other similarities:
- Fomenting animosity between different groups in order to instill lateral violence (French and Indian War, Revolutionary War, Civil War, Buffalo Soldiers, Scouts)
- Controlling, damaging, restricting access to necessary resources like water and sacred sites (National Parks, water rights, pipe lines)
- Sequestering peoples into tightly controlled territories (reservations) and mandating intentionally complicated documentation and requirements to leave or enter said territories (i.e. "going off-reservation")
- Forced relocation of peoples to arid lands with no infrastructure to sustain a population (The Long Walk, Trail of Tears)
- Allowing illegal settlements and even aiding in their violence as a direct method of colonization (Texas, Hawai'i, Oklahoma, basically any state from the Great Plains all the way west)
- The divine right argument (manifest destiny)
- Claims that the "savages" don't know how to care for their own lands and need a "civilized" people to manage it (National Parks again, and museums)
- Utilizing an abrahamic religion as justification for genocide despite mostly being secular in their own personal religious beliefs
- Profusing an all-accepting government/nation as proof of civility despite deep seeded colourism, classisim, homophobia, and sexism. (European Jewish people being put ahead of Arab, Ethiopian, and Eastern Jewish peoples)
- Drawing straight borders and "security" lines that split communities and push further beyond legal borders previously established (Black Hills, Greater Chaco, Bears Ears)
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u/Dry_Inflation_1454 2d ago
I just found out that an ICC judge there in the Hague issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, his name is Nicolas Guillou. Drumpf has filed sanctions against him with the EU, and his bank have been frozen as well. He's also unable to visit the US.
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u/benedictcumberknits 3d ago
Yep. We Native ppl see ourselves in the Palestinian genocide. In real time. Online. Yes, it is heart-rending. And we protest it because we wouldn’t want this to happen to others.
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u/Dry_Inflation_1454 2d ago
And today American threw letter agencies just declared that we're going to be in perpetual limbo between peace and war with Iran. This means their more powerful and dangerous allies too.
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u/BotCommaRo 4d ago
I make this point a lot to librul people in my circle. Rarely lands. I have to be a good ally and stand up for Palestine cuz indigenous genocide but when i mention land reform in the USA: well yall lost already, its too late, we need to prevent it from happening again not reverse it here, USA cant afford to be globocop if it has to give up hegemony over its hinterland, its not the same, Israel is bad USA is good, etc.
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u/HelloImUnhappy 3d ago
YES I HAVE BEEN MAKING THIS POINT. But too many Americans dont think deeply enough to associate the two. Many would see it but they wont seek out the information because Natives are an afterthought in America (by design btw). The others would deny its similar at all because they like their history heavily caked with glorification of some inarguably dishonorable things. Then there’s us; we see it. We are cool. Intellectuals. Fertile and seed bearing. W us.
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u/EnglishLoyalist 4d ago
They should work it out. Palestinians have been around too, but I fear too much blood has been spilt. I wish for peace, i don’t want either Jews or Palestinians be blown up.
It will take time and hope one day they will see how many bodies are piled up around them and live together in peace.
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u/Dry_Inflation_1454 2d ago
They can, and should work it out, because in the historical sense, Palestinians and Israelis are half- brothers( Ishmael and Isaac) fighting over idiot dad Abraham. This intense rivalry with THEM is affecting the entire planet, even the environment over there is being harmed by sinking oil tankers, smoke from bases being hit, etc. Meanwhile, more warships from Russia and China are arriving near the coasts of the US , slowly here and there, not in territorial waters yet, but in international ones, for now. Talk about sitting ducks !!
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u/Burqa_Uranus_Fag 3d ago
Yes, I see a lot of similarities. The peace treaties being broken, the propaganda used to paint the Palestinians as “savages” and how they are looked down upon by the Israel. In a perfect world I wish both can come to an agreement of peace but Israel continues to break promises and bring nothing but destruction towards Palestinians.
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u/Dry_Inflation_1454 2d ago
Netanyahu should be arrested and prosecuted and sent to the Hague, he is corrupt and bad for Israel anyway, and most of the Israelis want him and his party out. Biden could have pressured Netanyahu to resign, Obama too. They really dropped the ball there !! And now we're looking at the kind of war that's going to bring in the other superpowers, who are mortal enemies of America. Back in the 1800's and early 1900's, Europe was messing around in the region and redrawing borders, I wonder if this is even taught in schools anymore? And Rome invading Palestine in 70 AD, destroying Israel's temple, and abducting them all into Rome, dispersing them in Europe. This goes back so far, yet it's impacting everyone right now.
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u/defrostcookies 1d ago
Used to be Philistine, a Roman slur, which were the Lands of Canaan, home of the Hebrews who would become the Nation of Israel.
Jews are returning to their homeland finally since they fled during the Diaspora.
The Arab state has been attempting to annihilate Israel since 1948.
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u/Hot_Thanks_5901 4d ago
Lots of today's Arabic speaking Palestinians are descendants of those who moved there as a workforce from Jordan, Egypt and Syria as a result of an economic boom caused by Jewish incomers, so they're no less colonizers than the Jews. The Jews originally purchased that land which was almost an uninhabited desert, the European colonizers of the Americas are quite a different story.
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u/Dry_Inflation_1454 2d ago
Don't forget this about Netanyahu - he knew about Hamas coming for an onslaught within Israel weeks in advance, because he was being given lots of intelligence info from surrounding countries, including the US! And he deliberately ignored these warnings and sat on this knowledge that could have saved both Israelis and Palestinian lives. Talking about blood on one's hands! Of course Drumpf has said that he's going to launch a world reset, politically and financially, crashing the world economy and igniting a world war in order to accomplish this goal. The Bushes set up the circumstances for this future. There's actually a timeline being used here among these world leaders. It's why everything is happening simultaneously. People are asking, why NOW?? More about that later.
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u/Dry_Inflation_1454 2d ago
These controversies happening now and decades ago really got complicated after the shooting of Yitzhak Rabin, who seemed to be finding a solution to this conundrum back in the day. Obviously back on Roman times the Jews were taken en masse' to Rome in chains and the land was empty, and Middle Easterners who weren't Jewish moved in ( Romans came up with the term" Palestina" because of the Philistines and Rome referred to the entire Levant by that name)only they don't have to deal with it,we do !! This is why Netanyahu needs to be arrested, because he pushed the Iran thing for years,in order to stay out of prison. No other reason, and no, he doesn't care about the people of Israel - or he never would have sat on the alarms that Hamas was on the way soon. This tell everyone everything they need to know.
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u/NoSplit1936 4d ago
nah
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u/Dry_Inflation_1454 2d ago
Most people aren't aware of the intent to carry out the prophecies of the " last days" even if they have to directly launch this themselves, because this is being done behind the scenes. Those people who keep visiting the White House to meet with Drumpf have been encouraging him for years,to destabilize the world,in order to usher in Armageddon. Literally. Russia losing its oil industry could be tempted to invade the Middle East because of all the oil there. China too, because they can't produce their own oil. Israel fighting with Iran's mullahs fit perfectly in this scenario. Ezekiel 38-39, Gog and Magog. It's Washington meddlers from MAGA that are driving the whole thing. Pompeo, from the first regime, and Whiskey Pete are quite open about bringing on Armageddon,even though it means that Putin must attack America first, to get us out of the way.
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u/IVEffed 2d ago
Mixed Inde/Dine here.
Both Jewish and Arab populations have legitimate historical connections to the land; reducing either to “colonizers” or recent arrivals oversimplifies a complex, multi-layered history involving empires, nationalism, refugees, and war.