I've never understood the argument of Muslim Land or Arab Land. If one were to call Britain White Man's Land and start a terror campaign against African, Asian, and Arab immigrants, would the world community accept that?
Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1]. How does that become suddenly Muslim Land?
> Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1]
(Links a page that shows the exact opposite)
> If one were to call Britain White Man's Land and start a terror campaign against African, Asian, and Arab immigrants, would the world community accept that?
Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleanse 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades?
This isn't Reddit. Many people here actually do read sources. All the censuses in the decades before the fall of the Ottoman empire show a Jewish majority. And for the century preceding that, the censuses flipped back and forth.
> Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleans 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades?
No. The UN designated the malaria-infested marshes Israeli (not Jewish) and the majority of the rest Arab (not Muslim, not Palestinian, and not Egyptian or Jordanian). The Arab states rejected this, and opened a war with the newly formed Israel. Many Israeli leaders pleaded with the Arab residents not to heed the Arab states' calls to evacuate. The situation in Haifa is well documented, I know this from living with Arabs in Haifa two decades ago. They tell how the Haifa mayor pleaded with their families to remain in 1948.
> This isn't Reddit. Many people here actually do read sources.
Exactly. The Ottoman rule of Palestine spans 400 years, and the graph at the top of the page you linked shows that Jews became a majority in Jerusalem only at the very end of it, following zionist immigration at the end of the 19th century.
> The UN designated the malaria-infested marshes Israeli (not Jewish)
The problem is that this isn't reddit and people actually read the sources. This is the text of the Partition Plan:
"Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence..."
Why do you have such a problem with Zionist immigration that made Jerusalem a Jewish-majority city? It was legal immigration allowed by Ottoman Empire. Do you see Muslims immigrating to Europe in the same light? Many previously "white" cities in Europe are now Muslim. Should Europeans call it "Muslim occupation of white land"? That sounds pretty racist. Why double standard?
Ah no, I have no problem with it, as much as Palestinians had little problem with the tens, and then hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants to their land.
Of course if the UN were suddenly to declare that half of my country is now assigned to them only to build their, say, Arab state- then I would be quite pissed. Wouldn't you?
> The First Aliyah, also known as the agriculture Aliyah, was a major wave of Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Ottoman Palestine between 1881 and 1903 ... An estimated 25,000 Jews immigrated.
Jerusalem was already Jewish majority before 1881. And the large waves of the movement were towards the end, not towards the beginning.
Yes, as we said, zionist immigration to Palestine began at the end of the 19th century. Nothing to do with the small historical Jewish population of Palestine or Jerusalem.
Yes indeed, if white British people were expelled from their lands and their homes confiscated by anyone, Norse, Germanic or Russian, it'd be considered ethnic cleansing and a war crime.
The jews of Ottoman era were Sephardic and Mizrahi jews of N. Africa, not the Yiddish speaking Ashkenazis of Germany, France and Russia.
After the UN divided the holy land into an Israeli and an Arab state, the Arabs began their ethnic cleaning campaign. That is why there were zero Jews left in Gaza or the West Bank after the war. The war that was started with the stated goal of eliminating the Jews.
And note that despite Arab calls for the Arabs to evacuate the holy land, it remained 20% Arab. And let's not get started on the Jews in the other 20 plus Arab states. What at happened to them?
Like how the Arab countries expelled Jews after Israel was founded? The double standard about Israel and Arab colonization and ethnic cleansing is absurd.
I actually do know the "Muslim lands" reference. Religious Muslims believe any land ever controlled by Muslims must remain Muslim forever. It's a conquest tactic. It gets slightly reframed to be tolerable for westerners by invoking the idea that they're "indigenous", when they're largely Arabs who committed genocide against the previous peoples.
The Arab culture, identity, and distinct racial features formed in the Arabian peninsula. After they accepted Islam in the 7th century, they turned to conquest other areas.
This is all well documented in Arab sources, they are very proud of this.
Oh i didn't realize we're going back more than a millennia. Well, in that case every modern nation state is the product of one form of genocide or another - the USA being the worst genocidal state, going back just 500 years.
>The Arab culture, identity, and distinct racial features formed in the Arabian peninsula
Seems silly to me to claim a land that "your people" inhabited centuries and millennia ago, as it honestly seems silly to me talk about "racial features" when talking about humans. Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"?
> Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"?
Not by virtue of being the same race, but by virtue of being the offspring of parents who are proud of their heritage and teach their children.
Denying the existence of Arab culture, of which the Arabs are (rightly, in my opinion) very proud of, is racism. Not everybody has the same values and customs as you do.
"Whilst there are a great number of perspectives that can be taken on the subject, it is impossible to form a single, all-embracing concept of European culture."
Do you frequently stop reading articles two sentences in? It's amazing how much knowledge and intelligence you must be missing.
Please do keep reading past. The next sentence (literally sentence #3) gives you: Nonetheless, there are core elements which are generally agreed upon as forming the cultural foundation of modern Europe. One list of these elements given by K. Bochmann includes:
And then a detailed list of shared-culture-related items.
- A common cultural and spiritual heritage derived from Greco-Roman antiquity, Christianity, Judaism, the Renaissance, its Humanism, the political thinking of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the developments of Modernity, including all types of socialism;[5][4]
- A rich and dynamic material culture, parts of which have been extended to the other continents as the result of industrialization and colonialism during the "Great Divergence";[5]
- A specific conception of the individual expressed by the existence of, and respect for, a legality that guarantees human rights and the liberty of the individual;[5]
- A plurality of states with different political orders, which share new ideas with one another.[5]
- Respect for peoples, states, and nations outside Europe.
And then there are 15 categories from Music to Science to History, listing cultural similitudes or shared values.
> Religious Muslims believe any land ever controlled by Muslims must remain Muslim forever.
What are you basing this on? Are "religious" Muslims some kind of True Scots Muslims? I'm willing to bet that if I speak to any of my Muslim neighbours none of them will agree with this.
Source on Swedes being steppe barbarians? Most historians agree that Vikings originated in Scandinavia. Sami peoples originated in northern Russia and moved to the furthest north regions of Scandinavia. The Vikings were also more concerned with seafaring and raiding to the south and west and all the history I know of is that they coexisted mostly peacefully (Vikings would trade with the Sami). Conflict arose centuries after the Viking age.
Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1]. How does that become suddenly Muslim Land?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerus...