Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 23, 2023 8:12 pm
No, there's been no "occupation." Historically, the Jews have had every right to that land for thousands of years. You're trying to win the debate by assuming your conclusion...and it's a false one.
This is a claim most often made by Christian Zionists and settler Jews: on one hand they say that the land was empty of people. They also deny the possibility that the land was “occupied” because a) according to the religious view it is the eternal possession of Jews by divine decree, b) because some number of Jews remained in the area (true), and c) because Jews have so much history in those lands (though the Exile drove them out and into the Diaspora). The last is also true.
There are elements of truth in both b) and c). However a) is obviously an untenable assertion unless one is a Christian or a Jewish zealot.
Most Christian and Jewish Zionists refer to a) b) and c) with differing emphasis on one or the other.
Never, or rarely, is it stated that it is no longer tenable to refer to divine right; rarely is it admitted that there was an indigenous population (with significant cities), and only for some religious is the issue of a divinely ordained Exile mentioned. That is, an expulsion ordained by Yahweh as “punishment”.
If there was no divinely ordained exile, then the Exile was
merely an injustice committed against Israel by Rome. However it becomes an untenable argument to assert that it is legal or ethical to reconquer that land so many centuries later (2,000 years).
We know that Immanuel subscribes to the “divine right” justification. He has made this clear in statements to Janoah. That is really at the core of his *argument*.
That argument is often embellished with the claims that no one was living there; that Jews never fully left; and also that Arabs migrated there from surrounding nations in the early 20th century. But there is no genuine Palestinian people they say.
These arguments dovetail together, naturally, in varying combinations.
