[Serious post] This has to be one of the most beautiful videos I have seen for a while

@LordShadowfire you ever read about the history of the invasion?

@Iwantyourhotwife Yeah, how the Romans invaded in the first century and kicked the Israelites out, and the Palestinians invaded after?

@LordShadowfire I just looked into it - Rome defeated the Hasmonean rulers and controlled Jerusalem for about 700 years; I didn't know it was for so long!

@LordShadowfire @ElwoodBlues so, who is the original owner and [b]what[/b] makes someone an original owner of something? 👀

@Iwantyourhotwife Well, the Jews occupied it for several thousand years, and then the Romans stole it from the Jews... I'd call that original.

@LordShadowfire so occupying land for a number of years up in the thousands is your criteria of judgement for original?

@Iwantyourhotwife I'd like to see you find some descendants of the people who owned it before.

@LordShadowfire oh, so now there are people who owned it before

Two things:

1. You haven't really tried sharing your criteria of judgement for it to be applied 👀
2. Have you ever looked to find any answers to that same question? Could there be people who are alive today as descendants of people who owned the land before?

@Iwantyourhotwife aks [quote]Could there be people who are alive today as descendants of people who owned the land before?[/quote]
Yes. Almost certainly we are ALL descendants of people who owned the land before. Doesn't help much, does it?

[quote] In 2004 mathematical modeling and computer simulations by a group of statisticians led by Douglas Rohde, then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, indicated that our most recent common ancestor probably lived no earlier than 1400 B.C. and possibly as recently as A.D. 55. In the time of Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti, someone from whom we are all descended was likely alive somewhere in the world.

Go back a bit further, and you reach a date when our family trees share not just one ancestor in common but every ancestor in common. At this date, called the genetic isopoint, the family trees of any two people on the earth now, no matter how distantly related they seem, trace back to the same set of individuals. “If you were alive at the genetic isopoint, then you are the ancestor of either everyone alive today or no one alive today,” Rutherford says. Humans left Africa and began dispersing throughout the world at least 120,000 years ago, but the genetic isopoint occurred much more recently—somewhere between 5300 and 2200 B.C., according to Rohde’s calculations. [/quote]
[b]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/[/b]

@LordShadowfire Sounds like their quarrel is with the Romans, if they’re the ones who drove the Jewish people out 700 years ago, not the Palestinians, who would’ve then been there longer than white settlers have been in the U.S., Canada, or even Australia.

But [b]nobody[/b] in the West would accept that as justification for the descendants of indigenous people forcibly trying to reclaim those countries.

@Iwantyourhotwife The Romans were one, in a pretty long list of invaders and conquerors of the region. However, a point to note, the Jews were never fully "kicked out". Even when the Arabs and Ottoman Turks took the land by force (and renamed it - they adopted the name used by the Greeks 100's of years earlier ie Palestine), many Jews stayed.

Furthermore, the Jewish diaspora all over Europe dreamt of and campaigned for a return home, a return to Zion.

Bottom line, contemporary so-called Palestinians are the descendants of invaders ie it was never their land to begin with.

@bijouxbroussard Whether we in the west accept claims of ownership by Australian Aborigines or North American Native people or not, is completely irrelevant.

By that reasoning, Nelson Mandela should have died in prison and South Africa and Rhodesia (to name just two) should still be ruled by the descendants of the Dutch and British invaders.

@bijouxbroussard [quote]... quarrel is with the Romans, if they’re the ones who drove the Jewish people out ...[/quote] Apropos of the question of Romans driving out Jews, I started looking into the question of Roman persecution of other religions and it's pretty complicated. Short answer: Rome recognized Judaism as a legal religion, but drove the Jews out of Jerusalem in 66 (AD) while allowing them to live nearby.

The overall questions of who lived in Jerusalem over the last 2500 years and who ruled it over the last 2500 years are pretty complicated. IMHO no one has a clear claim to sole "ownership."

[sep][sep][sep]

Romans were polytheistic and pretty much tolerated other folks having other gods, as long as the folks would also pay a bit of respect to Roman gods. Greeks, Egyptians, the tribes of Germany, Gaul, etc were all allowed to keep their gods as long as they added a few.

Monotheistic religions were a problem because those people wouldn't recognize the Roman gods. After conquering Judea, Rome at first allowed Judaism, but trouble arose.

[quote]In 63 B.C., the Romans conquered Judea, the land of the Jews. Rome immediately recognized it had a problem because the Jews refused to pay homage to Roman gods. Rome gave in and exempted Jews from this requirement. Rome did this in part because the Jews had helped Roman general Julius Caesar win an important battle several years earlier. Soon Rome recognized Judaism as a legal religion, allowing Jews to worship freely.

But Rome viewed the Jews with suspicion and persecuted them on several occasions. One of the most serious conflicts between Rome and the Jews began in Judea in A.D. 66 when Nero was emperor. The Roman governor of Judea unwisely decided to confiscate a large sum of money from the treasury of the Great Temple in Jerusalem. He claimed he was collecting taxes owed the emperor. Rioting broke out, which Roman soldiers ruthlessly suppressed. This, in turn, enraged a nationalistic group of Jewish revolutionaries, called Zealots, who massacred the Romans in Jerusalem and attacked Roman troops elsewhere in the Roman province.
[ . . . more rebellions . . . ]
After crushing these challenges to their authority, the Romans dispersed Jews throughout the empire. But Judaism remained a legal religion and Jews continued to enjoy religious privileges. [/quote]
[b]https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-13-4-b-religious-tolerance-and-persecution-in-the-roman-empire[/b]

Which is to say that Rome didn't originally drive out Jews, and didn't drive out all of them. Roman suppression and persecution of Christians was more widespread, but that's a different topic.

Now back to who lived in and who ruled Jerusalem.

Alexander the Great conquered Jerusalem 332 BCE, taking it from various Babylonian and Persian Jews. Various Greeks ruled it until 167 BCE when a Jewish group, the Maccabees, conquered the Greek rulers. It's not clear to me if the Greek rulers ever suppressed Judaism though.

Rome conquered Jerusalem 63 BCE, at first tolerating Judaism but eventually banning Jews from Jerusalem though not from the Empire. Roman rulers were succeeded by Byzantine rulers who were Christians of Roman descent (after Constantine converted most of the Roman empire to Christianity around 312).

Byzantine rule begins to crumble around 614; by 636, Islamic Caliphs rule Jerusalem and allow Jews back into the city. Various Infighting Islamic groups control Jerusalem until the first Crusader conquest in 1099. Islamics regain control by the 1240s; in 1260 the Mongol empire briefly conquers Jerusalem.

There's more, lots more. I've skipped over many details. All this is just to underline the point that no one group has a clear claim to "ownership" of Jerusalem.

@room101 [quote] By that reasoning, Nelson Mandela should have died in prison and South Africa and Rhodesia (to name just two) should still be ruled by the descendants of the Dutch and British invaders.[/quote]
Over the indigenous Africans ?
[b]How[/b] ?

@ElwoodBlues [quote]Yes. Almost certainly we are ALL descendants of people who owned the land before. Doesn't help much, does it? [/quote]
Indeed, a very valid point.

I am glad this matter is slowly healing. Hopefully peace will come back soon and this can be dropped in the dirt.

@Iwantyourhotwife [quote]oh, so now there are people who owned it before[/quote]
Idk, were there?
[quote]You haven't really tried sharing your criteria of judgement for it to be applied[/quote]
So what I'm hearing you say is, you don't understand the meaning of the word original.

[quote][/quote]

@bijouxbroussard [quote]There's more, lots more. I've skipped over many details. All this is just to underline the point that no one group has a clear claim to "ownership" of Jerusalem.[/quote]
I mean, it seems complicated, and I don't mean to oversimplify, but who owned it before the Romans moved in in 63 BC?

@LordShadowfire I based my simplified timeline on this one:
[b]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Jerusalem[/b]
Seems there was a mix of Jews, Egyptians, and Greeks conquering and ruling Jerusalem for 1000+ years BC.

@ElwoodBlues I hate it when shit gets complicated, lol.

So basically, that area has been hotly contested for much of human history.

@LordShadowfire From 63 BC to 1918 AD is a really long time. And by 1948 when outside colonizers (British) established that land as Israel, the Holocaust refugees were largely Europeans.

That’s significant because when they established The Law of Return, where every Jewish person worldwide was to be welcomed there, not all tribes were. There have been Jews in Ethiopia (Beta Israel, formerly called "Falashas") who observed Judaism, including kosher laws, for centuries.
I’m not talking about the nutjobs in the U.S., but people in East Africa, who had never left.

These were [b]not[/b] converts. They saw themselves as descendants of Solomon & Sheba. But during a famine in the 80s, some groups pressured Israel to help them. Israel (some say reluctantly) air-lifted them there, but reports came out about the country sterilizing the women, ostensibly to keep them from mixing with the populace.

I was admittedly shocked to learn about that. But that’s one of the issues I’ve had with the policies of the [b]country[/b], not the people.

@bijouxbroussard How indeed. Geo-political history is littered with examples, both contemporary and ancient, where the indigenous population has regained its autonomy and land from invading occupiers. But mention Israel and many shrug their shoulders and say;

"meh, the Jews owned the land too long ago"

Why is that?

@bijouxbroussard btw, I purposely used the colonial name of Zimbabwe ie Rhodesia, above to illustrate my point about the name, Palestine.