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Comment by flyinglizard | Hacker News Reader

Which Indian tribe’s land have you built your high ground on?

I don't believe the US went in for a systematic renaming/demolition of places as Israel did. Balad Al-Sheikh has a history going back to the 16th century, Nesher to only 1924.

Also I'm not American.

I realize discussing politics here is pointless, but this is just so comically ignorant I have to reply.

1. Israel won its independence after barely managing to fend off the joint armies of seven Arab nations who invaded the Jewish area following UN partition decision, openly declaring they intend to wipe all Jewish presence. Almost all nations, US included, predicted Arabs will succeed and decided to sit it out. Comparing this to the history of Europeans and Native Americans is simply ridiculous.

2. The name Nesher comes from a cement factory on whose grounds the cave was found. The name Ramle comes from the city founded by the Umayyad dynasty shortly after Islam conquered the land from the Roman Byzantine empire, which conquered it from the Hashmonites, who conquered it from the Hellenic Seleucids, who took it from the Persians, who beat the Babylonians, who took it from the Judeans, who conquered it from the Cannanites etc. After the Umayyad, Ramle was controlled by the Crusaders, then the Mamluks, then the Ottomans, then the British and now Israel. So declaring a specific 18-19th century village in the area as the original "Native" of the place rather than all others who lived there is - simply ridiculous as well.

As an Israeli, I have no animosity towards Arabs. But I really can't stand Western idiots who don't have a slight clue about the Mideast, or anything really outside their incredibly sheltered existance, and see the whole thing as some stupid Hollywood good vs bad conflict.

I don’t understand this comment. What does Indian tribal land have to do with the naming of this discovery?

What I assume the poster meant - I might of course be wrong - is that the in the US discoveries are named after the location names of white settlers, not by the names of the locations that the people called them, that the white settlers killed to take the land. e.g. someone says "Discovered in New York" instead of how the land was named by the Native Americans who lived there and were killed.

Manhattan is derived from a native American phrase or word as far as I know.

You're right, looks like a bastardized version of "manaháhtaan" says Wikipedia.

I think the reply is meant to be a critique of the above comment.

They assumed that the first commentator was American, so said that given America entirely consists of land inhabited by displaced peoples (American Indians) that it's hypocritical to criticise Israel, which partially consists of that kind of land, for the same injustice.

To be accurate, Israel also entirely consists of that kind of land.

This is kind of very correct but also very misleading:

Israel is partly bought, partly doled out by UN and partly won in war.

Yes, many Arabs were displaced and with a course enough resolution there was an Arab within x kilometers everywhere in what has become Israel.

Also at the same time even more Jews where chased out from the countries around.

At no point did North American tribes drive out more Europeans (or any at all) than Europeans drove out Native Americans.

There can hardly be peace until we get the facts straight, both ways, so we should strive for that.

I don't know how it is misleading. In 1947, the Jews were 33% of the population and owned just 6% of the land of Palestine, yet a UN of only 46 countries and dominated by the great powers granted them 55% of the land for a Jewish state which zionist offensives quickly expanded to 80% of the land while ethnically cleansing the population. The zionists were the direct cause of the exodus of the worlds' oldest Jewish communities in the other Arab lands both by their treatment of the Palestinians but also by sowing panic in Jews in Iraq and elsewhere by planting bombs in synagogues. Israel, a European colony largely, now needed Mizrahi Jews since the European Jews had been subjected to genocide. Of course some Jews in places like Yemen were zionists also and emigrated for that reason. Anything non-factual in that?

You had a point until you brought up the Yemeni Jews who had been oppressed for generations treated as second class citizens, charged a "protection tax," banned from wearing the traditional Sudra as a form of humiliation, and more recently persecuted by the Houthis. The plight of the Palestinians is very real, but refrain from rewriting the history of Yemeni Jews. Educate yourself.

>Anything non-factual in that?

Nearly all of it (either non factual or so tilted as to be non factual)?

> owned just 6% of the land of Palestine

Absurd criteria - what does wealth have to do with it? Splitting America by 'ownership' would give 100% to rich WASP. By the way, Most local land was owned by families not living in the country or was unowned desert.

>55% of the land for a Jewish state

The big difference being the Negev desert, because it was thought the new state would need somewhere to settle WW2 refugees. The Jewish state got much less of the useful fertile areas.

>The zionists were the direct cause of the exodus of the worlds' oldest Jewish communities in the other Arab lands both by their treatment of the Palestinians

Displacement was caused by the local states and its beginning predated the UN partition (1941 farhud, 1945 Tripolitania massacre, etc.).

> zionist offensives quickly expanded to 80% of the land while ethnically cleansing the population

You mean 'directly caused by the constant attacks by 7 states and the local Arab population', right? Just applying the same standards you apply, but without inverting chronology this time.

>by sowing panic in Jews in Iraq and elsewhere by planting bombs in synagogues

Based on 'confessions' accomplished by torture. The actual actions of the Iraqi government are oddly ignored.

Modern Iraqi history is littered with letting inconvenient populations be displaced (from Assyrians, to Iraqi Persians to Marsh Arabs to Kurds to Yazidis and yes, Jews) and always blaming it on someone else.

> and dominated by the great powers granted them 55% of the land for a Jewish stat

70% of the area that was proposed for the Jewish state was used to create what is today Jordan.

The rest is creative interpretations and framings to make one of the worlds smallest countries - and the only land where Jews can feel safe - to seem like a giant agressor.

>70% of the area that was proposed for the Jewish state was used to create what is today Jordan.

Do you have a reference for that?

Do you know anotherland than Iceland, which does not consist of such land if you look carefully enough?

England

Not sure we can say that.

Recent history (from memory) Roman invasion 55 CE. Saxon invasion 400..500 ? Viking Invasions 900...ish Norman invasion 1066

All of these invaders made big changes to the country including place names, laws and language.

And there is the archeological record of pre-historic gene lines that are extinct in England as well.

Every nation is inhabited by people who displaced someone else, who in turn displaced someone else, who in turn displaced someone else, etc.

We're also all the product of several rapes down the line of our ancestors. That doesn't justify rape when it happens now, does it?

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