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Comment by voz_ | Hacker News Reader

Hard to move on when other people will kill you for it. Maybe the perpetrators of violence can move on first?

This is more or less Sartre's take on the identity of Jewishness, that it is essentially defined and maintained by the forces of antisemitic discourse and violence. Arguably a reductive, even insulting, understanding of identity and culture but still a compelling one for many people, people make the same arguments about womanhood and misogyny, Blackness and racism.

A less charged version of this is Daniel Boyarin's take in "Border Lines," that early Christianity and early Rabbinic Judaism were largely defined in opposition to each other. I.e. that being "not that other thing" both established a bright line division where one didn't previously exist, and shaped the things on each side of that line. (And in his opinion, created the very concept of "a religion" as a distinct package of culture and ideas where previously it was more integrated across social activities and behaviors).

As Christianity became dominant, it began to schism internally with much the same pattern, fractally defining parts of itself as things like "not Arian" or "not Catholic." Judaism, embedded within Christian society, still primary organizes around being "not Gentile" which ranges from simply Christian to full blown anti-semitism and pogroms.

"that early Christianity and early Rabbinic Judaism were largely defined in opposition to each other"

I never heard of that theory, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense. I would think early christians mainly defined themself by believing in jesus christ, meaning they believed Jesus from Nazareth was the Messias and the other jews did not believe jesus was the messiahs.

And then you had christians who believed jesus resurrected from the death and those who did not. Then you had those who believed it was only a jew thing and then you had Paulus, who made it a universal religion, ... so all in all, plenty of different things people believed in. So surely some groups of people define themself by what they are not, but I don't think this was valid of early christians.

"they believed Jesus from Nazareth was the Messias and the other jews did not believe jesus was the messiahs"

Isn't that definition in opposition?

Not in my understanding: it is

group A believes in X

group B believes in Y

What the parent poster seemed to imply was

group A believes in not Y.

Or a more concrete example of today, many people today define themself by being anti green, anti progressive, anti woke, antifashist etc. but often struggle to define what they are standing for.

The theory would be that given A believes X and B believes Y, A is more likely to incorporate ~X and B is more likely to incorporate ~Y.

And because beliefs tend to be on a bit of a continuum, what starts with A believes Z <= 4 and B believes Z >=5 evolves to A believes Z <=1 and B believes Z >=9, and both believe anyone who believes 3<=Z<=7 is not part of their group.

I recently saw an interview with Natan Sharansky who was a Soviet dissident who spent many years in Soviet jails fighting to be allowed to immigrate to Israel. His take on Jewishness at least in context of USSR was that Jews were completely assimilated and only the antisemites defined them as such and hated them and that's all. I think jews in Nazi germany as well suddenly found themselves jewish by the Nazi genocidal ideology while before it was complete assimilation with the German culture.

Since 2000, 11 652 Palestinians and 2 246 Israelis have been killed by someone from the other side. So who is the perpetrator here when one side perpetuates Apartheid policies?

Jesus, a Jew, was born in the land called Israel today, well before islam even existed. Al Aqsa is a form of religious domination (building ones holy site on another, older, holy site) and the very presence of palestinians is a form of colonialism.

What does that have to do with the current-day persecution of Palestinians by Apartheid Israel?

Children under the age of 15 in Palestine make up 50% of the population. In Gaza, it's 45%. One thing I've noticed is news media equating Hamas with the majority of Palestinians, they weren't even born when they came into power.

Apartheid Israel and Palestine are not the same. Israel is the aggressor. They've ethnic cleansed so many Palestinians that there are 5.9 million refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. That's half of Israel's population.

* Illegal Settlers living in Palestine can vote in Israel but not Palestinians. Apartheid South Africa did the same, they put the people in their own "country" and so couldn't vote. Israel doesn't want 1 state as that would mean millions more voting. And it doesn't want 2 states as that would mean giving up valuable land.

* Israel has ethnically cleansed and fragmented areas into [isolated cantons divided by Israeli settlements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_enclaves), and implemented [lebensraum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum) tactics. This was called [Bantustans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan) in South Africa.

* [It denies Palestinian fishing past 3 nautical miles in some areas, and not past 15 nautical miles](https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline100...)

* [The Apartheid Separation wall](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d0/73/81/d07381fffef632350bcb...)?

* The settlers kill and burn homes to get rid of people: [stealing homes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNqozQ8uaV8) and destroying olive tree groves. They pour concrete into Palestinian farmers' water wells.

* [They control the water completely](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...).

* [They get 12 hours of electricity a day](https://www.ochaopt.org/page/gaza-strip-electricity-supply).

* Palestinians didn't have 3G until 2018, their access is also restricted.

* They [blockade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip) Gaza, making it a concentration camp of 2.2 million people where 44% are children.

* [Not All Israeli Citizens Are Equal](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/opinion/not-all-israeli-c...)

* There were `5,248,185` Palestinian refugees in 2020; that's equal to half the population of Israel.

* [Israel dictates who you can marry](https://preview.redd.it/1k7jnev0pq971.jpg?width=1024&auto=we...)

* [Segregated road system](https://s3.amazonaws.com/VP2/visuals/en/4db97391fe7cb2462249...)

* [Israel Forcibly Injected African Immigrants with Birth Control](https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseknutsen/2013/01/28/israel-...)

* 50% of Palestinians are children.

As someone from South Africa, I've seen ethnic cleansing and Israel is doing worse. Israel is absolutely an Apartheid state. Various human rights organisations have already stated this.

It matters because it shows that the palestinians / arabs are the colonizers. They are the ones who are seeking to displace natives.

There are Palestinian Christians too who are displaced by the illegal Israeli settlers. Israelis are as native as the Palestinians; especially when you consider that Israelis have come from elsewhere in the Middle-East and from Europe. Whereas the Palestinians have always been there, most being ethnically cleansed in the last 75 years. On the other hand, 17% of Israelis speak Russian; they have recently made Israel their home.

But you are arguing disingenuously, you know it, and I'd rather not continue this farce.

Definitely - the idea of stolen land only stokes hate for the “others” that stole it generations ago

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