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Comment by pbiggar | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not a Rationalist, however, nothing you said in your first paragraph is factual and therefore the resultant thesis isn't supported. In fact it ignores nearly 2-3000 years of history and ignores a whole bunch of surrounding context.

The 2-3000 years of history are entirely and wholly irrelevant. Especially as history shows clearly that the Palestinians are just as much the descendants of the ancient Israelites as the Jewish diaspora that returned to their modern land after the founding of modern Israel. The old population from before the Roman conquest never disappeared - some departed and formed the diaspora, but most stayed. Some converted to Christianity during this time as well. Later, they were conquered by Mohammed and his Caliphate, and many converted to Islam, but they're still the same people.

Is your claim that genetics determines who should live in a particular patch of land?

No, not genetics, but heritage is a valid, and very commonly used, criterion.

I.e., the following is, I believe, a reasonable argument:

"I should have a right to live in this general patch of land, since my grand-parents lived here. Maybe my parents moved away and I was born somewhere else, but they still had a right to live here and I should have it too. I may have to buy some land to have this right, I'm not saying I should be given land - but I should be allowed to do so. Additionally, it matters that my grand-parents were not invaders to this land. Their parents and grand-parents had also lived here, and so on for many generations."

This doesn't imply genetic heritage necessarily - cultural heritage and the notions of parents are not necessarily genetic. I might have ~0% of the specific DNA of some great-great-grand-parent (or even 0% of my parents' DNA, if I am adopted) - but I'm still their descendant. Now, how far you want to stretch this is very much debatable.

This seems at odds with your earlier claim that "The 2-3000 years of history are entirely and wholly irrelevant". In fact the history of those 2-3000 years seems essential to determining "heritage".

That was in response to the argument that I believe the GP was making by bringing into discussion this timeline. The typical way this is presented by adherents of Zionism is something like "the Jewish people are the original people who lived in Israel/were given it by God; this land was stolen from the Jewish people and they were expelled, first by the Romans and then by the Arabs; the foundation of modern-day Israel marked the return home of the Jewish people, as was their right by their 2-3000 years of having lived there; the Palestinians were just the latest population living on this stolen land". By this logic, they then claim that Israel are not occupying any land, even Gaza or the West Bank, it is the Palestinians who had been occupying the land of Israel.

My claim is that this is factually incorrect by any stretch of the imagination, as soon as we recognize that the modern-day Palestinians and the modern-day Jewish people are just as much descendants of the ancient Israelites. Just because their language, culture, and religion have diverged, there is nothing that ties one group more to that land than the other (if anything, those that had left have a lesser tie than those that stayed, even if the culture of those that stayed diverged). So the claim of descent and continuity with the ancient kingdom of Israel, the 2-3000 year old history, is entirely irrelevant.

Are you responding to an argument zaphar didn't make? He/she just said "your first paragraph ... ignores nearly 2-3000 years of history", which is true. Now you seem to be saying "if you look at the first 2-3000 years of history you will see that the first 2-3000 years of history are irrelevant", which is about as self-defeating as an argument can possibly be!

Zaphar didn't make any argument, they only implied one. They said that the previous poster was wrong about everything, and then brought up the previous 2-3000 years of history as some vague justification for that with no actual argument.

I responded to the most plausible interpretation of what the 2-3000 years of history could have to do with the previous poster being wrong about Israel occupying the lands of the Palestinian people.

And again, as to the claim: I'm basically saying that the 2-3000 years of history don't, in fact, justify the occupation - so just forgetting about them and focusing on what is actually happening today (a population is being kept in an occupied pseudo-state that they aren't allowed to leave) is enough to understand the whole situation, and who is in the right and who is in the wrong. So the 2-3000 years of history are irrelevant, because they don't overturn the easily visible conclusion you would draw.

Of course, in every conflict, the history is interesting and enlightening in some ways. But, unless the history changes the light in which you view the current conflict, it's irrelevant to the question of "who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed?".

> Zaphar didn't make any argument, they only implied one

I agree! Yet you said:

> That was in response to the argument that I believe the GP was making

so I was confused. But now you've clarified:

> I responded to the most plausible interpretation of what the 2-3000 years of history could have to do

You guessed the argument, responded to it. Fair enough. Now I understand.

I appreciate your explanation. I don't think I agree with your analysis or conclusions, but I am grateful you have explained to me your thought process and haven't used personal attacks on me, so I feel this thread of the discussion was constructive. I can't say the same for anyone else participating in this thread.

Not interested in discussing that topic here, but that is precisely the kind of category error that would fit right in with the rationalist crowd: GP was talking about human rights, i.e. actual humans, you are talking about nations or peoples, which is an entirely orthogonal concept.

Very well put.

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