Palestine - (non-eschatological)

[Ernie]

This thread is for discussing Palestine from a historical viewpoint - not from an eschatological or scriptural viewpoint.
The latter can be discussed here. viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6182

Please keep partisan comments/debates out of this thread - avoid comments that reflect negatively on either right-leaning or left leaning political persuasions. Please keep this thread focused on the topic.

[Ernie]

Here is an article we published on Plain News.

https://www.plainnews.org/wp-content/up ... nflict.pdf

[Josh]

A great deal of Palestinians migrated to the U.S. around the time of WWI. Most of them were Arab Catholics (before such as thing as pan-Arab identity really existed) and integrated into general Catholic American society. You would be hard pressed to identify any of them in America today. Many of them would think they have “Lebanese” ancestry, and a common example of a surname would be Nader.

[joshuabgood]

Here is an article we published on Plain News.

https://www.plainnews.org/wp-content/up ... nflict.pdf

Good article...

[HondurasKeiser]

A great deal of Palestinians migrated to the U.S. around the time of WWI. Most of them were Arab Catholics (before such as thing as pan-Arab identity really existed) and integrated into general Catholic American society. You would be hard pressed to identify any of them in America today. Many of them would think they have “Lebanese” ancestry, and a common example of a surname would be Nader.

Interestingly, a massive wave of Palestinian and Lebanese Christians migrated to Central America and Columbia around the same time and continued to do so over the next few decades. Outside the U.S., Honduras has the highest number of Palestinian immigrants/descendants in all of America. Here they're still known as Turquos (Turks) because at the time of initial immigration their passport was from the Ottoman Empire. They tend to be very wealthy and the owners of local businesses, media outlets and large corporations. Some of the Honduran-born descendants have gone quite far in politics and 2 have become president. Many came over as Eastern Orthodox and while there are a few EO churches in the country; many converted to Catholicism for convenience.

I teach a number of their descendants at my school with last names like: Barjum, Hilsaca, Kawas, Kattan, Gabrie & Canahuati; a certain Mr. Hilsaca is one of my closest friends in Honduras.

They try their best to maintain their culture and heritage and many of the older generations still speak Arab amongst themselves. In the largest city there's an exclusive organization called Club Arabe that requires that at least one parent be fully Turquo for membership. Indeed, a lot of the Turquo culture, especially the food, has mixed into the wider Honduran culture.

[HondurasKeiser]

This book: Dollar, Dove, and Eagle: One Hundred Years of Palestinian Migration to Honduras is a fascinating look at that immigration.

[Josh]

El Salvador’s President is rather famously of this background. They seem to dominate business and finance in Central America.

Interestingly Arab Catholics dominate finance and banking in Israel.

[Ken]

The story is really about the expansion and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which was accelerated by the Ottomans picking the wrong side during WW1.

Expansion....



Dissolution....



If you look at these maps, you realize how many ethnic flashpoints were created by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire:

Yugoslavia and the Balkans (Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Serbia, etc.)
Greece vs. Turkey which had major civil wars and is still ongoing on Cypress
Armenia and the Armenian genocide
The whole Kurdish issue in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq
Iran vs. Iraq
The current Syrian civil war

In the grand scheme of things, the Jewish vs. Palestinian conflict over the lands of Palestine is really one of the smaller of these ethnic conflicts that followed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Smaller in terms of area, smaller in terms of deaths and fighting. Just pretty mundane frankly. But for some reason it gets elevated way above and beyond every other similar ethnic/religious conflict in the region. I'm not sure why that is frankly. Antisemitism? Any theories?

How is it, for example, that over 350,000 people (mostly Muslims) have been killed in the Syrian civil war (mostly by the Alawite Assad regime with the assistance of Russia and Iran) and you see nary a peep of protest around the world. But conflict between Israel and Hamas kills 3% of those numbers and the entire planet seems to erupt in protest?

[Bootstrap]

To take this a step or two further ...

Here's how the United Nations divided it up in 1947:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Na ... _Palestine



Here's what it looked like this year:

https://www.polgeonow.com/2021/05/israe ... -gaza.html

[Bootstrap]

Another depiction that seems to be accurate, but I haven't done extensive checking: