naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Can anybody tell me about the validity of the claims that Islamic Palestinians have occupied this region for thousands of years? Like given a random family currently living in Gaza, when did they likely migrate there? 1000 years ago? It was there a more recent migration of people?
The sort of “we’ve lived here forever this is our land!” Narrative just feels to clean to me.
You’re not getting good replies, and it’s a bit of a hard question to answer honestly. The question itself is very politically loaded and thus politically incorrect to investigate, and so there’s a dearth of available quality information.
It’s clear that as Jews moved from Europe to Ottoman Syria and later to Mandatory Palestine, they brought jobs and immigration along with them. However, this process was spread over roughly 100 years, so it’s hard to find a peak. Looking at demographic estimates of the region, e.g. what’s on wikipedia you can see that the local Arab population roughly doubled in the 25 years prior to the war of ‘47-‘49. This is not impossible given a high enough birth rate and improving health care that came along with British rule, so it’s not clear cut evidence one way or the other.
Further complicating the issue is that migration out of Mandatory Palestine is not counted.
Some evidence of Palestinian origins are in their last names. Al-Masri (Egyptian) is a common last name in Gaza and southern Israel, where you’d expect it - but that doesn’t mean too much after a few generations. Along those lines are also Bushnak (Bosnian), Mugrabi (Magreb, like me!), Halabi (Syrian), and probably more that I’m not familiar with.
Personally, I think it’s less than half of Palestinians world-wide who are actually “originally” from that specific strip of land, meaning that the person who left in ‘47 had a grandfather born there too. But I also don’t think it matters that much, to be honest.
Can anybody tell me about the validity of the claims that Islamic Palestinians have occupied this region for thousands of years?
Given that the average human lifespan is about two magnitudes lower than thousands of years, any person who is claiming continuous existence or continuity of experiences longer than they were alive is probably stretching a point and then some.
Like given a random family currently living in Gaza, when did they likely migrate there? 1000 years ago? It was there a more recent migration of people?
The more recent migration of random families on the Gaza strip was in 1948. In the longer term, the Levant has been invaded / conquered / settled / assimilated / conquered again so many times that demographics don't trace so linearly so nicely.
Closest people [to samples recovered from the Bronze Age and Iron Age Levant] are usually Christian Levantines > Many Jewish groups > Muslims > Other Jewish groups
Palestinian Christians are almost genetically indistinguishable from Roman-era Levantines, people of the time of Jesus Christ, the Apostles, etc.
Almost all Jews, Christians, and Muslims of the region carry noticeable Bronze Age/Iron Age Levantine ancestry. This means that almost all modern Levantines are at least partially (some overwhelmingly), descended from Israelites or people genetically indistinguishable from them
As you can see Samaritans (yes they still exist, but they are dying out) are almost indistinguishable from not just Israelites, but even Bronze Age Canaanites. Very impressive continuity. But it comes at the cost of serious inbreeding. There are only a couple hundred of them left
Everyone else (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) has mixed non-Middle Eastern ancestry, the majority of it being European (Greek and even Bactrian ancestry that entered the Levant after Alexanders conquests). Muslim Levantines also carry ~3-5% sub-Saharan African ancestry on average that Christians and Jews mostly lack, and a noticeable chunk of Arabian ancestry, but that is lower than most people would expect.
The reason Christian Levantines are closest the Canaanites, Israelites, Roman-era Jews, etc is because they never relinquished their religion, and therefore never mixed with other groups after the Islamic invasion. Those Christians who converted to Islam now had opportunities to mix with other Muslims, and even slaves from sub-Saharan Africa.
This is what it looks like happened.
The Bronze Age inhabitants of the region were Canaanites, Amorites, Eblaites, etc. The ancestors of the Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, etc also came from the BA Levant.
A subgroup of Canaanites became Israelites (they are genetically indistinguishable from Canaanites). This subgroup remains largely similar to each other until Alexander conquers the entire Middle East.
Then, Greek and Bactrian ancestry start entering the Levant. At this time, Samaritans split off from the ancestors of Jews, Christians, and Muslims of the Levant.
They are the first to split off. This is because they barely mixed with the incoming Greek/Bactrian groups.
The new population Roman-era Levantines are almost indistinguishable from modern day Palestinian Christians, Lebanese Christians, etc. They stay like this till the modern period, refusing to mix with Muslim Arabs (they weren't allowed to regardless) and not usually being allowed to own slaves.
This is where Levantine Muslims (Palestinian Muslims, Lebanese Muslims, etc) split off from the Christians - some Christians convert to Islam. They are now allowed to own slaves from Africa, and mix with Arabians and Egyptians and other Muslim groups. They carry some of this foreign ancestry.
Before, during, and after Alexanders invasion you had many other Jewish groups of course, splitting off and going to Europe and North Africa, being forcibly deported to Mesopotamia, etc. They are the only ones who either
1: didnt convert to the Arabian religion
2: didnt convert to the new religion that was formed/evolved through Judaism
The truth is, everyone in the Levant is overwhelmingly descended from ancient Jews, or at the very least those genetically indistinguishable from ancient Jews.
Lots of Muslims like to exaggerate their relationship to Arabians, since that is where their religion is from, and their prophet was an Arabian. The truth, for better or worse, is that almost none of them carry much Arabian ancestry. Only Negev Bedouins and Yemenite Jews do.
A bunch of people then take him to task in the comments for not sufficiently addressing Ashkenazi Jews.
One thing that's confusing me here is his statement [slightly trimmed] "the Jewish groups splitting off and going to Europe and North Africa, etc, are the only ones who didnt convert to either Islam or Christianity". Were there no jews who never left the area but also never converted to christianity or islam? Did they just not exist, or are they just missing from these genetic samples (perhaps they so completely mixed with immigrant jews that they're no longer a distinguishable population?), or am I just blind? The closest included sample geographically is Syrian_Jew.
One thing that's confusing me here is his statement [slightly trimmed] "the Jewish groups splitting off and going to Europe and North Africa, etc, are the only ones who didnt convert to either Islam or Christianity". Were there no jews who never left the area but also never converted to christianity or islam? Did they just not exist, or are they just missing from these genetic samples (perhaps they so completely mixed with immigrant jews that they're no longer a distinguishable population?), or am I just blind?
The various Jewish Diaspora groups mostly died out or were/are very tiny. Modern Jews are mostly descended from European Jews even after the Holocaust. These European Jews are descended from a very small group that migrated from the Levant into Europe shortly after Muslims took over the Levant.
Modern day Israel likely was continuously inhabited by Jews; although at times (eg towards the end of the crusades) this number might have dropped to the high hundreds or low thousands. Damascus and other cities in modern day Syria had much higher Jewish populations for the majority of this time, and they regularly travelled across the levant. So it’s likely that any remaining ‘Judean’ Jews would be part of the Syrian Jewish grouping.
What is certain is that for much of the last 2000 years far less than 5% or in many cases even 1% of the global Jewish population lived in Israel, although a larger percentage lived in the wider MENA region.
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Notes -
Can anybody tell me about the validity of the claims that Islamic Palestinians have occupied this region for thousands of years? Like given a random family currently living in Gaza, when did they likely migrate there? 1000 years ago? It was there a more recent migration of people?
The sort of “we’ve lived here forever this is our land!” Narrative just feels to clean to me.
You’re not getting good replies, and it’s a bit of a hard question to answer honestly. The question itself is very politically loaded and thus politically incorrect to investigate, and so there’s a dearth of available quality information.
It’s clear that as Jews moved from Europe to Ottoman Syria and later to Mandatory Palestine, they brought jobs and immigration along with them. However, this process was spread over roughly 100 years, so it’s hard to find a peak. Looking at demographic estimates of the region, e.g. what’s on wikipedia you can see that the local Arab population roughly doubled in the 25 years prior to the war of ‘47-‘49. This is not impossible given a high enough birth rate and improving health care that came along with British rule, so it’s not clear cut evidence one way or the other.
Further complicating the issue is that migration out of Mandatory Palestine is not counted.
Some evidence of Palestinian origins are in their last names. Al-Masri (Egyptian) is a common last name in Gaza and southern Israel, where you’d expect it - but that doesn’t mean too much after a few generations. Along those lines are also Bushnak (Bosnian), Mugrabi (Magreb, like me!), Halabi (Syrian), and probably more that I’m not familiar with.
Personally, I think it’s less than half of Palestinians world-wide who are actually “originally” from that specific strip of land, meaning that the person who left in ‘47 had a grandfather born there too. But I also don’t think it matters that much, to be honest.
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Given that the average human lifespan is about two magnitudes lower than thousands of years, any person who is claiming continuous existence or continuity of experiences longer than they were alive is probably stretching a point and then some.
The more recent migration of random families on the Gaza strip was in 1948. In the longer term, the Levant has been invaded / conquered / settled / assimilated / conquered again so many times that demographics don't trace so linearly so nicely.
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This is old, but gold: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY
An absolutely evergreen video.
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Fascinating thread on the genetics of the area from a few days ago:
A bunch of people then take him to task in the comments for not sufficiently addressing Ashkenazi Jews.
One thing that's confusing me here is his statement [slightly trimmed] "the Jewish groups splitting off and going to Europe and North Africa, etc, are the only ones who didnt convert to either Islam or Christianity". Were there no jews who never left the area but also never converted to christianity or islam? Did they just not exist, or are they just missing from these genetic samples (perhaps they so completely mixed with immigrant jews that they're no longer a distinguishable population?), or am I just blind? The closest included sample geographically is
Syrian_Jew.The various Jewish Diaspora groups mostly died out or were/are very tiny. Modern Jews are mostly descended from European Jews even after the Holocaust. These European Jews are descended from a very small group that migrated from the Levant into Europe shortly after Muslims took over the Levant.
https://www.razibkhan.com/p/ashkenazi-jewish-genetics-a-match
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Modern day Israel likely was continuously inhabited by Jews; although at times (eg towards the end of the crusades) this number might have dropped to the high hundreds or low thousands. Damascus and other cities in modern day Syria had much higher Jewish populations for the majority of this time, and they regularly travelled across the levant. So it’s likely that any remaining ‘Judean’ Jews would be part of the Syrian Jewish grouping.
What is certain is that for much of the last 2000 years far less than 5% or in many cases even 1% of the global Jewish population lived in Israel, although a larger percentage lived in the wider MENA region.
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Interesting, the Samaritans are the closest (virtually identical because of endogamous marriage) to the ancient bronze age Canaanites:
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=573522448&q=samaritan+people&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiv0ZaC8faBAxXpwAIHHaa4DYIQ0pQJegQICxAB&biw=1127&bih=732&dpr=2
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