cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/39480764
David Hearst
25 Nov 2025 19:56 GMTVery much in the mode of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Phillips declared that there was no such thing as Palestine or Palestinians. In fact, the only indigenous people around were the Jews, who were the only people with any historic, legal or moral entitlement to this land.
To say this while activists in Britain are being arrested for shouting “from the river to the sea” as an allegedly pro-Hamas chant, hands their defence lawyers a get-out-of-jail card.
Because what Phillips is claiming is that all the land from the river to the sea is Jewish. And as she knows, but the Crown Prosecution Service appears not to, “from the river to the sea” has been Likud policy since 1977.
Literally one lesson on Israelite history will tell you they’re more bloodthirsty than the US. Hell, so many of our anecdotes about conflict stem from their war against the Canaanites, now Palestinians. They’re the OG source of war
Edited last sentence to be less sensationalist
one lesson on Israelite history
If you regard the Old Testament as history, the violence is probably exaggerated because of it being written by nationalistic zealots. It almost certainly also exaggerates the scale of Israel’s conquests. They were never more than a minor force in the region, not much more than a city-state. Other ancient national epics are just as bloodthirsty and just as unreliable.
Canaanites, now Palestinians
I’m pretty sure the Palestinians got their name from the Philistines. In Arabic, the place is still called Falasteen and the people Falasteeni.
That doesn’t say anything about descent, though. The genetic evidence is that the people in Palestine now are genetically quite similar to people in Palestine in ancient times. The population has been pretty stable, despite wars, conquests and language changes. Modern Palestinian people are also closely related to Jewish people-- probably the closest of any non-Jewish group.
They’re the OG evil
Far from uniquely so. The whole region was prone to genocidal wars, enslavement of whole nations, and general chaos and brutality. Most other “advanced” societies 2500 years ago weren’t much better, at least not for long.
I think the bigger question is why those primitive tribal values should be considered a guide to how we live now.
My comment was very sensationalist because of my bias, that said I agree with your point about feuds being common everywhere. I also have a kind of tunnel-vision bias as I only looked at that region’s history.
As for the Old Testament, no my sources for the conflicts that range from now to 4,000BC were various sources of Wikipedia, likely American articles, and cross-referenced with what I could find in Al Jazeera and Israeli articles. But you’re still accurate - when white folk colonise and murder natives as massively as the empires did, you don’t have many people writing history other than nationalist zealots…
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
