Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict was first published in 1974. It seems like a pretty pointless nitpick by which to invalidate its entire historical account, that the author is not up to date on genome mapping - especially since you've just mentioned that the most direct descendants of the Canaanites turned out to be the Lebanese.

JL

Dunno what we disagree about unless it’s the fuck ‘em, kick their sorry asses out part. No question but that the Jews were in Canaan first, if that’s what you think we disagree on.

I tried to read that but I got to the third point and it was just such bullshit it was hard to take the rest seriously.

FACT
Palestinian claims to be related to the Canaanites are a recent phenomenon and contrary to historical evidence. The Canaanites disappeared three millennia ago, and no one knows if any of their descendants survived or, if they did, who they would be."

Multiple teams have extracted DNA from ancient Canaanite burial sites all over the Levant then compared the results to DNA taken from modern populations over the same area. Turns out if you are from the Levant, you are a Canaanite. Jew, Arab, Palestinian, even Persians, all related to the Canaanites. Though they found the "purest" population to be the Lebanese.

If you are going to put large bold and red "fact" in front of me, it had dam better be, especially when dated 2023. I made a flippant comment at the time about it but it was not historically inaccurate...

It's been fascinating watching the whole thing unfold. From the bloodthirsty pro Israel in r/2ndYomKippurWar on reddit (great place for combat footage) to the lgbtq+ going pro Palestinian...We support all the downtrodden even if large swaths of downtrodden what to kill or suppress other downtrodden.

I think blaming Netanyahu, at least partially, is quite valid. He was funding Hamas over the Palestinian authority and got complacent in defending the Gaza border and has been supporting increased settlements in the West Bank because of the make up of his coalition. I also think there is an element of revenge for betrayal coming from him. Yes, Hamas needs to be destroyed but if ends up in mass suffering, starvation and death to Palestinian civilians with no Marshall Plan like rebuilding afterward, they will reform within a decade. The new group may not be named Hamas but be just the same. We are also entering a new era of warfare. Will the Iron Dome protect against a swarm of drones coming in below tree level? Probably not.

I have known many Jews, mostly rich New York businessmen and deadheads but other than different decorations during the winter holidays, their devotion to their religion was low. Some might not get bacon on their cheeseburger but they would still get the cheeseburger. Never really thought much about their heritage. To me they were Americans who just happened to be Jewish.

On the other hand I worked for a Palestinian from the west bank for a while. He was by far the best small business owner I have ever worked for. Really cared about his employees and a stand up guy. While I worked for him, he went back to visit family in the west bank a couple of times and his stories of crossing the Israel border was always interesting. This guy was a multimillionaire American with with an American passport and always took shit at the border. Always. He even had his fuck you I'm an American moment when the border guard did not like the look of him and stamped his passport permanent non-entry. They went in anyway, just threw some blankets over him as he huddled in the back seat, but later went to the embassy and reported his passport stolen. New passport, no stamp, Fuck you.

To me as an atheist, it's all just bad religion and as an American mutt the importance of a homeland is quite lost on me...

Since Hamas attacked Israel, Israel has a right to seek redress in the court of battle. Taking Hamas’s land and deporting its people creates both redress and security.

Again, these Palestinian assholes have turned down a two-state solution for seventy-six years and counting. So, fuck ‘em.

blaming netanyahu is the easy way out. he's a proto-fascist and fundamentally corrupt just like trump, but that doesn't mean he's to blame for the current state of things. in some ways that makes him more prototypically middle-eastern than his political contemporaries. he's a symptom of the disease, not one of its causes.

in order to treat the underlying problem of the arab holy delusion, hamas needs to be put out of operation if not permanently then at least for a good long time. that's why regardless of whether or not bibi remains in power or the US provides arms, the war will continue until one side or the other is completely unable to fight.

JL

sorry i didn't get to fully respond to your earlier query, as liz hijacked the conversation. as i was saying, there are layers upon layers of propaganda and alternate realities swirling around the palestinian conflict. and as we've seen, it's very easy and tempting for people with limited information to jump to erroneous conclusions, and then remain married to those conclusions no matter what additional information might otherwise demonstrate their fallibility.

as such, it's extremely important for anyone seriously interested in "getting it" to try to put themselves in as many different people's shoes as possible, and then see each perspective from as realistic a perspective as possible. i would definitely NOT say (as many israelis do) that we should consider it a lost cause and just annex gaza and boot all the palestinians. i agree that two independent states can't really exist at the moment, because the palestinian governments aren't currently capable of operating independently without devolving into something like ISIS.

what i WOULD say is that there needs to be a massive international re-evaluation of what we're hoping to accomplish there. as ridiculous as it may seem, donald trump as a fundamentally corrupt land developer had an instinctive understanding of how things work in most of the middle-east, and was somewhat successful in starting things rolling in a positive direction. in order to build on that, the international community must somehow be brought to understand that they can't continue to feed the palestinian delusion that they're going to "end the occupation" by essentially ending the existence of Israel. right now the media campaign to "free palestine" is just another layer of terrorism, designed to try and get the world to gang up on israel and ends its existence. realistically, that's just not going to happen.

Shocking. Positively shocking. :-)