reSee.it - Tweets Saved By @BriannaWu
@BriannaWu - Brianna Wu
1/ Why should Israel exist? It’s a “settler-colonialist” atrocity, right? Didn’t they just steal the Palestinians' land in 1948? No. The truth is, no one knows more about getting genocided and kicked out of their homes than the Jews. I’m not a historian, but with all the heated Twitter conversation, I thought I’d read a book or two to have an informed opinion about Israel/Palestine and whose home the region is. Is Twitter’s portrayal of Jews as warmongers who stole the Palestinian’s land accurate? Or is this a selective, one-sided history? It is wildly one-sided and ahistoric. If you truly care about people living in peace and safety and not getting “settler-colonized” you should STRONGLY support the existence of Israel. This thread will educate you on the 2,500 years of history BEFORE 1948. It will explain how the land of Israel is the historic home of Jews, how they were slaughtered and evicted repeatedly in an event called the Jewish Diaspora. And as long as this thread is, it’s going to be a FRACTION of a FRACTION of the atrocities.
@BriannaWu - Brianna Wu
The original Jewish presence in the region dates to around 2000 BCE with the 12 tribes. About 700 years later, Egypt saw them as a threat, then came in and enslaved them. Moses led a slave revolt (based) with the help of divine intervention, escaped, and after 40 years of exile they eventually conquered what we call Israel today. Pretty traumatic, right? Lol, we are just getting started. So, after the Exodus, the Assyrians came in and conquered Israel. This is around the 8th century, who wanted the land for economic control and part of a wider effort of expansion and control. In 722, they seized a city called Samaria and exiled massive amounts of the Jewish population. (Important to note this is Biblical history, and modern historians do not have clear documentation) By 538, the Babylonians let the Jews return to their homeland and try to rebuild their society. And after about 500 years of difficult work, the Romans set their sights on Jerusalem. Over a million Jews are slaughtered, a staggering number for this time period when the world population was so much lower. Jews are enslaved. Jews are raped. Their homes are pillaged, and 1,878 years of horror start. This is called the fall of the second temple.
@BriannaWu - Brianna Wu
The name Palestine comes from the aftermath of all the Roman genocide, raping and pillaging. After the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132, most Jews are exiled from their homeland - though some remain. The Romans wanted to erase the Jews from history and renamed the region, taking it from what some called “Syria Palaestina.” Settler-colonialism, if you will. Many Jews escaped to Galilee. But, there was no one home - Jews begin to disperse all around the globe. Some go to Babylonia. Some go to Egypt (their original oppressors). Greece, Italy, Northern Africa, Europe. It’s uncertain if Jews will survive at all. By the 7th century, Islam is born and Islamic conquests start. In some ways, Jews are able to adapt and thrive in the midst of all the war. Their existence is given a special tax, and the Caliphates take over the major centers of Jewish life. Sometimes, there is tolerance and flourishing of culture, sometimes Jews are targeted for expulsion, rape and genocide. Their safety is at the whim of whoever is in charge. Then the Crusades start. This is around 1096, and it utterly devastating for Jews. It’s now Europeans specifically targeting Jewish communities. Envious of Jewish economic success, and spurred by antisemitic propaganda (sound familiar?) they do mass killings. They force religious conversions. And to survive, Jewish people disperse even further around the globe.
@BriannaWu - Brianna Wu
The first exile from a European country is England in 1290. This is after the York Massacre of 1190 where an entire Jewish population is slaughtered by a mob after a bunch of antisemitic ideas like “Jews control the money” become widespread. Not only is all Jewish property stolen, all debts to Jews are cancelled. Fast forward to 1492. Spain orders the expulsion of all Jews from Spanish territories. Five years later, Portugal does the same, making any practice of Judaism illegal. Jews escape to Northern Africa and the Ottoman Empire. Italy decides to follow suit through the 1500s expelling all Jews from Naples and Sicily, repeatedly. Lithuania does it. The Holy Roman Empire starts doing it in 1519, and Jews are targeted by the Papacy. Further expulsions continue for the next hundred years. In the 15th and 16th centuries, even Germany began expelling all its Jews. If you’re ever wondered why your Jewish friends are a little sensitive about antisemitic tropes, IT’S BECAUSE THEY ARE THE CORE REASON FOR ALL THIS HORROR. “The Jews control the money!” “The Jews are secretly in control! “Jews will not replace us!” It’s like a mind virus that just will not stop. The pattern repeats again. Jews escape. They resettle in parts of Italy. And then in 1670, Leopold I decides to kick them out again for the same damn reasons. This particular expulsion really sets up the events that led to the Holocaust, as it’s the start of random European violence targeting and slaughtering Jewish communities. They’re given a choice to abandon their properties or face execution. It happens again in Vienna in 1670. It happens in Prague and Bohemia in 1744.
@BriannaWu - Brianna Wu
About this time, Jews have kind of had enough and there’s a major shift in their culture. If you’ve ever been to a Black Lives Matter protest, or a trans rights march, you’ll probably notice there are a lot of Jews there. This cultural attitude, though not universally shared, can be attributed to the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment - where the fostering of civil rights becomes a major part of Jewish identity. They focus on education, they focus of working within the political system for protection. And unfortunately, all this advocacy leads to the rise of modern antisemitism. An irony of “Zionism” being used as a slur against Jewish people is the desire for a homeland comes from the political consciousness of this era, which heavily focused on civil rights for themselves and others. Listening to Twitter, you’d think Zionism is a bloodthirsty war cry. The reality is, Jews were working through various civil processes to find legally codified safety - and as they became prominent enough to have a voice in European affairs, they garnered the political influence to begin to dream of a nation to call their own. Zionism was also fostered by the exploding antisemitism of the era. Pogroms (violent riots that target and slaughter Jewish communities) become widespread. Discrimination also becomes widespread, especially in Tsarist Russia and Eastern Europe. One of the many horrors of the Holocaust is that Jewish success in Germany formalizing their civil rights led many to think it was a safe place for them. Many Jews migrated to the Weimar Republic and contributed to political, cultural and artistic life. They thought they were safe, and the reality is there are fewer Jews alive today than before the Holocaust, despite the explosion of the world’s population.
@BriannaWu - Brianna Wu
Why did I write all of this? BECAUSE NONE OF THIS IS MENTIONED OR CONSIDERED IN THE DISCOURSE OVER ISRAEL/PALESTINE. I do not understand how anyone can understand this history, understand the context of where Zionism came from, understand that Israel is the historic land for Jews, and not have some degree for compassion for Jewish people wanting a place to call home. And believe me, as long as this thread is, it’s the briefest, most superficial history of Jewish expulsions and genocides one could write. I don’t support Netanyahu, and I don’t think the way Israel is prosecuting this war will make them safe. It’s obvious and imperative that Palestinians get a state and begin to shape their own destiny. But ignoring 2,500 years of Jewish people being genocided and killed by mobs, ignoring whose land it was in the first place, rewriting “Zionism” in an Orwellian way to erase words that can even convey the desire for a Jewish nation? NONE OF THIS IS PROGRESSIVE. At best it’s ignorant, and at worst you’re just the latest in a very, very long line of people to buy into antisemitic propaganda and decide Jews should find somewhere else to live.
@BriannaWu - Brianna Wu
There was a similar challenge in getting accurate numbers of the civilian deaths America caused in the Iraq war. We don’t have great figures, even today. They range from 13,000 to 122,000, depending on methodology. Caution is called for. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
