If Palestine's history tells us anything, the historical region has continuously had a multi-faceted population. There is a clear absurdity of a people forcing others from their land in order to inhabit a place where nearly three millennia ago they once had a kingdom. If such a practice became universal, then Native Americans would drive out almost all Americans, Celtic descendants in Scotland, Ireland and Wales would reclaim the Czech Republic and southern Germany, and Mongol people would reestablish themselves throughout wide swaths of Eurasia.
But what if much of the scriptural theology upon which Western and Zionist conceptions of Judea and the Kingdom of Israel rest is largely a mix of deliberate glorification and invention, one that has snuffed out the rest of Palestinian history? What if much of the imagined past, including Israelites being slaves in Egypt <https://www.juancole.com/2025/11/ancient-hebrew-pyramids.html> and then rescued by Moses, according to the Old Testament, was based heavily on “exilic and post-exilic imagination <https://www.amazon.com/dp/1786992728>, literary invention, not facts” (p. 95)? What if the main Jewish kingdoms existed for about 400 years and were only a *part* of the Palestine region, within its wider 3,200-year history? Would that then undermine claims of Jewish and Zionist exceptionalism and make them human, all too human, like the rest of humanity? *https://www.juancole.com/2026/07/palestine-history-existence.html <https://www.juancole.com/2026/07/palestine-history-existence.html>* -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42435): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42435 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120235105/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
