idk man, the "settlers are the problem" sloganeering gets vertiginously close to "immigrants go back to where you came from". after a certain point, where are you going to send people back to?
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lenazun (lzg@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 05:50:45 JST lenazun -
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Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 05:50:44 JST Evan Prodromou @lzg I think there's a difference of type between settlements to house refugees and settlements to displace current residents.
Israel has a high population density (~416/km^2), but that's around Netherlands/Belgium level. The West Bank is higher (576) and Gaza is very dense (911).
The problem isn't a lack of space; it's a political program to expel another people from the space they're in.
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lenazun (lzg@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 06:09:39 JST lenazun @evan yes. this is political and economic terror. but I'm not convinced there's an intrinsic (let alone religious) claim to the land by anyone. there's a more valid argument that says "people have a right to security, shelter, conditions that allow them to thrive" wherever they happen to be.
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Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 06:09:39 JST Evan Prodromou @lzg so, I don't know what your background is, but I'm sad that you can't imagine having familial and cultural connections to the land.
I agree, though, that land connections in living memory are more real than fairy tales from long-ago times.
But I think there's an intrinsic difference between a massive influx of settlers backed by military might, and a normal immigration policy. Conflating the two is covering up that power dynamic.
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Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 06:13:02 JST Evan Prodromou @lzg I can definitely say, for me, the land where my ancestors are buried, where my great-grandfather built a house with his own hands, where our churches are, where my father went to school, has a significance to me that's much higher than a digital nomad co-working space and AirBnB on a beach. Connection to place matters; it is part of culture; disconnecting people from their place weakens and destroys culture.
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Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 06:14:34 JST Evan Prodromou @lzg that doesn't have to be some blood and soil bullshit. It's real, and it means something.
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Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 06:18:28 JST Evan Prodromou @lzg indeed! And it doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. There's more than enough room in Palestine and Israel for the ~7M Jewish Israelis and ~7M Palestinian and Israeli Arabs. We just have to figure out how to share it.
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lenazun (lzg@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 06:18:29 JST lenazun @evan but familial and cultural connections are not the same as some kind of entitlement. I live in California 20 yrs ago. do people whose family have lived in California for 200 years have more right to be there than I do?
We agree there's a difference between aggression and migration, no contest from me, but after hundreds of years, how do we split that? -
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Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 06:25:32 JST Evan Prodromou @lzg as far as claim to land based on tenure in California, I don't know. It's a hard question, and it rarely comes up, given the way we deal with land title in North America. The best examples I can think of are of course outstanding Indigenous claims to territory, historic expropriations like Bruce's Beach, dispossession in the Fillmore, or loss of land during the internment of Japanese Americans.
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Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 06:29:37 JST Evan Prodromou @lzg but yeah, balancing freedom of movement and the right to a homeland is hard as hell. I think a good rule of thumb is power differential; do the guests knock before they enter, or do they come in with guns.
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Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 06:31:05 JST Evan Prodromou @lzg as a migrant, I'm glad my home city of Montreal treats me so well, and I can think about my other homes with fondness, too.
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Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 11:14:02 JST Evan Prodromou @lzg right there with you.
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lenazun (lzg@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 11:14:03 JST lenazun @evan I'm glad it does, but for many of us (so many!) people staying is not an option. they are forced to establish other homes, other cultures, other places. it's not that they don't care about the land, it's that we have a right to be human anywhere.
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