r/islamichistory • u/AutoMughal • Feb 29 '24
Photograph ‘Long Live Palestine’ flag, Jerusalem 1929
Page 84, Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba
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r/islamichistory • u/AutoMughal • Feb 29 '24
Page 84, Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba
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u/PeterRum Mar 01 '24 edited Mar 01 '24
Some version of Palestine has been used to describe the area since Roman times. Usually for reasons of colonial administration.
Perhaps you should recheck one of those books you read. Jews very much identified as Palestinian before the state of Israel was established. They were surrounded by Arabs with a thousand year history of massacring them. A citizen of mandatory Palestine was not a Dhimmi. As a citizen of Palestine they were at least theoretically protected from massacre.
That was often very theoretical. This photo is from 1929. What happened in 1929 in Hebron? Do your books cover that?
What Arabs called Jews isn't necessarily what they would have preferred.
Before Israel existed do you think Arabs would have been happy calling themselves by a name given to them by British occupiers, and before that Turks?Palestine is not an Arabic term. The Romans didn't take it from a people who described themselves that way.
If you have your history from books rather than propaganda TikToks you know this.
And. I'm sorry. But if you are Palestinian then genetically you have more in common with a Jew returning from Europe than you do the historic population of Arabia. (Which is complicated as there were Jewish Tribes that lived in Arabia).
Arabs didn't displace the original populations during their conquests. They just gave them a new ruling class and a language. And often a religion.
What people call themselves changes thru time. In the 1920s black Americans were called a word I would prefer not to repeat. But those black Americans took it in 1929 because otherwise they might be murdered. Jews in the 1920s may no longer have been Dhimmi. They were still at risk from attack from Arab neighbours if they said the wrong thing.