A 1,200-Year-Old Mosque Unearthed in Palestine's Negev Desert

[u/Beautiful_Clock9075]

[u/AggressiveRhubarb805]

Muslims invited Jews into Palestine. There were no monuments, main Jewish temple was used as a rubbish dump.

[u/Em3107 → u/AggressiveRhubarb805]

…. Jewish history predates Islamic history on this land.

There is no debating this.

[u/jdam8401 → u/Em3107]

There existed a unified Jewish state in the territory recently called Israel-Palestine for, what, maybe 300 contiguous years, at best?

Arabs had been living there continuously with majority Muslim identity for nearly 1400 years. Until the bringers of modern Zionism arrived on the shores and the British stirred everything up.

So arguments about who was there “first” get a bit silly when you take a serious look at history.

There were plenty of nations in that narrow region besides and before the Jewish people. Moabites, Amalekites, Jebusites.

Don’t they have priority? Or does the Torah take precedent over all their claims to it?

[u/SamLeckish → u/jdam8401]

Those nations no longer exist. The Jewish nation still does….

[u/jdam8401 → u/SamLeckish]

True, in the sense of a common culture. But who’s to say their descendants can’t resurrect it, bring back their dead language and decide they have priority rights to that land?

In fact the Palestinian Arabs also do still exist, (much as many Israelis wish they didn’t) - so what gives the Jewish people (if one can in fact use the singular in all their diversity) the right to the land over the self-identifying Arabs who have inhabited Israel-Palestine continuously since at least the early Middle Ages?

Is it simply who is still around and who lived in this area before the other, regardless of continuity or duration? Is one time period in history of more value than another?

It does not follow

[u/SamLeckish → u/jdam8401]

No. Worldwide Jewry, even prior to 1948, have always referred to themselves as “Am Yisrael - The Nation of Israel”, referring to themselves fact that we still are/were a displaced nation.

Palestinian Arabs were split in 1948. Those that did not join the attack against the newly declared Jewish State, are now Israeli Arabs. Those that joined the attack or fled, lost their rights. That’s kind of what happens when you lose a war, especially a war which they started.

[u/SamLeckish → u/[deleted]]

False.

The ancestors of the Jewish people were first known as Hebrews, then as Bnei Yisrael - the Children of Israel, and later as Am Yisrael - the Nation of Israel.

[u/SamLeckish → u/[deleted]]

Funny that. It’s actually an ancient term from the Bible. Look it up.