naraburns nihil supernum
2yr ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
I thought the small population of Jews who never left Palestine were fairly well tolerated by the Muslim majority
There is limited continuity of Jewish settlement in historic Judea over the last 2000 years. Which is to say that there were certainly always Jews there (though at times the numbers may have fallen to only a few thousand or even a few hundred), but they were regularly forced out, resettled, exiled, left because of high local taxes on Jews, political instability and violence, pogroms and so on, then replaced maybe a few decades later by settlers from other levantine Jewish communities from elsewhere in the region. The Crusades were obviously a low point, but there was regular persecution by Muslim rulers too that was no worse than what was seen in Europe, if sometimes less frequent.
but they were regularly forced out, resettled, exiled
Got a historical source? Because to me this sounds like the popular myth that Jews were exiled by the Romans which caused The Diaspora. No such thing actually happened, as far as I know. Hadrian did declare Jerusalem, what was left of it, a "pagan city" (whatever that means. I've not been able to figure out) in vengeance after the Bar Kokhba revolt/war. But that's not a mass exodus from everywhere in the Levant.
Probably the majority of locals converted to Christianity then Islam successively over the centuries, but I don't know that for sure. It does lead to the question why "diaspora" Jews were so much more vibrant in resisting conversion and building a unique Jewish identity, but that's an edgy taboo question for another time.
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Notes -
There is limited continuity of Jewish settlement in historic Judea over the last 2000 years. Which is to say that there were certainly always Jews there (though at times the numbers may have fallen to only a few thousand or even a few hundred), but they were regularly forced out, resettled, exiled, left because of high local taxes on Jews, political instability and violence, pogroms and so on, then replaced maybe a few decades later by settlers from other levantine Jewish communities from elsewhere in the region. The Crusades were obviously a low point, but there was regular persecution by Muslim rulers too that was no worse than what was seen in Europe, if sometimes less frequent.
Got a historical source? Because to me this sounds like the popular myth that Jews were exiled by the Romans which caused The Diaspora. No such thing actually happened, as far as I know. Hadrian did declare Jerusalem, what was left of it, a "pagan city" (whatever that means. I've not been able to figure out) in vengeance after the Bar Kokhba revolt/war. But that's not a mass exodus from everywhere in the Levant.
Probably the majority of locals converted to Christianity then Islam successively over the centuries, but I don't know that for sure. It does lead to the question why "diaspora" Jews were so much more vibrant in resisting conversion and building a unique Jewish identity, but that's an edgy taboo question for another time.
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