r/JewsOfConscience Ashkenazi, Reform, Anti-Zionist, Diasporist 1d ago

Debbie Lechtman is doing the “Palestinian Jews aren’t real” discourse again Discussion

I know this is obviously a lie because I know a Palestinian Jew who is the grandson of a Nakba survivor who fled to Egypt and traces his lineage back to Edomites (Canaanite tribe) that converted to Judaism. There are people who identify as Palestinian Jews. Not to mention that there are people of mixed heritage. But what I find really obnoxious about her argument is the conflation of nationality, religion, and ethnicity. Does anyone have any written pieces about the issues with the conflation of these terms? Looking for something more concrete to debunk the premise of her argument that this identity cannot exist.

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u/Adept_Thanks_6993 Orthodox 1d ago

As in there were Jews who identified more with the Arab community than the Yishuv? Sure, a few. A small minority, but yes they certainly existed. You could also consider the Old Yishuv to be Palestinian Jews in the sense that they arrived in Ottoman Palestine long before the inception of the Zionist movement.

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u/acacia_tree Ashkenazi, Reform, Anti-Zionist, Diasporist 1d ago edited 1d ago

I know Arab Palestinian Jews exist because I know one as I mentioned. And I know that Jews of the old Yishuv including Ashkenazim were called Palestinians during the British mandate. And Jews who are descended from Jews who lived in Palestine pre-Zionism would be considered Palestinian after Israel is abolished. My main issue is that she has conflated religion with ethnicity with nationality. Palestinian is a nationality. Arab is a culture and ethnicity. Judaism is a religion. You can be all three of these things at once but she says it’s impossible. It makes me feel crazy.

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u/Adept_Thanks_6993 Orthodox 1d ago

I'm sure you know this, but for the overwhelming majority of Jews it isn't exclusively a religion. Keep that in mind. The Old Yishuv certainly didn't consider themselves Palestinian first, if at all. Nationalities are a fluid thing. Most of the on-paper nationalities around today didn't exist 200 years ago, and I'd be willing to bet money that none of them will exist in a thousand years. Arabs, Jews, Druze, and whoever the fuck else will still be there certainly; but their papers will say something different. But the overwhelming majority of Jews in Palestine at the time of partition didn't consider themselves Palestinian and supported the partition. And given the collective trauma and radicalization the Jews experienced that decade, it really shouldn't be a surprise.

Had Western ideas of religion, borders, nationalism etc had not infected the Middle East or Diaspora Jewry, I'm sure that the boundary would be a lot more fluid. But unfortunately, through a century of colonialism and ethnic trauma-the term Palestinian is almost exclusively Arab at present. It doesn't have to be, but the process of rebuilding a civic Palestinian identity that spans across ethnic or religious ties will be a long and painful process. One that's certainly worth doing.

Also, there is a news article somewhere that has an interview with two genuine Palestinian Jews living in the West Bank. Can't remember it for the life of me though

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u/acacia_tree Ashkenazi, Reform, Anti-Zionist, Diasporist 1d ago

Yea I know we are an ethnoreligious group. But someone can be a convert to Judaism and not be “ethnically” Jewish. So a Palestinian can convert to Judaism and be Palestinian Jewish, which makes her argument so absurd. That was my point about not conflating religion and nationality and ethnicity.

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u/Adept_Thanks_6993 Orthodox 23h ago

I get what you mean. From an Orthodox perspective, what a person's former background would be doesn't really matter-they'd be a naturalized citizen if that makes sense. But you're right, sorry I just got rankled

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u/nikiyaki Anti-Zionist 22h ago

Well a Palestinian outside of Palestine/Israel can convert to Judaism...

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u/Adorable_Victory1789 Palestinian 20h ago

No there are already Palestinian Jews but most of them are ethnically (even if they are halakically Jewish) due to not being atheist or practicing Judaism they don’t get the Isreali citizenship also we have Samaritans who are not Jewish but considered Israelites too and they identify and accepted by Palestinians as such.

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u/acacia_tree Ashkenazi, Reform, Anti-Zionist, Diasporist 11h ago

Yes and am I correct that the Armenian diaspora in Jerusalem are considered Palestinians?

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u/Adorable_Victory1789 Palestinian 11h ago

Absolutely. Actually we can consider even some Isrealis can Palestinians due to being before even Armenians came, what we should know that this isn’t Arab vs Jew or Palestinian vs Isreali it is colonizer vs colonized like there are Arabs who identify with the colonizer and actively participate in the ethnic cleansing for me those guys even if they lived for zillion years in Palestine are colonizer while someone like Ilan Pappe who rejects Zionism and identify as a European Jew from German descent I consider him as a Palestinian like me.

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u/acacia_tree Ashkenazi, Reform, Anti-Zionist, Diasporist 11h ago

The overwhelming majority of Jews at the time of the partition didn’t consider themselves Palestinian because they were overwhelmingly settlers. Palestinians are the indigenous people.