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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Anecdotally my jewish friends in the US are by far more successful, connected, happy, fulfilled, living their best lives compared to almost all of my non jewish friends. Not only do they have the unconditional support, connections and networking opportunities from their synagogues and other jewish friends, but many have inherited wealth that most could only dream of. None of my non jewish friends attend church, they have no community whatsoever, minimal, if any inheritance and zero connections. Perhaps I only associate with the exceptions but these jewish individuals are not hurting or suffering from anything other than jet lag from their last international holiday. They have a vast network of support that many others lack due to not belonging to a particular religion or group. [/quote]

I wonder why? Ever wonder how that happens? I mean , we all would love to have a vast network of opportunities and connections and wealth coming from a group we are part of....Hmmmmmm.[/quote]

This is silly. Yes, Jews as an ethnicity are relatively successful. But we don’t know each other - the heads of business / entertainment happen to be Jewish, but they didn’t get any boost from a network or conspiracy or whatever.  It’s just a bunch of individuals.  Maybe they have similar values, but that’s it.  All the successful Jews are not connected. [/quote]
All religions and cults provide connection and networking opportunities for members. Some groups are more lucrative and beneficial for members than others. It’s a choice to be an active member of any group.[/quote]

Judaism is a religion, but it is also an ethnicity. Lots of Jews are not active in a temple, don’t live in Jewish communities or go where there are lots of Jews. They are simply successful, or whatever they are, in their own right. [/quote]

Do you mean cultural Jews? Because yes, there are cultural Jews, just like there are cultural Catholics, cultural Muslims, cultural Hindus... where people retain some aspect of religious enculturation but are not practicing or don't believe in it.

But there are Asian Jews, Black Jews, White Jews, convert Jews. How are they "ethnic" Jews, too?
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It is hard if you are applying chattel-slavery definitions of race to an ancient ethno-religious people. You would have to look to older civilalization examples, Armenia is a good example. Armenians are native to historic Armenia which was settler-colonialized througout its history by Arabs, Turks, Europeans, etc.. Modern day Armenia is a sliver of historic Armenia - there's a large educated Armenian disapora throughout the world. Most Armenians are Apostolic Christians - and that's the state religion of modern-day Armenia. But you can marry into the Church, and the Armenians in exile intermarried with other Orthodox Christians. Because Judea was settler-colonialized, there is a large Jewish disapora around the world, but modern-day Israel is the homeland of Jews, like Armenia is the homeland of Armenians, or Kurdistan is the homeland of Kurds, or Italy is the homeland of Italians for that matter. The Jewish diaspora, the Armenian diasporia, the Chaldean diaspora, the Assyrian diaspora, etc. are all ethno-religious peoples orginating in the Levant (or straddling the Levant). [/quote]

That doesn't answer anything.

Jews exist in many ethnicities. Certainly not all (many? most these days?) Jews do not have any direct genetical lineages to the levant in any remotely recent history. And a lot of ethnicities are more similar than they are distinct.

None of which gives them a right to return to an ancient "homeland" from thousands of years ago, and I belong to one of the categories you mentioned. 
[/quote]

Actually, most Jews have DNA markers tracing back to the Levant - so yes, they do have "direct genetical" lineage to the Levant. Jews are a tribe, and, of course, blood quantum is a colonial construct set up to uphold white supremacy and strip indigenous communties of rights.

Moreover, the majority of Israeli Jews are of Mizrachi origin.  If Israel does not have the right to exist, than neither do Lebananon or Palestine for that matter, since both have sizable European and non-Arab admixture. Or Jordan or Syria - or India or any country really established in the late 80+ years, because these are boundaries set up after colonialism, but of course, that's not a standard that is applied anywhere else, there have been global shakeups after world wars or couuntries that split apart or form together.

By the same token, if Jews are indigenous, so are Palestinians by this point. If Jews deserve self-determination - so do Palestinians. [/quote]

There's a massive difference between Jews living on the land, because they have actual familial connection (ditto for Palestinians). And returning because of some "right of return" from a long long long time ago, with no actual traceable lineage.

And I thought Israel doesn't use genetic tests for right of return? Or a hell of a lot of non-Jewish people with Jewish blood would be allowed to "return."

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The Palestinian Authority allows for "right of return" for Palestinians whose ancestors lived on the land during Ottoman times and left long before the state of Israel was established, including those who immigrated to Ottoman controlled areas from Europe -as part of the Turkish resettlement strategy. For example, the woman ( Inea Bushnaq) interviewed by Mamdani as part of Nakba Day, is a registered as a Palestinian refugee, even though her Serbian and Bosnian ancestors moved to modern-day Israel as part of Turkey's attempt to encourage European immigration in the 1880s, though her relatives were not expelled from Israel with the founding of the State, her relatives still live in the same villages within Israel (https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/attachments/jps-articles/JPS177_06_Li_Seferovich.pdf) - her grandfather (a local doctor) stayed, later sold his land to Jews, and moved to England. I do think that centering yourself in the lived experiences of Jews is racism. I have family members who returned to Israel in the 1880s from Yemen because it was permissable to kidnap and rape Jewish children, Jews could not own property, Jews were routinely subjected murder/rape/etc. - and I have relatives who were kicked out of Lebanon after the establishment of the State of Israel. Judaism is a land-based religion and returning to the land has always been part of it - which not at all unusual for other ancient peoples in the Levant (or elsewhere). If you really dig into who is indigenous and and who is a refugee, these are very murky questions. 300,000 Arabs moved into Mandate Palestine because that's where the jobs were. How are you going to parse out who is legitimate in the eyes of privileged Western elites or elsewhere. Where do you expect the 900,000+ Jewish refugee familes from the Levant who were absorbed by Israel to go? Hint: they are not going back to Yemen. [/quote]

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