Billie Eilish joins history dunces wailing about ‘stolen’ land in USA to Israel – but elsewhere?
Land acknowledgements have become de rigueur at commencement ceremonies, film and music award events, and other programs. Something like this:
“We acknowledge that the land on which we gather is the stolen and occupied territory of the Indigenous First Nation People who stewarded the land through many generations before White European colonialists seized it.”
Many take these acknowledgements quite seriously. Indeed, professors and employees have been disciplined for mocking them, because employers find mockery “offensive” and “disruptive” – unlike their reactions to “mostly peaceful” Antifa, BLM and pro-Palestinian harassment and riots.
When accepting her Grammy, singer-songwriter Billie Eilish used her onstage opportunity to criticize Trump's immigration policies, saying “no one is illegal on stolen land.” Unless, of course, someone tried to enter her gated community and assert ownership over or enjoy a sandwich in her million-dollar mansion.
The actual “rightful” land ownership question is greatly complicated by history and reality – in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas in the past; and with Ukraine, Tibet and Taiwan today.
These lands and nations were not stolen the way a burglar grabs jewelry. They were typically purchased … or taken through war and conquest … across the globe, throughout human history, continuing today.
We might therefore ask: At what points do early and subsequent conquests, and thus land titles, begin and end? Who has today’s legitimate title? Who decides? Should all claims be treated the same – or should some have more “legitimacy” than others? Consider these abbreviated histories.
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Europe has been a battleground for millennia – over fiefdoms, states, countries and empires. Pax Romana once governed the continent and Britain, before the Visigoths, Celts and other tribes vandalized the Roman empire. Internal religious, ideological and political forces fragmented Christian Europe for centuries. Two world wars and the USSR's collapse created today’s political maps, while Putin dreams of more changes.
Muslim Umayyad armies conquered Spain and Portugal in the Eighth Century and were expelled by 1492. Mongols invaded Eastern Europe in 1237. Ottomans ruled southeastern Europe for two centuries.
The Americas inherited Europe’s history and philosophy of discovery, conquest, religious conversion and resource extraction. Cortés took advantage of superior weapons, smallpox epidemics and alliances with subjugated tribes to destroy the Aztec empire. Pizarro did likewise to dismantle the Inca kingdom.
The United States' claim of Manifest Destiny secured lands and resources from France via the Louisiana Purchase, California and the Southwest through wars with Mexico, and the rest of North America from Britain, Spain and Native American tribes. Canada’s history with its First Nations is similarly fraught.
Nowhere, however, is the “stolen land” trope more vocal and vicious than toward Israel.
The Middle East has been a bridge and battleground for trade, culture and invading armies from time immemorial. After Moses saw the Promised Land around 1400 BCE, the Israelites defeated the Amorites, Canaanites and Philistines – all of whom had invaded and conquered previous occupants. The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were conquered by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians, who exiled most of the Jewish people, until Cyrus the Great of Persia defeated Babylon and permitted them to return.
Alexander the Great ushered in Greek rule. Following another Jewish period, Rome took control, viciously subdued Jewish uprisings, and renamed the region Syria Palestina to insult the Israelites by recalling their mortal enemies, the Philistines. The Roman Empire gradually gave way to the Byzantine era, followed by centuries of Arab-Islamic conflicts with Byzantine and then Crusader forces.
Mamluks drove the last Crusaders out in 1291. The subsequent Ottoman-Turkish Empire lasted 600 years, until the end of WWI, when the British and French established “Mandates” and drew Middle East boundaries similar to what exist today.
Jewish immigrants and sponsors purchased land from local and absentee Arab landlords before and after the World Wars. After WWII, Jewish immigration surged. Land ownership in the pre-1948 area that is now Israel was roughly 15 percent Arab, 9 percent Jewish, and 76 percent British Mandate and "unregistered" plots.
At no point since Moses have Jews entirely disappeared from the Promised Land. At no point in Middle East history was there a “Palestinian” nation or people. Though some Palestinians now claim to be descended from Philistines, those ancient people were killed or exiled by the same King Nebuchadnezzar who sent the Jews into Babylonian captivity; their remnants assimilated into Babylonian-Phoenician populations.
Five Arab countries attacked Israel after it achieved nationhood in 1948. Some 700,000 Arabs left Israel, assuming they would return upon Arab victory, while over 800,000 Jews were displaced from Muslim countries across North Africa and the Middle East. The 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israel wars also ended in Israeli victories and territorial expansion.
Under millennia-long practices, norms and “international law,” victors win the lands and spoils of war. That means there is no “stolen” Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian or other land in Israel.
Nor have any conquered or displaced people ever had a “right of return.” And yet, Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO and their supporters demand such rights for Palestinians to their former homes in Israel. Indeed, the Hamas charter says Israel and Israelis must be driven out “from the river to the sea.”
Wars have consequences – serious and far-reaching. They do not include “rights of return,” a doctrine of “stolen land” – or some precept of “once Muslim, forever Muslim” applied to Spain, Portugal and southeastern Europe.
Just imagine the chaos that would erupt if the International Court of Justice began adjudicating claims and proclaiming “returns” to lands “stolen” by conquests through history.
When Muslim-Arab armies conquered the Middle East – sacking Jewish and other ethno-religious cities and forcibly converting millions – they claimed ownership of all those lands. Has the UN demanded that those lands be returned to descendants of their “rightful owners” of yore?
Should DNA tests be used to settle claims by descendants of Aztecs and Incas – or tribes subjugated by them – to properties in Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile? What about those who can trace their ancestry to Celtic, Saxon, Etruscan, Roman, Vandal, Dacian or other ancient Europeans who were conquered, decimated, exiled or assimilated over the ages? Ditto for Emperor Qin’s conquest of China?
What about the Berbers, Christians and other North Africans conquered by the Muslim Caliphate? Should Turkey be recognized as the owner and governing authority of Cyprus or Greece? Will China end its “occupation” of Tibet and recognize a separate Uyghur nation? Will the UN and “international community” boot Russia out of Crimea and Donetsk?
Why should Israel be singled out for further opprobrium – and demands that it alone, among all nations, return not only areas it took in wars Israel did not start, but lands Jewish immigrants purchased 75-100 years ago, and even the original 1948 pre-war State of Israel created by the United Nations?
The notion is utterly absurd. It is the product of vacuous thinking by dunces who can sing and chant slogans but have no grasp of even basic history. It should be tossed into history’s dustbin of stupid ideas.
Paul Driessen has been to Israel multiple times, including visits to sites of the October 7 Hamas massacres. He is the author of articles on energy, environmental, human rights and Israel issues.
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