Compensation

In thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I got to thinking about the Native Americans and what happened there. The situation is very similar. A group of people are ejected from a land due to religious beliefs (or debtors) and take over the land via British rule. The Natives attacked well into the 1800s, which means that we were constantly being attacked somewhere for 200+ years. The Natives also used the means they had, which were mostly renegade, to attack.

The difference is, the Palestinians and Arab people were not so welcoming of the Jewish populations when they started coming over in the late 1800s. They did not like the Jewish population, and decided to try to keep them off their land. But, it was their land until the Brits came around and took over, and then the Zionists started buying the land from the Brits.

But, in this case, who would be right or wrong? Both Zionist and Palestinian records have pointed out that the Palestinians were largely nomadic prior to the British rule. Thus, owning property seems like it may have been a foreign concept to the Palestinians as it was to the Native Americans (maybe less so, as I will admit this is a bit hazy of a fact). But, the Palestinians were the aggressors initially (though they had much the same rules as the Europeans did in the late 1800s).

Luckily, I have no ancestral guilt over what the Americans did to the Indians. My family is 2-4 generations American on all sides. Probably came on the cusp of true American industrialization.

ed's note: Please note that this is just thoughts formulating in my brain tonight, which may or may not lead to a better more thorough post.