The other question is, do the indigenous people of an area get to decide what happens to that area?
They do not. But neither do the invaders. If you believe in moral precepts other than "might is right" then there must be a balance. The indigenous peoples do have inherent rights which can not be abrogated. They have a right to self-determination. They have a right to self-government. They have a right to preserve their own culture and history and laws and religious faith.
But again, it makes little to no difference. Power is the only thing that matters, hence why people have weapons. That's why people play all these games. Israel exists simply because the US backs it up and no one has managed to destroy Israel.
Make up your mind. If power is power, then Israel wins. Why ask questions about the definition of "indigenous"?
Deciding who is indigenous is impossible,
No its not. Its actually rather easy. Its only hard when you try to exclude Joooooooos while including every one else.
It's still not an ethnicity.
Well, definitions of indigeneity don't use the term "ethnicity". They use "culture" so its irrelevant anyway. But why would you say that the Jewish people are not an ethnicity? What definition could you possibly be using which excludes the Jewish people specifically?
You have (deliberately?) changed terms from "indigenous" to "ethnicity". Why? Is it because I've already demonstrated that indigeneity is based on culture? Ethnicity is also based on culture. Here's a definition:
eth·nic·i·ty
eTHˈnisədē/
noun
- the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition.
The Jewish people clearly possess a distinct and recognizable and unique culture. They are clearly both an ethnic group and indigenous to the territory in dispute.
They have these rights? Really?
Do the indigenous people of the USA have the right to self determination? Hell no they don't. The right to self governance? No. The right to preserve their own culture? No. It took until 1978 for the Native peoples to be able to practice the sun dance and other such things. It was only when the US govt itself decided, not the Native peoples, to allow it to happen again that it wasn't prohibited. Basically Native Americans don't have much power at all in the US.
It's not about me making up my mind. I haven't told you what should happen. I haven't said that the Muslim Palestinians should control the country, I haven't said the Jewish Israelis should control it either. Don't start making assumptions about what you think I think.
I asked the question about indigenous because I wanted to see the argument of people on here. People are making an argument, and often on here the arguments aren't very good. So, I try and look at the main parts and see if there's any logic at all.
It's hard, if you're trying to be fair and balanced. If you have an agenda, and you've decided who are indigenous already, and you're fighting to make a case because you want to believe something, maybe it's not so hard. But if you're like me, and you want to see the TRUTH, then it's hard.
Jewish people aren't an ethnicity. I do understand the Judaism, like Islam is different from Christianity, whereby they see themselves as "family" within the religion, whereas Christians are less likely to do so. There are issues of cultural ways of dealing with this, like when the westerners turned up in the Americas and said "oh, you don't recognize our way of dealing with land ownership, so we're just going to take this land anyway".
But the point is we're dealing with who is indigenous of a particular piece of land. And the first factor here is that forefathers have to have lived there, and for many Jewish people this just isn't so. Or at least it isn't so for a long period of time. It depends on whether they think they can trace their ancestry back through Russia/Germany/wherever and then back to Palestine, which is probably almost impossible to do. So....
