I don't get it. Who are these people? Please provide some clue to the clueless.

Ah, sorry. They appear to be Palestinian Arabs having some sort of publicity event drawing parallels between themselves as Native Americans. (Instead, they just look goofy)

I think that the Palestinians have known for a long time that the Jews as cowboys and Arabs as "Indians" theme works as well as the Jews as "colons" and Arabs as "indigenous" theme.

This image is simplistic and not totally true, but it's compelling and it works like magic. The Arabs have apparently known this for a long time, and have used it to the hilt, very skillfully. This demonstration just happens to be a crude application of the same approach.

Will someone please explain to them that it's not the Israelis who keep the Palestinians in refugee camps, but other Arabs? That their statelessness is to some extent voluntary, since many of them want all or nothing? How is this a parallel to Native Americans?

Oh well, people will see the striking images and not think too much.

Well, in Quebec, the Palestinians are quite embraced by the Quebecois who somehow see their plight as analogous to the "oppression" of Quebec's French culture by Canadian English majority. It's quite remarkable how the more obvious similarities between Israel's beleaguered situation as a Hebrew state under threat of constant annihilation (and not just linguistically) in a region of Arab-Muslim countries, escape them completely. In fact, it would be highly inconvenient to notice this.

I guess people like to align themselves with whomever they perceive as the underdog, even when the underdog is the genocidal Hamas or Hizzbala.

People may justify it by saying they're supporting the cause of the underdog, but I think they're just supporting the cause of the fashionable.

After all, there are plenty of underdogs out there that we hear nothing about: The Tutsis, the Zimbabweans, the Tibetans, Sudanese, et. al. Funny, you don't hear "We are all Tibetans now."

Indians were known for scalping people.

Arab savages are known for beheading people.

Wait a second. Aren't people forgetting some of the "indigenous people" in the Middle East?

Haven't Jews lived continously in, for example, Judea and Samaria for some 3400 years?

"Aren't people forgetting some of the "indigenous people" in the Middle East?"

I guess there is some date in the past used as a "cut off" date (to use one of Larry David's favourite phrases). Whatever happened before that date is irrelevant and inconvenient to remember. It disrupts the smoothness of the narrative, and who wants that?

To return to the Quebecois for a minute, I remember the platform redacted in preparation for the 1995 referendum (on the question of separation from Canada) began with a statement like this (from memory): "Les autochtones" (the first nations) were the first people who occupied our land.

I tried to find the document on line but couldn't. However, at the time it offered a great insight into the fanatical nationalist thinking that it considers its claims so self-evident that they owe nothing to historical veracity or even common sense.

Guaranteed, some wacko lefties will be pulled in by these pictures.........

Sophia,

This--pointing out that we are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel--is the most tempting route to take; however, it won't make the Israel-haters budge:

On a Few Comments on DKos (from January 23, 2007)

Noga,

The cut-off date, according to the anti-Zionists, depends on the political expedience of the matter. The Native Americans can keep their lease on the land even after centuries, while the Jewish claim is null and void after more than 3,000 years in favor of a claim that's not yet even 60 years old. And see:

Colonists Of Their Motherland (from November 9, 2006)

I bring those posts from my blog because this business is something I've spent (and still spend, in principle, though it's been long since there was anything new under the sun in that department) a lot of time addressing.

There are only two peoples in our area still linked to antiquity: us Jews, and the Persians. All the rest are relative newcomers--a modern Iraqi, for example, has no connection to Hammurabi, to Sennacherib, to Nebuchadnezzar or to any other figure from that time, neither in ancestry nor in language nor in religion.

They want to provide tax-free casinos and cigs for the non-muslims?????

Many identify with the Palestinians out of plain old anti-Semitism ... it never went out of style, just changed its stripes to suit the times.

Sophia,

This--pointing out that we are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel--is the most tempting route to take; however, it won't make the Israel-haters budge:

On a Few Comments on DKos (from January 23, 2007)

Noga,

The cut-off date, according to the anti-Zionists, depends on the political expedience of the matter. The Native Americans can keep their lease on the land even after centuries, while the Jewish claim is null and void after more than 3,000 years in favor of a claim that's not yet even 60 years old. And see:

Colonists Of Their Motherland (from November 9, 2006)

I bring those posts from my blog because this business is something I've spent (and still spend, in principle, though it's been long since there was anything new under the sun in that department) a lot of time addressing.

There are only two peoples in our area still linked to antiquity: us Jews, and the Persians. All the rest are relative newcomers--a modern Iraqi, for example, has no connection to Hammurabi, to Sennacherib, to Nebuchadnezzar or to any other figure from that time, neither in ancestry nor in language nor in religion.

Speaking of timelines - there's a recent article on Ha'aretz entitled "Why Does Egypt Hate Us?"

A person in the feedback forum named Chinto states his location as Los Angeles, Mexico - then proceeds to declare that "antizionism is a proper way of life" and "BTW let's not spew the stupid anti-zionism equals anti-semitism baloney here." He concludes, "Zionism is a particular racism limited to a bigoted few."

Go figure.