christianity and white supremacy at large have molded this narrative that “the promised land” is a landscape that is forgiving and lush. it isn’t. it flows with milk and honey while in relationship with the jews, its indigenous stewards. the accessibility of the landscape is rooted directly in the involvement and inherited knowledge of its people.
israel was home to swamps that caused massive outbreaks of malaria, until kibbutzniks drained them. the jews of israel created infrastructure that would facilitate fresh running water in a desert region. nature and land is not always benevolent and receptive upon first blush— it requires a cultivation not only of the soil but of the relationship between it and its stewards.
colonizing forces argue that the indigenous people of a given place do not “own the land” because they work the land agriculturally in a way that’s different from how the colonizers do it. therefore, if they don’t see evidence of it being “worked” in the way they do it, they feel at liberty to claim it.
The flip side of this is people who think the Levant was always and is meant to be this lifeless and barren desert wasteland it was at the start of the 20th century. And therefore Israeli ecological work is colonial destruction
But that came about from centuries of exploitation by the Ottoman empire that destroyed the old forests and shrublands for intensive agriculture and construction in their core lands. In Antiquity the Levant was known for being fertile and prosperous, one of the main source of high quality timber for people such as the Egyptians and Minoans.
חשוב לי כמישהי שלומדת ולמדה היסטוריה ותלמד היסטוריה כל החיים שלה לרבלג את זה כי זה נכון
