The "Great Replacement," Replacing Charlottesville with... Khan Younis?
At least someone in the Israeli government is doing some serious thinking about "the day after" the fighting in Gaza ends. Unfortunately, it's the right wing radicals, and they want to prove all the "Great Replacement Theory" conspiracists correct - not in Charlottesville, however, but in Khan Younis.
This week, a group of right wing radicals got together in Jerusalem to discuss things like ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and resettling Jews into the godforsaken strip of land that no one has wanted to control since Napoleon. This is part of the far right's master plan that also includes the "encouragement" of Palestinian emigration from the West Bank, which President Biden took a huge swipe at today. It looks some Jews want to replace other people after all.
If this sounds shocking, giving all the pain this antisemitic - and false - theory has caused Jews over here, including acts of domestic terror and murder, then that explains why we should be so shocked that the Prime Minister of Israel hasn't shut down all talk of Gaza resettling and "encouraging" emigration. Thank God we have President Biden to stand up for Jewish values.
This plan is equal parts reckless and ridiculous. But let me address the part that I'm most qualified to address:
Gaza is not part of the Holy Land. It is primarily considered as being OUTSIDE of the land promised to our ancestors. Even if may have been tossed around in conquest conversations, it was never conquered. The proof that i was considered outside the territory is the rabbis allowed crops to be cultivated there during the Sabbatical years, when that was not allowed in the Land of Israel. Even if you believe that the West Bank cannot be relinquished because it is part of the ancient land of Israel (and I believe that it can be under certain conditions, because for God, human lives and peace are holier than land) - but even if you do feel that Hebron and Shechem are sacrosanct, when it comes to Gaza, the history is completely different. It is not part of the traditional land of Israel. it can't be gerrymandered in.
Here are some excerpts from a JTA explainer on the topic, which came out at the time of Ariel Sharon's controversial disengagement in 2005. Sharon's move was a security mistake in retrospect, because Hamas took over a year later and we see what happened, but it was justifiable at the time. Gaza was an unnecessary burden and never part of the plan, even for those pulling for a "Greater Israel." IDF soldiers were put at risk to guard a tiny minority of settlers living among 1.3 million Palestinians. And Sharon's gambit could have worked out differently if the Prime Minister for the better part of the two decades after his sudden demise - Netanyahu - didn't give Hamas free rein to freely rain missiles on Israel.
Here are excerpts from the backgrounder:
Samson is the only biblical Israelite noted for having set foot there. In the 17th century the false messiah Shabbatai Zevi gave the area a bad name when he launched his movement from its shores.
During biblical times, Gaza was part of the land promised to the Jews by God but never part of the land actually conquered and inhabited by them, said Nili Wazana, a lecturer on Bible studies and the history of the Jewish people at Hebrew University.
Wazana, who is currently writing a book on the borders of the biblical Land of Israel, said there are contradictory references to Gaza in the Bible. One passage in Judges — often cited by Jewish settlers and their supporters — says the tribe of Judah took control of the area. But other biblical stories contradict this — a pattern typical of the Bible, she said.
...The one period when Jews appeared to have sovereignty over Gaza was during the time of Hasmonean rule, when the Jewish King Yochanan — whose brother was Judah the Maccabee — captured the area in 145 C.E.
Haggai Huberman — who has written extensively on the history of Jewish settlement in Gaza over the centuries and is writing a history of the Jews in Gush Katif — maintains that the Jews who lived there always considered themselves residents of the Land of Israel.
He says that Jews have lived on and off in Gaza since the time of Roman rule, their settlement following a pattern of expulsion during times of war and conquest and return during more peaceful periods. The remains of an ancient synagogue found in Gaza date to around 508 C.E. Its mosaic floor, unearthed by archeologists, is now displayed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
There reportedly was a large Jewish community living in the area when the Muslims invaded in the seventh century. The Jews were noted for their skills as farmers and for making wine in their vast vineyards.
After the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, some Spanish and Portuguese Jews fled to Gaza. They abandoned the area when Napoleon’s army marched through but later returned in the early 1800s.
When the first wave of Zionist settlers arrived in the region at the end of the 19th century, a group of 50 families moved to Gaza City. According to Huberman, they established good relations with local Arabs.
The settlers stayed until they were expelled in 1914 — along with Gaza’s entire Arab population — by the Ottoman Turks during World War I. The Jews returned in 1920. But tensions simmered with Arab and Jewish nationalisms on the rise, and the relations with local Arabs began to sour, Huberman said.
The major Jewish presence in Gaza on the eve of Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 was a kibbutz called Kfar Darom, set up in 1946. It was evacuated during the war and was among the first places to be resettled by Jews after 1967. Initially inhabited by Israeli soldiers from the Nahal brigade, it soon evolved into one of several civilian settlements established in the 1970s as the settler movement gained strength.
Wazana said present-day debates over territory mirror those in the Bible.
“Descriptions of borders reflect different ideologies even back then,” she said. “People have put words in the mouth of God even in biblical times. If you have an ideology, you will find the right words to support it.”
Some who argue that Gaza was not part of the biblical Land of Israel point to the fact that Orthodox Jews are allowed to consume produce grown in the Gaza Strip during shmita — the seventh, or sabbatical, year when fruits and vegetables are not to be cultivated in the Land of Israel, according to Jewish law.
But Kamietsky said it is permitted to grow produce in the Gaza Strip because even though it is every bit “as holy” as the rest of the Land of Israel, it was not an area settled during the Second Temple period, when Jews returned from exile in Babylon.
The logic of that last line is somewhat circular. If Jews didn't choose to live there during the Second Temple period, the last time Jews had sovereignty over the region, how could it be considered so holy? If the most famous Jewish residents of the strip were Samson, who died there and "brought the house down," and Shabbtai Tzvi, a 17th century heretic, along with Napoleon, this is hardly an all-star lineup. The great Jewish heroes have always lived on the outskirts of Gaza, in places like Yad Mordechai in 1948 and now, all those towns and kibbutzim attacked on Oct. 7.
Resettling Gaza makes no sense, unless your goal is to destroy all chances for coexistence and eventually a little bit of calm, if not peace. If Ben Gvir and his cronies have his way, any chance for a positive outcome, like Napoleon, will be "blown-apart."
To conclude, I leave you with these 18 biblical verses mentioning Gaza. This is all of them. Not exactly Jerusalem. It is a cursed land. Judge for yourself whether you would be rushing back in to settle that land like Ben Gvir.
The only replacement we should be supporting is the replacement of him, from the government.
Genesis 10:19 - Gaza is within the Canaanite border | 
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