The girls, aged 14 to 16, have come for settler training to learn how to occupy Palestinian land — breaking international law. “God promised us this land and told us if you don’t take it, bad people will try and take it and you will have a war,” says Emuna Billa, 19, one of the camp supervisors. “Why do we have a war in Gaza? Because we don’t take Gaza.”
Their guru is Daniella Weiss, a 79-year-old grandmother in a long skirt and patterned headscarf. Founder of the Nachala or Homeland movement, she has been setting up illegal settlements for 49 years and was recently put under international sanctions. “You will be the new emissaries,” she tells the 50 or so girls at the camp. “I call it redeeming, not settling and this is our duty.”
She unfurls a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories dotted with vivid pink house symbols to represent existing and proposed Jewish settlements. Not only are these all across the West Bank, but also in Gaza. Already 674 people have signed up for beachside plots there, she tells me, and “many more want to join”. When someone asks her about settling Lebanon she smiles and says, “Yes, there too”.
So… does history matter here or not? Tough to set those goalposts is a way that isn’t paradoxical.
And no, I’m not going to contrive some example within your stringent framework because as far as I know one doesn’t exist. But, then I can’t think of any examples where humans moved in somewhere without breathable air either, so the presence of breathable air must be included in the definition of settle too, right? Do you realize how foolish your claim sounds. Just to clarify, I’m only asserting that “to settle” doesn’t require the taking of others land by definition. I said it does generally involve that because all habitable land is currently inhabited, but that is the only reason.
Binary question, does the term require taking land from others? Really think about that. Just because two things are related, even if inextricably linked, doesn’t mean the terms are unified to the same meaning. Just because we all breathe air doesn’t mean “to breathe” requires air. In fact, fish breathe quite differently. Eating generally involves chewing, but does the term “eat” necessitate chewing? Surely not, since many animals swallow food whole. Don’t some animals like birds, bees, wasps, opportunistic ants “settle” places after previous tenants have moved out of a location?
If a people migrated entirely out of a land, would the next people that made use of the land not be “settling” that land since they weren’t taking it? It sure feels to me like that is what you’re saying, and if you aren’t, then we don’t disagree. Settling is about coming to inhabit a place whether or not it is currently inhabited.
It doesn’t matter if you can contrive a situation (which has never happened) where someone is referred to as a settler but doesn’t displace someone else because that has never happened.
If over four hundred years, every time the word settlers is used to describe someone they were part of some project to displace someone else then it doesn’t matter that you can imagine some situation where that doesn’t happen, it means that the word settlers means kicking someone out of their home so you can live there.
I asked you to limit your search for peaceful settlers to 1900+ to make life easier on you since it’s shorter time and there’s lots of sources. If you can find a good example before then I’m open to it. The only thing I can think of is Iceland but that’s contentious because there’s the context of controlling fishing and trade routes even though there weren’t people living there permanently (this consensus is changing still and has changed in my lifetime).
Just for clarity, the word settlers came into use in the early 1600s, so examples of settlers from before then wouldn’t really be relevant since we’re talking about the meaning of the word.
What would convince you that you’re wrong and that the settlers are by definition part of the displacement of some other group? Would it be academic work?
It doesn’t mean that. Your inability or refusal to read a dictionary is your issue to deal with. I’ve lead you to the information. Now you just sound like a flat earther.
Every place that has ever been settled, has been settled at least once without inhabitants. You can use low order logic to arrive at that conclusion. But you don’t need to, as you are alive in the 21st century and seem to have access to the internet. Just go look at a dictionary. It is the only thing relevant here because a word’s definition is the only thing about which I have made assertions. If you are arguing connotative implications, I’ve already made it clear I have no issue with that.
If you just like to argue nonsense positions to hear your keyboard clack, cool. Have fun with that.
So you’re willing to choose the dictionary over all the history of the word, the etymology, all art portraying the ideas the word is associated with, the news, the present, piles of study about its meaning and the obvious fact that all settlement is dispossession.
Have you ever entertained the possibility that the dictionary is incomplete or not intended as a universal reference? That perhaps a few scant lines fail to communicate critical information that you might be missing?