BTW I disagree with Noah, I think there is a likely two state solution.
It involves the elimination of Gaza as an entity and probably the mass deportation of Gazans to the west bank. My guess, based on some conversations I've had with Israelis is that this is going to happen. Anyone associated with Hamas and/or other terro groups and/or can be shown to have raped etc. civilians who survives the Israeli re-occupation of Gaza is going to be imprisoned probably for life in a Gaza prison camp. All the rest will be deported to the West Bank with the clothes on their back and nothing more.
Israelis are pretty much 100% behind the elimination of the Hamas threat now in a way that they never have been before. AFAICT they are even more determined than they were in the war ~20 years ago against Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is partly because they feel that the attempt to trade land (Gaza) for peace was a total failure and that the Gazans, rather than showing gratitude, simply took advantage of the situation to prepare for more attacks on Israel. Since being nice didn't work and the status quo is unsustainable, the only option is to be extremely nasty.
There is no two states. Anybody who looks at a map knows that.
There can only be one state with both Palestinians and Jews. With whatever that means as the only other alternatives mean the genocide of either Jews or Palestinians.
"It involves the elimination of Gaza as an entity and probably the mass deportation of Gazans to the west bank. My guess, based on some conversations I've had with Israelis is that this is going to happen. "
So, absconding with these ‘young women’ back to base camp (Gaza) is not to use them as human shields at all. They are the prizes of predation that will be used for rape; in accordance with their religion.
I assume it is both. Which is why I am struggling with my feelings since I learned that a co-worker of mine is one of the women that is missing and presumably kidnapped.
I pray she is unharmed but given the pictures of other women in Gaza I fear very much that she is already harrmed if not dead
Ah gaslighting. Invented by the woke of the internet.
I don't support Hamas, Francis.
I am wondering though whose allies Hezbollah are. They're sounding very left wing in their criticism of the United States and seem to be holding back. Are they planning to go to war against America rather than Israel?
Netanyahu hasn't been hanging around with Ali Khamenei has he?
I am late to read this post of course, but perhaps someone will see this comment. There is earlier criticism that questions the relevance of farmer-pastoralist dynamics for the trouble in Gaza, but the same rivalry, if that's the word I want, is causing untold misery in Nigeria. This is a result of pressure on land thanks to spectacular population growth, but the diaspora in the west, usually from the Christian south, would too argue that the pastoralist movement south over recent decades and the violence that has occurred along the way, is down to Muslim crazies and heir cattle trying to destroy Christian communities. And this is a severe business - just after Christmas about 200 or so people were massacred across three days in one area of central Nigeria. What it says about this article's thesis I don't know, but anyway.
Farmer-pastoralist violence has a long, long history. The advance of the Indo-European pastoralists across Europe was clearly not a peaceful.
The Ming Great Wall was the culmination of two millennia of Chinese building frontier walls to keep the steppe pastoralists out. Something it ultimately failed at, hence the Manchu (Jurchen) conquest in 1644.
Sahel Islam has been noted for the strong identification of its local Sufism with jihad (in the sense of warfare).
Christianity has been expanding rapidly in Africa and pastoralists tending to be Muslim and farmers tending to be Christian seems to be part of the dynamics.
Indeed, though the further north and northwest you go in Nigeria the more that farming is carried out by Hausa Muslims growing millet, sorghum and whatnot. Traditionally after harvest herds would be invited to eat the crop residue and provide manure for fertilising in time for the next rainy season. A neat exchange relation which has all but gone.
But in the centre of the country, (which is not Sahelian in ecology, culture or in climate) where farmers are indeed Christian and into horticulture (such as tomatoes whose residue is inedible to cattle and to which manure is no use) it's meant expanse of farmland into much of the area's pasture, especially at riverbanks. So I think the herders have every right to a grievance there. The fact that the herders are Muslim (Fulani in this case) is very often weaponised by southern politicians and religious figures. The latter sometimes even see the thing as a modern day repeat of Cain and Abel, and say so in their sermons. I used to travel to Nigeria for work, but not for fifteen years or so. In the meantime this farmer-herder conflict has absolutely exploded. Man, Nigeria is complicated.
Oklahoma has some surprisingly dark themes, viewed through our pc-adjusted eyes. The baby boomer's parents didn't flinch from the dark side of life after Depression and War formed their emotional background, what to speak of growing up listening to incredibly sophisticated and complex bigband music for pleasure.
"Thanks to the polygyny of the oil states creating a pool of no-local-marriage-prospect young men..."
For this to be an issue re terrorism then at least one of three conditions would need to be true:
1. That the terrorists themselves originate in the oil-rich Gulf states (true of the 9/11 attackers, but not true of Middle Eastern terrorists in aggregate),
2. There is male mass migration from the oil-rich Gulf states to the rest of the Arab world (unlikely given the non-oil Arab world is mostly very poor), or
3. There is female mass migration TO the oil-rich Gulf states FROM the rest of the Arab world (unlikely given limited female autonomy in Arab societies).
You identify Christianity with farming and Islam with herding in this essay, but wasn't it the other way round in central and southern Iberia? In this territory, Muslim al-Andalus was based on irrigated agriculture, but the reconquering Christians turned it into a land of ranches that later became the prototype for the American Southwest.
Ibn Khaldun regarded the lack of pastoralists among the Muslims of al Andalus as a fundamental weakness.
There were Christian pastoralists — in Iberia, the Celtic fringe, the Balkans, famously the Cossacks. Just as there were lots of Muslim farmers. Nevertheless, Christianity sanctifies the Roman synthesis just as Islam sanctifies a pastoralist synthesis.
The Middle East selects for monotheism because it creates a unified moral order that can bind people across the farming/pastoralist ecological divide. Which is much more porous in that region than elsewhere.
You speak only of one people fighting this war in Palestine/Israel. And then you reach a 'conclusion' based partly on predatory Pakistani men in Britain. That is patently absurd. Pakistan was never part of the Ottoman Empire and as far as I know there are not very many Pakistanis currently in Gaza. There are though, somewhat surprisingly to me, quite a lot of Indians in Israel, so what do they bring to this conflaguration? Is pastoralism really a big part of the ANE? This is a part of the world that was one of the first to grow wheat (which by the by I seem to be allergic to, maybe I'm a, monogamous, pastoralist), to store wheat and therefore wealth (the Temples of the ANE started thus). What does the fact that Israel (& Palestine) have to import all their food more or less have to say to the current conflaguration (as it implies neither pastoralism nor farming but rather complete reliance on elsewhere).
You appear to not understand the argument at all. Yes farming started in the Fertile Crescent, but farming predates pastoralism, of which there is also a lot in the Middle East, historically.
The Ottoman Empire did not create the various patterns, though it harnessed some for its original expansion. The post is about what Hamas did on October 7th and how that fits into wider patterns.
And you've also missed my key point, that of what urban environments do to people. In this case both Israel and Palestine for all intents are urban environments. They're not pastoral or farming. BTW farming is a term that does not include corn (wheat, rye, oats) or horticulture. LOL.
Farming absolutely does include raising grains, particularly in Frye’s book. Folk sometimes make a horticulture (no ploughs/small fields) agriculture (ploughs/large fields) distinction.
Culture is persistent, especially sanctified cultural patterns reinforced by family structures.
You don't raise grains, you grow them. It's a subtle point but "I'm a farmer" does not imply that you grow corn (wheat, rye, oats) for those of us who grew up on farms. It implys that you farm sheep or cattle/cows. For such they can say that they work on a farm. This can also be qualified, a sheep farm or a dairy farm. But for corn it always has to be qualified as it's not really seen as a farm. So an arable farm or a wheat farm. Or you just say 'we grow oats' or 'we grow wheat'.
I'm not even sure what you meant by a pastoralist as this is a very Australian or American term really, denoting a very large farm normally with cattle or sheep. I doubt that it has any relevance whatsoever to the ANE.
I hadn't thought of it before but Islam was very much an urban religion. It was quite impressive in some of its early achievements in maths, in architecture but I can't remember a revolution in farming. Its origins placed in Medina or Yathrib are also pretty much bollocks. There is no way in hell that these small towns on the Red Sea (Mecca and Medina, Yathrib) were in any position, ever, to take over from the Romans. It had to be Persian, with their cities, sponsored. Muhammad taking over from Jesus who had of course taken over from the earlier Apollo. Greek city states to Rome and then to Persia. Jewish, Christian, Muslim. Urban all the way.
‘Agro-pastoral’ is often used for mixed crops and animals.
A unified Arabian peninsula (only time ever) dealing with two exhausted empires was in a position to conquer. Pastoralist conquerors, from the Indo-European surges, to Huns, Turks, Mongols etc are a recurring pattern.
Also there are Christian communities in both Israel & Palestine (which Gaza is supposedly a part of but currently there is an attempt to remove it, divide and rule applying here).
BTW I disagree with Noah, I think there is a likely two state solution.
It involves the elimination of Gaza as an entity and probably the mass deportation of Gazans to the west bank. My guess, based on some conversations I've had with Israelis is that this is going to happen. Anyone associated with Hamas and/or other terro groups and/or can be shown to have raped etc. civilians who survives the Israeli re-occupation of Gaza is going to be imprisoned probably for life in a Gaza prison camp. All the rest will be deported to the West Bank with the clothes on their back and nothing more.
Israelis are pretty much 100% behind the elimination of the Hamas threat now in a way that they never have been before. AFAICT they are even more determined than they were in the war ~20 years ago against Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is partly because they feel that the attempt to trade land (Gaza) for peace was a total failure and that the Gazans, rather than showing gratitude, simply took advantage of the situation to prepare for more attacks on Israel. Since being nice didn't work and the status quo is unsustainable, the only option is to be extremely nasty.
Well, if you eliminate the third enclave, yep, you are back to two states.
There is no two states. Anybody who looks at a map knows that.
There can only be one state with both Palestinians and Jews. With whatever that means as the only other alternatives mean the genocide of either Jews or Palestinians.
"It involves the elimination of Gaza as an entity and probably the mass deportation of Gazans to the west bank. My guess, based on some conversations I've had with Israelis is that this is going to happen. "
They need the real estate. Business is business.
I hope they both lose
So, absconding with these ‘young women’ back to base camp (Gaza) is not to use them as human shields at all. They are the prizes of predation that will be used for rape; in accordance with their religion.
Dastardly.
Sadly, yes. It does not preclude using them as human shields, but who they kill and who they take is revealing.
I assume it is both. Which is why I am struggling with my feelings since I learned that a co-worker of mine is one of the women that is missing and presumably kidnapped.
I pray she is unharmed but given the pictures of other women in Gaza I fear very much that she is already harrmed if not dead
You are the second person today who has told me they know someone who is missing. And I am in Melbourne, Australia.
And I'm in Japan. But I suspect I know more Israelis than most other people in Japan
Do you? Good for you.
One less than I did before Oct 7 though, my friend that I mentioned above was killed that day
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-family-recounts-last-moments-before-canadian-womans-kidnapping-by/
Ah gaslighting. Invented by the woke of the internet.
I don't support Hamas, Francis.
I am wondering though whose allies Hezbollah are. They're sounding very left wing in their criticism of the United States and seem to be holding back. Are they planning to go to war against America rather than Israel?
Netanyahu hasn't been hanging around with Ali Khamenei has he?
I am late to read this post of course, but perhaps someone will see this comment. There is earlier criticism that questions the relevance of farmer-pastoralist dynamics for the trouble in Gaza, but the same rivalry, if that's the word I want, is causing untold misery in Nigeria. This is a result of pressure on land thanks to spectacular population growth, but the diaspora in the west, usually from the Christian south, would too argue that the pastoralist movement south over recent decades and the violence that has occurred along the way, is down to Muslim crazies and heir cattle trying to destroy Christian communities. And this is a severe business - just after Christmas about 200 or so people were massacred across three days in one area of central Nigeria. What it says about this article's thesis I don't know, but anyway.
Farmer-pastoralist violence has a long, long history. The advance of the Indo-European pastoralists across Europe was clearly not a peaceful.
The Ming Great Wall was the culmination of two millennia of Chinese building frontier walls to keep the steppe pastoralists out. Something it ultimately failed at, hence the Manchu (Jurchen) conquest in 1644.
Sahel Islam has been noted for the strong identification of its local Sufism with jihad (in the sense of warfare).
Christianity has been expanding rapidly in Africa and pastoralists tending to be Muslim and farmers tending to be Christian seems to be part of the dynamics.
Indeed, though the further north and northwest you go in Nigeria the more that farming is carried out by Hausa Muslims growing millet, sorghum and whatnot. Traditionally after harvest herds would be invited to eat the crop residue and provide manure for fertilising in time for the next rainy season. A neat exchange relation which has all but gone.
But in the centre of the country, (which is not Sahelian in ecology, culture or in climate) where farmers are indeed Christian and into horticulture (such as tomatoes whose residue is inedible to cattle and to which manure is no use) it's meant expanse of farmland into much of the area's pasture, especially at riverbanks. So I think the herders have every right to a grievance there. The fact that the herders are Muslim (Fulani in this case) is very often weaponised by southern politicians and religious figures. The latter sometimes even see the thing as a modern day repeat of Cain and Abel, and say so in their sermons. I used to travel to Nigeria for work, but not for fifteen years or so. In the meantime this farmer-herder conflict has absolutely exploded. Man, Nigeria is complicated.
Quite. You get lots of Muslims farmers and various Christian pastoralists (Irish, Scots Highlanders, Balkan Vlachs and others, Cossacks).
https://youtu.be/cxuwDWbYsMI?si=PBId0sE9MX5h4HCT
Dr Bill Warner or a picture is worth a thousand words - timeline of Islamic invasions since Mohammed. Thanks for your essay Lorenzo. Fascinating.
Dr Warner is a treasure. The link is spot on, ta.
A light-hearted look at the divide including a light-hearted look at pastoralist rape and wife stealing from beloved musical of the fifties Oklahoma
https://youtu.be/O5aWawFdaXs?si=Kq5x7cmACIEhCafI
Oklahoma has some surprisingly dark themes, viewed through our pc-adjusted eyes. The baby boomer's parents didn't flinch from the dark side of life after Depression and War formed their emotional background, what to speak of growing up listening to incredibly sophisticated and complex bigband music for pleasure.
In this version, even with gunpowder imposing peace …
https://youtu.be/G85aEsgMDwA?si=KlB3mNdDoPaFvNc1
The latest iteration of Islam is Internet Influencer Islam ala Andrew Tate and Sneako.
"Thanks to the polygyny of the oil states creating a pool of no-local-marriage-prospect young men..."
For this to be an issue re terrorism then at least one of three conditions would need to be true:
1. That the terrorists themselves originate in the oil-rich Gulf states (true of the 9/11 attackers, but not true of Middle Eastern terrorists in aggregate),
2. There is male mass migration from the oil-rich Gulf states to the rest of the Arab world (unlikely given the non-oil Arab world is mostly very poor), or
3. There is female mass migration TO the oil-rich Gulf states FROM the rest of the Arab world (unlikely given limited female autonomy in Arab societies).
Which is it then?
You identify Christianity with farming and Islam with herding in this essay, but wasn't it the other way round in central and southern Iberia? In this territory, Muslim al-Andalus was based on irrigated agriculture, but the reconquering Christians turned it into a land of ranches that later became the prototype for the American Southwest.
Ibn Khaldun regarded the lack of pastoralists among the Muslims of al Andalus as a fundamental weakness.
There were Christian pastoralists — in Iberia, the Celtic fringe, the Balkans, famously the Cossacks. Just as there were lots of Muslim farmers. Nevertheless, Christianity sanctifies the Roman synthesis just as Islam sanctifies a pastoralist synthesis.
The Middle East selects for monotheism because it creates a unified moral order that can bind people across the farming/pastoralist ecological divide. Which is much more porous in that region than elsewhere.
This provides an excellent farmer/pastoralist overview of European prehistory, well before Christianity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQq3mkSVDUc
You speak only of one people fighting this war in Palestine/Israel. And then you reach a 'conclusion' based partly on predatory Pakistani men in Britain. That is patently absurd. Pakistan was never part of the Ottoman Empire and as far as I know there are not very many Pakistanis currently in Gaza. There are though, somewhat surprisingly to me, quite a lot of Indians in Israel, so what do they bring to this conflaguration? Is pastoralism really a big part of the ANE? This is a part of the world that was one of the first to grow wheat (which by the by I seem to be allergic to, maybe I'm a, monogamous, pastoralist), to store wheat and therefore wealth (the Temples of the ANE started thus). What does the fact that Israel (& Palestine) have to import all their food more or less have to say to the current conflaguration (as it implies neither pastoralism nor farming but rather complete reliance on elsewhere).
I suspect Lorenzo's argument is about the Arab Caliphates (which did end up including most of what is now Pakistan) rather than the Ottoman Empire.
You appear to not understand the argument at all. Yes farming started in the Fertile Crescent, but farming predates pastoralism, of which there is also a lot in the Middle East, historically.
The Ottoman Empire did not create the various patterns, though it harnessed some for its original expansion. The post is about what Hamas did on October 7th and how that fits into wider patterns.
It's not at all about Hamas.
And you've also missed my key point, that of what urban environments do to people. In this case both Israel and Palestine for all intents are urban environments. They're not pastoral or farming. BTW farming is a term that does not include corn (wheat, rye, oats) or horticulture. LOL.
Farming absolutely does include raising grains, particularly in Frye’s book. Folk sometimes make a horticulture (no ploughs/small fields) agriculture (ploughs/large fields) distinction.
Culture is persistent, especially sanctified cultural patterns reinforced by family structures.
You don't raise grains, you grow them. It's a subtle point but "I'm a farmer" does not imply that you grow corn (wheat, rye, oats) for those of us who grew up on farms. It implys that you farm sheep or cattle/cows. For such they can say that they work on a farm. This can also be qualified, a sheep farm or a dairy farm. But for corn it always has to be qualified as it's not really seen as a farm. So an arable farm or a wheat farm. Or you just say 'we grow oats' or 'we grow wheat'.
I'm not even sure what you meant by a pastoralist as this is a very Australian or American term really, denoting a very large farm normally with cattle or sheep. I doubt that it has any relevance whatsoever to the ANE.
I hadn't thought of it before but Islam was very much an urban religion. It was quite impressive in some of its early achievements in maths, in architecture but I can't remember a revolution in farming. Its origins placed in Medina or Yathrib are also pretty much bollocks. There is no way in hell that these small towns on the Red Sea (Mecca and Medina, Yathrib) were in any position, ever, to take over from the Romans. It had to be Persian, with their cities, sponsored. Muhammad taking over from Jesus who had of course taken over from the earlier Apollo. Greek city states to Rome and then to Persia. Jewish, Christian, Muslim. Urban all the way.
Weird US usages are not the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture
‘Agro-pastoral’ is often used for mixed crops and animals.
A unified Arabian peninsula (only time ever) dealing with two exhausted empires was in a position to conquer. Pastoralist conquerors, from the Indo-European surges, to Huns, Turks, Mongols etc are a recurring pattern.
The Penteteuch being a work of the Greeks.
Also there are Christian communities in both Israel & Palestine (which Gaza is supposedly a part of but currently there is an attempt to remove it, divide and rule applying here).