Valerie

@olivebr4nch @RawaneOsmane I have. Repeatedly. A temporary migration story involving Abraham does not magically make Judaism, Hebrew, the Israelite kingdoms, and Jewish temples “foreign” to the Levant. That argument is beyond absurd.

@ValpenglowCO @RawaneOsmane Open your Torah

“Free Palestine.” I grew up on those words. In Lebanon, most people around me wanted a free Palestine for a very practical reason — to send the Palestinian refugees back. The civil war that tore my country apart was ignited in no small part by the Palestinian armed factions who turned Lebanon into their launching pad. “Free Palestine” meant: free us from them. In Damascus, where my father’s family lived, the sentiment was different but equally self-serving. Palestine must be returned to the Arabs, its righteous owners. No one asked follow-up questions. No one was expected to. Palestine was central to Islam, most Arabs are Muslim, therefore supporting the Palestinian cause was reflexive. A non-brainer in the most literal sense — no brain engaged at all. Nobody stopped to point out that Palestine is not an Arabic word. Nobody found it strange that Jerusalem, the supposedly third holiest city in Islam, is not mentioned once in the Quran. Not once. Nor is Palestine. The entire theological and political architecture of this cause rests on a foundation that their own scripture doesn’t bother to acknowledge. What was actually happening was indoctrination. A systematic, generational rejection of Jewish sovereignty — and frankly, of any minority sovereignty. Jews, Christians, Druze, Kurds, Assyrians, Yazidis — the Arab world has been remarkably consistent in how it treats people who are different. We just don’t talk about that. Instead, in the West, we talk about Palestine. In the West, a civilization that has elevated human rights to its highest moral currency, the Palestinian cause has become the one exception to every rule. In the queue of human suffering, Palestinians cut the line every time. Homosexuals executed in Gaza and hanged from cranes in Iran? Palestine first. Women imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for campaigning for the right to drive — a right they were denied until 2018 — girls sold into marriage in Afghanistan, women erased from public life entirely under the Taliban? After Palestine. Political dissidents ground into dust in Syrian and Egyptian prisons, journalists disappeared in Libya, children starving in Yemen while their rulers wage proxy wars, entire populations hollowed out by hunger in Sudan? All of it waits. Christians ethnically cleansed from Iraq and Syria, the Arab world methodically emptied of every Jewish community it once held — a demographic erasure carried out across a century with surgical patience and near-total Western silence? Palestine is still first. So let’s end where we started. Free Palestine. Which Palestine, exactly? The Roman invention? The British administrative line? The British Mandate covered the entire territory of what is today Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan. In 1921, 78% of that mandate was handed to the Hashemite family — a dynasty imported from Hijaz in present-day Saudi Arabia — and became the Kingdom of Jordan, which it remains to this day. A foreign royal family, on the majority of historic Palestine, ruling it as a monarchy. Nobody protests that. No flags, no chants, no encampments. The remaining 22% was designated for the Jews, became Israel, and is the only part that any pro-Palestinian activist has ever had a problem with. So when you say Free Palestine, you mean that 22%. You mean the Jews. And free it from whom? From a people with a three-thousand-year-old documented presence in that land, to restore the glory of a name coined by Roman colonizers, a name lifted from the Torah, a name that has no roots in Arabic, no mention in the Quran, and no history as a sovereign state? You are not chanting for liberation. You are chanting for colonialism — the Roman kind, repackaged for social media. Free Palestine is not a cause. It is a colonial term, coined by invaders, recycled by the indoctrinated. The least you can do is have the intelligence to understand it and the decency to reflect on your position. 📍#Israel

@olivebr4nch You literally cannot have Levantine DNA in any amount unless you had ancestors from the Levant. That is how ancestry works. Ashkenazi Jews having European admixture after centuries in diaspora does not magically erase their Levantine origins. Give it up. You sound desperate.

@ValpenglowCO All Mediterraneans have Levantine influence, minimal Levantine influence doesn’t mean your origin is from the Levant, my point is Ashkenazis in origin are southern Europeans not “Levantines in origin mixed with Europeans in their exile” as you’re claiming

@olivebr4nch @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane Also hilarious to post random cherry-picked ancestry screenshots as if they overturn centuries of recorded Jewish history, archaeology, language, and continuous presence in the Levant.

@ValpenglowCO @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane According to the Torah Jews were FOREIGNERS to the land, the irony of it all is that most modern Jews have little to 0 ties even to the ancient Hebrew settlers The Arab conquest didn’t replace the indigenous population Palestinians are still predominantly indigenous Levantines

@olivebr4nch @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane The Torah does not say Jews were “foreigners” in the colonial sense you mean. Israelite identity, language, religion, and kingdoms all originated in the Levant. It’s not speculation, it’s the historical record. Migration & exile are not the same as being foreign to your homeland.

@HalifaxCB @travelingisrae1 The “everyone pro Israel is paid by Israel” conspiracy says more about you than anyone else. Some people form opinions from facts, not paychecks. Also ironic coming from people repeating narratives boosted by Qatari money in US universities and media.

@travelingisrae1 Another unwatchable bit of tedium brought to us courtesy of the shiny new $730M hasbara budget?

Working on a deep-dive video: "The 4 Greatest Palestinian Lies." My personal favorites: The "Genocide", "Ethnic Cleansing", "Jews stealing land" and The "Ancient Palestinian Nation" myth What are your "favorite" Palestinian lies? Let me know below 👇

@olivebr4nch @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane No, people start with insults and name calling when they can’t defend their argument. You’ve ignored the evidence and keep repeating the same narrative because it’s emotionally satisfying to you. Declaring yourself the winner while dodging the facts is a coping mechanism.

@ValpenglowCO @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane You mean that’s what people say when they’re winning the argument and the loser keeps repeating the same shit because they’re illiterate

@olivebr4nch @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane That’s what people say when they’ve lost the argument.

@ValpenglowCO @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane You’re just slow

@olivebr4nch @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane There were Arab migrations into the area during the late Ottoman & British Mandate periods from surrounding regions including Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, and elsewhere, especially as economic opportunities grew under British administration and Jewish economic development.

@ValpenglowCO @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane If we take that as the case then the entire Mediterranean has ties to the land even Egyptians are more Levantine than Ashkenazis and southern Europeans, yet that still doesn’t make any of them Levantines 🤡 AJs are southern Europeans period

@olivebr4nch @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane As far as that goes, not all Palestinians trace uninterrupted residence in the region going back centuries either. The population of Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine changed over time through migration.

@olivebr4nch @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane The studies do not support Ashkenazim are just Southern Europeans. They consistently show mixed Southern European and Levantine ancestry. And if admixture erases Levantine origin for Jews, the same logic applies to Palestinians after centuries of Arabian and regional admixture.

@olivebr4nch @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane Hilarious that your own screenshot shows Levantine ancestry linking Ashkenazi Jews to the land. That alone destroys the “foreign Europeans with no connection” argument.

@olivebr4nch @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane The land that became Israel was Ottoman territory and later British Mandate territory, not a sovereign Palestinian state. Jews also legally purchased significant amounts of land there long before 1948. You cannot “steal” land that did not exist as a sovereign state.

@ValpenglowCO @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane Having Levantine connection doesn’t make you indigenous to the Levant, all Mediterraneans have Levantine influence yet that doesn’t mean a Sicilian should show up in the Levant and steal land from the actual natives

@olivebr4nch @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane Except Jews are not Sicilians who invented a connection to the Levant. Judaism, Hebrew, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Jewish temples, and continuous Jewish communities all originated there. None of your arguments or the sources you’ve posted erase that.

@olivebr4nch @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane You sources show Levantine ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews. You just keep moving the goalposts from none exists to you personally don’t think it’s enough. Well, guess what? It’s not up to you. You don’t get to decide.

@PeterLjungberg5 @ValpenglowCO @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane Because they’re mainly from southern Europe, they’re as “Levantine” as southern Europeans even Egyptian and many Iraqis have more Levantine influence and yet again that still doesn’t make them Levantines

@olivebr4nch @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane So your argument is Jews mixing with Europeans means they stop being Levantine, but Palestinians mixing with Arabian, Egyptian, and other neighboring populations somehow remain perfectly untouched Canaanites. Incredible how the rules of genetics only bend in one direction.

@PeterLjungberg5 @ValpenglowCO @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane have you ever thought they were never in exile and are actually foreigners stealing land from the actual natives?? I’m using autosomal and their overall genetic profile

@olivebr4nch @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane And yet even that paper still modeled Ashkenazi Jews as having a Levantine component. So again, you’re moving the goalposts from “there is no Levantine ancestry” to “the percentage is lower than I wanted previous studies to claim.” Those are not the same argument.

@ValpenglowCO @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane The paper literally challenges your argument I don’t know if you even read it It argues that some older genetic studies overstated ‘Middle Eastern’ ancestry in AJs because they used broad Middle Eastern reference groups instead of specific Levantine references

@olivebr4nch @RawaneOsmane So now Judaism, the Hebrew language, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the Jewish temples are all somehow “foreign” to the Levant. Your argument has officially left planet Earth.

@ValpenglowCO @RawaneOsmane Judaism is foreign to the Levant, the Torah itself calls Jews FOREIGNERS to the land nothing about Judaism is indigenous, and again the irony is that most modern Jews have little to zero ties to ancient Hebrew settlers you were never in that land let alone “exiled”

@olivebr4nch @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane You’re cherry picking the Southern European ancestry while ignoring that this same paper explicitly models Ashkenazi Jews as having a Levantine component. The paper describes an admixed diaspora population, not just Europeans. Give it up.

@PeterLjungberg5 @ValpenglowCO @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane Not true, even a 2025 study backs it up and has similar results using a newer method nature.com/articles/s4146…

@olivebr4nch @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane You actually have to read the whole paper, genius, not just the conclusion. The paper explicitly states Ashkenazi Jews are an admixture of Middle Eastern and European ancestries and identifies the Levant as the likely source of the Middle Eastern component.

@ValpenglowCO @PeterLjungberg5 @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane That’s not what it says you’re just illiterate

@olivebr4nch @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane Look at your screenshot, it literally says Levantine. 😂

@olivebr4nch @BigBendChisos @RawaneOsmane pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC53…