it, is considered to be ethnic cleansing. It was ethnic cleansing when the Serbs and Croats did it to each other and to the Bosnians. It was ethnic cleansing when the Germans settled people in occupied Poland, Ukraine and Russia in WWII. The action is always the same— you kill the original owners, or drive them away, or make them afraid to stay. Any who remain lose their land rights to the new preferred settlers and usually get driven into a type of ghetto( like the Palestinian refugee camps now, or the limits on Palestinian building in occupied territories).
However when Jews began to do this to indigenous Muslims( and Christians too), from the formation of the State of Israel to the present, it wasn’ t( and still isn’ t) considered ethnic cleansing by much of the world – especially in the U. S. They are regarded as just going back to their“ promised land”( even though the land promised by YHWH in the Hebrew Torah is different than the land occupied by Israel today). Never mind that the Egyptians controlled it on and off before the two small kingdoms of Israel and Judea ever existed. Never mind that it has been the property of many other nation-states over the course of recorded history. God gave it to them, so they are entitled to it.
Manifest Destiny The American concept of“ manifest destiny” falls somewhat into this category too. Although no one at the time said overtly that the Christian God had given the land to them, much of the writing during that time had heavy religious overtones. The Christian European settlers were more“ entitled” to the land than were the Native American peoples, who were also considered heathens. There was no small amount of racism in this as well. The same is true for the period of the Spanish and Portuguese conquests of South America, and the English occupation of Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Many of the horrors that were visited upon the local populations were justified in the name of religion— a religion that was deemed superior to the beliefs of the indigenous peoples, whose conversion( often forcibly) into Christianity was considered part of the divine plan.
I do not see atheists having any chance of being able to take over a territory as their new“ homeland” to save themselves from possible persecution by others, nor to be allowed to forcibly convert religious believers. One thing the Jews, Christians and Muslims can all agree on is that they don’ t like atheists.
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