“We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed, they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it,” said Khanna, a progressive lawmaker from California in the U.S. House of ​Representatives.

“And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road. And then they call the IDF and ​the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans,” Khanna said, referring to the Israeli military.

An aide to ⁠Khanna who was in the group, Cameron Kasky, said they were held for more than an hour and made appeals to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem for help. A group ​of officers who appeared to be police eventually intervened, leading to their release, Kasky said.

  • yucandu@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    Stop using the word “settlers”. It’s a propaganda term meant to invoke an image of unclaimed, unoccupied territory.

    They’re burglars, robbers, and invaders. That’s what you’d call someone who came to your house, stole your shit, and said it was theirs.

    “Settler” is the word used to protect them.

      • WanderWisley@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Native American here: yes they do not like being called “settlers” they prefer “real white Americans”

        • Danquebec@sh.itjust.works
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          2 hours ago

          We’re referring to two different meanings here.

          1. A settler, as in, someone who comes to settle land that has been emptied through war, disease, genocide, etc. This one, we see as negative

          2. And settler in opposition to native. Of course in that sense it’s not negative. At least, I, as a settler, don’t see it as negative, it’s just a neutral descriptive and useful term.

          • doben@lemmy.ml
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            23 minutes ago

            Please explain how 2. is any different from 1., as the “war”, the diseases and the genocide all happened in direct opposition to the natives?

            There’s nothing neutral about the term.

            E: Also, curious how the settler explains to the native, what the term settlers means.

      • yucandu@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        You gotta step outside of your college educated bubble and talk to the average person. There’s a reason they use it.

    • FearMeAndDecay@literature.cafe
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      9 hours ago

      In my mind, bc they always call them Israeli settlers, the word has morphed to mean all the things you listed. Also bc historically whenever a country would “settle” somewhere, it usually meant “colonize.” Like when people came over and “settled” in America

      • Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 hours ago

        Yeah, but let’s think about the couched language here, I can settle into that couch, but if I murder and pillage into the couch I’m not using soft language to placate fucking nazis

      • kreskin@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        theyve actually changed the meaning of the word settlers from now on. I think Israelis will go down in history in a similar way as the nazis did.