More than 1,200 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank have been forced from their homes since the conflict started, according to rights groups and the United Nations.
More than 1,200 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank have been forced from their homes since the conflict started, according to rights groups and the United Nations.
I think it’s because (in America) we learn about the early setters in a good light (and completely ignore or whitewash as much of the native genocide and Chattel Slavery) in our history books. We may learn the big strokes like the trail of tears and the underground railroad, but most of the atrocities aren’t even discussed. Maybe in a college class if you made it in a good college with progressive teachers.
That makes sense. When I first started researching the history of US colonization it took me ages to twig that half of it’s filed under cute things like “Westward expansion”.
I’m not sure about the current state of the science but there were a bunch of studies that showed that first contact with Europeans had transmitted smallpox as early as 1520 which over the next couple hundred years wiped out maybe 50% or more of the native population in advance of colonization such that later arriving Europeans had the mistaken impression that the continent had always been largely empty when some estimates put the native population pre-colonization at 120 million or more.