Members of the Arab League

It's because by their standards you can be considered an Arab if you speak Arabic, even if you're not an Arab by race.

because palestine isn't a country

Palestine is recognized as a country by the United Nations so technically Palestine is a country. Although countries such as the United States and Canada believe Palestine is not a country.

@canadry, That is one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever read

Palestine is recognized by 139 United Nations members currently.

Not to mention the U.S. has full, undisputed control over its territory.

@canadadry By what standards is Palestine more of a country than the US or Canada? The latter two have global recognition, full autonomy over their territory, and clearly defined borders and leadership.

Palestine has mixed recognition (and even many of those that do recognize it nominally don't really treat it like a country), limited autonomy, unclear borders and fractured and uncertain political control.

If you say the US and Canada are illegitimate because they are "settler-colonial states," what framework do we use to judge that? Vietnam is almost entirely on territory colonized and settled by the Vietnamese, whose homeland in southern China was similarly colonized and settled by the Chinese. Turkey was famously settled by the Turks, who displaced and often genocided the prior Christian inhabitants. Similarly, much Palestinian ancestry itself comes from the imperial settling by Arabs from the Umayyad Caliphate on.

So this is just history - populations have changed and moved.

No way you defending genocide

I don't think it was about implying that US/Canada weren't settler colonies, more of just saying that that is how the populations originated and how that doesn't impact whether it is a country or not

^always a good rule of thumb

Most of them are countries that speak Arabic. Or some dialect of Arabic, anyway. That doesn't make them Arab in my opinion. Nor in the opinion of anybody who lived in those countries prior to about 1900.

But they are members of the league

^ indeed they are. Did someone here say they weren't?

No one who lived in those countries prior to 1900 is still alive so...

That doesn't mean we don't have access to things that those people wrote, can't make factual observations about them, can't observe that things people today take for granted and treat as common sense are actually recent inventions, and use this knowledge toward noble pursuits like fighting tribalism, or less noble pursuits like starting a conversation because you are bored or noting why some answers on a trivia quiz may be more intuitive than others.

What?! Are you saying the Arab League has no consideration for jetpunk's country list? How rude!

I personally trust JetPunk’s vetting process more than the Arab League’s.

It really has not been that way for centuries. These people did not start thinking of themselves as Arab until much more recently than that. They spoke dialects of Arabic, but everyone knew that they were not Arabs. They are genetically, culturally, and historically distinct from Arabs. Because of Arab conquest and subjugation of these people, they became linguistically and religiously similar, and of course there was genetic and and cultural sharing, but before the birth of pan-Arabism and Arab Nationalism, ideas that grew out of the 19th century idea of nationalism and, more specifically, a response to the nationalist movement which became known as Zionism, these people would have called themselves Copts, Syriacs, etc... but not Arab. Arab meant the nomad bedouins of the Arabian desert. They had their own proud distinct storied histories, in most cases stretching back much further than Arab history. Histories and identities that have since been suppressed by the Arab cause.

Calling a Moroccan, Algerian, Syrian, Egyptian or Somali an "Arab" makes almost as much sense as saying that English, Portuguese, French, Greek, Tunisian etc. people are all Roman. We call some of the languages spoken in these regions Latin and recognize the linguistic and cultural legacy left by the Roman Empire but we don't get this confused with the ethnicity of the people themselves because there was never any Roman Nationalism movement.

"I'll tell thee what, though. Being an Arab will be thornier than you suppose, Harith!" - Auda Abu Tayi, Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

This is a bit of knitpicking. Ethnical identities have been quite fluid, historically speaking, pretty much everywhere. Arab identity is constructed as much as French, Croatian, Turkish, etc.

I would have thought from how I phrased most of my comments that it would be clear I agree with Djilas, except for the use of the word nit-picking (or knitpicking). I'm doing neither. Just thinking out loud. There's nothing wrong with the quiz.

I don't know enough about this subject to jump in (although when did that ever stop me?) I only want to comment that after seeing the word knitpicking, it brings up a picture in my mind of someone carefully unraveling a mistaken stitch in knitting, a mind picture I much prefer to the one I see when the word nitpicking is used, since nits are the eggs of head lice. I think we should start a movement to use knitpicking instead. The meaning would be about the same :)

I think where most people today would use the word "Arab," a more accurate term would be "Arabic"- something related to Arab culture. But not actually Arab.

Similar to how it's more accurate to call some from Mexico Hispanic than it is to call them Spanish.

They're a bit iffy, being right on the edge of the historical boundary. Half in half out.

As a Jordanian, yes we consider ourselves Arabs and our country Arabic.

^ this guy sounds super smart and probably knows what he's talking about.

sas

It is in fact a member of the Arab League.

Yes, the Jews invaded Palestine for land since they had none. So technically Israel isn't really a country and Palestine is.

Palestine was technically never a country it was always territory controlled by another empire unlike Israel.

jetpunkers: palestine is recognised by 138 countries, is a UN observer state, but not a country

also jetpunkers: taiwan numba wan!!!

Jetpunkers: Taiwan is sovereign and Palestine is not.

Other Jetpunkers: seem to have an impossible time understanding what this means.

I've lived there. Which neighboring country do you live in? Is it Egypt? Because you're clearly in de Nile.

Zing.

Princess, I think you can't see the forest for the trees.

Wow. Imagine if someone called your country a "plague".

yeah i wouldn't be that kind on israel since it's much worse

Maybe they were taking this quiz from the Space Station.

Instructions say we must answer countries.

I think they mean on nearly every other quiz palestine is greyed out/already filled in (sometimes even left out). Having it as an actual answer is not consistent with the other quizzes. It is in the caveats ofcourse, but we have been trained by now not to type in palestine.

(I did get it btw, but only because I saw something was missing between o and q)

while I agree with your sentiment Vatican City is actually recognized by the UN as an observer state :)