There are documents holding specific Bedouin families that region dating to the 9th Century. As you probably know, with all the BS trying to establish a "Palestinian" people, there has also been a fair bit of hereditary work performed in that area. There is mt-DNA evidence of Canaanitic bloodlines in some Bedouin families, indicating far more ancient origins. Yet what defines a nomadic people is more than blood, but lifestyle and culture that remains in one region with specific people who migrate over fair distances upon occasion, just as we see the Ya'akov and his family in Bereshit. In that respect there have been herders of similar attributes in that region for as long as we can detect human influence, the only serious cultural break of which I am aware being the introduction of Islam.
Cain is the wanderer as soon as he wrecks his soil.
BTW, I scanned your page. You might want to take a look at excerpts from my first book that deals directly with the issues of eco-thugs and anadromous fish in coastal California.
“Palestinian” people, aka southern Syrians, Egyptians, etc.
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Your page is interesting. There is a lot more to the story than you recount. The story needs to have the old Washington Dept of Fisheries actions added. Without that bit, much of what you recount would not have occurred, or at least much slower.
The deconstruction and destruction of commercial fisheries is not confined to salmon or the West Coast. Nor are the forces confined to one political party or the other, but both; every US President since Eisenhower has stood firmly with these forces.
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In the early days of seal research in Washington State, so called volunteer biologists would collect seal scat off log rafts during the winter - oddly enough at the same time True Cod runs were passing. Then these same “volunteers” wrote definitive pieces claiming seals ate cod and clams, never salmon. This worked to convince the public via the media that the true enemy of healthy salmon runs were evil commercial salmon fishermen.
But truth be told, all this was merely the means and method to an end. None but blind, useful idiots among them cared a wit about salmon of any flavor.
Naturally, no one listened. And as I said recently in some other post, no one listens still. I've pretty much given up beating a dead horse, but guys like G. H. Lovgren at SwedesDock and Nils Stolpe over at FishNet USA continue the good fight.
Perhaps some day, in some other time people will listen, but not today. Today it is football and islamic revolutions, tomorrow something else to distract the public.
Yesterday's two column inch B-2 Section story no one cares about or reads, becomes today's major political methodology, springing full-blown on the scene, like Aphrodite from the head of Zeus.