#and then they still deny jews are indigenous to israel

[hindahoney]

Has anyone else noticed the weird appropriation of Yiddish for specifically anti-zionist spaces? It makes me deeply uncomfortable.

[halalchampagnesocialist]

There's a good reason why we, as Palestinians, are so reluctant to engage with the "Jews are Indigenous to Israel" argument as some historical fact. Regardless whether it is factual or not, it is certainly not a neutral statement.

This phrase or argument has always been used in tandem with the argument of "Palestinians are just Arabs originating from the peninsula." In practice, it's been used to drive us off our land and displace us in order to make way for Jewish settlers, whether it be in the West Bank or in '48 territories. It is also used as a rebuttal whenever we describe Israel's relationship to Palestinians or Palestinian land as one of settler-colonialism, it is used to deny and dismiss that argument entirely.

Obviously I don't think it is helpful to deny Jewish connection to Palestine or cultural roots there nor do I think it's helpful to pretend that Jews only just started showing up once Zionism took hold. I just don't think we should accept this argument wholesale while Jews can emigrate from anywhere in the world to Israel and become automatic citizens with full rights while Palestinians are actively fighting our displacement still to this very day. Indigenous also does not mean 'native' but describes a specific position with regard to coloniality, and you can't be a settler and Indigenous simultaneously. Saying that also does not mean that all Jews living in Palestine are inherently settlers or non-Indigenous. Words mean things.

[fairuzfan]

The thing that's never made sense to me is the "Holocaust inversion" talking point and the idea that we are "moralizing" the Holocaust as something you're supposed to learn from which like aside from the fact that israel's entire pr is that it needs to exist because of the Holocaust, I really don't understand how feeling empathy based on past experiences is like... a moralizing action?

Even those who don't feel empathy, they still like... have the universal idea that you shouldn't do bad things onto other people. When you consider that yeah, when you live in the world, you experience terrible things and you relate those terrible things to other terrible things happening in the world. That's just what everyone does. Whenever I hear things happening to indigenous Turtle Islanders I always relate it back to Palestine. When I hear about violence happening to Black people, I think "Ah it must be terrifying" and I think back to my own family members and friends who were killed by Israel. When i think of antiBlackness in arab spaces, i relate it back to the occupation and compare myself to the occupation on whether or not im inflicting the same pain i and my family endure onto others. It's just how you experience the world. No one is asking you to "learn" from the Holocaust, people are just asking you to apply empathy.

A universal example is that you don't really understand the grief of losing a loved one until you yourself lose a loved one. And when you encounter a person who lost a loved one as well, you relate to them in a unique way that you wouldn't have without having that experience of grief before. It's not a moralizing experience, it's just... an experience. An awful one but you don't *learn* anything from it.

So it always confounds me that there's such vehement pushback against the idea that what Palestinians are going through is similar to the Holocaust because it's not like we're making light of the Holocaust? It's that we are asking you, a zionist (in this case one who is Jewish specifically), to acknowledge that there are similarities between the way Palestinians are treated and the ways Jews, Roma, and multiple other people were treated during the Holocaust. It's that we're relegated to second class status, we are considered lesser, we are confined to ghettos, we have our livelihoods stolen from us, we have weapons tested on us, we're survielled like we are dangerous monsters and we experience systematic segregation. And now we are experiencing mass slaughter campaigns within our concentration camps. But what's the issue? Are you offended that Palestinians can even remotely understand the terrible violence that Jews experienced in the Holocaust? Or are you denying that Palestinians are experiencing those things??

People always bring up like "Oh you don't understand what exactly happened during the Holocaust, you're just using it as a stand in for "a very bad thing"" and that's like... never made sense either because what does that mean? I'm not... using the Holocaust out of nowhere, I'm using it because Israel tells US, PALESTINIANS, that we need to be kicked out and raped and tortured *because* of the Holocaust. When us, Palestinians, ask you to feel empathy for us based on what you experienced during the Holocaust, we aren't just pulling it out of thin air, we are using a zionist talking point and pointing out the flaws. "Does experiencing a Holocaust allow you to conduct massacres and unbelievable violence onto other people?" and "Why are we paying for the terrible crimes of Europeans? Why is this our fault that we must suffer for it, as you, a zionist, insist we must?"

It's just so confusing how people would take offense at feeling empathy for Palestinians. We aren't denying the awful, awful genocide of the Holocaust, nor are we "making light of it..." but if you believe that comparing what Palestinians go through is making light of the Holocaust, then you must think that what we are going through is not bad at all.

[ruffboijuliaburnsides]

Dear every person calling Israel "colonizers":

What is the shelf life of indigenousness? How long does it take for a people to lose the right to claim their homeland as their homeland? How long until Indigenous Americans no longer have a claim to the land the US exists on?

You are required to answer this question if you want to truly claim Jews are colonizers. Because I guarantee no definition you come up with to make Jews colonizers won't also erase the indigenousness of other groups you claim to support. So either you don't believe in those groups' indigenousness, or you're just denying Jewish indigenousness arbitrarily because you want an "acceptable" reason to hate them.

Or you could just stop saying that. The Israeli gov't can still be doing shitty things and Palestinians can be indigenous without you denying Jewish indigenousness. Multiple things can be true.

[perfectlyvalid49]

Sorry for grossing you out but uh, I have a complex claim to a lot of religions and cultures because of how colonialism (arguably Israel is a settler colony state so uh… hmmm) has impacted me.

As you’ve ascertained (correctly) I’m a non-Jewish American, only by technicality, because I haven’t found a rabbi that will even support the fact that I’m gay and the “three asks” thing feels like a troll move which feels… homophobic???

I need you to seriously consider how my life has been negatively influenced (hence the circumcision poll) by a bastardized JEWISH practice, and what the fuck that means for my identity as it feels like fate to some degree and a bit offensive that you would yuck my ability to find yum in Yhwh or w/e because I’m… too much of a faggoy? Idk man… just asking questions. I’d love to clarify your response in a dm since its… a lot. Not meaning to offend just sick of being put in a box because my circumcision and mother aren’t “right” enough to be in the in club because Hekate or Satan or whatever swooped in and said “NOPE” 🙃

Cheers

Trying to understand Israel through the lens of settler colonialism is a failing proposition. Consider the following:

Jews are indigenous to Israel. We have a historical record that says they’re from there in both the Greek and Roman written record. Like there is as much if not more evidence of Jews in Israel in Roman writing as there is of Julius Caesar being a real person. We also have archaeological evidence. Israel is covered with digs that find evidence of Jewish life dating back 2,000-3,000 years. We also have genetic evidence. DNA studies have shown that even super white looking Ashkenazi Jews have significant portions of DNA that are most closely related to other groups from the southern Levant.

So to call Jews settlers either denies all that evidence, insists that indigenous people can be settlers on their own land, or posits that indigenous people can somehow lose their status as indigenous if you wait long enough. The first is anti-intellectual and antisemitic, the second is ridiculous and the third is a dangerous line of thinking for all indigenous people. How long before Native Americans no longer have a claim to their land? How long before Maori no longer have a claim? It’s not really a place we want to go.

As for colonial, the definition of a colony is “a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that country.” So which country controls Israel? I think we’ve seen over the last year that it’s not the US given the way Bibi has repeatedly blown off Biden, so who is it? Which country is sending settlers to control the area? Again, it’s not the US. While some American Jews make Aliyah every year, the vast majority of Jews in Israel are either from Europe or the Middle East. To be a colony, you have to be a colony of some other power. What is the other power here?

So we can see that Jews are neither settlers nor colonizers. But you know who did colonize the area? Arabs. Arabs are indigenous to the Arabian peninsula, not Israel. And in the 7th century, Arabs came from the Arabian peninsula into Israel (and other places), conquered the locals and did their best to eradicate their cultures, forced conversions to the conquering religion, and settled in the new lands while being under the political control of the far away Caliphate. Sounds like settler colonialism to me. So if we must understand someone in the area as colonial (and I still don’t think it’s the best way to look at things, but if you do) then it’s the people that Palestinians are descended from.

Having said all that, just because colonialism has impacted you, it doesn’t mean you have a complex claim to Judaism. Here are ways you can have a complex claim to Judaism: 1) your father is Jewish and your mother is not, 2) you have Jewish ancestors who were forced to convert and you are now trying to reconnect with the religion that was taken from them. I don’t know your history, so it’s possible that one of those is true. But if you have no Jewish ancestry, then your claim is not complex, it’s non-existent, and if you do have Jewish ancestry but your ancestors willingly left the tribe, then you don’t really have much of a claim either. That doesn’t mean you can’t convert, but given that you seem to think you have claims on other aspects of Judaism as a non-Jew, my gut reaction is to be very doubtful toward your claim on Judaism in general.

If you can’t find a rabbi to support your conversion because you’re gay, you’re looking in the wrong places. The senior rabbi at my synagogue is gay, and we have several queer families as part of the congregation. There are literal signs on the door to the main office that say Trans and Queer Jews welcome here. This doesn’t mean that all congregations are welcoming, but lots are.

The three asks thing is a metaphor that some rabbis take literally. Converting to Judaism is a big decision. The three asks are to make sure that you’ve really thought about it and are really sure – that you’re taking it seriously and thought through all the consequences. If that feels like trolling to you, then maybe Judaism isn’t a good fit. Honestly, from my interactions with you this week, I would bet that the rabbis you’ve met with haven’t said no because you’re gay, they’ve said no because you don’t seem super interested in taking on Jewishness, you just want to take from it instead.

I don’t know what happened with your circumcision. If it went wrong and it was done by a mohel then you can feel angry toward the Jewish people I guess, but I would want to know why your parents had a bris for you if they weren’t planning on raising you Jewish. If you were just circumcised as a medical procedure, as many American babies are, then you may have trauma related to it, but you don’t need to be taking it out on the Jewish people, which is exactly what that poll was doing.

Don’t write down those four letters. Don’t try to pronounce them either. We have asked, repeatedly that people not do that, and once again, the fact that you are is super disrespectful to Jewish people. Write G-d, or God if you must, or even Hashem (I don't think goyim should, but it's better than what you did), but not those four letters. It’s not yucking your yum. You are allowed to enjoy what you want. But what you are doing here is the equivalent of coming into my house and saying that because my dinner looks delicious you can just reach onto my plate with your bare hand, scoop up some of what I’m eating, take a bite and throw the rest back. It’s disrespectful and offensive. I am not objecting to your joy, I’m objecting to your lack of respect to my culture.

Being Jewish is about more than just being circumcised and having the “right” mother. There is a culture here that you need to understand. If you are raised in it, then you get to join the club that way. If you’re not, then you can put in the work to learn it and learn to be respectful of it and join the club that way. So far, you haven’t been able to find a rabbi that thinks you’re willing to do that work, and from what I’ve seen, I’m willing to agree.

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

The most antisemitic person I know IRL (the only one really) posted care react emojis on my last couple Facebook posts (unrelated to I/P), which is so weird. They probably don’t realize the extent of my feelings, but they should have at least some inkling because six months ago I tried to express my grievance to them exactly once. I told them their post was cruel. Do they think I no longer think that, or…..?

They’ve been justifying the massacre of my people, mocking the concept of Jewish indigeneity, belittling Jewish fear, outright denying antisemitic violence in Israel and around the world……..and it hasn’t occurred to them that there are Jewish human beings who they know, who can see their posts. They haven’t made the connection between the October 7 victims and hostages whose slaughter they justify, and me.

It really is all just a game and a hobby to these people. They have no sense of reality. They aren’t affected by any of this, so they can’t fathom that anyone else is either. They’re so far up their own asses with “Zionism isn’t Judaism/anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism” that they’ve blinded themselves to the reality that their rhetoric can get me killed, that I’ll still be suffering the consequences of their stupid, performative Facebook posts long after they’ve moved on to the newer, shinier, more attention grabbing trend.

Jew hate makes you stupid, destroys your critical thinking skills - obviously, because you have no Jews around to help you develop critical thinking skills 😆 - and completely obscures your sense of reality.

[jewishwarriorprincess]

Things that boggle my mind:

How Hamas bodycam and live stream footage is considered Israeli propaganda

Why those who celebrated what happened are also denying it happened

Any images and videos from Oct 7th is immediately called fake and Israeli propaganda

How people will still claim that Jews..oh sorry Zionists control the media and governments yet the media and governments are constantly condemning or spreading misinformation about Israel

How fast people will use photos from Syria to claim it's Gaza

How no one actually does any digging and research into what they see and immediately believe it as fact

The revisionism of history, including claims that Jews lived peacefully with Muslims in the MENA ignoring the fact that Jews were forced to pay a protection tax (Dhimmi) and could not be above Muslims in any way, often stripping them of their Jewish identities and the violence that occurred before the establishment of Israel

How the Left will immediately retweet and share screenshots of literal white supremacists because it's against "Israel" even though they are mainly extremely false or full of hate

How promoting the boycott of Jewish businesses, even ones owned by Israelis who have nothing to do with the government is not considered antisemitic (according to the Left)

And while promoting BDS, they still use Israeli and Jewish products, technology, medication, etc

How what Hamas did is still being considered by the Left as "freedom fighting"

How literally none of my Leftie goy friends posted any support for Israel and the Jewish people but will scream ceasefire

How people scream ceasefire and don't mention the hostages

How quick people were able to forget or brush off the atrocities of Oct 7th

How Hamas' literal war crimes are not being mentioned or condemned by the UN, WHO, etc but these organizations are so quick to throw Israel under the bus and scream war crimes when the retaliation and ways of retaliation are adhering to international law

How corrupt the UN is. How can you let Iran be on your Human Rights council and still be seen as legitimate? How can you turn a blind eye to your schools and hospitals being used by Hamas for firing rockets and teaching children that their only purpose in life is to kill Jews and be martyred?

How no one, including the media (besides Israeli Media) talks about the continuous rocket attacks done by Hamas and the PIJ since Oct 7th which is aimed at targeting civilians (also a war crime).

How ripping down posters, even smearing dog shit onto posters of hostages, especially children is considered ok and an act of protesting

How Jews are told to hide their identities, not wave their flags, literally just not exist around the pro Hamas, sorry pro Palestinian crowds due to safety concerns or a risk of upsetting the protesters

How the people claiming to care for Palestinians don't speak up about the conditions Hamas keeps their people under in Gaza, executing them for speaking out, stealing aid supplies and money, how their leaders are worth billions and reside in Qatar while they tell their people to be martyrs for the cause

Kapos... I don't understand the anti-Zionist Jews to be honest. Especially seeing how they help spread misinformation and support those who want to kill them.

How targeting Jewish social media creators, especially those who are Orthodox, and making videos to smear them and encourage harassment because they are Jewish, spoke out about what happened on Oct 7, and support Israel is seen as ok... trying to destroy their livelihood, their mental health, and even threaten their lives.

How organizations like JVP, INN, etc are not being investigated in regards to their legitimacy

How indigenous people in the West are being tokenized and allowing it to happen, not researching history to see that the Jewish people are actually indigenous to the land and are an example of decolonization

That there are politicians who refuse to condemn Hamas but are not being investigated even though there have been proof of ties to Hamas

There are so many videos of Imams around the world preaching to kill Jews and if you call it out you're Islamophobic

The silence from women, especially those in the MeToo movement and UN Women organization in regards to the rape of Israeli women during Oct 7th

How people misread a headline regarding babies being decapitated and somehow blame Israel for saying 40 babies were beheaded when that is not what the reporter said at all

People saying that everything Israel has said about the attacks has been proven to be a lie yet refuse to provide any sources and if they do provide a source it's usually from Quds, Al Jazeera, or Electronic Intifada

Speaking of Intifada, how the Left will proudly shout for an Intifada without knowing what it is or what happened during the 1st and 2nd Intifadas

How the words Genocide, Ethnically Cleansing, Apartheid, and War Crimes have become buzzwords that have lost all meaning since they are so often used incorrectly

How watermelons have been ruined for me because now every time I see even the emoji I think about how people use it to promote a Jewish genocide

How people will post onto social media very antisemitic crap but if you call them out, try to educate, or post anything relating to Israel it is removed by the platform for violating some kind of imaginary rules. Saying death to Jews is ok but calling them out on it is not?

That people don't understand this wasn't a war we wanted to fight but were forced into it

That Israelis are not the government and we are not Bibi

How people will use Ethiopian Jews as a "gotcha" but when Ethiopian Jews call them out on tokenizing them and to STFU they are Israeli propagandist

That apparently I am a paid by Israel to engage in combatting disinformation....still waiting on that check because I could desperately use the money

People saying Jews are wealthy with privilege. I grew up a poor Jew and I'm still a poor Jew, my bank account is crying, again I'm waiting on that Israeli check lol

How people are calling Jews white supremacist oppressors....huh?

How the LGBTQ+ crowd are openly participating in calls for a genocide to the Jews and to eliminate Israel, even though it's the only country in the Middle East they can be openly themselves in

How Hamas top leaders openly talk about their desires, their plans, and how they mistreat their people in their goal to kill Jews, and how they have the Left on their side and brag about it but when posting those interviews it's considered Israeli Propaganda

How people are telling Jews to leave Israel...telling them to go back to Europe even though a majority of Jews in Israel are from MENA countries that forced them to flee, taking their property, money, valuables, documents. And when confronted about this, they say they can go back to Iraq, Iran, Yemen.... showing how dumb they really are. Also considering a lot of Israelis ages newborn to 40 are a mix. For example, my husband is Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, where is he supposed to go and our children? These countries are unsafe for Jews and we refuse to go back to Dhimmi status

How people ignore and or support that there are so many Islamic countries but a tiny Jewish one is seen as a threat... that a Jewish country is not allowed or is "racist", but the Islamic majority countries are ok? Even Christian ones?

Honestly just how stupid people are, how the same people who call themselves free thinkers aren't at all. How the same people who chanted to punch a Nazi are participating in Nazi like behaviors. The same people who said they would hide Jews during the Holocaust are the same ones participating in the rounding up of Jews.

I have so many more thoughts and I needed to vent it out. I remember my grandmother, who was able to escape the camps as a child because her parents had her baptized and sent off with other children, feared that another Holocaust would happen. That so many older Jews, especially Israelis, have an emergency pack in case they had to flee... cash, valuables, documents, family heirlooms all hidden in a secure spot just in case.

[indecisiveavocado]

Dear Goyim Who Think Judaism and Israel Aren't Connected,

They absolutely are. The holy land of Judaism is Israel, and no amount of fiddling will get around that inconvenient fact.

Even throughout our exile, Jews clung to the idea of Israel, the holy land. Even after the Romans slaughtered us, sold us slaves, expelled us, and tried to erase our connection to the land (a propaganda that you seem to have swallowed), even after their successors tried to keep us from coming back (not that all of us left; some stayed, stayed through persecution and massacre and more), we clung to it.

Israel is the holy land. And, in the words of Jefferson, "To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."

The central prayer in Judaism, Shema Yisrael, uses "Israel" as a synonym for the Jewish people.

We pray facing Jerusalem.

In old texts, it is incredibly common to see Israel used as a synonym of Jews. Thus in Nathan Ausubel's 1948 Treasury of Jewish Folklore we see rabbis referred to as the "Sages of Israel" (in a discussion of why Jerusalem was destroyed, no less!), and the saying "Am Yisrael Chai" literally translates as "the People of Israel live!"

At the end of the Passover seder, we say, "L'shana haba'a b'Yerushalayim" (Next year in Jerusalem).

Psalm 137: "על נהרות  בבל שם ישבנו גם־בכינו בזכרנו את־ציון". Or, "Al naharot bavel sham yashavnu gam-bakhinu bezakhernu el-tzion" (Tzion, Zion, being another name for the land). "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept as we thought of Zion." It continues, "How can we sing God's song in a foreign land? / If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning."

There are many rules that only apply when in Israel.

Observant Jews say, "ברוך אתה יי בונה ירושלים" (Barukh atah Adonai boneh Yerushalayim), or "Blessed are you, God, builder of Jerusalem" three times daily.

My very short Haftarah portion, which is assigned based on when you were born and thus not something I had control over, mentions Israel ("vegoaleikh kedosh Yisrael elohei khol-haaretz yikarei" - my brain can't stop singing it, Isaiah 54:5), in the context of God being the "Holy One of Israel". The prayer before the Haftarah reading includes the line "uvyisrael amo" (for Your [God's] people Israel). Again, my Haftarah portion was not in any way special; it was five verses. The translation of the part I read is all of 153 words. And yet it still mentions Israel. (The Hebrew, by the way, is 71 words.)

In short: by denying Jewish claims to Israel as the holy land (kedushat ha-aretz), you are erasing an indigenous people's history and implicitly accepting the narrative of settler-colonialist genociders who sought to make it as though the people whose land they were taking and who they were selling as slaves were not tied to the land and did not have any ancestral connection. Your claims are entirely false.

Sincerely,

Your Neighborhood (Non-Israeli, But Y'all Are Making Me Want To Consider Aliyah) Jew

*Extended footnote on the terminology used: There are two major (and definitely non-dialectical) indigenous languages in the region that still survive to some extent: Hebrew and Aramaic. (Other languages existed in the region - Phonecian and Ugaritic, for instance. But they didn't survive.)

The indigenous name for the region in Aramaic and Hebrew is ישראל, pronounced, roughly, "Yisrael". Via the process of translation, that became "Israel". The other common name for the region, Palestine, derives from the Roman Palestina, a relic of their campaign to destroy Jewish connection to the region by renaming it after a small Greek group who were long since gone, the Philistines. I am using the name the indigenous people of the region used, rather than the name of a colonial occupier trying to pretend like the indigenous people were unconnected to the land.

[doberbutts]

just a random guy w no stake in this but yr guy also fully regurgitated israel’s/zionist lies abt the “””misfired rocket””” hitting the hospital as if there isn’t documented evidence of israel admitting to - wanting to do that - doing that - expressing joy at the fact that they did that. the israeli govt spent days saying they were gonna bomb a hospital, bombed a hospital, /said they bombed the hospital/, and then changed their story to “misfired rocket” among other things (not a single hamas rocket is capable of that kind of destruction…) when they got flack for it. and Avi has yet to retract that statement despite it being another blatant lie from the israeli govt.

& obv this is much smaller but when pointed out that what ngaiman said that was zionist (“israel has the right to exist”, which he reconfirmed was still his stance), avi doubled down on that…not being zionism. and said ppl only call gaiman a zionist bc he’s jewish (which.. sure some ppl do, but the claim that a settler colonial state (or any state, tbh) has an inherent “right” to exist, and specifically that Israel has a “right” to exist, is literally zionism. which avi seems to think is not.)

i don’t think he’s a zionist himself but he certainly repeating a lot of zionist bs uncritically

I literally just got an article this morning talking about the forensics going on regarding the hospital bombing, from CNN, citing multiple sources saying the same thing; that it was a misfired rocket originating from somewhere in Gaza and probably not intentional, with all parties with munitions denying that it was theirs despite the firing of rockets nearby from all of said parties. No shrapnel or casings have yet been recovered and until that is recovered there is no way to know for sure where the device was made or where it came from.

So unless you are leaning on the antisemitic claim that Jews control the media, either all of CNN's sources are wrong including the Palestinian ones, or he's literally just repeating what multiple sources have been saying as of this morning.

Also conveniently you're leaving out that he's also stated that it doesn't matter where the device came from, the targetting of hospitals and other civilian centers is abhorrent and an immediate ceasefire needed to be called the moment it happened. Weird how he's not praising it, he's stating what the forensic team on site is reporting, and he's stating that no matter who is at fault they shouldn't be involving peaceful civilians.

As for whether or not Israel should exist... where exactly do you want the Israelis to go? A significant number of them were born there, with ancestors that originated there, as Arabic people living alongside Palestinians. They do have just as much right to be there as Palestinians because they have common ancestry with Palestinians. Those that came from elsewhere largely were forcibly expelled as an act of genocide- "going back where (they) came from" means going back to somewhere that's made it plain they are not welcome and they'll be killed on sight. They went to Israel because they were told that was the only correct choice for them.

Also I think it is incredibly dicey to be wielding "Jews are inherent outsiders that need to go back where they came from" because that is an antisemitic statement that has echoed across history ANDDDDD I think it's uhhhh incredibly hilarious as afronative to hear fucking Americans saying this when we're on stolen land ourselves with a government that is still trying to wipe out the few indigenous people we have left and sweep its continued atrocities under the rug.

What's that saying about glass houses and stones? If you're on American soil and you're not indigenous, how about you go back where you came from? Oh? You were born here? You have a family history here? You have deep ties to the area and can't just uproot your entire life? It's a little more complicated than just getting on a plane back to Europe or Asia or Africa? Hmm. Interesting. Don't you know that makes you complicit in genocide? No no no, it doesn't matter that your family was fleeing genocide yourselves, or that your ancestors were forced to come here, or that you personally took no part in the ongoing political war being waged against the dwindling number of Natives we have left. You don't belong here. You need to be forcibly detained and expelled. Maybe even kept in a cage for a while until we figure out what to do with you.

Whoop. But that's the silent part you're not saying. You can call it Zionist if you want. But I think people need to think a little more critically about the actual logistics of what caused this problem in the first place, before firing off about it. Especially not when a lot of these talking points are at their heart incredibly antisemitic.

[eretzyisrael]

by Yisrael Medad

To create the impression that wine was produced in ancient times by a “Palestinian people” who were not Jewish is an act of identity erasure. To retroactively create an Arab people called “Palestinians” long engaged with growing grapes in the hills of Judea and Samaria while excluding the Jews engaging in that very same activity is a crime of identity theft.

Asimov then writes that Khoury “was one of the very few winemakers working in the region before the October 7 attacks,” and informs his readers that “winemaking is not widely practiced today in the West Bank.” There are over two dozen wineries active in Judea and Samaria. Many of them, such as Shiloh Winery, Psagot Winery, and Tura Winery produce wines that have garnered international recognition. Various online sites, like KosherWines.com, list over 50 different wines made from the region’s grapes. Millions of bottles have been produced, with many going for export.

However, as those wineries are owned by Jews, Asimov totally ignores them. Even in passing, they are not even mentioned by the newspaper of record. The reader, drunk on the propaganda, is left with an erroneous and biased impression

Before Israel was established, during the mandate period and even before, if “Palestine wines” were talked about, the reference was to Jewish wines. In 1848, Yitchak Shorr established a winery in Jerusalem, the first one documented in modern times. In 1882, French Baron Edmond de Rothschild assisted in the establishment of the Carmel Winery which still produces wine.

Asimov facilitated the grafting of ancient Jewish winemaking onto a theft by self-declared “Palestinians” of that aspect of Jewish history, falsely claiming indigeneity. Not only do Asimov and his publication peddle false assertions but, given both their statures, who would or could deny their truth? This is deceptive emplotment.

Incidentally, olive trees are an instrument of ethnic erasure, too. In an article on political ecology, “Olive Oil and the Tastes of Palestine,” Omar Qassis acrobatically avoids the Jewish demographic and horticulture character of the Land of Israel. In his very brief mention of the history of olive tree cultivation here, Cassis leaps from the early Bronze Age to the mid-19th-century Ottoman Tanzimat reforms; no Jews.

Numerous mentions of olive oil in the Tanach, oil for anointing kings and priests, and oil for the rekindling of the candelabrum which marks the upcoming Hanukkah holiday are wiped clean.

While Asimov’s uncle’s name [writer Isaac Asimov] is linked to science fiction, Eric has produced unworthy political anti-Zionist propaganda.

[fortunatelychaoticphantom]

Why is the fact that Jesus and Jews were from Israel considered controversial? It’s what we’re taught at school (and for Christians - church) in the US.

I’m genuinely asking, this isn’t sarcastic. No one I know has ever disputed that fact before.

Hello!

You're referring to this post.

It's controversial because denying the connection of Jewish people (especially Ashkenazim but not only) to the land of Israel is a fundamental aspect of post-modern antisemitism.

Classical and modern antisemitism, particularly in Europe, relied on the Jewish people's foreignness to dehumanize them. It was obvious they were Not From Here, despite living there for centuries and longer, and many demanded that they Go Back To Where They Came From. And then they did.

But antisemitism didn't go away just because Israel was founded, it simply morphed, just like it had between its classical phase (centered on religious otherness, religious "crimes" and blood libels) and its modern phase (centered on race theory and economics).

Of course, right-wingers are still classically and modernly antisemitic. They usually don't bother to hide their hatred, it's pretty fundamental to their ideology and identity (though there are aspects of hiding, especially with holocaust denial). But the left has always been just as antisemitic as the right. But it has also grown in the post-modern age, after world war 2, with specific ideologies, centered around notions of humanism and the importance of human and minority rights. And antisemitism doesn't sit well with these notions, especially not after the holocaust... So something had to change. Unfortunately, it wasn't the antisemitism.

This is a classic cognitive dissonance; I feel something (hatred for Jews) that is inconsistent with my ideology (hating people based on their ethnicity is bad). In such instances you can either 1) work to change your actions (it doesn't matter what I feel, as long as I don't harm Jews, and eventually I might change my feelings for them); or 2) change your believes (Jews aren't a category worth protecting).

Now, "hating Jews" is still a big no-no in western left circles. Even now you can't actually directly say it (obviously this was true before October 7th. It seems like even these rules are changing as we speak). So westerners needed to do two things: 1) white-ify the Jewish people (especially the Ashkenazim) and 2) shift the focus on Israel.

The white-ification of the Jewish people is a major theme is western leftist circles in the past 70 years, especially in the US because of its complicated history with race and ethnicity, but it's prevalent in many other countries as well (it should be noted that Jewish people themselves have contributes to this phenomena for many reasons, but this is not the place for this discussion).

In the post-modern age, "whiteness" means "evil" and it is connected to European and western imperialism and colonization. So, essentially, they change what being a Jew is - a white person, as opposed to a Levantine person. This is where some of these people will do mental gymnastics to deny where Jews are originally from, whether denying modern Jews have anything to do with the historical ones (and many choose this route) or somehow both admitting they are from Israel but saying it doesn't matter because it happened a long time ago and then with the same breath talk about how Palestinians are the indigenous ancient people of the land (they are both indigenous, the world is just that stupid). Now, since white people are evil, they are open for criticism, especially if they are colonizers. And since Jews are white now, it makes no sense for them to live in the Middle East.

Which brings us to refocusing their criticism on Israel. Here, people have to walk a fine line between a legitimize political criticism of the Israeli government and the society itself throughout the years (and there are MANY justified criticisms...) and just being antisemitic. Unfortunately, western leftist circles tend to lean more heavily into the latter. And, again, as has been particularly evident for the last three weeks, their focus is on identifying Israel as colonizing enterprise, not just beyond the 67' Green Line, but by it's very nature of existence, since Jews are white now and don't belong there.

And now, once again, they call us to Go Back To Where We Came From (just to be very clear - Palestinians and the rest of the world are doing it as well), despite that part of the world literally saying "don't bring them here, they are not from here", like they always did, just like the post OP was sharing. Only those Europeans aren't saying "Jews are from the Land of Israel and they deserve to live there", they are just saying what the entire world has been saying for the past two thousand years - we don't want Jews anywhere, period.

They don't give a shit about where Jews are from. Some of them say we're from Europe for the sole purpose of destroying Israel. And they would gladly displace millions of Jews and send them to live again with the people who tried and nearly succeeded to annihilate us. Everyone else just don't care, as long as they can hurt us, but also refuse to accept us as their own. And trust me - if and god forbid when millions of Jews will once again become refugees, not a single nation around the world from which We Came From would take us in. Not one.

I know that people know where Jews are from, but the fact remains that huge sections of the world right now, especially on the left side of the political map, will actively deny it.

Because the truth is - the world doesn't give a shit what Jews are or are not. The world doesn't give a shit where Jews are from or aren't from. The world doesn't want Jews in Israel, and it doesn't want Jews anywhere else.

The only place the world deems the Jews to belong to is their graves.

[sethshead]

To free Palestine from Israel, first we must free Palestine from Hamas. Hamas is a force that abuses and oppresses Palestinians. It murders, tortures, and disappears dissenters, opponents, LGBTQ, civil rights and peace activists, and anyone who resists its power, including respected Islamic clerics. It allows women few rights save to be the brood mares for more shuhada. It steals food donations and resells them at inflated prices to the rich, provokes Israel only to then hide behind civilians, and denies civilians anyplace to hide. Hamas is a death cult. A Palestine under its rule, whether within the pre-‘67 borders or from the river to the sea, would be a violent, criminal, gangster failed state.

Yes, Israeli leadership must also change. Likud has never been willing to part with “Judea and Samaria”, no matter how much grief that causes Israelis within the pre-‘67 borders. Netanyahu has been a consummate bad-faith actor, and even the country’s more dovish leaders have still wanted to manipulate the “facts on the ground” to make final negotiations more advantageous to Israel. It is certainly past time for Israel to stop playing games with the futures of two peoples. But Likud can be and has been voted out. The same is not true of Hamas.

I accept that Hamza Howidy is not necessarily representative of the Palestinian electorate. I do not tokenize him; I simply agree with is observations and conclusions. Though most Palestinians do still demand a river-to-sea state or “right of return” (which in practical terms amount to the same thing), Howidy recognizes the obvious. Israel is going nowhere, nor are the Palestinians. Jews and Palestinian Arabs have connections to the land. Each possesses a kind of indigeneity and a right to self-determination in the land of their national origin, whenever that was. Neither wishes to live under the rule of the other.

Any one-state solution is foolhardy, an invitation to further conflict and bloodshed. None who desire that can legitimately be called a friend to Palestinians or Israelis. Recognizing the legitimacy of both of our national aspirations and finding a way to bring us together as neighboring states in respectful peace is the only thing that could remotely be called a victory for either side. If you and all your chants, slogans, rhetoric, and demands do not amount to that, you are doing more harm than good to both peoples.

[hero-israel]

What's so annoying about this constant uwu I'm baby leftist refrain of "just because you're indigenous to a place doesn't mean you have the right to displace people" that's coming from goyim and antizionist self hating Jews alike is that... Jews decolonizing Eretz Yisrael did not have to displace anyone. That was never the intended goal of even the most conservative, if you can call them this, racist Zionist leaders?

Jews resettling our homeland en masse does not fucking mean displacing anyone. These are two separate events. And blaming Jewish immigration for the displacement of Arabs is ignorant at best. It's a clear red flag they don't know the complexities of the Nakba, the different (if concurrent) factors for different groups of Palestinians to flee or be forced out in waves.

In any event, had Palestine accepted the partition plan, no displacement would have occurred. No war = no ethnic cleansing. Even though Jewish communities were routinely destroyed leading up to the partition, there still was no general will to cleanse the land of Palestinians among Jews. Many of the 750,000 Palestinians were displaced as a military exigency by a nascent Israel. This would not have occurred had the partition plan gone as intended. This would not have occurred had their been no partition plan at all.

Jewish resettlement =/= cleansing Arabs.

And at worst, acting like Jewish decolonization itself is an act of displacement, that all this was inevitable because of the mere presence of Jews increasing in Palestine, or some character of ~European~ Kha- I mean- Jew-ish people, or that their was some secret Zionist committee who all got together to drink blood in their Bank Palaces and circle jerked at the idea of cleansing Palestine... I mean then you're just antisemitic. Jews moving anywhere is not a crime, it is not a plague, it is not a humanitarian catastrophe. Jews should not be barred from any country. Human migration, at least when it's not military and financially expediated by an imperial power, is never immoral.

I don't think the Ottomans resettling Circassians and Balkan Muslims in the region was bad. I don't think Egyptians and other Arabs immigrating to Palestine in the 19th century was bad. The pro Palestinian side denies that these groups even came to Palestine, but if they were forced to acknowledge it, I doubt they would say they were displacing the totally real and indigenous Palestinian People? Probably because Arabs/Muslims are granted inherent legitimacy to them. This was always about "The Ummah 💪" to them. A Malaysian has more of a right to live in Palestine than a Jew from the Old Yishuv. They just hate Jews.

The Jewish resettlers built towns on empty land. They bought as much land as they could legally from the Ottomans. There were zero pogroms against Arab communities. There was space and economic opportunity for Jews and Arabs alike, and every Zionist leader acknowledged this. Does this mean everything was perfect and the Jews were totally faultless? Of course not. But the Zionists set out with a clear code of conduct for Zionism to occur. This is historical fact.

Even if not all of the 750,000 Palestinians who became refugees were specifically cleansed by the proto IDF, 200,000 or so people being cleansed is still a crime against humanity. Almost a million people fleeing their country at once is still a tragedy. But this was not an inevitable and direct consequence of Jews rebuilding Israel. There is a timeline where Zionism still occurred and was successful, and no Nakba occurred. This was 100% always a possible outcome.

Insisting otherwise means you think Zionism itself is a genocidal colonial mindset, which clearly all these people do believe wholeheartedly. But we'll never get anywhere as long as people don't recognize the umbrella of connotations and ideas that Zionism held and still holds. We'll never get anywhere while people still treat Jews living in our homeland as foreign suspicious duplicitous dangerous interlopers. Why should Jews come to the table if we're treated as the enemy no matter what? If the very core of Israeli identity is treated as rotten and not worthy of, not just respect, but life?

Excellent points throughout!

Retconning Zionism into being only about refugee displacement is also done to stifle discussion of the partition plans of 1947 (or 1937). Palestiners want to have their cake and eat it too - nonstop crying over the decisions of 1940s Jews, disregard and denialism of those of 1940s Arabs. The talking point is always "Why should they have given an equal share of the land / the best land / ANY land to new immigrants?" Funny how Jewish immigration was such a threat that it was perfectly understandable and natural for Arabs to riot and massacre to make it stop, yet not enough of a threat to consider that maybe it would get bigger and that a negotiated compromise would be a good idea. The only thought, the only goal, was killing.

(Similar: "there can't be a 2SS because of the settlers, let's make a 1SS" - the settlers would still be there in a 1SS, so they aren't the block. The block is refusing to allow for any Israel at all. Winning is the Jews losing.)

[mossadspypigeon]

“zionism was invented by jews for jews. the majority of diaspora jews support it in some form because it’s the jewish landback movement.” okay. so when do palestinians get to do it? clearly, this logic is flawed. everyone should know that the nations we come from have always been somewhat mixed, that’s just how humans are. stop trying to justify ethnostates by whitewashing them as “landback” movements.

do you have to work to be this stupid? logic? you want to talk about a concept you’re allergic to? do you not know what the fuck jordan is, or any of the peace agreements palestinians said no to? or who palestinians even are? they’re arabs, you googly eyed fucking turd. jordan was originally supposed to be the palestinian state and was until their terrorist groups came in and started executing kings and shit. now jordan doesn’t want palestinians in their country.

“whitewashing.” jews aren’t white, you raggedy ass bitch. we have never once been considered white until whiteness was the new bad thing to be. that’s why the shoah happened in the first place, dingus. we were never welcomed anywhere either after a chunk of our population was FORCIBLY DISPLACED BY OPPRESSORS.

but history doesn’t count right? when jews are involved? 😂 i see you, dude.

just say you don’t know what indigenous levantine people actually look like or lmao WHO THEY ARE or where arabs come from or how they got to the levant. or what landback even is. or basic history. or how ethnicity works. so, in other words, you don’t even go here.

also arabs have 22 ethnostates. japan even counts as an ethnostate. i don’t see you hating them. instead, i see you hating the one jewish country instead. and you want to act like you’re not a fucking bigot.

we have one strip of land the size of new jersey where everyone has equal rights. yes, arabs have equal rights there and have parties in the knesset. the minority leader of the knesset was the EX ADVISOR TO ARAFAT for ages. he’s still in the knesset. an arab judge sentenced a jewish president. more arabs live in israel than jews live in europe currently. but you have a problem when jews want our land back. you deny history and basic facts when jews are involved. suddenly we’re what hitler and all the other jew haters said we were: invaders, a scourge that needs to be cleansed. and yet you think you hate nazis, right? you argue their points in every message you’ve sent, along with arab supremacist points.

and for some reason, you feel like you can talk over jews on what our ethnicity is and who we are. arabs are suddenly indigenous to the levant to you and jews are european. your worldview is so fucked, martians would likely know more than you.

you cannot colonize a land you were displaced from. indigenous status does not expire. learn some fucking history that wasn’t spewed out by the PLO propaganda wing in the 60s.

yes, fayez sayegh, head of the PLO propaganda wing in the 60s, helped come up with all the shit you are currently spewing, including the MYTH of israelis being settler colonialists. (khalid helped too.)

(also sayegh? syrian who’s buried in lebanon but pretended to be “palestinian” btw.)

he also contradicted himself before he joined the plo and wrote:

“Until World War I, Palestine was essentially and inextricably a part of the Arab World. As a political entity, it had no existence of its own; it was an indistinguishable part of a larger Arab region, subject to Ottoman rule. As a community, its language and dialect, its culture and social structures, were identical with those of the surrounding Arab communities.” (1956, Sayegh “Arab Israeli Conflict”)

aka the truth before he dedicated his life to chugging out propaganda you all eat up like candy. although tbh before the 60s, arabs didn’t like being called palestinians. that was actually reserved for jews, which is why they stole the term later.

but anyway, in conclusion:

jews are from judea. arabs are from arabia. you’re a moron who’s spewing bullshit. hope that helps.

you done? like what exactly do you know? 😂🥱

[monellabella]

Being from a place doesn't mean that one group indigenous to that place gets to go and kick everyone else who is also indigenous to that same place. It certainly doesn't mean that one group indigenous to that place gets to bomb innocent civilians because that is not the way to catch terrorists. Even if the terrorists die, so did countless people who weren't terrorists. Being indigenous to a land also doesn't mean that said group should deny humanitarian aid to another group, whether that group is indigenous to that area or not.

First of all, if you really wanna have a conversation about this come off anon- I don’t bite.

Secondly, Palestinians as a national group do not fit the UN* criteria for indigeneity, even if many of them have jewish, druze, or ancestry from other groups indigenous to the levant- because indigeneity is not solely based on DNA and ancestry, it’s about cultural practices that show a clear connection to the physical land (among other things). Of course, I fully support the formation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and this does not mean that they have any less right to live on the land and claim it as their home, considering the very long history Palestinians have in the region. When Jews immigrated en masse to British Mandate Palestine after WWII, they did not kick anyone out- they legally purchased empty land. What happened was the neighboring arab countries felt threatened by the growing Jewish population, and when israel declared itself a state they told arab palestinians to leave their homes so the arab armies could come in, but that it would all be over within two weeks and they could come back. The arab armies lost the war and israel won the territory.

With all this in mind, are you telling me that Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that abuses its own citizens, has the right to enter a Israel’s internationally recognized sovereign territory, brutally rape and slaughter 1,400 of its people (1,200 of them Israeli), kidnap over 200 of them (130 are still being held in captivity, including the bodies of dead hostages which Hamas refuses to return), including children and the elderly, and yet the Israel has no right to respond militarily? Do you hear how insane that sounds?

Yes, the fact that innocent Gazans are killed as a result of the bombing is undoubtedly a tragedy- but that’s what war is. Over 2 million German civilians were killed in WWII, yet no one would argue that the allies didn’t have a right to attack Germany, nor has anyone ever made the argument (to my knowledge) that the allies had a responsibility to provide German citizens with humanitarian aid. The only responsibility a country responding to an attack on its territory has to the citizens of the opposing country is to take every measure to ensure that as few civilians are killed as possible- which Israel has done. They’ve sent down flyers, made phone calls, sent text messages, and use “door knocker” bombs that shake the building without destroying anything to warn people to evacuate. Strategically, telling civilians exactly when and where they will attack is a horrible idea as it alerts the enemy (Hamas) exactly where Israel will be striking. But i’m not at all opposed to these methods because they save innocent lives. It’s horrible and traumatizing when people’s homes are destroyed and they are only given minutes to evacuate, but is that not a better fate than death? Not only that, but Hamas has built MILES of underground tunnels underneath Gaza using money from aid organizations. With the money they have, they could’ve built bomb shelters, a defense system like the iron dome, but instead the leaders of Hamas are billionaires living in luxury in qatar while their people suffer. Because the truth is, they don’t care about Gazans, they have said themselves they have no interest in running Gaza and their only goal is destroying Israel and the Jewish people.

One could argue that Israel could do a better job of warning civilians, and at this point I (an American Jew) and most Israelis are unsure what further bombing of gaza is even accomplishing and are furious with Netanyahu and his cabinet. With that being said, Israel estimates it has killed somewhere between 9,000-13,000 hamas terrorists, if the death toll of 34,000 provided by the gaza ministry of health (which is controlled by hamas) is to be believed (and I say this bc Hamas has a history of lying about the number of deaths and also does not differentiate between civilian and combatant casualties), that still means that the combatant to civilian death ratio is roughly between 1:3 to 1:1. The average ratio in urban warfare is closer to 1:14. Israel has absolutely zero responsibility to provide humanitarian aid to Gazans, that is the responsibility of Hamas- the de-facto government of Gaza that started this war in the first place. And YET there are more than double the amount of aid trucks entering Gaza than before the war (70/day vs now 300/day). Yet half the population of Gaza is on the brink of starvation- Why? Because Hamas is literally STEALING HUMANITARIAN AID for themselves and selling it back at exorbitant prices.

[secular-jew]

If you want to understand the Jewish indigenous claim to Judea (Israel), and wish to properly counter the numerous false narratives from the pro-Pal camp, here is your primer. Yes, it's long. But complex issues can't be unpacked in a couple of soundbites.

Respect to the author, my good friend Ryan Bellerose, a Native American Métis tribe member, and advocate for indigenous rights worldwide.

*************************************************

""As an indigenous activist—I am a Métis from the Paddle Prairie Metis settlement in Alberta, Canada—there is one question I am most often asked by the public, one that can instantly divide a community due to its intense and arduous subject matter.

Yet, regardless of the scenario, each time I hear the words, “Are Jews the indigenous people of Israel?” I’m inclined to answer not only with my heart but with the brutal, honest truth, backed by indisputable, thousands-year-old historical and archaeological fact: yes.

While evidence in favor of this view is overwhelming, activists who oppose Israel’s right to exist and deny the Jewish people’s connection to the land—perhaps before learning where indigenous status stems from and what it means—still have an issue with this claim, supporting a narrative built on falsehoods that today is basically acknowledged as fact.

It is my belief that strengthening Jewish identity is the optimum way to fight against the perpetuation of false narratives and lies. This can be achieved only through an indigenous decolonization of Jewish identity, which would urge Jews to see themselves through a Jewish lens and manifest the indigenous aspects of Jewish identity in a meaningful way.

Now, to understand indigeneity, one must also understand indigenous people, how we see ourselves, and how we see the world. At its simplest, indigenous status stems from the genesis of a culture, language, and traditions in conjunction with its connections to an ancestral land, most commonly derived from ties to pre-colonial peoples. Once a people have such a cultural, linguistic, and spiritual genesis as well as a coalescence as a people, they are generally acknowledged as an indigenous people.

An anthropologist named José Martínez Cobo, who served as the UN’s special rapporteur on discrimination against indigenous populations, developed a simple checklist in order to make indigenous status easier to understand. Even though that checklist has since been adjusted—I would argue, to fit the UN’s anti-Israel agenda—it remains the standard for most anthropologists in the field today:

Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present nondominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system.

This historical continuity may consist of the continuation, for an extended period reaching into the present of one or more of the following factors:

a) Occupation of ancestral lands, or at least of part of them;

b) Common ancestry with the original occupants of these lands;

c) Culture in general, or in specific manifestations (such as religion, living under a tribal system, membership of an indigenous community, dress, means of livelihood, lifestyle, etc.);

d) Language (whether used as the only language, as mother-tongue, as the habitual means of communication at home or in the family, or as the main, preferred, habitual, general or normal language);

e) Residence on certain parts of the country, or in certain regions of the world;

f) Other relevant factors.

As a guideline, the Martínez Cobo study is fairly clear and gives us a way to avoid falling prey to false claims. However, there is one section—which, as far as I can tell, wasn’t in Cobo’s earliest definition—that has been referred to as problematic by many indigenous activists. This section refers to “nondominant sectors of society,” which is directly related to the issue of Jews as an indigenous people. It implies that by being “nondominant,” you have yet to realize self-determination. Ergo, if a group has achieved self-determination (i.e., the Jewish people or the Fijians), they will no longer meet the checklist as indigenous.

Seeing how the goal of all indigenous peoples is to achieve self-determination on their ancestral lands, it’s basically the most egregious example of a Catch-22.

You might be wondering why this seemingly throwaway line about “prevailing societies and non-dominant sectors” was included when it’s so clearly counterintuitive to our goals as indigenous peoples. It is my belief that it was inserted to deny indigenous status to one specific people, in fact, the only people who have actually achieved full self-determination on their ancestral lands: the Jewish people.

Why else would the United Nations include a caveat that basically denies indigenous peoples’ identity if we actually win in our struggle?

Archaeology, genealogy, and history all support the Jewish claim to indigeneity. A debate on this issue only even exists because we’ve been fed a false narrative that Palestinian Arabs also hold a claim to the land of Israel. Not to say that two peoples can’t be indigenous to one land. The Palestinians do indeed have the legitimate “rights of longstanding presence” in Israel, but this does not trump the indigenous status of Jewish people, 90 percent of whom can directly trace their genetics to the Levant. The cultural genesis, spirituality, language, and ancestral ties of Palestinian Arabs, however, trace back to the Hejaz (a region in present-day Saudi Arabia). In the Quran, the Hejaz is where Muhammad was born and where he established a community of followers.

To say that Palestinian Arabs were the first inhabitants of the land of Israel is problematic for actual indigenous people like the Jewish people, the Amazigh, the Copts, the Assyrians, the Samaritans, and others who were forcefully conquered, subsumed, and converted. It would literally be akin to white Europeans in North America making that same claim. Conquering peoples can still become indigenous through cultural genesis and coalescence. They cannot, however, become indigenous simply through conquering indigenous people.

Indigenous status is specific to certain areas, just as in North America, where certain tribes are indigenous to specific regions. The same rules should be applied in the Middle East. Just as the Cree would not claim Mohawk territories, Arabs should not try to claim Jewish, Amazigh, Kurdish, or Assyrian territories. Each of those peoples have clearly defined territories that date to pre-colonial times.

The primary argument promoting the false narrative that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel is that they are actually the descendants of European colonizers. This can be easily rebuked. Recent studies support the notion that some 80 percent of Jewish males, and 50 percent of Jewish females, can trace their ancestry to the Middle East. Early population genetics studies also confirm that “most Jewish Diaspora groups originated in the Middle East.”

Another study shows that even the first European Ashkenazi Jews were at least half Middle Eastern.

The next argument against Jews being an indigenous people derives from the fact that Abraham was from Ur. And, while he is considered the father of the Jewish people, they did not become a people in Ur but in the Levant—specifically, in modern-day Judea and Samaria.

According to Jewish tradition and spirituality, the Torah was given to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai, but they had their cultural Genesis in the land of Israel. Of the 613 mitzvot, the vast majority can only be completed in the land of Israel. The Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Jewish people are all buried in the land of Israel. The holiest sites in Judaism are located—you guessed it—in the land of Israel. Abraham was indeed from Ur, but the people who stemmed from him are, without a doubt, from Israel.

This is closely related to the issue of Jerusalem, which both Palestinian Muslims and Israeli Jews claim as their own. One need only look to the Tanakh, where Jerusalem is mentioned an astounding 699 times, and then to the Quran, where Jerusalem is not mentioned even once, to resolve this dispute.

Then there is the Canaanite argument, a relatively newer piece of Palestinian propaganda that argues—because the Torah claims that the Canaanites were driven out by the Israelites—that Jews are therefore not indigenous to Israel. Archaeologists suggest, however, that the Canaanites were in fact not destroyed at all, but subsumed by the ascendant Hebrew people.

It appears that once Palestinian Arabs realized their claim to being descendants of the Philistines was false—as the Philistines, derived from the Hebrew word peleshet, have no connection ethnically, linguistically, or historically to the people of Arabia—they decided that they were descended from Canaanites instead.

In a 2012 speech, a spokesperson for Mahmoud Abbas said, “The nation of Palestine upon the land of Canaan had a 7,000-year history B.C.E. This is the truth, which must be understood, and we have to note it, in order to say: ‘Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history.’ ”

This comment from the Abbas camp is complete rubbish, just one on a laundry list of Palestinian misnomers. First, the Canaanites have been extinct for 3,000 years and little is known today about their direct descendants. Second, pre-Islamic Arabs—of whom Palestinians are direct descendants—first appeared only in the 9th century BCE, not in 7000 BCE. Third, in 1946, before the establishment of Modern Israel, Palestinian-Arab leaders themselves only claimed a connection to the land of Israel dating back no further than seventh century CE—when Muhammad’s followers conquered North Africa and the surrounding region. You may also want to ask: What spiritual, cultural, or traditional constructs of the Canaanite people have Palestinian Arabs maintained? The answer is none.

But this should not be surprising. Even the most novice researcher looking into falsehoods perpetrated by Palestinian leaders would quickly find other blatant lies aimed at delegitimizing the history of the Jewish people, like the time Yasser Arafat told Bill Clinton there was never a Jewish temple in Jerusalem, or the time Ekrima Sabri, former Jerusalem mufti and chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council in Jerusalem, said, “After 25 years of digging, archaeologists are unanimous that not a single stone has been found related to Jerusalem’s alleged Jewish history.”

These are the proponents of the false narrative attempting to rebuke the indigenous status of the Jewish people in the land of Israel.

I got involved in this struggle because I was seeing nonindigenous people make arguments that are detrimental to actual indigenous people, arguments that attempt to rewrite our history. The idea that “Palestinian Arab” conquerors could become indigenous through conquering the Jewish people, even though the term “Palestinian” was only used in reference to Jews before 1948, is anathema. While Arabs claim to be related to the descendants of Israel through blood, it’s just another way to say that they acted like all conquerors, raping and pillaging and then settling and subsuming the locals. Native North Americans especially understand that simply conquering indigenous people does not grant one indigenous status.

Building a monument over our sacred places does not make them yours (Mount Rushmore, anyone?) Not any more than UNESCO declaring the Temple Mount to be a Muslim sacred site because they built a mosque over the church that was built over the ruins of the Jewish Temple. It’s a basic tradition in the Western ethos to respect those who came before you; it’s even built into most of our laws to respect prior claim, and that’s what indigenous rights are really all about. Respecting the rights of those who came before you."