This claim is often used as a way to push back on the framing of Israel as a colonial-settler state, not unlike the United States, Canada and Australia. All three of those entities are now dominated by the descendants of Western Europeans who effectively eliminated the native population to impose social, political, legal and military structures of their own making.
Other versions of this claim include:
- Jews were there first and this is land promised to land to the Jews.
- Israel is an example of an indigenous people finally returning to their native country after exile.
- Palestinians are Arab occupiers who arrived in 7th century. Calling Jews colonizers is just progressive “wokism”.
- There was no land theft because Palestinian land holders sold their land to Jews in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century
There are many points to address here.
Indigeneity
Not even the Bible claims that Jews are the indigenous inhabitants of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Instead, the story in Genesis 12 describes God promising the land that was then inhabited by Canaanites to Abraham. Generations later, it is Joshua who leads the Israelites in kicking out the indigenous Canaanites in the Book of Joshua. From a Biblical standpoint therefore, the Israelites were NOT the first inhabitants of the land. They were preceded by the Canaanites. Abraham himself was from the city of Ur in modern day Iraq
Claims that today’s Palestinians are the descendants of Arab conquerors who came after the advent of Islam in the 7th century also misses crucial realities about how communities and identities evolve. To understand this, it’s first important to remember that Arab, Muslim and Palestinian are distinct identities. Arabs represent a linguistic and cultural group, Palestinians represent a regional group, and Muslims represent a religious group. The “Decolonize Palestine” website has a good description of the historic processes of Arabization and Islamization, which took place over centuries and took hold at different levels in various regions. The site says, in part:
“Arabs have had a long history in the Levant before the advent of Islam. For example, The Nabataean kingdom ruled over Jordan, southern Palestine and Sinai a whole millennium before Muslims ever set foot in the area. Another example would be the Ghassanid kingdom, which was a Christian Arab kingdom that extended over vast areas of the region. As a matter of fact, many prominent Christian families in Palestine today, such as Maalouf, Haddad and Khoury, can trace their lineage back to the Ghassanid kingdom.”
The Arabs who conquered this region from the Romans were relatively few in number, and the process of eventual Arabization included the adoption of the Arabic language and cultural norms. Similarly, Islamization included the adoption of Islamic religious beliefs and practices. Many people of the region remained Christian over this period, but identities evolved over time.
The next question is what does indigeneity “buy you” in terms of rights. If we were to grant the claim that Jews are indigenous to the land, and follow the Israeli framework, the consequences would wreak havoc on the modern world. Italy would have claims on vast swaths of Mediterranean and European countries based on the expanse of the Roman Empire two millennia ago. To take the analogy further, if Vikings pointed to a mythological text to claim that they inhabited North America prior to the Native Americans, descendants of Vikings would not therefore have a legitimacy to take over the United States and establish a new state.
Demographics
According to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East and the Jewish Virtual Library
1) While Jews did inhabit the land of Palestine at varying levels across the centuries, demographic data is in limited supply during the 400 years of Ottoman rule (16th – early 20th Centuries). Indications are that Jews were a minority during the Ottoman period.
3) Jewish migration to Palestine increased in the early 20th century, driven by the Zionist movement, as well as by pogroms in Eastern Europe and later, the rise of Nazis in Germany and the subsequent Holocaust. Even then, Jews represented about 30% of the population in the mid 1940’s, shortly before the partition of Israel and Palestine in 1947/1948.
Use of the term “Colonialism”
Founding fathers of Israel like Ze’ev Jabotinksy referred to the Zionist project as a colonial one. They were not shy about using this label, which was not seen in a negative light at the time.
Jabotinksy wrote in his 1923 Essay “The Iron Wall”
“My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other
countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are
acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being
carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.
The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted
the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage….
“Every native population, civilised or not, regards its lands as its national home,
of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain that mastery always; it will refuse
to admit not only new masters but, even new partners or collaborators.
“This is equally true of the Arabs.”
He further stated that, “Zionism is a colonization adventure” – As quoted by Lenni Brenner, in The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir (1984), where the quotation is cited as being from “The Iron Law”
Similarly, major Zionist organizations central to Israel’s foundation held colonial identity in their names or departments, such as Jewish Colonisation Association, the Jewish Colonial Trust, and The Jewish Agency‘s colonization department
Only more recently, when colonialism came to be seen in negative terms, did Zionist talking points shift and Israeli talking points began to re-position Jews as a native population in Palestine.
The real point: Justice
The critical point is about Justice.
No matter who the actors, it is patently unjust to remove people from their homes, whether they have occupied that home for one generation or one hundred, and it’s a fantasy to imagine that people who are being removed from their homes will not fight back. Resistance is a normal response to any attempt at ethnic cleansing, regardless of which parties are involved.
The Zionist movement has faced resistance because it sought not just to establish a Jewish state, but it sought to establish a state where Jews were dominant and had the authority to expel or repress Palestinians as was needed for the sake of the state. some of the most well known examples of where this has happened are colonial settler movements of the United States, Canada and Europe, and as such they have served as useful analogies.
Palestinians are resisting repression and ethnic cleansing, no matter who is carrying it out.