🔗 The Ridiculousness of the "Native to the Land" Argument

If you happened to read some of the arguments made with regards to the events of October 7 and the war that followed, you may have noticed people claiming that Palestinians are "native to the land of Israel/Palestine". Some Israelis, conversely, claim that we, as ethnic Jews, are native to the land, and we certainly have a stronger position, given that we have historical documentation, religious documentation, and archaeological findings that support this claim, whereas they have none of those. Still, their proponents often repeat the claim, explaining that the Palestinians "originated in Palestine". They hadn't, otherwise there would be records of it, and they wouldn't have last names like Al Masri ("the Egyptian") or Halabi ("of Halab", a.k.a Aleppo in Syria, a surname that is not uncommon for Jews as well), and other surnames that betray their "origin".

Still, I find the argument ridiculous for both our sides. Let's think for a second: what does it even mean to be "native to the land"?

Let's look, as an example, at the Native Americans. Did the Native Americans "originate" in the Americas? The answer depends on its semantics. The Native Americans did not originate in the Americas, in the sense that their ancestors migrated to North America from Asia via the Bering Land Bridge that connected the two continents many thousands of years ago, and later sunk below sea level, physically separating the continents. And the people in Asia itself—as all member of the Homo Sapiens genus—originated in Africa.

However, the people that crossed the Bering Land Bridge into the Americas dispersed and settled throughout the continents, and it's through millennia of geographical separation that genetic makeups changed (adapting to wildly different climates and environments), ethnicities developed, and cultures and traditions evolved. Genes, ethnicities and cultures that did not exist in Asia, and for a long while, nowhere else on Earth; so in that sense, they definitely are native to the Americas.

The idea that Palestinians in any way "originated" in "Palestine" is ludicrous as it fails any semantics you wish to give that word. The Palestinians are ethically Arabs, originating from Arabia, they speak Arabic, their culture is largely Arabic culture, and their religions are Arabic religions. Not to mention that their so called "Palestine" doesn't even exist in their own historical records.

But I don't want to sound like I'm trying to convince you that I—by virtue of being Jewish—magically "own" the land of Israel. Jews are somewhat unusual, as far as ethnicities go. Our dissidents like to say that we're all white European colonizers who hate diversity, despite it being a well known, easily disprovable falsehood. You'd be hard pressed to find a nation that is as diverse as Israel.

The Jewish religion originated in the Levant, where the Israelites—our ancestors who themselves emerged from the Canaanites—formed the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Through long periods, this religion was insular, taking in no converts, thus culturally and genetically separating itself from adjacent nations, to the point where an ethnicity evolved. But due to several wars waged by various conquistadors Jews were exiled from their land—again and again—and dispersed into many different areas of the Middle East, Europe, North Africa and others.

The status of the Jews as a minority wherever they laid their hats, the restrictions (and sometimes freedoms) that they suffered (or sometimes enjoyed) under different rulers, and the ire of their neighbours who despised their refusal to relent and convert to whatever religion was hot at the area, have all put a big strain on the religion, and its numbers remained low. Through millennia, these exiles were surrounded by peoples of different cultures and religions, and have naturally absorbed some of these cultures, not to mention that intermarriage happens whether you like it or not. Thus, the Jewish diaspora was born and many different Jewish "communities" formed, for example the Persian Jews, of which I am a member.

The 19th and 20th centuries brought on a major change for humanity. The industrial revolution and the inventions of the train, the motor-vehicle and the airplane made travel much, much, ridiculously much faster, bringing almost all of humanity closer together. With global, real-time communication, different cultures could be shared and appreciated. Massive, global wars and dissolution of longstanding empires have erased many border lines and drew new ones. Emigration became very common, often increasing friction between peoples of different communities, ethnicities and races. We are still experiencing the effects of these events and advances, and this war is one of them. Those who maintain that Israel is "bad" because it's against diversity would do well to understand that the reason many of our neighbors have made it their mission statement to destroy our country and kill us all is exactly because of the diversity that Jews have brought back to Israel from their exile outside of it.

After the Holocaust, wherein at least 6 million Jews were murdered, anti-Jewish sentiments were rising in the Muslim world as well, where religious extremism was on the rise, and social orders were beginning to change. Jews, already second class citizens in those countries, suffered even more animosity and have begun to be driven out of their homes.

As such, the Jews were in dire straits, and fled in droves. Many came back to Israel, their ancestral land. Many others made their way to America. In Asia and the Middle East, almost none had remained. In Europe, some were able to elude the Nazis or otherwise survived the war and remained in Europe. Still, a gathering of cultures and genetics arrived in Israel, which is why you will find so many different "kinds" of us: Mizrahi Jews (Persian Jews, Syrian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Yemenite Jews, Egyptian Jews, etc.), Sephardi Jews, Ashkenazi Jews (Polish Jews, Russian Jews, German Jews, etc.), Ethiopian Jews, Bukharan Jews and many others. Not to mention that Israel has many other peoples, such as the Druze, the Bedouin, the Circassians, the Armenians, and others, and various religions. Again, for such a small country, we have more diversity than you could possibly handle.

But am I "native to the land"? In some ways, it's a tough argument for me to make, and in others, it's an easy one. If one of my evidences for the Palestinians not being native to the land was the fact that their surnames originated in other locations, clearly this can be used against us as well, since all those Jewish exiles who made their way to Israel in the past few hundred years brought with them many surnames that also betray their supposed origin. My surname is German Jewish. Still, we are the descendants of the original Jews that were exiled from Israel and Judah. That said, my mother's family lived in Iran/Persia for hundreds if not thousands of years, and we're only the first generations of the family born and raised in Israel. On the other hand, members of my father's family lived in Israel (and whatever it happened to be called under British and Turkish rules) for almost 200 years.

At a certain point, the question of nativity to a land becomes too complex. But more so than that, it's simply moot. It doesn't matter who's native and who's not, who originated here and who hadn't, who was here earlier and who wasn't. Go back far enough and we all fail those tests. The only thing that does matter is that we're here now, it's ours now, and there's nothing you can do about it, genocidal war or not. I was born here. Quite frankly I don't give a flying fuck what grievances people may have with things that happened before I was born. I have no other place to go. No other nationality, no other citizenship, no other passport. Due to anti-Judaism I can't even travel to Iran and see where so many of my family lived for so many years (not to mention many other countries in the Muslim world which do not allow Jews/Israelis to enter).

Whether you like it or not, we exist, and Israel exists. If that bothers you in any way, you should probably look within, because maybe the problem is you. And when you're done looking within, find something actually useful to do, because let me tell you, we will continue to exist, if only to spite you. That's our specialty. Enjoy.