For the last 3,000 or so years, there has been a documented presence of Jews in what is now Israel. The Land of Israel was the birthplace of Jewish identity and culture. Certainly, for the last 2,000 or so years, the majority of the Jewish community has lived in the diaspora (i.e. outside of the Land of Israel). This diaspora was largely involuntary, resulting from successive conquests and expulsions by the Roman, Byzantine, and various Islamic empires, yet throughout this period, Jewish communities maintained continuous presence in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias, even under difficult conditions.
Those Jews who returned to Israel as part of the Zionist movement, beginning in the late 19th century, did not represent a foreign power, colonial or otherwise. In fact, the families of most Israeli Jews lived across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia before returning to Israel in the 20th century. Approximately 60% of Israeli Jews today are descendants of communities from the Middle East and North Africa who were expelled from Arab countries after 1948, making the “European colonizer” narrative particularly inaccurate. Unlike colonialism, which extracts resources for a foreign motherland, the Zionist movement sought refuge and self-determination in the Jews’ ancestral homeland.
They believed that the re-establishment of a Jewish sovereign state, in their native land, was the only way to ensure that Jews could continue to live, peacefully or otherwise. They fought for self-determination, like so many other peoples did in the 19th and 20th centuries, and they gradually returned home, becoming a majority in Jerusalem in the 1860s, and establishing the first Jewish city in modern history, Tel Aviv, in 1909. Archaeological discoveries continue to validate the indigenous Jewish connection to the land, including the 2023 discovery of a 2,700-year-old Hebrew inscription in Jerusalem and numerous artifacts bearing Jewish symbols, Hebrew writing, and imagery from the First and Second Temple periods.
True colonialism involves a foreign power exploiting local resources and populations for the benefit of a distant homeland. The Zionist movement, by contrast, involved a native people returning to rebuild their ancestral homeland, purchasing land legally, developing agriculture on previously barren soil, reviving their ancient language, and establishing democratic institutions. The Jews who built modern Israel did not maintain political allegiance to any foreign power but rather sought independence from British colonial rule, the same British who also controlled much of the Arab world.
This indigenous connection to the land is recognized in international law, including the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which acknowledged the “historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” as “grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” Modern genetic studies further confirm the ancestral connection, with Jewish populations worldwide sharing distinct genetic markers that trace back to the Levant region.
Sources
[1] Israel Antiquities Authority, “Archaeological Discoveries in Jerusalem,” 2023.
[2] Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, “Population Demographics,” 2024.
[3] League of Nations, “Mandate for Palestine,” 1922.
[4] American Journal of Human Genetics, “Jewish Diaspora Genetics,” 2020.