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Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-805116
Jews Are Not Colonialist Invaders of the Land of Israel
(Jerusalem Post) Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg - The Jews are not colonialist invaders of the Land of Israel. This land was the home of the earliest tribes of Israel dating back to the 13th century BCE. The major books of the Bible were written by Jews in the Land of Israel or nearby nations to which Jews were exiled. Despite the exile of Jews inflicted by the Roman Empire, there was never a time when some Jews did not live in the land - usually as second-class, often-mistreated inhabitants. The name "Palestine" was imposed by the Romans on the area to erase the Jewish historical presence in the land. Jesus was not a Palestinian. He died as a Jew in Judea. Muslim Arabs did not live in the area until it was conquered by Arab armies a century after the birth of Islam in the seventh century, almost 2,000 years after the first Jews moved into the area. The Jews are the indigenous people in the Holy Land. It is an incontrovertible historical reality that there had been a Jewish Holy Temple on Mount Moriah for hundreds of years, long before the al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock shrine were built there in the Middle Ages. There is some evidence that most of the Arab population in Israel and the West Bank moved to the area in the 18th and 19th centuries, many of them attracted by the rising economy generated by the Zionist settlements. Palestinian nationalism did not emerge until the second half of the 20th century. More than 50% of Israeli Jews are Sephardim - Jews who lived in the Middle East for millennia before they were driven out by the newly independent Arab nations such as Iraq, Syria, Algeria, Libya, etc. They are indigenous people and have no home countries to which to return. Their skin hues are pretty much the same as the Arabs. The writer is president of the J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life, and a senior scholar-in-residence at the Hadar Institute.