The argument that Israelis have every right to subjugate and cleanse Palestinians from the land because it’s their “ancestral homeland” is bullshit for a plethora of reasons, but ignoring most of them, there’s one simple, proven fact that is almost never brought up -
Israeli-led DNA studies have shown that the indigenous Palestinian population are descendants of the Jewish population that lived in the region in ancient times. Sure, Palestinians aren’t Jewish religiously, but given this claim to indigeneity that many Zionists argue, why are Palestinians excluded? Why are we labeled as “foreign invaders”?
Why is this claim to an “ancestral homeland” used to justify our ethnic cleansing in al-Nakba and the expansion of Israeli settlements built on stolen and cleansed Palestinian land?
Why is our ancestral claim to the land completely ignored, while others are given these BS “birthright” trips to a land that many Palestinians are denied entry to?
Is this because Israel is built on the idea of Jewish religious supremacy? If Palestinians share the same ancestral roots as those claiming Palestine/Israel to be their ancestral homeland and use that as a justification for their return, why is their “return” based on the removal of Palestinians?
Does this ancestry in any way limit or delegitimize the anti-semitism that does exist among those who are no longer religiously Jewish? Absolutely not, but again, that isn’t the point here.
The point is that the argument to Israel being an “ancestral homeland” and that Palestinians are “Arab invaders from Saudi Arabia” or “Jordan” or w/e other BS arguments we hear from Zionists are just that…BS.
It’s an argument used as nothing more than propaganda. I mean, Ben Gurion himself, first Prime Minister of Israel, stated that “f we investigate the origins of the Felahim [Palestinians], there is no doubt that much Jewish blood runs in their veins.”
So why then have future Prime Ministers and Israeli politicians, along with Zionists in general, buried this truth? Why is “ancient ancestry” used as a justification for the removal of Palestinians in order to make room for Israeli settlers and settlements? Palestinians are simply the Jews who remained, and converted, whether to Islam or Christianity [the village I am from is named after a Christian monastery]. Why are there no “Palestinian Jews”, then? Because they were absorbed into Israel and became Israeli, and intermixed with the influx of foreign migrants that came to be the first population of modern Israel.
One can argue that “there was no Palestine in ancient times!! Only the Kingdom of Israel!!!!” and yeah, you’d be right, but that in no way whatsoever delegitimizes the modern Palestinian struggle and narrative. We were a part of these various Kingdoms. We remained. We were converted, we were absorbed into numerous various empires, and we’ve remained throughout history. We’ve developed our own identity, our own culture, our own way of life, and we remained in the land that over time came to be known as Palestine. And no, those Zionist claim “the name Palestine was never used for the region!!” are BS, as it has been used for millennia to refer to the general geographical region, and become a formal entity in the early 40′s.
Palestine is our ancestral homeland, and we will continue to fight for it.
