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Jews Are Indigenous to Israel

(Jerusalem Post) Prof. Ilan Troen interviewed by Rossella Tercatin - Comments on social media last week that Jews are not indigenous to the Land of Israel seek to undermine the legitimacy of Israel as the Jewish homeland, Ilan Troen, emeritus professor of Modern History at Ben-Gurion University and of Israel Studies at Brandeis University, told the Jerusalem Post. "For a long time there was very little doubt on whether the Jews were indigenous here," Troen said. He pointed out that the difference between the European conquest of their lands and the Jewish return to Israel has been conspicuous. "Europeans entered into territories that they never belonged to and implanted Europe there, as proven by names such as New England." "When Jews returned here, they did not give any European names to the places and they spoke Hebrew. There is no other example of people rejuvenating a language they spoke thousands of years ago." "What is fascinating is that Palestinian Arabs began calling themselves indigenous after 1967 and the fall of Nasser and Pan-Arabism. Palestinians needed to demonstrate that they were here before the Jews and they did so by inventing that they are descendants of the Jebusites, which would mean that they were here before Joshua conquered the Holy Land as described in the Bible." "For Muslims to find a connection with a pagan past is highly unusual, an act of political imagination, clearly a decision for rhetorical purposes." Prof. Ilan Troen is a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
2020-07-13 00:00:00
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