The Jews are an indigenous people

[Ian David]

The Jews are an indigenous people
By Ray Beckerman

The problem of bringing peace to the Holy Land is a complex one, and it is not one that can be resolved by resort to the issue of "indigeneity" -- i.e. who is more "indigenous".

The solution will require thinking, compassion, and intellectual integrity. Simplistic sloganeering will not do it, and ignoring history would be fatal to the process.

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The presence of the Jews in the Holy Land goes back many thousands of years. In addition to the continued residence of the Jews in the Holy Land throughout recorded history, the repeated genocides, enslavements, expulsions, and exiles to which they have been subjected prior to the formation of the State of Israel, which thinned their numbers time and again, have never caused the Jews to forget their history, or to stop considering the Holy Land -- where the remains of their forefathers are buried -- as their sacred land. The land of Israel (Eretz Y'Isroel) and Jerusalem (Y'Rushaloyim) are central to Jewish culture and religion in the Diaspora, and always have been. Almost every part of Jewish liturgy contains references to the Holy Land and to our being there. There are holidays which were celebrated in the middle ages in the cold steppes of Russia which were centered around fruits and growing seasons that existed only in The Holy Land. Synagogues in the Diaspora are constructed with a view towards the direction of Jerusalem.

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It is clear that (a) both peoples are "indigenous" and have ties to the land, and (b) had the Arabs shown the slightest respect for the rights of the Jews to live in their ancestral homeland in peace there would be no "occupation".

More:
http://fairbyray.blogspot.com/2010/01/jews-are-indigenous-people.html