The Indigeneity Game
Time to stop playing the game we were meant to lose
Yemenite Jews en route to Israel, 1948
A major part of the discussion surrounding the State of Israel has been whether or not Jews are indigenous to the Levant. This seems like an important question, if the ancestors of present-day Jews emerged from the Levant and Jews are still largely Levantine, then logic dictates that their state would have more legitimacy. But, if Jews are interlopers, some foreign population using Judaism as a guise to colonize what is rightfully Palestinian land, then Israel would have no right to exist! We ought to give the whole thing back to the Palestinians. Hasbara apparatchiks and Zionist influencers alike have made much ado about the indigeneity of the Jewish People and their connection to the Land of Israel. Citing our genetic makeup, historical ties, and religious yearning for the Land of Israel, it is obvious to anyone with eyes that Jews are the rightful owners of this territory! However, the more time goes on, the less effective these methods seem to be – so what gives? Why, more than ever, have people mobilized in the streets chanting “Free Palestine” and calling Israel a colonialist project?
The answer is simple – we’re not meant to win the game. To understand this better we need to understand the heart of the Indigeneity theory forwarded by Progressives.
The theory of Indigeneity is as follows, if you were living in a country before its subsequent colonization by Europeans, you are indigenous. It doesn’t matter if your ancestors only arrived in the country 20 years previously, the crux of the argument is that if you suffered from European expansion and its consequences that makes one native to a land. This is why, in the Progressive framework, Arabs are as indigenous to Northern Africa as the Amazigh, who have been there since the Stone Age. This framework refuses to look beyond the scope of the 18th century. Why? Because this axiom is convenient to the Progressive worldview, which is fundamentally anti-Western. In its pursuit of rejecting the cultures that reared it, the Progressives are willing to entertain some strange bedfellows.
Progressive and Muslim Protesters calling to “Free Palestine” and “End the Occupation”
The indigeneity theory only applies to those ostensible allies of the Progressives, while excluding those who it doesn't approve of. Are the English native to England? No, of course not don’t be ridiculous. But an Arab tribe who moved into a city only a hundred years ago and displaced its native Jewish/Assyrian/Coptic population is surely indigenous. It is the mistake of the Hasbarists, the majority of whom are highly educated individuals who went to some of the West’s elite universities to try to fit Jews into a framework where they are fundamentally not welcome. Why are we insistent on using a system where we are designed to lose?
There are also further misgivings of the Indigenous Liberation movement. Epistemologically, it is no different from “Blood and Soil” Fascism and often fails to offer solid ideological red lines from it. Where do converts fit into the equation? Should non-native peoples have a right to dwell among natives? If so, why? The failure to provide compelling answers to such questions has led many young, idealistic Jews to Blood and Soil rhetoric quite quickly.
The final point to be made here is that indigeneity does not grant a state “legitimacy”. The United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Austrailia are all inherently colonial projects, yet, if anyone says they are illegitimate nations, you’d be right to consider them an insane person. States are legitimate, because they exist. That might seem an awfully simplistic way to look at the world, but it’s true. How or why a State comes into existence is largely inconsequential. If it can exert power over its territory, establish trade, and its people grant it sovereignty, then the State is legitimate for those reasons. Appeals to reasons outside of realpolitik just invite pernicious and idealistic movements to hijack the day to day of geopolitics, the consequences of which we are currently dealing with.
Jews are indigenous to the Southern Levant. This is something that can be observed by anyone with even a remote understanding of the region and its history. This does not grant Israel any more legitimacy than if the Jews were foreign invaders. Indigeneity does not dictate legitimacy, sovereignty does. The sooner Israel realizes this, the better.
While I agree with your general analysis, there is a difference in Israel’s situation that needs to be borne in mind and arises from international law as it existed at the end of WWI.
The Ottoman Empire had been defeated and its territory outside Anatolia seized to be redistributed as the victorious Allies decided. That was entirely consistent with international law at the time. While normally the Ottoman colonies would have been absorbed by the British and French Empires, the US objected and demanded a different outcome. And so the concept of “Mandates” was born.
The specific Mandate for Palestine, established by the international community in 1922, set forth the internationally recognized boundaries of that territory. Its express purpose was the reestablishment of the Jewish homeland to which end Jewish immigration and “close settlement” was encouraged. Whether this objective was meant to right an historical wrong, support Zionism or provide a convenient excuse to move Jews out of Europe is, in fact, beside the point. Whatever the true motive (and it probably depended on whom you asked), the objective was the creation of a Jewish state.
In 1923, Britain closed off 78% of the land and turned it over to their Hashemite Arab clients to rule - that is today’s Jordan, which is no more nor less than East Palestine in reality.
As relevant here, the borders of the rump Mandate as they existed when Israel declared its independence in May 1948 are the legal borders of the state under the same doctrine of international law that made Crimea and the Donbas region part of sovereign Ukraine: uti possidetis juris.
And that doctrine very explicitly overrides any right to self-determination of any other group within those borders. That the world pretends that lands seized following an illegal war of aggression by Jordan and Egypt and held for 19 years have somehow transformed into “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is a political position not a proper legal determination under international law - which is why, for instance, the General Assembly was careful to frame its case to the ICJ on the legality of Israel’s “occupation” so as to foreclose any inquiry into the question of whether the Arabs or Jews had the superior legal right to this disputed territory.
So, the bottom line is that the legal borders of Israel were set under existing international law, its declaration of independence was consistent with international law and its statehood satisfies the conditions of the Montevideo Convention of 1933 that codified the applicable international law.
Its current existence, of course, arises from its ability to defend itself as international law famously is not self-enforcing. So your conclusion is accurate, but the background should not be forgotten.
As to your main focus on indigeneity, the question only arises from the anti-Israel chorus’ need to counter every argument supporting the Jewish claims. As we see here and elsewhere, evidence and logic play little if any role.
The tactic is essentially the gainsaying of every point in the expectation that people will draw the conclusion that there must be some good faith dispute and the sides are equal when they are not. And even when the Palestinians side is discredited by the overwhelming evidence, the world simply moves the goalposts and the charade continues.
It should be noted that we have seen this same tactic of appealing to a non-existent controversy to confuse the public deployed in other arenas, most infamously perhaps by the tobacco industry in its decades long fight to deny any link between smoking and the increased risk of cancer.