I noticed recently that many pro-Israel advocates are shying away from the indigenous argument and when I asked them for reasons why I was somewhat shocked at the replies. I assumed that people advocating for Israelis and Jewish ancestral lands would be glad to have an airtight and unassailable argument available to them. One that does not rely on “God Gave it to me” or “the Europeans gave it to me”.
On our side there is a very strong urge to maintain “fairness and balance”. I have written about this as I find it annoying and counterproductive. It’s not my job to advocate for colonizers and give them equal time, I will let their advocates do their own jobs. Me? I am gonna kick ass using facts and history and I am not going to be gentle about it because the stakes are far too high.
You want to know what the problem is with the indigenous argument? It is TOO powerful, it’s too one-sided and it’s not “nuanced or balanced” because the facts are one-sided and there really is no nuance here.
The problem with the indigenous argument is that it does not allow fence sitters or virtue signaling, it does not allow false equivalence or half-assed arguing either. You either meet the checklist for indigeneity or you do not. Your people are either indigenous to the area in question or they are not.
Our side has always prided itself on being more moderate, on being the ones who compromised, because our side was always willing to give up something for real and lasting peace. But that’s off the table. Anyone with a functioning brain knows the Arab leadership has turned its people’s misery into an industry and made themselves billions by skimming aid. Not only are they unmotivated to negotiate for an actual peace, they actively work against it whenever they can because they know the gravy train will stop if they ever have peace, and the Arabs will revolt. So now that we know the two-state delusion is dead, where do we go from here?
Oh the two-state delusion isn’t dead you say? Even the staunchest two-state advocates admit that under the current regimes there are no valid partners for peace, and that peace cannot be unilaterally imposed, and since we know that the Arabs in the PA and Gaza, kill anyone who challenges their leadership and access to the gravy train, unless the world removes the PLO and Hamas from power, there is no way to actually have regime change in the PA or Gaza. This means that the two-state delusion is not viable “under current conditions” and since we just learned the conditions are unlikely to change, this means the two-state delusion is not a realistic solution. We may as well advocate for the entire Middle East to give control to the Jews, because that’s as likely as the Arabs actually negotiating in good faith with Israel. So yeah, its dead. Just admit it.
So how does this all tie into the indigenous argument? Isn’t this all just ancient history? Why does it matter? It matters to people who believe in justice and morality, many of whom are Zionists, who support the rights of Jews to live with self-determination on their ancestral lands, to worship the creator the way Jews have for thousands of years at their most sacred places and to manifest an authentic Jewish identity the way their forefathers and foremothers meant for them. A great crime was committed against the Jewish people, and they were exiled, not all but the vast majority. So when they managed to return to their ancestral lands it’s a beautiful amendment to what had become a litany of tragedy. Pogroms, wandering, the Holocaust, and then suddenly the return of the exiles. It simply doesn’t get any more just than that.
Pro-Israel advocates and activists need to understand that we do not have to say things like “ Jews are indigenous BUT….” Or “ The Arabs have rights too….” Of course the Arabs have rights of longstanding presence but those rights are not the same as indigenous rights.
The indigenous argument is important, because its airtight. The only arguments against it come from people who don’t even understand indigenous rights or indigenous status. The people who say “but the Arabs are indigenous” are only doing so because they have been force-fed false history and lies. The Arabs are indigenous… TO ARABIA, the Hejaz where their language, religion, customs and genetics all come from. If they self-identify as Arabs then they cannot self-identify as indigenous to non-Arab lands and that means any land outside the Hejaz, because truthfully the Arab world should be called the “Arabized” world. Indigeneity is site specific – Jews are not indigenous to the entire Middle East any more than Arabs are, any more than Amazigh are or Bedouin. It’s time to start calling out false narratives, not empowering them.
Jews can trace their lineages back several thousand years. They can show the genesis of their spiritual mode and method and trace it back to Israel, their evolution as a people, their cultural and linguistic coalescence, all of it comes right back to Israel, every path, every creek and stream, every hill, all have a story attached, that’s how you know the Jews are home. How can you expect that to be balanced with a group of people who started showing up in the 7th century and never actually built anything other than some scabby villages and a few mosques?
So get off the fence, you don’t need to be – besides some of you have been fence-sitting so long your ass must be getting sore by now. Take a side, take a stand, because we are the good guys and we are tired of having to carry your ass. No more virtue signaling, no more weak and vacillating arguments that give equal time to the enemy. It’s time to tell the truth.
Jews are indigenous to Israel. Jews are from Judea, Arabs are indigenous to Arabia. It’s not complex, it’s not fair, it’s not balanced, it’s simple unfettered truth.
