The Jews: An Indigenous People
Book excerpt from Ben M. Freeman
The Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel.
The forthcoming book, The Jews: An Indigenous People (to be released February 27, 2025), by my friend Ben Freeman, presents the first-ever scholarly work to prove this. It is the definitive study on Jewish indigeneity. It is currently available for pre-order here.
The following is an excerpt from the final chapter, explaining why we should view Zionism as the Jewish indigenous rights movement:
ZIONISM: AN INDIGENOUS RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Ever since the Soviet Union launched its war against Zionism in the second half of the 20th century, the definition and meaning of our movement has been stolen and bastardised by the wider world. The demise of the Soviet Union over three decades ago and the collapse of Soviet-backed regimes elsewhere in the world has had no impact on this assault; if anything, it has gone from strength to strength – a pernicious, living legacy of Stalinism. Zionism has been framed, never more so than since 7 October, as a form of colonialism, white-supremacy and imperialism. The greatest irony of all this is that it was the Soviet Union – not Israel – which operated a form of colonialism and imperialism through- out Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America – a pattern of behaviour which lives on in Putin’s Russia today. The Soviets thus perpetrated a lie about Israel which actually described their own politics and society. These are anti-Jewish lies which are rooted in thousands of years of anti-Jewish tropes, centred on the blood libel and conspiracy fantasy.
Indigeneity is the conceptual framework through which we can understand Jewish identity and our relationship with the Land of Israel, thus, to understand Zionism we must conceptually reframe it to acknowledge it as the indigenous rights movement of the Jewish people. Whatever its different strains and the disputes within the movement, Zionism had one simple and overriding goal: to allow the Jewish people to exercise their right to self-determination in their indigenous home: the Land of Israel. This goal correlates precisely with Article 3 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. ‘Indigenous peoples have the right to self- determination,’ it states. ‘By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’
Zionism is an ideology created by Jews for Jews and it is one which is rooted in thousands of years of Jewish history. Founded by Theodor Herzl, modern political Zionism emerged in the 19th century as a response to the enlightenment, post-emancipatory Jew-hate, and the rise of the nation state. However, throughout 2,000 years of exile, a return to Israel has been a central Jewish focus. In the very first sentence of Der Judenstaat Herzl himself acknowledges the ancient roots of his modern political aspirations. ‘The idea which I have developed in this pamphlet is a very old one: it is the restoration of the Jewish State,’ he writes. Herzl was not wrong. Maccabees I, written 2,000 years ago, affirms the ancient Jewish desire to return to our home: ‘We have neither taken other men’s land, nor holden that which appertaineth to others, but the inheritance of our fathers, which our enemies had wrongfully in possession a certain time. Wherefore we, having opportunity, hold the inheritance of our fathers.’
Likewise, the most important Jewish prayer, the Amidah contains the ‘Ingathering of the Exiles’, which is itself a yearning for the Jews to return home to Zion: ‘Sound the great shofar for our freedom, raise high the banner to gather our exiles, and gather us together from the four quarters of the earth. Blessed are You, Lord, who gathers the dispersed of His people Israel.’
As the late Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, argued:
‘Israel remained the focus of Jewish hopes. Wherever Jews were, they built synagogues, each of which was a symbolic fragment of the Temple in Jerusalem. Wherever they were, they prayed about Jerusalem, facing Jerusalem. They remembered it and wept for it, as the psalm had said, at every time of joy. They never relinquished their claim to the land, and there were places, especially in the north, from which they never left. The Jewish people was the circumference of a circle at whose centre was the Holy Land and Jerusalem the holy city.’
Thus the fashionable assertion that Jews either spontaneously or randomly decided to return to Israel in the 19th century, or today have no connection to the ancient Israelites, is false. Genetically, as well as, of course, culturally, we are related to the ancient Israelites, and our focus on Israel – and desire to return home – throughout our exile was clear.
The continuous nature of Jewish civilisation and its roots in, and focus on, the Land of Israel is key to Jewish indigeneity. For any seri- ous scholar of history or anthropology, the connection between the Jews and the Land of Israel is clear for all to see. However, as has been graphically demonstrated by the response to 7 October, too many people seek to continue the work of the Soviet Union: to deny Jewish indigeneity, portray Jews as a colonial people with no connection to the Land of Israel, and present Zionism as a white, imperialist project.
This is the essence of antizionism – a movement which has made huge inroads into academia, the media, and, tragically, the wider public consciousness – and it is nothing less than the racist delegitimisation of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and to sovereignty. Israel is neither a colonial state nor is it a white-supremacist state. It is neither a symbol nor bastion of Western imperialism. These are anti-Jewish lies told about Israel to demonise it and to bring about its destruction. Islamists and the ‘progressive Left’ treat Israel as the Collective Jew, or the Jew among Nations. And as historian Vernon Bogdanor writes, ‘The older antisemitism insisted that Jews had no place in the national community. The new antisemitism insists that Israel has no place in the international community.’
Antizionism is antithetical to Jewishness. As I examined in Reclaim- ing our Story, the second part of the Jewish Pride trilogy, Jews have internalised Jew-hate for thousands of years. Antizionism exemplifies this process in action in our times. It is perhaps the ultimate expres- sion of internalised Jew-hate. It also illustrates one of the key manifestations of internalised anti-Jewishness: deployment. In the 15th and 16th centuries, some Jews converted to Christianity and then spent their lives demonising Jews. Today, antizionist Jews aren’t content to simply reject Israel. Instead, they deploy their Jewishness as a weapon to provide a sheen of respectability and legitimacy to Jew-hate focused on Israel. In other words, they kosher antizionism. Antizionism is an illogical position for Jews to take. After all, who are Jews without Israel? Who are any indigenous people without their native lands? It is impossible to separate the Jews from Israel. We must be clear to those Jews who are so warped by Jew-hate that they shed this connection. They have strayed too far, and unless they make amends they have no place among us. We may be diverse in our practices and beliefs, but antizionism is simply not a legitimate expression of Jewish identity.
And just as we must deepen our understanding of our identity as Jews, we must also deepen our understanding of Israel and our connection to it. Understanding Zionism as the indigenous rights movement is crucial – both for ourselves and the wider world. We have to accurately describe our experiences, our history and our relationships. The United Nations’ position on the right to self-determination is rooted in the notion that an indigenous people have the right to define their own destiny and to create a society in their image. To be masters of their own destiny. This is what the Jewish people have done in Israel since 1948. It is an act of decolonisation unprecedented in world history. Never before has an indigenous people been colonised and exiled from their land and then able to reclaim their sovereignty 2,000 years later.
‘Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired,’ Article 26 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples declares.8 The Australian scholar Julie Cassidy terms this notion ‘reversion’. ‘The sovereignty of the dispossessed peoples continues, awaiting reversion, despite the loss of territory and even total illegal annexation,’ she argues. ‘[W]here people have been forcibly subjugated, their sovereign title continues in abeyance and can later be restored. Even a state which has been totally extinguished can resume its sovereignty when the resurrected “new” state and the old pre-colonization state are identical.’ This was the goal of Zionism and its campaign to reclaim sovereignty in the Jewish indigenous land. It is also key to understanding our legal rights to the Land of Israel. Jews never ceded or relinquished sovereignty. We did not voluntarily abandon the land. Instead, the land was conquered and, as such, stolen from us. Of course, the Roman Empire, which was responsible for taking the land, no longer exists, and, before the Jews were finally able to reclaim it, our homeland changed hands on multiple occa- sions. However, none of this changes the fact that the land was stolen and the claim to indigeneity does not simply expire over time.
Scholar Jeremy Waldron cites the Jewish right to the Land of Israel as an example of this reversion, stating: ‘It is also believed the steps taken by the United Nations towards the establishment of the State of Israel only reinforced the legitimate claims of the Jews to their historical rights. Prior to Israel’s re-entry into these territories, it has been suggested the occupants (i.e., Arabian and Jordanian States) were unlawful belligerents, who therefore acquired no legal title to the country, despite its annexation. In line with this suggestion, many in the international community saw Israel’s return to be a legitimate assertion of the State’s right to exercise full sovereignty over its kindred lands.’
In creating modern Zionism, and re-establishing Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, the Jews reclaimed what is ours and what was stolen from us thousands of years ago. As we saw previously, in the same manner that the early Zionists bought land in Eretz Yisrael from Turkish landowners, in 2022, the Chickahominy Tribe purchased 944-acres of their ancestral lands using a $3.5 million state grant, regaining sovereignty for the first time since the 17th century. On this momentous occasion, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, stated: ‘Returning this historically significant parcel of land to the Chickahominy is one way to recognize tribal sovereignty, honor their rich history and ensure that the tribal nation has a place where they can continue their sacred traditions and share their stories.’ Similarly, Assistant Chief Wayne Adkins argued: ‘This is a repatriation of the historically significant land and rich culture of our people, and pays respect to a history that for too long has been held hostage,’ he said. ‘This gives us a presence back on the river that we came from. We’re coming back. It opens a new era for the tribe to share our history.’ As both Northam and Adkins’ words underline, the relationship which exists between an indigenous people and our land is unique and rich, and it is only with sovereignty in that land that we can fully manifest our specific identities. Like the Chickahominy in their lands, the Jews are not a colonising force who took over vast swathes of land to which we had no claim or connection. We did not seek to homogenise foreign peoples, imposing our culture and our values on them. Supported by the international community who recognised our connection to Israel, we simply took back what was stolen from us. No more, no less. Our aim was encapsulated by Herzl in Der Judenstaat: ‘We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die. And in 1948, thanks to Zionism, the indigenous rights movement of the Jews, this became our reality for the first time in 2,000 years.
The Jews: An Indigenous People (2025) is available for pre-order here.
I just pre-ordered this book!