In the past fifteen years, there has been a significant rise in public discourse, particularly in the English-speaking world, about ‘Jewish indigeneity’ to Palestine. Citing the United Nations working definition, Dani Ishai Behan writes in The Times of Israel blogs: “In anthropological terms, indigeneity pertains to ethnogenesis, i.e. ‘where a people became a people’.... Ashkenazi Jews—and Jews more broadly—meet all of the most important, relevant criteria” (2018). In The Forward, Micha Danzig and Yirmiyahu Danzig write, “Zionism is the first successful indigenous movement of a dispossessed and colonized people regaining sovereignty in their indigenous homeland” (2017). Ryan Bellerose, a Metis activist and Advocacy Coordinator at B’nai Brith Canada, writes in Tablet Magazine, “Archaeology, genealogy, and history all support the Jewish claim to indigeneity” (2017).
Expressions that Palestine is the homeland of Jewish people date back millennia, and Zionism, particularly in its settler-colonial form, has been around for more than a century. So why have claims that Jews are “indigenous” to Palestine become more prevalent in public discourse only recently and not before? This paper, a chapter in my dissertation, examines current public discourses that claim ‘Jewish indigeneity’ to Palestine. My primary sources include newspapers, articles, and blogs (such as The Times of Israel, The Forward, The Jerusalem Post, and others), materials published online by Jewish organizations (such as Chabad, Hillel, B’nai Brith, and others), and some social media content that explicitly discuss ‘Jewish indigeneity’ to Palestine. In tracking the uses of the category of indigeneity, I gather the following information: How does the author define “indigeneity” in general? What evidence does the author use to argue for (or against) ‘Jewish indigeneity’ to Palestine? Does the author address whether or not Palestinians are indigenous, and what arguments or evidence do they use? Does the author argue for or provide evidence of co-indigeneity (of Jews and Palestinians)? Does the author compare Jews to Indigenous peoples? If the author argues against calling Jews indigenous, what argument or evidence do they use?
My research suggests that claims of ‘Jewish indigeneity’ to Palestine include the following justifications: material, etymological, and ritual/liturgical evidence that tie a people (Jews) to a place (Palestine); evidence of ongoing Jewish presence in Palestine; Jewish self-definition as "indigenous" to Palestine; Jewish identity as emerging from Palestine and maintained in exile over thousands of years; ideas about the emergence of a Jewish peoplehood, culture, or nation (often expressed as “ethnogenesis” or “where a people became a people”) in Palestine; and, very often, criteria articulated by the United Nations, particularly in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. While most articulations of indigeneity include criteria of a people’s homeland being controlled by a settler-colonial state and the imposition of settler-colonial practices, many Zionists who use the discourse at the center of my analysis argue that Jewish people, like Indigenous peoples, have experienced genocide, colonization, and dispossession, and interpret the nation-state of Israel as a form of Jewish return (often using language of Land Back, decolonization, and self-determination) rather than a settler-colonial state.
In my analysis of the data, my goal is not to come to particular definitions or reify the category of indigeneity but to show how people are using it and why. Zionist uses of the category of indigeneity are particularly interesting because of the claim that an entity, the nation-state of Israel, widely recognized as a settler-colonial state, is in fact a realization of indigenous sovereignty. I am interested in the implications of appropriating and weaponizing the category of indigeneity—and invoking a universal language of indigenous rights—to describe Jewish people’s relationship to Palestine to serve and justify the existence and actions of the settler-colonial nation-state of Israel and buttress a logic of possession over land and the dispossession and elimination of Palestinians.
Another part of my analysis of this discourse of ‘Jewish indigeneity’ to Palestine is to think through how it operates as a logic of possession. My paper examines how asserting Jewish indigeneity to Palestine bolsters the narrative that the nation-state of Israel is an anti-colonial or postcolonial state. I examine how the category of indigeneity functions—and is even inverted from its more traditional significations—to justify a possession, an ownership, of land that is quintessential to settler colonialism. I suggest that this logic is counter to the meanings of indigeneity articulated by many Indigenous peoples: indigeneity as relationship/kinship to land, not a possession, and certainly not mass destruction (genocide, ecocide) for the sake of possession. Again, the goal is not to reify categories or essentialize indigeneity as relationship/kinship to land but to examine the interplay between nuanced, local, historically-situated articulations of indigeneity and simplified or reduced versions of it. In my examination of Zionist approaches to indigeneity, I evaluate their immense departure from critical Indigenous articulations of indigeneity as well as how they function as a myth of settler indigeneity, contributing to atrocious settler violence toward Palestinian people and land.
primary sources:
Behan. Dani Ishai. 2018. “Ashkenazi Jews Are Indigenous To Israel, Not Europe.” The Times of Israel, December 25. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ashkenazi-jews-are-indigenous-to-israel-not-europe/.
Danzig, Micha, and Yirmiyahu Danzig. 2017. “The Tribal Case for Israel." The Forward, April 6. https://forward.com/community/368369/the-tribal-case-for-israel/.
Bellerose, Ryan. 2017. “Are Jews Indigenous to the Land of Israel?" Tablet Magazine, February 8. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/bellerose-aboriginal-people.
secondary sources:
Du Bois, W. E. B. [1920] 2014. “The Souls of White Folk.” In Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, 17–29. Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing.
Khalidi, Rashid. 2020. The Hundred Years’ War On Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company.
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. 2015. The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Pappé, Ilan. 2014. The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge. London, UK: Verso.
Wolfe, Patrick. 2006. “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Journal of Genocide Research 8(4): 387–409.
This paper examines the rise of contemporary public discourse in the English-speaking world that makes claims about ‘Jewish indigeneity’ to Palestine. Focusing on online sources, such as newspapers, articles, blogs, materials published by organizations, and social media content, this paper analyzes how authors define indigeneity, the evidence they use to support claims of ‘Jewish indigeneity,’ and whether these claims intersect with other articulations of indigeneity. Ultimately, this paper investigates how the category of indigeneity and the language of universal indigenous rights are appropriated to justify the existence and actions of the settler-colonial nation-state of Israel and deployed to legitimize the possession of Palestine. It analyzes how Zionist ideas of indigeneity reproduce settler ideas about land as possession and function within the framework of the nation-state that fundamentally conflict with critical Indigenous approaches to land as relational, an interconnected web of obligations and responsibilities, in opposition to colonialism and the nation-state.