Weaponizing Indigeneity: Zionist Public Discourses on Possessing Palestine

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.