The True Palestinians

The True "Palestinians"

Where do Jews come from? Antisemites push the narrative that Jews are mere ‘occupiers’ of the land of Israel, pushing out the indigenous ‘Palestinians.’ Though faith is an integral part of the Jewish culture, Jews are not a religion. The working definition of religion means ideas spread across borders and the need to seek converts. Jews do neither.

There are only three actual religions: Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Jews, Assyrians, Druze, Yazidis, and Hindus are races of people with strong faiths, culture, and customs. Jews emerged from the Semitic tribes in Israel and formed a nation 4,000 years ago. From a historical angle, Jews created monotheism and built a culture and society around that concept. From a faith-based angle, Jews accepted monotheism and then created a society to support that then new concept.

Jews emerged from the Semitic tribes in the Hill Country (Judea & Samaria) of Canaan. Jews then expanded outward to other parts of what became Israel. The 12 tribes geographically were located in what is now Northern Israel, Southern Israel, in parts of today’s Jordan, and in the Judea & Samaria region. This is important to note as the 1920 Mandate of Palestine map of the Jewish homeland included the entire region of Palestine, a colonizer term for Israel from 136 AD – 1948) to reflect the Jewish tribes’ provenance.

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All modern genetic Jews trace back to either the Kingdom of Israel (the Assyrian Exile beginning in 722 BC relocated Jews throughout the Assyrian Empire) or the Kingdom of Judah.

Today, some Persian Jews, Kurdish Jews, Bukharian Jews, Azeri Jews, and even a percentage of the Pashtun tribe in Afghanistan trace back to the Kingdom of Israel. Other genetic Jews can trace their lineage back to the Tribes of Judah (Ashkenaz, Sephardic, and many Mizrahi Jews). The very name ‘Jews’ stems from Judea, but there was no real difference between the Israelites and the Judeans. Just different leadership. In fact, the two names were interchangeable. When the Kingdom of Israel was exiled, the remaining Judean tribes renamed the entire region, ‘Judea.’

Jews were always warriors, (still are) and fought against other Jews when needed (Maccabees launched several Jewish Civil Wars against Hellenized Jews), in addition to outside adversaries.

Enemies were numerous; not only regionally, but also ruthless empires who wished to utilize Israel as a crucial crossroad point into other regions. Jews withstood many who wanted to subjugate them, but one enemy in particular proved to be too mighty to withstand: the Roman Empire. Many falsely believe that the Romans were antisemitic, but they were not. True antisemitism did not emerge until the rise of Christianity.

The Romans punished any group which stood in their way, and the Jews, who cost the Romans more men and money to fight than any other people, were punished viciously. Many Jews were taken as slaves after the Romans destroyed the second Temple in 70 CE. But the Romans were not finished punishing Jews; the final retribution was that after the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, the Romans dealt one ‘final’ or so they thought, blow to Jews and renamed the land of Israel, Syria Palestina after one of the Jews’ most bitter rivals, the Philistines, who were a seafaring people living in today’s Gaza. The Greeks at the time also used the word Palestina to describe Israel.

There were no Arabs in Israel at the time, as Arabs lived in the Arabian Peninsula and had not made their way to Israel as of yet. That migration came later as Islam began to spread.

Though Jews remained in Israel and were subjects of the Roman Empire, numerous Jews were now in the Diaspora, but quite a few Jews were left in Israel and it was there that they were referred to, for thousands of years, as Palestinians, the colonizer term for Jews IN Palestine from 136 AD – 1948. Many Jewish priestly class members ended up as farmers in the Northern Israel town of Peki’in, while others hid in the mountains and hills of Judea & Samaria. Later on, Jews returned to Jerusalem, lived in Ashkelon, Akko, Haifa, Tiberias, Hebron, Sefad, and Gaza. Therefore, there was always a continual presence of Jews in the land of Israel. Not one year saw Israel Jew-free. Jews were living in Israel under every single conqueror: from the Romans to the British.