The Jews, originally known as Hebrews, have maintained a presence in the area once called Canaan (now called Palestine) since antiquity. They are descended from the Canaanites, a semitic people who lived in the Levant during the late second millennium BCE.
Palestine is probably one of the most contested pieces of real estate in human history. It was once part of the Akkadian Empire. Later, it was an important trading partner and tributary state of Egypt before the Bronze Age collapse in the 12th century BCE, out of the ashes of which rose the kingdoms of Judaea and Israel. No kingdom lasts forever, and beginning in the 8thcentury BCE, this coveted land fell over and over to a series of conquerors: Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans. In fact, it is because of the Roman conquest of Israel and Judaea that the region is called Palestine today.
The Bar Kokhba Revolt of 70 CE resulted in mass expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem, as well as a rebranding of Judaea and Israel as Syria Palestina (Syrian Palestine) in an attempt to permanently sever the connection between the Jewish people and their homeland. However, not all Jews were driven from the land. The number of Jews in the area has fluctuated over the centuries. At times, the Jewish presence in Palestine has been miniscule, having been subjected to so many pogroms and expulsions, but it has never been completely extinguished.
While today’s Palestinian Arabs can also trace their lineage back to the original Canaanites and claim indigeneity to the area, Hamas’ claim that the Israelis are colonists stealing Islamic lands is patently false. Islam was never even a presence in the Middle East until the 7thcentury CE.
At the time that the first caliph, Umar, rode into Jerusalem to accept the city’s surrender, it was predominately Christian. Under Roman and Byzantine rule, Jews had been banished from their holy city except for specific religious celebrations a few days a year, so they must have been happy at first when Umar entered Jerusalem and proclaimed that Jews were free to return. That happiness was likely short lived since the Pact of Umar came into effect soon after.
Although the Pact in its original form is between the conquering Muslims and the Christian majority, it applied to Jews as well, since they were also “People of the Book.” This treaty created a second-class citizen known as the “dhimmi.” People are told now how wonderful life was for non-Muslims under Islamic rule, but the truth is that life as a dhimmi was miserable due to crippling (jizya) taxes, constant demoralization, and the threat of pogroms.
Muslims were encouraged by their leadership to move to conquered lands and exploit the resources there. Between the Pact of Umar grinding people down until they either left Palestine or converted to Islam, the pogroms, and the influx of Muslim settlers, the demographics of the area gradually shifted to an Islamic majority. Arabic displaced Aramaic and Greek and became the lingua franca of the region.
Political Islam claimed Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount as its own, outlawing Jewish prayers on the premises and constructing the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. Christians were able to wrest control of this sacred place from the Muslim conquerors in 1099 during the First Crusade, and they controlled Jerusalem for 88 years. Eventually the Kingdom of Jerusalem fell under Islamic control once more in 1187 when Saladin’s army marched into the city. Islamic control of the Temple Mount was re-established and made permanent by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf.
Of the various religious and ethnic groups currently inhabiting Palestine, the Jews have the deepest and oldest roots, going back over 3000 years. Eventually, most of the area became Christian, but Christianity was born in Jewish lands, brought to the Jewish people by one of their own. It was not brought by invaders; rather, the Roman and Byzantine invaders were eventually converted to Christianity by the people they conquered.
The Muslim armies that conquered Palestine in the 7th century CE were composed of people not indigenous to the area. They were foreign invaders who came in with a foreign ideology. During the Arab expansion in the Middle East, Arabic-speaking people of the Islamic caliphate were encouraged to settle in newly-conquered areas and take advantage of the local resources. Indigenous peoples were killed, converted to Islam, driven out, or made dhimmis. Local language and culture were forcefully displaced by Arab language and Islamic culture.
A political and class system was created that separated people into groups and discriminated against them based on religion, creating an upper class of Muslims and a lower class of everyone else in accordance with Islamic political doctrine and Mohammed’s example. Political Islam also appropriated the most holy site in Judaism, the Temple Mount, a highly psychologically demoralizing move meant to send a clear message about who was in control.
People accepted Islamic civilization not because it was superior but because the cost of maintaining their own religion and culture simply became too high to bear. It was a case of, “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
Settler colonialism is defined as a type of colonialism where the indigenous population is displaced by settlers who form a permanent colony in their stead. This definition accurately describes what happened to Jews in Palestine and to ignore this history and call Jews the colonizers is intellectually dishonest. To repeatedly exile Jews from their homeland, dispersing them far and wide and then claim the returning diaspora has no genetic lineage from Palestine is also dishonest.
Israel’s struggle to exist is not settler colonialism. It is an on-again, off-again response to Political Islam’s attempt to conquer the original Jewish homeland.
March 11, 2026