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Do the Jewish People Know That Our People Never Actually Left the Land of Israel?
An aerial view of the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, describes how anti-Zionists in academia have systematically challenged the moral basis of the Jewish/Zionist story. He exhorts us, the Jews of the world, to mount a credible defense of our story.
But do we Jews know our own story?
Edward Robinson, a prominent American archeologist of the 1800s, did not think so. Robinson was the first to identify the archeological ruins of Bar’am, a site in northern Galilee near the Lebanese border, as synagogues. The primary structure, built in the third century CE, was still in use in the 13th century.
While Robinson knew the truth 170 years ago, the common understanding, in both the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds, even today, is that the Jews, driven from their home by the Roman capture of Jerusalem in 70 CE, were scattered to all points of the globe, only to truly return to their ancestral home after 2,000 years of wandering.
In that case, who wrote the Jerusalem Talmud? In fact, the writers (including several sages mentioned in the Passover Haggadah) were living in the Holy Land after the destruction of the Temple.
And what about the four additional Jewish revolts that took place after the destruction of the Temple, the last one against Emperor Heraclius in the seventh century CE? How can you have Jewish revolts without Jews?
Moreover, an autonomous Jewish Patriarchate existed until the year 425 CE, more than a century after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Rabbi Lee I. Levine, an American-Israeli archeologist and historian, notes that the Jewish Patriarch enjoyed extensive prestige and recognition, equivalent to that of a king.
The ruins of 100 synagogues built after 70 CE are witnesses to continuing Jewish life in the Holy Land. While a majority are in Galilee, they exist throughout the land. Several were imposing structures with elaborate mosaic floors. Huqoq, a recently excavated synagogue site with magnificent mosaics, dates to the fifth century CE. The mosaics survived because a 14th century synagogue was built over the ruins of the earlier one.
In later centuries, the Jewish population increased and decreased as a function of immigration, natural disasters, pogroms, and disease. While many Jews drifted from one exile to another, others stayed on, joined from time to time by returning exiles. In fact, the Jewish people never left the Middle East, and this brings up another part of the Jewish story often ignored — the story of the Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews.
Seventy-seven years ago, North Africa and the Middle East, outside the British Mandate of Palestine, contained almost a million Jews. With the establishment of Israel, however, they were subject to violent persecution and expulsion. Most ended up in Israel, where today they and their descendants make up more than one-half of the 7.7 million Jews in the country.
Then there is the history of the Jews of Iran, who experienced forced conversion and violent pogroms throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. The 1903 Kishinev Pogrom in Russia received worldwide attention. Who knows about the 1910 pogrom in Shiraz, Iran (then Persia), during which 12 Jews were killed, 50 injured, and the entire community of 6,000 robbed and made homeless?
One more aspect of the Jewish story gets little attention — unlike other nationalisms, modern Zionism was, and still is, a rescue mission. Every Zionist leader from Herzl onwards was aware that millions of European Jews were in imminent physical danger. The fact that modern Zionism arose in the 1880s, with the onset of violent pogroms in Russia, is not a coincidence.
The Jewish story is one of an oppressed people that never stopped inhabiting its ancestral homeland.
Jews in Israel are not colonizers. They are indigenous to the Land of Israel, and to the Middle East. Israel is not a European colonial entity. It is a diverse society and less than 50% of Israeli Jews are European in origin.
Finally, the development of modern Zionism was not an “option.” It was a necessity, a survivalist imperative, progressively compulsory due to increasingly incendiary antisemitism. In some ways, things haven’t really changed since then.
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.
The post Do the Jewish People Know That Our People Never Actually Left the Land of Israel? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.