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Indigenous Zionism Is Peoplehood Zionism
Israel’s First Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (C) stands under a portrait depicting Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, as he reads Israel’s declaration of Independence in Tel Aviv, May 14, 1948, in this handout picture released April 29, 2008, by the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO). Photo: REUTERS/Kluger Zoltan/GPO/Handout
Zion has figured powerfully in the Jewish imagination for millennia, at least from the time of the Babylonian exile, and the pre-exilic Psalms. Enter the “-ism” of the late 19th century, when Theodor Herzl translated that longing into a political movement — Zionism.
Even since Herzl, Zionism has existed in various forms — whether named or simply as an idea: Labour Zionism, Religious Zionism, Political Zionism, Practical Zionism, Cultural Zionism, Christian Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, and more. What most have in common is the conviction that the Jewish people have an ineradicable connection to the Land of Israel.
Enter Indigenous Zionism: a Zionism that recognizes that such connection is an indigenous bond, one in which Jewish Peoplehood is seen to have been forged through the relationship between land, ancestry, Hebrew writings, and the language itself, from which arise cultural and spiritual practices.
In the current torrent of academic fashions and activist orthodoxies, one idea that has captured the imagination of progressive movements is settler colonialism and the associated rhetoric of decolonization.
This theoretical framework purports to explain global history through a tidy dichotomy of settlers and indigenous peoples, of Western power and non‑Western victimhood. Yet when that model is applied beyond the contexts in which it was originally developed, especially in regions with complex histories, it does more harm than good.
Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the debate over Israel and Zionism. What is too often caricatured as settler colonialism is better understood through the lens of indigenous peoplehood, observing parallels that exist between Jewish historical experience and the stories of other ancient peoples. In this sense, Indigenous Zionism is above all Peoplehood Zionism: a recognition of ancestral connection, continuous presence, and deeply rooted land-based identity.
At its core, Zionism is the expression of a people’s right to self‑determination in its ancestral homeland. For the Jewish people, this is not an abstract political invention of the modern era, but rather the resumption of an identity shaped over millennia in the Land of Israel.
Long before Europe’s age of imperial expansion, Jews maintained a continuous presence in the Levant, a presence expressed culturally, spiritually, linguistically, and demographically. Settler colonial theory, which originates largely in Western academic circles, typically defines settlers as intruders acting on behalf of an external metropolis to subjugate indigenous populations; this definition simply does not fit the historical trajectory of the Jewish people in their homeland.
Contrary to reductionist narratives, Jews did not arrive en masse as white Europeans with the trappings of Western economic power. Firstly, there remained throughout centuries of exile, a small presence of Jews in the land. In Māori thought, this is the concept of “keeping the fires burning.”
The return of Eastern European and Russian Jews during the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a two-fold response. On the one hand, Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine was legally enabled within an imperial reform context, whereupon, Jews embraced the opportunity of re-establishing themselves as a people in their ancestral land. On the other hand, it was — in so many cases — a direct reaction to persecution, marginalization, and threats to their existence. These were populations motivated by survival-driven desperation, not imperialist ambition. Whichever the driver, Jews overwhelmingly regarded the Land of Israel as the ancient cradle of their people, not as foreign soil. Even Arab leaders of the time acknowledged the Jewish historical connection. This historical reality is crucial: it differentiates a movement of return rooted in indigeneity from the archetype of colonial conquest.
A core problem with applying settler colonialism to Israel is that the theory collapses complex histories into a binary moral narrative: oppressor versus oppressed. Few human histories are so simple, and the Middle East is a region where multiple layers of civilization, conquest, displacement, and cultural survival overlap.
Indeed, the Arab conquests of the seventh to ninth centuries brought a sweeping linguistic and religious transformation across the region, one that subsumed many ancient peoples. Kurdish, Assyrian, Chaldean, and Amazigh communities, among others, maintained continuous links to their lands yet were subjected to cultural and political marginalization. This complexity underscores a fundamental flaw in settler colonial frameworks when applied universally. Indigeneity is not merely dispossession or victimhood; it is about genealogy, continuous presence, language, ritual, and identity anchored in a specific geography.
The broad misapplication of settler colonialism has very real political consequences. Once adopted unquestioningly by activists and academic institutions, it provides a convenient but woefully simplistic moral certitude: all historical wrongs arise from a single dynamic, and dismantling alleged structures of colonial power is supposedly the path to justice.
In practice, this framework frequently morphs from analytical model into ideological dogma. It becomes a “religion of grievance” with its own categories of original sin, penance, and absolution, where dissolving complexity via the dogma of colonial guilt eclipses other narratives of agency, resilience, and reconciliation. Those who resist this mode of thought are not simply arguing for historical nuance; they are confronting a contemporary orthodoxy that has profound consequences for real peoples and nations.
Consider, for example, the persistent accusation that Israel commits genocide against Palestinians. This claim often rests on rhetoric rather than careful historical and legal analysis, and well established definitions. The “religion of grievance” leads accusers to ignore the atrocities committed by non‑state actors such as Hamas, which has openly declared its intent to destroy the Jewish State. The machinery of international opinion, when driven by such problematic and simplistic narratives, tends to silence any call for impartial and disciplined inquiry.
Indigenous Zionism or peoplehood Zionism recognizes that nations are more than juridical entities. They are living communities formed by shared history, culture, memory, and connection to land. For Jews, this peoplehood has been further forged by exile, persecution, revival, and more recently statehood. In many respects, such experiences are consistent with what indigenous peoples around the world know intimately: that identity persists beyond displacement, and that belonging is more than presence. It is this peoplehood — not colonial conquest — that underpins the legitimacy of Zionism as a movement of self‑determination.
Further, Indigeneity is not contingent upon whether individual members of a community consciously affirm that identity. A Jew, Māori, or Native American person may choose not to self-identify as Indigenous for a range of reasons: cultural dislocation, assimilation pressures, internalized stigma, or the mistaken belief that indigeneity is synonymous with marginalization rather than cultural continuity and pride, or progressive politics rather than an authentic identification. Yet such individual positioning does not determine the status itself. indigeneity refers to the historical emergence, formation, and ongoing development of a people in relation to a specific ancestral land. It is a collective, relational, and genealogical reality, not merely a matter of personal declaration.
Detractors may object that indigeneity, like Zionism itself, is a political construct. Indeed, both movements have a political element, developed in response to historical circumstances. However, at the core there is a deeper meaning that transcends politics and historical contingency, which speaks to the essential element of peoplehood and its genesis in a particular place.
In an age of narrative wars, Jews have been falsely accused of being foreign white colonizers. The denial of indigeneity to Jewish people maps directly onto the experience of other Indigenous peoples, in which ideologies formed in the Western academy seeks to determine identity. Māori academic Linda Tuhiwai Smith emphasized that Indigenous Peoples must define and assert their own realities: “Our survival, our humanity, our worldview and language, our imagination and spirit, our very place in the world depends on our capacity to act for ourselves, to engage in the world and the actions of our colonizers, to face them head on.”
Jews can take their place in the Indigenous world, forerunners of decolonization, having regained sovereignty and restored their Indigenous language. They will write their own story rather than have it imposed on them by their ideological opponents.
To those ignorant of the deep layers of history involved, the accusation of settler colonialism may seem persuasive. To those who have examined the evidence, and who understand the dangers of flattening complex identities into politically expedient constructs, such claims fall short. Indigenous Zionism is not an oxymoron; it is the affirmation that the Jewish people’s claim to their land arises from continuity, culture, and unique identity — the hallmarks of genuine indigenous connection.
In a world increasingly shaped by monolithic narratives, reclaiming the richness of human histories — including the Jewish story — is not an indulgence in academic detail. It is a defense of a people’s right to define themselves on their own terms, rooted in their own histories. Indigenous Zionism, then, is simply peoplehood Zionism — an assertion that identity and belonging are not abstractions to be judged or negated by a fashionable but woefully superficial ideological dogma, but truths grounded in the enduring experience of a people with their land.
Dr. Sheree Trotter is Māori (Te Arawa). She earned her PhD in history from the University of Auckland, is the Director of Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem, a Fellow of London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, and Alumna of the ISGAP-Oxford Institute.
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German Antisemitism Commissioner Leaves the Left Party Over Anti-Israel Stance, Lack of Support Amid Death Threats
Andreas Büttner (Die Linke), photographed during the state parliament session. The politician was nominated for the position of Brandenburg’s antisemitism commissioner. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa via Reuters Connect
Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, has resigned from the Left Party, citing a rise in antisemitism within the ranks, relentless personal attacks, and a party climate that has become intolerable.
“I struggled with this decision for a long time, as I have felt a deep connection to the party over many years,” Büttner wrote in a letter to the party leadership, as reported by German media.
“But I have reached a point where I must acknowledge that I can no longer remain a member of this party without betraying my own convictions,” he continued.
According to several German media reports, the commissioner, who had been a member of the Left Party since 2015, said he was resigning over the party’s handling of antisemitism, internal expulsion proceedings aimed at removing him, and relentless personal attacks.
“The fight against antisemitism is a task that transcends party lines,” Büttner wrote in his letter. “All the more shocking for me is what I have had to witness within my own party for years.”
He criticized the Left Party’s rejection of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, noting that the party falsely regards it as a tool to repress protest while continuing to relativize antisemitic rhetoric.
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016.
Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
In his letter, Büttner also condemned the Left Party in Lower Saxony, a federal state in northwestern Germany, for its position on Zionism, insisting that challenging Israel’s right to exist is unacceptable — especially after the state convention passed resolutions branding Israel a “genocidal state” and an “apartheid state.”
“These resolutions are no longer acceptable to me,” he said.
In recent years, Büttner has faced not only external threats but also a sustained campaign of insults and defamation from members within his own party.
“The way my own party has handled attacks against me is particularly troubling,” Büttner wrote in his letter. “Instead of clear solidarity, I have too often experienced silence.”
Federal party leader Jan van Aken expressed regret over Büttner’s resignation but rejected any accusations of antisemitism within the Left Party, reiterating that the party “stands unequivocally against antisemitism.”
Earlier this year, Büttner endured two personal attacks within a single week, the second escalating into a death threat.
The Brandenburg state parliament received a letter threatening Büttner’s life, with the words “We will kill you” and an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
A former police officer, Büttner took office as commissioner for antisemitism in 2024 and has faced repeated attacks since.
In the week prior to this latest attack, Büttner’s private property in Templin — a town approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — was targeted in an arson attack, and a red, inverted Hamas triangle was spray-painted on his house.
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the attack, marking what was at the time latest assault against him in the past 16 months.
In August 2024, swastikas and other antisemitic symbols and threats were also spray-painted on his personal car.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Germany has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to newly released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in the country reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials have noted that the real number of antisemitic crimes registered by police is likely much higher, as many do not get reported.
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Over 100 Groups Call on University of California to Address Campus Antisemitism
Illustrative: Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
Over 100 Jewish advocacy groups have signed a petition imploring the University of California (UC) system to confront faculty antisemitism amid the fallout over a new AMCHA Initiative report which argued that professors accelerated the campus antisemitism crisis by promoting the use of their platforms to promote anti-Jewish tropes in the name of opposing Israel and Zionism.
“We urge the [UC Board of Regents] to act now: stop faculty and academic units from using UC authority, resources, classrooms, and UC-branded platforms to advance political advocacy as institutional practice by strictly enforcing UC’s existing rules, and strengthening them where needed,” said the petition, which has so far amassed 124 signatures from groups, as well as 4,000 individuals. “This is not about policing faculty speech. It is about enforcing the crucial boundary between private speech and institutional advocacy.”
It continued, “When that boundary disappears, academic norms break down and students face harassment, intimidation, and exclusion. We call on you to protect students, restore the university’s academic integrity, and rebuild public trust in the University of California.”
The petition’s signatories include Alums for Campus Fairness, the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, The Lawfare Project, Zionist Organization of America, and Students Supporting Israel (SSI).
The AMCHA Initiative report, titled “When Faculty Take Sides: How Academic Infrastructure Drives Antisemitism at the University of California” examined the “antisemitism crisis” across UC campuses since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. It included dozens of examples of faculty antisemitism, including their calling for driving Jewish institutions off campus; founding pro-Hamas, Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters; and endorsing institutional adoption of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The University of California system is a microcosm of faculty antisemitism, the AMCHA Initiative explained in the exhaustive 158-page report, which focused on the Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz campuses.
“The report documents how concentrated networks of faculty activists on each campus, often operating through academic units and faculty-led advocacy formations, convert institutional platforms into vehicles for organized anti-Zionist advocacy and mobilization,” the report said, adding that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) alone holds at least 115 faculty endorsers of the BDS movement, according to the report. Meanwhile, dozens of its academic departments issued statements of support of the pro-Hamas encampments which struck college campuses during the 2023-2024 academic school year and became the hubs of antisemitic assault and discrimination.
It also said that FJP chapters offered more than supportive words, “defending and helping orchestrate boycott-aligned activism (including encampment demands), seeking to deplatform Israeli speakers, and filing an amicus brief … that denied Zionism’s place within Jewish identity and defended exclusionary encampment conduct toward Zionist Jewish students, including expulsion from campus spaces.”
UC Office of the President spokesperson Rachel Zaentz reportedly said the UC system was taking AMCHA’s report “seriously” and reviewing it. However, UC spokesperson Dan Mogulof expressed concerns about the methodology used to compile the data.
“While we appreciate this organization’s dedication to confronting antisemitism, it is unfortunate that no apparent effort was made to seek information directly from the campus and/or confirm information, some of which appears to have been gathered from unreliable sources,” Mogulof told The Daily Californian.
The AMCHA report followed previous studies revealing the extent of faculty misconduct in higher education promoting anti-Israel animus and even outright antisemitism.
In February, The Algemeiner learned that, according to a lawsuit, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University assigned a Jewish student a project on “what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group.”
Similar incidents have come at a fast clip since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre: a Cornell University professor praised the terrorist group’s atrocities, which included mass sexual assaults; a Columbia University professor exalted Hamas terrorists who paraglided into a music festival to murder Israeli youth as the “air force of the Palestinian resistance”; and a Harvard University FJP chapter shared an antisemitic cartoon which depicted Zionists as murderers of Blacks and Arabs.
The AMCHA Initiative has explored faculty antisemitism before.
In September 2024, the organization published a groundbreaking study which showed that FJP is fueling antisemitic hate crimes, efforts to impose divestment on endowments, and the collapse of discipline and order on college campuses. Using data analysis, AMCHA researchers said they were able to establish a correlation between a school’s hosting an FJP chapter and anti-Zionist and antisemitic activity. For example, the researchers found that the presence of FJP on a college campuses increased by seven times “the likelihood of physical assaults and Jewish students” and increased by three times the chance that a Jewish student would be subject to threats of violence and death.
FJP, AMCHA’s researchers added, also “prolonged” the duration of “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” protests on college campuses, in which students occupied a section of campus illegally and refused to leave unless administrators capitulated to demands for a boycott of Israel. They said that such demonstrations lasted over four and a half times longer where FJP faculty — who, they noted, spent 9.5 more days protesting than those at non-FJP schools — were free to influence and provide logistic and material support to students.
Additionally, FJP facilitated the proposing and adopting of student government resolutions demanding acceptance of the BDS movement — which aims to isolate Israel culturally, financially, and diplomatically as the first step toward its destruction. Wherever FJP was, the researchers said, BDS was “4.9 times likely to pass” and “nearly 11 times more likely to be included in student demands,” evincing, they continued, that FSJP plays an outsized role in radicalizing university students at the more than 100 schools — including Harvard University, Brown University, Princeton University, the University of Michigan, and Yale University — where it is active.
“One of the important functions of these groups is to give academic legitimacy to the notion that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and that’s a hugely important trope being trafficked on campuses right now,” AMCHA Initiative executive director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner at the time.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Support for Israel Craters Among US Democrats, According to New Poll
“Hands Off Lebanon & Iran” Protest, March 8, 2026, Chicago, Illinois. Photo: Screenshot
A new national poll reveals the extent to which support for Israel among Democratic voters in the US has dropped dramatically since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of the Jewish state, a trend that has raised alarm among analysts and pro-Israel advocates who warn that the long-standing bipartisan foundation of the US–Israel alliance may be weakening.
According to a new NBC News survey, just 13 percent of Democrats now have a positive view of Israel, a massive dip from 2023, when the figure stood at 34 percent before the war in Gaza. As for those who view the Jewish state negatively, the percentage skyrocketed from just 35 percent in 2023 to a majority, 57 percent, today.
In contrast, the poll indicates that Republican support for Israel remains overwhelmingly strong, although not to the same extent as before the Oct. 7 attack. According to the survey 54 percent of Republican voters continue to view Israel positively, a nine-point drop from 2023. The percentage of those who view the Jewish state negatively increased slightly from 12 percent to 18 percent,
The poll also reveals a sharp generational divide in attitudes toward Israel, with support declining across every age group but falling most steeply among younger Americans. Among Americans aged 65 and older, support for Israel slipped modestly over the past three years, declining from 64 percent in 2023 to 55 percent in 2026. During the same period, negative views toward Israel rose from 12 percent to 21 percent.
The drop was more pronounced among Americans aged 50 to 64. In that group, support for Israel fell from 59 percent in 2023 to just 37 percent in 2026, while unfavorable views doubled, climbing from 15 percent to 30 percent.
Among those aged 35 to 49, support declined from 34 percent in 2023 to 20 percent in 2026. At the same time, 43 percent of respondents in this age bracket reported negative feelings toward Israel.
Younger Americans expressed the most critical attitudes. In the 18–34 age group, only 13 percent said they support Israel, while 63 percent reported unfavorable views.
The results highlight a growing partisan and generational divide in American attitudes toward the closest US ally in the Middle East, with Republicans largely framing Israel’s recent military actions as a legitimate exercise of self-defense against terrorism. Analysts note that this alignment reflects broader trends within the Republican Party, where support for Israel has become an increasingly central element of foreign policy identity and where sympathy for Israel significantly outweighs sympathy for the Palestinians.
For decades, Israel enjoyed broad support across the American political spectrum. While Republicans have generally been more strongly aligned with Israel in recent years, Democratic leaders historically remained supportive of the Jewish state’s security and its strategic partnership with the United States. The latest polling, however, suggests that this bipartisan consensus is under growing strain.
Some supporters of Israel argue that the polling shift reflects the success of a sustained global campaign to delegitimize Israel following the Oct. 7 massacre. They note that Israel’s military operations in Gaza are aimed at dismantling Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that openly calls for Israel’s destruction and continues to embed its fighters within civilian areas.
The political implications could be significant. US military aid and diplomatic support for Israel have historically depended on bipartisan backing in Congress. If Democratic public opinion continues to move away from Israel, analysts say it could influence future policy debates over arms transfers, diplomatic support at the United Nations, and the broader US approach to the Israeli-Palestinian
At the same time, many Democratic lawmakers remain firmly supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself.
A major analysis of Democratic voters released last week suggests that despite increasingly vocal criticism of Israel in some activist circles, especially among the party’s youth, the broader Democratic electorate remains largely supportive of the US–Israel relationship.