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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.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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