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Jews Are Indigenous to Israel; They Are Not Colonizers
“Decolonize Palestine” and “Colonizers Back to Europe” are the demands of pro-Palestinian activists at protests that erupted in North America and Europe after October 7. Based on the lie that Israel is a European colonial-settler enterprise, these slogans ignore the fact that more than 50 percent of Jews living in Israel today are from the Middle East, many violently expelled from the Arab/Muslim world after the establishment of Israel. Moreover, these slogans deny the historic connection between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people, and fail to acknowledge the continuous presence of Jews in the Holy Land through the centuries.
Indiscriminate rocket attacks from Lebanon on northern Israel, by the terrorist group Hezbollah, have accompanied the current war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. On reading that Kibbutz Bar’am, located close to the border, was one of many Israeli sites evacuated, I remembered my first visit to Israel 45 years ago. It was a 10-month sabbatical visit to Haifa with my wife and children.
We bought a small car that we used extensively for day trips to archeological sites, mainly in Galilee, and the very first site we visited, Bar’am, stunned me. Here was the ruin of a large synagogue, an architectural gem, built in the 3rd century CE, and used as a synagogue for centuries, perhaps as late as the 13th century!
There were other wonders, such as the synagogue at Korazim, built between the 3rd and 5th centuries, and in use until at least the 700s. There also was the elaborate mosaic synagogue floor at Beit Alpha, built in the 6th century (as indicated by an inscription), and in use until it was destroyed by an earthquake in 749.
The remains of at least 80 synagogues, built after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE have been identified, and while most are in Galilee, others have been discovered throughout the land.
I had initially been under the impression that Jewish life in the Holy Land more or less ceased after the fall of Masada in 70 CE. I knew the 70 CE date was not a sharp demarcation. After all, the Bar Kokhba revolt, an even greater challenge to Roman rule than the one that ended at Masada, occurred 70 years later, and the meeting of rabbis in Bnei Brak portrayed in the Passover Haggadah must have taken place around the year 100. Yet, the ruins I’ve described indicate that a large and prosperous Jewish community persisted for hundreds of years after the destruction of the Temple.
I was not the only one blown away by the Bar’am ruins. Edward Robinson, one of the first to identify the Bar’am ruins as synagogues (there were two), who was an important Bible archeologist of the 1800s, made the same point in a book (written with Eli Smith) called Biblical Researches in Palestine (1856).
Encountering the synagogues at Bar’am (Kafr Bir’im), they wrote “The size, the elaborate sculptured ornament, and the splendour of these edifices do not belong to a scattered and down-trodden people.” They add, “All these circumstances would seem to mark a condition of prosperity and wealth and influence among the Jews of Galilee in that age, of which neither their own historians, nor any other, have given us any account.”
The comment about the lack of attention to this period of Jewish life is still true today, 168 years later. One of the only news articles about the history of the Bar’am synagogues that I could find was one by Joe Yudin (Barams-ancient-synagogue The Jerusalem Post, 2012).
In fact, Jews formed a majority of the population of Palestine until at least the 5th century. An autonomous Jewish Patriarchate existed until the year 425, and the Jerusalem Talmud was written there (mostly in Galilee) during the early centuries of the Common Era. Two additional Jewish revolts, against Byzantine rule in the 4th and 7th centuries, also indicate that a substantial Jewish population lived in Palestine.
While it is true that from the sixth or seventh century until modern times, Jews formed a minority of the population of Palestine, periodic immigration (aliyah) ensured that their numbers were appreciable throughout the years. Besides, indigeneity is not dependent on numbers, and Palestinian indigenous status does not invalidate the Jewish one.
Palestine is the name given Judea by the Romans in 136 CE, as punishment after the failed Bar Kokhba revolt. The Arab conquest of Palestine took place in 637 CE, when Umar Al Khattab captured Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire. Now, in a deliberate inversion of the truth, the indigenous homeland of the Jews is ‘occupied’ when Jews live there.
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, who taught at the 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.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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