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‘White Colonizers:’ Defaming Jews & Jewish History
An aerial view of the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Among the loudest slogans hurled at Israel and its supporters lately is the claim that Jews are nothing more than “white colonizers.” It’s shouted on campuses, plastered on placards at rallies, and even echoed in newsrooms as if it were an unquestionable truth.
But it is not remotely accurate or historical. It is an inversion of history; an antisemitic libel dressed in faddish language.
Like all forms of antisemitism, the lie mutates to fit the prejudices of the age.
In medieval Europe, Jews were vilified as Christ-killers. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Jews were branded as rootless “Semites” poisoning Europe. Today, when “white” and “colonizer” are among the most despised labels in much of Western discourse, Jews are suddenly recast as exactly that. The aim never changes: to transform Jews into whatever is most hated in a given era.
Jews: Indigenous to the Land of Israel
The Jewish people are not strangers to the land of Israel. We were formed there. Our language, culture, and tribal faith were born in the hill country of Judea and Samaria. Jerusalem was our nation’s capital more than 1,500 years before the rise of Islam and the Arab conquest of the Levant.
And contrary to the widespread misunderstanding that Rome “exiled all the Jews” after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE or after the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE, no such complete exile occurred.
Archaeological, rabbinic, and Roman sources alike confirm that in the land the Romans renamed Syria-Palestina (circa 135 CE), Jews remained a substantial presence — often a plurality of the local population — well into the Byzantine and early Islamic periods. Major Jewish communities thrived in Tiberias, Sepphoris, Caesarea, Gaza, and Jerusalem itself long after the Roman Empire fell.
If colonialism means foreign empires imposing their will and their imported cultures, languages, and practices on native peoples, then the true colonizers of the land were Rome, Byzantium, and later the Arab and Ottoman conquerors — not the Jews, who remained deeply rooted in their homeland despite forced dispersion and persecution.
Jews Are Not “White”
The effort to cast Jews as “white” is equally false. “White” itself is a social construct — one invented in Europe and America to define tiers of dominance and advantage. Jews were rarely, if ever, included in it. At best, Jews were sometimes considered “white” conditionally, when it was convenient for the dominant group to blur their difference. Until, of course, the construct could be used as a slur against Jews, once “whiteness” itself became a disparagement in certain circles.
For centuries, European antisemitism defined Jews precisely as not white, not European — an alien presence to be ghettoized, excluded, or mass-murdered. The Holocaust was the culmination of this racialized hatred and othering, murdering over six million Jews in Europe and North Africa for being Semitic outsiders.
Calling Jews “white” also erases the majority of Israel’s Jewish population, who trace their families not to Europe, but to the Middle East, North Africa, and Ethiopia.
Roughly half of Israeli Jews descend from communities expelled or fleeing persecution in places like Iraq, Yemen, Morocco, Syria, Ethiopia, and Libya. Are Iraqi Jews “white colonizers”? Are Ethiopian Jews? Of course not.
Nor does the shade of a person’s skin or certain phenotypes erase their identity. Many Ashkenazic Jews may appear fair-skinned, just as many Yemenite or Ethiopian Jews may appear darker than most Arabs—and certainly darker than most Palestinian Arabs. But defining Jewish peoplehood through appearance is as false—and as dangerous—as defining Black identity in America by skin tone. The Jewish people are not a color. We are an indigenous Semitic tribal people.
While Not Determinative of Jewish Identity, Genetics Confirm Our History
Jewish identity is tribal, covenantal, and civilizational — not genetic. A convert to Judaism is fully and equally a Jew, because Jewish peoplehood is about belonging to the tribe, not about DNA.
That said, genetic science confirms what history, archaeology, and memory already tell us: Jews from diasporas across the world — Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Yemenite, Ethiopian, and Indian — share common Levantine ancestry.
- A landmark 2010 study in Nature found that “Jewish Diaspora groups from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East converge genetically to form a distinct population sharing Middle Eastern ancestry” (Behar et al., Nature, June 2010).
- A 2020 study in Cell confirmed that “the major Jewish groups all share substantial genetic ancestry tracing back to the Levant” (Xue et al., Cell, 2020).
- Even the Y-chromosome lineages of Ashkenazi Jews point overwhelmingly to Middle Eastern rather than European origins, clustering closely with Samaritans, Druze, and Palestinian Arabs (Hammer et al., PNAS, 2000).
In short, while our peoplehood does not depend on genes, genetics underscore what archaeology and history already attest: Jews are a Middle Eastern tribal people — dispersed, but never severed from their ancestral roots.
Return, Not Colonialism
Colonialism is what France did in Algeria, and what Britain did in India: a foreign power sending its people to exploit an alien land.
Zionism is the opposite. Jews had no empire, no metropole, no “mother country” to dispatch us to “settle” in Zion. What Jews had was memory, yearning, a tribal call to return — repeated constantly through prayer — and an unbroken chain of community in the land itself.
When Jews fled Baghdad pogroms in 1941, or when Yemenite Jewish communities walked across deserts in the late 1800s to reach Jerusalem, they were not colonizers. When Ashkenazic Jews, survivors of pogroms and of the Holocaust, returned (mostly as refugees fleeing brutal persecution) to the only land in which Jews had ever been sovereign, they were not colonizers.
When Ethiopian Jews risked their lives in the 1980s and 1990s to come home to Israel, they were not colonizers either. They were all sons and daughters of Zion returning home.
The Projection of Colonialism
Ironically, the accusation of “colonialism” is truer of the Arab conquest of the Levant in the 7th century than of the Jews.
Arab-Muslim armies imposed new rulers, languages, and cultures on lands stretching from Spain to Persia, including the land of Israel. Yet today, many descendants of that conquest call the indigenous people of the land of Israel “colonizers.”
In fact, some Palestinian Arabs themselves are descended from Jews and other native peoples of the Levant who, over centuries of pressure under Arab Islamic rule, abandoned their native faiths, languages, and cultures and fully adopted the identity of the colonizing culture. The irony is that many of those descendants now claim the Jews are the interlopers and colonists.
This is projection, not history.
The Poison of a False Narrative
Labeling Jews as “white colonizers” is not an innocent mistake. It is part of a sustained campaign to delegitimize Jewish self-determination, and to make the Jewish return to Zion appear as imperial theft rather than what it is: justice, survival, and self-determination.
And tragically, it has poisoned the minds of generations of Palestinian Arab children, raised on the fantasy that Jews are foreigners who can be expelled like the French in Algeria, rather than neighbors who belong and who have a right to self-determination in their indigenous land.
Truth as the Path to Peace
The facts are clear: the Jewish people are not “white.” We are not colonizers. We are the indigenous Semitic people of the land of Israel, who after dispersion and near-destruction returned home. To call us otherwise is not just historically wrong. It is an assault on truth itself, a modern mutation of antisemitism cloaked in the rhetoric of “decolonization.”
None of this means that Jews cannot share the land with Palestinian Arabs, many of whom have lived here for generations.
But coexistence must be built on truth, not fiction. It cannot rest on denying that the Jewish Temples stood in Jerusalem, as Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas recently claimed, or on pretending there ever was an Arab nation or state anywhere in the Levant with Jerusalem as its capital.
Peace requires acknowledgment of the actual history of this land: that it has always been the birthplace and homeland of the Jewish people, and that a shared future must begin with recognition of that enduring reality.
Only then can we replace poisonous myths with the possibility of real peace.
Micha Danzig is a current attorney, former IDF soldier & NYPD police officer. He currently writes for numerous publications on matters related to Israel, antisemitism & Jewish identity & is the immediate past President of StandWithUs in San Diego and a national board member of Herut.
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Iran Criticizes Arab-Islamic Summit Statement, Flags Objections After Doha Meeting
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, attends the emergency Arab-Islamic leaders’ summit in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: Hassan Bargash Al Menhali / UAE Presidential Court/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has criticized the final statement of the Arab-Islamic Summit held in Doha on Monday as insufficient, in the wake of last week’s Israeli attack targeting the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Qatar.
In a statement released shortly after the summit, Iran reaffirmed its “unwavering support for the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination,” while arguing that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot adequately address the Palestinian issue.
According to the Iranian delegation, “the only real and lasting solution is the establishment of a single democratic state across all of Palestine, through a referendum involving all Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories.”
On Monday, Qatar held a summit of Arab and Islamic nations in the aftermath of last week’s Israeli strike on Hamas, with leaders gathering to express support and discuss regional responses.
The Sept. 9 strike targeting leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group in Doha marked a significant escalation of Israeli military operations, reflecting Jerusalem’s broader efforts to dismantle the terrorist group amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
Expressing solidarity with Qatar, summit leaders condemned Israel’s strike, labeling it “cowardly, illegal, and a threat to collective regional security.”
In the final statement, the heads of state declared that “an assault on a state acting as a neutral mediator in the Gaza crisis is not only a hostile act against Qatar but also a direct blow to international peace-building efforts.”
Alongside the United States and other regional powers, Qatar has served as a ceasefire mediator during the nearly two-year Gaza conflict, facilitating indirect negotiations between the Jewish state and Hamas.
However, Doha has also backed the Palestinian terrorist group for years, providing Hamas with money and diplomatic support while hosting and sheltering its top leadership.
During the summit, Arab and Muslim leaders called for a review of diplomatic and economic relations with Israel while firmly opposing any attempts to displace Palestinians.
In the final statement, the heads of state also emphasized resisting Israel’s efforts to “impose new realities on the ground,” urged enforcement of International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for Israeli leaders over war crime allegations adamantly denied by Jerusalem, and coordinated actions to suspend Israel’s UN membership.
Although Iran participated in the summit and endorsed the declaration, its delegation issued a separate statement shortly afterward clarifying that doing so “must in no way be interpreted, explicitly or implicitly, as recognition of the Israeli regime,” reaffirming its rejection of the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Iranian leaders regularly declare their intention to destroy Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state.
The statement also stressed that the Palestinian people have the right to employ “all necessary means to achieve their inalienable right to self-determination,” emphasizing that backing this cause is “a shared duty of the international community.”
As the heads of Arab and Islamic states convened for a summit on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned he did not rule out further strikes on Hamas leaders “wherever they are.”
During a diplomatic visit to Israel, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed strong support for Israel’s position, even as Washington previously voiced concerns over the strike in Qatar, a US ally.
Speaking alongside Netanyahu, Rubio said the only way to end the war in Gaza would be for Hamas to free all hostages and surrender. While the US wants a diplomatic end to the war, “we have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen,” he said.
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“Your Name Was Included”: UC Berkeley Cooperating With Trump Administration, Admits to Disclosing Names
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
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is cooperating with the Trump administration’s inquiry into campus antisemitism, providing materials containing the names of some 160 people identified in disciplinary reports and other official documents.
As first reported by The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s official campus newspaper, the university’s Office of Legal Affairs notified every person affected by the mass disclosure, writing to them on Sept. 4.
“Last spring, the [US Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR]] initiated investigations regarding allegations of antisemitic harassment and discrimination at UC Berkeley. As part of its investigation, OCR required production of comprehensive documents, including files and reports related to alleged antisemitic incidents,” chief campus counsel David Robinson wrote. “This notice is to inform you that, as required by law and as per directions provided by the UC systemic Office of General Counsel, your name was included in report as part of the documents provided by OGC [Office of General Counsel] to OCR for its investigations on Aug. 18, 2025.”
He added, “These documents contained information about reports or responses related to antisemitic incidents.”
Anti-Israel activists told the Californian that the university is helping the Trump administration hunt witches.
“I think the message was sent to anybody has who has ever been accused of antisemitism, which of course, includes a lot of Palestinians,” one said, claiming that he has been falsely accused. “Whenever we teach about Palestine, it usually leads to an investigation. I think they flagged and sent all of that information to the federal government.”
Students for Justice in Palestine, infamous for its ties to jihadist terror organizations, also criticized the move, charging that the administration had promised to conceal their identities and thereby obstruct the government’s inquiry.
“Chancellor Rich Lyons should not have given assurances that he wouldn’t be giving our information to the federal government,” the group said. “Beyond that, he should never have bowed down so easily. I would think that a university that prides itself on being this liberal haven would at least stand up to a fascist like Donald Trump.”
UC Berkeley came under scrutiny in 2024 after a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at its Zellerbach Hall featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.
Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach. The mob then, according to witnesses, eventually stormed the building — breaking windows in the process, according to reports in The Daily Wire — and precipitated the decision to evacuate the area. During the infiltration of Zellerbach, one of the mob — assembled by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.
Other incidents, including the university’s employment of a lecturer who tweeted antisemitic images — one of which accused Israel of organ harvesting, a blood libel — the rewarding of academic benefits for participating in anti-Zionist activity, and the banning of Zionist speakers from Berkeley Law, have raised concerns about anti-Jewish hated on campus. In 2017, The Algemeiner ranked UC Berkeley as number five on “The 40 Worst Colleges for Jewish Students.”
In August, an Israeli professor sued the university, alleging that school officials denied her a job because she is Israeli — a claim its own investigators corroborated in an internal investigation, according to her attorneys at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Filed in the Alameda County Superior Court, the complaint is seeking justice for Dr. Yael Nativ, who taught in UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies as a visiting professor in 2022 and received an invitation to apply to do so again for the 2024-2025 academic year just weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel.
A hiring official allegedly believed, however, that an Israeli professor in the department would be unpalatable to students and faculty.
“My dept [sic] cannot host you for a class next fall,” the official allegedly told Nativ in a WhatsApp message. “Things are very hot here right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”
Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) later initiated an investigation of Nativ’s denial after the professor wrote an opinion essay which publicly accused the school of cowardice and violations of her civil rights. OPHD determined that a “preponderance of evidence” proved Nativ’s claim, but school officials went on to ignore the professor’s requests for an apology and other remedial measures, including sending her a renewed invitation to teach dance. After nearly two years, the situation remains unresolved.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israel Issues Travel Warning Ahead of Jewish Holidays Amid Rising Attacks, Discrimination Targeting Israelis Abroad
A flag is flown during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, outside the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel has issued a travel warning ahead of the upcoming Jewish high holidays and the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities, alerting citizens of heightened terrorist threats against Israelis and Jewish communities abroad.
On Sunday, the National Security Council (NSC) urged travelers to stay alert, cautioning that the two-year anniversary of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel could trigger attacks by Iran-backed or Hamas-linked terrorist groups targeting Jews and Israelis abroad.
“The recent period has been characterized by continued efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets by the various terrorist organizations (most of them led by Iran and Hamas),” the NSC said in a statement.
“Oct. 7 may again serve as a significant date for terrorist organizations,” the statement read.
Israeli officials warned that the threat mainly stems from Iran and its terrorist proxies, which have increasingly targeted Jews and Israelis beyond Israel’s borders.
In recent months, the NSC reported that dozens of plots have been thwarted, even as violent incidents — including physical attacks, antisemitic threats, and online incitement — have continued to rise.
“With the war ongoing and the terror threat growing, we are witnessing an escalation in antisemitic violence and provocations by anti-Israel elements,” the NSC said in its statement.
“This trend may inspire extremists to carry out attacks against Israelis or Jews abroad,” it continued.
According to the NSC, Iran remains the leading source of terrorism against Israelis and Jews worldwide, acting both directly and through proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
“Iranian motivation is growing in light of the severe blows it suffered in the framework of ‘Operation Rising Lion’ and the growing desire for revenge,” the NSC said in a statement, referring to the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Amid rising tensions over the war in Gaza, Israeli officials have previously warned of Iranian sleeper cells — covert operatives or terrorists embedded in rival countries who remain dormant until they receive orders to act and carry out attacks.
In light of this reality, the NSC also warned that social media posts revealing ties to Israeli security services could put individuals at risk of being targeted.
“We advise against posting any content that suggests involvement in the security services or operational activities, including real-time location updates,” the statement read.
This latest updated warning comes amid a growing hostile environment and a shocking surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes targeting Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Across Europe, Israelis are facing a disturbing surge of targeted attacks and hostility, as a wave of antisemitic incidents — from violent assaults and vandalism to protests and legal actions — spreads amid rising tensions following recent conflicts in the Middle East.
On Saturday, a 29-year-old Israeli and his sister were attacked by three Palestinian men while on vacation in Athens, Greece.
According to local media reports, the two siblings were walking through the city’s center when three unknown individuals carrying Palestinian flags approached them, shouting antisemitic slurs.
The attackers assaulted the Israeli man, a disabled Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veteran, scratching him, throwing him to the ground, and striking him with their flagpoles, while his sister attempted to intervene and protect him.
October 7 is a global war against Jews & Israelis.
Pro-Palestinian radicals just attacked an Israeli man in Syntagma Square, Athens. via @N12News https://t.co/IZR2IdNrUI pic.twitter.com/9S2o4IjtO6
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) September 14, 2025
Greek authorities arrested all five individuals involved in the incident. According to the Israeli man’s father, his son was placed in a cell with 10 Arabs, where he was reportedly beaten again and feared for his life.
In a separate antisemitic incident earlier this year, a group of Israeli teenagers was physically assaulted by dozens of pro-Palestinian assailants — some reportedly armed with knives — on the Greek island of Rhodes.
After leaving a nightclub, the teens were followed to their hotel, where they were violently assaulted, leaving several with minor injuries.
In another example of rising anti-Israel sentiment and hostility toward Jewish communities, one of Britain’s most prestigious military academies, the Royal College of Defense Studies, announced Sunday that it will bar Israeli students from enrolling next year, citing concerns over the war in Gaza.
In Belgium, two IDF soldiers attending the Tomorrowland music festival were arrested and interrogated by local authorities following a complaint from the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), an anti-Israel legal group that pursues legal action against IDF personnel, accusing them of involvement in war crimes.
According to HRF, the soldiers were seen waving the flags of the IDF’s Givati Brigade, which they claimed has been “involved in the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza and in carrying out mass atrocities against the Palestinian population.”
In France, a 34-year-old Algerian man was sentenced to 40 months in prison for threatening passengers with a knife and making antisemitic death threats after boarding a train at Cannes station.
In another incident earlier this year, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was brutally attacked and called a “dirty Jew” in Anduze, a small town in southern France.