In a world increasingly confused by slogans, hashtags, and historical revisionism, it is more important than ever to clarify foundational truths. Chief among them is this: Israel is not a colonial invention, nor a foreign implant in the Middle East. It is the ancestral and legal homeland of the Jewish people — a truth anchored in history, affirmed by international law, and now once again expressed through sovereign statehood.
Ancient Presence and Displacement
The Jewish people have maintained a continuous presence in the Land of Israel for over 3,000 years. According to biblical chronology, Joshua led the Israelites into Canaan around 1400 BCE, fulfilling the biblical promise to Abraham and his descendants. The land — which became the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah — served not only as a physical dwelling but as the epicentre of Jewish identity, spirituality, and nationhood.
Despite successive conquests by Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman empires, Jews remained rooted in the land. Even after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the brutal suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE — which led to a large-scale Jewish diaspora — Jewish life in the land never ceased. Small Jewish communities endured in Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed, Hebron, and other cities through every century that followed, often under hostile regimes.
This continuous connection predates Islam by over a millennium and Arab nationalism by more than two.
There Never Was a State Called Palestine
The term Palestine was introduced by the Romans following the Bar Kokhba revolt, likely as an attempt to erase Jewish identity from the region by renaming it after the ancient Philistines, Israel’s biblical enemies. But crucially, there was never in history a sovereign Palestinian Arab state in the land.
In the 19th century, “Palestine” was a poorly defined backwater province of the Ottoman Empire. According to British consular reports and European travellers, the population was sparse, underdeveloped, and often depopulated due to neglect, banditry, and disease. In 1850, the population was estimated at 350,000 — mostly Arabs, many of whom had migrated in prior centuries from Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. This population only began to rise significantly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, largely due to economic opportunities brought by the growth of Jewish immigration and agricultural development.
The land may have been ruled by empires, but it was never governed as an independent Arab polity.
The Palestine Mandate and International Recognition
Following World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations created a mandate system to administer former Ottoman territories until they could stand as independent states. In 1922, the Mandate for Palestine was ratified by 51 member nations. It explicitly recognised “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and called for “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people” in that territory.
The Mandate was not an act of colonialism. It was an act of postwar decolonisation — restoring to the Jewish people a small sliver of their ancestral homeland. Originally, the Mandate covered the land on both sides of the Jordan River. But in 1922, Britain unilaterally separated the territory east of the Jordan to create the Emirate of Transjordan (modern-day Jordan), reducing the area allocated to the Jewish home by over 70%.
While Arab populations were granted vast territories in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, the Jews were offered this narrow strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
A Forgotten Exodus: Jews Expelled from Arab Lands
While the world focused on the displacement of Palestinian Arabs in 1948 — much of it the result of a war initiated by five Arab states — an equally significant, but often ignored, refugee crisis unfolded.
From the 1940s through the 1970s, nearly 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab and Muslim countries where they had lived for millennia. In Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, Jewish communities were uprooted, stripped of citizenship, and dispossessed of homes, synagogues, and entire neighbourhoods. Few have ever received compensation.
Today, these once-vibrant communities have been erased. Algeria, which once had over 140,000 Jews, has virtually none. Iraq, home to the Babylonian Jewish tradition, once boasted over 130,000 Jews — now fewer than 10 remain.
Most of these Jewish refugees were absorbed by Israel, where they form the backbone of Israeli society. Unlike Arab countries that confined Palestinians to refugee camps for generations, Israel embraced its displaced kin.
Regional Demographics: The Myth of Overcrowding
The Arab states often claim that they are too overcrowded to absorb their Palestinian brothers – using population pressure as a pretext to deny them full citizenship and permanent resettlement. In reality, it is Israel that is densely populated and territorially small, while its neighbours have vast, underpopulated lands by comparison.
Here’s the demographic reality:
- Israel: ~9.8 million people in just 22,000 km² → ~440 people / km²
- Jordan: ~11 million in 89,000 km² → ~130 people / km²
- Syria (pre-war): ~24 million in 185,000 km² → ~140 people / km²
- Iraq: ~45 million in 438,000 km² → ~108 people / km²
Despite controlling territories many times larger than Israel, these states have systematically refused to integrate Palestinian populations – choosing instead to confine them to refugee camps, restrict their rights, and exploit their status for political leverage against Israel.
The claim of “overcrowding” is not only unconvincing – it is a myth that conceals a deliberate policy of rejection and scapegoating.
Judea and Samaria, Gaza, and the Question of Sovereignty
The territories now called the West Bank and Gaza were part of the land designated for the Jewish national home under the British Mandate. They were never sovereign Arab lands. After the 1948 Arab invasion, Jordan illegally annexed Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), and Egypt occupied Gaza. Neither move was internationally recognised.
Notably, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was formed in 1964, at a time when Judea and Samaria were under Jordanian rule and Gaza was under Egyptian control. Israel had no military or administrative presence in either territory. This raises an inconvenient truth: the goal of the PLO was never about liberating occupied Gaza or the West Bank – it was about eliminating Israel.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/plocov.asp
It was only after the 1967 Six-Day War – launched in part by threats and aggression from Egypt, Jordan and Syria – that Israel came to control these territories in a defensive war. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, passed in response, affirmed Israel’s right to “secure and recognised boundaries” and did not demand full withdrawal from all territories captured.
Furthermore, the legal principle of uti possidetis juris – which preserves the administrative borders of former legal entities when new states are formed — supports Israel’s claim to these areas as inheritor of the Mandate’s original jurisdiction. In this light, Israeli presence in Judea, Samaria and Gaza cannot be deemed “illegal occupation” under international law.
What Does “Free Palestine” Really Mean?
Many well-meaning people in the West — including in New Zealand — join marches or fly Palestinian flags believing they are standing up for peace and justice. But the movement they are supporting is often led by actors with much darker intentions.
The chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” leaves no room for Israel or Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean — in other words, the entire country. This slogan has long been used by Hamas and other genocidal groups as a rallying cry for Israel’s destruction.
Let us be clear: “Free Palestine” in that context does not mean a two-state solution. It means the end of Israel. And for Jews — both in Israel and globally — that is an existential threat.
New Zealanders must understand the gravity of these slogans. They are not benign calls for coexistence; they are coded messages of hate.
What New Zealand Must Acknowledge
New Zealand was among the countries that endorsed the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922. It stood for the reconstitution of the Jewish homeland as a matter of justice and international consensus. That vision remains morally valid and legally binding to this day.
To remain true to our democratic values, New Zealand must:
- Recognise the historic and legal Jewish claim to the land of Israel.
- Reject slogans and movements that seek the destruction of Israel under the guise of “liberation.”
- Stand against antisemitism — whether overt or disguised as anti-Zionism.
- Refrain from supporting UN bodies or NGOs that perpetuate historical distortions or bias against Israel.
Conclusion
Israel is not a colonial implant. It is the historic homeland of the Jewish people — the only nation ever to emerge from, and return to, that land as its indigenous people. Its rebirth in 1948 was not an act of theft, but of justice — the long-overdue restoration of a people to their ancestral soil after centuries of exile, discrimination and persecution.
The land of Israel is small, but its story is vast — and true.
It is time New Zealanders remembered it.
