Yet the Jewish People for more than two millennia has consistently maintained the strongest claim to be the aboriginal people in its ancestral homeland, and their existence and roots are widely documented, acknowledged, and recognized.
Institute for Contemporary Affairs
Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation
No. 612 August 2017
- The Palestinian “Balfour Apology Campaign” to demand the annulment of the Balfour Declaration is part of a consistent policy of denying the rights of the Jews to their national homeland as a people indigenous to the area.
- Yet the Jewish People for more than two millennia has consistently maintained the strongest claim to be the aboriginal people in its ancestral homeland, and their existence and roots are widely documented, acknowledged, and recognized.
- Christianity grew out of Judaism, and the early Christian existence and settlement in the Holy Land were part and parcel of the Jewish existence and settlement there.
- Arab and Palestinian leaders are attempting to establish a mythical, new narrative according to which the “Palestinian People” have existed as a distinct people indigenous to the area for thousands of years, predating the Jewish People.
- Saeb Erekat, the Secretary-General of the PLO, claimed in 2014 that he is a direct descendant of the Canaanite tribes who lived in Israel some 9,000 years ago. Yet according to Erekat’s own Facebook entry, the Erekat clan is from the northwestern Arabian Peninsula and settled in the Palestine area around 1860.
The present, ongoing, and cynical attempt to rewrite and manipulate historic and legal realities would appear to be part of today’s radicalized Arab and Muslim rejection of any non-Muslim historic or legal right to land or any religious heritage apart from Islam.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the character of the Jews as perhaps one of the oldest indigenous peoples who remains a distinct people and to consider the nature and implications of such distinctness in the practical realities of today’s international community.
