Israel’s enemies again attempt the “indigenous people” lie

Dear Friend of FLAME:

While Jews have been afflicted over the centuries by more ethnic and religious persecution than perhaps any other people, they can take at least cold comfort in the fact that their enemies almost always rely on outright lies to attack them.

From the blood libel that Jews used the blood of Christian babies to make matzah and the myth that Jews deviously manipulate international banking . . . to current slanders against Israel about apartheid, genocide and stealing the land of indigenous Palestinians.

Because these accusations are clearly, factually and demonstrably false makes it easy, at a minimum, to brand its perpetrators as rank anti-Semites deserving of social scorn. Yet, as Mark Twain was reputed to have said, “an early-morning lie travels ‘round world before truth has time to put its shoes on.”

We lovers of Israel are condemned to explain and document the truth repeatedly, because so many people still haven’t heard it—and the lies travel fast.

The latest outrage was committed by the Washington D.C. branch of a national climate action group, Sunrise DC, which bowed out of a voting rights rally because a “number of Zionist organizations” will be taking part. “Given our commitment to racial justice, self-governance and indigenous sovereignty, we oppose Zionism and any state that enforces its ideology,” Sunrise DC said in a statement it posted on Twitter.

You may want to read that statement again to fully comprehend its absurdity. The group opposes Zionism, the national movement for the Jewish people to return to their indigenous and ancestral homeland, because of the group’s commitment to “self-governance and indigenous sovereignty.”

In other words, all peoples—including ethnic successors of colonizers—are welcome to self-governance and indigenous sovereignty . . . except Jews. This is not only anti-Semitic— it is also nonsense and actively in opposition to social justice principles.

According to Amnesty International, an indigenous people has (among others):

• An historical link with those who inhabited a region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived

• Distinct social, economic or political systems

• Distinct language, culture and beliefs

• Been marginalized and discriminated against by newcomers

• Maintained and developed their ancestral environments as distinct people

In short, the Jews of Israel have all those characteristics. The Palestinians have none.

The Jewish people are the oldest surviving civilization by thousands of years with ancient ties to the Holy Land—the land of Israel. Jews have their own laws, religion, language and culture. The Palestinian Arabs do not.

The Jewish people held sovereignty in the Land of Israel on multiple occasions in its history, only to be conquered, occupied, oppressed and then violently expelled—or to be more precise, ethnically-cleansed. Whether in Christian Europe or Muslim Asia and Africa, including in their own homeland, Jews were a subjugated people, constantly being harassed and reminded that they did not belong.

Yet even during the darkest moments of their exile, they never lost hope of a return to their homeland, and kept alive their distinct language and culture—firmly rooted in the territory that is today the State of Israel.

By all rights, such a people, who seized the opportunity to return home, liberated the territory from those who had occupied it with foreign settlers—buttressed and supported by imperial and colonial powers like the Arabs, Ottomans and Great Britain—should be the darlings of all who support “self-governance and indigenous sovereignty.”

Indeed, Zionism is the ultimate act of self-governance and indigenous sovereignty. Only the Jewish people can make such a claim about their connection to their homeland in the Middle East. Every part of Jewish identity is tightly bound to the land that gave us our name. The term Jews originates in ancient Judea.

On the other hand, the Muslims who currently live in Israel or Judea and Samaria are the descendants of people who settled in the territory under colonial rule, Ottoman or British. Even those whose claims go back a number of centuries still identify their origins in Arabia, or they were colonized by the language, culture and religion of the Arabian Peninsula, like the rest of the Middle East and North Africa.

During the 1,300 years of largely Muslim rule, no occupying or imperial leader made the Land of Israel sovereign. Each conqueror oppressed the locals, whether Jewish or Christian, forced many to convert and killed others.

Tellingly, documents and titles Palestinians and their advocates like to wave in court are all, without exception, given by the Ottoman Sultanate, an occupying power, to their ancestors— merely on the basis of ties to the colonial leadership.

Apologists for Palestinian indigenous claims now have a new tool—the children’s story “Uncle Meena,” by Palestinian author Ibtisam Barakat—which is being promoted in English classes in U.S. public schools. This one-sided book’s most contemptuous view—promoted by the beloved Uncle Meena and endorsed by the relatable Noora—holds that Palestinians are like Native Americans (or “Red Indians,” as the story dubs them), while Israeli Jews are akin to white, colonizing cowboys. This is the central theme of “Uncle Meena.”

According to “Uncle Meena,” Jews are new to their homeland—which denies Jewish identity and erases Jewish history. Ironically, this “cancelation” of ancient, indigenous peoplehood is the ultimate act of colonialism.

Those touting and accepting this narrative complete the colonization: It becomes unimpeachable, because so many people accept it. It is the power of a lie that is not defeated.

On the other hand, once Jewish history and connection to the Holy Land for thousands of years—long before the Islamic conquest and Arab occupation of the region—are understood and accepted, the Palestinian narrative façade shatters.

Those who use the language of “self-governance and indigenous sovereignty” are, perhaps unwittingly, siding with the colonizing and imperial occupiers over true indigenous people. They are signaling their social justice credentials—yet in the service of the great lie.

However, I hope you’ll make the point to friends, family, colleagues and your elected representatives that ignorance is no excuse for racism . . . or its anti-Semitic variant. It’s time social justice warriors get a shot of integrity and stand up for the truly, factually indigenous—regardless of a misplaced bias against the Jewish people and Zionism—their 3,000-year dream of self-determination, finally fulfilled.

I hope you’ll also take a minute, while you have this material front and center, to forward this message to friends, visit FLAME’s lively Facebook page and review the P.S. immediately below. It describes FLAME’s new hasbarah campaign—which exposes “Ben & Jerry’s Bad Taste” and those who support boycotts of the Jewish state.

Best regards,

James Sinkinson
President, Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME)