But that is not basis of our claim on the land. Many of the founders of Israel and those earlier who coined Zionism, were not religious at all. This is simply the land where we came from, where our ancestors were buried. Many of the religious wanted to wait for a messiah to come before going back and were wiped out in the holocaust. My family was in Palestine until 1517 when Turks did a pogrom against us and we left. Still, there has been a Jewish presence in the land all this time. Even with no books or religion, we would still be there.