Zionism is the most successful expression of indigenous rights and self-determination in the ancestral homeland of Jews.

It doesn’t require our religion to be so, for us to have self-determination there, but Judaism and Zionism express the same idea.

From Abraham being told to return from Ur to the Promised land, Moses leading the people back there, Joshua battling there, Saul, David and Solomon ruling there, the prophets in exile telling to return there, and then finally Hanukkah- Jews fighting off the yoke of invaders and attempts at Hellenic assimilation, to live free again.

Half of our 613 laws and commandments can only be carried out in the land, we pray in the diaspora facing Jerusalem and saying “ Next year in Jerusalem”. Our seasons and calendar, everything is based on the land of Israel.

There is not one Jew on the planet who follows Judaism who rejects the land of Israel and our connection to it. The only difference is some are waiting for a Messiah to form a theocracy. Many of these Jews still live in Israel, some are even so called settlers in the West Bank (Actually Judea and Samaria).

To say an essential tenet of Judaism is not for Jews to live in the land, is intellectually dishonest. And Jews in the land were being killed for hundreds of years before political Zionism. My own family had to flee Hebron.

The chutzpah of a non-Jew defining Judaism and denying our indigenous heritage. By the way, any Palestinian who is indigenous can only piggy back on the same claim as Jews ie: they are descended from Jews. They can have the same claim, but they can’t have a competing claim as Arabs( or any other people) did not arrive in region till much later. And any Palestinian, regardless of his religion now, with such heritage, should have welcomed Jews returning.