Ashkenazi Jews Are Indigenous To Israel, Not Europe
Ashkenazi Jews Are Indigenous To Israel, Not Europe For Jews, awareness of our indigeneity to Israel is of paramount importance. It is a vital reminder of who we are, where we come from, and what our ancestors died to defend. It is the antidote to centuries of exile and colonization, and the legal basis our national rights are contingent upon. For these reasons, it has become a cornerstone of Jewish resistance, and rightly so. But our self-identity as an indigenous Middle Eastern people hasn’t always been welcomed. To the contrary, it has been and continues to be ferociously resisted. Despite centuries of being told to ‘go back to Palestine’, today we are told, with alarming frequency, that we are “only a religion” and that we are “foreigners” and “colonizers” in our own indigenous homeland. Too many people fail to recognize this for the insidious psychological assault on our being that it is. Especially important to maintaining our indigenous identity is showing the anti...