After years of discussing with many people about Israel I realized the huge amount of misunderstanding and confusion about its history and its people. I have noticed that the conversations often fall back on the same patterns and that the same points come up again and again. So I made this FAQ to address the most common issues and questions, with the aim of helping people who are genuinely intrested in Israel.
Jews are a people and a nation originating from the Land of Israel and descendants from the Israelites. The Jewish people is one of the oldest nations of mankind still remaining, having endured for more than 3 millennia since the Bronze Age. Jews are sometimes improperly referred to as an ethnicity, in fact the Jewish people is made up of many ethnicities.
Yes, a nation is a community of people who share a common language, homeland, history, and culture, but more importantly, a shared commitment to self-identification as a nation. Most Jews are not religious (even in Israel) but still consider themselves Jews. For most Jews, their identity is not reducible to their religion or their specific Jewish ethnicity because it is tied with a willingness to see oneself as part of the same people. Not all Jews see themselves as part of the Jewish nation, many consider their Jewish identity as simply their ethnicity or religion. This is currently a minority view among Jews but was hugely popular among assimilated Jews in the West during the 19th and early 20th century up to the Holocaust. Today the vast majority of Jews consider themselves to be part of the Jewish people, not just ethnically or religiously Jewish.
Zionism is Jewish nationalism in the Land of Israel, that is the ideology that the Jewish nation has the right to self-determination and political autonomy in the territory of the Southern Levant that constitutes their ancestral homeland.
No, most non-Zionist Jews and many anti-Zionist Jews still consider themselves part of the Jewish people. Recognizing the Jews as a nation is a necessary condition for being Zionist, but not sufficient.
Yes, Jews, as a nation, are native to the Land of Israel. Jews are not the only native people of the territory, the Palestinians are also native to the area since their nation was formed on this territory like the Jews, that is also the case for the Samaritans. As such, Jews do not have exclusive rights over the territory, but they certainly have legitimate national claims upon it, the legitimacy of this claim has been internationally established with the diplomatic recognition of the State of Israel by 162 of the 193 UN member states.
No, Jews being a native people of the Land of Israel, establishing a Jewish state in that land cannot by definition be colonialism.
No, Zionism is not at all concerned with race, only with Jews, the Land of Israel and the establishement of a state. They are Jews of every human race.
No, anti-Zionism per se is not antisemitic, anti-Zionism is merely the rejection of the ideology of Zionism. This rejection can be based on many antisemitic grounds (and generally is), but also on many non-antisemitic ones. Non-antisemitic reasons for being anti-Zionist include: anarchism (being against all states) and Jewish religious fundamentalism (being against a Jewish state because the messiah did not appear) but also Palestinian nationalism.
The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. The state was established as Jewish and democratic in the ideology of Zionism in 1948 after the British Empire withdrew from the territory.
No, the State of Israel was established by the Jewish community of the Land of Israel (Yishuv) after the British Empire left the territory.
No, Israel is comprised of Jews of many different ethnicities, Sephardi Jews, descendants of the Jewish diaspora in the Iberian Peninsula, Mizrahi Jews, descendants of the Jewish diaspora in the Middle East, Ashkenazi Jews, descendants of the Jewish diaspora in central Europe, Beta Israel, from Ethiopia, Bene Israel, from India, etc. All Jews would have to be regarded as being of the same ethnicity to designate Israel as an ethnostate. It is more accurate to refer to Israel as a nation state.
No, Israel is a liberal parliamentary democracy. All governmental political powers in Israel are held by democratically elected officials and there is no religious power that controls the government.
No, all citizens of Israel are equal before the law and enjoy the same political liberties with a notable exception: Arab citizens are exempt from compulsory military service. Discrimination on religious or ethnic grounds is outlawed and offenders are persecuted.
Palestine is the name given by the Romans in 135 CE to the Land of Israel after crushing the Jewish revolt of Bar Kokhba against the Roman occupation. Since Roman times the name has been used in the West to designate the region geographically and since modern times in the Arab and Muslim world.
The Palestinians are an ethnic group and an Arab nation constituted of the Arab inhabitants of the Land of Israel as well as their descendants. The name was previously used to refer to all inhabitants of the Land of Israel, including Jews, especially during the British Mandate, but this is no longer the case.
Yes, like the Jews they constitute a people with a common language, history, culture, homeland, and a shared willingness to self-identify as a nation.
The State of Palestine is a Palestinian proto-State that claims parts of the Land of Israel, including the West Bank, Gaza and the city of Jerusalem, but exercising sovereignty over none. The proto-State’s institutions are currently controlled by a dictatorial kleptocracy based in Ramallah successor to the terrorist group Palestine Liberation Organization.
Hamas is an Islamist terrorist organization which has controlled the Gaza Strip since Israel withdrew from the territory.
The Occupation refers to the Israeli presence and control of residents in the territories of the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem.