Go Back to Poland!

There is an accusation increasingly heard from some voices within the pro-Palestinian movement that I find both historically dishonest and deeply offensive. Jews, we are told, are European colonizers who came to Palestine, displaced its indigenous population and have no legitimate historical claim to the land. Some go further, suggesting that Jews should go back to Poland, Germany or wherever else they supposedly came from.

I wonder how many people making these statements have taken the time to examine the history they are so confidently dismissing.

I have no objection to people criticizing the Israeli government, opposing its policies or advocating for Palestinian self-determination. Those are legitimate political positions. But describing Jews as foreigners with no ancestral connection to Israel is something quite different. It requires ignoring more than 3,000 years of documented Jewish history.

Where Did the Jewish People Come From?

The Jewish people did not originate in Poland, Germany or Russia. Their origins lie in the ancient Levant, in territory that includes modern Israel and the Palestinian territories.

By approximately 1200 BCE, the Israelites had emerged as a distinct people in the region. One of the earliest pieces of evidence is the Merneptah Stele, an Egyptian inscription dating to approximately 1208 BCE that identifies a people called Israel in Canaan. The inscription is particularly important because it provides evidence of Israel’s existence outside the biblical narrative.

The kingdoms of Israel and Judah subsequently developed in the region, and Jerusalem became central to Jewish religious, cultural and national life. As documented in the historical and archaeological scholarship summarized by Encyclopaedia Britannica, these kingdoms were established centuries before Christianity and more than a thousand years before the Arab Muslim conquest of the seventh century.

This is not simply a matter of religious belief. The Jewish people’s origins in the region are supported by archaeological discoveries, ancient inscriptions and historical records.

Jewish identity developed there. Hebrew, the language of the ancient Israelites, survived in Jewish religious and literary traditions and was subsequently revived as a modern spoken language. Jerusalem remained central to Jewish religious practice and collective memory throughout centuries of displacement and migration.

The modern State of Israel was established in 1948. The Jewish people’s connection to the land did not begin in 1948.

How Did Jews Come to Live in Europe?

Jewish communities existed outside the land of Israel long before the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. Roman wars, displacement, economic migration and changing political circumstances contributed to the growth of Jewish communities throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

Over many centuries, Jews established communities in Poland, Germany, Spain and elsewhere. They developed different languages, customs and traditions while retaining a shared connection to their ancestral homeland.

Living in Europe did not make Europe the place where the Jewish people originated.

And not all Jews lived in Europe.

For centuries, substantial Jewish communities existed in Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Morocco, Egypt, Syria and other countries across the Middle East and North Africa. Following Israel’s establishment in 1948, large numbers left these countries, sometimes fleeing persecution or expulsion and sometimes emigrating under other circumstances.

Many settled in Israel.

The demographic evidence is revealing. In its March 2016 report, Israel’s Religiously Divided Society, the Pew Research Center found that 48 percent of Israeli Jewish adults identified as Sephardi or Mizrahi, while 45 percent identified as Ashkenazi. These are broad cultural and ancestral identities, but the findings demonstrate why portraying Israeli Jews as an exclusively European population is inaccurate.

So when someone tells Israeli Jews to go back to Poland, I have a question.

Where exactly are Jews whose families lived for generations in Baghdad, Sana’a, Tehran or Casablanca supposed to go?

And why should Jews whose ancestors lived in Europe be considered foreigners in the very region where Jewish identity originated?

What Does the Scientific Evidence Tell Us?

There is also scientific evidence supporting the historical connection between Jewish populations and the ancient Levant.

In May 2020, the scientific journal Cell published a peer-reviewed study by Lily Agranat-Tamir and colleagues titled The Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant. Researchers examined ancient DNA from archaeological sites across the region and compared it with genetic information from modern populations.

Their findings identified substantial ancestry related to ancient Levantine populations among many present-day Jewish groups and Levantine Arabic-speaking populations. The researchers also documented later genetic contributions, reflecting centuries of migration and intermarriage.

The study does not establish exclusive ancestry or territorial ownership for any modern population. Genetics cannot determine political rights. What it does demonstrate is that the region’s population history is far more complicated than the suggestion that Jews are simply Europeans who arrived in someone else’s homeland.

What About the Palestinians?

It is equally important to acknowledge that Palestinian Arabs have longstanding ancestral connections to the region. Many descend from populations that lived there long before the emergence of modern Palestinian national identity. The spread of Arabic language and culture following the seventh-century conquest did not involve the wholesale replacement of the existing population.

Recognizing Jewish history does not require denying Palestinian history.

Both peoples have historical connections to the land, and neither connection disappears because the other exists.

There are legitimate historical debates about Zionism, Jewish immigration, British imperial policy, Palestinian displacement and the establishment of Israel in 1948. Some historians examine aspects of the modern Zionist movement through the framework of settler colonialism, while others emphasize Jewish national self-determination and historical return.

Those debates deserve serious consideration. But they concern modern political movements and historical processes. They do not establish that Jews, as a people, originated in Europe or have no ancestral connection to Israel.

That is the distinction too often lost in political slogans.

When Jews Are Called Colonizers in Their Own Ancestral Homeland

One of the more troubling arguments advanced by some voices within the pro-Palestinian movement is that Jews are not indigenous to Israel but are foreign colonizers who arrived from Europe and displaced the land’s rightful inhabitants.

The argument is frequently expressed through the language of decolonization, portraying Palestinians as the indigenous population and Jews as outsiders whose presence is the product of European colonial expansion.

There is a fundamental historical problem with that characterization when it is applied to Jews as a people.

The Jewish people’s origins in the ancient Levant are not a matter of political opinion. Archaeological discoveries, ancient inscriptions and historical records establish the existence of Israelite society more than 3,000 years ago. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah developed in the territory, and Jewish religious and cultural identity emerged from those ancient communities.

Jews did not become indigenous to the region because the modern State of Israel was established in 1948. Their ancestral connection existed long before the emergence of Christianity, Islam or modern European nationalism.

That does not mean the establishment of Israel in 1948, or the history of Zionist settlement preceding it, is beyond legitimate historical criticism. The displacement of Palestinians is a documented part of that history, and historians continue to debate the relevance of colonial frameworks to Zionism and Israeli statehood.

But there is a difference between examining the political history of a modern state and declaring that an entire people are foreigners in the land where their identity originated.

The latter claim requires ignoring established historical evidence.

It also ignores the fact that Israeli Jews are not exclusively descended from European Jewish communities. Many have family histories extending across the Middle East and North Africa, including communities that existed for centuries before the establishment of modern Israel.

What concerns me is how readily the accusation of colonialism can become something more than a political argument. When Jews are described collectively as foreign occupiers who have no legitimate connection to the land, it becomes easier to portray their very presence as something that must be reversed.

And when that argument leads to demands that Jews leave Israel and return to Europe, the distinction between criticism of a political movement and hostility toward a people has been crossed.

The Palestinian people have legitimate historical connections to the land, just as Jews do. Recognizing those connections is not a concession to either side. It is an acknowledgment of the historical record.

The conflict over modern sovereignty, borders and political rights cannot be resolved by pretending that one people’s history does not exist.

I find it particularly disturbing that some of those who demand recognition of Palestinian identity and historical attachment to the land are prepared to deny the equivalent historical attachment of Jews.

There is no contradiction in recognizing Palestinian rights while acknowledging Jewish indigeneity. The contradiction lies in demanding historical recognition for one people while refusing it to another.

If the argument for Palestinian freedom depends on portraying Jews as foreigners with no ancestral connection to Israel, it is an argument built on a historically false premise.

And if that argument extends to demanding that Jews leave because they are Jews, it has moved beyond legitimate criticism of Israel into antisemitism.

Go Back to Poland

As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I find this particular expression especially disturbing.

My mother was deported from Hungary to Auschwitz in 1944. She survived, but members of her family did not. I grew up knowing what happened when Jews were treated as outsiders in countries where their families had lived for generations.

Before the Second World War, Poland was home to approximately 3.3 million Jews. During the Holocaust, Nazi Germany established extermination centres in occupied Poland, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Sobibor.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum documents how these German-operated killing centres became central to the Nazi campaign to murder Europe’s Jews. Its historical research identifies approximately 2.7 million Jewish victims murdered in the five principal killing centres established in German-occupied Poland.

When someone tells a Jew to go back to Poland, I wonder whether they appreciate the history behind those words.

For millions of Jews, Europe was not a place they could simply return to after the Holocaust. Entire families had been murdered, communities destroyed and homes lost.

To suggest that Europe is the Jewish people’s rightful homeland, while denying their documented origins in the ancient Levant, is an extraordinary distortion of history.

And when someone demands that Jews leave Israel because they are Jews, rather than arguing about borders, laws or government policies, I regard that as antisemitism.

History Cannot Be Rewritten to Accommodate Politics

I recognize that not everyone who supports the Free Palestine movement shares these views. Many people advocate for Palestinian rights without denying Jewish history or calling for the expulsion of Jews. Their position should not be confused with those who use the Palestinian cause to justify hostility toward Jews.

But those who describe Jews collectively as foreign colonizers and tell them to return to Poland should be challenged.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves competing national aspirations, historical grievances, displacement and unresolved questions of sovereignty. The Jewish people’s ancient connection to the land does not settle those disputes or justify every action taken by an Israeli government.

Nor does Palestinian suffering justify denying Jewish history.

I am a secular Jew. My connection to Jewish history does not depend on religious observance, and my understanding of that history does not require me to agree with every decision made by the Israeli government.

What I cannot accept is the suggestion that Jewish identity is a European invention or that Jews have no legitimate historical connection to the land of Israel.

The evidence says otherwise.

The Merneptah Stele establishes that a people called Israel existed in Canaan more than 3,200 years ago. Archaeology documents the ancient Israelite kingdoms. Historical records establish the development and continuity of Jewish religious and cultural identity. Modern genetic research provides additional evidence of ancestral connections between Jewish populations and the ancient Levant.

None of this is dependent on accepting a particular political position concerning the modern State of Israel.

It is history.

You cannot erase more than 3,000 years of Jewish history simply because acknowledging it complicates your political argument.

And if your vision of a free Palestine requires Jews to abandon their ancestral homeland because they are Jews, perhaps it is time to examine what you are actually advocating.

There is nothing wrong with advocating for Palestinian freedom. There is something profoundly wrong with demanding that it be achieved by denying Jewish history or expelling Jews.

The freedom of one people should not depend on the erasure of another.