Published: 8 July 2024
Last updated: 14 July 2024
About ten years ago a pair of young Korean missionaries buttonholed me at a train station in suburban Melbourne. It was just before Easter, so I told them I was Jewish, and that Jesus’ Last Supper was probably a Passover seder. They were fresh to their mission and I’m certain that they had never met a Jew before. The missionaries angrily told me I was wrong, and that I wasn’t a Jew, and stormed off.
I have been thinking about this encounter a lot over the past eight months.
When the reality of a living Jew did not match their worldview, the missionaries chose to deny my identity rather than reconsider their position.
Jews are just 0.2% of the global population, still fewer Jews than prior to the Holocaust, and many people don’t think the remnant is the authentic article.
This is why they are so quick to tell us that our faith is obsolete, our history fake, and our attachment to land imaginary.
There have been many attempts to erase Jewish history and invalidate Jewish identity. The discredited Khazar myth claimed that Ashkenazi Jews were actually descended from a nomadic Turkic people, who converted to Judaism. A more recent phenomenon is the Radical Hebrew Israelites—a Christian extremist group who claim modern Jews stole the religious identity of Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous people and that White Jews are fake. Until recently mainstream Christianity accepted Jewish history but argued Jewish religion was no longer valid because it had been superseded.
The denial of Jewish indigeneity in Israel is yet another attempt to deny Jewish authenticity.
Comments3
David Steinberg8 July at 12:45 am
Ben Harrison – first: the claim that Jews are not indigenous to Israel is, in fact, a core talking point in certain anti-Zionist and even antisemitic circles. You might not have personally heard it framed that way, but it’s widespread — especially in academic and activist spaces where any Jewish connection to ancestral homeland is routinely denied, dismissed as “colonial,” or treated as myth.
Now to your more specific point: Yes, Jews — Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, and others — are all part of a continuous ethnoreligious group originating in the Levant. The vast majority of Jews, including those who lived in Europe for centuries, have maintained rituals, languages (like Hebrew and Ladino), genetic links, and ancestral memory that tie back directly to ancient Israel. This is not “bs” — it’s established by archaeology, genetics, liturgy, and history. Jews didn’t suddenly pick Israel out of a hat after WWII.
So yes, saying “Jews are indigenous to Israel” is not controversial in historical terms. It’s just inconvenient for people who want to reduce Jews to a religion with no land, no peoplehood, and no history — which is itself a form of erasure.
You also mentioned that “Jews can’t take criticism.” That’s a cliché. Criticize Israeli policy all you like — Israelis do it daily, often with more vehemence than anyone in the West. What many Jews (and non-Jews) react to is when criticism crosses the line into double standards, historical denial, or scapegoating. That’s not “playing victim.” That’s recognizing a pattern.
And last: saying “some of my best friends are Jewish” doesn’t buy you immunity from scrutiny. You say you want honest dialogue. That requires accepting that some criticisms are antisemitic — just as some criticisms of other groups can be racist, misogynistic, or bigoted.
So yes — peace to all. But peace isn’t built on flattening or denying anyone’s history. Including ours.
Albert van Raaphorst26 July at 12:20 am
The far left seem to be engaging in the same thing that characterised the Apartheid Regime of Sth Africa. How ironic is that? I have had a Jewish friend who has died sme time ago. I am a Catholic who is more Centrist. We often spoke to each other about our differences and shared experiences. do try to also do the same with our Muslim brothers and sisters if possible .