Israel & Palestine - Part I - History of The Jews in The Middle East

There isn't any serious argument about the Jewish people having originated in the Middle East and having established political entities several centuries BCE, with a brief period where independent kingdom won it's independence from the Seleucids before being absorbed by Rome. What is being argued (by supporters of Israel) is that the Jews originated there and had a continuous presence there while others argue that Israel is a colonialist entity that supplanted the indigenous population. Still others argued that Ashkenazi Jews (Yiddish-speaking Jews from Europe) were not descended from Biblical Jews, but from the Khazars, a Turkic people whose ruling aristocracy may have converted to Judaism in the 8th Century. 

I'm going to argue that the Jewish people are indigenous to what is now Eretz Israel, the modern nation carved out of the Palestinian Mandate which was in turn a province of the Ottoman Empire. Later articles will discuss the Palestinian Arabs, the United Nations Partition Plan, persecution of Jews, persecution of Arabs, quasi-apartheid in Israel. 

Nothing I write should be interpreted as support either for the October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians or the wholesale destruction and civilian deaths in Gaza. 

The last independent Jewish entity prior to the establishment of the modern state of Israel was the Hasmonaean Kingdom, which ceased to be independent in 63 BCE and was displaced completely in 37 BCE by King Herod, who was installed by Rome. Herod's client Kingdom of Judea ceased to exist upon Herod's death in 4 BCE. After Herod's death no independent Jewish political entity existed in Palestine, or anywhere else, until 1948. Despite there being no independent Jewish state post-Herod, Judea and the surrounding area continued to be the cultural and religious home of the Jews. There were Jewish communities in many cities of the Roman and Persian Empires, but Jerusalem and Judea were still regarded as "home". In around 70 CE the Romans defeated a Jewish revolt, destroyed the Temple and deported hundreds of thousands. After successive revolts, Jews were banned from Jerusalem, but not Judea, which was renamed Syria Palaestina. 

Nonetheless, Jews were never completely driven from Palestine. The population totals and percentages are unreliable and appear to to have waxed and waned in cycles before the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, but there were always at least some Jewish presence in what had previously been Judea. Not only native-born Jews, but immigrants from Europe fleeing persecution as well. Population figures become more reliable during reign of the Ottomans, 1516 through the end of World War I. (1516 was when the Ottomans conquered Jerusalem - the empire existed before that date) Jewish population according to Ottoman censuses remained a steady 5,000 from the 1530's through the 1800 census. The total population was around 156,000, increasing to 275,000 in 1800. The Ottoman Palestine region roughly corresponded to modern Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories and Jordan. There is no reliable figures for that area excluding what is now Jordan. (Throughout this time Palestine, including what is now Jordan, was simply a geographical term, like "The Midwest U.S." that is descriptive, but has no legal or political meaning. Palestine at this time was part of the Ottoman province of Syria.)

During this time, although there was recognition that Palestine was the location of their ancestral home, it doesn't appear that there was any indication that the area was a political Jewish homeland of any sort. On the contrary, Palestinian Jews were a religious minority living amid a Muslim majority in a Muslim-ruled polity, similar to how European Jews at the time were a religious minority living amid a Christian majority in a Christian-ruled land. 

It must be emphasized the Ottomans did not view their various provinces as potential independent nations, or even as "homelands" of various ethnic groups, but as simply administrative divisions, analogous to counties within an American state. Individual subjects were categorized according to their religion with Muslims at the top, with "Greeks" and "Armenians" next and Jews last. This is significant when viewing Jewish immigration into Palestine. In the 1500's the Catholic rulers expelled Jews from Spain and Portugal. These Sephardim were welcomed into the Ottoman Empire. Once welcomed into  Ottoman lands, many Sephardim settled in the center of the empire, in what is now Turkey, although many spread throughout Ottoman lands, including Palestine. This was not technically immigration, but movement from one part of the empire to another. 

During the 19th Century Jews continued to relocate from other parts of the empire and immigration into Palestine from outside the empire continued. Much of the immigration was driven by persecution that occurred not only in Europe, but in the empire itself and other Muslim nations such as Egypt. During the 1800's Jews continued to be a presence in Palestine, although never more than a tiny minority. In 1880 the Jewish population was around 23,000. This was the situation in the late 1800's as Zionism cohered and established itself. Despite the lack of a Jewish state, there had been a continuous Jewish presence in the area that is now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories. Though a minority, Jews were clearly a people indigenous to the area.