It is becoming commonplace and almost accepted to refer to Israelis as “occupiers,” people who are living on someone else’s land. Bob Dylan, in his song from the early 1980s entitled Neighborhood Bully sang, “His enemies say he’s on their land.” The false claim against Israelis, and Jews in general, is as old as written history.

Abraham was concerned about being called an occupier. It was for that reason that he overpaid for the cave of Machpelah so that no one would ever say that he buried his dead on the land of another without permission.

Perhaps the definitive testimony on the subject of the right of Jews to live on their land was given by Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). Klein testified at a hearing before the United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee (119th Congress) on December 10, 2025. He noted that,

John Adams, in a letter to Mordecai M. Noah, March 15, 1819, wrote:

 ….I could find it in my heart to wish that you had been at the head of 100,000               Israelites indeed as well discipline’d as a French army – & marching with them into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the dominion of it-For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation….

At the time, Israel was illegally occupied by the Muslim Ottoman Empire, based in Turkey.

What some call the West Bank was an area illegally occupied by Jordan between 1948 and 1967. It is properly known as Judea and Samaria, which is the historic Jewish homeland.  This is the land where Abraham purchased the burial place for his family.  It is where King David was anointed and ruled. Virtually all of the patriarchs and their families lived in Judea and Samaria. It was the land of the Maccabees.  Judea and Samaria were also the heart of the Kingdoms of King David and King Solomon.

A Jewish nation existed as an independent state until crushed by the Romans in the early Second Century of........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)