In every great historical dispute, there comes a moment when language fails—not from lack of vocabulary, but from excess. Words like “native,” “settler,” “colonizer,” and “indigenous” are flung about like accusations, as if etymology alone could decide who belongs and who doesn’t. And yet beneath these labels lies a deeper philosophical question: What makes someone of a place?

Is it ancestry? Blood? Ritual? Language? Or loyalty to a memory that survives the centuries?

We live in an age obsessed with proving origin through DNA tests, genealogy charts, and surnames. Identity has become forensic — as if a 23andMe report could settle ancient territorial or spiritual questions. As if a name on a family tree could confer legitimacy on a political claim. This biological fetishism masquerades as indigeneity but reduces identity to a sterile laboratory result: blood without memory, culture without continuity. What’s next — measuring skulls like the Nazis did?

What matters isn’t the biological shell, but the content: thoughts, feelings, ideas. And those have nothing to do with DNA — just as they have nothing to do with skull measurements.

True belonging is not inherited. It is cultivated.

It is spoken in the language of the land. It is passed through stories, rituals, sacred obligations, and love. It is remembered not only in books, but in the way one walks through a landscape, names its trees, marks its graves, and knows when to mourn and when to plant.

A man can claim to have “Israelite” DNA and yet be alien to Israel. A woman can have no genetic tie to a land but be........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)