The chant “From the River to the Sea” is a catchy refrain popularized by those who seek to deny the Jewish people—the indigenous people of the Land of Israel—the right to sovereignty in their ancestral homeland. The irony is difficult to ignore because accusations that Jews are “occupiers” of Israel are often advanced by the descendants of peoples and empires that historically conquered and ruled the land. Yet the record of antiquity, supported by extensive archaeological evidence, tells a far more complex and enduring story—one that chronicles the ancient Jewish connection to the land across millennia.

History records that two-thousand years ago, well before the emergence of Christianity and Islam, the Romans initially referred to Israel........

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