Marked Increase in Understanding of Jewish Indigeneity

It is heartening to see that the awareness of the Indigeneity of the Jewish people is growing. According to Google Trends, there has been a steadily rising interest in search combinations such as Israel indigenous, Jewish indigeneity, Palestinian indigeneity, Zionism indigenous, and indigenous Israel. 

The trend is also closely associated with contemporary debates over Zionism and antisemitism. Since 2024, searches pairing “Jewish indigeneity” with terms such as “antisemitism,” “Zionism,” and “Israel” have risen markedly as governments, universities, advocacy organisations, and scholars increasingly engage the indigenous-status argument in response to accusations that Zionism is inherently colonial. The concept of Jewish indigeneity is now frequently presented both as a defence of Jewish national self-determination and as a rebuttal to narratives that portray Israel exclusively through a settler-colonial framework.

Although Google Trends measures relative search interest rather than absolute search volume, its data clearly demonstrate that the vocabulary of indigeneity has shifted from the margins to the centre of public discourse concerning Israel, Zionism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and contemporary antisemitism, with the steepest and most sustained increase occurring from 2024 onward. This aligns with the launch of IEJ in February 2024. The IEJ team is proud to have contributed to this growing understanding.

Four recent articles on the Indigeneity of the Jewish people and her Indigenous supporters are signs of the increased exposure of this issue.

Ben Freeman, author of ‘Jews: An Indigenous People’ wrote a piece for Honest Reporting titled, Jewish Indigeneity is an Anthropological Reality which included these key takeaways:

• Indigeneity is anthropological, not political. It concerns where a people’s civilization originated and developed, not whether they currently hold power or have experienced oppression.

• The Jewish people meet every substantive criterion for indigeneity. History, archaeology, language, law, culture, collective memory and an enduring connection to the Land of Israel all point to the same conclusion.

• Recognizing Jewish indigeneity restores historical accuracy. It places the Jewish people within the same anthropological framework applied to every other indigenous people and provides the proper context for understanding Jewish identity and Zionism.

Mitch Danzig raised the question, If Jews Are Not Indigenous to the Land of Israel, Then What Does ‘Indigenous’ Even Mean?

He argues, ‘If the Jewish people – whose ethnogenesis occurred in the Land of Israel; whose language, civilization, calendar, literature, and legal tradition developed there; whose continuous presence there has never entirely ceased for more than three millennia; and whose prayers have pointed toward Jerusalem for nearly two thousand years – are not indigenous to that land, then the word indigenous loses any coherent historical meaning’.

Tony Masiuk’s article, Zionism as Decolonization — How I Went From Anti-Zionist to Zionist describes the process of changing his view from opposing the “existence of Israel and everything to do with it” as “matter of principle” to a realization that Jews are the Indigenous people of the land. As a Metis Nation citizen, he gives an enlightening perspective on the understanding of ethnogenesis:

‘I am a Metis Nation citizen. The earliest frameworks with which I came to understand ethnogenesis, were from within my own nation.

For those who aren’t familiar, Metis aren’t just a racial category of mixed people with both Indigenous and European ancestry. Rather we became a distinct ethnic group and nation through ethnogenesis, coalescing as a people in the Red River Settlement (now Winnipeg) and spreading throughout the prairies as our collective identity was in its formative stages (roughly 1812–1870). Our ancestors experienced distinct cultural components, language, kinship structures, historical events, etc that emerged and defined Metis as being separate from other peoples (both First Nations and Europeans) and united as our own people.

This experience of ethnogenesis was inextricable from the specific land wherein it all took place.

Therefore, we are not indigenous to France, England, Scotland, the shores of Hudson Bay, the whole of Canada, nor anywhere else, because our ethnogenesis events did not happen in these other places, even if we had ancestors from there, or ended up there later. We also do not lose our Metis-ness or our indigeneity by intermarrying with non-Metis or by moving out of the homeland.

The same can be said for any group that has an indigenous relationship to a land.

Also ethnogenesis (and thus indigeneity) is not determined solely by living in a land for a long time, by conquering Indigenous people, nor having genetic similarity with or ancestry from Indigenous peoples. Only by having a distinct identity that formed uniquely on the land in situ, can a people be indigenous and all Indigenous people’s identities are ultimately defined by their ethnogenesis and emergent relationship to land’.

Finally, Dr. Yvette Alt Miller quotes many of our friends and colleagues in this article, Indigenous Peoples Call Israel the World's Greatest Decolonization Story, affirming that “Indigenous people around the world, those who have experienced colonialism and outside settlement firsthand, routinely describe Israel as an inspiring example of an indigenous people returning to their homeland”.