 Late in the 19th century, Zionism was born, founded by a group of secular, yes let me repeat that, secular Jews. Its sole purpose was the establishment of a self-determinate Jewish homeland, and its eyes were focused solely on the lands of Palestine. To attract as much attention, passion and loyalty by Jews across all traditions, Zionist ideology was strategically founded on the belief and narrative that the Palestinian territories of the times were indeed the land that God had promised to the patriarch Abraham many millennia ago, and the only destination for the Jewish nation. They were the chosen people, and this was their promised land, and this goal was to be achieved no matter the means to such an end. To understand better the promise God made to Abraham, let's take a quick dive into the Torah to recollect the several verses of its first book, Genesis. The Lord had said to Abraham, Leave your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to the land I will show you. The Lord appeared to Abraham and said, To your seed I will give this land. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham and said, To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River the Euphrates. The Kingdom of Israel, when Jews ruled the lands, came and went, as did many other subsequent kingdoms and empires who presided over the same land, but let's be clear about something. Prior to Zionism, there was no movement by any Jewish people along history that called for the return of the Jews to their so-called homeland, neither for the return of a theoretical diaspora nor for the creation of a Jewish nation. Jews were assimilated everywhere, part and part of every civilization. Their identity was reflective of their socio-geographic situation. Jews in Arabia were Arab Jews, Jews in Europe were European Jews, and so on. With Zionism thought though, this reality had to be reinvented. Jews were told that they now needed a Jewish land, and to trigger the emotion of all Jewish people, the Zionists resurrected and preached the narrative of their only acceptable solution, the promised land. And what's the narrative exactly? Well, it's fairly simple. God promised the land of Canaan to the Jews, as written in the Torah, right? Well, that is it, but it's not quite as strong an argument as it sounds. The question that presents itself, is it the Jewish faith that bestows these lands on the Jews? No-one in Scripture does it necessarily say so. It actually says the seed, the descendants of Abraham, and makes no mention of any faith. You'd say that this fact is quite obvious as it's embedded within the Torah, the Jewish holy book, where God's promise was found, right? Well, not quite so yet again. Let me shed a little light on this. So if it's all about the holy book, then Christians believe in the Torah, the Old Testament, and find it as important to their own book, the Bible, the New Testament. Muslims also find the Torah, the Torah, and Arabic, as well as the Bible, the Injeel, as holy as they do the Koran. As a retort, one would then counter-argue with me by saying that it was the Jewish God who bestowed these lands. And again, I would reply that the Christians and Muslims believe in that same God. So if all these subsequent faiths believe in the same book and the same God, then why should they be excluded from their rights to the same lands that the Jews consider as their sole legacy? Why can't Christians and Muslims lay the same claim to these lands? But let's put this weaker point of contention aside for now. Let's get into the real reason why Jews believe that they are the only people deserving of these lands. The Torah explicitly lays out that the bequithal of lands to Abraham is indeed a genetic promise, originally to his seed, plural, but further on in the book of Genesis solely to his son Isaac and then further on to his son Jacob. There above it stood the Lord, and he said, I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham, and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you were lying. So if genetics drive the strongest Zionist argument for the claim to the lands of Canaan, then this is the opportune time to disintegrate this element of that narrative. History never sits still, as doesn't any population, and definitely neither do commitments to any one belief system or another. Judaism didn't sit still. It was overcome to a certain extent by polytheism, centuries later by Christianity, paganism, and even beyond that by Islam. So to say that the descendants of Isaac and further on Jacob stayed Jewish for almost 3,000 years is naive. Most today might be Christian, Muslim, or even agnostic. Are these descendants not deserving of any claim to the lands of Canaan? Zionists have attempted to claim that genetic testing has proven that the majority of modern Jews in Israel are direct descendants of Jacob. Even if such a genetic link is infinitesimally minute, the percentage of DNA ancestry reaches high single digits at its very best. These tests have been published at the highest of academic and media institutions to prove to the world the Zionist claim. Whereas when we look at erodes, the Christians and Muslims who have been living in the region for many centuries have shown DNA ancestry levels well above 50% as a minimum. This further proves the notion that those who might have been Jews in ancient times became another religious denomination and remains till modern times. Such studies, although as important to those of the Zionists, are not aggressively pushed for public consumption, as it's quite obvious to the Arab world that those who resided in Palestine at the end of the 19th century had been there since God knows when. So from a genetics point of view, the Zionist claim fails yet again. The facts cannot justify any reason for the Jews to be prioritized as beneficiaries of such a godly promise. If you know, you know, and if you don't, then join the Chronicles, where we present content about Middle Eastern history, culture, and heritage. If what I have presented so far hasn't convinced you, then I ask, what of the many Jews who have zero genetic claim to Jewish ancestry? God didn't include them in his promise? Are they not the chosen people and the land of Canaan, not their rightful inheritance? This is both a rhetorical and serious question. So now I ask my Zionist counterparts, which is it, faith or genetics? Which gives the Jews the right to the Palestinian lands? From my perspective, it's neither. Late in the 19th century, there were pretty much no real nations, not in the modern sense of the word or system. There were still empires and territories, city-states, and rarely any true borders. What made nations back then were the people who continuously inhabited them. Even if the Arabs who inhabited them had all the rights and claims from both a religious and genetic perspective, it is their presence over the many centuries that lays their entitlement to the lands of Palestine. These Arabs who happen to be a majority of Muslims, a considerable contingent of Christians, and also a minority of Jews living side by side over the many ages.