You Are on Indigenous Land

10/31/2025

You Are on Indigenous Land – Aquinnah Wopanaak Territory.

I was picking up a coffee with a friend in West Tisbury’s 7a recently when I saw these words on a large poster, reminding me that we were standing on, and enjoying, another people’s land.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so cynical, but with all the current events and the continued attempts to alienate Israel, my mind quickly went to the Jewish people’s indigenous land.

“Would the writers of this poster say the same about my indigenous homeland?” I thought. “Or were Jews conveniently excluded from this worldview which recognizes indigenous people’s rights to their ancestral homeland?”

I then realized that the problem rests much closer to home, within the Jewish community itself.

We fail to realize, and to appreciate, that Israel is our indigenous homeland.

I know this because even well-meaning and otherwise pro-Israel Jews will often refer to the West Bank—the first documented homeland of the Jewish people—as “the occupied territories.”

In this week’s Parsha, we read how the story of the Jews begins with G-d commanding Abraham to journey to the Land of Israel.

“Lech Lecha el Ha’aretz asher arekha.” Go forth, G‑d tells Abraham, to the land which I will show you.

This was G-d's first communication with Abraham, and the opening words of the long, tumultuous, and wondrous story of the Jews. 

When Abraham enters the land, he pitched his tent in the town of Shechem, today's Nablus, before settling in the nearby town of Bethel and then purchasing a burial plot for his wife, Sarah, in Hebron, the West Bank's largest city.

But despite the West Bank being indisputably the historical birthplace of the Jewish people, many Jews will refer to these areas as “occupied,” and ridicule and even despise the Jews who live there, calling them “settlers” who are “stealing another people’s land.”

Wait a second.

Have we forgotten that the towns and cities in the West Bank are indigenous Jewish land?

Or have we just sadly bought into the narrative that every place must respect its indigenous people, except when it comes to the Land of Israel and the Jewish people?

If a Wampanoag group were to buy homes today in West Tisbury, it would be celebrated. The peak of progressivism. We would be ending historical ills and returning the land to its indigenous people.

Yet when it comes to our own people, and our own indigenous land, we belittle the people who live there (the overwhelming majority of whom are peaceful) with scorn.

But more than being ahistorical or ideologically inconsistent, delegitimizing Jewish settlements in the West Bank is dangerously short-sighted and undermines our claim to the rest of Israel.

If the West Bank is “occupied” and we have no right to be there, despite it being our indisputable indigenous homeland, then what right do we have to live in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Netanya?

If our indigeneity is not recognized in the West Bank, then there’s no reason for it to be recognized in Israel proper.

And if we have no indigenous claim to Israel, then the protesters are right, and from the river to the sea, Palestine should be free!

What right did we have to declare sovereignty in another people’s land? What right did the British have to sign the Balfour Declaration? And what right did the UN have to propose a partition plan in a land that doesn’t belong to the Jews?

The only answer to these questions is the answer found in this week’s Parsha, where G-d commands Abraham to journey to the Land of Israel and tells him:

“Lift up your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever."

And since that day, the Land of Israel - including the West Bank - has always been our indigenous, ancestral homeland.

During the generations when we lived there or during the times we were exiled, Israel was always our holy land, to where we prayed three times a day and never stopped hoping to return.

And only when we recognize this truth, will we begin to have any legitimate claim to Israel whatsoever. But if we fail to recognize this reality, then we are indeed settler colonialists, occupying another people’s homeland.

So the next time you find yourself thinking about the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, close your eyes, imagine yourself standing there, and picture a large poster with the words:

You Are on Indigenous Land – Judean and Samarian Territory.