Ambassador Alan Baker writes a compelling piece for The Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs, outlining the political, historical, and religious reasons to analyze the character of the Jews as perhaps one of the oldest indigenous peoples who remain a distinct people and to consider the nature and implications of such distinctness in the practical realities of today’s international community.

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Some of the highlights of the study includes focuses on:

 

• How the Palestinian “Balfour Apology Campaign” demanding the annulment of the Balfour Declaration is part of a consistent policy of denying the rights of the Jews to their national homeland as a people indigenous to the area.
   

• How the Jewish People, for more than two millennia, have consistently maintained the strongest claim to be the aboriginal people in its ancestral homeland, and how their existence and roots are widely documented, acknowledged, and recognized.
   

• How Christianity grew out of Judaism, and the early Christian existence and settlement in the Holy Land were part and parcel of the Jewish existence and settlement there.
   

• How Arab and Palestinian leaders are attempting to establish a mythical, new narrative according to which the “Palestinian People” have existed as a distinct people indigenous to the area for thousands of years, predating the Jewish People.
   

• How Saeb Erekat, the Secretary-General of the PLO, claimed in 2014 that he is a direct descendant of the Canaanite tribes who lived in Israel some 9,000 years ago. Yet according to Erekat’s own Facebook entry, the Erekat clan is from the northwestern Arabian Peninsula and settled in the Palestine area around 1860.

 

The study is incredibly detailed, and includes an impressive list of over 40 sources in its reference notes, most of which can be viewed online.

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Please visit the JCPA website to read the complete study:

http://jcpa.org/article/jews-one-worlds-oldest-indigenous-peoples/

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About the author: Amb. Alan Baker is Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center and the head of the Global Law Forum. He participated in the negotiation and drafting of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, as well as agreements and peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. He served as legal adviser and deputy director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as Israel’s ambassador to Canada.