The historical Jewish presence in Israel is one of the most well-documented yet frequently denied facts in the discourse surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Critics regularly accuse Israel of a host of crimes, ranging from practicing apartheid to being a “settler-colonialist” state. But these allegations share one core aim: to deny the Jewish connection to the land of Israel and delegitimize the Jewish People’s claim to their ancestral homeland. This denial relies on a wholesale rejection of three thousand years of Jewish history in the Middle East.
Jewish history begins with Abraham, considered to be the father of the Jewish People, and of the three major Abrahamic monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Roughly 3,900 years ago, he settled in what is today Israel. The story of Abraham and the Jewish people is foundational to understanding the unbroken bond between the Jewish nation and the land of Israel.
Later, his descendants were forced to leave for Egypt due to a famine, where they lived for hundreds of years, eventually becoming slaves under the Pharaoh, widely considered to be Ramses II.
About 3,300 years ago, the Israelites left slavery in what has become known as the Exodus, settling back in the land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua. This exodus and settlement in Canaan marked a defining chapter in Jewish history, establishing the Israelites’ roots in the land promised to their ancestors.
The Jews soon developed a civilization in the land where their ancestor Abraham had lived centuries before, and in the year 1020 BCE, Saul became the first King of Israel. The Israelites, who had been split into 12 familial tribes, each occupied a different part of the land.
King David and Jerusalem
Only a few years later, King David, the second King of Israel, continued the monarchy and designated Jerusalem as the capital of the kingdom.
The city was selected both for its strategic value and for its historic connection to the Israelites through their ancestor Abraham.
Forty years later, King David’s son, Solomon, builds the First Temple in Jerusalem as a replacement for the traveling tabernacle which the Israelites had used during their exodus from Egypt. The Temple served as the religious and spiritual, as well as the civic centre of Jewish life, both in Jerusalem and throughout the region.
But upon King Solomon’s death around 930 BCE, the Israelites split into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah. This separation lasted two centuries, until the Northern Kingdom of Israel was invaded and conquered by the neighbouring Assyrians. Home to 10 of the 12 tribes, the inhabitants of this kingdom were exiled and otherwise assimilated into the wider Assyrian population.
For its part, the remaining half of Judea, weakened, was later invaded by the powerful Babylonian Empire in the 6th century BCE. The Babylonians, led by King Nebuchadnezzar II, destroyed the Jewish Temple and exiled the people, forcibly transferring them to Babylon. This Jewish exile in Babylon was a transformative period that profoundly shaped Jewish identity, religious practice, and the enduring longing to return to the land of Israel.
For 70 years, the Israelites lived in exile until the Babylonians were defeated by the Persian Empire, which allowed them to return to their ancestral homeland. They soon began construction on the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The Babylonian exile and Jewish return to the land of Israel are one of the earliest documented examples of a displaced people reclaiming their ancestral homeland.
Though the exact details of when the shift in name took place are unknown, it is during the period of the Babylonian exile that the Israelites began to become known as Jews after the land of Judah from which they had been taken.
Over the following centuries, the Jews continued to face invasion from powerful regional powers, including the Syrian-Greeks and the Romans, who in the first century CE, conquered Judea, destroyed the Second Temple, and exiled a large number of Jews from their homeland.
The Jewish Population During the Roman Period
Despite this cataclysmic defeat, Jewish history in the Land of Israel did not end. There remained a Jewish population in the land, and over time, a growing number of Jews began to return to their ancestral homeland.
Even during this Roman exile, Israel in general, and Jerusalem in particular, remained central to the Jewish collective psyche. The land was prominently featured in Jewish writings including the Hebrew Bible, and Jews around the world prayed in the direction of Jerusalem.
In the 19th century, this return to Israel picked up steam with the rise of the contemporary Zionist movement, which, while non-religious, nonetheless recognized the ancient Jewish connections to Israel. The modern-day Zionist movement, founded by Theodor Herzl, laid the groundwork for the State of Israel. Theodor Herzl and Zionism transformed the centuries-old dream of returning to the land of Israel into a modern political movement, culminating in the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
While the Jewish presence in Israel has been far from a straight line, it has stretched back more than three thousand years, during periods of both peace and war. The Jewish connection to the Land of Israel is not an article of faith, but is one of demonstrated fact.
Explore the Historical Jewish Presence in Israel
From Abraham and the Jewish people to King David and Jerusalem, from the Babylonian exile and Jewish return to the Zionist movement and modern Israel, the historical Jewish presence in Israel has stretched back more than three thousand years. The Jewish connection to the Land of Israel is not an article of faith, but is one of demonstrated fact.
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