The Land of Israel go back more than 3,000 years

The Arab Muslim colonization of the Jewish homeland began with invasion. In 636–638 CE, the armies of Caliph Umar conquered the Land of Israel.

Nearly 55 years later, in 691–692, they built the Dome of the Rock directly on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism for more than 1,700 years where two Jewish Temples had stood. The Al-Aqsa Mosque followed around 715 CE.

Then came the systematic degradation of the indigenous Jews. In 717 CE, crushing taxes drove many Jews off their ancestral land. In 720 CE, Caliph Umar II banned Jews from worshipping on the Temple Mount entirely.

That ban lasted more than 1,200 years; and, in practice, the ban continues to this day under Muslim control of the site. Jews were reduced to humiliated dhimmis (second-class “infidels” in their own homeland). <å>This was not coexistence. It was Arab colonization followed by attempted Jewish erasure.

The Jews did not “colonize” the Land of Israel.
They are its indigenous people.

Some never left. Others returned in every generation whenever conditions allowed. Political Zionism in the late 19th century was the modern expression of that unbroken connection, culminating in the restoration of Jewish sovereignty.

History does not begin in the 7th century.

Jewish roots in the Land of Israel go back more than 3,000 years.

By Brian D. Butler