Israel Is The Ancestral Homeland of the Jews, Not Palestinians Addressing common counter-arguments 1. "Palestinians are closer to ancient Israelites than modern Jews" - Incorrect. Ashkenazi Jews alone trace the majority (roughly 80%) of their Y-lineages to the Levant. They are basically indistinguishable from non-Jewish Levantines on the paternal line. About 40-50% of their maternal lineages (contrary to earlier papers which overestimated European input) are also Levantine. Palestinian paternal lineages are predominantly Peninsular Arab with MRCA estimates dating back to the mid-1st millennium CE which corresponds neatly with waves of Arab invasion and settlement. This is why they cluster with Saudis on most sample-based PCAs. The mtDNA side is more diverse, but the majority of it is decidedly non-Levantine. A Levantine component does exist (particularly among the Christians), but there's no way of proving that any of it comes from actual Jews (Arameans are more likely) and, either way, was almost certainly acquired via forced conversions and sexual violence. You cannot October 7th your way into indigeneity. 2. "But this proximity list I have here says Palestinians are closer to ancient Canaanites" - Because proximity lists are based on population aggregates and genotypal similarity, not shared ancestry. For example, someone who is half-Cherokee and half-Nigerian will chart further away from “Cherokee” than will an Indigenous Siberian or Indigenous Amazonian individual with no Cherokee ancestry whatsoever. To give a more pertinent example: someone who is 75% Arabian and 25% Levantine will chart much closer to “Bronze Age Levantine” than someone who is 75% Levantine and 25% European. Why? Because Arabians and Levantines are neighboring populations. They're genetically much closer to each other than Europeans are to either. Thus, even if a sample is 75% Levantine, that 25% European will strongly pull their plot away from the Levant. On such lists, Ashkenazi groups (i.e. aggregates, not individual samples) will chart closer to Sicilians and Cretan Greeks than non-Jewish Levantines. Does this mean Ashkenazi Jews originate in Italy? No. All it means is they are a similar genetic average when their base components are mixed together — Ashkenazim are Levantines with a South European component on the maternal line, and Sicilians are a largely Roman and Greek-descended population with a significant MENA pull (Phoenician , plus Southern Europeans have retained much more European Neolithic ancestry than other Europeans). That Ashkenazi aggregates may have stronger affinity (that is, similarity) to Sicilians than, say, Lebanese Christians is meaningless in regards to the origin of Ashkenazim as Jews. 3. "But the grandparents and great-grandparents of modern Jews were born in Europe" - Because that's where their ancestors ended up after being driven out of the Middle East. Recent history in Europe does not cancel out or supplant ancestral origins in the Levant. By this logic, Europeans are "indigenous" to Tennessee and the indigenous tribes they displaced are indigenous to their place of exile. On that note, a large portion of Palestinian families can't trace their history in the land back more than 100 years. They arrived with the British mandate. Saeb Erekat, for instance, loves to claim that he is a "Canaanite" despite descending from a Saudi Arab clan that arrived in the 20th century. 4. "Netanyahu's REAL last name is Mileikowsky" - Jews in Europe had European surnames forced on them in the 18th-19th centuries. Before that, they used traditional Hebrew patronyms. Conversely, there is nothing "Israelite" about Palestinian surnames. Nearly all of them pinpoint origins outside of Eretz Yisra'el. 5. "Palestinians are culturally closer to the Israelites than modern Jews" - Jewish language, holidays, folklore, calendar, core cuisine, music, and history all center on the land of Israel. Palestinians speak Arabic, practice Islam (notwithstanding the Christian minority), and are culturally almost indistinguishable from other Arab populations. Their flag uses pan-Arab colors, each one representing a different caliph. And no, dabkeh is not a Canaanite dance. 6. "Jews stole Palestinian Arab cuisine" - Most if not all Levantine cuisine is thousands of years old, predating the Arab conquests. Jews were familiar with these dishes in antiquity and are now returning to them after centuries of exile (to say nothing of Jews who were never exiled and never stopped eating these foods). 7. "Modern Jews look like Europeans" - No. ashkenazijews.net/ TL,DR: Jews are indigenous to Israel and arguments to the contrary are invariably based on sophistry, misinformation, and misreading of data.