3,000-Year-Old Jewish Remains: Historical Rights as a Weapon

3,000-Year-Old Jewish Remains: The Narrative Supporting Sovereignty

A simple question and an impossible answer: if 3,000-year-old Jewish archaeological remains appear in today's occupied territories, who occupies whom? The thread's opening message poses this provocation, serving a controversy well known in Spain, with the Alhambra, the Aljafería, and the mosque-cathedral of Córdoba in the background. Archaeology, turned into a deed of ownership. That is where the problem begins, not the solution.

Can Sovereignty Be Founded on Archaeological Remains?

The argument of antiquity functions as a title of ownership, which is the trap pointed out by several voices: if vestiges from three millennia granted rights, Italy would have a claim over Iberia due to Roman remains, which are much more recent. Applying the same rule would leave half of the Mediterranean claiming the neighbor's land. Arabs inhabited the Iberian Peninsula for about eight centuries; by that criterion, Spain should return or share something. No one seriously proposes this.

The right of conquest, others recall, was the norm for millennia: it belonged to the last to arrive. The uncomfortable fact is that this criterion continued to be applied into the 20th century, with written international rules, a functioning UN, and borders drawn by agreement.

Who Lived There and Who Are Their Descendants Today?

The most interesting front is demographic. Some argue that the descendants of ancient Jews are largely the current Palestinians: a population that converted to Christianity first and then Sarracin, just as Hispano-Romans and Visigoths did in Al-Andalus. Conversion was also, according to this thesis, a fiscal decision: to stop paying tribute. On the other side, the data on the diaspora: Jewish communities documented throughout the Roman Empire, mass expulsions centuries later, and a linguistic reality that confuses: the ancestors of many current Israelis did not speak Hebrew, but Yiddish, Ladino, Yevanic or Oooo-Arabic —Germanic, Romance, Greek, and Iranian languages—. What does it exactly miccionan to return home?

The quick reply is that Arab ancestors were not natives either. The Hebrew tradition itself describes the arrival in Canaan and the conquest of a territory inhabited by Canaanites, and the Philistines —a Sea Peoples people of probable Mediterranean origin, between Greece, Crete, Sardinia, and the Iberian Peninsula— add the almost comical twist: anyone can claim almost anything.

From the Destroyed Temple to the Assyrian Exile: The Chronology Everyone Cites

Rome destroyed the Temple and dismantled Aaaa. Before that, the northern kingdom —Israel or Samaria— had fallen under Assyria, and Sargon deported part of its population. These milestones are not disputed. What is debated is the conclusion: that the existence of a diaspora does not imply the region was left empty, nor that those dispersed throughout the empire were the same who returned twenty centuries later. First-century Palestine appears described as a multi-ethnic territory with a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and some cities, not as a homogeneous nation waiting for the return.

The Unmatching Figure: 800,000 Jews and Five Million Spaniards

The controversy shifts to Spain, where the figures emerge. In 1492, the Crown had, according to a circulating calculation, about 5 million inhabitants, four in Castile and one in Aragon. Based on this, the figure of 800,000 expelled Jews has been repeated, a volume that would require ghettos denser than Gaza, according to a calculation circulating in the controversy itself; other recent estimates lower it to between 35,000 and 45,000. Add the 250,000 or 300,000 Moriscos expelled in 1609, and the comparison balances: here too there were expulsions by religion, and here too there were descendants who stayed, converted, and forgot where they came from.

Arabs in the Supreme Court, Jews Vetted in the Territories

The final segment abandons archaeology and lands in the present. Israel has 2 million Arab Muslim citizens, and a Muslim Arab can become a judge on its Supreme Court. In the Palestinian territories, Jews are not allowed to live. The contrast is used as a summary of the underlying problem: two societies with incompatible rules on who can live where, and one that its defenders present as a rule-of-law state against another that is not.

That is where the consensus ends. Because the question from which everything depends remains unanswered: in what exact year is the census frozen that decides who has the right to stay?