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All of which should convince us that claims based on ancient presence or territorial/political occupation cannot be resolved by rational argument.

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Good article, but the fact is that whether they themselves believed this or not, modern genetics shows that Ben Tzvi's theory was basically correct: https://www.razibkhan.com/p/more-than-kin-less-than-kind-jews

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This is fantastic, thank you! I wrote a piece a bit back called "the Myth of the Indigenous," about us de-historicizing people prior to somewhat arbitrary but politicized moments in history, from which I then tried to show some of the concrete demographic changes from the 19th century that points to no modern group being "indigenous" per se, as I don't quite think there's any good use for that term. I like your work here in showing more about how relationship to land and what we would now called identity groups were actually understood by historical participants. This makes me want to research more on this topic now, so thank you.

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Yah modern genetics has more or less proven that Palestinians are genetically mostly Israelite in origin. In the northern West Bank that number can be as high as 85% in the southern West Bank as high as 80%. In Gaza and coastal plain it varies as you go north but it’s usually around 45%.

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