Iranian Zoroastrians in Tehran celebrating the Sadeh Festival. The Zoroastrians are a bona fide ethno-religious group and the oldest too. (Photo credit PK)

Israel being “the ancestral homeland” is given as one of the key excuses why Israel should remain in Palestine

This “ancestral homeland” claim is strongly bound with the claim of being an “ethno-religious” group.

To be defined as an ethno-religious group there are two globally accepted criteria:

An ethno-religion is typically characterized by the following two key elements:

1) Strong Link Between a Specific Ethnicity and a Specific Religion:

      •     Ethno-religions often bind religious identity to a specific ethnic group, where religious practices and beliefs are deeply intertwined with the group’s cultural and ethnic identity. Membership in the religion is often inherited through birth within a specific ethnic group, rather than through conversion. Examples include the Druze, Yazidis, and Zoroastrians.

2) Cultural and Geographic Concentration:

      •     Ethno-religions are geographically and culturally concentrated, with their beliefs and practices evolving alongside the development of a specific ethnic community in a particular region. This localization often helps reinforce a unique identity that blends cultural traditions and religious beliefs.

These defining elements distinguish ethno-religions from universal religions, which spread beyond ethnic or cultural boundaries.

Which means, the key defining features to be a bona fide ethno-religious group is that this group must have a shared ancestry and a shared religion.

Jewish Israelis or Jews do not meet either of those criteria.

Bona fide ethno-religious groups like the Zoroastrians and the Druze do meet the criteria.

They have a shared ancestry, religion, culture, and don’t accept converts.

Jews are perceived by some to be an ethno-religious group, but some believe they are not and that they’re just a religious group.

 I don’t think Jews are a bona fide ethno-religious group, I think they’re now just a religious group.

I believe initially they were during the time of the Israelites, but not anymore, due to the many historical changes over the centuries.

A substantial number of Jews themselves believe they’re just a religious group now.

Scientifically from ancestry perspective, many Jews can’t trace their ancestry back to the Israelites and Middle East.

Which is a key defining feature to qualify as an authentic ethno-religious group.

For example: Ethiopian Jews have a different ancestry and DNA markers to say, Ashkenazi Jews.

Arab Jews have a different ancestry and DNA markers to Ashkenazi Jews.

When such diverse ancestries, DNA markers and cultures are forming a group – then it’s no longer a case that this group can authentically be acknowledged as an ethno-religious group.

The reason why some argue Jews are an ethno-religious group has a lot to do with Zionism.

One of the key ideas of Zionism is that all Jews can ‘return’ to their ancestral homeland” in historic Palestine.

Zionism is not about race (how someone looks) – it was a concept created based on ethnicity (a now illusionary idea of a shared ancestry and DNA).

And the idea of a national identity, in no small part due to years of persecution of Jews in Europe – that is obvious even from rudimentary reading up on Theodore Herzl’s views of Zionism.

How Jewishness is ethnicised in Israel is a man-made construct, that is scientifically incorrect – it is designed to essentially pave a way to manufacture new Jewish people, who really are not Jewish.

Because Israel amended their “Law of Return” in 1970 – and they said as long as any person had one Jewish grandparent then that meant they were Jewish, and have the ‘right to return’.

It is a form of “blood quantum”. Except blood quantum is scientifically legit, this is not.

The Israeli concept of determining a Jewish person – is like saying if I had one Indian grandparent and three Bangladeshi grandparents then that would make me Indian.

No, my ancestry would still be Bangladeshi.

When Israel amended its ‘Law of Return’ in 1970, the provision of believing someone is Jewish just because they have one Jewish grandparent, was based on the Nazi era definition of Jewishness.

Everyone has the right to believe whatever they want to believe they are.

But no one has the right of acceptance when they abuse that right to ethnically cleanse, occupy, murder and terrorise others.

It claims this “ethno-religion” angle only because it advances the concept of Zionism.