Recently I found myself in a heated exchange on X/Twitter with Dr Jeffrey Sachs from the Department of Politics at Acadia University. Sachs was arguing that whether Jews are indigenous to the Middle East doesn’t matter in the context of today’s political disputes. He even went as far as to suggest that the beauty of my culture or the political rights of my people wouldn’t change if I discovered that my ancestors had only arrived in Iraq or Tunisia in the 19th century. According to him, indigenity is irrelevant when it comes to political rights.
But here’s where Dr Sachs gets it wrong, not just about Jews, but about what it means to be indigenous and why it matters, especially in the face of erasure and displacement.
For my family and for countless others, indigenity isn’t an abstract concept. It’s rooted in real history, in real places, and in a connection to the land that has defined us for millennia. I come from a family of Mizrahi Jews who have lived in the Middle East for more than 2,000 years, long before Islamic conquests shaped the region. My ancestors didn’t “arrive” in Iraq or Tunisia in the 19th century. They were there for centuries, holding onto their identity and culture through waves of persecution and displacement. To dismiss that history as irrelevant is to erase the very real struggles my family endured to maintain their connection to their land and identity.
Indigenous identity isn’t just about where someone’s grandparents were born. It’s about where a people were formed, where their language, culture and traditions grew in deep connection to the land. The Jewish people aren’t indigenous to the Middle East simply because we’ve lived there for a long time. We are indigenous because that land shaped our very identity. Our language, our spirituality and our traditions were all born from the land of Israel. That’s what indigenity means. It’s not a casual claim of ancestry but a formative relationship between a people and a place.
When you dismiss the importance of that relationship, you’re not just abstracting, you’re erasing the very foundation of who we are. You’re ignoring the trauma of displacement, the loss of identity and the centuries of survival against efforts to erase us. For Jews of the Middle East, like my family, the connection to the land is what kept us going through centuries of exile and marginalisation. It’s not a question of aesthetics or abstract pride in heritage. It’s about survival.
Dr Sachs argued that our political and civil rights don’t turn on anything as “meaningless” as where our ancestors came from, but that statement misses the heart of the issue. The notion that we can detach identity from place and history as though they don’t matter is a dangerous oversimplification. It overlooks the fact that colonialism, in all its forms, exploits this very disconnection. It’s not just about political subjugation or economic exploitation. It’s about erasing the identity of a people, cutting them off from the land and history that sustains them. When the Islamic empires swept through the Middle East, Jews weren’t just politically subjugated, they were marginalised, their cultural and religious identities suppressed under regimes that saw them as second-class citizens.
This is the reality my family lived through. My ancestors didn’t survive centuries of displacement and persecution just to be told their connection to the land is irrelevant. That history is not an abstraction. It’s the reality of what it means to be indigenous, to have a bond with a place that defines who you are and, when severed, leaves lasting wounds.
So no, I wouldn’t love my culture any less if my family had arrived in Iraq or Tunisia later. But that misses the point. My family’s deep roots in the Middle East inform who I am today and how I understand the political realities we face. It’s not just about where our ancestors were born, it’s about the continuous, generational connection to the land that shaped us. That history matters because it informs the rights and identity of indigenous peoples, whether it’s Jews or Palestinians today.
Indigenous identity isn’t some relic that we can wave away because it’s inconvenient for contemporary politics. It’s a lived experience, deeply tied to the history, culture, and rights of a people. When we dismiss it, we’re not just ignoring the past, we’re erasing the present. For those of us who have been marginalised, displaced, and erased throughout history, that’s not something we can afford to overlook.
If we want to have a real conversation about political rights, justice and identity in the Middle East, we can’t start by erasing the history of those who have lived there for millennia. We need to understand that indigenity matters because it is about the very core of who people are and the land that has shaped them.
That’s why I won’t reduce my people’s connection to our land and our history to an abstraction. It’s not just part of our past, it’s an essential part of our identity today.
