Abstract

Zionism is a political geography idea founded on a theory of racial appropriation of space and time. It is centered on a Jewish exclusive inheritance claim over both the territory of the former British Mandate of Palestine and the cultural heritage and genetic material of the Biblical Israelites. By the same token Zionism denies such exclusive inheritance “rights” to the Muslim and Christian Arabs who are the natives of Palestine. This paper explores and takes issue with the claim: “contemporary Jews are Semitic.” It is based on a broad multidisciplinary geographic synthesis of the critical findings about the Semitic claim. First, it presents the Israeli Law of “Return” as the embodiment of the Semitic claim. Second, it synthesizes the major critical findings about the Semitic claim in history, archaeology, linguistics, and genetics.