DNA Wars: What Gene Gives Jews the Right to Palestinian Land?

What is a Jew? What is a Palestinian? Zionists keep changing their answer

art by Nina Paley

Call it Canaan, Palestine, Israel, or the Holy Land if you wish, but its best name is the Promised Land—its conquerors usually justify taking it by saying God promised it to them. Nina Paley illustrated that brilliantly:

When the Persian Empire took Judea, Jewish priests said Cyrus the Great was a messiah, even though his religion was Zoroastrianism. When the Maccabees seized the land, they insisted God wanted them to rule. When the Crusaders set out again and again, they played the God card every time.

But when European Zionists launched the ninth crusade at the end of the 19th century, the God excuse could not unite them. Most devout Jews believed they should not build a new Israel until the Messiah came, and many Zionists, like the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, were atheists.

Since those early Zionists lived in the age of scientific racism, nationalism, and imperialism, they…