Why Germany and Spain Should Give Land to Make Jewish States and Palestine Should Give None

The “Ancestral Home” of Ashkenazi Jews is Germany; of Sephardic Jews, Spain

A Zionist recently said he believes Palestine is the “ancestral home” of the Jews. Anyone who understands genetics and culture knows that’s an odd claim. Genetically, most Jews are more European than Middle Eastern, and, as their names, languages, and traditions show, Ashkenazi (“Germanic”) and Sephardic (“Hispanic”) Jews do not share an ancestral home. The first Ashkenazim, like the first Protestants, appeared in Germanic Europe. The first Sephardim, like the first Catholics, appeared in Latin Europe.

Palestine is the ancestral home of two religions, but it is only the ancestral home of the Palestinian people, the children of Canaan who were once mostly polytheists, then mostly Jews, then mostly Christians, and now, mostly Muslims. Historically, Palestine was a refuge for Jews—nothing in its history is comparable to the Spanish Expulsion or the German Holocaust. If a Jewish ethnostate should be created in the ancestral home of Jews, Spain and Germany should give land to make amends for their awful histories.

Obviously, Spain and Germany cannot offer land that shares a border, but historically, Ashkenazim and Sephardim lived apart, which suggests a solution that’s appropriate to history. One Jewish state could be Israel and the other, Judah.