I guess you think this addresses my point that you muddle religion with geneology, but this doesn't resolve that problem at all, it just sort of wallows in it. That ancient Israel was the seat of the Jewish religion has always been the zionist's public rationale for reclaiming this area, with the presumption of direct descent from those people usually being used to bolster the case. My point is -- and this is the third time I've had to restate it -- even if all that's true, since when is such a territorial claim still valid after having lapsed for 1500 years? That so ancient a claim can only be void is one of the basic postulates of modern political reality, and you seem to accept this in the general case. But when the case of Israel comes up, this total double-standard explodes out of you. Your way of resolving the inconsistency (in your own mind) seems to be that this is the divine mandate of your belief system, that any social or physical reality beyond this is irrelevant and meaningless, that you're taking Israel back and God's on your side and anyone who gets in our way will get the white-hot sword of zionist zeal slammed up their ass, amen, hallelujah. I'm sorry, but I don't find this even a little persuasive. It's a very closed circular argument that really amounts to what I've been calling it all along: racialist self-advocacy.

Meanwhile, were there Jews here in antiquity? Okay, sure. Are all present-day Jews descended from them? Different matter altogether, much cloudier, and ultimately irrelevant. Your argument is complicated further by the fact that the Jews were not the ONLY ancient inhabitants of this area. What about other such claims, some of which might be even more ancient and inclusive? By your (ridiculous) rationale, don't such claims take precedence over your own? The final nail in your argument's coffin, though, is that you end on the "manifest destiny" note as if this whole category of thinking is anything other than obscene. It's just pure bigot-think.

One of the best illustrations of this is the country that invented the term, the United States. Your argument here is identical to that of American's during the settler bigot phase. I already talked about this:

The United States was a "democracy," too, during the 114 years in which we massacred Indians continuously from the Alleghenies to the Pacific. To justify their villainy to themselves, Americans told themselves all the same putrid lies you tell yourself:

"We're just liberating them from savagery"

"This land is too good for the likes of these heathens -- God wants US to have it"

"Well, we have to DEFEND OURSELVES!"

and so on. And just like yours, their lies didn't justify shit, not then and not ever. They were just the conceits by which we slithered around the simple truth that we were greedy bigoted murdering monsters. We haven't really changed or learned much since then, either.

There's no forgetting or forgiving crimes this enormous. Americans better hope and pray justice is never delivered to us for what we did to the Indians, because if it ever is, all our exalted "prosperity" and "greatness" will be so many ashes sifting through our fingers.

And so too with Israel.