Yossi Schwartz, ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 15.10.2026
Today we read in the Zionist Wall that Barack Obama attacked Israel and claimed that it was exploiting its military superiority to impose its will on the Palestinians, and aroused harsh criticism among Jewish commentators in the United States: “Erase 3,000 years of Jewish history,” writes Reut Goldman.
“Former US President Barack Obama sharply criticized Israel and the policies of the Netanyahu government, claiming that Israel had given up its moral advantage in the conflict with the Palestinians. During an event in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Obama accused Israel of taking over the lands of others and claimed that the country could no longer rely on its military superiority to ensure its security”[i]
“For thousands of years, the Jewish people have been subjected to oppression, discrimination and killing. Europe was responsible for much of this, and the Jews were looking for a place of refuge. There is no question about that,” Obama said. But they also took land from other people and behaved excessively. And those people said, understandably: ‘This is injustice, and I want my land back[iii].'”
“Obama’s remarks drew sharp criticism from Jewish commentators and pro-Israel elements in the United States. Jewish-American journalist Seth Mandel attacked the former president in an article published in Commentary magazine, claiming that he ignores the history of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. Mendel recalled that even before the Balfour Declaration, large Jewish communities existed in Jerusalem, Tiberias, and Safed, and that Jews legally purchased land, sometimes from landowners who did not live there. “Whose land is it, Mr. President?” asked Mandel, who accused Obama of harboring a grudge against Israel because of his diplomatic failures in the Middle East.[iv]
The Daily Wire news website also published harsh criticism of the former president, under the headline “Obama erases more than 3,000 years of Jewish history.” The article claimed that Obama presented a distorted picture of the establishment of the State of Israel, as if the Jewish state was founded only in the wake of the Holocaust and persecution in Europe, while ignoring the historical connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. The website even claimed that his remarks were a continuation of the hostile policy toward Israel that characterized his tenure and mentioned his administration’s decision to refrain from vetoing a UN Security Council resolution against the settlements in December 2016. “[v]
The Zionist attack on Obama is particularly interesting in the claim regarding the historical connection between ancient Jews and contemporary Jews. The Zionists are not the only ones who have used this radical nationalist fabricated claim.
The Italian entrepreneur claimed that modern Italians were the heirs and direct successors of the ancient Roman Empire. The concept they used was Romanism. Benito Mussolini and the Fascist regime used this concept to promote a cultural and national identity linking 20th-century Italy to ancient Rome. Fascists perceived modern Italy as the “Third Rome,” with Ancient Rome being the first and Renaissance Italy being the second.
Mussolini imitated ancient Roman rulers— first Julius Caesar and then Emperor Augustus—to build imperial ambitions and consolidate governmental power.
The regime adopted distinctly Roman symbols, such as the ancient Roman salute, the symbol of the whip and axe, and linked this ideology to power, discipline, and territorial expansion, including ambitions for Rome the Great.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement saw Germany as a direct continuation of the ancient Germanic tribes (such as the Teutons and Goths).
Nazi ideology relied on historical myths and the romanticization of the distant past to substantiate its claims:
The Nazis claimed that the ancient Germanic tribes were the original and pure “Aryan race”. They portrayed the Germanic warriors (e.g., Arminius who defeated the Romans at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest) as a symbol of power, blind loyalty, and purity of blood.
The Nazi concept divided German history into three heydays (Reichs). The regime presented itself as the Third Reich, the successor to the First Reich (the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation) and the Second Reich (Bismarck’s German Empire).
Hitler used the claim that the Germanic tribes had once settled in Eastern Europe to justify the invasion, conquest, and expulsion of Slavic populations, claiming that it was “returning” historic territories to the Germans.
The Zionists have, of course, another claim that Palestine has been the promised land to the Jews.
The first settlers in America (mainly the Puritans from Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries) saw America as a promised land, using Exodus stories and biblical mythology to justify their conquest.
The European colonialist settlers compared the transit of the Atlantic to the splitting of the Red Sea and the new settlement to Canaan.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was seen as building a “city on the mountain inspired by the Bible, as a model of faith and morality that the world should look up to.”
John Cotton and Religious Leaders: Demand and Directly Link the Suffering of the Puritans in Europe to the Divine Promise of the Land
The biblical analogy was often used by the settlers to view the indigenous peoples of America as “Canaanites,” which for them justified their conquest and dispossession.
The story of European colonizers in South Africa mirrored that of European settlers in America.
The Dutch settlers, who later became known as Boers or Afrikaners, developed a religious and nationalist consciousness, and they saw South Africa – and especially in the areas to which they migrated – as the “Promised Land”
In 1652, the Dutch East India Company established a supply station on the Cape of Good Hope. Most of the settlers who arrived there were Calvinist Christians.
These Calvinists saw themselves as a “chosen people” like the Israelites in the Bible, and the local natives (such as the Bantu or Zulu blacks) as “Canaanites,” in a way that justified domination, conquest, and settlement.
Over time, groups of nomadic peasants and shepherds (truckboarders) left the Cape Town area and migrated inland. They did not see themselves as colonialists sent on behalf of Europe, but as a new people (“Afrikaners”) for whom South Africa is the only homeland and divine inheritance.
This perception was especially strengthened in the 19th century during the “Great Trek” – the mass migration of Boers fleeing British rule in the Cape colony into the interior of the continent, a journey that they perceived directly as their “Exodus” from Pharaoh to the Promised Land.
As for the old Yishuv, which preceded Zionism, it had no ambition to establish a Jewish state.
The expelled from Spain and Portugal settled in Palestine, which was ruled at the time by the Mamluks and later by the Ottoman Empire. The emigration of the expelled from Spain and Portugal from 1492 onwards completely changed the face of the tiny Jewish settlement in the country and led to cultural, economic, and religious prosperity.
The expellees settled in four cities: Hebron, Jerusalem, Safed, and Tiberias.
Safed became the main destination for the expelled and, in the 16th century, the largest and most significant city in the Land of Palestine.
The greatest Spanish sages came to the city, including Rabbi Yosef Karo (who wrote the Shulchan Aruch there), the Arizel, and Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (the Ramak).
The expellees established a thriving textile and wool industry in Safed, which turned the city into an international economic center. In 1577, they established the first printing press in the Middle East there.
Jerusalem absorbed many families expelled from Spain. The new Sephardic community merged with the local residents (the few Musta’arabi) and became dominant, establishing synagogues, charitable institutions, and yeshivas.
The community in Hebron grew and became established thanks to the expellees’ families, who began purchasing land and buildings around the Cave of the Patriarchs.
During the 16th century, the wealthy Portuguese conversant Dona Gracia Nasi and her nephew Don Yosef Nasi leased Tiberias from the Ottoman Sultan. They restored its walls, planted mulberry trees for the silk industry, and tried to turn it into an independent city of refuge for the expelled.
The ridiculous claim that the old Yishuv, clearly one of the expellees from Spain and Portugal who did not aspire to establish a Zionist state, and that the Zionists were a continuation of that community that lived in the land without a break for 3000 years is another Zionist lie.
Endnotes:
[i] https://www.walla.co.il/news/world/383957547
[ii] Ibid
[iii] Ibid
[iv] Ibid
[v] Ibid