“We are Jews from Judea,” declares Netanyahu. It’s interesting that Netanyahu uses the argument that Jews inhabited the Holy Land for centuries to buttress Zionism’s position on a Jewish state. In reality, Jews abstained from immigrating to the Holy Land en masse for the past 2,000 years so as not to transgress the dire prohibition of “going up as a wall” and violate the fundamental Three Oaths that govern the Jewish people in exile. The primary Jewish populations resided in countries outside the Land of Israel, varying throughout the centuries. Throughout our long history, the Jewish people viewed the Land of Israel as the Torah views it: a Holy Land. A place where one can serve G-d with greater sanctity, but which also requires greater stringency in observance, as a transgression in the Holy Land carries greater severity than one committed outside it. Think of a synagogue. Its primary purpose is to serve as a place of worship. Engaging in mundane activities, let alone violating one of the Torah’s commandments within its sanctuary, constitutes a desecration of G-d’s name and carries greater severity. It was through this lens that the Jewish people viewed the Holy Land. Only individuals who wished to undertake its heightened spiritual obligations sought to live there, mindful not to defile the land. *It was never a political movement, a collective immigration effort, or, G-d forbid, an attempt to gain sovereignty.* Such acts undermine the basic principles that Jews have upheld in accordance with the Torah for over a millennium, until Zionists transformed our religion into a GDless nationalist movement. For Netanyahu to use this historical presence as substantiation for an “indigenous claim” is quite satirical. In Judaism, redemption is not a nationalist undertaking achieved through political sovereignty, but a Divine promise of the ultimate restoration of G-d’s presence in the Holy Land and everlasting peace among the nations. Zionism is indeed the antithesis to Judaism.