Ancient Historians Embrace Debunked Conspiracy Theories Denying that Jews Are Indigenous to Israel

In an attempt to defend the Hamas terrorist atrocities of October 7, 2023 as legitimate acts of resistance, a group of classicists, ancient historians, and archaeologists at elite American and international universities claim in an open letter that Jews have no ancestral connection to the Land of Israel and therefore deserve the horrors that befell them. The fact that the signatories deny the very existence of one of the most well-documented ancient cultures in order to push a political agenda strikes a devastating blow to the integrity of the humanities. The alignment of inscriptions, artifacts, material culture, and historical texts that range from showing the life of everyday Israelites to striking historical documentation of biblical events and major figures in Jewish history attests to the antiquity of Jews in their Levantine homeland over a period of three millennia. The author argues that his colleagues join an age-old tradition of attempts to write the Jews out of history.