The Right to Self-Determination: Why the Jewish People, Like Any Other Nation, Deserve Sovereignty in Their Historical Homeland

The right of nations to self-determination is a cornerstone of international law and moral justice. It asserts that every people, bound by shared history, culture, and identity, possesses the right to govern themselves and live freely in their ancestral or national homeland.

For the Jewish people, this principle carries both universal and historical weight. Like all nations, Jews are entitled to self-determination — and the natural place for its realization is their historical homeland, the Land of Israel, where their identity was born, their language revived, and their civilization first flourished.

This essay explores why the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral land is not only legitimate but essential — rooted in history, morality, and international law, and supported by the same principles that apply to all nations seeking freedom and security.

1. The Universal Principle of Self-Determination

The idea that every nation has the right to determine its own political destiny emerged in modern international law after World War I and was reaffirmed following World War II. It became one of the foundational principles of the United Nations Charter (Article 1.2), which commits the international community to “develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.”

This principle recognizes that no people should live under the domination of another, that cultural and national identity must be freely expressed, and that sovereignty is the natural expression of nationhood. It underpinned the liberation of former colonies in Asia, Africa, and Europe. If self-determination applies universally, it applies to the Jewish people no less than to any other.

The Jews are not merely a religious community; they are a people, with shared ethnicity, language, culture, history, and destiny. Their ancient homeland — known historically as the Land of Israel — is not a matter of myth or theology but of well-documented civilization. Like Greeks in Greece or Armenians in Armenia, the Jewish people constitute a nation bound to a specific geographic and cultural origin.

2. The Historical Homeland of the Jewish People

The Jewish claim to the land of Israel is unique in its depth and continuity. Archaeological, historical, and literary evidence attests to more than 3,000 years of continuous Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, and Galilee.

It was in this land that the Israelites formed their first political and spiritual identity. King David established Jerusalem as his capital around 1000 BCE, and King Solomon built the First Temple — the spiritual center of Jewish worship. The Hebrew prophets, poets, and lawgivers walked these same hills, and the Hebrew Bible — a foundational text for Western civilization — recorded their laws, struggles, and prayers for peace.

Even after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE and the dispersal of Jews across the empire, Jewish life in the land never ceased. Communities in Tiberias, Hebron, Safed, and Jerusalem continued to exist through every foreign rule — Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, Ottoman, and British. Jews prayed daily for the return to Zion and the restoration of Jerusalem.

This unbroken connection — historical, cultural, and spiritual — distinguishes the Jewish people’s claim from that of any colonial or foreign project. The Jewish homeland is not an imported idea; it is a return to origin.

3. The Jewish People as a Nation, Not a Sect

Critics have sometimes argued that Jews, spread across continents and cultures, ceased to be a nation. Yet the evidence of Jewish identity across 2,000 years of exile shows the opposite: Jews retained a collective consciousness that transcended borders.

Wherever they lived — in Yemen, Poland, Morocco, or Persia — Jews spoke Hebrew in prayer, commemorated the same holidays, and looked toward Jerusalem as the heart of their hope. Their calendars, rituals, and laws were tied to the agricultural and spiritual rhythms of the Land of Israel — the harvest of Shavuot, the pilgrimage of Sukkot, the fasts mourning the destruction of the Temple.

This cohesion is unparalleled. No other dispersed people maintained such continuity of language, memory, and geography. Even secular Jewish thinkers of the 19th century — from Theodor Herzl to Ahad Ha’am — recognized that the Jewish people were not a mere faith community but a nation awaiting renewal.

Self-determination, therefore, for the Jewish people means restoring their ability to live freely and securely as a nation — not dominating others, but being self-governing in their homeland.

4. The Moral Basis of the Jewish Right to Self-Determination

The moral argument for Jewish self-determination rests on two pillars: justice and survival.

For centuries, Jews endured persecution, expulsion, and genocide in nearly every corner of the world — from the Spanish Inquisition to the Russian pogroms, culminating in the Holocaust, which annihilated six million Jews. The lesson of this tragic history is clear: without sovereignty and self-defense, the Jewish people are vulnerable to the whims of others.

Zionism — the movement for Jewish national restoration — emerged not as a colonial ambition, but as a response to statelessness and oppression. It sought not conquest, but return; not supremacy, but survival.

In the words of Theodor Herzl in The Jewish State (1896):

“The nations in whose midst Jews live are all either covertly or openly anti-Semitic. I call the world to witness that this is not a call to arms, but to return.”

Jewish self-determination in the Land of Israel is thus both a moral necessity and a humanitarian imperative. It ensures that the Jewish people — after millennia of exile — can live in safety, equality, and dignity, like every other nation on earth.

5. Legal Recognition of Jewish Self-Determination

The Jewish right to reestablish national sovereignty in their ancestral homeland was not only moral but also legally recognized by the international community.

• The 1917 Balfour Declaration, issued by the British government, affirmed “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

• The 1920 San Remo Conference incorporated this principle into international law, assigning Britain the Mandate for Palestine to facilitate Jewish national restoration.

• The League of Nations Mandate (1922) formally recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and called for the establishment of their homeland.

• The United Nations Partition Plan of 1947 (Resolution 181) reaffirmed this right by voting to create both a Jewish and an Arab state in the land.

In every instance, the global community acknowledged the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their historic homeland — not as colonial newcomers, but as an indigenous people returning home.

6. The Rebirth of a Nation: 1948 and Beyond

When the State of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948, it was the realization of an ancient dream and a modern principle. The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel invoked both historical justice and moral right:

“By virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, we hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel — to be known as the State of Israel.”

The new state immediately offered citizenship and equality to all inhabitants, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. Despite being attacked by five Arab armies, Israel survived — proving that its people were determined to defend their sovereignty.

Israel’s reestablishment was not a colonial act but decolonization in its truest sense — the restoration of an indigenous nation to its ancestral land after centuries of displacement.

7. Addressing the Misconceptions

Opponents of Jewish self-determination often mischaracterize Zionism as colonialism. This argument fails both historically and morally.

Colonialism involves a foreign power imposing rule over an unrelated land for economic exploitation. The Jewish people, by contrast, originated in the Land of Israel. They spoke its language, built its cities, and left behind archaeological and written testimony unmatched in depth.

When Jews returned in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they purchased land legally, built new settlements, and revived a desolate land that had been neglected under Ottoman rule. Their aim was self-governance, not domination.

Moreover, Jewish immigration to Israel was accompanied by economic growth that benefitted all inhabitants, Arab and Jewish alike — through improved infrastructure, education, and employment.

Thus, the return of Jews to their homeland was not conquest but homecoming.

8. The Ethical and Spiritual Dimensions

Jewish self-determination is not only a political principle; it is a fulfillment of spiritual and ethical purpose. In the Hebrew Bible, God’s covenant with Abraham declares:

“To your descendants I give this land” (Genesis 15:18).

This covenant was not about privilege but about responsibility — to create a society founded on justice, compassion, and holiness. The Prophets of Israel envisioned a nation that would serve as a moral light among nations (Isaiah 49:6).

The rebirth of Israel in the modern age is thus more than a national act — it is a moral testament to the endurance of faith and the human spirit. After centuries of exile and suffering, the Jewish people chose renewal over revenge, agriculture over conquest, innovation over despair.

9. Parallels with Other Nations

Every people yearns for sovereignty in their homeland — whether Greeks in Greece, Poles in Poland, or Armenians in Armenia. The Jewish people are no exception. They are among the few ancient nations to have regained their statehood in modern times.

Just as European nations rebuilt themselves after centuries of foreign domination, the Jewish people rebuilt Israel after 2,000 years of dispersion. To deny them that right would be to apply a double standard — affirming self-determination for all but the Jews.

True justice demands consistency. If self-determination is a universal human right, it must include the Jewish nation — one of the oldest and most enduring in human history.

10. Conclusion: A Just and Enduring Right

The Jewish right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland is not a modern invention, nor a political convenience. It is the fulfillment of a continuous story that spans millennia — of a people who never abandoned their covenant, language, or hope.

Their return to the Land of Israel restored not only their national sovereignty but also a measure of justice to history itself. It affirmed that the Jewish people, like all nations, have the right to live freely, govern themselves, and shape their future in peace.

As the modern world continues to uphold the principle of self-determination, it must remember that the Jewish nation’s claim is neither exceptional nor exclusionary. It is universal, historical, and moral — the same right that allows any people to call their homeland home.

“For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” (Isaiah 2:3)

The reestablishment of Israel is, therefore, not only the triumph of a nation but the reaffirmation of a timeless truth: that all peoples, great and small, have the right to live in freedom, dignity, and peace upon their own soil.