Demspotis
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Joined: 3/11/2005
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Going back to the OP -
As you say, it's important to understand the historical background, and not just the post-WWII era. Much more of the ancient history seems relevant to me, beyond the common descent (whether physically, ideologically or both) from Abraham.
In terms of ancient history, there are two different main narratives. One is the story given in the Bible, and the other is what is drawn from historical documents and archeology. Some things are shared by both, and therefore corroborated and confirmed; others, some of them of great importance, are not shared. Beyond the Bible, there is additional information for that narrative from the Talmud, the crystallized record of Jewish oral tradition of Biblical interpretation in regard to law, and Kabbalah, the Jewish oral tradition in regard to spirituality.
The Bible says that Abraham came from Ur, a major city founded by the Sumerians, though by his time, the language and culture were Semitic. Oral tradition says his family had originally come from what would become the Promised Land (and the Bible places his relatives there, in fact). Skipping ahead, some of his descendants, in the Biblical narrative, went to Egypt, and after a change in dynasty, a new hostile ruler enslaved them. Eventually, under Moses, they fled from Egypt, and, according to the Bible, YHWH ordered the next Hebrew leader, Joshua, to genocide the Canaanites who then lived in the Promised Land and take it for their own. The Bible genealogy claims that the Canaanites were Hamitic, that is, related to the Egyptians, rather than Semitic.
Now, one major point of difference between the Biblical narrative and history and archeology is that there is no evidence whatsoever of any such invasion and genocide. Too, there is no evidence that that Canaanites were anything but Semites, and closely related to the Hebrews. Their language was nearly identical; and the genetic study shown in the OP may be taken as supportive too. The main difference is religious: the Canaanites were polytheists, and also may have had a less strict moral code than the Hebrews.
There is, however, a possible historical explanation for this belief of the Canaanites as related to Egyptians: at one point, the Egyptian empire had expanded well into the Middle East, including the region of Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, etc., so that during that period, the rulers (not the populace) were either Egyptian governors, or locals in vassalage to the Pharaoh. Certainly there was some cultural influence; if the Egyptians built anything, it would have been according to their own architectural styles, and those would have remained well beyond the time of the Egyptian dominion there. To hostile eyes, it could have seemed "proof" that the Canaanites were foreigners, instead of close kin.
Some Kabbalist teachers (I'm not going to name any, since they, especially those alive today, might not appreciate their names being bandied about in such a place ;), but a web search for Kabbalah ought to turn up some examples easily enough) say the Bible is not meant to be taken literally, especially the apparently historical portions; that these are spiritual metaphors. Some of these teachers accept the scientific version as the historical truth.
So, this version says that perhaps some slaves that escaped Egypt came back to the land and joined up with kinfolk with the same or similar religious ideas, and then they expanded, gradually taking the dominant place and becoming ancient Israel, and then the split into two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. (At least in broad terms, there is little difference from this point in the two narratives)
Regardless of the origin of the kingdom(s), and whether or not the founders actually genocided previous inhabitants, there was both conflict and peace with various neighboring peoples, most of whom were fellow Semites, some of them closely related to the Hebrews. Then came a succession of great empires that conquered the whole Middle East, including the coastal area where Israel and Judah were. Some of these empires were Semitic, like the Assyrians and Babylonians, others were Indo-Europeans like the Persians or the earlier Hittites. The Turks were still living in Siberia back then, but most of the peoples living in what became modern Turkey were Indo-European. Toiday, aside from the Persians/Iranis there are the Kurds in the Indo-European family... and for that matter, much of the populace of Turkey is still mostly descended from those other IE peoples, even if they have spoken the Turkish language for many centuries. Among them was a colony of Celts, the Galatians; I'm told that some of them still retain some kind of Galatian identity.
The Persian empire lasted until Alexander conquered it; but the Persian empire adopted the Aramaic language as its lingua franca of government, presumably because so many of its subject peoples were Semites. Aramaic is another Semitic languages, closely related to Hebrew... in some ways seeming about halfway between Hebrew and Arabic.
Alexander's conquests shattered, and ended up being a patchwork of smaller kingdoms as before the age of the great empires began. When the Romans became uppity and imperialistic, they absorbed these many little nations into their dominion. Most of them mostly accepted the status quo... being oppressed was nothing new to anyone there. The Jews had a habit of rebelling every once in a while, and eventually the Romans dealt with it by ejecting them all from their homeland, and for several centuries no Jewish person could go there, and especially not to Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, other peoples moved in to the then-unoccupied lands. Also, there were converts to Christianity who were unaffected by the exile of Jews, because by that time the communities had fully split. Later, the Roman Empire made Christianity the official religion on pain of death (except for Jews, who were, however, barred from their own country), so all of the remaining pagan Semites of the region became Christian at that time. A few centuries later, Islam was born, and the Arabs conquered the Middle East, bringing their religion and language. They did not, however, genocide people who converted, and most converted in that area, so they are not actually "Arabs", they just speak Arabic. Also, there remained a significant Christian minority in most Muslim countries up to the present day. As such, the Palestinians and their neighbors AND the Jews are all indigenous; but the Jews had been exiled by the Roman imperial authorities.
The real problem, then, isn't foreign colonists oppressing indigenous people, it's two groups of indigenous people, who are kin, refusing to recognize each other and their respective historical situations, and refusing to share their common heritage. In the ancient conflict, theology came into play: the worshippers of the god of Abraham against the other Semites who remained polytheistic. But, today, the Jews and both the Muslim and Christian Palestinians all worship that same one god of Abraham, so if by chance some Jews see in today's conflict a replay of the supposed war against the Canaanites, it's a mistake, theologically speaking.
So, summing up all that, in regard to the present-day troubles: the Jews are indigenous to the region. When in exile, of course they wanted to return. This is the "original" Zionism. Actually, the real origin is when most of the important Jews were taken to Babylonia by the Babylonian Empire. When the Persians took over, they let the Jews go home, if they wanted. (Many stayed... some stayed until the formation of modern Israel and the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries, some even until the aftermath of the Iraq War.)
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RE: Antisemiticism on the collarme boards. - 
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