Ashkenazi Jews have a distinct genetic lineage that is a mixture of European and Levant. They are definitely, in significant part, descended from people who lived in that region. That part of their heritage (at least half, in genetic terms) left the area during late years of the western Roman Empire, and it seems to be they mostly ended up in Spain and migrated east across Europe. These were mostly expulsions, not willing migrations. They picked up a lot of European DNA along the way, but always remained distinct.
The Jews who stayed in Palestine are the ancestors of today's Palestinians of all religious groups.
Does that make Ashkenazi Jews indigenous to the Levant? Maybe, by a less standard definition of the term that prioritizes ancient ancestry over continuous occupation. Palestinians are obviously indigenous to the area by any metric, being the direct descendants of the area's ancient Jews and related Canaanite groups. Ashkenazi Jews and Palestinians are closely related populations, but that does nothing to absolve settlers of their crimes.
if ashkenazi jews are indigenous to israel, then i demand magna hungaria back in the name of hungarians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Hungaria
should the people or marseille go back to greece then? :D
I don't think indigenous requires displacement, and if it does, that actually sort of helps the settler argument, because their ancestors include in large part Palestinian Jews displaced well over a thousand years ago.
What matters is that Palestinians and their ancestral groups have always been there, since before recorded history, and they are being forced from their homes. That it's being done by a group of their cousins who were forced off in the more distant past doesn't justify it in any way.
I'm not trying to make any kind of Zionism-related argument here. My question was more of an oblique way of saying that it's setting off my :hitler-detector: without being accusational. Because the particular phrasing of the question is also reminiscent of the one regularly directed at anyone assumed to be an immigrant: "But where are you really from?"
This occupying line of thinking also heads off in the direction of "No reparations; that was centuries ago", "Australia is a white country now", and even "it's been Israel for 75 years". And talk that moves from "the systemic mistreatment of Palestinians is apartheid" to "Jews don't really belong here" is a degradation into antisemitism, so careful phrasing matters.
Since this is a sensitive topic, I want to make it clear that I'm not interpreting either of your comments that way, just trying to clarify my original response.
If you're talking about the Khazar theory, the idea that any significant population of modern day Jewish people are descended from caucasus converts, there's no evidence for it and DNA evidence suggests otherwise.
