The Merneptah Stele names Israel as one people among others in Canaan

Israel was an ethnonym for a people, c. 1208 BCE, written with the determinative for a people, not a place. The people of Israel were one of many in Canaan (Ashkelon, Gezer, Yanoam all appear alongside it). Israel was one of many.

“Mainstream archaeology largely regards the Joshua blitzkrieg-conquest as NOT historical.” What most archaeologists now think actually happened is that there was never an invasion and that the people who became “Israelites” were actually there all along and emerged from WITHIN the Canaanite population. Around 1200 BCE, groups in the hill country gradually developed a separate identity, different customs, different settlement patterns, and over time started calling themselves Israel.

If the conquest is false (which she argues), Israelites emerged from the Canaanite population meaning Jews and Palestinians descend from the same Bronze Age substrate. If the conquest IS true, then it was a claim of conquest, and “we took it by force from the natives 3,000 years ago” is a very strange foundation for “it was always rightfully ours and never theirs.”

Yes, Canaanites were a diverse group of Semitic-speaking city-states and peoples, not one unified nation. But “the Canaanites weren’t one nation” is not an argument that the land had no indigenous population. Diverse peoples living on land are still peoples living on land.

First published in my Quora debunk archive.