Our Claim to Eretz Yisrael
Every time Chayei Sara comes around, my thoughts go to the purchase of Hebron and Me'arat HaMachpeila by Avraham Avinu. I remember someone quoting this part of the Chumash on the floor of the United Nations during the deliberations following the Six Days War. I went onto the internet to see if I could find some quotes from back then, and I discovered things that were quite upsetting, and other things that were comforting. Various search keywords led to many anti-Israel and anti-Jewish websites that attempt to discredit our claims and to legitimize Palestinian myths and wishful thinking. But it also led to several Jewish sites...

(from "The Jewish Claim To The Land Of Israel" on the website of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise) A common misperception is that the Jews were forced into the diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE and then, 1800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years... The Jewish people base their claim to the land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) G-d promised the land to the patriarch Abraham; 2) the Jewish people settled and developed the land;3) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people and 4) the territory was captured in defensive wars...

In the second century, after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word "Filastin" is derived from this Latin name...

The Twelve Tribes of Israel formed the first constitutional monarchy in [Eretz Yisrael] about 1000 BCE. The second king, David, first made Jerusalem the nation's capital...

Even after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile, Jewish life in [Eretz Yisrael] continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the 9th century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea...Many Jews were massacred by the Crusaders during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee... Tzfat... Jerusalem... and elsewhere during the next 300 years...

When Jews began to immigrate to [Eretz Yisrael] in large numbers in 1882, fewer than 250,000 Arabs lived there, and the majority of them had arrived in recent decades... No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine... Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity... Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-WWI phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the Six Days War and Israel's capture of the West Bank...

Israel's international "birth certificate" was validated by the promise of the Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of Joshua onward...
There's more to say, it will have to wait for another opportunity. The bottom line, I believe, is that G-d promised us the Land and gave it to us... FOREVER. And that includes 5762, 2001, 2002 and every other year in anyone's calendar. And we should not be ashamed or embarrassed to say it without hesitation.