Former President Barack Obama criticized the founding of Israel, not because Jews didn’t deserve a refuge, but because the founders of Israel “took land” from the Palestinians. Did they?
First, a preamble. Jews deserve Israel not only as a refuge, but because Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel.
Now, the modern Jewish state of Israel was founded upon its acceptance of the UN partition plan of 1947. The plan called for two states, a Jewish one and an Arab (not a “Palestinian”) one. Jews in the land of Israel accepted the plan. Arabs rejected it, and five Arab countries went to war to try to wipe out the prospective Jewish state.
Arabs saw it as a colonialist enterprise that did not deserve to exist on any land named by the ancient Romans as “Palestine” and named by the Jewish tradition as “the Land of Israel.”
All this is well known. To address the “expansionist” claim, we must focus on critical components of the UN partition plan, specifically, the territory on which Israel was founded, and the territory on which the Arab state was, according to the UN, supposed to be founded.
Under the UN partition plan, the Jewish state was allotted a patchwork of cities and settlements, plus the Negev. The total land mass for the Jewish state was about 5,500 square miles.
To put this in perspective, consider that Obama’s home in 2026 — greater Chicago — is about 10,286 square miles. The Jewish state was about half the size of a single contemporary American metropolitan area.
Then consider that roughly 60% of the Jewish state — of those 5,500 square miles — was a desert. The Negev.
This left the viable Jewish state — minus the Negev — at roughly 3,300 square miles. That’s a lot smaller than Connecticut.
Israel was a very tiny place.
When Obama says Israel “took land” from the Palestinians, how much land was there to take?
And how many Jews were there to take it?
Consider: Most Arabs in the area didn’t want to live on their own land in the sense that they preferred to live in the Jewish areas. True, most of the Arabs didn’t want the Jews there at all, but if both Jews and Arabs had to live on the land that the Romans called Palestine, the Arabs preferred to live on the Jewish land. It’s hard to say that Jews “took land” from the Palestinians when the Arabs wanted to live where the Jews lived. How do we know this? As follows:
In the UN’s Jewish state, there were 538,000 Jews. In this same area there were 397,000 Arabs. The UN’s “Jewish” state would be roughly 43% Arab.
In the UN’s Arab state, there were 804,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews.
Wow. The UN’s Jewish state would be roughly 43% Arab, and the Arab state roughly 1% Jewish. Why?
Because the Jewish economy and the Jewish standard of medical care drew Arabs to where Jews lived.
Rather than driving Arabs out, the Zionists drew them in.
The Zionist enterprise — the renewal of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel — was not bad for local Arabs. It was good for them.
Just the opposite of Obama’s claim.
How did Jews acquire the land they lived on? They did just that — they acquired it.
That’s how the early Jewish settlers in Petach Tikvah and Rosh Pina were established (1870-1880s), and that’s what Baron de Rothschild’s Jewish Colonisation Organization did.
On a much larger scale, that’s what the Jewish National Fund did from 1901 on. Its purpose was to acquire land for Jewish settlement in Palestine. That’s why virtually no land in the State of Israel today is privately owned. It was purchased for the Jewish people, which is why virtually all apartment owners in Israel own the brick and mortar only. They rent the land for 49-year periods from the Israel Lands Authority, which became the successor to the Jewish National Fund upon Israel’s founding. The ownership of the Land of Israel would be preserved for the Jewish people — who bought it.
What kind of land was this?
Mostly inhospitable. Some of it was swamp land. Virtually all of it was bereft of natural resources. No oil. No minerals. An arid Negev.
It was tough enough for the Zionist settlers to work the inhospitable land they bought. There was little motivation to “take land” — other inhospitable land. Obama is ignorant of the land question in pre-state Israel.
What about since Israel was founded? Is it expansionist?
Israel has expanded since 1948, the year it was founded, only as a consequences of wars waged against it. “Expansionist” implies aggression. But Israel did not start the following wars:
• Israel’s borders expanded slightly in 1949 due to the invasion of five Arab armies that tried to wipe it out.
• Israel’s borders expanded a lot in the 1967 Six Day War, which began when Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping — a casus belli (the same as Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz). Of the borders of Israel that expanded in 1967, Israel returned the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1982, and unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
• Israel’s borders expanded when Egypt and Syria launched the Kippur War in 1973. Israel occupied part of Egypt, and quickly withdrew.
• Israel’s borders expanded into southern Lebanon in 1982 due to the incessant Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli civilians launched from Lebanon. Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.
• Israel’s borders expanded into Gaza after the Hamas invasion of Oct. 7, 2023. Israel has since withdrawn from roughly 40% of Gaza, pending resolution of this conflict. The ball is in Hamas’ court. It has supposedly committed to disarming, but it hasn’t.
• Israel’s borders expanded into southern Lebanon after Hezbollah launched a war against Israel on Oct. 8, 2023. Israel has occupied southern Lebanon in order to destroy Hezbollah’s bases and tunnels there, pending resolution of this conflict. The ball is in Lebanon’s court. It has said it wants to disarm Hezbollah. We hope it succeeds. If it does, Israel will withdraw, as it did in 2000.
• Israel’s borders have expanded into one post-Six Day War area, the biblical heartland west f the Jordan River. Many of specific settlements were established there in response to specific Palestinian, murderous terrorist attacks on Israel civilians — you make war, we build homes. Other settlements were established in order to prevent Palestinian terrorist incursions from across the Jordan River (a frequent pre-1967 plague), which accounts for Israel’s settlements in the Jordan Valley.
Yes, Israel’s borders have expanded many times, but not by choice. Rather, by self-defense; and almost entirely, not permanently.
President Obama, that’s not “expansionist.”
Your word feeds the myth that tiny Israel is a militaristic state when, in truth, it hates the fact it must go to war again and again just to preserve its existence. Ask Israeli soldiers whether they enjoy reserve duty and combat — or whether they would prefer to be left alone to live their lives.
Mr. Obama, you know, or should know, the answer. So kindly stop with the “expansionist” language. It’s inaccurate. It’s dangerous. It feeds the hatred of Israel and Jews.
It also highlights your own failure to bring peace to the region.
© IJN 2026
