Religious pilgrimage, of course, has nothing to do with being descended from people who lived on the land when the holy stuff (allegedly) occurred. Christians, taken as a whole, have ancestors from nearly every tribe on every continent, yet they all know what is meant by "the Holy Land": Palestine, aka modern Israel.

And you may not now (though I've posted on the topic before) that a large fraction of the world's Jews have no direct ancestral connection to the tribes of Israel enumerated in Torah. The ethno-cultural branch known as the Ashkenazim -- the Yiddish-speaking ones from eastern and northern Europe, whose avatar is Tevye the Milkman -- were originally a tribe of steppe nomads called the Khazars. Story goes:

When they wandered down close to the Black Sea and began to interact with settled peoples, their king invited representatives of the major religions they found there to explain why and how adherence to any religion in particular might civilize their tribe. They chose Judaism, and converted en masse. There wasn't a Semite among them (in the cultural anthro use of the term).

As for myself: all land is sacred, if you listen closely enough... but I admit, some land becomes more so when special attention of that type (reverence) is paid to it. Being of Irish descent, my idea of a personal religious pilgrimage is to attend services at a synagogue in Dublin, combined with a trip to Newgrange.

- - - - -

actually I wasn't so much insinuating that someone who actually was Jewish would do the branding. I was more preparing everyone for the onslaught from mindless supporters of Israel who've conveniently attached themselves to flinging the label on anyone critical of that country.

Oh, yeah, I knew that. As the token Jew in HZ (since Daniel and DFM are gone, I'm it), I thought to assist with a *ahem* preemptive strike. Claims of anti-Semitism don't stick quite as easily when The Jew says, "No, it isn't."

And have you noticed how few of the claimers actually have the standing to back it up -- that is, how few of them are Jews?