At Camp David in 2000, during the most hopeful discussions about resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a Palestinian representative at the table denied any Jewish historic connection to Jerusalem. Speaking of the Holy sites, he referred to the Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa mosques sitting on the Temple Mount, but labeled as fantasy the notion that there had ever been a Jewish Temple on that spot or in the city at all.

This allegation at a critical juncture undercut the aspiration of achieving a two-state solution — the Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state — and proved devastating to the left-of-center Israeli delegation seeking a compromise that would serve the interests of both peoples. With the hope that each side was finally willing to accept one another’s narrative, now the Israelis were being told once again that they had no legitimacy in their historic homeland.

This came to mind as we learned about a “DeCal” student-led course being offered at the University of California, Berkeley, called “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis.” The class thesis and much of its syllabus are built on the foundation of the denial of the Jewish connection to the land of Israel.