On May 6, 2026, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani claimed Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are “illegal under international law” and accused them of displacing Palestinians.

It’s a common lie, and one that is easily debunked.

Here’s the truth.

Judea and Samaria: The Jewish Homeland for 3,000 Years

Judea and Samaria are the biblical and historical homeland of the Jewish people.

This is the land where Abraham walked, where King David ruled, and where the ancient Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were born. Hebron — home to the Cave of the Patriarchs — is one of the oldest Jewish cities on earth. Abraham purchased the burial site there nearly 4,000 years ago.

Jews have lived continuously in Judea and Samaria for more than three millennia — through Roman rule, Muslim empires, the Crusades, the Ottoman period, and into modern times.

That continuous presence was shattered not by “settlers,” but by Islamic violence and ethnic cleansing.

In 1929, Muslim mobs massacred 67 Jews in Hebron and drove the survivors from the city. In 1948, Jordan invaded and illegally occupied Judea and Samaria, expelling every remaining Jew and barring Jews from their holy sites for 19 years.

Then, in 1967, Israel won a defensive war and regained control of the territory. Many Jewish communities that exist today were rebuilt on the same land where Jews had lived for centuries before they were murdered or expelled.

Calling this “settler colonialism” turns history upside down.

Israel Cannot “Occupy” a Sovereign Country That Never Existed

This is one of the most important — and most ignored — points in the entire “Palestine” narrative.

Under international law, true “occupation” means one country temporarily controlling the land of another sovereign country after a war (see Hague Regulations, Article 42). The rules protect the rights of the ousted legitimate sovereign and the local population.

But there has never been a sovereign Palestinian Arab state in Judea and Samaria — not ever in history.

• Before 1948: The land was part of the British Mandate for Palestine, which the international community designated for a Jewish national home.
• 1948–1967: Jordan illegally invaded and annexed the West Bank. This annexation was recognized by only a handful of countries (mainly Britain and Iraq) and rejected by most of the world, including the Arab League, which viewed Jordan as a temporary trustee.
• After 1967: Israel captured the land in a defensive war from Jordan — a country that had no legitimate sovereign title to it. No Palestinian state existed then, and none exists now with recognized sovereignty over the territory.

You cannot occupy land that had no legitimate sovereign.

Furthermore, even the UN’s own definition of “occupation” refers to a situation in which the local sovereign authority is unable to exercise control over the territory because of a foreign power’s presence.

But under the 1994 Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority exercises full civil and security control over Area A in Judea and Samaria. Israeli civilians are actually forbidden from entering these areas, and the Palestinian Authority governs the daily lives of the overwhelming majority of Palestinians there.

This is not, by any stretch, an occupation.

The Law Actually Supports Jewish Settlement

The legal right to Jewish settlement is older than the state of Israel itself.

After World War I, the international community recognized the Jewish people’s historic connection to the land. The 1922 British Mandate for Palestine — approved by the League of Nations — explicitly encouraged “close settlement by Jews on the land.” This included Judea and Samaria.

When the United Nations was created, Article 80 of the UN Charter preserved these rights. They were never canceled.

Jordan’s occupation of the West Bank from 1948 to 1967 was illegal and recognized by almost no one. Israel captured the land in a defensive war from a country that had just tried to destroy it. There was never a sovereign Palestinian state there.

The Fake “Geneva Convention Violation”

Pro-Palestinian activists like Mamdani love to quote Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which bans an occupying power from “transferring” its population into occupied territory.

This is a deliberate misuse of the law.

• The rule was written after WWII to prevent Nazi-style forced deportations and demographic destruction.
• Israeli families move there voluntarily. Israel does not deport or force them.
• It does not apply to Jews returning to their ancestral heartland in disputed territory with no prior legitimate sovereign.

Even the Trump administration officially rejected the claim that settlements are illegal.

Selective Application

Further proof that the Fourth Geneva Convention was never meant to apply to Israel in Judea and Samaria is because it has not been applied to any occupations.

If Article 49 really banned civilians from living in disputed or occupied territory, then the same standard would be used against actual foreign occupations and state-driven population transfers around the world.

For example:

• Turkey’s occupation and settlement of Northern Cyprus
• Morocco’s control of Western Sahara
• China’s demographic engineering in Tibet and Xinjiang

Yet the UN, the International Red Cross, and Western governments do not seem to view those cases as illegal occupation — even though those countries have far weaker historical and legal claims to the territories involved.

That suggests Article 49 was never originally understood as banning ordinary civilians from voluntarily moving into disputed territory.

The provision was written after World War II to stop Nazi-style forced deportations and mass population transfers carried out by governments at gunpoint — not Jews choosing to live in the historic Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria.

The Bottom Line

Nowhere else on Earth do people who have lived in a land for thousands of years suddenly get branded “illegal” for simply living there. Imagine telling Native Americans, Tibetans, or Kurds their ancient presence violates some modern political slogan. Only Jews in their biblical heartland face this twisted standard.

Zohran Mamdani’s attack has nothing to do with law. It’s part of the Islamic effort to erase Jewish history and rights. He peddles propaganda that turns indigenous return into a supposed “war crime.”

Mamdani can keep shouting “illegal.” Facts, history, and law say otherwise.

Sources

Ynet News, WJC, Times of Israel, UN, Northwestern University School of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, Times of Israel, PMW, Thinc