It takes a special kind of historical illiteracy to brand a people as "colonizers" while standing on the ruins of their ancestors' temples. When we strip away the modern political jargon and look at the forensic evidence, the accusation collapses under the weight of archaeology. As an Iranian, I look at the history of Judea and I do not see a dispute over real estate. I see a crime scene that looks painfully familiar. My own ancestors watched their Zoroastrian Fire Temples destroyed or buried beneath mosques. The method of Islamic expansion has always been building directly on top of the indigenous holy sites to demonstrate that the new power has crushed the old. This is exactly what happened in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock sits upon the Jewish Temple Mount not by accident, but by design. It was a deliberate act to assert dominance over the preceding faith. Ironically, by building on top of Jewish ruins, the conquerors permanently cemented the proof of who was there first. If you dig into the soil of this land, you find Hebrew coins, ancient scrolls, and the foundations of synagogues dating back three millennia. You do not find the artifacts of a lost "Palestinian" nation. For centuries, pilgrims and travelers recorded their encounters here. They wrote of Jews, Arabs, Turks, and Druze. Yet there is no record of a distinct "Palestinian" people prior to the twentieth century. That identity is a modern construct, appearing only after the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty. - Armin Navabi