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The belief that the State of Israel was "given" to the Jewish people, as a means of reparations from the Holocaust, is a fallacy that aims at historical revisionism whilst erasing Jewish indigeneity to the land. 
 

Indigenous Jewish sovereignty was restored when the State of Israel declared independence in 1948.

The process of WWII reparations did not begin until West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer declared on September 27, 1951, that his government was ready to compensate Israel for material damage and losses and to negotiate with Israel and with representatives of Diaspora Jewry for other reparations (JVL, 2020). 

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In the 1870s, there were twenty-seven thousand Jews living in Palestine, mostly concentrated in the city of Jerusalem (Gordis, 2016). The first large concentration of Jewish immigration (Aliyah) to Palestine occured between 1882 to 1903 (Gordis, 2016). These immigrants were Jews fleeing violence and systemic antisemitic oppression cast over Eastern Europe and Russia (Gordis, 2016). 

 

In 1917, while the land was under Ottoman Turkish rule, Britain endorsed a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ via the Balfour Declaration. Six weeks after the declaration, the Ottoman Empire receded, and the British Empire then took over Palestine (Gordis, 2016). The British Empire obtained control as a results of the spoils of war until 1948 when Jews regained sovereignty over their indigenous land and the Modern State of Israel was born. (Gordis, 2016).

 

Citations:

JVL. Holocaust Restitution: German Reparations. (2020). Retrieved October 29, 2020, from https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/german-holocaust-reparations

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Gordis, D. (2016). Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn. NY, NY: Harper-Collins.