In Defense of Jerusalem and Israel

A few weeks ago on Yom Yerushalayim Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University was on Al Jazeera's Arabic TV station, being confronted with the normal Arab issues, West Bank, Jerusalem, and I felt Dr. Kedar responded very well.
Of course the one critique I have is related to one line he said regarding the future of the "West Bank" and the creation of a PA state there.
Now I will admit that he did come of very strongly, not the typical apologetic Jew that we see in the media these days (click here for an example). But there still is an idea that the Jews don't belong in YESHA.
I was speaking to someone last year about this issue, and they told me that Israel was violating "international law."
Now I'm not a law student, but I have learned enough that when someone tells me something I'm not aware of to ask what their source is. So I asked them which law they were referring to.
They explained to me that Israel was an occupying entity that came into that land, started colonizing it, and started cleansing the locals from their places of birth. This was the crime they were committing.
I of course wouldn't have it, told them that I found that either they had an incredible bias for ignoring all of atrocities committed against the Jews by Arab countries in the early part of the 1900's, or they were simply ignorant of them and victims of other people who had these biases.
But furthermore, if you go by that rational that if a foreign entity (which the Jews most certainly are not) drives natives of their land and then starts colonizing that land and claiming it as their own, then you have just displaced at least 50 Million people on the East Coast of America, and even more if you branch further out west.
Because America WAS founded on this idea of colonizing the land and driving the natives out, yet I don't think that Left-Wing academics will say that the United States is occuping the natives of America (IE Native Americans), of course they probably will claim their occuping other countries, but it is certainly not for colonization. Israel, albeit with secular motivation which might be a topic for a different post, were not invading they were returning. The fact that the Jews lived previously in the land of Israel, is only in debate by anti-Semites. Anyone with an open mind who is presented with un-biased information, will find archaeological evidence of the Jews previous reign over the land everywhere. One of the reasons the Arabs will not allow archaeological research teams onto the Temple Mount is because it would disprove their claim that the Jewish Temple never existed..

Here's the Al Jazeera interview with Dr. Mordechai Kedar (in Arabic with subtitles):