The Forward has been running a series of articles about a group in northern Arkansas that owns adjacent tracts of land that Jews and non-whites are forbidden to purchase or live on. On Thursday, the attorney general of Arkansas said this was legal. The details are complicated — mostly focused on the fact that there’s been no purchase or sale or business transaction yet, so nothing formally violating the law — but the significance of this story for thinking about Israel and Zionism is not.

The Arkansas group is called Return to the Land, and it is part of a larger national movement. Focusing on people’s proof of “ancestral heritage,” it seeks, according to its mission statement, to “put land [in the United States] BACK [my emphasis] under the control of Europeans.”

The parallels between this movement and Zionism are striking. Both movements claim that they are movements of return; hence the “back to control of Europeans.” Both movements style themselves as the original owners/stewards of the land, with no reference to its previous indigenous inhabitants. Both movements focus on some proof of lineal descent.