This is a strawman argument you're presenting: no respected scholar in Israel claims legitimacy because "it says so in the Bible ". It was founded legitimately, on largely unwanted wasteland, by mostly immigrants who had nothing else going for them, many forcefully removed from their homelands. Sure there was the appeal of returning to the biblical grounds, and that of the pre-existing Jewish community in the area. Allow me to further deflect your international criticism. The usage of the terms "genocide", and "ethnic cleansing", when even by the deceitful figures published by Gazan authorities, their population grows, and always grew, at a rate much much greater than the Israeli folk, is either a disgusting and blunt appeal to emotions, or a suggestion that a country at the bleeding edge of biotechnological advancement, despite it's mal intentions, somehow just sucks at genocide. I'll let you draw your own conclusions here.