@Bugbear,
Jewish theology teaches that all peoples and cultures have been set in place by the great "Cause" of the universe. Our cosmology in the Tanakh was written in very ancient mythological narratives, using language that is a "snapshot" of the ancient past. Today Jews reinterpret this "God gave us this land" as meaning that our culture plays the part every other one does in the fabric of society.
This is not to say we don't have our literalists. Unfortunately, the current state of Israel is under the control of a party that believes in Biblical literalism, and this is causing all the great problems we are currently experiencing in Israel today. While Zionism itself has been secular since its inception, not to mention that Judaism has traditionally seen the Biblical texts as allegorical or religious takes on history, since the end of the Shoah and the Return, and more specifically the outcome of the Six-Day War, some Orthodox rabbis have been adopting a political hermeneutic that mirrors Christian Fundamentalism.
Since the God "concept" in Judaism stands for the Great Cause of the universe, whether that be the laws which govern the cosmos or the inescapable march of time (or even something closer to the Christian explanation of God--which most Jews would claim "unlikely" if not heretical), each people, ethnic group, family, and person is seen to fit the purpose for which the Great Cause has caused it into being. The land of Israel is no more or less the land of those who claim it than history will eventually show it as being.
