THE LAND OF ISRAEL
A HISTORICAL VIEW
by
Prof. Robert Sandler 2008
It has been many years since Yasser Arafat stormed out of a meeting in Washington with then President Clinton and Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, and hurriedly fled back to Gaza. That hasty departure was Arafat’s tacit rejection of the proposals Prime Minister Barak presented to him. At that meeting, Barak surprisingly had placed on the table for discussion, almost everything that Arafat had said he wanted from the Israelis as they approached what they called “final stage of negotiations.” Whether the Israeli Knesset and the Israeli people would have accepted and ratified the views of Barak is now moot. In the light of the event that occurred soon after Arafat’s return to Gaza and in light of the higher level of Muslim suicide violence against innocent Israelis that was launched on Arafat’s return, the landscape of the Arab-Israeli problem changed dramatically.
It is important to note that the current predicament involving Israel and the Arab countries did not begin when Arafat spurned Barak’s offer in the late summer of 2000. It did not begin after the Six-Day War in 1967; nor did it begin when the State of Israel was re-established in May of 1948, or when the United Nations passed a Partition Resolution in November, 1947.
The saga of the land of Israel and its long and profound relationship with the Jewish people goes back 3000+ years. Many people do not know that. The Muslim world (with some exceptions, I’m sure) generally lacks an accurate historical awareness of the strong and deep connection between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people. It is the opinion of this writer that it is important for those fair-minded people who are interested in the present conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians to know that an authentic historical record exists of who has lived and governed on that land during the last 3000 years.
Three thousand years ago, King David of the Israelites (Jews) and his son, King Solomon after him, established the land of Israel, with Jerusalem as its Capital on the land that now comprises Israel, Jordan and Lebanon. From 1000 B.C.E. (before the Common Era) to the year 70 C.E. (the Common Era=A.D.) - almost 1100 years - the Israelites (the Jewish people) lived on that land. They had their own government; they engaged in trade with other countries and fought wars; they some and lost some. Only for 48 years, from the years 586 to 538, was there no Jewish government in Jerusalem.
In the year 536, B.C. E., the Babylonians (modern day Iraqis) led by Nebuchadnessar, attached and conquered Jerusalem. They destroyed the revered Temple of the Jews (Temple of Solomon) and forced thousands of Jews into exile in Babylonia. In the year 538 B.C.E., forty-eight years later , a very fortuitous event occurred; King Cyrus and his Persian army (modern Iranians) attacked and defeated the Babylonian forces and allowed the Jews to return to their country, where, by the year 521 B.C.E., they had rebuilt their beautiful Temple and re-established their government in their Capital, Jerusalem.
In the year 63 B.C.E., 458 years later, the Romans conquered the Land of Israel. For 521 years, the Jews were allowed to maintain their religious freedom and culture so land as they paid taxes to the Roman government. Many years later, after Pontius Pilate was sent to be governor of Judea, serious long-term trouble developed. Pontius allowed i men to defile the Jewish Temple and in general make the lives of the Jews unlivable. From time to time, Jews rose up in revolt. Three years later, in the fateful year 70 A.D.,, an overwhelming military force was sent from Rome to put down the revolt. The fighting was fierce; it was reported that blood ran ankle-deep in Jerusalem. The result was that the Jewish government was crushed. large numbers of Jews fled in all directions, mainly to cities in North Africa and southern Europe Although it was reported that the Roman General Titus had been given orders not to damage the Temple, the nature of war, historically-then and now-is that war develops its own momentum of attack, counter attack and destruction. The Roman soldiers destroyed the Jewish Temple. Only the outer Western Wall remained...as it does to this day. At that time, the Romans believed that they had destroyed Judaism.
In the year 401 A.C.E. = A.D., however the Roman Empire itself fell to the Goths, et al. After the Romans left Palestine, small groups of Jews trickled back to their cherished homeland. As the centuries passed, the country fell into ta state of neglect. Nevertheless, small groups of Jews, now and then, over the centuries, did find their way to the Land of their Fathers and managed as best they could to survive.
In the ear 632 A.C.E., Muhammad, a well-meaning, deeply spiritual Arabian, died. He had concluded that both Christianity and Judaism were somehow flawed. A collection of his ideas was written by his friends and followers. This book, the Koran, became the basis of a new monotheistic religion - Islam - like Christianity, an offshoot from Judaism. There is no authentic specific evidence existing that connects Muhammad with the Land of Israel.
In the 11th century - a thousand years ago - when Muslim forces gained control of the Christian holy places in Jerusalem, Pope Urban II, in Rome authorized a crusade in order to retake control of those Christian holy places. After 200 years and several additional crusades, and much bloodshed, the Christian holy places remained in Muslim hands until modern times.
Throughout the middle ages, Jews in Europe had a very difficult time. They were expelled from country after country. They were persecuted and humiliated by Christians wherever they went. Father Edward H. Flannery, a well-known Roman Catholic priest (now a resident of Rhode Island) who in his career has been very interested in Christian anti-semitism, estimated that from the beginning of Christianity to 1933, the year Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, Christians murdered between 7 million and 10 million Jews. The Jews who have survived have clung to their traditional beliefs and values. Throughout their difficulties, they never abandoned hope for a better future. From the moment Jews fled their homeland of Israel to escape the onslaught in the year 70 A.C.E., they incorporate into their thinking - even into their liturgy - the hope for one day, somehow, returning to Jerusalem, to Eretz Yisrael, to the Land of Israel.
Many centuries earlier, during the above mentioned 48 year forced exile of Jews to Babylonia, a psalmist had written in Psalm 137:
“By the river of Babylon,
There we sat and wept,
When we remember Zion,
If I forget thee O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget its cunning,
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
If I remember you not.
If I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy.”
It is interesting to note that the word, “Jerusalem” does not occur even once in the Islamic holy book, the Koran. The work “Jerusalem” occurs 676 times in the Hebrew Bible. Soon after the year 70, when the Temple and the Jewish government were destroyed, and the Jews were scattered all over the map, the Jewish sages had written in the Haggadah on the last page: ‘NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM’ - words which have been spoken year after year, century after century by everyone sitting around the Seder table. Those words are still written in Haggadahs today in very place where Jews celebrate Passover. Also, at the end of the 24 hour fast and meditative reading on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, the ancient sages had added, again on the last page of the Yom Kippur Prayer Book, the words “NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM.”
From time to time, in the 10th and 11th centuries and again in the 15th and 16th centuries, there were many places in Palestine where significant numbers of Jews, poor, strongly dedicated Jews, eked out a living. They built small synagogues in Jerusalem, in Safed, in Hebron, in Tiberias and other places. “Palestine” was the name that the Romans had used instead of Jdea, after they crushed the Jewish revolt, as if to imply that Israel, or Judea no longer existed. Throughout those centuries of the middle ages, the countries of the Middle East were ruled by various empires: at times by the Egyptian Empire, at times by the Syrian Empire, among others. For most of the later centuries, the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire was the controlling power. It is very significant to note, however, that throughout those centuries, no group of people, no army, and no empire ever attempted to establish a country or a state on the Land of Israel. That Land was tacitly acknowledged, world-wide, that Palestine was the Land of the Hebrew Bible, the Land of the Jews. Non-Jews referred to it, as some still do today, as the Holy Land.
In the early years of the 19th century, Erope experience an Enlightenment. Napoleon’s French armies were toppling dictators, and the concepts of feedom and democracy wre in the air. In several European countries, Napoleon’s armies in course of the military victories, broke down the ghetto walls behind which Jews had been forced to live. For the first time, Jews were able to attend universities and participate in the main stream of the cultural life of Germany, Austria, England and France, et.al. Jews in Europe were now able to finance settlements in Palestine.
Sir Moses Montefiore, a Jewish Philanthropist in England (1784-1885) first visited Palestine in 1827. He subsequently visited Palestine many times. He bought large tracts of land. He financed agricultural settlements in Safed, Tiberias and Jaffa; he established a girls’ school in Jerusalem and built many housing complexes. During his visits to Palestine, he learned that the Jewish popultion of Palestine was about 10,000. Jerusalem had 5,000; Safed had 1,500; Hebron had 750; Tiberias had 600 and 400 were living other villages.
Later in the century, the affluent Rothschild family financed an ardent group of hightly motivated young pioneers, the Lovers of Zion, who emigrated from Poland and Russia to Palestine, where they began the laborious task of reclaiming the Land from its historic neglect. The return to the Land of Israel as on its way. It is significant to note tht in 1800 there were very few Arabs in what is now Israel. As the 1800’s progressed, some Arabs in neighboring countries - generally nomads -were attracted to what the Jewish pioneers and new settlers were doing. Result ? They were willing to work for the Jewish pioneers and earn some money.
In the mid-1890’s, an educated, articulate Austrian journalist, Theodore Herzl, developed a profound appreciation for his own Jewishness when he began to notice the virulent anti-Semitism that burst forth in Europe during the Dreyfus case in France. Stirred to action, Herzl embarked on a mission of propounding the cause of the re-establishment of the Jewish state. Herzl met with several heads of state in Europe to lobby for that cause.
In 1897, in Basel, Switzerland, Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress, which effectively announced to the world that the restoration of the Land of Israel had already begun and that, within the foreseeable future, a State of Israel would be a reality. “If you will it,” Herzl said, “it is dream.”
Money, in small amounts and in large amounts, from Jews all around the world started to pour into the Jewish National Fund, which was set up to buy land in Palestine and to pay for whatever was needed to achieve a restored Land of Israel.
During World War 1,British forces defeated the army of the Ottoman Empire and gained control of almost all of North Africa, including the area of ancient Israel. In 1917, the British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, aware of the progress that the Jewish pioneers had already made in Palestine, issued the famous “Balfour Declaration,” which announced to the world that “His Majesty’s government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object .” In 1921 the newly-formed League of Nations ratified the Balfour Declaration and named England to be the mandate country to, in effect, monitor the growth and development of the Jewish settlers until the time when the Jewish Agency was capable to govern itself as a modern state The Grand Mufti, an Arab Muslim leader in Amman (now the capital of Jordan) complained to the League of Nations that if a Jewish state was to be established, an Arab state should also be created. With the authority of the League of Nations, England agreed to lop off 70 percent of the land of Biblical Israel, which consisted of all of the land east of the Jordan River, in order to create a new Arab state. This new state was called TransJordan, which came into being in 1923. Some people suggested that the name of the new state be “Palestine.” Perhaps, unfortunately, that name was rejected. In the meantime, the hard work of reclaiming the land which had lain fallow for so long, continued on the west side of the Jordan River, as did the building of Jewish villages, schools and housing, etc.
After Hitler came to power in 1933, many German Jews, and others, left Europe and went to Palestine. The Arabs, who supported the Nazi Germans, complained to the British government. The British, unfortunately (for Jews), issued the infamous White Paper banning further immigration of Jews to Palestine - in effect condemning untold numbers of Jews to death in the gas chambers of the Holocaust.
World War II, the military war, started on September 1, 1939. The world soon became aware of another war, a one-sided war, against the Jews. When World War II ended in 1945, many of the survivors - their family and assets gone - made their way to Palestine to start a new life. Even while TransJordan, an Arab state, consisted of 70 percent of Biblical Israel, the Arab states pressured the newly-formed United Nations not to allot the entire 30 percent of the remaining land of the west side of the Jordan River to the Jews. Commissions and investigations debated and argued; convoluted maps of the Jewish settlements and Arab villages were put forth. In the meantime, the horror of what had happened to the Jews during that war produced enough moral backbone among the movers and shakers of the world to get something done.
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a Partition Plan providing for a Jewish state and an Arab state with the 30 percent. At the time, there was no organized ethnic Palestinian state. Although neither side was completely satisfied with the Partition Plan, the Jewish Agency accepted the Partition Resolution. The Arab countries rejected the Resolution - and began preparing for war.
On May 14, 1948 the Jewish Agency, led by their first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, declared the re-establishment of the State of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital Jews around the world rejoiced...after almost 2000 years. !!
On May 15, 1948, the armies of Egypt, TransJordan, Lebanon and Syria, with units from Iraq and Saudi Arabia, attacked Israel from the north, south and east and announced to the world, that they were going to eradicate the “Zionist prescence” and that they were going to “drive the Israelis westward into the Mediterranean Sea.” That ws the objective of the Arab states in 1948, and as they have been telling the orld since 1948, (although the world refuses to listen). That is still their objective to this day.
In 1948-49, the fledgling State of Israel held off their attackers until the Arabs settled for a truce. In that war, TransJordan occupied East Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, the Western Wall and the provinces of Judea and Samaria on the west bank of the Jordan River. They occupied - and defiled shamefully - other Jewish and Christian holy places and then changed their country’s name to Jordan. The fact is that on one ever gave TransJordan the right to occupy Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem.
In June 1967, the Arab States bordering Israel tried again to defeat the Israelis on the battlefield. They urged those Arabs who lived in Israel to leave their homes so that Arab military forces could concentrate on killing Jews without having to worry about killing Arabs. In that war, which lasted all of six days, Israeli forces overran East Jerusalem, recaptured the Western Wall, the Temple Mount and the entirety of Judea and Samaria, as well as the Golan Heights (from which Arab snipers used to take target practice, killing Jewish farmers below.) To the south, Israel conquered the entire Sinai Peninsula, which the Israelis willingly returned to Egypt when Egypt and Israel signed a peace agreement in 1979. Israel offered the Gaza Strip to Egypt; Egypt refused it.
The Arab state tried again to defeat the Israelis when they lunched a surprise attack against Israel in 1973 on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jesish calendar. In the Yom Kippur war they were once again defeated. Having been defeated three times on the battlefield, the Arab leaders met in Cairo and decided first, that Yasser Arafat the the newly-formed Palestine Liberation Organization would represent the Palestinian interests. They had teenagers throw stones at both Israeli soldiers and civilians hoping that Israel would give them some land. That did not work. They eventually began to have terrorists blow themselves up in crowds, killing many innocent people. When Israelis would retaliate, they would hide among children and then charge Israelis for hurting their people. Large numbers of innocent Israelis have been killed by Palestinians.
The Israelis have managed to make peace with the Egyptian government and with the Jordan government.
Actually, the Palestinians do have a state. The name of the state is Jordan. The vast majority of Jordanians are Palestinians. Jordan is three times as large as Israel. In any event, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will end when the Palestinians learn about the real history of the Jewish peiople and the Land of Israel...and when they recognize the existence and legitimacy of the State of Israel.
