A history lesson
At Little Green Footballs this morning, Charles Johnson points to an article in today's Washington Post with the comment, "At the Washington Post, Richard Cohen agrees with Hamas and Hizballah that 'Israel is a mistake.' And he’s open to the argument that Israel is a 'crime.'”If that sounds like an overly blunt characterization of what Cohen wrote in this morning's Washington Post, it's not. Cohen's article reflects a total ignorance of Jewish history, and of the Jewish connection to the land of Israel dating back to biblical times, which is inexcusable even for an assimilated Jew (which I assume Cohen to be). In fact, even Christians should be offended by Cohen's writing them out of the history of the Holy Land. Cohen adopts the Arab narrative of the last century of history lock, stock and barrel, without even considering that it might be false. Note, I said Arab and not 'Palestinian,' because the 'Palestinians' by their own admission are a fiction created by that Arab narrative.
The term "Palestina" was invented by the Roman emperor Hadrian. The Romans wanted to rename Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) after the Philistines, the longtime enemy of the Jews. Hadrian believed that by renaming the Jewish homeland after the Jews' archenemy, he would be able to forever break the bond between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people.
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But even the name of the Philistines, from which the term "Palestine" was adopted, is completely alien to the Land of Israel.
The name Philistines in Hebrew is plishtim, which comes from the Hebrew verb polshim (foreign invaders).
Arabs only came to the Land of Israel in large numbers after the Jews returned in the 20th century and started to rebuild the nation, thereby creating economic and employment opportunities for Arab immigrants.Prior to 1870, when Jews started to return to the Holy Land in large numbers, there were fewer than 100,000 Arabs living in what is today the State of Israel - including Yesha (the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District).
This small number of nomadic, tribal Arabs who lived in the Holy Land before the modern Jewish return never considered themselves to be a separate people or nation.
The Arabs who lived in the Land of Israel were not "Palestinians" but Arabs - part of a huge Arab people with 22 very large independent nations that control one-ninth of the land mass on the planet Earth.
In an interview given by Zuhair Mohsen to the Dutch newspaper Trouw in March 1977, Mr. Mohsen explains the origin of the 'Palestinians':
- The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.
- For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
In this morning's Washington Post, Richard Cohen writes:
The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.Israel is anything but a mistake, and history shows the justice of Israel's cause. With the exception of the period between the two Jewish Temples between roughly 586 and 516 BCE, Jews ruled this land continuously from approximately 1300 BCE until 68 CE. Since that time, no other government has been based in Israel, no other country has called Jerusalem its capitol, and no other people has called this land its home. It is not history that is Israel's enemy but the false narrative of history presented to the World by the Arab Muslims. It is not history that is Israel's enemy, but Arab attempts to wipe out the vestiges of that history, as if destroying all of the Temple artifacts on the Temple Mount will confirm that it was 'always' Haram al-Sharif, that two Jewish Temples never stood there and that Jesus never argued with money changers there.
This country was deserted swampland for much of the period between 68 CE and the beginning of the return of larger numbers of Jews started in 1870. Israel's interior areas were mainly a desert-like wasteland while her coast was a malaria-ridden swamp. But Jews always prayed three times a day that God should gather them in from their diaspora and bring them back to this country. Many Jews attempted to come here on their own. Jews were a majority of the population of Jerusalem in the 19th century, and settled many of the cities of the Galilee as well. In 1844 - when the Land of Israel was controlled by the Turkish Muslims - the Turkish census counted 7,120 Jews and 5,000 Muslims living in Jerusalem. Thus, Jerusalem was already a Jewish city 160 years ago. Until an Arab massacre wiped them out in 1929, there was even a large Jewish community in Hebron, which included a major Talmudical academy, which was transplanted from the village of Slobodka in Lithuania.
In Chapter LVI of Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain wrote regarding his trip here in 1867:
Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective--distance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land.This is from Twain's description of seeing the remains of the Temples (in Chapter LIV):
Small shreds and patches of it must be very beautiful in the full flush of spring, however, and all the more beautiful by contrast with the far-reaching desolation that surrounds them on every side. I would like much to see the fringes of the Jordan in spring-time, and Shechem, Esdraelon, Ajalon and the borders of Galilee--but even then these spots would seem mere toy gardens set at wide intervals in the waste of a limitless desolation.
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists--over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead-- about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot where, on that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.
Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land? Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition--it is dream-land.
Every where about the Mosque of Omar are portions of pillars, curiously wrought altars, and fragments of elegantly carved marble -- precious remains of Solomon's Temple. These have been dug from all depths in the soil and rubbish of Mount Moriah, and the Moslems have always shown a disposition to preserve them with the utmost care. At that portion of the ancient wall of Solomon's Temple which is called the Jew's Place of Wailing, and where the Hebrews assemble every Friday to kiss the venerated stones and weep over the fallen greatness of Zion, any one can see a part of the unquestioned and undisputed Temple of Solomon, the same consisting of three or four stones lying one upon the other, each of which is about twice as long as a seven-octave piano, and about as thick as such a piano is high. But, as I have remarked before, it is only a year or two ago that the ancient edict prohibiting christian rubbish like ourselves to enter the Mosque of Omar and see the costly marbles that once adorned the inner Temple was annulled. The designs wrought upon these fragments are all quaint and peculiar, and so the charm of novelty is added to the deep interest they naturally inspire. One meets with these venerable scraps at every turn, especially in the neighboring Mosque el Aksa, into whose inner walls a very large number of them are carefully built for preservation. These pieces of stone, stained and dusty with age, dimly hint at a grandeur we have all been taught to regard as the princeliest ever seen on earth; and they call up pictures of a pageant that is familiar to all imaginations -- camels laden with spices and treasure -- beautiful slaves, presents for Solomon's harem -- a long cavalcade of richly caparisoned beasts and warriors -- and Sheba's Queen in the van of this vision of "Oriental magnificence." These elegant fragments bear a richer interest than the solemn vastness of the stones the Jews kiss in the Place of Wailing can ever have for the heedless sinner.
Down in the hollow ground, underneath the olives and the orange trees that flourish in the court of the great Mosque, is a wilderness of pillars -- remains of the ancient Temple; they supported it. There are ponderous archways down there, also, over which the destroying "plough" of prophecy passed harmless. It is pleasant to know we are disappointed, in that we never dreamed we might see portions of the actual Temple of Solomon, and yet experience no shadow of suspicion that they were a monkish humbug and a fraud.
In 1913, the British Royal Commission reported:
"The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts ... no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached Yabna village.... Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen.... The ploughs used were of wood.... The yields were very poor.... The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. Schools did not exist.... The rate of infant mortality was very high.... The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert.... The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants."And so the land remained until the Jews cultivated it plot by plot.
Israel is a 'mistake' created in 'Arab land'? Hardly.
The rest of Cohen's argument is standard leftist drivel about how Israel has to 'hunker down' and allow itself to be beaten rather than decisively winning a war (and that's what we're in now) and being able to find peace on its own terms. The fact that Israel has tried to 'hunker down' and give away its territory time and time again in a bid to make 'peace' with the 'Palestinians' - and that the 'Palestinians' and their Arab supporters have come back to fight another day each time - shows the fecklessness of that policy. It's very simple: the Arabs will not willingly tolerate any Jewish presence in this part of the world. There is no amount of land that we can give them that will entice them to live in peace with us. Until we decisively defeat them, they will come back to fight another day and another day. There is no need to give any more of an answer than that.
Israel is neither a mistake nor a crime. It is the beginning of the culmination of more than 2000 years of Jewish yearning to return to our homeland. The manner in which the Jewish people has chosen to govern the Land of Israel has its faults. But being a 'mistake' created in 'Arab land' - let alone being a 'crime' - is not among those faults. We Jews have to learn to stop listening to liberals like Cohen and to start fighting - with God's help - for our existence. Hopefully, the current battle marks a turning point.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:35 AM
22 Comments:
Strong post!
The Carl-in-Jerusalem explanation ...
The antidote for Hellenization.
- Jeremayakovka
Dont insult "liberals" Cohen's word are that of a loser, not a liberal. The press these days love a self hating jew, the press has it's own agenda, and the washington post seems to love hezbollah...
It saddens me that morons like cohen have: a job, and use the name "cohen" he should change his name to putz
Wow, a beautifully written and informative peice.
Nice post, a rebuttal that Cohen's piece richly deserved.
I am a grad student in historical studies, and it's nice to see a good history lesson -- history is sadly neglected nowadays. There is a very long and complicated history of the Roman province of Judaea (later renamed, as you noted, by Hadrian -- he actually renamed it "Syria Palaestina" in 135 AD -- with Jerusalem also renamed Colonia Aelia Capitolina). The formulation of the province under Roman rule is often stated to be AD 6, when Samaria, Judaea, and Idumaea were annexed by Rome. Prior to that, it had enjoyed political independence for some while.A succinct historical outline here:
http://www.unrv.com/provinces/judaea.php
In terms of identity in the province of Judaea, it's worth noting that this location enjoyed privileges and a separateness of identity that was largely unique among Roman provinces. Jewish religious liberty enjoyed Rome's official sanction in various forms, though there was endless trouble in the region resulting from Romans seeking to impose various pagan temples, etc.
I can't find the part where Cohen says that he's open to the idea that Israel is a crime. In fact, that seems to be a misquotation.
Say what you will about the demographics of the area at the time of Israel's creation, but it was created. It wasn't like the people of the area decided to rise up and form a new government. It was foreign powers (US, western Europe mostly) that created the Jewish state. The fact that all of the neighboring nations immediately opposed this new state might suggest to an objective observer that perhaps there was a flaw in the idea of creating a Jewish state in the given location. This rabid opposition lead to the US providing military aid to protect the new state. Again the need to protect the new state might indicate that the creation of the state is problematic and will never be stable. You refer to a "decisive victory" against the Arab states, and exactly what is that? Think about what would be involved in such a "decisive victory." It would be a pretty catastrophic (in terms of lives lost, damage, etc.) event, right? Now you're saying that basically such a catastrophic even is needed in conjunction with the creation of the Jewish state in order to stablize its existence. Don't you think that Cohen would argue that you've just proven his point?
Michael 10:27 you are kidding aren't you - I mean you have done a little research on this topic before commenting. Created nations - Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria etc.
All after the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WW1.
Of course Israel, the less than a third of the jewish homeland intended in the Balfour Declaration, took a little longer. Something about, oh you know those pesky Muslims and their terrorism thingy. Google Haj Amin Al-Husseini, Michael, get a lesson on the origins of terrorism to achieve your goals via appeasement.
Well written and well done.
I don't just think its just the Jews that the Arab Muslims hate.
Here in the UK over the last 20 years, we've seen a rise in the amount of muslims settling here and to be honest things have never been worse.
The Chinese have settled here, the African, The Jew, the Indian as well as many European's and all have integrated nicely into the community without the ghetto's that we are seeing now. For some reason the muslim just can't integrate well.
It's as though the two cultures are thousand of years apart. We seem to have learned to keep religion in the background whilst getting on with ourlives and we're super tolerant these days, unlike my fathers generation, who blamed evrything on the 'Darkies'.
So don't ask me why the Muslim won't integrate because i don't have the answer, but there seems to be a theme to it most definately.
Of course the goverment and the so called do gooder's don't exactly help when they scrutinising our every tradition and try to ban them in case it upsets the minorities.
So sleep well in the knowledge that it's not only Israel that the Arab Muslim would appear to want to meddle in. Indeed i thing the agenda goes way beyond that.
First off the 10:19 Michael is a differnt Michael.
Second @spydermr2, my point was not that just because Israel was created it was mistake. Obviously the end of colonialism lead to a lot of nations being created. However, how many of them have faced continuous violence from all of their neighbors ever since their creation? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with Cohen. I'm just saying that he has a point.
If you had a dog, would you put it in a pen with other dogs knowing that either it would be killed or it would have to kill all the other dogs in the pen? If you went ahead and put the dog in the pen and the dogs all fought violently, would you question your decision?
It's easy to judge the parties involved and say "the Arabs are awful because they will not leave Israel alone" etc. However, the conflict that has gone on for the last half century was entirely predictable. Given what happened and the predictability of the events, does it require anti-semitism or lack of mental faculties to think that maybe there were flaws in the decisions made?
Awesome post! I wish you and your family safety.
Carl-- you just got press for this post on Mark Levin's show on WABC 770 AM out of NYC! Mazel Tov, he's one of the most popular Jewish conservatives in the city!!
Michael say that since Israel has faced continuous opposition from its neighbors then maybe that indicates it was a mistake to create the nation of Israel, as Cohen suggests.
OK, in the USA there was a decision to desegrate public accommodations. This led to opposition and sometimes deadly violence. Thus was desegration a mistake? The US government's position was that desegration was not a mistake and opponents would have to accept it either willingly or by force.
Since when do we let violent opponents decide what is the right thing to do?
michael,
The 'crime' comment is in the last paragraph of Cohen's article.
Israel didn't start getting significant amounts of aid from the US until the Nixon administration. Harry Truman recognized Israel as a state over his State Department's objectionss. But it was Nixon who (possibly to try to divert attention from Watergate) was the first President to give Israel significant aid.
jon wright,
The Muslims seem to have trouble with Christians (throughout the Middle East, especially in Egypt) and Hindus (in India and the Kashmir) as well.
shanah,
What are you talking about? I used to live in New Jersey and no one told me about this. Please email!
Is this guy Cohen an Anti-Semitic Jew? I fguess so. How does th Washington post print such anti-semitism?
Do they have an Anti-semitic license? I thought the jews were supposed to own the media in a zionist conspiracy. Oh they do, his name is Cohen.
Is this part of the plot?
..
Good luck to you Carl, may the sword and IDF of Israel smite the wicked. Please exterminate them for us. I hope you can finish the job before our Lib-left steps in to save them again.
I feel Israel does not have a right to exist at least in terms of an apartheid state. Why should anyone subject themselves to 2nd class citizenship?
Here are some of the Zionist voices of peace and accomodation. And btw, the bulk of my anger is over the fact that support of/influence by Israel is helping destroy my freedoms in the US by the creation of a police state based on the Israeli model. That truly sucks. And just to get an idea of how insidious the forces trying to hide the truth are, comments as benign as this get blocked or deleted at pro-Zionist sites all the time as they call for the murder of all the Arabs/Muslims who resist (Israpundit, Atlas Shrugs, LA Jewish Journal Forum, etc, etc, etc...) You'd think if the Zionist felt their argument was that strong, they'd allow it to stand on its own merits. Instead, it's like the Mossad motto, "By deception shall you do war."
The following from: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/hatespeech.html
1. "There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy." Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001
2. "The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more".... Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000
3. " [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs." Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts". New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
4. "The Palestinians" would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." " Israeli Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
5. "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
6. "How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.
7. "There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed." Golda Maier Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969
8. "The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war." Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972.
9. David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): "If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.
9a. Ben Gurion also warned in 1948 : "We must do everything to insure they ( the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. "The old will die and the young will forget."
10. "We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves." Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.
11. "Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." - Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio. (Certainly the FBI's cover-up of the Israeli spy ring/phone tap scandal suggests that Mr. Sharon may not have been joking.
12. "We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New York Times 14 April 1983.
13. "We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return" David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.
15. "We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai." David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.
16. "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum"
17. "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969.
18. "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.
19. Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of Plan Dalet. "We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters" Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960. From "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas.
20. "There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:...the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary." Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5.
21. "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
22. "It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972.
23. "Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine, Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry.
"Since that time [68CE], no other government has been based in Israel, no other country has called Jerusalem its capitol, and no other people has called this land its home"
Please get your facts straight. Every one of those is wrong:
The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem was based in modern Israel and held Jerusalem as its capital.
It's not relevant to the substantive point at all, but I think a post correcting someone else's facts has an obligation to be as accurate as possible
r this a history lesson
it seems that this guy who wrote this lesson can do any thing but not to give us a history lessons
hey .. this group has to read the history again .. mr cohen r right
@Richard Gadsden:
The crusaders were not a nation, they were an army. They did not come from Israel and they did not claim that Israel was their home.
Just like Carl stated:
"Since that time [68CE], no other government has been based in Israel, no other country has called Jerusalem its capitol, and no other people has called this land its home"
You claims about the Crusader Kingdom were not accurate or relevant - but since you claim that this article has many other errors perhaps you could at least attempt to substantiate that clam.
@zarkoosh:
What language are you trying to communicate in? It certainly isn't English.
The Land of Israel and its uncontested Capital Jerusalem
The Qur'an 17:104 - states the land belongs to the Jewish people
If the historic documents, comments written by eyewitnesses and declarations by the most authoritative Arab scholars are still not enough, let us quote the most important source for Muslim Arabs:
"And thereafter we [Allah] said to the Children of Israel: 'Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd'.".
017.104
YUSUFALI: And We said thereafter to the Children of Israel, "Dwell securely in the land (of promise)": but when the second of the warnings came to pass, We gathered you together in a mingled crowd.
PICKTHAL: And We said unto the Children of Israel after him: Dwell in the land; but when the promise of the Hereafter cometh to pass We shall bring you as a crowd gathered out of various nations.
SHAKIR: And We said to the Israelites after him: Dwell in the land: and when the promise of the next life shall come to pass, we will bring you both together in judgment.
- Qur'an 17:104 -
Any sincere Muslim must recognize the Land they call "Palestine" as the Jewish Homeland, according to the book considered by Muslims to be the most sacred word and Allah's ultimate revelation.
“The birthplace of the Jewish people is the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael). There, a significant part of the nation's long history was enacted, of which the first thousand years are recorded in the Bible; there, its cultural, religious and national identity was formed; and there, its physical presence has been maintained through the centuries, even after the majority was forced into exile. During the many years of dispersion, the Jewish people never severed nor forgot its bond with the Land. With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jewish independence, lost two thousand years earlier, was renewed.”
If people of any nation were exiled to other country’s and than years later were able to reclaim their country, the world population as a whole would support such action and would not consider giving a piece of the country to the foreigners who are residing there, and under no circumstances would they consider parceling portions of the county to be set up as a separate State for the foreigners.
Why should anyone in the world consider doing this very same action with the land of Israel which is a Jewish land for thousands of years?
The Arabs living in the land of Israel have come from the surrounding Arab countries; they have no right whatsoever to any part of the land of Israel.
In the past hundred years many Jews were ejected from Arab countries surrounding the land of Israel, their property taken and their homes and lands taken over.
Let those Arabs who want to Claim the land of Israel as theirs go to those Arab countries and the homes and lands that the Jews were occupying.
Any part of the land of Israel is not occupied territory; it is legally a Jewish land and has been for thousands of years, no Arab has any right to claim any rights to the land of Israel. The surrounding Arab countries compose of over 100 million people and millions of square miles, why do they have to bother little Israel with its territory about the size of the State of New Jersey.
Maybe the world should consider giving European countries or parts to the Italians, since the Romans occupied it for many years.
JERUSALEM
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its cunning.
May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
(Psalms 137:5-6)
Jerusalem, the uncontested and undivided capital of Israel, is located in the heart of the country, nestled among the Judean Hills. The city's ancient stones, imbued with millennia of history, and its numerous historical sites, shrines and places of worship attest to its meaning for Jews.
Jerusalem the "eternal and undivided capital" of the Jewish people,
Jerusalem is -- and must remain -- the uncontested, undivided capital of Israel.
Jerusalem is the only city that can prove the validity of Israeli-Jewish existence. No one should question Jewish historic claim and affinity to Jerusalem which dates back the Canaanite period (3000-1200 BCE). The re-capture of the old city in 1967 was widely seen by the Israelis as nothing less than the renewal of God's covenant with the Jews. Jerusalem represents their past and present, a source of religious and cultural continuity without which Israel's very existence could unravel. The hope of returning to Jerusalem has sustained the Jews throughout their dispersion, and centuries of exile have been unable to extinguish it.
Abraham, Isaac and Jacobs resided in the land of Israel and Jerusalem from the year 1948 from Creation (circa 1800 BCE).
King David made Jerusalem the capital of his kingdom, as well as the religious center of the Jewish people, in 1003 BCE. Some forty years later, his son Solomon built the Temple (the religious and national center of the people of Israel) and transformed the city into the prosperous capital of an empire extending from the Euphrates to Egypt.
The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in 586 BCE, destroyed the Temple, and exiled the people. Fifty years later, when Babylon was conquered by the Persians, King Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and granted them autonomy. They built a Second Temple on the site of the First, and rebuilt the city and its walls.
Alexander the Great conquered Jerusalem in 332 BCE. After his death the city was ruled by the Ptolemies of Egypt and then by the Seleucids of Syria. The Hellenization of the city reached its peak under the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV; the desecration of the Temple and attempts to suppress Jewish religious identity resulted in a revolt.
Led by Judah Maccabee, the Jews defeated the Seleucids, rededicated the Temple (164 BCE), and re-established Jewish independence under the Hasmonean dynasty, which lasted for more than a hundred years, until Pompey imposed Roman rule on Jerusalem. King Herod the Idumean, who was installed as ruler of Judah by the Romans (37 - 4 BCE), established cultural institutions in Jerusalem, erected magnificent public buildings and refashioned the Temple into an edifice of splendor.
Jewish revolt against Rome broke out in 66 CE, as Roman rule after Herod's death became increasingly oppressive. For a few years Jerusalem was free of foreign rule, until, in 70 CE, Roman legions under Titus conquered the city and destroyed the Temple. Jewish independence was briefly restored during the Bar Kochba revolt (132-135), but again the Romans prevailed. Jews were forbidden to enter the city, which was renamed Aelia Capitolina and rebuilt along the lines of a Roman city.
For the next century and a half, Jerusalem was a small provincial town. This changed radically when the Byzantine Emperor Constantine transformed Jerusalem into a Christian center. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher (335) was the first of numerous grandiose structures built in the City.
Muslim armies invaded the country in 634, and four years later Caliph Omar captured Jerusalem. Only during the reign of Abdul Malik, who built the Dome of the Rock (691), did Jerusalem briefly become the seat of a caliph. The century-long rule of the Umayvad Dynasty from Damascus was succeeded in 750 by the Abbasids from Baghdad, and with them Jerusalem began to decline.
The Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099, massacred its Jewish and Muslim inhabitants, and established the city as the capital of the Crusader Kingdom. Under the Crusaders, synagogues were destroyed, old churches were rebuilt and many mosques were turned into Christian shrines. Crusader rule over Jerusalem ended in 1187, when the city fell to Saladin the Kurd.
The Mamluks, a military feudal aristocracy from Egypt, ruled Jerusalem from 1250. They constructed numerous graceful buildings, but treated the city solely as a Muslim theological center and ruined its economy through neglect and crippling taxes.
The Ottoman Turks, whose rule lasted for four centuries, conquered Jerusalem in 1517. Suleiman the Magnificent rebuilt the city walls (1537), constructed the Sultan's Pool, and placed public fountains throughout the city. After his death. The central authorities in Constantinople took little interest in Jerusalem. During the 17th and 18th centuries Jerusalem sunk to one of its lowest ebbs.
Jerusalem began to thrive once more in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Growing numbers of Jews returning to their land, waning Ottoman power and revitalized European interest in the Holy Land led to renewed development of Jerusalem.
The British army led by General Allenby conquered Jerusalem in 1917. From 1922 to 1948 Jerusalem was the administrative seat of the British authorities in the Land of Israel (Palestine), which had been entrusted to Great Britain by the League of Nations following the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The city developed rapidly, growing westward into what became known as the "New City."
Upon termination of the British Mandate on May 14, 1948, and in accordance with the UN resolution of November 29, 1947, Israel proclaimed its independence, with Jerusalem as its capital. Opposing its establishment, the Arab countries launched an all-out assault on the new re-established state, resulting in the 1948-49 War of Independence. The armistice lines drawn at the end of the war divided Jerusalem into two, with Jordan occupying the Old City and areas to the north and south, and Israel retaining the western and southern parts of the city.
Jerusalem was reunited in June 1967, as a result of a war in which the Jordanians attempted to seize the western section of the city. The Jewish Quarter of the Old City, destroyed under Jordanian rule, has been restored, and Israeli citizens are again able to visit their holy places, which had been denied them during the years 1948-1967.
Conclusion, the land of Israel and Jerusalem as its undivided capital for the Jewish people is a historical fact for thousands of years and shall remain that way for eternity.
Yehuda Draiman
This is not a history . I advice you to go back to your books and try to include ALL the facts, without forgetting the many other details.
If you truelly believe that the Land where Israel is now establishing its state is for jews, then you are wrong. To cut the conversations short ( since you will bring more evidence from your own references, and same with me ) I direct you the the UN many resolutions which declare the west bank ( AT Least ) as OCCUPIED LAND. I dont think that the UN is also mislead !
Try to find solutions, not to proof lies .
Israel should have responded sooner - It is Israel’s government fault for this escalation.
For years the Arab population around and surrounding Israel has been bombing with rockets and suicide bombers.
Would the U.S. or any other country shown such restraint while its citizens are terrorized, the answer is absolutely not.
Israel chose restraint. The Arab world sees restrained as a sign of weakness and capitulation.
It is long overdue for Israel to take off the gloves and respond with extreme force and keep the pressure without relenting.
Do not worry about the media or world opinion. You do whatever you have to, to defend your country and its population.
People in the world respect those in power who defend their citizens and not weaklings, even though they may object initially.
If the Arab permit extremist to hide among civilians, they must bear the consequences, it is a right and an obligation to protect its citizens by any means available – no force is too small, extreme force and prejudice is required.
For every bullet a grenade, for every missile a bombardment. When Sharon was defense minister many years ago, that was the policy and it worked, it will work today also.
Anyone threatening the security will be expelled out of their homes and the greater Israel
Jay Draiman
Long live Israel💕💙💚💛💜❤👍
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