EXCELLENT rundown of a few historical realities that are sure to stick in certain craws.
So here’s the truth.
The Jews are not foreigners in Israel. They are the world’s oldest continuous nation in the land, with a history there stretching back nearly four millennia. Insofar as their ancient ancestors thoroughly intermarried with their Canaanite predecessors, the history in the land of the descendants of those unions goes back even further: they are literally the original owners of the land. The Jews built kingdoms in that land before Rome — not just the empire but the city itself —existed, they worshiped in Jerusalem millennia before Muhammad, and those in exile prayed for return unceasingly, reassuring one another throughout: “Next year in Jerusalem”.
Israel is not a colony. It’s a restoration.
Nor is the modern State of Israel some Zionist invention, or an exercise of British imperial fiat. In 1947, the United Nations voted overwhelmingly to establish Israel, partitioning the remaining 20% of the Palestine Mandate into two states: one Jewish, one Arab. The Jews accepted. The Arabs declared a war of annihilation, just three years after the Holocaust, a war the Jews won.
Why do those two facts alone not settle this once and for all?
Oh, and that other 80%? Already given to the Palestinian Arabs in 1922, the modern Kingdom of Jordan. In 1947, the UN sought to give half the remainder — the 20% set aside for a Jewish homeland — to the Arabs as well. That’s 90% for the Arabs, just 10% for the indigenous Jews.
If those Palestinians who refuse to live in peace in Israel (which they may do), and refuse to live peacefully beside the Jews in the so-called “territories” (which they may also do), wish to live peacefully somewhere, what is wrong with the 80% of Palestine on the East Bank of the Jordan? Do these colonizers really need 100%? And why would anyone agree to such an absurdity?
The Jews did not ask for 100%, or even 50%. The Jews accepted the UN’s terms in peace. The Arabs responded with an attempted genocide, not just by the Palestinian Arabs themselves but also the surrounding Arab states. The Israeli victory is nothing short of a miracle. Nor did the Arabs stop there: they expelled vast Jewish communities from their countries, minorities who had lived continuously in those lands for as much as 2,700 years.
Israel is not a “settler colony.” The State of Israel was founded by and through international law. Virtually the entire world agreed that there must be a Jewish state, just as there must be an Indian state, and a Kenyan state, and a Polish state, and a French state. Israel’s existence rests not on imperial decree but on the consensus of the nations, and on the same principle of self-determination that birthed nearly every nation in the modern world.
By contrast, the Arabs now calling themselves “Palestinians” are not indigenous. Their presence begins with the Muslim conquest, millennia after the Jews. Jews still lived in the land, then and always, even after Rome had expelled many of them. And most of the ancestors of today’s Palestinians are recent arrivals as well, settling in the wasteland the area had become under the Turks only after the Jews began to develop it, “making the desert bloom”. They came to benefit from Jewish enterprise. Now they want to steal what the Jews built.
The irony is glaring: those who arrived by imperial sword now claim the mantle of the native, while the true indigenous people are smeared as colonizers.
But…but…but…butbutbut…THEY HAVE BIG, HOOKED NOSES! AND THEY’RE GREEDY, JUST OBSESSED WITH MONEY!! AND THEY STICK TO THEIR OWN KIND, LIKE SOME KIND OF CLAN OR TRIBE OR SOMETHING!!! AND THEY CONTROL ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING!!! AND…AND…AND…
((((****JOOOOOOOOOO!!!****))))
- Entries
As you say, an “EXCELLENT rundown”.
Perfect in fact.