By Jerome Verlin
“The Squad” just did grassroots American Jews a favor by introducing House Resolution 1123, “Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian Refugee Rights.” [”Nakba” means “catastrophe” in reference to the Jewish state.]
In branding Israel’s 1948 independence an unjust “catastrophe for Palestinians” and demanding a “Right of Return” for Arabs, Rep. Rashida Tlaib et ilk joined Israel’s enemies in their quest to “recover” Palestine in its entirety, meaning all of today’s Israel, including Judea-Samaria (mislabeled “the West Bank”) and all of historic Jerusalem. The “return” of millions of Arabs who had never set foot in Israel would destroy the Jewish state.
Israel’s enemies deny that today’s Israel is the third entity of Jewish sovereignty stretching back 3,000 years.
In a nutshell: the ancient Israel of the Bible did exist (King David, Temple Mount and all); the Romans didn’t “exile” us; our presence has been continuous. There would have been vastly more Jews present in 1948, except for foreign rulers’ massacring homeland Jews and barring entry to Jews, from the Romans to the British.
The Jews’ Biblical history is based on reality. Archeologists are divided on whether Israelites, as Jews were initially known, entered Canaan from outside more or less as described in the Bible (“Conquest” school), or arose from within the Canaanite population (“Indigenous Origin” school). On this they agree: Israelite presence. A state arose in the late second millennium BCE, in the Judea-Samaria highlands (what many now call the “West Bank,” in an attempt to sever Jews from the land of their origin and strategic heart of their state).
For decades, this was said with a smirk: “King David was as real as King Arthur.” But in the 1990s, archeologists unearthed at Tel Dan an 8th century BCE enemy king’s inscription boasting of victories over the northern kingdom of Israel and “the House of David.” Other enemy inscriptions and Assyrian and Babylonian records reference Israel and Judah. First and Second Temple period structures (Temple Mount, Western Wall, Hezekiah’s Tunnel, Masada, Khirbet Qeiyafa, much more) and artifacts, including seals with biblical names, attest to ancient Israel’s reality. It is history, not myth.
The Maccabees’ long 2nd (CE) century revolt against Alexander’s Seleucid successors regained independence for the Jews’ homeland. The Great (66-70 CE) and Bar Kochba (132-135 CE) revolts were major Roman wars, not mere provincial rebellions.
The widely-held belief that on defeating Bar Kochba the Romans exiled Judaea’s Jews is factually incorrect. Post-revolt Roman-Byzantine era (135-638 CE) synagogues and other Jewish remains dot the land. Schools of homeland sages in Galilee wrote great works, including the Mishnah and then Jerusalem Talmud.
The Romans themselves recognized the Patriarch as head of the homeland’s Jews until the 5th century. Self-mustered battalions of 20,000 or more homeland Jews fought alongside the 614 CE Persians against the hated Romans’ Byzantine heirs. The Jews were rewarded after fighting alongside the soon-following Muslim invaders. Archeologist Dan Bahat published a map of a hundred 9th century Jewish communities.
The 1099 CE Crusader invaders acknowledged that “the Jew is the last to fall” in fighting them at Jerusalem and that Haifa’s Jews “courageously” held them off for a month. Jews lived in their four holy cities – Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron – and in Galilee and elsewhere in the 400 years of Turkish rule.
Historian James Parkes wrote that the continuous, tenacious presence of post-Biblical Jews, “in spite of every discouragement,” and wrote today’s Israelis’ “real title deeds.”
Today’s Israel is the next sovereign native state to emerge after Roman-destroyed Jewish Judaea. Every ruler in between – Romans-Byzantines, foreign Muslim dynasties, Crusaders, Mamluks and Turks – had been a foreign invader, and mostly non-Arab at that. Arabs whom we all call “the Palestinians” have never ruled Palestine ever, and foreign Arab dynasties only between 638 and 1099 (progressively under control of the Turks).
In 1947, British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, no friend of ours, told Parliament that there were about 1.2 million Arabs and 600,000 Jews in Palestine. Others put the number of Arabs at only a million. Jews weren’t a tiny minority. Indeed, a century earlier, Turkish misrule had driven Palestine’s population down to a couple hundred thousand or less. Starting in the 1850s, Jews were a majority in Jerusalem.
The Jewish population would have been higher, save for the previously mentioned massacres and the barring of Jews from their homeland. Turks expelled many during World War I.
20th century Arab immigration was unimpeded, while the before-during-and-after-the-Holocaust anti-Jewish British blockade, backed by interference elsewhere, blocked Jews from escaping from Europe to Israel.
Israel wasn’t “created” or “founded.” In 1948. Its government declared independence, just as American colonists had done two centuries earlier. Its homeland army threw back the instant, Palestinian Arab-involved, multi-nation Arab invasion aimed at Israel’s destruction, launched the day it declared independence.
The post-WWI San Remo treaty and Palestine Mandate recognized historic Jewish connection to Palestine and called for re-establishment there of the Jewish national home. A clause in the Mandate allowed Britain to “withhold” from the Jewish national home the portion of Palestine east of the Jordan River, which Britain did, creating today’s Palestinian Arab-majority Jordan.
There was no such Mandate clause applying to Palestine west of the River, the historic land of Israel itself. After the excision of Jordan, the U.N. in 1947 attempted to partition that remaining 22% of Palestine land between Arabs and Jews, all of whom were Palestinians. That led to the declaration of independence of a Jewish state and the Arabs’ failed attempt to drive the Jews into the sea.
God knows Jews need Israel. For centuries, indigenously Middle-eastern Mizrahi Jews had lived lives of persecuted dhimmis in Arab lands. In the West, the Holocaust was no anomaly. Over the centuries, every device of ethnic cleansing – Pale of Settlement, ghetto, Holocaust, Inquisition, pogrom – was devised in Christian Europe for Jews. There was no peace, there was no shelter.
In Africa, Israel three times provided a magic carpet for Ethiopian Jews, who are Black, to escape persecution by migrating to Israel, which has Muslims and Christians in its government. And yet liars smear Israel as “apartheid.”
More Jews were expelled from Arab lands than Arabs who left Israel. One distinct difference: Israel absorbed Jews from Arab lands, while Arab “hosts” put Palestinian Arabs into refugee camps, where they languish today.
Grassroot American Jews and their allies should not be reticent. They should forcefully and forthrightly stand up for the historic, international treaty-recognized Jewish people’s national home — Israel, where it is, with its current borders and historic boundaries.
The details of how it came to be are difficult to follow, but the broad brushed story of the Israel of today that began many thousands of years ago is contained in a book I keep by my bedside. It’s called ‘The Bible,’ and contained therein is the Old Testament. (There is also the New Testament, or as a Jewish friend of mine teases me, ‘The Sequel.’) Jews are back in their home, and there they will stay. But again, not without a fight. I just hope Jews comfortable in America understand what’s at stake.
It is best when the Bible is supported by archeological facts.
Agreed. And the facts support the Bible, as you pointed out.
HAPPY SUNDAY !!!
Thank You Jerry Verlin for enlightening us.
Seven congress man & women jumped on this unfactual piece of garbage. Hopefully, it will stay in committee for eternity.
I don’t know what the mindset is of this Congress. It is scary that people ( woke, liberal, etc ) will jump on the bandwagon of HB 1123, without having one of their aides actually do some research on ( old ) Palestine, ( new )Jordan and ( newer still ) Israel. I have never read a great deal on Israel. I did know that it has been around awhile. I also new about the fight for independence brought on by the wars of Europe over the centuries, topping off with WW I & II.
The Jews that I have known are not quick to talk about Israel’s history. I never asked why.
We can only hope that the United States continues to be a friend to Israel.
Tony
Arafat was successful In his propaganda titling Arabs from Jordan as “ Palestinians.”
Talib and her anti Semite cohorts continue to spread the lie and need to be stopped.
Sadly, the hatred and lies displayed by the Jan 6th rioters dressed in anti Semetic garb continue on the far right.
Anti Semitism is rampant in the United States today. Frightening.
Thin skin and hurt feelings, as well, seems to be rampant. Perpetual whining would be another.
Excellent and factual.
Ms. Arch,
Thank you. So many Americans do not know these facts. Jerry
Talib is a Fundamentalist. In her belief system there is no separation between the religious and the political.. She and other religious zealots are a threat to our way of life, specifically the separation between the church and state. She needs to be challenged on her beliefs and exposed for who she really is, a religious revolutionary. The US needs Israel and Israel needs US. United we are stronger together. Hopefully truthful information can extinguish religious zealots.
Mr. Martin,
Thanks for your comment. I fully agree US and Israel provide strong benefits to each other. But the US administration must understand that Israel just cannot go back to the existentially perilous, historic Jerusalem excluding ceasefire lines of 1949 in a western Palestine “two-state solution.” Palestinian Arabs are the majority population in 78% of Palestine, eastern Palestine, Jordan. Jerry
I agree that Israel should exist and that its historical and moral claims are well grounded. I am very, very sad however over the apparent abandonment of a two-state solution by many in the pro-Israel camp. I see the problems as complex, rather than binary. Personally, I think the real “nabka” for both sides was Arafat’s rejection of the Camp David peace accords. The fact that the extremes on both sides think they dodged a bullet, proves its merit. A two-state solution need not be the 1949 cease-fire lines (Jerusalem was supposed to be an “International City”–not a divided one), and rejecting such a two-state solution on the grounds that some parts of the line are impractical is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The Camp David accords contained land-swaps, and there is no reason to reject a priori the possibility of a two-state solution,
because the cease-fire line cannot work.
Hence, you had me up to “current borders” and lost me with “historic boundaries.” If you favor annexation and, presumably either “transfer” or dhimmi-hood/second-class rights for the Arabs in the occupied territories/disputed territories/west bank/Judea & Samaria or whatever one wants to call the area, I have to object. If you favor annexation with full citizenship and voting rights, you are on the same page, at least in terms of the solution, with the Squad, and I also object because of the practical consequences. Just because Israel has these rights–and I agree it does–it does not mean the Palestinians have none. As Golda Meir said, “It is right vs right.” The lack of historical roots for Palestinian nationalism does not mean it does not exist. There were no roots for American nationalism and then there was. There were no roots for Ukrainian nationalism (Putin is right that they never ruled themselves, and many are Russian-speakers), and then there was.
History has its claims, but so does the present.
Hi, Tom,
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. A majority of America’s Jews agree with you. Part of the reason I don’t is that Palestinian Arabs are already the majority population of eastern Palestine, the 78% of the Palestine Mandate east of the River, today’s Jordan. The Mandate clause allowing Britain to “withhold” part of the Mandate from the Jewish national home was limited to east of the River. If Jordan’s not “Democratic & Arab,” make its king a constitutional monarch like Elizabeth, don’t renege on the Mandate by taking away much of the 22% the Mandate recognized as the Jews’.
The main reason I reject a western Palestine “two-state solution” is that Jerusalem (three times Jewish state capital and renewed Jewish majority since 1800’s Turkish rule) and Judea-Samaria (what the UN itself called it in 1947) are the core parts of the historic homeland of Jews. And the Jordan River and Judea-Samaria ridge is a natural defensible border. The meandering 1949 ceasefire lines [thank you for not miscalling them “Israel’s 1967 borders”] are not. Nor would be other inside-the-land-of-Israel lines.
Israel’s Jews, most of whom reject an inside-the-land-of-Israel two-state solution (as do the Palestinian Arabs, who want all of Palestine), are not ultra-nationalist claimers of a “Greater Israel.” It’s those who’d take away historic Jerusalem and the Judea-Samaria hill country heartland from us Jews who are seeking a “Lesser Israel” than what by history and international treaty is the Jewish national home. God knows we need it, and it needs to be militarily defensible and Jewishly meaningful.
But you ignore the elephant in the room, which is the Arab population who live there. I have absolutely no disagreement on Jerusalem, or the need for secure borders. The UN partition was poorly drawn, and its plan for Jerusalem was unworkable. The partition, speaking legally, is the operative “international treaty” until changed by agreement or renegotiated. The mandate was legally abrogated by the agreed partition, and even it remained somehow binding, it changes the issues not at all.
That is, you mistake me. I am not making am argument about legal or historical rights. I am making a moral and practical argument. If you are for annexation and full citizen rights for those now living in Judea and Samaria, then you are with Tlaib. Israel will then, indeed, have all its historic territory. Why in the world do you have any disagreement? You should work with her. But Israel is not just a defined territory. It is also an idea. Go with Tlaib, and Israel the state will no longer be Israel the idea.
If you want annexation and rule over a second class citizenry–again, Israel will no longer be Israel. It cannot impose the type of second-class citizenry it was created to avoid and still be Israel the idea. I am proud that there are Arab members of the Knesset. That is not some sort of plus or brownie point. It is necessary to the very idea of Israel.
Finally, there is “transfer.” You know what it would be called, and I do not see a good argument to refute it. How many times were Jews expelled from countries because they did not fit the definition of who belonged in, or had a right to be in “their” country? And each time “historically” and de jure correct. Besides the terrifically bad international fallout that would threaten its very existence, Israel the idea would be gone. Even Jabotinsky wrote: “no one will expel from the Land of Israel its Arab inhabitants, either all or a portion of them — this is, first of all, immoral, and secondly, impossible.”
In other words, my position is not the slightest claim that Israel’s existence is in any way unjustified or illegitimate. It is a plea to preserve the State of Israel. When the choice is half a loaf or none, choose the former. The Arabs’ mistake, and Arafat’s mistake was choosing the latter. (Not so Ben Gurion, who was ready to accept a country “the size of a postage stamp”). I do not kid myself that the two-state solution is currently in good odor on either side, and that is what fuels my fear and despair for Israel. I do not want to see it destroyed by outside forces or by its own acts. It is not an argument for a “lesser Israel,” but for Israel, period. Refusal to accept the amputation of a limb to save one’s life is understandable, but ultimately fatal. The famous “three no’s” refusing under any circumstances to give up an inch of “Arab land” for peace should not be adopted as Israel’s model. It cannot end well.
You could not be more rational.
[1] “The elephant in the room,” Tom, is Palestine, all of it, west and east of the Jordan River, both of which were embraced within the UN-officially-adopted League of Nations Palestine Mandate, which recognized my Jewish people’s historic connection with Palestine and specified reconstituting there the Jewish national home. The Mandate gave an option to its trustee, Britain, to “withhold” from it only the portion of Palestine east of the River, which Britain with alacrity did, creating in that 78% of Palestine all-Arab Transjordan. The UN General Assembly’s 1947 resolution to again partition between Arabs and Jews the remaining 22% which Britain’s excision of Jordan from the Mandate left for the Jews had no power to renege on the Mandate, and was anyway unanimously rejected by Arabs, intent as they were on “driving the Jews into the sea.” Palestinian Arabs are the majority population of Jordan, sitting on 78% of the Palestine Mandate
[2] Your suggestion that we “work with Tlaib,” whose House resolution is titled “Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian Refugees’ Rights,” is unrealistic in the extreme. Her “Nakba” [“Catastrophe”] is that Israel exists. If Israel was “created” in an Arab land in 1948, how is it that a homeland army of homeland Jews threw back and then some the instant invasion of several neighboring Arab states, in which Palestinian Arabs fully participated on the Arab side? It’s true that we Jews were only a third of Palestine’s 1948 population, but the exclusively foreign empires which ruled between Rome’s final defeat of ancient Israel in 135 CE and Israel’s independence as the land’s next native state in 1948 [Palestinian Arabs have never ruled Palestine ever] slaughtered homeland Jews over and over, barred Diaspora Jews’ return home, including the Mandate duty-defying Britain in its before-during-and-after the Holocaust anti-Jewish Palestine blockade. Count on the Jewish population side the homeland Jews slaughtered by the (mostly non-Arab) foreign rulers over the centuries, and the homeland-striving Holocaust survivors locked in European “Displaced Persons” camps in 1948 and in British prison camps on Cyprus. We’d have been the 1948 population majority, not just a third, but for all that.
[3] And as for Tlaib’s “Palestinian Refugees’ Rights,” more indigenously Middle-eastern Jews were displaced from vast Arab and other Muslim lands in the 1948 war and its wake than Arabs left tiny Israel. Israel’s population today is majority Mizrahi (Middle-eastern origin) Jews.
By history and international treaty, San Remo and the Mandate, Tom, the land of Israel, the Judea-Samaria hill country heartland and historic Jerusalem (Temple Mount, City of David and all) included, is the homeland of Jews, including the right of endangered Diaspora Jews to come home, and we will not give it up to Arabs who have a four-times larger Palestine homeland next door, along with almost all of the land of the Middle East.