The book of Samuel describes Zion as a Jebusite fortress in Jerusalem
The king and his men set out for Jerusalem against the Jebusites who inhabited the region. David was told, “You will never get in here! “Even the blind and the lame will turn you back.” But David captured the stronghold of Zion; it is now the City of David.
Perhaps the most famous use of the word Zion is in psalm 137 which runs
By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat,
sat and wept,
as we thought of Zion.
Psalm 137 was written in the 6th century BC. Its theme is the yearning of the Jewish people. They were in Babylon having been taken captive and exiled there after Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in 597 BC and destroyed the First Temple.
Then the conquerors were themselves conquered and the exile ended.
Some hundreds of years later the Romans conquered Israel and destroyed the Second Temple and exiled the Jews again. You can see the bas relief stonework today on the Arch of Titus in Rome showing the things carted off by the conquerors. And the words ‘Judah Kaput’.
It was a long exile from 67 A.D. to 1948. When historians say the Jews were exiled, it doesn’t mean all Jews. Jews lived in Israel throughout the period. Some went in the early 1900s to make a land based on agriculture and community.
The modern Zionist movement began in the late 1800s in reaction to growing antisemitism in France and then in Germany. It was a demand for homeland, a country.
It took the Second World War and the decision of the United Nations in 1947 to turn that declaration into an internationally recognised reality.
Some people ask how people can feel exiled when they were not alive when the people were exiled generations before. Well, you can when you have been made to feel different down through the generations. You can when you have been treated differently, excluded, herded together, denied rights. And you can when spiritual beliefs have remained central to what makes a people a people.
This is a rebuttal to those who say that modern day Jews are colonisers. They are not. The writings of the conquerors, the Arch of Titus, archeological finds, say they are not.
A few days ago, after Israeli troops were alleged to have fired on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, President Macron of France was quoted as saying that Israel “must not forget” it owed its existence to a United Nations resolution.
In reply, prime minister Netanyahu said Israel was founded by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, not a UN ruling. And that among those who fought for Israel in 1948 were French Jews who had been sent to death camps after being rounded up by the collaborationist Vichy regime.
Ouch, and touché.
Macron is aware of the powder keg on which he sits. 8-10% of the French population (5 to 7 million) are Muslims from the former French colonies in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.
It’s unlikely that he is just plain antisemitic, because he has spoken out against anti-Semitism in France and globally.
Or, perhaps there’s some truth in what he says because while Israel fought for its independence it was granted it by the ‘great powers’. It was Russia’s vote that tipped the declaration into a Yes vote in 1947 that led to the creation of the State in 1948.
So by agreement of the UN, of the international community, Israel exists. Therefore any people that denies Israel’s right to exist is acting against the international community.
This preamble to say that history is written by the victors. That is to say that those who write about history are inevitably partisan and have a point of view from which they cannot escape.
So don’t expect from me an even handed analysis of events.
Also, I am wary of analogies because at some point they break down. Comparing what the Allies did in World War Two to what Israel is doing now will only carry so far.
But I am going to draw some comparisons.
Where should I start? What is the date that all parties agree is the best date from which to start counting forward? Is it when the people stood at the foot of Mount Sinai as one man with one heart and God promised them the land? It was not an empty land. They had to drive out the Canaanites. God told them they would have to and that they should because he said so.
When is ‘too far in the past’ ? When is ‘too recent’ and does not take account of the past?
Should I start with 1948?
If Jews are seen as recent colonisers of a land that was already occupied, then ‘free’ (as in From The River To The Sea) means free of those colonisers. But, the land was part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries and the local population did not have a state. The Ottomans ruled until the end of the First World War. Having lost, the land was then administered by Britain until the 1947 declaration by the United Nations that created Israel in recognition of the Jews’ claim to their historic homeland.
Yes there were people there in 1948. Arabs and Jews as well.
And whatever the UN declaration the Arabs were not prepared to divide and share any of it. When the State of Israel became a fact on the ground, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia attacked.
For them the decision of the UN, of the international community, meant nothing.
When Hamas claims ‘From the river to the sea’, it means claiming for itself all the land that the International Community declared to be Israel.
When Tamara and I were living in Jerusalem, our neighbour had sympathy with those who were here before the Jews came. And more sympathy when the wave of European and American messianic Jews came.
My climbing buddy in Israel was an intelligence officer in the army. He remembered being in school – mixed Arab and Jewish children – saying that no one thought about who was what. I remember the day he let rip with what he thought of the black hatters, how they had come and spoiled a perfectly amiable situation. And this was when I was wearing a black kippah and was learning at a yeshiva.
I have only ever wanted to bring people together – religious, non-religious, a bit religious – Jews. What about others?
I remember when Tamara and I went to Israel, I think it might have been before we moved there – and Tamara was looking for a jellaba, and was talking to the shopkeeper in the Moslem Quarter. I saw how straight on she was talking with this man. She was admirable to me because she didn’t have any baggage about ‘us and them’.
And there was an us and them.
I remember talking with a man who had swapped places with his companion sitting outside in Ben Yehudah. He had difficulty coming to terms with how he had lived, protected from the bomb blast by her body.
And I remember talking with a woman (or did I talk with her friend) who had found herself staring at her toes, blown off in a bomb blast on a bus.
Or I, and no doubt everyone who passes the cafe on the corner of Jaffa and King George still today remembers the people who were blown up while sitting there.
And then there’s the news you can catch on i24News – the shootings that happen two or three times a week and are not picked up by international media. It’s just too frequent to be news.
It’s muddy. Just today Seven Israelis were charged with spying for Iran. And yes, that’s Jewish Israelis. And yes there are messianic Jewish settlers who want to kick every Arab out of Israel – from the river to the sea.
And there’s the creeping land grab, inching Israel forward.
And I could talk about the many Arabs who stand with a for Israel – or the Israeli Bedouin Arab who shot at random people in Beersheba bus station a few days ago and killed a woman and wounded eight others.
And in all of this there is Hamas. So let’s talk about them because they want it all from the river to sea – from the Jordan River on the east to the Mediterranean Sea on the West.
And when in the timeline of history to start?
There is no time that satisfied everyone’s requirements. I am going to start with 1966, two years after Yasser Arafat founded the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
In 1970 the Palestinians tried to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy and Jordanians kicked them out.
The Egyptians never kicked out the Palestinians because they never let them in. They confined them to Gaza with a border wall between Egypt and Gaza that is as tall and as fortified as the wall between Israel and Gaza. It is a steel and concrete barrier constructed by Egypt that runs all along its border with Gaza.
In 1982 Lebanon expelled the PLO during the Lebanese Civil War. The Palestinians it didn’t expel are still in refugee camps there.
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt took control of Gaza, and it remained an Egyptian-administered territory until 1967. In other words before Six-Day War in 1967 the Gaza Strip was not under Israeli control. It was under Egyptian control.
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Jordan captured and annexed the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This annexation was even recognised by some countries. Jordan administered the territory until 1967, when Israel captured it during the Six-Day War.
So bring in Jordan and Egypt and Lebanon – cry out in the name of the Palestinians against those countries. But no one has cried out.
Or ask why those countries isolated the Palestinians or kicked them out.
In 2004 Israel was exporting 50 million flowers to Europe from Gaza.
In 2005 Israel withdrew from Gaza.
Israel left the greenhouses, the fruit, the vegetables, the flowers so the Palestinians could continue an industry where they could support themselves.
After the withdrawal the Palestinians destroyed every synagogue, destroyed all the greenhouses, and ripped out the copper piping that fed water to the system. They destroyed it and used the piping for the tunnel system.
Now because of October 7th, Israel wants to control what is called the Philadelphia corridor between Gaza and Egypt – because it is certain that the material for the tunnel system in Gaza did not come by way of Israel. So it was smuggled in from Egypt.
I don’t know what the Israeli cabinet’s strategy is but if I were planning this campaign I would destroy the tunnels and also the buildings that are hiding the tunnels – and I would destroy it so completely that the Palestinians would rend their garments and ask themselves why they ever chose this path, why they ever promoted Hamas to lead them, why they took their lead from Iran.
The same for Lebanon and Hezbollah.
And you ask me whether it is just and proportionate.
The psychologist RD Laing reflects on the fact that in 20th century wars ‘normal men’ killed millions of their fellow men.
We know it is crazy, but in the face of aggressive war we don’t know a better solution.
When Germany and Japan were at war with the Allies, the allied response was to carpet bomb German cities, firebomb Japanese cities, and drop Atom bombs on Japanese cities with the intention of dispiriting the population and forcing peace and thereby saving allied lives.
How many hundreds of thousands civilians were killed?
How many moslems (Arab or otherwise), have been murdered by the Syrian regime, in the Iraq-Iran war, in Yemen – and where is all the worldwide condemnation? Nowhere. But when it is the Jews, then we condemn.
I don’t believe anyone can explain antisemitism in the language of this world.
The Torah view is that the reason for antisemitism is the failure of the Jews to come together. When the Jews come together the world will come together.
By that measure, it is right that the world holds Israel to a standard higher than other nations.
End
That’s my response. It is not even handed. It is partisan. I love my people and I hurt for them. And if another group wants only death then let them have it but not at my people’s expense.