The Inexplicable and Extraordinary Existence of Eretz Israel

I have written many times about the unbelievable historical miracle that is the modern nation of Israel. You may consider this article a synthesis of various things I have learned that I believe vital to understanding the Jewish nation and its place in history and in the ever-present moment.

They say that ignorance kills. If this is true, then knowledge must save. I have found it absolutely stunning the lack of knowledge of history and of the general state of the world amongst the voices of the “pro-Palestine” movement (in quotes, because if they were truly ‘pro-Palestine’, they would be pro-Israel). They shout and they scream, but they know not what about. They don’t even know that they know nothing. All that they seem to know is “Israel bad” — but don’t ask them why. You’ll only want to bang your head into a brick wall on hearing their non-answers.

I won’t dignify their inane and insane claims by mentioning them here. I’ve written plenty enough about the veiled antisemitism behind the campaign of lies against the Jewish nation. Instead, I want to focus on the truth. It’s all that really matters, when you get right down to things. Lies get tossed in the trash-bin of history, along with those who shamelessly utter them. But Truth is eternal.

Let’s start with the obvious question: what is Israel, exactly?

Israel is the Jewish nation. Its existence began several thousand years ago with the Kingdom and the Twelve Tribes that formed some time around 1000 BCE in the land of Israel. Before that, the Jewish people came and lived in Israel under still-debated circumstances. The farther back in time you go, the harder it is to differentiate historical fact from in this case Biblical assertion, which is also debated through translation and interpretation differences. Their even older ancient neighbors in Mesopotamia — the Sumerians — have the same question mark above their origin.

What we do know is that the Jewish people inhabited Israel as a sovereign collective at least three thousand years ago, and likely lived in and around the area long before that. They spoke and wrote the language of ancient Hebrew, which although changed in various ways is still the same language spoken there today.

Why does this matter? It indicates that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. Already you should be able to predict the objections from our “pro-Palestine” friends. “But if they came from somewhere else, they’re not indigenous!”

Humanity comes from Africa. All of us. It’s a fact of evolutionary biology. We (or most likely our ancestors) all came from somewhere else to get to the place we are. As of three thousand years ago, the Jews were sovereign in the land of Israel. They have the oldest claim to the land out of any peoples still living today, by thousands of years.

But how did the land come to be known as ‘Palestine’? That’s what the British called their Mandate at the time the modern nation of Israel declared independence from them. How did that come to be?

Skipping a thousand years of history, the Romans under future Emperor Titus conquered the Jewish capital of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The Arch of Titus in Rome commemorated their ‘victory’, complete with ‘spoils’ such as a stolen menorah. They sacked the sacred temple of the Jewish people and exiled or took into slavery many of the inhabitants of the land.?

Despite the devastation of their people, 65 years later the Jews led another revolt against the Romans, the Bar Kokhba rebellion. This, too, was ultimately unsuccessful in dislodging the Roman colonizers of Jewish land. The Romans butchered the Jews in retaliation, with estimates of half a million Jews massacred. And the Romans renamed the land ‘Syria Palaestina’ — Syrian Palestine — to further humiliate the rebellious Jews.

This name was in reference to the ancient Philistine peoples who were the Biblical enemies of the Jews along the coast of southern Levant. They were likely Greek in origin, and it is hypothesized that they migrated to the land during the Bronze Age Collapse. They were eventually destroyed by the Babylonians and their people assimilated by that empire. The modern conception of the Palestinians as Arabs is unrelated to the Philistines or ‘Palestinians’ of old.

So how did we get to our modern mess of an era? How are things still so confused?

Centuries passed, and Israel changed hands and empires. The Jewish people were never entirely expelled from the region. It came under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire (or the Byzantines) until it was conquered by the Rashidun caliphate, the first after the original prophet Muhammad’s. Israel and Jerusalem went back and forth between Muslim and Christian conquerors during the Crusades. The Mamluks of Egypt gained control of the entire region with the Siege of Acre in 1291 until they themselves were conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the early 1500s. The Ottomans maintained control for hundreds of years until finally being defeated and dissolved by the Allies in World War I.

That’s a lot of history, I know. Why is any of this relevant?

Through the centuries and millennia, the Jewish people in and out of Israel were subjected to oppression, violence, forced conversion, and discrimination at the hands of their Christian and Muslim overlords. They were known as the ultimate victims, practically powerless to resist and completely at the mercy of the controlling empire they happened to live in for the time being. For Christians, they were “Christ killers” and hated. For Muslims, they were “dhimmis” who refused to submit to the will of almighty Allah. Under constant threat of death or expulsion, the saying “in every generation they rise up to destroy us” became a historical truth that the Jewish people lived for millennia.

But not anymore. Zionism, or the movement for Jewish self-determination in the homeland of the Jewish people, had been reinforced by waves of pogroms sweeping Russia and Europe in the late 1800s. Theodor Herzl, the founder of the movement of Zionism, had recognized the dangers of nationalism rising across the world, and realized that the Jews needed their own nation again if they were to survive the coming centuries. They began purchasing land from the Ottomans and then the British and migrated in waves back to their ancient home. The Jews never "stole land" from the Arabs or anyone else living there. It was all gained through purchase; or, later, defensive war.

The British control over Israel was a messy and frankly catastrophic affair. While carving up the carcass of Ottoman Middle East, they promised to create a sovereign Jewish state in the Levant with the Balfour Declaration. They then reneged on this promise in 1939 with the ‘White Paper’ of Chamberlain’s government, which also virtually closed Jewish immigration into the land. This created the conditions under which the Holocaust of the Nazis could occur in the first place. If Britain had freed their colonial subjects in Israel to form a Jewish state before World War II, the Holocaust could not have happened.

World War II was fought and won, and the British once again faced choice paralysis with what to do with Mandate Palestine. Eventually, they decided to hand it over to the United Nations and were determined to leave once and for all. They had already had to fight a war against the Arab inhabitants of the Mandate between 1936 and 1939 and weren’t too keen on spending any more money or lives doing so again.

So the UN adopted Resolution 181 on November 1947, partitioning British Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish state accepted this plan, and the Arab state rejected it and declared open war on the Jewish state with the goal of annihilating it and taking over the entire region. This war was eventually joined by the Arab League when Israel officially declared independence on May 14th, 1948. But despite all odds against them, the Jews won.?

The land of the Arab partition was absorbed by Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, and would remain in this configuration until the ‘Six Day War’ of 1967 in which Israel not only defended her right to exist yet again as a sovereign nation, but gained control of Gaza from Egypt (and also the Sinai, which Israel later gave back for the promise of peace with Egypt) and the West Bank from Jordan. And, more or less, that is what the borders are today. Israel has tried many times to give the Arabs (now known as the ‘Palestinians’) their state, but the option for sovereignty has been rejected each and every time for the choice of war and the hopes of annihilating the Eternal Nation of Israel.

What are the takeaways from this history lesson?

Historical fact is historical fact. European Christian and Arab Muslim claims to Israel are based on right of conquest over each other and over the Jews. That is not to say that they are wholly invalid — just that this fact needs to be recognized. The Jews are the original Palestinians. They were known as such even through World War II. Stating this does not detract from the modern conception of ‘Palestinian’ — after all, understandings change. But we must not have any illusions about the ancient indigeneity of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. If you truly want to support ‘decolonization’, then you support Jewish self-determination in Israel, i.e. Zionism.

The ‘Palestinians’ as we know them today are the descendants of colonizers. That’s not to say they’re wrong to live in the land their ancestors colonized, but we must have historical clarity if we are to ever have lasting peace on Earth. There never was such a state as 'Palestine' in the entire history of the Earth. The land of Israel was conquered again and again by empires, yet the only sovereign nation to have ever existed in that land was the Jewish nation of Israel.

The existence today of the nation of Israel is a miracle on par with ancient Babylon suddenly springing back to life and speaking Akkadian. Israel is a nation of the same people on the same land and speaking the same language as three thousand years ago. This alone is so historically improbable that it still blows me away. And the fact that people not only don’t realize this wonder, but are actively working to destroy it; honestly, it breaks my heart. All I can do is fight as hard as I can for the Truth. I hope that you’ve learned something from this article. I hope you can appreciate the marvel of Eretz Israel.

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