The Relationship of the Jewish
People to the Land of Israel
Rabbi
David Rosen
When anti-Israel rhetoric
increases, one inevitably comes across new attempts to minimize the Jewish
connection with the Land of Israel
and impugn thereby the very existence of a Jewish state. Paradoxically this sometimes comes from
certain Christian quarters, when one would have thought that anyone with even a
cursory familiarity with the Hebrew Bible (that Christians refer to as the Old Testament)
would be familiar with the bond between the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob and the Promised Land. Yet even
where this historical relationship is acknowledged, it is often argued that
this bond was something of the distant past and bears no relevance let alone
justification for the contemporary context.
However, contrary to anti-Zionist
propaganda, the return of the Jewish people to its ancestral homeland did not
begin just a half a century ago, following the Holocaust, nor even a hundred
years ago with the advent of modern Zionism.
For the past almost twenty centuries, ever since their expulsion from Palestine
by the Romans (70 C.E.), Jews have striven continuously to reestablish their
bond with the Land of Israel ,
although the foes of the Jewish people did their best to obliterate the Jewish
connection with the Land. Indeed, the
Romans introduced the name Palestina in order precisely to erase the usage of
the name Judea , just as they renamed Jerusalem ,
Aelia Capitolina.
Spiritually, the Jewish people
never left the Land. Even in exile, Jews
the world over turned to Jerusalem
in prayer as they continue to do today.
These daily prayers and grace after meals which Jews have recited over
the centuries are replete with references to the restoration of and return to Zion . The solemn service for the Day of Atonement,
the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, concludes with the words “Next year in Jerusalem .” At the end of their day of fasting and
communion with God, Jews the world over throughout the generations, reaffirmed
their hope for a “return” to their Homeland, not at some indefinite date in the
remote future, but “next year.” This
affirmation was similarly made at the conclusion of the Passover meal.
Indeed the liturgy and religious
observances of Judaism are closely bound up with the physical aspects of the Land
of Israel – the produce of its soil
and the course of its seasons. On the
Feast of Tabernacles, the festival of the harvest ingathering, which comes at
the start of the “rainy season” in Israel ,
Jews wherever they may dwell, recite prayers for rain. On Passover, when the “dry season” begins in
the Holy Land , Jews from Alaska
to Australia
beseech God to bless the Land of Israel
with life-giving morning dew.
It is accordingly evident to anyone
with a cursory knowledge of the Jewish religion, that the attachment of the
Jewish people to their ancestral land has transcended both time and space.
But if all this is so, the
opponents of the Jewish State demand, why did the Jews stay away from Palestine
for so many centuries? While it is
certainly true that many chose to remain in exile; the neglect of the land by
successive conquests over the ages and the hazards of travel, made repatriation
a precarious option. Nevertheless, as
late as the seventh century of the Common Era – six centuries after the
conquest of the country by Rome –
there were in Palestine a
sufficient number of Jews to give material help to the invading Persian
armies. Even after the conquest of the
country by Arab tribes some two decades later, the Jews of the Holy
Land remained strong enough to be a factor of significance during
the Crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The mere recorded historical fact of the
Crusaders’ slaughter of the Jews of Jaffa, Ashkelon , Caesarea
and Jerusalem , is ample proof that
there was a substantial Jewish presence in Palestine
theretofore.
Throughout the centuries, each
persecution and expulsion in the Diaspora brought a new influx of Jews to the Holy
Land . The Spanish exile of
1492 was followed by a wave of repatriation to the Land
of Israel , and in fact, by an
attempt to establish an independent Jewish entity in the Galilee
in the sixteenth century. This “state”
was to be ruled by Don Joseph Nasi, Duke of Naxos and Cyclades . During the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, great popular messianic movements involving entire Jewish
communities in the European Diaspora, sent masses of Jews on their way to the
land of their fathers. There have even
existed some settlements in the Galilee where Jewish
families lived uninterruptedly for two millennia, such as the village
of Pekiin , tracing their origins
back to the first century of the Christian era.
Anti-Israel propagandists suggest
that during the whole period of Jewish exile, there was some kind of continuous
local non-Jewish rule. This of course
could not be further from the truth.
The first exile by the Babylonians
lasted only half a century and was followed by a period of Israelite autonomy
under Persian and then Greco-Syrian rule, until the Maccabean revolt in 165
B.C.E. Jewish independence was
subsequently reestablished and maintained until the Roman conquest, destruction
of the Second Temple
in the year 70 C.E. and subsequent exile of the majority of the Jewish
population. However thereafter, the Holy
Land was subject to continuous foreign conquests.
Byzantine rule came to an end in
638 with the Arab invasion of Palestine . The rule of the Caliphates however, came to
an end in 1071, followed by Turkish Seljuk rule. The Crusader conquest in 1099 was followed by
Ayyubid rule in 1187, Mameluke (Albanian) rule in 1260, and Ottoman conquest in
1516. The Turks ruled for the lengthy
period of exactly four hundred years and were replaced by the British in 1918
until the establishment of the State of Israel.
Thus, since the end of Jewish
Hasmonean rule, during the whole period of recorded history, Palestine
was never ruled by the local inhabitants.
At the beginning of the British
Mandate there were in the whole of Palestine 557,000 Arabs (both Moslems and
Christians) and 84,000 Jews. Only 30%
(some 186,000) of these Arabs lived in the area which is now the State of
Israel. The Arab population increased
rapidly during the Mandatory period, in direct relationship to the increase of
Jewish population. Palestine ,
which was an area of Arab emigration prior to 1922, suddenly became a locale
for Arab immigration. The principal
cause was the Jewish settlement which improved the general conditions (e.g.
Moslem infant mortality which was 19.6% in 1922 declined to 14% by 1939). Between 1922 and 1939 the resident non-Jewish
population of Palestine increased
by 75.2%. During the inter-war period
there was an increase of 375,000 in the Jewish population in Palestine
and 380,000 in the non-Jewish population in Palestine . Moreover, the Arab increase was greatest
wherever Jewish development was most marked.
Thus, in Haifa the Arab
community increased by 216%, in Jaffa
by 134%, and in Jerusalem by
97%. All these were within the area of
Jewish development. On the other hand,
where there was no Jewish settlement, in Nablus, for example, the Arab increase
was only 42%; Jenin 40%, Hebron 40%, Bethlehem 32%, Beit Jalah 23%.
The following statistics regarding
the faith communities in Jerusalem
from the middle of the nineteenth century, demonstrate the preponderance of the
Jewish population in the city already well before the rise of modern Zionism as
well as thereafter.
Year
|
Jews |
Moslems |
Christians |
Source |
1844
|
7,120
|
5,000
|
3,390
|
Encyclopedia Britannica
|
1896
|
28,112
|
8,560
|
8,748
|
Calendar of
|
1905
|
40,000
|
7,000
|
13,000
|
Encyclopedia Britannica
|
1922
|
33,971
|
13,413
|
14,699
|
Chambers Encyclopedia
|
1939
|
80,850
|
27,000
|
26,000
|
Colliers Encyclopedia
|
1944
|
97,000
|
29,000
|
31,000
|
Chambers Encyclopedia
|
1948
|
100,000
|
40,000
|
25,000
|
Z. Vilnay,
|
1967
|
195,700
|
54,963
|
12,646
|
It is interesting to see that the
Christians constituted even a larger group than the Muslims in most of the
second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries.
Among some of the most unfounded
claims of Israel ’s
enemies that have recently been made, is the assertion that at the end of the
nineteenth century Palestinian Arabs lived in 90% of the land. However anyone who knows anything about
geography knows that even in the most densely populated areas, human beings do
not occupy ninety percent of land. More
pertinent, however, is a reading of Mark Twain’s account of his visit to the Holy
Land that makes it clear how little of the land was actually
populated at all. Moreover, Jewish
purchase of arable land was limited by the major owners of such, who were
overwhelmingly absentee Arab landlords who leased the land to local peasants. Not for nothing therefore, were most
kibbutzim built on drained swamp land and desert and Israel ’s
largest city was erected on the sand dunes north of Jaffa ! Notable are the statistics provided by the
Christian journalist Terrence Prittie, who in his book on the Israel-Arab
conflict (p. 120) writes that in all of Palestine
in 1945 there were just over 1.1 million Arabs, roughly 650,000 of them in
areas that subsequently became part of Israel .
Nevertheless, the evident and
overwhelming unique Jewish historical attachment to the land between the Jordan
River and the Mediterranean , does not mean
that the attachment of Palestinian Arabs to this land should be ignored. Precisely because two peoples do live in and
are attached to the land, we need to find the way to enable both the local Arab
and Jewish populations to enjoy national self determination with dignity and
security. Sadly we could have already
been there in 1947. As a result of the
Arab refusal to accept the United Nations proposed partition that would have
allowed two states to live alongside each other and instead the launching of
all-out war against Israel; the local Arab Palestinians bore the brunt of the
conflict. Indeed perhaps the greatest
tragedy of the Palestinian people has been their leadership and that of the
Arab world, which time and again has encouraged fantasies of destroying Israel
and has rejected the opportunities for compromise.
Those anti-Israel propagandists who
seek to deny the continuous bond and relationship between the Jewish People and
the Land of Israel, only play into this delusion which just encourages the
violence that has boomeranged on the Palestinian population and continues to
prevent them from seeking the compromise that can provide them and their
children with a decent future of dignity, sustenance and security.