Jewish Roots in Israel

This story goes back more than a month.

Since Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on October 7, world opinion shifted in record time from sympathy for Israel to sympathy for Gaza, where Hamas operates. The terrorist group weaves its assets among schools and hospitals to maximize civilian casualties when attempts are made to excise its criminals.

As a result, Israel’s defensive response has sparked a wave of antisemitism worldwide. Andrew Macaskill and Estelle Shirbon reported at Reuters early this morning that everywhere one turns, one finds open hatred of Jews. An elderly Jew in London called this the scariest time to be Jewish since World War II. A French political scientist said that, for people committing antisemitic acts, “Jew” has become “equal to Israel, equal to killing Palestinian children.”

Yesterday, protesters from CodePink, a group self-described as “a feminist grassroots organization working to end US warfare and imperialism,” interrupted Senate Appropriations Committee testimony by Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding aid to Ukraine and Israel. Holding up their hands painted blood-red and the phrase “FREE GAZA” written on their forearms, they demanded a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to funding for Israel. Another protester said as police escorted him out, “Engage in diplomacy, not in warfare!” Another, “Ceasefire now! Save the children of Gaza.”

For historical perspective and moral clarity on the Israel-Hamas war, I’m starting today a series of articles reviewing how we got here. The story of Middle East conflict is older than the one month it has dominated news, and requires more analysis than a thumb-scroll through photos of Gazan hardship.

Jewish people trace their roots in the Land of Israel back 4,000 years.

A United Kingdom of Israel emerged in the second millennium BCE (before current era). Its most famous leader was King David, alive about 1000 BCE, who is known to most people as the David who killed Goliath. Their duel in the Valley of Elah is described in the Book of Samuel, which appears in the Hebrew Bible and as two books in the Old Testament. It is part of the Deuteronomic history first recorded around 550 BCE, detailing the origin of ancient Israel.

The United Kingdom of Israel later split into the northern Kingdom of Israel (Samaria, best known via the parable of the Good Samaritan, told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke) and the southern Kingdom of Judah (containing Jerusalem and the Holy Temple). The Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires conquered these kingdoms, respectively. Initially exiled to Babylon, after the fall of Babylon to Persians under Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE, many Jews returned to Jerusalem and built the Second Temple.

Alexander the Great of Macedonia conquered the region, resulting in religious divides culminating in the Maccabean Revolt of Jews resisting Greek influence in their traditions. Next came the Hasmonean dynasty in the second century BCE.

The Romans took control of Judea in 64 BCE, leading to a long era of Jewish–Roman conflict and the start of the Jewish diaspora. The area became predominantly Christian by the 3rd century, and in the 7th century it was defeated by the Muslim conquest of the Levant. By then, Jewish settlements had decreased significantly. Israeli archaeologist and historian Michael Avi-Yonah estimated that only 15% of the area’s population was Jewish in the 7th century, but Israeli historian Moshe Gil said they were the majority until the Muslim conquest.

Following that, the region was conquered by Christian Crusaders who took it back from Muslim rule. In 1517, Sultan Selim the Grim of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire captured the area including all of Egypt and established his Ottoman Empire as the preeminent Muslim state.

That lasted until 1918 and the end of the First World War. In the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British government declared its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then still part of the Ottoman Empire, one of the Central Powers of WWI, along with Germany and Austria-Hungary. When the war ended with an Allied Power victory, the League of Nations issued the Mandate for Palestine, granting British administration of Palestine and Transjordan, conceded in defeat by the Ottoman Empire.

The British struggled to control “Mandatory Palestine” for three decades, navigating rising tensions between Jewish and Palestinian Arab groups. Both communities raised their flags high, championing nationalist movements.

In 1937, as the tendrils of World War II began to twitch, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husayni, the top Arab politician in Palestine, reignited the Arab revolt against Britain and aligned his forces with Nazi Germany. In recognition of the all-encompassing war, Jewish and Arab forces agreed to a ceasefire from 1940 to 1944.

After the war, Britain organized a September 1946 Jewish-Arab conference in London. In echoes of the region’s acrimonious past and shades of its violent future, the conference deadlocked. Britain referred the Palestine problem to the newly created United Nations (its charter having been just signed and entered into force in 1945), and on 29 November 1947 the UN adopted a resolution recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and a special international regime for the city of Jerusalem. The plan of partition included Gaza and the West Bank.

The next day, Arab militants attacked public buses near Tel Aviv, killing seven Jews. Thus began the 1947-1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, even before the State of Israel came into existence. It featured snipers, car bombs, and the targeting of Jewish civilians by Arabs, tactics in use to this day. According to the US State Department:

“Fighting began with attacks by irregular bands of Palestinian Arabs attached to local units of the Arab Liberation Army composed of volunteers from Palestine and neighboring Arab countries. These groups launched their attacks against Jewish cities, settlements, and armed forces. The Jewish forces were composed of the Haganah, the underground militia of the Jewish community in Palestine, and two small irregular groups, the Irgun and Lehi. The goal of the Arabs was initially to block the Partition Resolution and to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state. The Jews, on the other hand, hoped to gain control over the territory allotted to them under the Partition Plan.”

The last British forces left Haifa on 14 May 1948, and the Jewish provisional government proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, a homeland for the Jewish people: the State of Israel.

The United States and the Soviet Union immediately recognized the new country. The Arab League countries of Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan immediately denounced it. On the night of 14 May 1948, the Arabs launched an air attack on Tel Aviv.

The war that began in 1947 intensified as other Arab groups joined the Palestinian Arabs, and lasted another 10 months to March 1949. The United Nations orchestrated two ceasefires, but no formal armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab states appeared until February 1949. According to the State Department:

“Under separate agreements between Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Syria, these bordering nations agreed to formal armistice lines. Israel gained some territory formerly granted to Palestinian Arabs under the United Nations resolution in 1947. Egypt and Jordan retained control over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, respectively. These armistice lines held until 1967.”

On 13 December 1949, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel. The following July, the Knesset, Israel’s legislative body, passed the Law of Return, granting all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel and become citizens. With that, the descendants of Jews who had been evicted to Babylon 2,500 years earlier returned to Israel. Many in the diaspora moved from Iraq, Persia, Yemen, and North Africa to the land of their ancestry.

With that, the modern cauldron of Middle East poison was suspended over the fire.

Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all make historical claims on the territory, and each of the world’s three monotheistic traditions considers Jerusalem to be its holy city, revering different parts of the Temple Mount.

Judaism is the oldest of the three religions, followed by Christianity in the 1st century as an offshoot of Judaism (Jesus was “King of the Jews” but his followers started Christianity), then Islam in the 7th century out of Mecca in present-day Saudi Arabia. Islam arose from a combination of Judeo-Christian traditions and Bedouin tribal culture.

Mitchell Bard wrote in the Jewish Virtual Library that Jewish people base their claim to the Land of Israel on at least four premises, three of which are non-religious:

• Jewish people settled and developed the land,

• the UN granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people,

• Jews captured additional territory in defensive wars.

So, what happened in 1967? The Six-Day War, which I’ll cover in my next installment, as the starting point of a timeline that brings us to the current Israel-Hamas war, in historical perspective.

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Sources

Reuters
Open hatred of Jews surges globally, inflamed by Gaza war

CBS News
Protesters calling for cease-fire in Gaza disrupt Senate hearing over Israel aid as Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks

Purdue University
Ancient Israel (the United and Divided Kingdom)

Britannica
Books of Samuel

Biblical Archaeology Society
Understanding the Good Samaritan Parable

The Cambridge History of Judaism

Wikipedia
History of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel

A History of Palestine, 634–1099
by Moshe Gil
Cambridge University Press, 1992

All About Turkey
Sultan Yavuz Selim I

The Last Muslim Conquest
by Gábor Ágoston
Princeton University Press, 2021

Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) of the United Kingdom
The Palestine Mandate

Wikipedia
Map of UN Partition Plan for Palestine

US Department of State
The Arab-Israeli War of 1948

Reuters
Ancient tablets reveal life of Jews in Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon

Jewish Virtual Library
Pre-State Israel: Jewish Claim To The Land Of Israel