Every day brings another shocking revelation about what’s happening in our world. Whether it’s additional information about the atrocities that happened on Oct. 7 or news of another soldier killed in Gaza or another act of hatred or violence elsewhere in the world, it’s as if a dark cloud is covering our future.
Thousands of words can be written about any of these, as we try to keep up with and process each day’s news.
One thing that came to mind this past week is the feeling that there’s a force in play trying to erase the heritage and history of the Jewish people, an effort accompanied by hatred and violence.
There are historical and archeological records connecting the Jewish people to the land of Israel. Despite the claims that accuse Israel of settler colonialism and that today’s Palestinians are the true indigenous people in the area, history disputes this.
For example, the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (Islam’s third holiest site) sits on the site of Judaism’s holiest site, which is where the Beit Hamikdash (Holy Temple) was built by King Solomon and then destroyed by Babylonian king Nebuchadenezzar in 423 BCE. The second Temple was rebuilt by Jewish returnees from the Persian exile and was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.
These Temples were the center of Jewish worship and national identity in ancient Israel and continue to be a central part of Jewish identity and liturgy today. The destruction of both of these Temples are still mourned in Jewish communities throughout the world every year on Tisha B’Av (The ninth of Av).
Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born in Mecca in 570 CE, many years after the second Temple was destroyed and the Al Aqsa Mosque was built sometime between 685-715 CE, as previously mentioned, on the site of where the two Temples previously stood.
The latest claims this week, timely as we approach Christmas, is that Jesus was Palestinian. However, during Jesus’ time, the region was part of the Roman Empire and was known as the Roman Province of Judea so the area wasn’t called Palestine during his lifetime. (The term “Judea” refers to the region associated with the tribe of Judah, which is where the word “Jew” originates.)
Source: World Book Encyclopedia, 1979
My dad still has a 1979 set of the World Book Encyclopedia in his living room so I was curious what it had to say about the region a mere 31 years after the state of Israel was born.
PALESTINE, a small land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, is one of the world’s most historic places. Two great religions - Judaism and Christianity - originated in Palestine. It is the Holy Land, the site of many events described in the Bible. Followers of Islam, the Muslim religion, also consider Palestine a sacred place.
Palestine’s location between Egypt and southwest Asia has made it a center of conflict for thousands of years. Many peoples have invaded the region. After 1948, most of Palestine was divided between Israel and Jordan. A small piece of land called the Gaza Strip was taken by Egypt. As a result of this division, there is no present-day country called Palestine. But Arabs who do not recognize the existence of Israel still call the area Palestine.
The listing continues about the region’s early history and Hebrew Settlement, noting that it became known as the Land of Canaan (because the ancient Canaanites lived there) and the Hebrews (or Israelites) settled there about 1900 BCE and then later some journeyed to Egypt and then returned during the 1200s BCE. Eventually Palestine was part of the Roman Empire, where Christianity was the official religion.
During the 600s CE, “the Arabs swept across the Arabian Peninsula and conquered Palestine. They wanted to spread their newly adopted religion, Islam, to other areas of the world. Many Palestinians accept Islam and other parts of Arab culture.”
Then the region was taken over by a list of numerous other rulers until 1517 when the Ottoman Turks ruled Palestine and it became part of the Ottoman Empire.
At this time, there were small minorities of Christians and Jews living in Palestine but there were mainly Arab Muslims (because Islam was the official religion of the Ottoman Empire).
Here’s the encyclopedia’s description about the Zionist Movement:
“The Zionist Movement. By the mid-1800s, European nations had gained economic and political influence over much of the Ottoman Empire. European Jews began to settle in Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine, in order to live and die in the Holy Land. By 1880, about 25,000 Jews lived in Palestine.”
“Beginning in the late 1800’s, oppression of Jews in Eastern Europe set off a mass emigration of Jewish refugees. Some Jews formed a movement called Zionism, which sought to make Palestine an independent Jewish nation. The Zionists succeeded in settling Jews in several farm colonies in Palestine, though the Ottoman Turks strongly opposed the movement. At the same time, the Arab population began to grow rapidly. During the 1900’s, Arab nationalist groups in Palestine also opposed the Jewish settlement. Nevertheless, by 1914 the number of Jews in Palestine rose to about 85,000 out of the total population of nearly 700,000.”
By the end of 1917, Palestine was conquered by the British and the British government committed itself to a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine (the Balfour Declaration).
Here’s what the encyclopedia says about the origin of the State of Israel:
“The United Nations Special Commission on Palestine recommended that Palestine be divided into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The commission called for Jerusalem to be put under international control. The UN General Assembly adopted this plan on Nov. 29, 1947. The Jews accepted the decision, but the Arabs rejected it. Fighting broke out immediately.
On May 14, 1948, the Jews proclaimed the independent State of Israel, and the British withdrew from Palestine. The next day, neighboring Arab nations invaded Israel in an attempt to help the Palestinian Arabs destroy the new Jewish state.
When the fighting ended, Israel held territory beyond the boundaries provided by the UN plan. Egypt and Transjordan (now Jordan) held the rest of Palestine. About 700,000 Arabs who lived within Israel’s new borders fled from the Jewish state and became refugees in neighboring Arab countries. By 1951, about 700,000 Jewish refugees had settled in Israel.”
Even in 1979, it was called a “continuing conflict,” and, obviously, the conflict continues today.
“The Continuing Conflict. The UN arranged a series of cease-fires between the Arabs and the Jews in 1948 and 1949. But a peace treaty was never signed. Full-scale wars broke out again in 1956 and 1967. Israel held all of Palestine and areas beyond Palestine after a UN cease-fire ended the Six-Day War of 1967. A fourth Arab-Israeli war erupted in 1973. Cease-fires ended most of the fighting by June 1974. Throughout the early 1970’s, Arab guerrilla groups attacked Israel. Some of the most militant guerrillas carried out airplane hijackings, bombings, kidnappings and murders outside of Israel to gain world attention for their cause.
Efforts by the UN and various countries to bring about a peace agreement were unsuccessful during the early 1970’s. Many Arabs remained unwilling to recognize a Jewish state in Palestine, where Arabs had made up a large majority of the population for hundreds of years. But by the early 1970’s, more than 3 million Jews lived in Palestine and they formed a majority of the population.”
Here’s a listing about the PLO:
“Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is the political body that represents the Arab people of Palestine. Its chief goal is to establish a Palestinian state for these Arabs. There are more than 3 million Palestinian Arabs. About 700,000 of them became refugees as a result of the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, when Israel was founded. By the mid-1970’s, about 2 million Palestinian Arabs lived outside what was once Palestine. The area that had formed Palestine now consists of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the west bank of Jordan.”
And now here we are, 44 years after these encyclopedia’s listings were published. What used to be considered “militant guerrillas” are now being called “freedom fighters” by some and are gaining world attention by manipulating the world’s opinion by revising history on social media. They’re still kidnapping and murdering, as well as raping - and many of today’s college-age students and young adults are celebrating these attacks.
The Gaza Strip (which was under Egyptian administration in 1948) was part of the territory Israel gained after the 1967 war (along with the west bank of Jordan). Although many on TikTok are claiming the terrorists’ violent acts are justified because they’ve been living in an “open-air prison” for 75 years, if they knew a little about history, they’d learn that these violent acts were happening long before 1948. In fact, there’s plenty of violence currently occurring in other Arab countries, where very few Jews remain because they were persecuted in those countries and forced to leave. Many of these Jewish refugees lost their property in the Arab countries, despite living there for generations, and found a home in Israel, the only Jewish country in the world.
Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and it was under the Palestinian Authority until Hamas took it over in 2007. If Gaza hasn’t been in Israeli control since 2005, how is Israel occupying Gaza? Yes, they control their border, but wouldn’t most countries if their neighbors were firing thousands of rockets over their border and committing terrorist acts in their towns and cities? (In 2007, a total of 2,807 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, which compiled this list from various sources. Since Oct. 7 of this year, more than 12,000 rockets have been fired from Gaza. Fortunately, today the Iron Dome is able to intercept many of them and save many more lives - including Jews, Arabs, Christians and everyone else who lives within the border of Israel.)
I don’t expect younger generations to pull out encyclopedias to do their research - who does that anymore anyway? However, I would hope they would take some time to do some research using sources that existed before the Internet. Don’t they want to make educated decisions before condemning a country and a people? Many are committing hateful and violent acts based on falsehoods. They act like they are advocating for humanity but are actually advocating for hatred and violence. This is their world, too, and their actions are forming their world’s future. Is this what they want their future to look like? Is this the contribution they want to make?
If anyone can find a reliable source before the 1980s that confirms the current Palestinian narrative, please let me know because I haven’t been able to find anything.
Although I sadly believe that many of the pro-Palestinian protesters around the world would indeed like Israel to not exist (though I do question what kind of future they envision for themselves and their world and I question where they’re getting their facts from), I also sincerely hope that there are some who protesting simply because they are devastated by seeing the impact of the war on innocent children in Gaza and aren’t actually advocating the murder, rape, kidnapping and other acts of barbarism.
The world has changed since Oct. 7. The trauma of the past has mixed with today’s technology to create a surreal new reality. What will the future bring?