Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem - these names conjure up a range of mental images. Jerusalem is among the oldest and holiest cities on Earth and Tel Aviv is modern and vibrant. As for Haifa, no one is quite sure how its name came about but it has nestled on the slopes of Mount Carmel for more than three millennia.
This region, known as the Southern Levant, is all over the news these days. West Asia, what we used to call the Middle East, is in turmoil.
Israel's government intends to claim all the land it has settled as well as the Gaza Strip and parts of other countries' lands. That's an ambitious goal, considering the current Nation of Israel is only 75 years old. To understand Israel's interest in these lands, we must consider:
- the Jewish ancestral home
- life in the Jewish Diaspora
- why and how the Jews returned to Palestine
- Zionism as a political movement
We must also address two fundamental issues: religion and the right to self-determination. Though hardly mentioned during the breathless reporting of strikes and casualties, religious beliefs underpin everything that's going on.
Ancient Israel
Archaeologists have dated artefacts found in the Levant region to around 1,5 million years ago. It makes sense that this area would bear prehistoric signs of human activity. It lies along one of the most travelled migration paths out of Africa.
The Natufian people were among the first defined cultures to settle in the region but they soon gave way to the Canaan civilisation. This was sometime in the Middle Bronze Age; between 2100-1550 BCE (before the current era).
Canaanites were a Semitic people whose civilisation collapsed in the Late Bronze Age (ca 1200 BCE). Two groups emerged from the chaos and settled in different areas. These groups were the Philistines, also known as the Sea People, and the Israelites, who settled in the region's highlands.
The first mention of Israelites appears in Egypt around 1209 BCE. However, an actual land called Israel didn't appear until some 300 years later; it was called the Kingdom of Israel. It joined forces with the Kingdom of Judah; it was then that the Jewish faith came to be.
The Kingdom of Israel and Judah didn't last long and it was in constant conflict with other regional powers. The joint kingdom fell to the Assyrians in 720 BCE and thousands of Jews were deported. From then on, various powers took control of the land, making life difficult for those of the Jewish faith.
In the 4th Century of the current era (CE), Roman Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the empire's religion. Life as a Jew became unbearable in the region now called Palestine. The faithful left their lands, as others before them had done, to find someplace where they could worship according to their beliefs.
We detailed all of this in a companion article that describes the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now, let's explore the lives of the emigrant Jews.
The Jews Leave the Southern Levant
The Hebrew bible records the Israelite exile as beginning during the 8th Century BCE, often under orders of a conquering force. But in some instances, Israelites - and later, Jews left of their own accord. Such was the case after the Roman religion change.
Leaving the region long called Palestine behind, Jewish clans settled across Europe and in Russia. they did their best to assimilate into their new homes and contribute to their new communities. Jewish families opened businesses and schools, and built prayer houses.
These communities were far-flung and centuries had passed since their religion's founding. Religious practices changed, interpretation of sacred texts diverged and new Jewish movements evolved. The Hebrew language became diluted.
We don't need a time machine to ask that long-ago Jewish diaspora if they yearned for their land. Psalm 127 makes clear their longing for home. For many, the ritual Passover feast concluded with "Next year in Jerusalem!". But we don't know if it was rote sentiment or an actual shared desire.
We do know that the Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia embraced 'doi'kayt' - the concept of 'here-ness'. For them, Russia was their home, their lands, their businesses and their lives.
Religion's Role in the Diaspora
The Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam, foster a binary mindset. They posit good versus evil, believers against heretics, the saved and the damned. They are exclusionary; if you follow this faith, all others must be reviled. It forms a basis for 'othering' - the "You're not one of us" mindset.
Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 19th Century, Jewish communities endured waves of religion-based hatred across Christian Europe. Sometimes, it manifested in civil or social injustice, maybe being barred from a trade or from living in a certain district. Often, it was brutal, like during the Inquisition and the Crusades.
As far back as 1821, Russians began carrying out pogroms against the Jewish people. These attacks escalated over time, leaving thousands dead and untold numbers of businesses ravaged. Eastern European Jews began to question doi'kayt; soon they were leaving in droves.
The desire to worship according to one's beliefs drove the 4th-century exodus from ancient Palestine. European Christianity and antisemitism were now driving the Jewish folk out of another homeland.
The Return to Palestine
Through the centuries of the Inquisition, small numbers of Jews trickled into Palestine. Several times during the Ottoman Empire's rule, attempts were made to establish a Jewish state. None of them bore fruit. At the end of the 19th Century, Palestine remained overwhelmingly Muslim.
Despite the pogroms, more than half of the world's Jewish population still lived on Russian imperial lands at that time. This is where the Zionist movement - the drive to return to Palestine began. However, it wasn't until Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl published a pamphlet outlining the need for a Jewish state that the movement began in earnest.
During this period, the British Empire played a heavy role in West Asian geopolitics. The British government noted the influx of Jewish people into Palestine. It planned to recruit them in their fight against the Ottoman Empire, which still ruled the land. In return, the United Kingdom promised "A national home for the Jewish people".
This 1922 Balfour Declaration became an integral part of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. Essentially, the mandate stated that the British Empire must make good on its promise to create space for Jewish settlements.
At the end of the Second World War, the Empire got to work, albeit slowly. After the Great Britain's 1945 general election, the new government declared it intended to roll back some of the promises made for the region.
But successive waves of immigration - aliyahs, had already built up the Jewish population in Palestine. More were arriving and the British border guards had a hard time stemming the flow. Impatient Zionists, unwilling to wait for their proclaimed independence from British rule, sought to gain it through guerilla warfare.
As though that fighting wasn't enough, Zionist and non-Zionist Jews couldn't agree on how the Jewish state should be set up. The British government appealed to the United Nations (UN) to help resolve the Palestine question. Meanwhile, the Orthodox Jewish leader urged holding off on a decision until the Jews could formulate a status quo agreement.
This agreement would ensure that the rights, duties and privileges of secular and non-secular Jews would be upheld. The UN permitted the delay, finally arriving at Resolution 181 in November 1947. The Arab world did its best to fight against establishing a Jewish nation to no avail. The State of Israel was officially proclaimed on May 14, 1948.
Zionism: Politics and Spiritualism
History and artefacts prove that Israelites (and later, adherents to Judaism) once held that land. But if these peoples' ancient history mandates returning ancestral lands to them, what about Australia, Canada and the US?
Those countries' indigenous peoples must also have a right to reclaim their ancestral lands. And they should receive the support that today's Israelis do to claim all that once was theirs. That likely won't happen; it's the same claim Russia's president makes about portions of Ukraine. His assertions have been roundly rejected.
The UN Charter states that a people's right to self-determination is foundational. Thus, no one could argue that the people of Israel shouldn't have a land of their own. But by the same token, Israeli settlements' former inhabitants, the Palestinians, are being denied that foundational right. Indeed, Israelis have become settler-colonialists and the land's original inhabitants - the 'others', have become stateless.
Zionism brought about a cultural watershed. Jews consider Israel their spiritual centre no matter where in the world they live. But now, on the nationalist track Israel finds itself, we have to question how spiritual this movement is. Erasing an entire people is hardly spiritual.
The current Israeli government has stated it intends to reclaim Galilee, the Negrev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria. These are all regions the Hebrew bible lists as former Israelite lands, long abandoned and now 'belonging' to others. What sort of politics allows cashing in a millennia-old marker?
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