Michael Coren on Israel's survival: The triumph of an indigenous people over oppression

Michael Coren, Israel

This week marks the 60th birthday of Israel's modern foundation. The term "modern" is significant here, in that the Jewish state never quite disappeared, even after it was defeated by the imperial Roman military following the great Jewish revolt of 70AD and the legendary resistance of Masada.

There was still a massive Jewish presence in the country, until a second uprising in 135AD, after which the Romans forcibly exiled most of the population, obliging the Jews who remained to live in what was effectively northern Israel. Here, in Galilee, the region remained overwhelmingly Jewish.

Jewish dominance was retained until Islamic cavalry swept across the Middle East. The Christian heartlands of North Africa and Egypt became predominantly Muslim, and the Jewish presence in Galilee was reduced to a shadow of its former shape and size. But the Jews stayed, as is testified by the ruins of numerous synagogues in the area. After Islam came the Crusades of the 12th century. More slaughter, more exile.

From this point, Jewish Israel was minimal, although it never died. The conduit to the original Jewish homeland was preserved by memory, aspiration and by communities in Jerusalem, Hebron and the Upper Galilee.

We should not think of this as "mere history" any more than we should refer to "mere politics." A dispersed and persecuted nation returning to its place of origin is not expansion or imperialism but the precise opposite. Indeed, this is arguably the most successful example of the triumph of an indigenous, native people over oppression and ejection. That the Jews were forced out of their homes for centuries makes the return not less but more laudable.

This, of course, is not how the bulk of the Islamic world views the situation, and they are now joined in a perverse alliance by the political and religious left, who mingle vicarious anti-Americanism with a residual anti-Semitism. Why condemn genocide in Sudan and mass murder and torture in Zimbabwe or Syria when you can bash the Jews and their friends in Washington?

It reaches a point, however, when most of this is so facile and bland as to be irrelevant. No degree or depth of argument will convince the more vehement followers of Mohammad and Marx that Israel is a flawed but overwhelmingly generous state with an absolute right to exist. Debate is invariably pointless, and cogent explanation makes Israelophobes angry rather than conciliatory.

So let us cause apoplexy.

Most Palestinians are fairly recent immigrants from other parts of the Arabic world, encouraged to relocate by the economic opportunities produced by European Christian settlers in the 19th century. They are products of a nomadic culture, and latecomers to the ancient Jewish homeland. Those who have lived in the country for longer tend to be in the north, where they still live and enjoy full rights as Israeli Arabs — rights, by the way, that few if any minorities enjoy in the Islamic world, such as the more than a million Jews who have been forcibly expelled from Arab nations since the Second World War.

Many of the stories of Palestinians still having the keys to their homes, now lived in by Jewish Israelis, are mythological. The war of 1948 did indeed cause upheaval, but much of it concerned Jews forced to leave Jerusalem. Entire Arab towns and almost 1.5 million Arab citizens still exist in Israel; hardly an example of ethnic cleansing.

The security wall along parts of the West Bank has saved countless Israeli lives. The Israeli right opposed it as a limit on greater Israel and the international left oppose it because it is so successful. Settlements are communities. Most of them are on previously empty and neglected land, and to object to Jews living in a specific place is surely a race-based housing policy and thus repugnant to progressive sensibilities. But then, "progressive" has lost its meaning just as much as has "anti-imperialism" and social justice.

Israel celebrates its birthday with the grandest gift it could give itself. It ignores fatuous criticism and continues to evolve. Authentic peace may never be achieved: Absence of war is sometimes the best that can be hoped for. It is better than the absence of a home.

James Morton
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