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Source: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/undisputed-answer-israels-legitimacy-dead-sea-scrolls
The Undisputed Answer to Israel's Legitimacy
(Fox News) Loay Alshareef - I am an Arab Muslim and have spent years advocating for peace and reconciliation between Muslims and Jews. I have never understood why acknowledging the ancient Jewish connection to this land should be considered threatening to Muslims. The Dead Sea Scrolls are one example that demolishes the claim that Jewish attachment to the land is a recent political invention created by Europeans in the 19th or 20th centuries. The ancient manuscripts found in caves near the Dead Sea were written by Jews living in this region more than 2,000 years ago. I do not see something that belongs to a civilization completely foreign to me. I see part of the religious and historical landscape from which Christianity emerged and which Islam itself repeatedly acknowledges. This is why I believe Muslims should be among the last people to deny ancient Jewish history. The Quran is filled with the history of the Children of Israel. Moses is mentioned more frequently in the Quran than any other prophet. The Quran speaks of King David, Solomon, Aaron, Joseph and the tribes of Israel. It acknowledges the Torah and repeatedly places its own religious message in conversation with earlier Jewish and Christian traditions. There is therefore something deeply strange, in my view, about some Muslims feeling that we must erase Jewish history in order to defend Arab or Palestinian rights. Peace will never be built by creating historical amnesia. For decades, political arguments surrounding Israel have frequently attempted to deny Jewish history altogether, pretending that a nation did not exist on its ancestral homeland. The Dead Sea Scrolls tell us that Jewish communities lived in this land, developed religious institutions in this land, and debated the meaning of their faith in this land centuries before Islam appeared and centuries before modern European nationalism existed. History cannot become something we recognize only when it supports our political position. If archaeology proves something uncomfortable, we should not destroy the archaeology. We should adjust our understanding. For Muslims in particular, recognizing the Jewish people's ancient connection to this land should not frighten us. It does not diminish Islam. It simply requires intellectual honesty. The writer is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa.