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Historical Fiction: Israel Is Not a Colonialist State

(New Republic) Dore Gold - The argument that Israel is a colonialist entity is often marshaled to undermine the Jewish state's legitimacy. It claims that Israel was established as an outpost of another distant power imposing itself on the territory and its native inhabitants. But the fact is that Britain and the rest of the League of Nations considered Jewish rights in Palestine beyond their power to bestow because those rights were already there to be accepted. Thus the League of Nations gave recognition to "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine." In other words, it recognized a pre-existing right. It called for "reconstituting" the Jewish people's national home. The accusation that Israel has colonialist roots because of its connection to the British Mandate is ironic, since most of the Arab states owe their origins to the entry and domination of the European powers. Prior to World War I, the Arab states of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan did not exist. They became states as a result of European intervention, with the British putting the Hashemite family in power in two of these countries. Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states emerged from treaties that their leaders signed with Britain. For many Palestinian spokesmen, it became important to deny the historical ties of the Jewish people to their land and to portray them as recent colonialist arrivals to the region - in contrast to the Palestinians, who were portrayed as the authentic native population. Arafat used to tell Western audiences that the Palestinians are descendents of the Jebusites, with ancient roots in the land. But in Palestinian society, one establishes one's status by claiming to be a relative latecomer, whose ancestors were from the Arabian families that accompanied the Second Caliph Umar bin al-Khattab when he conquered and colonized Byzantine Palestine in the seventh century. Even at that time, the Jews were still a plurality - and, perhaps along with the Samaritans, a majority - in the land, six hundred years after the Romans destroyed their ancient Temple and the Second Jewish Commonwealth. This emerges from Professor Moshe Gil's monumental 800-page A History of Palestine: 634-1099.
2010-08-18 09:10:05
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