MYTH
The Jews have no claim to the land they call Israel.
FACT
A common misperception is that all the
Jews were forced into the
Diaspora by the
Romans after the destruction of the
Second Temple in
Jerusalem in the year 70
C.E. then, 1,800 years later, the Jews suddenly returned to
Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years.
The Jewish people base their claim to the Land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) the Jewish people settled and developed the land, 2) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people, 3) the territory was captured in defensive wars, and 4) God promised the land to the patriarch
Abraham.
Even after the Second Temple’s destruction and the exile’s beginning, Jewish life in the Land of Israel continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and
Tiberias by the 9th century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah,
Gaza,
Ashkelon,
Jaffa, and
Caesarea. The
Crusaders massacred many Jews during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as many
rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee. Prominent rabbis established communities in
Safed, Jerusalem, and elsewhere during the following 300 years.
By the early 19th century—years before the birth of the modern
Zionist movement—more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today
Israel.
1 The 78 years of nation-building, beginning in 1870, culminated in the
reestablishment of the Jewish State.
Israel’s international “birth certificate” was validated by the promise of the
Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of
Joshua onward; the
Balfour Declaration of 1917; the
League of Nations Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration; the
United Nations partition resolution of 1947; Israel’s admission to the U.N. in 1949; the recognition of Israel by most other states; and—most of all—the society created by Israel’s people in decades of thriving, dynamic national existence.
Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its “right to exist.” Israel’s right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel’s legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgment…There is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would consider mere recognition of its “right to exist” a favor, or a negotiable concession.
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