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sians, Greeks, Romans,
Byzantines, Arabs,
Kurds , Mamluks and
Mongols , Tartars and
Crusaders, Turks and En–
glishmen....
Then , driven from
their land and scattered
to the winds, the Jews
gave expression to the an–
guish of Exile and the
passion for Return , never
ceasing to assert their
right and title to
Eretz
Israel.
The ·survival of the
Jewisb people through
dark centuries was inex-
tricably linked to their
memory of their land and
to their determination to
return.
This longing and this dream con–
stitute a continuity of faith and
nation unprecedented in world his–
tory.
For never has there been another
instance of a people whose political
state and religious center were de–
stroyed , its land devastated, its
members driven off and dispersed
to the far corners of the earth,
victims of discrimination and per–
secut ion , of mass slaughter in cru–
sades, expulsions, inqu isitions,
blood libels, pogroms, and holo–
caust~nly
to survive in creativity
and dignity, and to return to their
land to rebui ld after 1,900 years.
There was, in fact, something in
addit ion to the age-old spiritual
bond of the Jewish people with
Eretz Israel.
Despite all the inva–
sions, conquests and devastations,
Jews never ceased living in the land
of Israel.
Clinging stubbornly to the soil,
fortified by the faith that one day
J ewish sovereignty would be re–
stored , J ews lived and married and
died in the Holy Land without in–
terruption, during all tbe centuries
of foreign rule, of anarchy and ne–
glect, of war and destruction and
massacre.
Under Roman , Christian and
Muslim rule over the centuries,
Palestine turned into a wasteland
of neglect, the number of Jews
contracted. Still they remained–
for these Jews saw themselves as
the "guardians of the walls," the
living presence whose descendants
would rebuild the land anew.
12
espite all the
invasions, conquests and
devastations, Jews
never ceased living in the
land of Israel.
And through al! the generations,
through all the centuries of d isper–
sion, Jews kept coming back to the
Holy Land. A lways tbere was
aliyah-ascent
to lsrael-even
when immigration was forbidden
by alíen rulers.
The modero J ewish restoration
began in the mid-19th century,
well before the rise of political
Zionism. Jews were immigrating,
building, planting, fortifyi ng,
dreaming of the day when Jewish
sovereignty would be restored and
Eretz Israel
reborn....
l nto this empty land, laid waste
by war, victim of abuse and ne–
glect, the Jews carne to reclaim and
rebuild their ancient homeland....
The Jewish claim to
Eretz Israel
begins with the Bible, not because
the Bible is a political document ,
but because it shaped the con–
sciousness of the J ews for 3,500
years and made of them a distinct
people; because every day for 70
generations J ews turned to Zion in
prayer, study and yearning.
The Jewish people's r ight does
not derive from the Balfour Decla–
ration of 1917, or the League of
Nations Mandate of 1922, or any
United Nations resolutions, or the
world's guilt after the bolocaust. It
is a right grounded in the most
ancient and unbroken connection
between a people and its religion,
culture and land in recorded his–
tory.
lt is a right confi rmed by the
sacrifice and devotion of those who
stayed on in the land through al!
the years of pestilence and blight,
of oppression and banishment, of
slaughter and pogrom- J ews sus–
tained by the faith that tbey were
the caretakers, tbe guardians, tbe
protectors of the land that would
one day be restored to al! the Jew–
ish people from every place of their
dispersion and every center of their
exile.
It
is a right validated by the
struggle of tbose who tore the
stones from the arid earth and
made it blossom; who turned
swamp into orchard and deser t into
oasis; who filled the land with
forests, constructed roads, changed
the landscape, transformed the des–
olate plains and bare mountains,
built universit ies and schools,
brought health to all the inhabi–
tants, not least the Arabs.
Not to understand this mi llen–
nial romance between a people and
its land, this organic link between
the Jews and Jerusalem, between
the chi ldren of Israel and the land
of Israel , is to miss the vital core of
the fate and passion of Jewish his–
tory.
One need not be a rabid na–
tionalist, or a religious zealot, or
even a believer, to stand in awe
before this noble heritage, to un–
derstand that it is at the very heart
of the J ewish people's tie to
Eretz
Israel,
to accept the irreversible
fact of the centrality of Zion in the
consciousness of the Jewish people.
And to recognize it as a
paramount reality and fact of life
in the Middle East with wbich the
world must come to terms.
The study of history will also
dispel another widely disseminated
myth: that a place called Palestine
is the ancient national homeland of
the Arabs of the "West Bank"
(and of Israel, too, for that matter).
The word
Palestine
has its
origins in the biblical name which
the Israelites gave the land of the
Philistines. And though that an–
cient people disappeared early on
from the stage of history, the name
was used for the first time by the
Roman Empire to e r ase from
memory the land's identity with
the Jewish people. After the Arab
conquest of the area in the 7th
century, Palestine-"Fi lastin"–
was treated merely as a part of
Syria.
For nearly two millennia, the
The
PLAIN TRUTH
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