The Palestinian/Israeli Conflict

I shall list here the arguments that many Zionists and Israel supporters use to defend the existence of Israel, and my response to those arguments.

    The Jews claim that God promised the Holy Land to the descendents of Abraham, and that since they are the only descendents of Abraham, they are the inheritors of the land.

  This promise is found in the Old Testament:

"Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.'" Gen. 12:1-2. "Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, 'To your descendants I will give this land.'" Gen. 12:7 (RSV)

  However, they do not realize that they are not the only descendants of Ibraheem (Abraham), for the Arabs, too, are the descendents of Ibraheem, for they are the children of Isma’eel (Ishmael), the brother of Is’haaq (Isaac). So, the Arabs and the Jews are cousins. Also, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was a direct descendent of Ibraheem, and as such, those who believe in his message, al-Islam, the Muslims, share a similar relationship to the Jews, for although now neither the Muslims nor the Jews as a whole are blood descendents of the Prophets, they can be considered to have that relationship due to their following the Prophets’ messages.

  The following Qur’anic Verse clarifies the issue of God’s promise to Ibraheem:

"And when Abraham was tried by his Lord with words, and he fulfilled them; God said: “Indeed, I will make you a leader for the people.” Abraham said: “And of my descendents?” God said: “My covenant does not include the wrongdoers.”

  The wrongdoers, in Islam, are those who first and foremost do not worship God alone, and those who commit evil and injustice against the people. Thus, when Bani Israa’eel (the Children of Israel) stopped obeying God as He had commanded them to, they lost God’s Pleasure and Favour.

  There are many examples in both the Bible and the Qur’an of Bani Israa’eel’s transgressions, but I will only quickly mention events starting with the time of Musa (Moses).

 Despite the fact that Moses had come to guide them, and rescue them from the Pharoah’s injustice and oppression, and lead them to Palestine, their Promised Land, Bani Israa’eel continued, over and over, to disobey Moses. For example, when they were told to enter Palestine (which at the time was being occupied by the Canaanites) with confidence in God, they refused to, saying, “O Musa (Moses)! We shall never enter it as long as they are there. So go you and your Lord and fight you two, we are sitting right here’’ [al-Maa'idah 5:24].  

  Thereafter God decreed that for their lack of faith, Bani Israa’eel would wander the desert wilds for 40 years, until those whose hearts had been diseased by the lack of faith and confidence had died, and a new generation, reared on Moses’ teachings, and led by Yusha ibn Noon (Joshua), entered Palestine victorious.

  But as time passed, and the first believing generations passed away, the Children of Israel grew proud and arrogant. Instead of thanking God for the riches and wealth He granted them, and instead of humbling themselves, they began to consider themselves better than everyone else. Thus, God grew displeased with them and caused them to suffer defeat at the hands of their enemies.

  God gave them another chance to redeem themselves when He sent Jesus (peace be upon him) with the same message the Moses (peace be upon him) had: worship of God alone, and the subsequent commandments of goodness and justice. While there were those who followed Jesus (and in Islam, we consider these people to be Believers, without labelling them as Jews or Christians. Anyone who believes in the Prophets’ message and obeys God’s commands, is considered to be a Believer – a Muslim) the majority of the people, especially the Jewish leaders, refused to accept him, and actively tried to harm him (leading to their attempt to crucify him, which failed because in Islam, we believe that God raised Jesus (peace be upon him) to heaven and replaced him with a man who looked exactly like him, and that is the person who was crucified, not Jesus). So again, the Jews rebelled against the Prophet sent to them rather than obeying God, and so again they lost the right to be triumphant and victorious.

  Finally, God sent Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as the Final Messenger to Mankind, with the complete message of Islam – which was the same message of all the previous prophets, including Moses and Jesus. Now, since God had given the Holy Land to those who believed in Him and His Prophets and obeyed His Commands, the Muslims inherited that right by being the followers of the last Prophet of God, whose message was the final form of the messages of the previous Prophets of God (peace be upon them all).

  At the same time, Muslims have never, during the period of their rule of Palestine, forbidden the Christians and Jews from visiting their holy sites. When ‘Umar, the second Khalifah (successor of the Prophet), entered Palestine, he found that the ruins of the Temple Mount (later to become the site of al-Masjid al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock) was in ruins and being used as a rubbish dump by the Christian inhabitants. When he saw this, he wept, ordered it cleaned up, and prayed there. As well, ‘Umar personally promised the freedom of and safety of all the peoples, and did what had not been done for a very long period of time: permitted the Jews to once again live in Palestine, in safety and security.

  And, right up until World War One and the subsequent turmoil, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all lived together in relative peace and harmony – something that was rare indeed in the extensive history of the Holy Land.  

  Now, as for the issue of Palestine being the ancestral homeland of the Jews, I find that, quite frankly, ridiculous. I am not dismissing the claim; it’s just the same claim of ‘ancestral homeland’ can be used by millions of people all over the world. Yes, Palestine may be the ‘ancestral homeland’ of the Jews, but it is also the homeland of many others.

  The history of Palestine documents the coming – through conquest, emigration, or otherwise – of many different peoples. The Canaanites, the Hebrews, the Romans, the Persians, the Samaritans, the Arabs, and more… they all came to the Holy Land (although it wasn’t necessarily holy to all of them) and settled and intermarried and eventually integrated into the native population until there could be no more distinction between them. Thus, the Jews cannot claim exclusiveness to the land, because it does not belong to them alone. The Jews are not the only people to have their historical roots and ancestry in the land, nor have they ever been the only people to ever inhabit the land.

  To say that they alone have the right to rule, or that they have some exclusive right over the land, is ridiculous from both a religious and nationalistic point of view.

   However, it being a ‘democratic’ country’ doesn’t really have much to do with its legitimacy, since we’re concerned with how it was created and not so much on how it is run today.

  Just because Israel is called a democracy today, does not mean that it was created on democratic principles. Quite the opposite, in fact: Israel was created as a result of colonialism. When Britain could no longer handle Palestine, they gave it to the Zionist Jews, who then, upon the expiration of the British Mandate of Palestine, established the State of Israel.

  Israel was not created upon democratic principles, because if it had been, then the entire population of Palestine would have voted for or against it. But no such vote ever took place. Democracy, apparently, was not suitable for that particular time or purpose.

  Take the following analogy:

  Say that I have a jar of cookies…and someone has stolen it. I’m mad, right? And now imagine just how much madder I am, when I see the thief saunter in through my front door, munching away at my cookies, and then the thief takes out one cookie and says, “Here, you can have this!”

  Is that just? Of course not! The WHOLE COOKIE JAR is mine! I have the right to it ENTIRELY! Not just a single cookie! So of course, I refuse to accept the single cookie because the whole jar is mine, and I want my jar of cookies back! To be told that I should be content with just the one cookie, rather than the whole jar that I am entitled to, is simply unjust.

  Okay, cookie jar analogies aside...

  The fact is that the Jews were a minority in Palestine. They constituted only about 8% to 12% of the total population. And even then, they were Orthodox Jewish and the majority of them weren't even Zionists (keep in mind that is the Zionists who were behind the creation of Israel, and not just Jews in general). Now, does it make sense for a total minority to stand up and demand that they have their own state?

  First of all, I deny the claim that the Jews/Zionists ‘made the desert bloom'. Secondly, even IF they did ‘make the desert bloom’, it still does not give them a right to the land.

  Let me explain myself. I deny the claim that they ‘made the desert bloom’, because of something very interesting that I have read.

“Britain’s high commissioner for Palestine, John Chancellor, recommended total suspension of Jewish immigration and land purchase to protect Arab agriculture. He said ‘all cultivable land was occupied; that no cultivable land now in possession of the indigenous population could be sold to Jews without creating a class of landless Arab cultivators’...The Colonial Office rejected the recommendation.” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”

(I originally found this on the site http://ifamericansknew.org and found it elsewhere on the Internet. Admittedly, I have not read the book from which the quote is extracted myself.)

  Now, since Britain was in charge of the Mandate of Palestine, and was responsible for handing it over to the Jews, shouldn’t we listen to them about what they have/had to say about Palestine? And now what are we to conclude from this? We have been informed that the land was already inhabited and being farmed; yet the Zionists claim that the land was empty and barren. Clearly, they have lied, which throws doubt upon their credibility.

   Now, even IF their claim was true, it still does not give them a legitimate right to the land. The fact is that they took the land from the Palestinians, who did NOT agree to that, and then did as they would with it. Whether or not they improved conditions there is irrelevant when it comes to the point of Israel’s right to exist, because we may also say that the European settlers improved conditions in the 'New World', yet that does not make their occupation and colonization morally correct. Similarly, Israel's occupation and colonization is absolutely inexcusable.

  True. Before Israel, before the British Mandate of Palestine, before all that, the people who are now called Palestinians identified themselves as Arabs. However, this still does not give Israel any legitimacy to establish itself as a separate state, nor does it make their falsely generous offer of an ‘Arab state’ okay because even if there was no country or state called Palestine at the time, the Palestinian people are like the Aboriginal Natives of North America in that they never had a nation but are native to the land, and have their own dialect of language and their own customs and culture.

  Also, the claim that Palestine was an empty land, barely inhabited, is not true. No doubt you have heard of the saying, "A land without a people, for a people without a land." This is utterly false. In fact, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, even said that: "Palestine is not an empty country . . . on no account must we injure the rights of the inhabitants." (1918, recorded in "Ben Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs" by Shabtai Teveth, one of Ben Gurion's official biographers)  However, keep in mind that despite this statement, Ben Gurion did not believe in the Palestinians' political rights and this attitude contributed to the displacement, and later, occupation of the Palestinian people.

  This, of course, is rubbish. Arabs have lived peacefully with Jews throughout history. In fact, it is under Muslim rule that Jewish culture flourished greatly - take, for example, the reknowned Musa ibn Maimoon (Maimonides), the great Jewish physician and theologist who lived in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain). The Muslims/Arabs were known for their tolerance whereas Europe was rabidly anti-Jewish – actually, just xenophobic in general. In any case, if Muslims/Arabs really hated the Jews so much, would they not have killed them off long ago?