Starting the Clock: The Use of History with Israel and Palestine

Many of the arguments from both sides of the Israeli Palestinian debate depend on history.  We take a look through the centuries to determine which argument has more merit.  

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Starting the Clock: The Use of History with Israel and Palestine

November 2023

“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.”

― Winston S. Churchill 

Social media interactions can be where time goes to die. Just recently, I received one that responded to my factual arguments with a GIF of Elmo the Muppet and the recurring phrase, “You’re an idiot.” Those are easy to ignore. Others are more troubling. To my pro-Israel argument, one respondent noted that the part in the Hamas charter of eradicating Israel as a nation was not only spot on but that the people living there could be dispatched as well. It was nanoseconds before I hit the block button on those.  

Then there are the interactions that give me pause and even some circumspection. A few weeks ago, I received a note stating I was practicing “cafeteria” history. I think I understand the meaning. A historian picks and chooses from the available options with a menu and tray as a stand-in for the facts of the historical narrative. Yet that is not what I am attempting—quite the opposite. I accuse progressive historians of just that. But with a little wrinkle.  

Let’s say that one enters the cafeteria with a problem to solve. For example, I want to pick those foods that will comprise the healthiest choices. The progressive historian will enter with a preset narrative. Apples and peanut butter are the healthiest choices, and they will not consider the rest of the selections. One also learns that from age 6 or 7, our progressive historian consumer was taught that Apples and Peanuts were the healthiest choices. Then, one learns that the Apple Growers of America and the National Union of Peanut Farmers fund the progressives’ living.

The conservative historian is trying to conserve that concept of historiography similar to how a good detective would oversee a crime. Russell Kirk talked about both prudence and variety. It is in those two qualities that historiography should be conducted. Look at all the available facts, omit the secondary ones, and meld the important ones into the narrative. Make certain these facts contain both primary and secondary sources.  

The conservative historian enters the cafeteria and looks at all the selections to ascertain the healthiest. Then, they research each selection. Chocolate pudding is less healthy than the orange or the broccoli. And the peanuts? If the historian has an allergy, they are worse than the pudding. The progressive historian does not consider this because they have been taught the value of peanuts over a decade and, of course, the not-so-subtle pressure from the union. The conservative historian builds a diet of the best things, creating the story.  

The Israel-Palestinian war, or the latest iteration of this 70-year conflict, is rife with progressive narratives that, like the denizens of the cafeteria, have pre-determined the conclusion. Instead of apples and peanuts, these historians, activists, and the terrorists themselves pick out dates. And by dates, I mean time frames, not the food of which Sallah saved Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But unlike the traitorous Nazi monkey who was killed in that movie, the progressives do not necessarily pick bad dates, but convenient ones.  

People often ask my opinion about the conflicted history in this part of the Middle East. I did a two-part podcast series a few years back that stretched to 90 minutes and over 9,000 words. Complexity is not an understatement in relation to any description of this conflict.  

In so many things, from the optimal political system (small r republican governance, minimally regulated capitalism) to the meaning of our existence (love and sacrifice), history has been my guide. Yet, in the case of Israel, I am a bit flummoxed. Where do I begin the narrative from all the dates I can choose?

One possibility is to begin the story between 2,000 and 1,800 BCE when a group settled the land that is currently Israel, which we would know from the Bible as Canaanites. These were Sematic-speaking people like the Hebrews (and the Arabs). Were the Canaanites proto-Arabs? Were they proto-Palestinians? No, because they were not Arabs but were there before the Hebrews.

Then, around 1,800 BCE, we have the first historical note of the Jews and the introduction of Abraham. One historian, the great and unfortunately late Thomas Cahill, believed that Abraham and his tribe would have come from Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. And already here, the problems begin.

Growing up in the West, it is common to think of Abraham as the first Jew. However, the prophet Mohammad (570-632 CE) included Abraham as an earlier Prophet of Islam. The Qur’an refers to him as the friend of God (sura 4: chapter 125) and the father of prophets; Muslims believe that he is one of the ancestors of the prophet Muhammad himself. Islam also claims Moses, thus linking the religion to this place some 2200 years before its creation. We do know there were Jewish tribes in Arabia, ethnic groups professing the Jewish faith that inhabited the Peninsula before and during the advent of Islam. In Islamic tradition, the Jewish tribes of the Hejaz were seen as the offspring of the ancient Hebrews. And indeed, the Abrahamic monotheism served as a wellspring for all three great religions emanating from the Middle East.  

If this sounds a bit complex, Genesis chapter 11, verses 6 and 7, about the tower of Babel, which, if it had existed, would have been in Mesopotamia, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. So come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” Thank you, oh God, of the Israelites.

Of the four great river valleys where civilization began, the Nile, the Indus, the Yellow, and Mesopotamia, only the latter needed a clear linguistic source. This issue still needs to be resolved even by the time of the New Testament. In Acts 2 8-11, how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”

Abraham had two prominent sons, Ishmael, the firstborn son and ancestor of the Arabs, and Isaac, patriarch to the Hebrews. Within Islam, Ishmael is regarded as a prophet, the ancestor of the Ishmaelites (Hagarenes or Arabs), and the patriarch of Qaydār. Another conundrum: if both lived simultaneously, which to choose? Yet it was to Isaac that Abraham granted his covenant with God as the 2nd great patriarch. It was through Isaac that the promise to Abraham that the Lord would “make thy seed as the dust of the earth” (Gen. 13:15), or as numerous as the stars (Gen. 15:5; 22:17), or “as the sand which is upon the sea shore” (Gen. 22:17) would be fulfilled. (Gen. 21:9-14.) Indeed, the promises made to Abraham, which resulted in the blessings of the “Abrahamic Covenant,” were renewed with Isaac (Gen. 26:1-4, 24) and then later with Isaac’s son Jacob. Also called Israel, Jacob created the twelve tribes of Israel. Abraham may been a part of Islam, but at least biblically, he knew he was the progenitor of the Jewish state.  

Do you think that is all a bit mythological? Then, we begin our clock with the historical Kingdom of Israel around 1,000 BCE. This is not just biblical because we have accounts from other sources, primarily of trade, of this state from Egypt, Mesopotamia, modern-day Syria, and Turkey. Recent archaeological discoveries also support the existence of the United Monarchy, ostensibly under rulers named Saul, David, and Solomon. Yet, the dating and identifications are not universally accepted. But to confuse even this straightforward argument of the Kingdom, there is debate whether the Philistines, who lived in what would be modern-day Gaza, were fully conquered. Regardless of the land demarcations, we know the Hebrew Kingdom existed in the early Iron Age. We also know of a prominent city in this region called Jerusalem, the capital of Judah, in the 9th century after the original state split apart.

And a word about Jerusalem. Not only was it clearly the primary city of Judaism in ancient times, but it also contained the two temples. Solomon purportedly built the first, but it was destroyed during the Neo-Babylonian invasion in the 500s BCE. It was rebuilt during the Persian rule but, as we shall see did not last. It is considered the holiest place in Jewish tradition. But again, Muslims claim it was in Jerusalem that Mohammad journeyed to after he died in the Arab city of Medina to ascend into heaven and establish a claim on Jerusalem as the third holiest city in Islam.  

In the 700s BCE, we have accounts of the Assyrian conquests and those of the Neo Babylonians. In other words, Jews ruled modern-day Israel for at least hundreds of years and populated the region for nearly two millennia (1800 BCE to 70 CE). We also know this was called Israel, Judah, and Judea. There was no “Palestine” until the Roman period.  

Then, we have two key pieces about the Jews. The first involved Cyrus the Great of Persia, allowing captive Jews to return to their lands in the mid-500s. The price was acknowledging the suzerainty of the Persians in the region. Then, 200 years after Alexander of Macedon conquered the area and died, his general Seleucus took over the lands. A descendant of Seleucus, Antiochus IV, fought against a rebellion by a priestly Jewish family named the Maccabees, who organized a successful rebellion against Antiochus after he defiled the holy temple in Jerusalem.  

Then there were the Romans. After the fall of the Seleucid Empire, Rome and Parthia divided up the old Hellenistic Kingdom, but Rome did not immediately assume direct provincial control over Israel. Instead, they ruled through Jewish puppet monarchs such as Antipater and Herod. After growing dissatisfied with the Jewish kings, In 6 CE, the region was reorganized as the Roman province of Judea. That changed in 66 CE. The First Jewish–Roman War (66–74 CE), sometimes called the Great Jewish Revolt or simply The Jewish War, was the first of three major rebellions by the Jews against the Roman Empire fought in Roman-controlled Judea. These revolts, including the Bar Kokhba of 136 CE, eventually led to the destruction of Jewish towns, the displacement of its people, and the appropriation of land for Roman military use, as well as the destruction of much of Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple.

These watershed moments, the elimination of the symbolic center of Judaism and Jewish identity, motivated many Jews to formulate a new self-definition and adjust their existence to the prospect of an indefinite period of displacement. Afterward, Jews migrated to other parts of the Roman Empire and the Middle East. This displacement, called a diaspora, was to last for centuries.  

Though there were undoubtedly still Jews in Judea, Jewish hegemony, whether by direct rule as in the Kingdom of 1,000 BCE or as a province of a greater empire from the 700s through 136 CE, effectively ended with the Romans ushering in a period of 600 years in which Christianity as a religion, and other near Eastern peoples, occupied the land.  

So, if we start the clock in the 1000 BCE, it is Israel. If, however, we begin in 136 CE, we have Palestine.  The word Palestine derives from Philistia, the name Greek writers gave to the land of the Philistines, who, in the 12th century BCE, occupied a small pocket of land on the southern coast between modern Tel Aviv–Yafo and Gaza. In CE 78, Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, stated, “Next to these countries Syria occupies the coast, once the greatest of lands, and distinguished by many names; for the part which joins up to Arabia was formerly called Palaestina, Judaea, Coele,[c] and Phoenice.” So, a prominent Roman used both Judea and Palestine to designate this part of the world. Another Roman, though this one of Jewish ethnicity, Flavius Josephus, was a historian and military leader. Best known for writing The Jewish War, he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry.

He initially fought against the Roman Empire during the First Jewish–Roman War as general of the Jewish forces in Galilee, until surrendering in 67 CE to the Roman army led by military commander (later Emperor) Vespasian. Josephus claimed the Jewish messianic prophecies that initiated the First Jewish–Roman War referred to Vespasian becoming Roman Emperor (clever man). In response, Vespasian decided to keep Josephus as a slave and presumably interpreter. After Vespasian became Emperor in AD 69, he granted Josephus his freedom, at which time Josephus assumed the Emperor’s family name of Flavius. A few quotes from the 90s CE work Antiquities of the Jews:

“...these Antiquities contain what hath been delivered down to us from the original creation of man, until the twelfth year of the reign of Nero, as to what hath befallen us Jews, as well as Egypt as in Syria, and in Palestine,”

“...the children of Mesraim, being eight in number, possessed the country from Gaza to Egypt, though it retained the name of one only, the Philistim; for the Greeks call part of that country Palestine.”

Following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, and the province of Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina. But let’s be clear. The so-called Palestinians in that Roman Province are not the ones we know of today. Roman Rule over the region was to remain, albeit in a few altered forms, until the 600s when a new Middle Eastern power emerged.  

It is a little rich to hear the charge from American leftists that one of the reasons they oppose Israel is because they are settler-colonists. In the 600s CE, Arab armies, fired by the new religion of Islam, poured forth from the Arabian Peninsula and conquered from Morocco and Spain in the West to India in the east. Christianity in North Africa was replaced nearly wholesale by Islam, but the language and the ethnic identities changed as well. What is settler colonialism than to replace Aramaic-speaking Levantines with Arabians speaking Arabic? And I noted that Islam claimed Abraham and Moses. Thus, a timeline, a clock, to rival the Jews. Without this linkage, any serious consideration of today’s Arab-speaking, Arab-descended Palestinians begins in the 600s, 2200 years after the advent of the Jews. One way to think of it is that at the inception of Islam, the Jews had been in that region longer than the Arabs have been to the present day. But if one begins the clock at around 700, a claim of Arab, or at the very least Islamic, suzerainty (soo zer run tee) would prevail. But here is where it gets tricky again. 

Around 900 CE, a group of non-sematic peoples, the Turks, invaded the region and began a 200-year rule. Though they converted to Islam, they were not Arab.And here is another clock beginning point that brings our timeline to nearly 100 years from today. In 1516, another Turkish Empire, the Ottomans, defeated a group of Mamluks from Egypt who claimed the Levant for themselves. 

This began a 400-year period in which the Ottomans not only ruled modern-day Israel but, at times, controlled the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina. But as with all states, the Ottomans fell into decay, and after serving on the losing side in World War I, they were forced to give up their Middle Eastern conquests. And here is where it gets, again, tricky.  

After repeated persecutions, exiles, and pogroms throughout the centuries, a group of Jews conceived of a movement for a return to the traditional homeland of Abraham, Jacob, and the Maccabees. Zionism was a movement for (initially) the re-establishment and, today, the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization 1897 under Theodor Herzl and later led by Chaim Weizmann.

In support of this, After World War I, The League of Nations issued a British mandate for Palestine—a document that gave Britain administrative control over the region and included provisions for establishing a Jewish national homeland in Palestine—which went into effect in 1923. There was vigorous and violent opposition to this by the people already living there, but any complications were moved aside after the Holocaust of World War II.  

So, if we begin the clock sometime between 1923 and 1947, the formal declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 seems like settler colonialism. Since its beginning, Israel has fought four major wars with its Arab neighbors, including Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. It has also contended with a near unending series of terrorist acts perpetuated by the likes of Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization and, more recently, Hezbollah and Hamas. Arab states funded the PLO. Iran and a Gulf state, Qatar, think Hamas and Hezbollah. So if the clock is 1948, or we abide by the provisions of the League of Nations, then Israel is defending itself.  

And regarding this clock, in 1947-8, there were approximately 600 to 700 hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs and over 900,000 Israelis. If they had taken a vote and allowed popular sovereignty to carry the day, Israel would still be Israel.  

So, with this highly complex history, who deserves the right to the land? I love history, the narratives, the pageantry. History is the story of who we are and what we have done as a species. Astronomy is the story of the cosmos, and paleontology tells the story of life and the animal kingdom. But history is humanity. But history cannot really help us here. I believe that if we use history as the sole determiner, I think the Jews have the better claim for the simple reason that it was once, clearly, their homeland, and regardless of the claims of Islam, Abraham was a Hebrew, not an Arab. But I can also make an historical claim for the Palestinians. There have been Arab populations in that region for 1,400 years, and just as we say that Russia cannot retake Ukraine in 2023, how does one say that Israel could take the area in 1948?

But as an American writing this on land that once belonged (temporarily) to the Potawatomi Native Americans, it is a little rich to say I would do this or that. Instead, I support Israel not for historical reasons but for idealistic ones. If popular sovereignty was the guide, there are more Jews in the region today than Arabs, as was the case in the 1940s. I perceive that the highest order of society is classical liberalism, with personal liberty, private ownership of land, freedom of the press, and women’s rights. The best form of governance includes democratic processes, separations of power, and non-corruption. Again, I would choose Israel over Palestine. In Gaza and the West Bank, it is a majority opinion that women are 2nd class citizens and being gay is a moral offense worthy of execution. And I do not take pains to differentiate Hamas from the Palestinians. It was the Palestinians who elected the terrorist group in 2005, knowing the Hamas charter of eradication of Israel and the destruction of those values I hold dear. In the West Bank, the ruling party, Fatah, will not hold elections for fear of the same election results.

And on a purely moral ground, Hamas’ actions on October 7 were beyond appalling. States have committed atrocities throughout history, the United States included, but the Hamas fighters were unique in videotaping these savage acts, something even fascist regimes would not do. There is no history, no excuse for the justification of murdering children and then boasting about it.