The RP: Debunking the Myth of Israel’s Illegitimacy

We’re proud to announce The RP’s latest gig — a semi-regular columnist for The Times of Israel.  As the Jewish State finds itself in the headlines following the Gaza conflict and Palestinian maneuvers before the United Nations, The RP dispels the myth of Israel’s illegitimacy being pounded by the mostly-liberal Blame Israel First crowd.

Here’s an excerpt:

My column last week in The Huffington Post, “Why My Fellow Liberals Should Support Israel in Her Conflict with Hamas,” provoked the predictable hackles from the Blame Israel First crowd.

Within their excuses and rationalizations for the Hamas regime’s abhorrent actions — such as the targeting of Israeli civilians and the employment of Palestinian human shields — ran a familiar argument:  That all means are justified, since the Jewish State is legally and morally illegitimate.

You may have heard their historical narrative:  The Great Western powers, triumphantly basking in the aftermath of World War II, were paralyzed with guilt for their failure to prevent history’s most horrifying genocide.  The Allies decided to resolve the “Jewish problem” by carving up the Arab-dominated Palestine to create a Jewish State because of the Chosen People’s mythical, Biblical ties to the land.  Just as with the imperialist colonization of Africa and Asia; here, white-skinned, European, self-important and self-righteous conquerors patronizingly tried to “civilize” — and, if that failed, they’d violently displace — dark-skinned, indigenous peoples… all along ironically justifying their actions as a pursuit of justice and freedom and democracy.

It’s a powerful story that tugs at the heartstrings and plays to the deepest biases of many American liberals. For most progressives, our foreign policy worldview was defined by Vietnam, during which the old liberal guard launched a misguided quest to further the cause of global freedom, resulting instead in the inexcusable loss of hundreds of thousands of lives — mostly innocent, native Southeast Asians.  The mindset was reinforced more recently in Iraq, where a neo-con Bush/Cheney Administration played upon popular insecurities to wage an unnecessary and brutal war under the false pretenses of promoting democracy.

And hey, what liberal doesn’t love a good underdog story; whether it’s a minority group championing civil rights, or a tiny nation battling an imperial power?

It’s no wonder that this Bizarro-Bible myth of Israel as Goliath and Palestine as David plays smack dab into the liberal wheelhouse.  And it confirms to some progressives that it’s the Israeli imperialists — greedily grasping onto their colonial territories — who are the key obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

The trouble with this narrative is that it’s entirely untrue.

Whether or not you believe that the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and/or the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) should be accepted as literally true — I don’t — it’s important to understand that for millennia, Jews and Christians have proclaimed Israel as their ancestral homeland.  The city of Jerusalem and the land of Zion are mentioned more than 800 times in the Hebrew Bible, and in over 100 instances in the Christian Scriptures.  Contrast that with the Koran; even though Jerusalem is spiritually significant for Muslims, the city is never mentioned in Islam’s holiest text.

But even those who reject any discussion of the holy books in this context must concede that the objective, independent historical and archaeological evidence is overwhelming: There has been a sustained and vibrant Jewish presence in the land of Israel for thousands of years.

Over the past few centuries, archaeologists have made a series of extraordinary discoveries that establish that a distinctive Jewish religion and culture was developed around 4,000 years ago in Israel, and that Biblical figures such as David, Solomon and Jesus were the focus of considerable attention by the Jews of antiquity within Jerusalem and throughout the holy land. Further, Martin Gilbert, a widely-respected historian, has demonstrated, through a dispassionate examination of the historical record, that for more than 1600 years, Jews formed the “main settled population” of what now is considered the modern state of Israel.

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