The Case for Israel

on June 4, 2011

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Ananth Venkatesh

American president Barack Obama has recently outlined his vision as regards the solution to the cancer that has bedevilled the Middle East since 1948 i.e. the Palestinian-Israeli territorial conflict.

What Obama spoke was, basically, a reaffirmation of the policy pursued by his conservative predecessor, George Bush, on this significant issue. Obama, unequivocally and lucidly, voiced that an independent Palestine would have to be created on two of the four territories that Israel had occupied during the June War in 1967. The two territories are West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Gaza, governed by the terroristic Hamas, is imprisoned by Israeli blockades but is independent in one way as there are zero Israeli settlers and forces there today. Israel, under Ariel Sharon’s practical Prime Ministership, had disengaged fully from Gaza in August 2005.

What was the 1967 war?

That War was one, in which Jewish Israel had pounded the Arabic forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in a classic pre-emptive war that produced cataclysmic results for the Arabs. The Arabs lost territories as well as self-esteem because of their defeat at the hands of a tiny Jewish State that offset its territorial smallness with a shrewd and ruthless military strategy that caught the Arabs unawares. The war, which started on June 5, lasted 6 days only but engendered deep-seated repercussions for Middle Eastern politics, which reverberate even today.

Egypt had governed the Gaza Strip from 1948 onwards after the first Arab-Israeli War. Jordan was one of the beneficiaries of this war as the Jordanian military managed to seize the largish West Bank, including the sacred Eastern sector of Jerusalem. East Jerusalem is an area of immeasurable religious significance for the Semitic faiths.                             

  • Egypt lost Gaza when the Israeli forces overran the hapless and unprepared Egyptian forces in June 1967.
    Jordan lost West Bank when the Israelis subdued the Jordanians stationed there and established Israeli control.
  • Syria, which had a terribly disputed border with Israel in the Golan Heights, was also smashed as the Israeli services captured the Syrian Golan Heights, a zone of considerable agricultural importance.
  • Also, Israel captured the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, which is a vital and sizable chunk of Egypt. The Sinai was strategically important as it was ideally placed for Nasser’s Egypt to attack Israel.
    Also, there was ‘black gold’ in the Sinai i.e. oil. Therefore, vanquishment of the Arabs resulted in colossal territorial loss. The standing of Arab political heroes such as Nasser, Egypt’s autocrat then, received a thrashing. The Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian political and military heads were vilified by their national populace respectively.

The June War was a  conflict that Israel had no choice but to execute as the neighbouring Arab States refused to accept the Israeli State’s legitimacy and continued to intimidate Israel. Egypt and Jordan had formalized a defence pact some days before the June War’s initiation. The formalization of this pact was another instance of Israel being bullied by Arabs.  Israel had to demonstrate that it was committed to protecting and furthering its existence as well as that of its Jewish populace. The memories of the horrifying Holocaust were still raw in Jewish minds. After all, the Nazi and Fascist forces had targeted the Jewish race as a whole to eliminate it fully. By refusing to acknowledge the Israeli State’s right to exist in the Holy Land and by claiming all of Palestine for themselves, the Arabic States had pointed fingers at the Jewish race.

The June War silenced the Arabic hostility and made some Arabic nations accept, howsoever grudgingly, that Jewish Israel was here to stay as a self-confident and determined nation in the Muslim Middle East.

Before even the birth of Christianity and Islam, the Holy Land was the ultra sacred homeland of the Judaic people. Over centuries, various military, cultural and political factors such as the Roman mercilessness, Christian anti-Semitism and the Islamic expansionism led to the decline in the Jewish population in the territory of ancient Israel. Intellectual degradation, internal divisions and the shortage of willpower to fight for your religion’s survival were diseases that afflicted certain segments of the Jewry. You can state that this is a malaise that had also afflicted the adherents of the Hindu religion, especially when Hindu India was steadily overpowered by the marauding foreign Islamic forces, beginning from the 8th century.                                                                         
What is often forgotten is that, in 1947, respectable and pragmatic Jewish leaders such as David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, etc. had agreed to the partition of ancient Israel into a Jewish State and a Palestinian Arab State. There was no opposition from these realistic and indefatigable Jewish voices when the UN’s Partition Plan for the Holy Land was ratified by the member countries in November 1947. The Jewish political heads then were willing to see a Jewish Israel coexist in peace with a sovereign Palestine in a partitioned Holy Land. However, in 1947, the Arab States were implacable in their opposition to the creation of a self-governing Israel in a Palestine that had been steadily Islamized ever since the triumph of the Mohammedans in the Crusades against Christians. There was only an inconsiderable minority of Jews in Ottoman Palestine that had been subjugated by the Allied powers during WW 1.

The Need for the Jewish State

Britain was mandated by the highly flawed League of Nation to administer Palestine/Israel (Holy Land) after WW 1. British policy vis-à-vis Jewish immigration in the Holy Land was inconsistent and marked by fluctuations. It needs to be remembered that, in the 1890s, the idea of a Judaic nation in the Holy Land had sprouted among some leading Jewish intellectuals such as the legendary Theodore Herzl.  This idea was one that was quite controversial and inflamed passions. That such an idea emerged wasn’t surprising considering the venom of anti-Semitism that had permeated countless Christian minds in Europe through several centuries. One manifestation of that venom was the banishment of numerous Jews in the 15th century from Spain and Portugal by these countries’ Christian monarchs. This banishment happened after the ‘Reconquista,’ which was the liberation of Iberia from Islamic rule by the Spanish and Portuguese Christian soldiers.

British immigration policy from 1918 onwards resulted in the relaxation of norms for Jewish immigration into the Holy Land. There was some deliberateness behind this British policy. Of course, the sorrowful memories of Christian defeat in the Crusades against the Islamic warriors would have played a role in Britain deciding to allow more European Jews to immigrate to the Holy Land.

Islam was seen as the foe by certain Christian Britons in the British government then. There was sympathy in them for their Jewish brothers. There were sections in British Christianity that felt that allying with the Jewish demand for a national homeland in Palestine was the right thing to do. Christianity and Judaism were, after all, inextricably linked by historical developments. Some of their spiritual roots were the same.

Whatever it is, British governance in Palestine resulted in a marked increase in the Jewish population in Palestine by 1945. The Jewish population was large enough and reasonably well-equipped to fight against the Palestinian Arabs in a civil war just after WW 2. The Jewish determination to create a homeland for themselves was strengthened after the savagery of the Holocaust and the Arabic refusal to accept a Jewish nation in the Holy Land. The civil strife resulted in bloodletting on both sides. Finally, Israel managed to muster adequate global diplomatic support, after which Israel declared its independence in May 1948.

What followed was the Arab invasion to kill the nascent Israel and to maintain Palestine for the Arabs fully. The Israelis were compelled to wage war in 1948 because of Arab belligerence and intolerance. It was a war for Israeli survival, which Israel won. Israel conquered more territory than was awarded to it by the UN Partition Plan.

Another part on the same topic by the author in the coming days.


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