Judea and Sumeria: Embracing Israel's Jewish Roots

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December 15, 2010 • Volume 28 • Winter 2011

By Russell Sitrit-Leibovich

The dominant issue overshadowing international perspectives on the current situation in the Middle East is the indignant claim that Israel "occupies" the West Bank, a 'traditionally Arab land'. International media depict persistent Jewish "settlements" as being barriers to any constructive advances towards the peace process.

What such historical revisionism conveniently overlooks is the deep and ancient Jewish connection to Judea and Samaria, the historical names for the West Bank. The current view not only wholly constructs an Arab or "Palestinian" legacy in Judea and Samaria, but completely disregards Jewish presence, history, and connectionto these lands.

The term "settlement" conjures up images of foreign colonists seizing native territory for their own self-serving gains. Not only is using this term to describe Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria inaccurate, it is absurd. Replete with Jewish historical and religious sites, Judea and Samaria are the most ancient homeland of the Jewish people, testifYing to a presence stretching back over 4,000 years.

Here, one finds cities such as Hebron, the resting place of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Jewish people and the first capital of the Jewish monarchy; Bethlehem and Shechem, the burial sites of the biblical figures Rachel and her son Joseph; and Beit El and Shiloh, lands which played significant roles in ancient Jewish history. It was in these cities that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived, King David fought and conquered, and Isaiah, Jeremiah and Amos preached.

The Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria has continued uninterrupted to the present dsy, with the exception of various periods during which occupying powers, such as Jordan's illegal occupation (1948-1967), prohibited Jews from inhabiting the areas. Following the destruction ofthe Second Temple and the exile of the majority of Jews from the land of Israel in 70 C.B., Hebron remained one of the centers of Jewish life, hosting many important rabbis, yeshivot and synagogues throughout history. It was only in 1929, following Arab riots throughout Israel, when 67 Jews were murdered in a state-sanctioned pogrom in Hebron, that the community was destroyed, later to be rebuilt following the city's liberation in 1967 and in response to Arab efforts to ethnically cleanse these lands of Jews in the 1920s and 1930s.

"'Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation-state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our forefathers." - Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, September 2010

At no point in history was there ever a sovereign Arab or "Palestinian" state in Judea and Samaria, nor in any other part of the land of Israel, for that matter. This falsification of history is part of a systematic campaign by the Palestinian Authority (P.A.), along with the wider Arab and Islamic world and seconded by the media, to deny the Jewish connection to the land of Israel. At the same time that P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas was conducting "peace" negotiations with Israeli. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, PA-run television aired a documentary on Rosh HaShanah in which, panning to the Western Wall, the narrator explained, "[Israelis] know for certain that our [Arab] roots are deeper than their false history. We, from the balcony of our homes, look out over [Islamic] holiness and on sin and filth [the Jews praying at the Western Wall]."

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton was so appalled at P A leader Yasser Arafat's claims that there had never been a Jewish temple in Jerusalem that he stormed out of the Camp David Accords of 2000, in disgust. Similarly, for many years, the Islamic Trust (wakfi in charge of the Temple Mount has been condemned for systematically destroying Jewish archaeological artifacts, and discarding the evidence in Kidron valley garbage dumps. Following the Israeli Defense Force's transfer of control of Shechem (Nablus) to the Palestinian Authority. in October 2000, Arab mobs reduced the tomb of the biblical figure Joseph to a pile of rubble.

Finally, when Netanyahu recently included the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb in a list of Jewish heritage sites, the Islamic world exploded in anger, with Mahmoud Abbas condemning this as "a serious provocation". Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan concurred with the claim that these had never been Jewish sites, but rather, mosques. The demand that Judea and Samaria be Judenrein in order to make way for a Palestinian state is but another step in this campaign to write Jews out of their own history.

There is, therefore, no Israeli occupation in Judea and Samaria, areas having never been ruled by a "Palestinian" entity in the past. The two successor states to the British Mandate are Israel and Jordan.
Israel liberated Judea and Samaria during the Six Days War, a war of aggression launched against it by its Arab neighbours with the intention of completely annihilating the Jewish state. With this victory, Israel was reunited with these most ancient lands. Moreover, after illegally occupying these 'disputed' lands from 1948 until 1967, Jordan formally renounced all claims to them in 1988.

Israel derives its legitimacy as a Jewish state from its historical legacy and ties to the land. Its Declaration of Independence begins by stating that "The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped." It was not in Tel Aviv or Herzliah where the Jewish people
developed, but rather in Hebron and Shiloh, Shechem and Beit El. To uproot thriving Jewish communities in order to make room for a 23rd Arab state would be a historic travesty. As Charles Krauthamer once wrote "Israel is the ·very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago".

True advancements towards peace in the Middle East will only come when Israel embraces its Jewish roots, and the Arabs recognize that the Jewish people have never left and are here to stay.