Israel Insider
Sept 25 2005
Academicians Questioning the Legitimacy of Israel
By Michael Anbar September 25, 2005
Many voices in academia and in the media have lately questioned the
legitimacy of the State of Israel. This has been going on on both
British and American campuses in spite of the fact that the one and
only Jewish state has been established under the auspices of the UN
in 1947. The UN resolution affirmed the League of Nation’s 1920
resolution to grant Great Britain a Mandate to help establish a
Jewish state in the historical homeland of Jewish people. Yet,
although it has been recognized diplomatically by most member states
of the UN, including several Muslim states, Israel’s legitimacy is
still being questioned. In other words, diplomatic recognition seems
to be insufficient for academicians who wish to delegitimize the very
existence of the State of Israel.
The state of Israel comprises an overwhelming majority of Jews. The
Jewish people constitute a nation with a unique language, religion
and extensive literature, as well as a history of 3000 years — the
longest written history of any nation existing today. Like most
states, Israel has minorities of people who belong to other nations.
The largest among these are Muslim Arabs who belong to the Arab
nation, which comprises 22 independent states, ranging from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf. Most of these Arab states were
established as independent states within the last 100 years, not
substantially earlier than the State of Israel. However, Israel is
the only homeland of the Jewish people, who have lived in that land
for more than 3000 years. A major feature of the State of Israel is,
therefore, its long history as the homeland of the Jews. No other
existing nation can claim such a long historical attachment to scores
of towns and villages, shrines and ancient battlegrounds, mountains
and rivers, within such a small geographic boundary; the national
territory of the Jews people is one of smallest of its kind on Earth.
Based on its historical credentials Israel should be recognized as a
state more readily than practically any other state on this planet.
It should be recognized not just de facto because it exists, having
all the attributes of statehood, but it must be recognized as the
unique historical homeland of the Jewish people. Yet, this
recognition has been problematic throughout the last 57 years of its
politically independent existence. There are still scores of Islamic
states that do not recognize the very existence of the State of
Israel, not to speak of its extensive historical Jewish past.
Moreover, many states that maintain diplomatic relationship with
Israel hesitate to recognize it as the Jewish historical homeland.
Even the United States, which recognizes Israel de Jure, based on
international commitments to create a national home for the Jewish
people, does not officially attribute this recognition to the rights
of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland.
Coming back to academia, it is noteworthy to realize that never
before has the academic community questioned the legitimacy of any
other existing state. These academicians, some of them Jewish,
including even some Israelis, seem to echo Muslims who vehemently
challenge the right of Israel to exist.
The sixty year-old Islamic challenge of the legitimacy of the Jewish
State is based purely on religious grounds. According to Islam,
territory that was conquered by Muslim becomes “Arab land” for
perpetuity. Since the land of Israel was once conquered by Arabs in
the 7th Century, it has become “Arab land” in Muslims’ view.
Consequently, Muslims are religiously obligated to object to the
establishment of a non-Muslim political entity in this once Islamic
province.
Since such a religion-based claim would not be credible in the modern
world, shrewd Arab leaders disguised it as an objection to Western
imperialism, claiming that the Israelis are Westerner “crusaders”
trying to grab and “colonize” “Arab land.” This is a ludicrous claim
because Jews continued to live in Israel, their homeland, for
millennia, being the only surviving natives of the land, very much
like Native American Indians or Celts in Ulster. Moreover, half of
Israeli Jews are not Westerners but “Easterners” –refugees from Arab
countries where they lived for many centuries. In brief, Muslim
worldwide animosity to the “infidel” State of Israel that was
supposedly established on “Arab land,” allegedly “stolen” from the
Muslims, is based purely on Islamic religious convictions, as is
evident in Islamic sermons held every Friday in mosques worldwide.
The animosity exhibited by Western intellectuals toward the Jewish
state is, therefore, surprising indeed. Never before had contemporary
secular academicians defended a religious premise or a religion-based
political claim. These contemporary academicians, most of whom are
agnostics or atheists, seem to defend a religious dogma as if they
were medieval Christian clerics. The same “liberal” academicians
frown upon fundamentalist Christians who view Israel as God given to
the Jews. It seems as if in the view of these professors Islamic
fundamentalist dogma triumphs Christian evangelical belief.
It is hard to explain this behavior. Although many academicians and
academic institutions are being funded by oil-rich Islamic countries,
it is hard to believe that a large segment of the academic community
was bribed by Muslims to become their champions. Therefore, their
hatred of the Jewish state may be due to inherent hatred of Judaism
and Jews.
This animosity is unlikely a perpetuation of Nazi anti-Semitism or of
medieval Christian misojudaism (hatred of Jews). It might be due to
their pronounced secularism and antagonism to the Church. Because
Zionism is an intrinsic aspect of Judaism, these professors consider
it to be a manifestation of messianic clericalism, which they detest.
Paradoxically their hatred of dogmatic Christian clericalism resulted
in their support of Islamic religious dogma.
They fail to realize that Zionism, the urge of exiled Jews to return
to their homeland and live there as a sovereign nation — a feature
of Judaism for the last twenty five hundred years — is basically a
political rather than a theological premise. Zionism, unlike
messianism, does not invoke divine intervention but human
accomplishment. Zionism is therefore similar to Polish or Greek
nationalism when their countries were occupied, or to current
Kurdish, Armenian or Tibetan nationalism. It is therefore ironic that
secular academicians uphold an Islamic religious premise in their
attack on the Zionism, which is essentially a political ideology.
>From an academic standpoint, a critical approach to the legitimacy of
a state is, by itself not a bad idea. This may prevent the creation
of political entities, defined as states, which are not rooted in
distinct historical, cultural or ethnic realities. States that have
no distinct common historical, cultural or ethnic roots are
artificial political creations with intrinsic instability (e.g.,
former Yugoslavia, Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia or current Iraq
and Nigeria). On the other hand, states that are part of a large
conglomerate of small states with closely related history and culture
(language, religion) will inevitably merge into larger more stable
political units (e.g., Germany, France, Italy).
When it comes to the Jewish State of Israel, there is no dispute that
it has distinct historical and cultural roots, and yet its legitimacy
is being disputed by academician who should know history and
political science. The proposed Palestinian state, on the other hand,
so strongly advocated by the same anti-Israeli academicians,
presumably offering self-determination to Muslim Arabs who live in
Israel’s territory, is historically and culturally indistinct from
Syria, Jordan, Arabia and the Arab parts of Iraq, as well as Egypt.
All these states have been part of a single Arab empire. And they
will most likely end up as such eventually under an aggressive Muslim
Arab ruler (see Germany or Italy).
This did not happen in the last 70 years because of the competition
among local Arab dictators, each of whom has been vying for the
hegemony of the “Arab nation.” It may, however, happen in the
foreseeable future considering the political weakness of the rulers
of Jordan, Syria or Arabia.
So what is the political justification for creating another Arab
mini-state under another local Arab warlord despot (e.g., Abu Mazen)
who has even less grip of his “constituency” than the rulers of
Jordan or Syria? The only rationale for the creation of a
“legitimate” Arab mini-state of “Palestine” is to make it a tool to
eliminate the “illegitimate” state of Israel, which the Arabs have
vowed to eradicate. The PLO, the ruling party in the “Palestinian
Authority,” has been established by the Arab League in 1964 (before
the 1967 Six Days War!) with the declared purpose of eliminating the
Jewish state.
Arab propaganda has used the “oppression” of Arabs under Jewish rule
as another excuse for the elimination of that despised “occupation”
or “Arab land.” Academicians who bought this propaganda should have
been more sophisticated. In fact, according to UN statistics, the
standard of living of Arabs under Israeli rule, even in the “disputed
territories,” is significantly higher than that in most Arab
countries. It is amazing that academicians, who are expected to be
critical of information presented to them, were blinded when it came
to the Arab-Israeli conflict. This brings us back to the inherent
antipathy of academia to the Jewish state, which defies a rational
explanation.
In summary, politicians may take positions contrary to common sense
for purely shortsighted, opportunistic reasons. This is how most of
the existing Arab states in the Middle East have been created by the
European victors of WWI from parts of the Ottoman Empire in order to
prevent a large Arab political entity from being formed (“divide and
conquer”). The same politicians have prevented the formation of a
politically independent Kurdistan, a legitimate country with distinct
historical and cultural roots. However, academicians are expected to
have a broader historical perspective. Yet too many academicians seem
to support the elimination of the State of Israel by questioning its
legitimacy, advocating the creation of an artificial Arab state
designed to replace it. All this looks like flagrant politization of
academia; something that has been frowned upon by the same professors
since the days of Joseph Stalin.
Let us end with another paradox. Academicians are supposed to be the
standard bearers of truth. Truth is based in objective facts. In
historical studies archeological findings provide such facts. The
“Palestinian” Arabs are presently doing their best to destroy
archeological evidence for the pre-Islamic presence of Jews in the
Land of Israel, especially on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Yet, we
do not hear about British academicians protesting that atrocity
perpetrated by the “Palestinian Authority,” they seem to support. Nor
did these British professors boycott Arab academic institutions for
this vandalism that aims destroy historical artifacts of the culture
that imbeds foundations of Western Civilization. But the same
academicians have been trying to boycott Israeli universities whose
faculty opposes yielding to Arab religion-motivated political
demands; demands that are part of the assault on the very
civilization these professors are part of.
One cannot but wonder whether professorship is always associated with
rational thinking.