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Academicians Questioning the Legitimacy of Israel

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  • Academicians Questioning the Legitimacy of Israel

    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.

    http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/6696.htm
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