This is Not a Foreign Land

In the wake of the Feast of Lights, Hanukkah, and mindful of the confusion and the darkness that appear to have descended upon so many of us, we would do well to take a good look at the words of Simon – the last of the Hasmonean Princes to rule Israel during the Second Temple era. In the Book of the Maccabees, Simon is quoted as saying: “It is not a foreign land that we have taken, nor have we set our rule over the property of strangers. This is the inheritance of our Forefathers, which at one time was illicitly conquered, and we, when the opportunity arose, recovered the inheritance of our Fathers.”

No doubt the Arabs’ greatest victory in recent generations has been the adoption of the concept of “occupation.” If it were only at the UN General Assembly that the automatic majority was mobilized in support of this lie; if it gained currency only among the open and the latent antisemites in Europe, or only on the college campuses of North America – that would not be so bad. We are accustomed to holding our own, and fighting back, against the greatest of odds. But from the moment that many among our own people have begun to repeat the occupation mantra – and refuse to listen to the Arabs, who regard us as occupiers throughout the Land of Israel – from that moment on, we really and truly face an existential danger. And from the moment that Ariel Sharon made use of that term to define our situation, he forfeited the right to be considered a Zionist leader in Israel.

Secular Zionism sought to rid itself of the “mysticism” of the Jewish people’s connection with its land. “The Jewish people,” the political Zionists explained, “has returned to its land because this is its historic patrimony, and everywhere in the Diaspora we are persecuted.” These two reasons could serve also the Arabs laying claim to this land – or, at a minimum, won’t interest them. Whoever does not understand where this definition of the Jewish people as an occupier in its own homeland will lead us, and thinks this definition is limited to Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District, should have been present at the Knesset debate on the proposal to draft an agreed constitution. There he could have heard the words of the representatives of Israel’s Arab community demanding national minority rights.

What are these rights that the Arab minority in the State of Israel claims for itself? For one thing, they demand that the street signs in all the country’s cities should include Arabic; they also demand an autonomous educational system; changes in our national symbols, including the replacement of our anthem, Hatikvah, which cannot represent the Arab minority; abolition of the Law of Return and its replacement by an immigration law granting quotas to Arabs and Jews for the attainment of Israeli citizenship; abolition of the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet Leyisrael); and the replacement of the Israel Land Administration by an egalitarian body.

In effect, what is demanded here is the establishment of a third entity side by side with the State of Israel and the State of Palestine. These demands were not aired, let us remember, on the Hizballah Television or Radio Hamas. These demands were heard in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, from the lips of the academic and political representatives of Israel’s Arab community and their supporters among the country’s Jews, backed up by legislative proposals put forward by Arab Members of the Knesset.

Those who advocate “two states for two peoples” fail to realize that the implementation of this slogan would lead straight to a Palestinian state in the areas of Judea-Samaria and the Gaza District and, adjacent to it, a bi-national state within the Green Line. And even this would be merely an intermediate stage until the demographic factor comes into its own within the State of Israel too. And all of this would be perfectly natural and fully justified, considering that we are “occupiers” in the Land of Israel, albeit “benevolent occupiers” eager to grant the occupied Arabs a state of their own, as well as national rights for those who did not flee the country during the War of Liberation in 1948 and are now trying to seize it from within.

When, 2,147 years ago, Jonathan the Maccabee was captured and executed by the Greek commander Tryphon, Jonathan’s brother, Simon, became the last of the Hasmonean brothers to rule Israel. Like his brothers before him, Simon faced a formidable array of enemies, from the Syrian Greeks, and the large Greek minority that had settled in Israel, to the pro-Greeks among Israel’s Jewish population – the Hellenists. Fighting for Israel’s freedom and independence, and maneuvering among all those arrayed against him, Simon was crystal-clear in formulating the nature of this war over his people’s patrimony.

Our situation today is very similar to that one. What is missing is a leader who has not forgotten this simple truth.