Why Do the Arabs Oppose Recognizing a Jewish State?

Prime Minister Netanyahu suggested to US  secretary of state John Kerry that the framework he was drawing up for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority include Palestinian Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Kerry did intend to include this Israeli proposal but since has backed away from it in view of Arab opposition, first of all from Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah and Palestinian Authority. Just today, the Arab League voted its support for Abbas' position.

One of the justifications for this opposition that apologists for the PA/PLO present is that by Israel being a Jewish state, the civil rights of Arab citizens of Israel would be adversely affected. However, all states belonging to the Arab League define themselves as Arab states. All Arab League member states but Lebanon define themselves constitutionally as Islamic states in one way or another. This does not stop them from opposing Israel being defined as a Jewish national state. The arguments against Israel as a Jewish state could logically be applied to Arab and Islamic states, and with more justification, since we have the benefit of hindsight to know just how non-Arabs and non-Muslims have been treated in Arab states.

The explanation for the Arab position lies, I believe, in the traditional Arab-Muslim view of Jews as an inferior dhimmi people, a millet [see below] devoid of national rights, and only entitled to live if they pay a yearly head tax on dhimmis called the jizya. The dhimma system applied to all non-Muslims who were subjects of the Islamic state, with individual exceptions. Within this system, the Jews were at the bottom of the barrel, at least in the Fertile Crescent  countries, including the Levant, where the Jews' status was inferior to that of their fellow dhimmis, the Christians.

Whereas the Quran and medieval Arab historiography, such as the writings of Ibn Khaldun, recognize the Jews as a nation or people, the entrenched Islamic view of Jews as an evil, inferior contemptible millet is now dominant. Moreover, in fact, in practice, that was the actual status of Jews in the Arab-Muslim countries for centuries. Even today in the 21st century Muslims believe that Jews do not deserve the dignity of having a national state of their own, the Quran and the old Arab historians notwithstanding.

This contemptuous view of Jews is clearly stated by the PLO in its charter. Article 20, already denies that the Jews are a people, claiming that they are merely a "religious" group. Jewish tradition holds that the Jews are both a people and a  religious group. Here is the relevant text of Art. 20:

"The claim of historical or religious ties between Jews and Palestine does not tally with historical realities nor with the constituents of statehood in their true sense. Judaism in its character as a religion is not a nationality with an independent existence. Likewise the Jews are not one people with an independent identity. They are rather citizens of the states to which they belong."

Note the contempt for Jews which oozes from this text. The history of Israelite/Jewish kingdoms in the country, as well as of the Roman province of Judea, is denied. The setting of much of the Hebrew Bible lies in the Land Of Israel which the PLO denies in a way reminiscent of Holocaust denial. Further, Jews do not have "the constituents of statehood in their true sense." Just by the way, the Nazis and other German Judeophobes claimed that the Jews were not capable of being a "state-forming nation." [see Francis R  Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press 1985)].

For texts of the PLO charter and the  Hamas charter, see here.
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Addition: in ancient Greek Jews were sometimes referred to as Ethnous Ioudaion, Jewish nation.
millet -- Turkish word referring to a recognized, organized religio-ethnic community within the Ottoman Empire [from the Arabic word milla or millatun, meaning originally people or nation but in Turkish usage referring specifically to the legally inferior communities of dhimmis (zimmis in Turkish), who were in turn the non-Muslim subjects of the Islamic states]. The millet was charged with keeping order among its members and often charged with collecting the jizya tax from them, and the millet enjoyed a certain religious autonomy and authority over its members, provided that Islamic restrictions on dhimmis were not violated. The traditional millets were the Armenians, Ermeni millet, like the Jews a religio-ethnic community, the Jews, a millet within the Ottoman Empire and also including Samaritans defined as Jews in Muslim tradition; as well as Greek Orthodox Christians, who were called I believe Rumi millet. The Greek Orthodox millet included Arabic-speaking Christians as well as other Eastern Orthodox Christians, such as Vlakhs [the old name for Rumanians], Bulgars, Serbs, etc. In the 19th century up to 1914, eleven millets were added to the original three, with the new millets representing ethnic subdivisions of the Greek Orthodox.There were no doubt nuances of the law in effect in different places.

Inventing a History for a "palestinian people" that never existed in history

David Bukay describes and explains the PLO/PA strategy of erasing the Jews, erasing Israel, from the history of the Land of Israel and replacing them with a concocted "palestinian history."

Bukay writes:
"Rewriting the history of the Land of Israel by erasing Jewish history and replacing it with a fabricated Palestinian history is a central goal of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and something that the early generations of Palestinian leaders, including the notorious Hajj Amin Husseini, who led the Palestinian Arabs to their 1948 defeat, dared not do. This fictitious history, which ignores all historical documentation and established historical methods, is based on systematic distortions of both ancient and modern history with the aim of denying Israel's right to exist. . . ."

Click on link for rest of article:
Founding National Myths

I comment on some of the points that Bukay makes:

1-- The PLO/PA claims that the Canaanites were Arabs. This lie is also found in certain anti-Zionist British writers active years before the rise of the State of Israel in 1948. In fact, far from speaking Arabic, the Canaanites spoke a language extremely close to Hebrew. Indeed, linguists sometimes consider Hebrew as a Canaanite dialect. Otherwise, linguists say that Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite family of languages. The Prophet Isaiah calls the language spoken by the Jews to be Canaanite [Isa. 19:18]. Josephus Flavius says that the Jews speak a Phoenician tongue [Against Apion]. But the Phoenicians were of course Canaanites too, not Arabs. Besides Hebrew and Phoenician, the Canaanite family of languages encompassed Ammonite, Moabite, and Edomite. Our post here shows some of the linguistic similarities between Hebrew and Ammonite and Moabite.

2- Bukay refers to verses in the Quran that agree with Jewish/Israelite rightful ownership of the Land of Israel, called Holy Land and other names in the Quran. See here.

3- Jund Filastin which Bukay mentions was the name of a military district set up by the Arab conquerors in the seventh century. Its borders were about the same as those of Palaestina Prima, a Late Roman subdivision of the country which encompassed, roughly speaking, the south of the country, up to about the middle of Samaria and on the coast reaching up to near Haifa. Jund Filastin did not include the Galilee or the Golan Heights or northern Samaria which the Romans had, grosso modo, called Palaestina Secunda whereas the Arabs included those areas within Jund Urdunn, the Jordan military district.

4- On the Arab denial of Jewish history also see the manic efforts of Nadia Abu el-Haj here & here. When I visited the old Shim`on haTsadiq Quarter in Jerusalem, I ran into the leader of an Arab protest there, a Mr Hijazi, who likewise denied the Jewish history of that area of Jerusalem. The name Hijazi by the way refers to the Hijaz, the northwestern region of Arabia where Mecca and Medina are located. This indicates that Mr Hijazi's forefathers were migrants to the Land of Israel.

5- The ancient Jews did not call the Land of Israel "palestine," nor did the Romans call it that. The Romans called the whole country Judea [IVDAEA] until the Jewish defeat in the Bar Kokhba war in 135 CE, whereas the Jews called the country the Land of Israel. The Emperor Hadrian introduced "palestine" as the new name for the land of the defeated Jews. More exactly Hadrian called the land "Syria Palaestina" [= palestinian Syria; Palaestina is an adjective] as if it were to be considered from then on a mere section of Syria. Even after the Romans under Hadrian had officially changed the name of the country, the Jews continued to call it the Land of Israel.

6- The Arab historian and sociologist Ibn Khaldun confirms that the Land of Israel was Jewish and ruled by Jews. See here.

UNESCO Presented Ancient Israeli Mosaics -- Once Upon a Time

UNESCO was not always as hostile to Israel as it is now. This UN body, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, was once not as corrupt as it is today. As recently as 1965, UNESCO published --together with the French publisher Flammarion-- the book Israeli Byzantine Mosaics [French title: "Mosaiques Byzantines Israeliennes", by Ernst Kitzinger (Paris: Flammarion 1965). At that time, UNESCO wanted to promote art to the masses. So they published, with Flammarion, a series called Great Art in Pocket Editions [Grand Art en Editions de Poche]. Israeli Byzantine Mosaics was part of that series. I bought it at the UN building in New York in those days. As I understand, books in the series were also published in English and maybe other languages besides French.

The mosaic was a highly developed art form in the Byzantine period preceding the Arab-Muslim conquests. It did not die off in the East --including Israel-- immediately after the conquest but it died out gradually, slowly, as did other features of civilization. Many more mosaics from that period have been found in Israel since Kitzinger's book was put out by UNESCO. Some of the mosaics are Jewish, as at Beyt Alpha and Tsipori [Sepphoris], others are Christian and pagan [early in Byzantine times]. Yet the techniques and workmanship are strikingly similar, indicating that the same workshop or workshops served Jews, Samaritans, Christians and pagans.

Here are two of the Jewish mosaics:

Huldah [location]: Mosaic floor with seven-branched menorah [candelabrum] from the Holy Temple in Jerusalem plus other Jewish ritual objects. These latter are, from right to left, a shofar [ram's horn used on the Rosh haShanah holiday]; an incense shovel as used in the Temple; an etrog [citron in English], a citrus fruit used on the Sukkot holiday; and what appears to be a lulav, a palm frond, also used on the Sukkot holiday. The Greek inscription says "Praise for the People." The mosaic is dated to the 6th century.

Beth Alpha [location -- Beyt Alfa בית אלפא]: Mosaic floor. The Binding of Isaac was a favorite Jewish theme in that historical period, since it is the story of the Jews' forefather being saved from death at the last moment by God. This theme appears in a number of Jewish mosaics from the Byzantine period which followed --as we know-- the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE [Hurban haBayit] by Roman legions and their auxiliary forces [including Arabs], and the exclusion of Jews from Jerusalem by Emperor Hadrian in 135 CE. The names Abraham [אברהם] and Yits'haq [יצחק = Isaac] written in Hebrew appear over the heads of those two persons, along with the Hebrew words Al Tishlahh [אל תשלח]. These words mean: "Do not send", part of the words of God's angel to Abraham in Genesis 22:12 , Biblical reading portion: Vayera. The Biblical verse is: Don't send your hand against the boy and don't do anything to him. A modern Jewish translation gives this as: Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him [The New Jewish Publication Society translation; Philadelphia: JPS 1985]. This mosaic too is dated to the 6th century.

The general importance of the Jewish mosaics is that they refute the present claim of the "Palestine Liberation Organization" and its offshoot, the "Palestinian Authority" that there is no Jewish history in the Land of Israel, the country that they now call "Palestine," the name imposed on the country by the Emperor Hadrian after he had suppressed the Jewish revolt led by Bar Kokhba, 132-135 CE. Note that two languages appear in the inscriptions on these mosaics, Hebrew and Greek. Arabic does not appear. The PLO's denial of Jewish history in the country is made in the PLO charter, Article 20:

The claim of historical or religious ties between the Jews and Palestine does not tally with historical realities nor with the constituents of statehood in their true sense. [PLO Charter, article 20]

The fact that photos of these mosaics were published by UNESCO is doubly important since UNESCO in recent decades has gone along with the lies of the PLO/PA, the Arab states, and the OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference]. The OIC dominates UNESCO as it does the UN "human rights council" and the UN generally, with 56 or so UN member states belonging to it, more than a quarter of all UN member states. Recently, the UNESCO has admitted "palestine" as a member although Arab domination of the country goes back only to the Arab conquest, completed in 640 CE.

The PLO/PA intends to use UNESCO to impose its false version of history and to assert Muslim domination over Jewish holy places and historic sites in the country which have long been controlled by Muslims [such as the Temple Mount and the Tomb of the Patriarchs/Cave of Machpelah in Hebron]. More recently, in the 1990s, the PLO/PA has claimed Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem and Joseph's Tomb in Sh'khem [Nablus] as Muslim holy places, although in the past Rachel's Tomb was seen as a Jewish shrine and Joseph's Tomb was shared by Jews, Samaritans, Christians and Muslims.

Judea the Roman & Greek Name for Israel -- "palestine" a Later Imperialist Imposition

Judea was the Roman name for the Land of Israel, for all of it, including Samaria, the Galilee, the Golan Heights and the east bank of the Jordan River. This is often forgotten today in the face of the massive propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the world that there was a historical "palestinian people" with an ancient history living in a land that was --supposedly-- always called "palestine." We know the ancient history of the Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman periods not only from Jewish sources --which the Judeophobes prefer to view as suspect-- but also, and even more so, from Roman and Greek sources. These include Hecataeus [Hekataios] of Abdera, Varro, Alexander Polyhistor, Livy, Suetonius, Tacitus, Plutarch, Cicero, Pliny the Elder, Diodorus, Polybius, Strabo, Ptolemy, and so on. Most or nearly all of the extant writings of these authors concerning Jews are conveniently gathered in Menahem Stern's Greek and Latin authors on Jews and Judaism (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences 1974-). Otherwise, they are also found scattered among many ancient and later manuscripts, print publications and translations. Of course, the falsifiers habitually overlook these writings, while discrediting ancient Jewish writings. After all, it would not do to have non-Jewish authors confirming what the Jews say. So they are overlooked, as said.

We have already presented documentation that the official Roman name of the Land of Israel was Judea. This place name was actually written IVDAEA in Latin and Ioudaia in Greek [as transcribed into the Latin alphabet]. We see this name on coins & military diplomas and in manuscripts, etc. The Roman Empire used the terms Iudaea and Provincia Iudaea until it defeated the Jews in the Bar Kokhba Revolt 132-135 CE. It was only after victory in that war that Emperor Hadrian imposed the name "Syria Palaestina" on the country, replacing the name Judea, as a punishment for the Jews, by renaming their very homeland so that it would no longer seem to be theirs. This may have given a certain psychological satisfaction to some of the Roman imperialists, as if their Jewish enemies had been wiped out with the name of their country.

Of course, despite today's pervasive propaganda in favor of "palestine" and "palestinian", the real scholars are aware of the true historical names in use in ancient times. Elsa Laurenzi, a historian and specialist in classical archeology at the La Sapienza University in Rome, supplies concise definitions of relevant terms. Now we will present her definition of Iudaei; in another post we will present her definition of "palestine":

Iudaei
The name Iudaei identifies the people of Israel in the Latin sources, both literary and legal. It derives from the place name [toponym] of their place of origin, Iudaea, and indicates a double identification, religious and ethnic. Its extensive spread is attested by the very permanence of the term "giudeo" [= Jew] in the Roman dialect [of Italian]. Only starting with the 6th century, with the issue of the Novelle [new laws] of Emperor Justinian, was the synonym Hebraei [Hebrews] established, which remained rare however up to Medieval Latin.

Iudaei
Il nome Iudaei identifica il popolo di Israele nelle fonti latine, tanto letterarie quanto legali; deriva dal toponimo del luogo di provenienza, la Iudaea, ed indica una doppia identificazione, religiosa ed etnica; la sua diffusione e` testimoniata dalla stessa permanenza del termine "giudeo" nel dialetto romanesco. Solo a partire dal VI secolo, con l'emanazione delle Novelle del'Imperatore Giustiniano, si afferma il sinonimo Hebraei, che rimane comunque raro fino al latino medievale. [Elsa Laurenzi, Le Catacombe ebraiche (Roma: Gangemi 2011), p 12]

Elsa Laurenzi points out that in the Roman mind, the Jews were named after their country, Judea. She adds that Emperor Justinian introduced the term Hebrews as the official name for the Jews, although --I would add-- it had been used earlier by Pausanias and others. It is interesting that in both Italian and Russian Hebrew is used today as the proper name for Jew, of course in forms specific to each language: Ebreo in Italian and Yevrey in Russian.

Did the Philosopher Theophrastos Observe Jewish Evening Prayers?

The philosopher Theophrastos [or Theophrastus] was the leading pupil of Aristotle. Upon his teacher's death, Theophrastos became the leader of the Peripatetic School. Like his teacher, Theophrastos had wide interests and wide knowledge. Among other things, he took an interest in different peoples, cultures and religions. Two other pupils of Aristotle, Clearchos of Soli and Megasthenes, also discuss the Jews in their writings that have come down to us. Writing about Jewish worship, Theophrastos first identifies them ethnically and geographically as part of the Syrians:

. . . Theophrastos says, the Syrians, of whom the Jews constitute a part, . . . [conduct sacrifices]

"Syrians" refers to the Semitic speaking peoples at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. The name "Syria" originally applied to the area around Tyre [Tsor in modern Hebrew, Sour in Arabic], the great ancient Phoenician trading city. Greeks broadened the application of "Syria" to the whole region, encompassing the Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Syria of today.

Theophrastos then went on to what he considered significant in Jewish worship:

During this whole time [of their worship], being a nation of philosophers, they [the Jews] converse with each other about the deity, and at night-time they make observations of the stars, gazing at them and calling on God by prayer. . .

Let's now look at some blessings that come near the beginning of the Jewish evening prayers:

Blessed art Thou. . . Who gathers the dusk by His word, opens the gates [of heaven] in wisdom, and changes the times and causes the seasons to follow one another by reason, and arranges the stars in their constellations in the sky according to His will, He is the Creator of day and night, [Who] rolls away light before darkness and darkness before light, and moves day away and brings night, and distinguishes between day and night . . . Blessed art Thou O Lord Who gathers the dusk.

. . . Thou hast taught us Law [= Torah] and commandments, statutes and judgments. Therefore, O Lord. . . when we lie down and when we rise up we shall discuss Thy statutes; we shall rejoice in the words of Thy Law [= Torah] and in Thy commandments forever. . . We will ponder them day and night. . .

Theophrastos wrote that the Jews are a nation of philosophers who discuss God and at night observe the stars. The evening blessings quoted show that the ancient Jews observed the stars and related natural phenomena at night and that they discussed and pondered God's laws and commandments day and night.

It is reasonable to conclude that Theophrastos may very well have observed the Jewish evening prayers at first hand or have heard reports from others who had observed them. In his lifetime, Alexander of Macedon had conquered Greece and other lands from northwestern India to Egypt, including the Land of Israel. These conquests increased the already existing contacts between many cultures and peoples of the ancient East and the Mediterranean Sea.Theophrastos' contemporary, Clearchos of Soli, another pupil of Aristotle, wrote that their teacher knew about the Jews and had had a discussion with a learned Jew years before Alexander's conquests. Clearchos' report demonstrates that ancient Greeks had some knowledge about the Jews as well as contact with them. This would have given Theophrastos an opportunity to know and observe Jews perhaps before Alexander's conquests.

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SOURCES
Quotes from Theophrastos based on Menahem Stern, ed., Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, vol. I (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1974), p 10. I have made some changes in the translation. The Greek word translated here as "nation" is genos, also translated as "race" or "origin."

Quotes from the evening prayers based on the Hebrew text in Simeon Singer (translator), The Standard Prayer Book (New York: Bloch Publishing 1954), pp 130-131. The translation is mainly my own with help from Singer's translation.