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Michael Anbar , PhD, is a professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Buffalo. Formerly a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, he is the author of , published by iUniverse.
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By Michael Anbar
August 12, 2002
I have a serious problem with President Bush's insistence on Arab recognition of "Israel's right to exist." This has also been the "carrot" offered by the Saudis to Israel at Beirut (later they watered it down to "normalizing relations" with the Jewish state, whatever this means). Since the Jewish Zionist State of Israel does exist, it matters very little whether its existence is recognized or not recognized by the Arabs. The current Arab position is somewhat analogous to that of the United States in the pre-Nixon era -- not recognizing the right of communist China to exist.
The State of Israel has regained sovereignty over the Land of Israel, the historic homeland of the Jewish people. It can be readily documented that Jews lived continuously in the Land of Israel for more than 3,300 years, even if they lost their sovereignty between 71 and 1948 AD. The Arab claim that the Jews abandoned their homeland two thousand years ago is a flagrant lie. Some Arabs, including Yasser Arafat, audaciously have claimed that the presence of Jews in their homeland even 2000 years ago is just a Zionist myth.
An objective historical analysis shows that also after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD and even after the devastating Bar Kochba revolt in 132 - 135 AD, there has been a continuous extensive Jewish intellectual activity in the Land of Israel. This activity has been manifested by the composition of the most important books in Rabbinic Judaism, taking place in the Jewish homeland. These include the Mishnah (1st to 3rd Century), the Talmud (the "Jerusalem" version, 3rd to 5th Century), the Tosephtah (additions to the Talmud, 5th to 7th Century), the Zohar (the main exposition of the Kabbalists, 13th Century), the "Shulkhan Arukh" (the famous authoritative compilation of rules of social and religious daily behavior of Rabbinical Judaism, 16th Century), plus many hundreds of Jewish religious and philosophical monographs (11th through 19th Centuries).
Such extensive intellectual activity required the contributions of thousands of Jewish scholars over the last two millennia. The intellectual activity of those scholars required a social and economic infrastructure of scores of non-scholar Jews for every Jewish scholar. In brief, history tells us that with the exception of a short period in the 7th and 8th Centuries, following the Arab bloody conquest of the Land of Israel, Jewish intellectual activity flourished in the homeland of the Jewish people, as did extensive Jewish presence. Large Jewish populations existed over the years in many urban centers, notably in Tiberias, Safed, Hebron and Jerusalem. The hiatus in Jewish intellectual activity in the Land of Israel following the Arab conquest refutes another claim of Arab BIG LIE propaganda - that Arabs were historically friendly to Jews until recently, when "European Zionist colonialists" showed up.
In brief, the Land of Israel has been truly an "occupied territory" - occupied by barbarians Arab invaders, similarly to the occupation of Italy by barbarian Germanic invaders. However, unlike the latter, the Arabs have not assimilated the prevailing Judeo-Christian culture but maintained their new militant xenophobic culture up to date.
Because of demographic considerations, the State of Israel is ready to recognize a non-militant, democratic new Arab state within the boundaries of the Land of Israel. In other words, under conditions articulated by President Bush, the State of Israel, in full agreement with the U.S., is ready to recognize the right of a new Arab state to exist, and not vice versa. Moreover, any meaningful peace agreement must include the recognition by the entire Arab world that the State of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people. Any other recognition, such as the "right to exist" might be revoked overnight.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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