Commentary
Israel may not think that it’s fighting a religious war, but its Islamic enemies certainly think that they are.
Regardless of how many observers try to characterize the animosity between Israel and its Islamic adversaries in economic, ideological, or geopolitical terms, the enduring animating factor is militant Islamism and its mandate to wage jihad against the Jews and Israel.
That fact alone makes this violence only the latest chapter of a long religious war.
In such a tense and treacherous time, where emotions run high, it’s helpful to clarify our terms. Let’s limit “religious” to meaning one who believes in the tenets and mandates of either Islam or Judaism. By “God,” let’s distinguish Islam’s Allah and Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
What’s more, let’s agree that the proclaimed endgame of Israel’s enemies, from Iran to Hamas to Hezbollah, is the end of Israel.
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Does that sound too simplistic? Too one-sided? Too religious? It will seem to be so to some, but it also happens to be true.
Despite the attempt by the Islamists—and the leftists around the world—to frame what’s really going on right now in the Middle East as the liberation of the “Palestinians,” as if it was just about land, the conflict between Israel and its antagonistic Islamic neighbors is, at its roots, deeply religious in nature.
Secular Beginnings
But it wasn’t always the case. In fact, Palestinian nationalism and Zionism began as secular and atheist movements (respectively) for much of their past.In Israel, the religious aspect was marginalized and ignored, if not scorned, for at least the first three, if not five, decades of its existence. The truth is that Israel was founded as a secular Jewish state. Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was himself an atheist, as were his Zionist cohorts. In the immediate post-war era, Jewish socialist atheists made up Israel’s leadership and much of its population.
In the Palestinian movement, the focus wasn’t on Islam as much as it was on pan-Arabism and anti-colonialism, with European Jews only the latest colonizers to be expelled.
They have a point, but not an everlasting one.
A Checkered History With Islam
One would assume that Israel’s claim to the land is common knowledge, but after hearing so many false “truths” over the airwaves, the need for a primer is apparent.Islam itself didn’t exist until A.D. 622. Most of the lands that it conquered in North Africa and the Middle East had been Christian for several hundred years, including Syria and Lebanon. Even Jerusalem was mostly Christian when it was conquered by the Muslims in 638.
In a fit of religious triumphalism, the Dome of the Rock mosque was built on the presumed site of the Second Temple. Byzantium, the eastern leg of the Holy Roman Empire, was Christian until 1453, when Constantinople became Istanbul.
Over the centuries, the territory of Palestine has been held and ruled by many conquerors and empires, from the Romans to various Islamic caliphates, to Crusaders, Sultanates, the Ottomans, and the British.
The Abrahamic Covenant
Unlike the Palestinians, the Jews’ claim to Israel goes all the way back to the Abrahamic Covenant as described in the “Book of Genesis.” God (Yahweh) promised Abraham to make his descendants His chosen people and declared the land of Canaan, which would become Israel, as the eternal homeland of the Jews.Israel would remain a nation, with various interludes of exile, for about 2,000 years, until A.D. 70, when the Romans finally invaded and destroyed the Second Temple. In the process, the Roman army murdered about 1 million Jews, with many of the remaining either taken into slavery or scattering themselves to the far corners of the earth.
The Birth of Palestine
Those Jews that remained in Israel revolted one last time against the Romans in A.D. 135. After crushing the uprising, Roman Emperor Hadrian officially renamed Israel “Palestina,” the Latinized version of the Jews’ most-feared enemy, the Philistines. It was the Romans’ attempt to wipe Israel off the map and to rid the world of even the memory of it.Do those words sound familiar? They should; they’re the same words spoken by Israel’s enemies today, from leaders of Hamas to the mullahs in Tehran. They’re also found in Psalm 83.
It’s also quite ironic that the Philistines who attacked ancient Israel did so from Gaza, of all places, just as the Palestinians do so today. Talk about history repeating itself.
God Is a Zionist
In short, Yahweh, the God of the Jews (and Christians), is clearly a Zionist. He was a Zionist in Abraham’s day in the year 1948 Anno Mundi (after creation). He was a Zionist in A.D. 1948, the year that modern Israel was born. He fulfilled His promise to restore the nation of Israel in “one day” and to keep the Jews in Israel for ever more.Allah, however, isn’t a Zionist.
Finally, it’s no coincidence that the name “Israel” is found more than 2,200 times in the Old Testament alone, while the name “Palestine” is completely absent from both the Koran and both Testaments of the Bible. Even the Koran mentions Israel and Israelites.
Religion Returns
That said, are all members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Hezbollah, and numerous other anti-Israel, anti-Semitic groups that are strewn about the Middle East and, for that matter, American academia, devout Muslims?Of course, they’re not. But Islam provides plenty of religious cover and justification for their heinous acts of savagery.
But what of Israel? Does every Jewish Israeli believe in the God of the Old and/or New Testament?
No, they don’t. In fact, in a 2016 report by Israeli news source Haaretz, Israel is one of the least religious nations on earth. In a 2021 study, the vast majority of Jewish Israelis either don’t believe in the Bible or have spiritual-but-not-religious outlooks, neither of which can be considered religious by Biblical standards, with at least 20 percent of Israelis identifying as atheists.
But that’s changing as Israelis are becoming more religious.
Still, the Jewish history in the land and the Jews’ claim on it far surpasses all others.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
