The Promised Land

If there is any other country besides my own that I have gradually grown to respect, then it has to be Israel.
I do not have anything personal against the Palestinian muslims, in fact I support their demand for resettlement in the West Bank and the Gaza strip, but as long as it is done in a civilized manner, and not through Fidayeen suicide bombers.
But the reason why I admire the Israeli’s in particular is to see the resolve of a long suppressed and persecuted race to have a country of their own on the face of this planet.

At the heart of this struggle is the most bitterly fought for piece of land in the history of humanity – the ancient city of Jerusalem, which the Jews call the land of Zion (After Mount Zion) and which is deemed sacred by 3 prominent religions – Jews, Muslims and Christians.
Jews hold it sanctimonious as it contains the only remaining wall of the temple to Yahweh built by King David originally around 1000 BC and then destroyed through the ages by Babylonians, Greeks and lastly by Romans in 70 AD, aptly called the Wailing wall.
Muslims deem it pious as it contains the Dome of the Rock, the site from where Prophet Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven.
Christians consider it holy as it is the place where Jesus Christ spent his last days, and the location of the Church of Holy Sepulchre built around 335 AD by Constantine the great over the site where Christ was crucified and buried.

For over 2000 years, Jews dispersed the world over harboured an innate desire to reassemble all Jews in their ancient homeland, and finally have a country of their own; a desire which came to be known as the Zionist movement.
These were also the millennia of unprecedented persecution for them, starting with their mass and systematic slaughter during the Crusades. They were barred from owning land in most countries. The Roman Catholic Church forbade Christians to live among Jews.
In 1215 a law was passed in Europe forcing all Jews to wear a distinguishing badge. Later French, British and Spanish kings expelled Jews from their countries and seized their properties.
A 100,000 Jews were wiped out within a decade during the Cossack revolt in mid 19th century in Poland. It became worse after the Czars took over, as Jewish women were not allowed to live in city centres without the badge of a prostitute.
After the assassination of a Czar, the mobs butchered all Jewish communities they could find – which later came to be called Pogroms.
Of course the last nail in the coffin would be the slaughter of more than 6 million of their kind in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.

So after the 2nd world war the Jews of Palestine had just 1 objective, to demand from U.N. their own separate country and to gather the survivors of the Holocaust there.

The Britishers had ruled Palestine after defeating the Turks in the 1st World War, and just like in India, after the 2nd world war they were only too keen to relinquish the burden of their weakened empire and push off any responsibility as early as possible.
They forwarded the task of dividing Palestine to U.N. which divided it into 2 parts – Israel for Jews and Palestine for Muslims, but as soon as the British left the muslims refused to acknowledge the existence of Israel and together with the support of 7 nations of the Arab league – Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Jordan, waged war on the newly formed Israel.
How the Israeli’s gathered people to fight that war – all able bodied girls, boys, men and women, how they trained them, how they gathered weapons and cash for their newly formed country, and how they eventually won, is a miraculous tale of human courage under fire.

Being a tiny island surrounded on all sides by hostile countries, they have since been attacked again and again, but unfortunately for the Palestinians, it has only resulted in giving Israel the moral right in international opinion to fight back to defend themselves, and in the process capture more land from the Palestinians – 3 times the originally allocated land after the 6 day war in 1967.
The peace process had gained momentum under Aerial Sharon, wherein he had initiated removal of his Jews from West Bank and Gaza strip, even though amidst protests from the hardliner division of his own community.
That process is now under peril like never before, with the terrorist group Hamas having been elected to power in Palestine, a group whose only claim to fame is Fidayeen attacks and bombings in public places, and whose charter itself calls for the complete annihilation of Israel.
Like Kashmir, I hope against hope that a final solution to this terrible conflict is reached, and no more blood is spilled on that ‘holy land’.

( I might write about 2 famous Israeli operations sometime later – the main reason I thought of writing this in the first place)