Israel, Israelis

Frequently Asked Questions:

• What is Israel?

• Is Israel crucial to Jewish survival and continuity?

• What other names were used to describe the land including the modern State of
Israel?

• Is Israel a democracy? Is Israel humanitarian?

• Why is Israel so cautious when is comes to peace-making, territorial

compromises, and foreign policy in general?

• Did the British ever say they supported establishing a national home in Palestine
for the Jewish People?

What is Israel?
• Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth
that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and
worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find
pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls
written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the
corner candy store.
- Charles Krauthammer - The Weekly Standard, May 11, 1998

• "Israel is the expression of the Jewish resolve to live by what is good and just for
the Jewish people and not by what finds favor in the eyes of others".
- Yosef Tekoah, From an address made in New York, April 15, 1975

Is Israel crucial to Jewish survival and continuity?

• The stakes could not be higher. It is my contention that on Israel - on its existence
and survival - hangs the very existence and survival of the Jewish people. Or, to
put the thesis in the negative, that the end of Israel means the end of the Jewish
people. They survived destruction and exile at the hands of Babylon in 586 B.C.
They survived destruction and exile at the hands of Rome in 70 A.D., and finally
in 132 A.D. They cannot survive another destruction and exile. The Third
 Commonwealth - modern Israel, born just 50 years ago - is the last.
The return to Zion is now the principal drama of Jewish history. What began as an
experiment has become the very heart of the Jewish people - its cultural, spiritual,
and psychological center, soon to become its demographic center as well. Israel is
the hinge. Upon it rest the hopes--the only hope--for Jewish continuity and
survival.
- Charles Krauthammer - The Weekly Standard, May 11, 1998

What other names were used to describe the land including the modern
State of Israel?
• Many terms for the Land exist in other languages. The English call it "Palestine",
and the Germans "Palastina", having adopted the name through the course of
generations from the Greek and Roman inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast. As
seagoing peoples, the Greeks and Romans first discovered the Land of Israel
through direct contact with its Philistine inhabitants who according to the Old
Testament (see Amos 9:7; Jeremiah 47:4; Deuteronomy 2:23), came from
Caphtor, which may probably be identified with Crete. A Pelasgian origin was
also suggested, but modern scholars believe that the Philistines, undoubtedly
immigrants, came from Crete.
During the period of Roman rule the land was divided into districts: "Palestina
Prima" in the South, "Palestina Secunda" in the central portion, and "Palestina
Tertia" in the southern part of Transjordan. The English also called the country
"the Holy Land", and the French "Terre Sainte", from the Latin "Terra Sancta".
The State of Israel issued a special medallion bearing the words "Terra Sancta"
for non-Jewish pilgrims. The English "Land of Israel" and the French "Pays
d'Israel" appear in Christian literature, and writers have called their books on the
Land by these names. Another name common among non-Jews is "the promised
land", found in Latin literature and maps of the country. The English and
Germans also use the names "land of the Bible" and "land of the Holy Scriptures".
"Das Gelobte Land" (the praiseworthy land) appears in German literature
praiseworthy for the great events which occurred during the time ancient Israel
dwelt in the homeland of the Holy Scriptures and cradle of Christianity.
In Arabic literature, the Land of Israel appears once in the Koran, as "Ard al
Makdasa" (the Holy Land) in the Islamic version of Moses' words to the people of
Israel: "Enter, my people, the Holy Land which Allah has assigned for you"
(Koran, 5, "The Table", 24).
Today the Arabs call the land "Falestin", the Arabic version of "Palestina",
appearing in ancient Jewish literature. This name is found also in medieval Arabic
literature, where it designates only a part of the Land of Israel, the southern
district and its capital Ramla, corresponding to the ancient Roman "Palestina
 Prima".
Between medieval and modern times, the Arabs also called the Land of Israel,
together with neighboring Syria, "A-Sham".
During the modern period, after the end of World War I, nationalist Arabs called
the Land, including Transjordan, "Suria a-Jenubiyeh" (southern Syria). This was
also the name of an Arabic newspaper published in Jerusalem. These nationalists
hoped to annex the Land of Israel, then under British rule, to Syria, where an
Arabic kingdom had been established. When the French, who had been promised
the mandate over all of Syria and Lebanon, put an end to this kingdom, the term
"southern Syria" disappeared.
- HMAVERIK@aol.com

Is Israel a democracy? Is Israel humanitarian?

• Democracy: No culture has shown a more profound commitment to democracy
and its values than Israel. The U.S., perhaps the most strenuous defender of
human rights, cannot claim that the danger that led to internment camps for
Japanese and to the McCarthy inquisition compares with the threat Israel has
faced in its first fifty years. Look at Israel's free, untrammeled speech and
multicultural dialogue. The Israelis are not without fault? They don't do well
enough by their own Arabs or the falashas [Ethiopian Jews]? What grade would
you give the rest of the world for its treatment of minorities and racially different
refugees?
Place in the Global Community: Israel is actually a natural leader and model for
would-be developing nations. In the early '60s, Israel had perhaps the single most
successful program of "peace corps" volunteers and professionals in the world.
How did the Israelis know all about the Entebbe airport? They built it.
- David S. Landes & Richard A. Landes, in The New Republic, September 8,
1997

Why is Israel so cautious when is comes to peace-making, territorial

compromises, and foreign policy in general?
• America is a country that has never had to conduct foreign policy as process, or
felt the need to look upon diplomacy as a continuing set of relationships. Nor has
it ever known tragedy as a people. By contrast the Jewish people have
experienced an endless series of tragedies. Moreover; Americans inhabit a
continent, while Israelis inhabit a territory which, at its widest point, is 50 miles--
from the Jordan to the sea. Reconciling the imperatives of a superpower with the
necessities of an ancient people is no simple matter.
 - HENRY A. KISSINGER, in a speech for Commentary magazine

Did the British ever say they supported establishing a national home in
Palestine for the Jewish People?
• His majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate
the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be
done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing and non-
Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews
in any other country.
- British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour in a letter to Baron Edward de
Rothchild as a representative of the Jewish people, November 2, 1917, the letter
would become known as 'The Balfour Declaration', which pledged the support of
the British government for a national home for the Jewish People in the area of
the British Mandate for Palestine.

• "[The Jordan river] will not do as Palestine's eastern boundary. Our duty as
Mandatory is to make Jewish Palestine not a struggling State but one that is
capable of a vigorous and independent national life."
- the Times of London, September 19, 1919

• "So far as the Arabs are concerned --I hope they will remember that it is we who
have established an independent Arab sovereignty of the Hedjaz. I hope they will
remember it is we who desire in Mesopotamia to prepare the way for the future of
a self-governing, autonomous Arab State, and I hope that, remembering all that,
they will not grudge that small notch -- for it is no more than that geographically,
whatever it may be historically -- that small notch in what are now Arab territories
being given to the people who for all these hundreds of years have been separated
from it."