Alternative Insight

Israel's Nation State Law Transforms Sovereign States into Tribal Governances
The Middle East crisis is now a more intensified international challenge


Read it carefully - Israel's Nation State Law has not reinforced a nation state; it has established a privileged Jewish community, governed by communal administration, with an extension to Jews in other nations, who can align themselves with Israeli society. Israel has become an atavistic revival to a tribal form of governance, where borders and boundaries are not fixed. It is as if the mythical Joshua, leader of the Biblical Conquest, is brought to life and, with sword and Lord, clears the land for the chosen people.

Based on misconceptions, the Nation State Law reveals Israel as a deliberate deception. The world has been insufficiently alert to this phenomena and to the contrived manner by which it became formulated. Israel never established an Israeli nationality and. instead, gave its citizens unique nationalities, one of which is a Jewish nationality. The Nation State Law now allows all Jews in the world to be part of a Jewish nation without having Israeli citizenship. Due to its grievous nature, the Nation State Law may be counterproductive, soliciting challenges from Jewish groups and governments that sense the harm the Law can do to them. Opposing the transformed sovereignty requires transformation of thought, vision, and strategy.

The misconceptions that encouraged the Nation State Law are apparent in its articles, which have been fabricated from spurious history.

Article 1A - The land of Israel is the historic national home of the Jewish people.
Ancient Israel was home to ancient Jews. The area that is now Israel was not the ancient home of modern Jews. When ethnicities speak of an ancient home, they speak, such as from the voices of Native Americans, of caring for the land or for their hunting grounds, for attachment to a soil that nourished them, and with intimate knowledge of ancestors. They may look back at a recognized civilization that gave the world new advances in technology, culture, warfare, administration, or other disciplines, and left identifiable physical traces that excite mankind. Modern Jews have no attachment to a soil, no memories of an advanced civilization, no honest attachment to an ancient land, and do not have intimate knowledge of ancestors.

 

Historical evidence shows that, after the ancient Hebrews, due to conquest and subjugation, faded from history, many of the later Jews were not attached to the land and did not consider it a national home -- just the opposite -- a large number of the later Jews preferred to remain in the land of exile, Babylonia. Jews moved throughout the Roman Empire, populating Alexandria, Rome, Cyrenaica, Salonika, Cyprus, and other places. From the time of the Maccabean revolt of the mid-2nd century B.C. to the Bar Kokhba revolt of the 2nd century A.D., some of whose centuries included the reign of the Hasmoneans, a sizable Jewish exodus to Mesopotamia and Persia and throughout the Roman Empire occurred. Freed from a pastoral life, dry conditions, and restricted economies, new communities of Mesopotamian Jews, knowledgeable and worldly, appeared in the Fertile Crescent. That region, which housed the great Jewish academies of Surah, Pumbadita, and Nehardea, best expressed the legacy and heritage of modern Judaism. In The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492, winner of the 2012 National Jewish Book Award in Scholarship, by Maristella Botticini, Zvi Eckstein, Princeton University press, 2012, the authors claim that "Judaism reached its Golden Age in 800 -1200 A.D. During that time, Mesopotamia and Persia contained 75% of world Jewry with the rest in North Africa and Western Europe."

If, "The land of Israel is the historic national home of the Jewish people," why did only relatively few Jews of the succeeding generations that lived in the Ottoman Empire, migrate to that land? Why, after the 19th century emancipation movements liberated western and middle European Jews, did these Jews prefer to integrate into European society, and why did the mass of Russian Jews not consider Zionism as a relief for their difficulties. Between 1881 and 1914, 2.5 million Jews migrated from Russia -- 1.7 million to America, 500,000 to Western Europe, almost 300,000 to other nations, and only 30,000 - 50,000 to Palestine (ED: 15,000 returned to Russia). By their actions, the Jews rejected the Levant as a "national home."

Israel government use of Biblical references to gain support for a Jewish attachment to the area, intensifies the misconceptions. History and archaeology do not support the Biblical narrative before 800 B.C.

The Exodus and lack of proof of its occurrence
Although the ancient Egyptians kept meticulous records, no manuscripts, drawings, or documents describe Hebrew slaves in Egypt or an exodus.

Did Joshua assault Jericho?
Archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, in her book Digging up Jericho: The Results of the Jericho Excavations, 1952-1956, Praeger, New York, estimated the city was destroyed before 1550 B.C., 150 years prior to Joshua's supposed arrival, and remained dormant until the 11th century B.C. Radiocarbon tests by Hendrink J. Burns, Tell es-Sultan (Jericho): Radiocarbon results of short-lived cereal and multiyear charcoal samples from the end of the middle Bronze age, Jacob Blaustein, Institute for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, confirmed Ms. Kenyon's conclusions. If Joshua did not conquer Jericho, was there any conquest?

Rebuttal to Biblical history
Recognized Tel Aviv University archaeologists, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, who documented their explorations in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, Simon & Schuster, 2002, provide a definitive rebuttal to Biblical history. Their archaeological diggings demonstrated that "the Israelites were Canaanites who developed into a distinct culture. Recent surveys of long-term settlement patterns in the Israelite heartlands show no sign of violent invasion or even peaceful infiltration, but rather a sudden demographic transformation about 1200 BCE in which villages appear."

Finkelstein and Silberman continue with discoveries, which "suggest that Jerusalem was sparsely populated and only a village during the times of David and of Solomon. During the time of Solomon, the northern kingdom of Israel had an insignificant existence, too poor to be able to pay for a vast army, and with too little bureaucracy to be able to administer a kingdom, certainly not an empire." It was not until the eighth century B.C., 200 years after David, that Jerusalem began to grow.

A constant drumming of public relations and historical misconceptions have made it seem as if the more than one thousand years of lack of control and sizable physical presence by Jews in the Levant did not occur. Today is portrayed as only a short interval from the 2700-year-old reign of ancient King Hezekiah. Centuries of Christian and Crusader rule and more than one thousand years of Muslim rule and their tremendous constructions and creations in Jerusalem are downplayed. The Christian and Muslim everything become nothing, and a minor Hebrew something becomes everything. Myth replaces reality. Ethereal spirituality replaces physical presence.

The Holy Basin contains well-marked Christian and Muslim institutions and holy places that have had historical placement for more than a millennium -- Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Al Asqua Mosque, Dome of the Rock and its Mosque of Omar. Some remains of Jewish dwellings, burial grounds and ritual baths can be found, but few, if any, major Jewish monuments, buildings or institutions from the Biblical era exist within the "Old City" of today's Jerusalem. The oft-cited Western Wall is the supporting wall for Herod's platform and is not directly related to the Second Temple. According to historian Karen Armstrong, in her book Jerusalem, Ballantine Books, April 29, 1997, Jews did not pray at the Western Wall until the Mamelukes in the 15th century allowed them to move their congregations from a dangerous Mount of Olives and pray daily at the Wall. At that time, she estimates that there may have been no more than 70 Jewish families in Jerusalem. Have seventy Jewish families determined the "holiest site" of the Jews? No remains of the Temple have been located.

Myths have been portrayed as reality and that portrayal is incorrect.

Are Jews a People?
A people is "a body of persons that are united by a common culture, tradition, or sense of kinship, that typically have common language, institutions, and beliefs, and that often constitute a politically organized group."

Although modern day Jews have some identifiable characteristics and affinity with one another, they do not share the characteristics that define a people -- no common language, no common culture, no common values. Contemporary Jews have languages and cultures coincident with the nation they inhabit. Atheist, Reform, Constructionist, Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews have different traditions, different values, and entirely different cultural expressions. Because the religion is small in numbers and a severe minority in all nations, Jews, who practice Judaism, sense a kinship with other Jews. Due to the several denominations, the kinship is loose and sometimes antagonistic.

The Mizrahi who came to Israel were Arabs; the Ashkenazi were western; the Falasha were Ethiopians, and the Yemenites were from the Arabian Peninsula. Israel replaced the differing languages, dialects, music, cultures, and heritage of these ethnicities with unique and uniform characteristics, destroyed each community and created a new people. Accompanying the destruction of each community was the destruction of centuries old Jewish history and life in Tunisia, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt.

Most Jews ascribe to a common form of Judaism, that which achieved its modern status in Mesopotamia during the 5th century A.D. At that time, in the Persian Parthian and Sassanian Empires (248 B.C. to 641 A.D), Jewish scribes codified the oral and written laws and produced the Babylonian Talmud, which became the central text of Rabbinic Judaism, and the basis for a Jewish law. If the Jewish people had a defined heritage (not home), it was in Mesopotamia, and, therefore the Israelis are in the Diaspora.

Article 4A -The state language is Hebrew.
Fierce arguments in the linguistics community debate the Hebrew spoken by Israelis -- if it is directly related to Old Hebrew, defiles the liturgical Hebrew of the Bible, can be considered a new language, or should be described as Israeli Hebrew.

During the early Zionist settlements, a spoken Hebrew language did not exist. Russian, Polish, English, Yiddish, and Arabic were major languages of Jews throughout the word. Because (1) the major Jewish population resided in the United States,(2) the Sephardim spoke Arabic, (3) Palestinians were sure to inhabit Israel, and (4) Israel was located in an Arabic speaking region, it seemed practical and sensible to have English and Arabic as major languages in Israel. However, in order to create a national people with a unique identity, the Zionists wanted a new language that fostered an image of the nation being a continuation of the Hebrew kingdoms. The subtlety of this arrangement, whereby Arabic would eventually be excluded and identification of present Israel with ancient Israel would be strengthened, passed unnoticed.

There was one Hebrew, and, because it became a dead language, it is now called Old Hebrew. From http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/language_dead.html

Strictly speaking, classical biblical Hebrew is a dead language. It is as dead as Akkadian, Ugaritic, Sumerian, or koine (dialect) Greek. We are dealing with a fixed set of texts, not the Hebrew spoken in the nation of Israel today. Israeli Hebrew has significant differences from biblical Hebrew.

The Hebrew that emerged from "Old Hebrew," was actually a language of those Jewish people who took stage after the demise of the Hebrews and the 6th century B.C. exile of some of the Israelites to Babylonia. Aramaic became the spoken language of the new Jews and the Aramaic square letters became the alphabet of what was called Hebrew, but should more correctly be termed Jewish. This notation on the language tree appears in Israel Museum of the Lands of the Bible and on other language trees.At https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-why-hebrew-should-be-called-jewish-1.5316745

At this point we have to point out that the alphabet we call Hebrew today is, strictly speaking, not Hebrew at all. About the end of the sixth century BCE the Hebrew language discarded the ancient Hebrew letters and adopted Aramaic ones. When Zionism warmed up to the idea of speaking Hebrew, the idea was wrapped into a heroic story of an ancient language resurrected from the dead. The truth was that even if Hebrew was not spoken by all, the alphabet -- that written-backwards alphabet with odd looking letters, each representing a consonant, without vowels -- was known to all Jews. Perhaps the alphabet that the Hebrew language uses today, which is in fact Aramaic, should really be called Jewish.

Is Modern Hebrew a new language? Reshef, Yael. Revival of Hebrew: Grammatical Structure and Lexicon, Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics. (2013).

While Modern Hebrew is largely based on Mishnaic and Biblical Hebrew as well as Sephardi and Ashkenazi liturgical and literary tradition from the Medieval and Haskalah (18th century Jewish enlightenment) eras and retains its Semitic character in its morphology and in much of its syntax, the consensus among scholars is that Modern Hebrew represents a fundamentally new linguistic system, not directly continuing any previous linguistic state, being a koine language (dialect) of the same language, based on historical layers of Hebrew, as well as incorporating foreign elements, mainly those introduced during the most critical revival period between 1880 and 1920, as well as new elements created by speakers through natural linguistic evolution.

What should the language be called? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Hebrew

The term "Modern Hebrew" has been described as "somewhat problematic" as it implies unambiguous periodization from  Biblical Hebrew. Halim Rosen supported the now widely used term "Israeli Hebrew" on the basis that it "represented the non-chronological nature of Hebrew.

Rabbi Yosef Yadid Halevi (1867-1930), a prominent Sephardi rabbi in Palestine, summed up orthodox attitudes to Israeli Hebrew. "Hebrew is being used as a tool to build a new Jewish identity detached from the Torah and commandments. They (the Zionists) believe that in order to have the label 'Yeudi' it is sufficient to speak Hebrew and to be a national Jew, with-out religion."

By establishing a new linguistic system, the Zionists demonstrated that the Jews were not a people. Using Hebrew as its foundation is a ruse to fool future generations into believing the Israelis had a common and long established thread to the ancient Hebrews and the land they inhabited.

Article 6A - The state shall foster the well being of the Jewish people in trouble or in captivity due to the fact of their Jewishness or their citizenship.
World War II ignited when the Nazis extended the concept of being German to nationals in other nations and acted to defend the interests of these "Germans." Boundary changes from several wars had displaced many of these Germans. Jews are not displaced from a Jewish national state; they were citizens of other nations before establishment of an Israeli state, which has Israeli citizens but no Israeli nationality. International authorities must reject a concept of a state with an extended people.

The wording of this article in the Law should be troublesome to all nations. It can be interpreted as meaning that Israel will interfere in other nations in order to protect its extended nationals. Many nations construct religious, educational, and cultural institutions in foreign nations to preserve the culture of their citizens who have migrated to other nations. This is not the same as the thrust of Israel National Law -- Israel is not fostering the well being of citizens who have migrated; it is fostering the well being of citizens of other nations who never had Israel citizenship.

Article 6B - The state shall act in the Diaspora to preserve the affinity between the state and the Jewish people.
The concept of a Jewish people is a construct and not a reality. Why is Israel doing this and who asked them? Those who want to have affinity, for whatever reason, will have affinity. Jewish organizations in foreign nations have been shown to influence those nations to support Israel. This article in the Law implies that Jewish citizens of other nations will be dissuaded from being integrated into their nation and will be persuaded to have more affinity with Israel, an arrangement that is sure to be contested by other nations. The bizarre appearance of this article in the Law questions the sanity of an Israeli government that behaves as a religious body, turning Jews into a tribe and giving them special significance.

Article 6C- The state shall act to preserve the cultural, historic, and religious heritage of the Jewish people in the diaspora.
What is the cultural, historic, and religious heritage of the Jewish people? What are their collective art, architecture, literature, music, poetry, dance, and cuisine? Who defines these characteristics? This article of the Law shows the Israeli government does not know what is a person, what is an American or other nationality, and what is a Jew

Using the word "diaspora" to describe the displacement of world Jewry is deceptive -- diaspora from where? Similar to Episcopalians who left Great Britain for America, similar to the Puritans and a myriad of other groups who fled persecution, and similar to peoples who stretched out to various parts of the world, the Jews sought relief and prosperity. Where they found those elements, they found a home. Unfortunately, similar to other minorities, they often became victims to a hateful majority

The consequences of these articles in the Law are:

The Middle East crisis is now an increased international challenge
The world has been delinquent in vigorously challenging Israel; a nation built on actions normally termed crimes by world institutions -- theft of lands, dispossession of an indigenous people; subjugation of the dispossessed, wanton killing and injury to those who protest. Distracting and deceiving the world community with contrived and fallacious narratives have permitted Israel to continue its illegal maneuvers. By extending its thrust worldwide, Israel’s devious nature is better understood. Nations that believe in international laws should realize it is necessary to enact those laws when they are transgressed.

Actions can be taken:
Jewish populations should take legal action against Israel for placing them in jeopardy and unfairly transgressing upon their lives.
Jewish populations should demand their nations take action against Israel and have these laws repealed.
All nations should consider the egregious consequences of the Nation State Law and take administrative action -- vocal, diplomatic, and in international institutions.
All nations should recognize that the Nation State Law is the culmination of the illegal and criminal behavior of Israeli governments and demand restitution for the Palestinians and an end to the violence against them.

alternative insight
october 15, 2018


					

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