Israel at 60: What it means to be the Zionist state

Ilan Ben-Dov ,  Singapore   |  Fri, 05/09/2008 9:37 AM  |  Opinion

The establishment of the state of Israel on May 15, 1948 was the most significant event in the history of the Jewish people in modern times.

After an exile of almost 2000 years, the Jewish people are returning to their ancient homeland, a tiny little piece of land in the Middle East of which they were dreaming, yearning and praying for, for many centuries all over the world.

The millions who emigrated to Israel before and after the establishment of the state and those who come today are not just "colonial settlers" who arrived to a remote and unknown plot of land, but people who are going back to their homeland, the place where their religion, culture, language and national identity took form. The place where they became a people.

The land of Israel has been the home of the Jewish people for more than 3000 years. Even after they had been deported from their land by the Roman Empire, after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, a significant group of Jews remained in the land. The majority who were exiled, never forgot their homeland and prayed for many centuries to return to Jerusalem, to Zion.

Anti-Semitism -- The phenomenon of hatred towards Jews because of their different religion, led to Jews for many centuries, living as an oppressed minority, weak, humiliated and persecuted. Anti-Semitism is hatred, which in many occasions is coupled with brutal violence against Jews only because of their religion and because of their persistence to preserve their different way of life.

Hundreds of years of such hatred and persecution led to the biggest tragedy in Jewish history and the history of the whole world, the Holocaust.

The systematic murder of the Jewish people by the Germans during the World War II, the Shoah, was not just another case of "genocide". It was the first time in human history where a systematic, planned, and industrial murder of millions of people was perpetuated. Six million Jews, among them one and a half million children were slaughtered in the death camps of Nazi Germany only because they were Jews.

The national Jewish movement, Zionism, was established in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, many years before the Holocaust. Zionism is a political idea, a political platform, and a movement which aims at calling the Jewish people to come back to their ancient homeland and resuming their independence as a modern state.

Thus, Zionism has two aims. One is the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the normalization of their lives like many other peoples in the world. The other is to establish a safe haven for all Jews, in which they will have a state of their own and capable of defending themselves.

The Zionist leadership never ignored the fact that the land of Israel, whilst under British rule, was not an empty place. Many Arabs lived there. Those Arabs, the Palestinians, saw and still see this land as their land and they also wish to exercise their national rights there.

The territorial conflict between Arabs and Jews over the rule of the land led the General Assembly of the United Nations, in November 1947, to decide on the partition of the land into two separate sovereign states. One state; a Jewish state and the other a Palestinian state. The Zionist leadership immediately decided to accept the UN partition plan. The plan was rejected outright by the Arabs.

The entire Arab world rejected the mere idea of an establishment of a Jewish state in the Middle East and started a war against the newly established state of Israel. With this rejection, they also denied the Palestinians, the establishment of their own independent and free state that could also have celebrated today its 60th year of independence.

Today, 60 years after, Israel fully accepts the right of the Palestinians to a state of their own. Israel thinks that it is possible to end the Middle East conflict by reaching a territorial compromise which will enable both people to live as good neighbors together in peace.

Sixty years after the establishment of Israel, it is a flourishing democracy. It has a dynamic and pluralistic society with a rich culture. It has become an important center of creativity and innovation. It has numerous universities and research institutes, some of which are renowned worldwide.

The existence of Israel is a fact. Those who choose to ignore this fact are ignoring a living reality. The very few who choose a policy of "no recognition" of the state of Israel are becoming marginal and irrelevant.

Israel will continue doing everything in order to reach a historic compromise with its neighbors and to finally end the conflict. We all hope that this compromise will be reached in the near future for the benefit of all the people in the Middle East.

We all hope that this compromise will be reached in the near future for the benefit of all the people in the Middle East.

The writer is Ambassador of Israel in Singapore

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