By Dr Simon Smelt, a retired economist.
Part One of a multipart series
“You are robbers because you stole the land” (eleventh century Jewish sage Rashi on what the nations of the world will say to the people of Israel when they regain their heritage).
“One-third of Generation Z voters (18 -24 years old) say Israel doesn’t have a right to exist as a nation” (Dec 2023 and April 2024 US polls).
The dominant narrative in the media and amongst commentators portrays an ancient, indigenous Palestinian people forced to accept waves of European Jewish settlers who, supported by colonial powers, stole their land and then oppressed them. Such a description fulfills Rashi’s eleventh century prediction and throws into question Israel’s right to exist. This series of articles examines the history of the Land and the available facts from the first to the twentieth century to test this narrative. We find that the story advanced is not only a vast simplification and distortion but often also false and even the inverse of the truth.
The U.N. defines “indigenous people” as inheritors and practitioners of a unique culture and way of relating to the environment; they retain social and cultural characteristics distinct from the dominant society in which they live. The Jewish people amply fulfill these criteria generally and in relation to the Holy Land.
If we consider the attachment to the land of Israel, as culturally codified in the sacred writings of the respective peoples, Muslims and Jews, we find not a mention of the land of Israel in the Koran, while Jerusalem is referred to over 600 times in the Jewish Tenach (Old Testament.)
In the Tenach , the Lord promises the land of Israel to the people of Israel over 100 times. In Psalm 137 the people sing “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion….. If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning.” The Tenach repeatedly prophesies the scattering, regathering and eventual renewal of the Jewish people in the Land.
No surprise then that examination of the history of the Jewish people and of the Land confirms the strength of their claim to the Land in terms of both deep cultural attachment and tenacious actual settlement.
This is not to sweep aside the rights of the Arab inhabitants. However, in terms of religion, the Koran and associated hadith do not refer at all to the Land, whether as Cannae, Philistia or otherwise, and Jerusalem is only mentioned once, indirectly. Muslim interest in the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque (built upon the Islamic conquest of the Land in the seventh century) has waxed and waned, with the buildings sometimes in disrepair, sometimes refurbished. Neither is the focus for the religious to the extent that Jerusalem is for the Jews.
In terms of government, the 2,000 years from Roman rule until 1948 see no period of local rule, no Palestinian ruler. Arab rule accounts for less than 150 years. Until the Ottomans (1517-1917), the Land is tossed back and forth between warring – mainly Islamic – empires. With so many different empires and occupying armies, the population inevitably becomes racially mixed. As elsewhere, the Jews are less prone to such mixing because they hold themselves apart as a people under the requirements of Mosaic law and tradition.
In terms of settlement, travellers’ journals, academic studies and official records taken together help us discern broad patterns amidst the seemingly endless wars and factions and our own modern political divides. In Part 1, I cover the first to the eighteenth centuries. Part 2 focuses on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The first millenium
The first and second Jewish revolts against Rome (66-70CE, 132-135CE) are catastrophic, with a Jewish death toll of one million plus. The Emperor Hadrian renames the land ‘Palestina’ and Jerusalem ‘Aelia Capitolina;’ he bars Jews from Jerusalem and and furnishes Temple Mount with a temple to Jupiter. Hyenas and wolves roam the ruined cities and the rabbinical hierarchy moves to Tiberias and Safed in the Galilee where they write the Jerusalem Talmud. Under Emperor Constantine (fourth century), Byzantium succeeds the Eastern Roman Empire. Jews return to Jerusalem in 438CE courtesy of Empress Endoria. With Jewish support, the Persians capture Jerusalem in 614CE but then turn against their allies. When the Byzantines briefly regain the city in 629CE, the Jews again suffer.
Sultan Umar conquers the Land for Islam in 637CE. He declares freedom of religion, and allows Jews to worship in Jerusalem. His successors subjugate dhimmi (non-Muslims) and in 720CE ban Jews from worshipping on the Temple Mount.* In the eleventh century Sultan al-Hakim orders all churches and synagogues in Jerusalem demolished. Rapid power shifts destabilize the Land and Jerusalem’s inhabitants are slaughtered in 1077 after a failed revolt. Jews and Arabs alike defend Haifa and Jerusalem against the first Crusade in 1099. Victorious, the crusaders massacre them. Contemporary maps show flourishing communities in the sixth century becoming skeletal by the eleventh century. The Land is torn, yet the Jews remain.
Travelers’ reports
The Kurdish leader Saladin crushes the crusaders in 1189CE and invites the Jews to return. From the twelfth century on, records from travellers to the Land are known and provide a consistent picture. With occasional bright spots, Jews are severely oppressed and impoverished and at risk from massacre – right up to the twentieth century. Yet, population loss – from disease, poverty, starvation and murder – is replenished by immigration along difficult and dangerous routes from Europe. As the traditional Passover seder concludes: “Next year in Jerusalem.”
In the twelfth century, the great Jewish sage Maimonides visits and the Spanish poet Yehuda Halevi emigrates. The monk Benjamin of Tudela records small numbers of Jews in the towns. The thirteenth century siege and sack of Jerusalem by the Tartars and subsequent rapid succession of conquerors batter the population. However, by 1326CE the Moslem pilgrim Ibn Battutah finds a busy city. In the fifteenth century, under Papal pressure, many Christian ships bar Jews from travelling toward the Holy Land. Nonetheless, late fifteenth century travellers report “many Jews” in Jerusalem. Visiting rabbis estimate Jewish families resident there at 150 to 250 – in any case, a minority.
The Ottomans
The Ottoman conquest of 1517CE brings disorder and slaughter of Jews. With order restored, surviving tax records indicate rapid growth in Jewish households over the next 40 years, particularly in Jerusalem and Safed – perhaps by families expelled from Spain (1492CE) and Portugal (1497CE) who fled to Ottoman territories. The reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566CE) is the pinnacle of the Ottoman Empire. He seeks to revive the Land and is favourable toward the Jews. He invites the Jew Joseph Nasi to build a Jewish community in Tiberias and to develop vineyards. Safed flourishes and in 1577CE gains the first Hebrew printing press in the Middle East.
The Ottoman Empire’s decline after Suleiman is mirrored in the Land. Seventeenth and eighteenth century accounts paint a picture of depopulation and land going to waste. Even the ports of Jaffa, Haifa and Acre are recorded in the Ottoman registers as mere villages. In Safed, the death of famous sages, a massacre in 1660CE and decline of the local textile industry results in rapid population loss.
The general deterioration in Ottoman Palestine comes from a combination of factors, notably: lax and corrupt administration; growth in piracy, banditry and extortion; high and unwise taxes (a tax on trees!); absentee landlords and insecure land tenure. Failure to maintain irrigation and drainage systems turns arable lands into desert or swamp.
The late seventeenth century is probably the nadir. It also yields our best snapshot of the region. The Dutch scholar and linguist Adriaan Relandi drew together and analysed recent travelers’ reports to provide the first accurate topographical maps of the region and a comprehensive survey of settlements. In 1714CE he publishes the results in a vast tome: Palaestina, ex monumentis veteribus illustrata. He notes that most of the settlement names originated in Hebrew, Greek, Latin or Roman, not Arabic. He finds much of the land utterly desolate with few inhabitants outside the semi-ruined towns. The largest Moslem settlement is Shechem (Nablus): 120 people, plus 70 Samaritans. Jerusalem has the biggest population: c5000, mostly Jews. However, unlike in Europe, Jews often work the land. Tiberius is mostly Jewish (engaged in fishing etc.) and Jews account for half of Gaza’s population, cultivating vineyards, olives and wheat. Bedouins provide seasonal labour. Even at this nadir, the Jews persevere and buttress the economy.
In sum, the overwhelming evidence is that from the time of Hadrian to the end of the eighteenth century, the Jews were extraordinarily and uniquely persistent in clinging on in the Land through invasions, expulsions, massacres, repression, deep poverty, and economic collapse. And at the centre, the magnet of Jerusalem.
Notice too that the strongest leaders – Umar, Saladin, Suleiman – are the most favourable to the Jews in the Land.
*Still in place – to calm Moslem concerns.
Image: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arch_of_Titus_Menorah.png
Key reading list
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (1946) A Survey of Palestine: Prepared in December, 1945 and January, 1946 for the Information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 2 Vols. HMSO, NY. Available at: https://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/A-Survey-of-Palestine/
Frantzman, Seth (2010) The Arab settlement of Late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine: New Village Formation and Settlement Fixation, 1871-1948, Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/2267938/The_Arab_Settlement_of_Late_Ottoman_and_Mandatory_Palestine_New_Village_Formation_and_Settlement_Fixation_1871_1948
Galvin, James (2007) The Israel-Palestine conflict: one hundred years of war, 2nd Ed, CUP, Cambridge, NY. Available at: https://archive.org/details/israelpalestinec0000gelv_k1z6
Glass, Joseph (1999) “The Jews in Eretz‐Israel/Palestine: from traditional peripherality to modern centrality,” Israel Affairs. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/48156320/The_Jews_in_Eretz_Israel_Palestine_From_traditional_peripherality_to_modern_centrality
Gottheil , Fred (2003) “The Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration into Palestine, 1922-1931,” Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2003, pp. 53-64. Available at: https://www.meforum.org/522/the-smoking-gun-arab-immigration-into-palestine
Hughes, Matthew (2019) Britain’s Pacification of Palestine: The British Army, the Colonial State, and the Arab Revolt, 1936–1939, New York: CUP
Jaski B et al (eds.) (2021) The Orient in Utrecht : Adriaan Reland (1676–1718); Brill: Leiden,Boston. Available at: https://archive.org/details/oapen-20.500.12657-50786
Palestine Royal Commission, (1937) Report. Presented to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in Parliament by Command of his Majesty, London: HMSO. Available at: https://archive.org/details/palestine-royal-commission-report
Peters, Joan (2001) From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, JKAP: Chicago
Ruppin, Arthur (1971) Arthur Ruppin: Memoirs, Diaries, Letters. (Ed: Alex Bein; Trans: Karen Gershon), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London
Schein, Andrew (2012) “Institutional reversals and economic growth: Palestine 1516-1948,” J of Institutional Economics, 8, 1, 119-141; available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1744137411000385
