CHAPTER X

CULTURES AND THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT

LI WEIJIAN

The contemporary Middle East issue refers largely to vying for lebensraum between Israel and the Arab world, with the Palestinian issue as its kernel. The Arab-Israeli conflict has a history of over one hundred years in terms of the Zionist movement that emerged in the late 19^th century.¹ The Arab-Israeli conflict is the most complicated, most intractable and most spectacular for the international community at the beginning of the 21^st century. Many books and articles have been published in China and abroad on the issue, but most of their authors are realpolitik analysts. In fact, this international conflict, the most enduring and most complicated of the century, is deeply rooted in the ancient feud of the religions and cultures that imbue the two nations, Arabs and Jews. Although the Judaism and Zionism connote different meanings, “it is impossible to think of Zionism without Judaism and of Israel without both of these ideologies -- at least as the state stands today”.² Likewise, the anti-Israeli fanaticism of the Arabs is also inconceivable if one is ignorant of the religious and cultural backgrounds of the two.³

THE GENESIS OF THE ZIONISM: RELIGION AND CULTURE

Zionism has been the immediate cause of the Arab-Israeli conflicts. The theory of the Zionism stems mainly from the two sources: Jewish history⁴ and the Jewish religion.

            Historically, the Jews were among the oldest inhabitants of Palestine. About 1800 BC, a Jewish tribe, led by its chieftain Abraham, migrated from the valley of Euphrates to settle in Canaan -- Nabulus in the present-day Palestine -- to be called “Hebrew” by the indigenous people.⁵ In 1720 BC, during the reign of the Hyksos in Egypt, Canaan was in famine and Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, led the Hebrews to Egypt, settling in the Nile Valley as farmers. Due to their different religious beliefs, they were pressed by the natives and finally reduced to slaves, subject to Ramses II of Egypt. In 1227 BC, the Israelites could not bear the persecution of the Pharaoh, and the Exodus took place under the leadership of Moses. Moses died after his followers sojourned in the Sinai Peninsula for over 40 years, and Joshua brought the Israelites back to Canaan. There they gradually formed a confederation of tribes and established Judah and the state of Israel. Notwithstanding, Palestine was successively conquered by the Empire of Yashu, Babylon, Persia, Macedonia, Rome and so on, during which the Temple built by the Jews in Jerusalem was twice destroyed.⁶ Under Roman rule, over one million Jews were slaughtered. The last forced Israeli exile from Palestine was in the year 132 A.D. By the middle of the twelfth century A.D., there were only 1,400 odd Jews living in Palestine. Afterwards, surrounding tribes migrated to this land one after another. These were the ancestors of the present Palestinian Arabs. Since the exile of the Jews, Arabs have inhabited this land and lived together peacefully with the Jewish minority.

Zionism owes its origins to complicated causes, one of the most important of which is that the Jews believed in Judaism and were persecuted because of that. As Engels explains, so far as the passion of religion-obsessed masses are concerned, tremendous storms can be launched by putting their life interests under the cloak of religion. Perusing the evolution of Zionism, one finds that the religious culture has been the force that set in motion the whole history of the Zionism. Without religion, Zionism is but Utopia. As Josef Hermoni, an Israelite, comments, “Zionism is mysticism. . . . It is a secular expression of Judaism. . . . No intellectual acrobatics can stop Zionism from withering away once it has been cut off from its mystical, Messianic dimension, the very root of its existence.”⁷

Pristine Zionism was manifested mainly in the form of religion for Judaism was the only spirituality that could bind together the Diaspora Jews since they were expelled from Palestine by the Roman legion. The Rabbi of Orthodox Judaism, Abraham Kuktan (transliteration) wrote that the re-association of the Jews and the land of Palestine is indispensable to the renaissance of Judaism. Thus, he advocated that the Jews return to the land of Palestine, the land promised by God. Jerusalem was the symbol of the Jewish national unity and the center of their cultural spirit.

Religious Zionism appealed to religion as the sine qua non for the cause of the return of the Jews to Palestine, so as to internalize the Jewish vision of returning to Palestine as a sacred religious pursuit. The school of cultural spirit, which emerged from within Zionism led by Ahad HaAm, advocated resurrecting Jewish culture and Judaism in particular in Palestine. They promoted Zionism by exploiting the religious belief of rank-and-file Jews. They spread Zionism by using Judaism as a powerful vision and spiritual pivot, and made the return to the Holy Land the tenet of the Jewish Zionist movement.

As facts prove, this was quite effective, for the vision of “exile inhabitants” -- i.e., the thought that the Jewish people should move from temporary settlement all over the world to the Israelite homeland, which permeated in the Bible and late Hebrew literature -- was deeply rooted in the heart of world Jewry. Long persecuted for religious reasons, unless assimilated or converted, Jews regarded Jerusalem as the Holy Land of Judaism and never forgot to restore the “Temple” and the Kingdom. Though they reside far from homeland, they pray towards Jerusalem three times a day. They leave a part of a new house undecorated so as to remember that Jerusalem is yet to be finished, break a glass in a wedding ceremony to remind people not to indulge in bliss before the recovery of the Temple, and put a small bag of earth in the tomb of a recently dead person to symbolize his Sabbath in the holy and pure land. They bless in prayer: next year in Jerusalem and they cherish the memory of the Holy Land, Palestine, every minute.⁸ This idea was first accepted by the Russian Jews who were being harshly persecuted by the czars and started to plan and organize the migration to Palestine from 1882.

            The resurrection of the Hebrew language in the late 19^th century showed the robust ability for rebirth in the Jewish nation. It became an important ingredient of the Zionist movement and the striking symbol of the resurrection of Hebrew culture. The publication of the book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) by Theodor Herzl and the convention of the First Zionist Congress heralded that the Zionism had become a worldwide organized political movement. it set in motion the transformation of the early spiritual and cultural Zionism into a political ideal. “The truth is that, like all other ideologies that have come to be accepted as the basis of a nation-state, the ideal of Zionism has been embellished and related to all historical, spiritual, and cultural manifestations and achievements of the Jewish people.”⁹ However, despite the integration of the Jewish religion, nationality and culture, religion is still the most external formation. The vision of the Jews returning to the Samarian rockhills and Judean mountains is the very stuff of the Zionist vision. Whoever derides and mocks this vision is mocking the entire Zionist vision and deriding the Jewish People’s undertaking in Eretz Yisrael.¹⁰ Undeniably, the desire of return has gained greater motives as religious zealots have acquired political footing.

            Today, Israelis still claim that the Zionism began when the Lord said to Abraham, “Unto thy seed will I give this land” (Genesis XII, 7). They consider Moses the first great Zionist, for he led his people out of Egypt. Although scholars dispute the authenticity of the historical accounts, and some are even skeptical, Jews take it for gospel. Biblical accounts undoubtedly enlighten the entire Judaic culture, including the Zionist movement. They have cherished the basic spirit in the creed of Judaism and were the starting point of all the activities in the ensuing thousands of years.

RELIGIOUS CULTURES AND THEIR IMPACT ON MODERN ARAB’S AND ISRAEL’S NATIONAL POLITICS

The form and content in the case of the two cultural phenomena have yet to be probed in works on philosophy and culture. Though no definition has been as yet given to the contents of spiritual culture, religion is certainly a basic and essential component and exerts tremendous impact on the other components. Religion has been one of the important elements that have greatly affected the interactions between nations and spiritual cultures. Judaism and Islam in particular are more civilizations, than religions, though religious elements have been crucial and inseparable in these two civilizations.

            In the Israeli and Arab worlds, religion is found in family customs and social conventions; it directly affects people’s life and way of thinking. The two religions, as profound cultural phenomena, are in fact two sets of cultural systems. Though complicated, they cast the national identities, shape the national traits, enforce the national cohesion and embody the national values. Though they share the same roots and have some similarities, their cultures and languages are almost totally different, as are Jews from Muslims.¹¹ They shape their respective national policies, domestic and external, in their own ways.

Yahadut and the Polity of Modern Israel

The literal meaning of the term Yahadut in Hebrew may be translated as Judaism, Judaica or Jewishness, depending on the various contexts. Yahadut is one of the three indispensable elements that form the national identity of Israel and the cornerstone underpinning her national politics, economy and culture. Since the majority of Jews associate Zionism with Judaism, Yahadut and Zionism have inevitably become ideological sources of modern Israeli, with other minor thoughts surrounding it.

            Due to the fact that there is a special relationship between the Jews and Judaism, and that Yahadut is the ideological foundation and the norm of life and behavior of all the Jews, it is hard to talk of the Jewish nation without Judaism, and vice versa. Here, Judaism is no longer a religion in its pure sense, but is the kernel of the Jewish spiritual culture. Likewise, Jews are but the materialized shell of the Judaism. Judaism therefore has a particular status in Israel: legally, it is not defined as the state religion, but in reality it is ubiquitous. Constitutionally, Israel is a secular democratic republic with separation of government from religion, but in reality the government is basically integrated with religion.

            Over the last 40 years since the founding of the state of Israel, religion has been deeply involved in secular politics. Judaism has left its sacred altar to involve itself in the political maelstrom. Religious parties exert great impacts on the Israeli politics. These religious parties are small in scale and number, and over the years have commanded an average of 17 seats or about 13% in the Knesset. Nevertheless, power and influence of the religious parties surpass their appearance. They have managed to dissolve several governments and called for early general elections. Three factors contribute to their influence.

Firstly, religious parties are relatively stable. For over 40 years of the history of Israel, secular parties have experienced frequent splits, realignments and mergers based on their different political philosophies. By contrast, religious parties have been relatively stable political forces, for they have had relatively stable political programs and therefore relatively stable voters. For exactly the same reason, the other major parties consider their alliance as necessary.

            Secondly, Israel’s political system and the status quo of her politics determine that the majority parties must cooperate with minority ones. The Basic Law, the Government (1968) provides that the cabinet take office upon confirmation by the Knesset. The support of 61 or more out of 120 Knesset members are required to form a government. Since the founding of the state, the Israel Labor Party and the Likud Bloc have been the two dominant parties, with each about 35% of Knesset seats. As too many parties participate in the election fragmenting the seats, and for various other reasons, neither of the two major parties has ever garnered enough seats to form a government. Thus, a party with the majority of seats must form a coalition government. As coalitions between the two major parties are rare, religious parties are ideal candidates as allies of the majority party as they have a relatively stable number of seats, which can supply for the shortage in those required. As a result, religious parties have invariably been members of coalition governments of either Labor or Likud in the history of Israel’s government.

The religious parties in their turn capitalize on the situation by asking a high price. The majority parties have to make compromises, even at the expense of part of their own political views in order to form a coalition government. On important issues in particular, the predicaments which result from the antitheses between real political needs and religious passions, diminish the policy-making power of governments. For example, the collapse of Rabin’s government in Dec. 1976 and the Peres’ failure to form a government in March 1990 were both the results of the stance of non-cooperation and non-support taken by the religious parties when their demands were not fulfilled.

Lastly, religious parties could weather government policies by their religious privileges. Since the very beginning of the state of Israel, the synagogue has enjoyed certain privileges in the national life thanks to the special position of Judaism in the Jewish heart. Though these privileges mostly involve social issues, they wield enormous influence in politics. For example, in 1976, Rabin’s government was forced to resign and thus the Labor Party lost control of the government for the next 15 years. The reasons were that the religious parties charged the government and raised a no-confidence bill against it because the government had held a ceremony handing over a new-type American fighters to the Israeli Air Force on the Sabbath day, which, to them, was blasphemy. Furthermore, Israel has nine Basic Laws, but no comprehensive written constitution. The postponement of the solution to this lack has been due to the fact that the synagogue would not surrender on the issues of the definition of the Jews, the relationship between religion and the state, and so on. In addition, though the top leaders and the members of supreme committees of the synagogue do not participate in government functions, they can play their roles in the Knesset by controlling their religious parties.

Islam and Arabic Traditional Culture in the Politics of Arab Nations

The Arab world is not politically monolithic. Political systems of Arab countries vary. Egypt and the like are secular parliamentary democracies; Iraq, Syria and so forth are military or civilian autocracies; Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations are monarchies; Sudan is a state that integrates government and religion. Notwithstanding, Arab nations are not nation-states in the strict meaning of the phrase. A single nation, a common religion and traditional culture constitute the striking nature of the Arab nations.

The word “nation” here contains a religious connotation. The Arabs are unified and have become a nation via the Islamic movement. In Arab nations, all ideological systems are based on the heritage of the religious culture; Islam is still the customary way of thinking and political language for all Muslims. Islam either dominates the ideologies of the Arab nations, or wields key influence on them. Egypt, a country that has separated religion from government and imposed a secularist policy long ago, prizes and hence relies on Islam to a great extent, bases her domestic and foreign policies on it, and justifies her legislation by it. This is the more true of the Arab monarchies which merge religion and government. Indeed, in the Arab world, no matter how powerful the nationalists are, they can never take precedence over Allah and Islamic authority. The Quran is the source of spiritual culture and the culture of reason alike; it is the source of both Arabic literature and academics.

All that may answer the question of why protests invariably take religious forms when social upheavals and political crises emerge in the Arab states, and Islam is bound to be picked as an alternative value orientation whenever nationalism stumbles. For instance, the burning of the Al Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem in 1969 triggered an outburst of the whole Muslim world. The political and territorial contention between the Palestinians and Israelis turned in no time into that of the two politicized religious cultures: the Muslims of the Islamic world and the Judaism of Israel.

   Religion and the cultural tradition are two essential components of Arab national identities. Apart from religion, modern Arabs are imbued with a traditional culture derived from the desert. In Arab history, the Bedouin factor should not be neglected. Their influence was especially crucial in the period of the spread of Islam. The Bedouins referred to the nomadic or semi-nomadic Arabs on the Arabian Peninsula and the desert areas in North Africa. Several important migrations were seen in Bedouin history which lasted for about 500 years from the seventh century when Islam began to expand to the eleventh century. In the course of this, Bedouins gradually mingled with the indigenous nations and hence their tradition permeated the entire Arab nation. Bedouins are generous, hospitable and loyal to friends, on the one hand, and, on the other, aggressive and revengeful. Those traits can be observed in the Arabs. Revenge was the sole cause of the incessant pre-Islamic tribal wars. Over thousands of years, revenge has been the responsibility of every Bedouin; it is sacred in their, and even Arabs, eyes. According to the primitive law of the desert, debts of blood must be paid in blood: if a man from tribe A has been killed by tribe B, a man from tribe B must be killed to pay for the life, no matter if he is or is not the actual killer. No punishment other than revenge is valid.¹² That might be the root-cause behind the indifference of persons concerned towards their own frequent terror and violence against innocents in Arab states even today, which has been repeatedly denounced by international opinion.

CLASH OR MELD: RELIGIOUS CULTURES IN ARAB-ISRAELI RELATIONS

Since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, Arabs and Israelis have been in conflict. Four large scale wars have taken place in this period as well as skirmishes, and there have been innumerable “border” disputes, for which the religious cultures of the two sides have been catalysts. As a well-known American scholar of religious affairs, L.M. Hopf (transliteration), commented, other aspects aside, religious differences are the most impressive and important reasons behind the conflicts between Jews and Muslims.

The immediate cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been Zionism. As described in the first section of this article, Zionism has fulfilled its historic mission on the foundation of the biblical accounts and the Israelites’ overwhelming passion and unflinching longing for the “promised land.” At the beginning of independence, Israeli soldiers were buttressed to a large extent by nationalist fervor with strong religious features in their combat with Arab troops which outnumbered them many times. Their continuing expansionist behavior embodies the idea of “an everlastingly expanding country” put forward by the first Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion. This originated from the words of Jehovah to Joshua, “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that I give unto you, as I said unto Moses” (the Book of Joshua). Israeli authorities translated these words to mean that the land under the feet of the Israeli soldiers is Israel’s. Under this idea, Israeli military forces have expanded the land under its control to 87,019 square kilometers, 6 times that of the area provided to Israel by the 1947 UN Partition of Palestine Resolution.

   During the entire process of the Zionist movement, Israel has received the all-out support from the Jews residing all over the world. Though not all overseas Jews want to settle in Israel and some are even well integrated into their resident countries politically and economically, their cultural and religious mentality and their nationalism are strong. Though some Jews omit religion in terms of their daily life, more often than not this is unconscious. It is quite difficult for Jews totally to avoid the Jewish religious culture whenever or wherever they want to. The religious belief and religious life of the Jews across the world today are still the most central display of Judaic culture. To them, to be concerned with Israel is to guard the dignity of Judaism. Thus, the fate of Israel touches them to the heart, more than that of any other country. Not only did Jews everywhere in the world donate money and materials to Israel in the Arab-Israeli wars, but also tens of thousands of Jewish youths came to Israel as volunteers to fight. Ten million or more Jews in the world are the powerful backers of Israel.

   In the Arab world, whenever an Arab nation is in crisis, the traditional religious faith is prone to externalize itself into human behavior, to become the source of value orientations, and even to cause irrational fanaticism that appears weird to others. One of the prominent features of Islam is the Arabs’ deep-seated spiritual phenomena. As Karl Marx wrote, Islam, as a religion full of combative spirit, reduces the geography and humanities of disparate nationalities into one simple formula dividing them into two states and two nations -- the Orthodox and the heathens. He continued, the heathens are “harbi (transliteration),” or enemy. Islam claims that heathens are under no protection of law which engenders a regular mutual hostility between Muslims and heathens. Though, the word ‘Jihad’ refers not only fighting against the enemies of Muslims, but also contains richer meanings, Arab leaders have been appealing to it as the most efficient weapon for mobilizing the Muslim masses in dealing with the demon Israel. Some Islamic extremist organizations such as Hamas are against Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, conceiving that the divinely blessed land is not negotiable, and only Jihad can liberate the Palestinian people.

The Quran directs the people to do justice, be charitable, kind, merciful, continent and tolerant, but it does not provide for the avoidance of violence. On the contrary, it spells out that violence can be used in defending faith, and considers those who partake in the struggle more likely to be admitted into the paradise than those who do not. It is not difficult for such wording to be abused by extremists. The assassination of the former Egyptian President Sadat by extremists, a Palestinian youth exploding a bomb on himself and Israeli riders on a bus, and Iraq launching SCUD missiles against Israel, albeit in its war with the United States in the Gulf -- weird thought they may seem -- connote profound religious cultural codes.

            Furthermore, Jerusalem is unique for the Arabs. It is the Holy Land of Islamism, as well as of Judaism and Christianity, so it has particular religious status and spiritual symbolism in the Islamic world. The present situation in which it is under the control of Israel alone increases to a large extent Arab disgust and hostility towards Israel.

The above analysis tries to testify that the different religious cultures have, as one of their facets, induced and catalyzed the Arab-Israeli conflicts. But it does not indicate that Judaism and Islam were doomed to repel each other from the very beginning, or that the two peoples are diametrically opposed to each other forever. On the contrary, Judaism and Islam, or Jews and Arabs, share a common origin. Jews are geographically close neighbors of the Arabs, racially they are close kin.

The Bible itself came into being with the profound influences of the civilizations of Egypt and ancient Babylon. More specifically, it was a collection, modification and recompilation of different genres of ancient Semitic literature, including classics, documents, myths, epics, dramas, novels, poems, axioms, essays and so on. As Engels commented, the so-called Holy Book of the Jews records but religious and tribal legend. The only difference is that those legends have been modified since the Jews were separated from their nomadic cousins. He continued that Palestine was surrounded by desert, i. e., the land of the Bedouins, which was the reason of the uniqueness of the accounts. He emphasized that the inscriptions on tablets, sagas, Quran and all the pedigrees of the ancient Arabs are easy to explain and prove that the main contents were about Arabic culture, or more precisely, Semites in general, just like the Edda and the German epics.

   Islam is the third monotheism following Judaism and Christianity. Historically speaking, it is a branch of the latter two religions and is closest to them among other religions. All three are the products of the one common Semitic spiritual life. Quran’s historical accounts and religious legends can virtually find their counterparts in the Bible. The Quran claims to be a Book revealed in the wake of Moses, which testifies to the previous Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture means the Old Testament and the Bible; testifying means that the Quran and Bible can be traced to the same origin.

The Arab nation traces its origin back to its earliest ancestor, Abraham, the same grandfather respected by the Jews in the Old Testament. Islam claims that Abraham was neither Jewish nor Christian, but the ancestor of all those in the world who hold monotheism. They firmly believe that there has been only one true religion in the world, that is, the worship of the One Omnipotent. They have no doubt that Judaism and Christianity preceded Islam, regard the Pentateuch (Torah), Psalms and Gospel as revelations from God, and consider Moses, David and Jesus also as prophets. While religious sagas about prophets in the Bible are coherent and consistent, in the Quran they are but evidence of instructions and commandants, and are mentioned only for the sake of context. Muslims are very familiar with those figures and their stories, which indicates that compilers of the Bible were Semites like Arabs. They used to have a shared history and also shared biblical accounts, which prove that Judaism, Christianity and Arab culture had for a long time collided and melded into one another.¹³

Notably, the absorption, exploitation and transformation of existing cultures have been conducted in the manner of the idiosyncratic culture of the receiving nation. There is a mechanism of cultural choice: the formation of the new culture was a result of cultural choice by the receiving nation as the subject of the choice. It should not be deemed as a simple compound of the received cultures; rather, they were localized and nationalized.

Jewish and Arab relations used to be amicable. Europeans are those who have most persecuted the world Jewry. Almost all the European states, except Italy, have a history of anti-Semitism. On the contrary, since medieval times, Jews living under the Muslim rulers were fairly protected; within the scope of the Arab Empire, the rulers pursued a relatively lenient policy towards the monotheistic and Biblical Jews. So long as they were subject to the Islamic rule, they were allowed to practice their own religion and were a protected people.¹⁴

Url Avnery, the former M.K. of Israel and a famous author and journalist, commented in his book, Israel without Zionists, that the stalemate between Arab and Israel at present was caused by the clash of two authentic historical movements. External forces played a certain role, but were not major factors. Therefore, he suggested that the solution had to be found between the two sides themselves (Arabs and Jews).¹⁵ One of the solutions he proposed was to set up a great Semitic confederacy composed of all the countries in the region. “Thus,” he wrote, “a solution in Palestine is almost a prerequisite for a general Semitic peace settlement.” He noted that the reason he used the term Semitic has nothing to do with race.

The term Semitic should, rather, be viewed as emphasizing a historical heritage, common to all peoples speaking languages of the Semitic family -- Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and so forth. It also emphasizes the common cultural and spiritual background of all the peoples of our Region. . . . It automatically includes Arabs and Hebrews, explains itself readily in the Region and throughout the world, and has the same meaning in all languages.¹⁶

Avnery’s solution might not be feasible insofar as the status quo of Arab-Israeli relations is concerned. Nevertheless, what merits further research is that he proposed a new type of relation on the basis of the common cultural and spiritual background of Jews and Arabs.

In the world today, nations differ in their levels of economic and social development and vary in political systems. They even vary in their structures of life, standards of living and ways of life, all of which have been formed historically. All those cultural particulars coexist and influence one another. Every nation can make its own contribution to the general development of the world culture, since every nation has its unique historical experience that entails a universal essence. It is the varieties of the national experiences that create the premises, on which they interact more efficiently and reinforce one another’s ideas, values and achievements. This, in turn, creates conditions for the development of each nation. All in all, Arab and Israel share common cultural origins and used to live together peacefully for a long time. Even though they have encountered some setbacks in their peace process, there is no ground for doubting that the two nations will eliminate hostility and coexist peacefully.

NOTE

1. Zionism derives from the name of Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. The hill with an area of 5,000-6,000 square meters is deemed by Jews as the Holy Mountain, for a story is told in the Bible that Jews would gather at Mt. Zion. According to the Isaiah in the Old Testament, Zion was the only exception in the invasion of the Kingdom of Judah by foreign powers. The prophet Isaiah predicted that through Zion salvation would come.

2. Kemal H. Karpat, Political and Social Thought in the Contemporary Middle East (Praeger), p. 286.

3. Michael Courtis: Religion and Politics in the Middle East (Westview Press, 1981), p. 75.

4. The history of the ancient Jews usually interwoven with legend, hence further textual research is needed in some aspects.

5. The word Hebrew in Semitic means “later crossing”. Since Jews arrived at Palestine by crossing the river Euphrates, the natives gave them that name. The word Israel was the name given by the Lord when Jacob, the ancestor of Jews, won the battle with a god. The term Jew derived from the name of the state of Judah which itself was named after Jacob’s fourth son.

6. From 1003 BC to 965 BC, under the rule of David and Solomon, the Kingdom of Israel reached its apex. Jerusalem was then made the capital of the kingdom, and Judaism as the state religion. Solomon built the magnificent Temple of Jehovah which made Jerusalem gradually the center of Jewish religion and culture. The dynasties of David and Solomon provided the Jews with a splendid culture. The period was termed that of the “First Temple”. In 585 BC, the new Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar occupied Assyrian and conquered the Kingdom of Judah. Jerusalem was sacked, the Temple destroyed, and the bulk of Jews was exiled to Babylon, referred to by historians as the “Babylonian exile”. This was the first Diaspora in Jewish history when the era of the First Temple ended. In 538 BC, the Persian Emperor, Cyrus the Great, defeated the Babylonians and permitted the Jews to return to their homeland to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple; then the time of the Second Temple began. In 63 BC, the Roman Empire occupied Jerusalem and the whole of Palestine, and the Temple was destroyed again. Rebellions were all suppressed by the Roman Legions. Over a million Jews were slaughtered and tens of thousands more were taken as slaves. The rest were exiled from Palestine. The period of the Second Temple was over and the Jews began the Great Diaspora.

7. Yosef Hermoni, Jerusalem Post Weekly, June 22, 1976.

8. Xu Xiangqun and Yu Chongjian ed, The Third Temple—The Rise of Israel (Yuandong Publishing house, 1994), p. 26.

9. Ibid., 2, p. 287.

10. Yosef Hemoni, “Gush Emunim View of Zionism,” in Kemal H. Karpat, Political and Social Thought in the Contemporary Middle East (Praeger), p. 296.

11. John F.H. Sawyer, “Islam and Judaism,” in Denis Maceoln, Islam in the Modern World (London, 1983), p. 27.

12. The Third Temple, 8, p. 284.

13. Zhong Qikun, “Pre-Islamist Sources of the Relations of the Arab Culture and the World Culture,” The Arab World (Chinese Journal), No. 3, 1987.

14. Ibid., 8, p.12

15. Uri Avnery, Israel Without Zionists: A Plea for Peace in Middle East (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 208.

16. Ibid.