No One Has A Greater Claim to Israel Than Jews

by Farley Weiss, Chairman

11/1/2023, 9:24:47 PM

The massive rise of antisemitism in the United States is expressed by the outrageous demonstrators calling for Israel’s destruction with their chant “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free.” The antisemites demonstrating base their view on the false allegation that the Jews are colonialists who have taken the land from the Palestinian Arabs due to world sympathy because of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, too few Jews know that in reality there is no people or country with a greater claim to their land than the Jews have to Israel.  

The Jewish people’s claim to Israel is based upon the fact that G-d gave it to us, as the Torah makes clear when G-d spoke to Abraham and again to Moses and the Jewish people after leaving Egyptian slavery. The Maharsha, a famous biblical commentator, wrote 500 years ago that Noach owned the world at the end of the flood and gave Israel to his son Shem who then gave it to his descendant, the forefather of the Jewish people, Abraham. He further said that the seven nations in the land when the Jews left Egypt were all invaders of the land and had no right to the land. The Bible even includes purchases of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem by King David, The Cave of Machpela in Hebron by Abraham and Joseph’s Tomb by Jacob in Shechem (Nablus).   

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism makes it clear those who oppose the existence of Israel are antisemitic. Israel is the only Jewish state and the Jews are the indigenous population to the land. King David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel over 3,000 years ago and the two Jewish Temples were located on the Temple Mount with the last one being destroyed by the Romans 2,000 years ago. Jews were not a significant presence in the land over the past 2,000 years because invaders like the Romans forced the Jews out.

But the Jews never gave up their rights to Israel. Even under Ottoman Turkish rule with limited ability for the Jews to return, the Baedecker’s travel guide in 1906 listed the population of Jerusalem as consisting of 40,000 Jews, 13,000 Christians, and 7,000 Muslims. The international community agreed to the Jewish right to the Land of Israel and a right of return for Jews to Israel at San Remo in 1920, in a unanimous League of Nations Resolution in 1922, and in the Anglo-American Treaty that was ratified by the US Senate and signed by President Coolidge in 1925.

The UN reiterated their support for a Jewish state in UN Resolution 181 in November 1947 and the Arab world rejected a two-state solution of an Arab state with a Jewish state. Israel only came into existence in a fight for its survival without a single ally, as President Truman would not provide arms to Israel.  

After Palestinian Arab rioting in Hebron in 1929 massacred 67 Jews — in similar fashion to the October 7 massacre — led to the British policy of allowing Arab immigration while restricting Jewish immigration, a bipartisan majority of 15 members of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee declared in a public letter that the British White Paper violated the Anglo American Treaty. In the end, the Palestinian Arab rioting led to the British White Paper which gave Jews no place to go to escape Hitler. The result was six million Jewish deaths.

The Holocaust had nothing to do with the establishment of the State of Israel and if anything there was greater world support for Israel before the Holocaust, when US Presidents Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover were all counted among supporters of the establishment of a Jewish state. President Truman recognized Israel, but refused to give Israel arms in 1948 in its War of Independence after being attacked by many Arab countries. President Johnson refused to assist Israel in the Six Day War in 1967 as well.   

In our new book “Because It’s Just and Right – The Untold Back Story of the US Recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel and Moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem” with a foreword from Senator Jon Kyl and blurbs from Senator Joe Lieberman, Alan Dershowitz, Ambassador David Friedman, Governor Mike Huckabee and others, my co-author Len Grunstein and I present the overwhelming case for the Jewish right to Israel and Jerusalem.  The book is on Amazon and the website is jerusalemrecognition.com.

American support for Israel has never been greater, with 74% of Americans supporting Israel in its fight against Hamas. However, the street is being taken over by the minority of haters of Jews and Israel. We need to know the justice of our claims to win this fight not just for Israel but against the rise of antisemitism as well, which is rooted in opposition to Israel.