By Mendy Hecht

It’s pretty easy to explain both sides of the Gaza conflict.

 The Israeli side: “Every country has the right to defend itself.”

 The Muslim Arab side: “We are freedom fighters striking back against oppression and occupation and we are fighting to liberate our homeland.”

 But who’s right?

 Whose land is it?  Whose country is it?  Who’s occupying who?

 You may have noticed I’m not using the misnomer “Palestinian.”  That’s because there never was a sovereign, independent Arab Muslim state called Palestine.  There was a British-occupied territory called Palestine, and well before that a Roman-Empire one, but not an Arab Muslim one.  Therefore, there is no such thing, no was there ever such a thing, as a “Palestinian” as there is such as thing as a Moroccan, an Egyptian or a Syrian.

 There was never an Arab Muslim country called Palestine, with its own government, currency and military, which the “evil” Zionists occupied in 1948 and imposed their own state.  That’s a lie-and one of the biggest hoaxes in modern history is the manufacture of the artificial, counterfeit nationality called “Palestinian.”

 I recognize the fact that since 1967, when the phrase “Palestinian” first came into use to describe the stateless, generic Muslim Arabs who had been living in what became the State of Israel, these Muslim Arabs have been calling themselves “Palestinians.”  So in that sense there is actually something called a “Palestinian.”  For the several generations of stateless, generic Muslim Arabs who call themselves “Palestinian,” “Palestinian” is an national identity-but it is a false one, one with no real historical or factual basis.

Now, back to the current conflict.

Whether we reject or embrace the lie that some sort of Muslim Arab political entity called Palestine existed before the creation of the State of Israel, it still doesn’t give the State of Israel the right to be there.  You can’t just march in where people are already living for generations and say “We’re here, we’re setting up shop and we’re in charge now!”  That’s simple invasion and occupation.

Unless you have a reason for creating a country that goes beyond the standard politics and war-making of human history.

 The standard Israeli/Jewish response to the question “Why does Israel exist?  What justification is there for its creation?” has been to cite the Jewish People’s long history of persecution and the need for a safe haven, culminating with the Holocaust.

 Okay, but then why in “Palestine”?  Why not in Madagascar, Poland or Texas? 

 ”Because,” comes the standard follow-up, “that’s where the Biblical Holy Land is/was, and where our ancestors were exiled from by the Romans, and where we have had a tradition that we will return to that land one day.”

 Now, here’s where the confusion on the part of anyone not Jewish begins.  The conversation essentially goes like this:

 NON-JEW: “So Israel was chosen because that was the Biblical homeland, right?”

ISRAELI/JEW: “That’s correct.”

NJ: “And Herzl decided to build the modern State of Israel on the site of ancient Israel because that’s where Jews historically believed that some sort of Messiah would return them?”

I/J: “Correct.”

NJ: “But that’s a religious idea, isn’t it?”

I/J: “That’s right.”

NJ: “But the State of Israel is a secular state, isn’t it?”

I/J: “Um….”

 Ultimately, therefore, justification for the State of Israel goes back to Jewish faith, religion and belief-which in turn goes back to belief in God.  And that is a fact that, for reasons deserving at least another article if not a book, the political progenitor of the State of Israel known as Zionism ignored and continues to ignore when inconvenient.

 My essential point, therefore, is this: The land upon which the State of Israel sits belongs to the Jews not because the U.N. created the State of Israel and gave it to them, or because Zionism is a morally justifiable movement and/or a nice idea, but because God created the universe and decided, for whatever ultimate reason, to give a tiny sliver of Mediterranean real estate to a tiny Semitic tribe and their descendants for all time.

 It’s rub-dub-smack right there in the comments of Medieval French Torah scholar Rashi on the very first verse in the Torah, Genesis 1:1.

 Rashi writes: “Why did the Torah begin with ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’?  Because if the nations of the world come and say [to the Jews] ‘You are thieves, for you have conquered the lands of the Seven Nations [referring to 7 Biblical nation-clans who lived in Biblical Israel] before Abraham], they [the Jews] [will] respond, ‘All the universe belongs to God-He created it; He willfully gave it [the Biblical Land of Israel] to the Seven Nations and He willfully took it from them and gave it to us.’ ”

 Ultimately, therefore, the State of Israel is a superimposition upon what we Jews call the Holy Land, much like a transparency placed upon a projector appears to be part of that map on the wall.

 Make no mistake-I am not against the State of Israel.  I am happy that the Holy Land is under Jewish control, albeit a secularized Jewish control with a nearly non-existent belief in its own spiritual heritage and a resulting rampant left-wing self-hate movement that democratically votes for withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and other parts of the Holy Land and which “understands” terrorists’ motivations better than the motivations of their own religious brethren.  I wish that were not the case.

 However, as a religious Jew, I support the military actions of the State of Israel, because I also subscribe to the belief in loving and embracing one’s fellow Jew. This includes reeducating him or her as to their true spiritual identity regardless of what he or she believes (or doesn’t).  And most importantly, it includes the belief in God, and the belief that the Holy Land is ours because it was given to us by God-and that Jews are religiously obligated to militarily defend it from those who want to throw the Jews out, even if those Jewish military members are not religious and believe the State of Israel is there simply because Zionism is, or was, a good idea.

 Thus, the ultimate reason Israel is in the moral right and the Muslim Arabs are in the moral wrong is not because Hamas is deliberately attacking Israel’s civilians while deliberately hiding among their own civilians-although that’s morally evil enough. 

 The ultimate reason Israel is in the moral right and the Muslim Arabs are in the moral wrong is because the land upon which it sits, like all land, belongs to God, and He gave it to the Jews and not to the Muslim Arabs.  Therefore, it is ours.

 And this is something that even Muslims of faith-who believe in God and believe that ultimate right and wrong come from God, not from the U.N.-can agree with.

 Mendy Hecht is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer.