1.
Here is a historical fact: In the Land of Israel, no other kingdom or state was established apart from the Kingdom of Israel or Judea and the State of Israel. Over the last 3300 years, the only people to establish any kind of political rule in this region were the People of Israel. The only people ever to have their political capital in Jerusalem is the Jewish people. During periods when Jewish independence was lost, various empires treated this land merely as a distant province. Here's another fact, the land has never been entirely devoid of Jews or Israelis, including our Samaritan brothers, descendants of the northern tribes of Israel. The continuity of Jewish settlement since the settlement period (and even earlier, during the time of the Patriarchs) is a proven historical fact.
2.
Here are some historical figures: Until the settlement period and shortly after, the Egyptian Empire ruled the country, while the Hittite Empire held sway in the north. Towards the end of the 13th century BCE, the People of Israel crossed the Jordan River from the east, settled in the land, and conquered it. At first, they lived as a federation of tribes, gradually uniting into a single kingdom over the course of centuries. As the Kingdom of Israel weakened and split into the Kingdom of Judah (the Southern Kingdom) and the Kingdom of Israel (the Northern Kingdom), the Jews gradually lost control over the land. In the 7th century BCE, the Assyrian Empire took over much of the Land of Israel, destroying the northern kingdom in 722 BCE and exiling the ten tribes.
The Assyrian Empire eventually fell to the Babylonian Empire, which also took over the Kingdom of Judah. Following a revolt by the last kings of Judah, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and burned down the Temple in the summer of 586 BCE, marking the end of the First Temple period. The Babylonians exiled the Judean social elite, who later integrated into the Babylonian administration.
3.
Decades later, in 539 BCE, the Persian Empire defeated the Babylonians. The Persians were tolerant toward us. Professor Bernard Lewis told me once, that the Persians felt different in the ancient world because they believed in two gods (good and evil) as opposed to the plurality of gods in the Greek or Egyptian pantheon. When they met the Jews and learned about their belief in one God, it created a deeper connection between them, something more than just interests. Nowadays we would call this "shared values."
In 538 BCE, King Cyrus called on the Jews to return to Jerusalem: "Thus said Cyrus, King of Persia: 'The Lord God of Heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and has charged me with building Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Anyone of you of all His people—may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem that is in Judah and build the House of the Lord God of Israel, the God that is in Jerusalem'" (Ezra 1:2-3).
Unlike the Balfour Declaration, which was given during World War I when Britain did not rule our land, the Cyrus Declaration was issued by a king with authority and control over the land, giving it validity. And so began the period of the Second National Home.
The Persian Empire fell to Alexander the Great, who conquered half of the ancient world around 333 BCE. After his early death, the empire was divided among his officers, and the Land of Israel fell to Seleucus (circa 323 BCE). One of his descendants, Antiochus IV (Epiphanes), decided to impose his pagan beliefs on the Jews. This led to the Hasmonean Revolt from 167 to 142 BCE, after which Simon the Hasmonean, (the only surviving son of the five sons of Mattathias) established an independent Jewish kingdom and declared himself "Nasi" (a Prince of President, not a King).
In 63 BCE, following the death of Queen Salome Alexandra (Shlomtzion), her two sons, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, fought over the throne. Their conflict led to Roman intervention and the invasion of the land and Jerusalem. The Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey), who was stationed in Syria, captured Judea and installed Hyrcanus as ruler. This marked the beginning of a partial loss of Jewish independence, although Jewish kings continued to rule under Roman suzerainty.
In 6 CE, the Romans abolished the monarchy and appointed procurators to govern the land, each more oppressive than the last. The final procurator, Gessius Florus, appointed in 64 CE, was particularly brutal. The Jews decided to fight for their freedom, leading to the Great Revolt in 66 CE, which ended in 70 CE with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Titus. The Romans continued to rule the Land of Israel for several more centuries. After the Bar Kokhba Revolt, Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea as "Syria Palaestina" or simply "Palaestina," hoping to erase the Jewish connection to the land and prevent further rebellions. In 324 CE, the land came under the control of the Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Church) until 638 CE.
4.
In 638 CE, the Muslims conquered the Land of Israel and did what the Christians never dared: build their mosques in our holiest place. Indeed, they are the foreign occupiers of the land, not the Jews. The great replacement theory is not only Christian; the Muslims also claim to replace us as the chosen people. The Muslims ruled the Land of Israel until 1099, when they were defeated by the Crusader army in the First Crusade. During the centuries of Muslim rule, many Jews were forced to convert to Islam and lived as crypto-Jews until they assimilated into Muslim society (those who kept faith with the God of Israel preferred to go into exile). To this day, there are Palestinians who observe Jewish customs (an astonishing historical irony). The Crusaders established the Kingdom of Jerusalem and ruled the country from 1099 to 1187, when they were defeated by Saladin at the Battle of the Horns of Hattin. The Crusaders continued to rule the north (Acre) until 1260. They were followed by the Mamluks who ruled the Land of Israel between 1260 and 1517.
Then came the Ottomans, who ruled the country for 400 years, from 1517 to 1917, until they lost the Middle East to the victorious powers of World War I. The Ottomans signed a document ceding their lands to the superpowers. At the San Remo Conference in April 1920, the powers decided to allocate around 99 percent of the territory to the Arabs and the Biblical Land of Israel, including eastern Transjordan, (about 1 percent) to the Jews. Faisal, the representative of the Arab delegation, and Chaim Weizmann, the representative of the Zionist delegation reached a historic agreement on this issue.
To implement these decisions, the victorious powers created a new historical institution: the mandate. The United Kingdom received the mandate to implement the Balfour Declaration in the Land of Israel ("Palestine"), establishing a national home for the Jewish people. Thus, at San Remo, the Balfour Declaration was enshrined in international law and validated within the framework of the League of Nations. This validation did not change with the establishment of the United Nations and remains valid to this day.
5.
About a year later, in 1921, the British took three-quarters of the land originally intended for the Jews, and handed over eastern Transjordan to the Emir Abdullah and the Hashemite family, which came from the Hijaz in Arab peninsula. This led to the establishment of the Emirate of Transjordan, which became the Kingdom of Jordan in 1946. From the original League of Nations mandate, only the western part of the Land of Israel was left for the Jews, about 22 percent of the initial territory.
The Arabs did not relinquish their claim even to this tiny territory either, and worked to prevent the Jews from establishing a state there. In the wake of Arab pogroms against Jews, a committee headed by Lord Peel in 1937 proposed dividing the land: about 17 percent for the Jews, 75 percent for the Arabs, with Jerusalem remaining international. The Zionist movement accepted this proposal, but the Arabs rejected it and continued their acts of hostility.
In 1947, the UN proposed partitioning the country into a Jewish state and an Arab state. It is important to note that there was no mention of a "Palestinian" state, but rather an "Arab" one. The official name of the country at that time was "Palestine - Land of Israel." The Jews agreed to the partition, but the Arabs refused and initiated a war that came to be known by the Jews as the War of Independence. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was established. The Pillar of Dawn had risen.
