History of the Diaspora Jews - Essay Example

Jewish diaspora Introduction to the history of the Diaspora Jews The disintegration of the Jewish s back to the 70AD resulting from the activities of the Roman Empire to evict the Jews from what they knew to be their home for millenniums. However, conceivable that the history of the Jewish diasporic nature begun way before the Romans even thought of invading and evicting the Jews from Judea (Ehrlich, 178). At the time of Assyrian conquest of Israel in the year 722BC, the Hebrew was already scattered in the Middle East. Anthropologic studies indicate that the primordial Jewish Diasporas entirely disappeared from the realms of history. Nonetheless, when King Nebuchadnezzar deported the Judeans in 586BC and 597BC, he consented to their stay as a unified community within the Babylonian Empire. A second group fled to exile in Egypt. Taking into account these epic in the history of the Jewish, it is intuitive that the 597BC was the genesis of the Jewish diaspora. In 538 BC, the Cyrus, the then king of Babylon to return to their homeland but a larger population of the Jewish opted to stay put in Babylon (Ehrlich, 112). On the other hand, a large population of the Jews remained in Egypt. However, the stunning fact about the Judeans in their diasporic episodes is that they retained their religious inclinations, identity, and social norms. In the 63 BC, Judea came under the protectorate of Rome. Under the leadership of a governor, Judea was allowed a king. The functions of the governor were to regulate trade among the Judeans and maximize the collection of taxes (Ehrlich, 88). The Jews had a protracted conflict with the Greeks, but the Romans were their gravest threat. The Jewish revolted the rule of even a Jewish king. In the 70AD, a Jewish revolt that ended desperately rocked the annals of history. The last revolt of the Jewish against the Romanian governorship was in 73AD that occurred in the mountain fort of Masada. The captives held in the port by the Romans were already starving. In a reactionary move, the Jewish revolutionaries massacred themselves in defiance of the imposed rules by the Romans. The Romans responded to this act of defiance by destroying Jerusalem, annexing Judaea as a Roman province, and simultaneously driving the out of Palestine. The era following the 73AD instrumentally marked the beginning of the Hebrew diasporic nature. The remnant Jews and their worldview consequently spread all over the world in countries such as Africa, Asia, and Europe. This paper discusses the intrigues of about the diasporic experience of Jews in the Middle East. The Israelites in Israel state are an example of Jews diaspora in a Muslim-dominated region of the Middle East. The conflicts between the Israel and Palestine are current age phenomena but dates to the 19th century. The Arabs and the Israelites have eminent religious differences but studies on the prominent conflicts between the two states reveals that religion is not if any, the cause of the conflicts (Wettstein et. al, 126). The struggle is traced to a fight over a strip of land, which was primordially called Palestine. The 1948-949 Israeli independence war is a case depiction of the hostile reception of the Jews by the Arabs in the Middle East. After the Arab-Israeli, the war between 1948 and 1949 resulted in the segregation of Palestine into three parts including; the Israeli state, the west bank and the Gaza strip. Palestine is a small area of land that is barely ten thousand square miles approximated to the size of the state of Maryland. The competing claims between the Jews and the Arabs over Palestine are determinedly irreconcilable if no side is willing to forego their claims. The Jews claim that the contentious strip of land was their biblical inheritance following God’s promise to the faithful Abraham and his generations. Furthermore, the Jews assert their claim by advancing their perceptions the land was a historical Jews cite that hosted the Jewish and Judean kingdoms. On the other hand, the Palestinian Arabs posit that the land is their inheritance following their historically prudent residence in the land. A further assertion to the Arab claim of Palestine is that they form the demographic majority in the disputed land up to the time of the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948 (Wettstein 142). The Arabs refute the fact that the biblical timescale can be used to lounge a valid claim in the modern age. The sole Biblical argument that the Arabs engage in is that since they are the descendants of Ishmael, who was the outcast son of Abraham, they too have a share in Gods promise of a land for his generations. Since the birth of the Israeli state, Middle East has been a haven of conflicts. This eminent conflict between the Arabs states and Israel has continued amidst the Israeli attaching their sense of inheritance of Palestine both as a holy land and as a Gods Promised Land to their ancestor, Abraham. It is deceptive stance to believe that the principal position of the Zionists is that their resurfacing in Palestine in the late 19th century was a mere return to their ancestral homeland. It is falsity that the returning Jews bought land in Palestine and began establishing their community there. However, they faced myriads of oppositions by the Palestinian Arabs. This adversarial relationship between the Israeli and Arabs erupted from the Arabs inherent hate of the Jews. The actual occurrence is that the Zionist movement forthrightly envisioned a tacit end of change the possession of the Palestine Land from the Arab population to themselves. They perceived this move as means of ensuring that Israel stands out as a sovereign state. The Arab community became suspicious of the actual intentions of the Zionists and began suppressing their immigration. The Arabs viewed the influx of the Jews in Palestine as a significant threat to their very existence. The Zionists received military assistance from the British in the case of aggression hence threatening the security of the Palestine Arabs. The perceptions of the Zionists were guided by the flawed colonial worldview that the rights of the existing inhabitants of an area were of secondary significance (Wettstein, 122). The 1948 proclamation of the Israeli as a sovereign state resulted from approximately two millenniums clamor for the Jewish return to their land from which the Romans expelled them. Their determination to attain sovereignty was a culmination of the Holocaust of the European Jewry that strengthened them. Since its inception, Israel has been perceived as undermining the peace in the Middle East with four significant wars fought between the Middle East states and Israel. However, studies indicate that the Israeli foreign policy is firmly grounded in the need for peace and security (Wettstein, 91). The two policy stipulations are closely related at any standards. It is reasonable that the unique position of Israel in the Middle East is exploited by political intersects to enhance regional stability. By the time of declaration of an Israeli state, only around one hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians remained in the new state. They were granted the rights of universal suffrage but were relegated to second-class citizens by the state. Israel defines itself as an overly Jewish state, and any inhabitants other than the Jews are considered aliens. These frustrations of the Palestinian Arabs have intersected with various secondary factors to cast the Jewish Israelites against their neighboring Arab states. A dramatic puzzle is that over sixty-five years of animosity has been the order of the day between the Arabs and the Israelites in Palestine. Even though the interstate solution has proven a viable option to stop the conflicts, they continue escalating with each side unrelentingly pursuing their historical and contemporary grievances (Simon et. al, 182). The factors underlying the Israeli-Palestine conflict are pervasive including religious subscriptions and the past experiences of either side. The historic establishment of Israeli state following the Holocaust engendered the Hebrews to negative perceptions of their enemies. The establishment of the Israel state was a last refuge for the embattled Jews. The Jews have had to live to protect their refugee interests. Security from external aggression is a principal focus of the Israeli foreign policy. The Hebrew pursued their diasporic welfare at all reasonable costs. The Palestine Arabs do not adequately acknowledge the historical experiences of the Israelites and their desire to recast their experiences For the Palestinian Arabs, the Israeli independence war was not a calamity (Simon et. al, 132). The Arabs perceived themselves as having been invaded by aliens. Two significant factors determine the unique situation of Israeli in the Middle East. The first issue is the overriding effect of the Jews attempts to maintain ethical authenticity even with its status as a foreign state. The original population of the current Israeli state was ninety-five percent Muslim and Christians, but there is a gross disparity in the treatments of the two sections by the Israeli government. A second challenge to Israel existence is her controversial capture of the privately owned land in the West Bank and Gaza. Following the 1967 Israeli-Iran War, there emerged an armistice between the state of Israel and her neighboring Arab countries. The suspicions about Israel are a result of the arms race. The western world including the United States of America loathed the establishment if the American state as a significant triumph for humanity. The Zionist leaders perceived the Jews as a source of benefits for modernization due to their skills. The Jews did not accept the Palestinian Arabs since they were seen as potential usurpers of their ancestral land (Simon et. al, 132). The move by United Nations to divide the Palestinian territory encompassing the area between River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea resulted in the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab country. Jerusalem was set as the international enclave between the two nations. The subdivision of the land area resulted in the allocation of fifty-five percent of the land area of the Palestine while only forty-five percent of the land was left for the Palestinian Arabs. The Arab-dominated region was overly opposed to the subdivision and allocation of Palestine to the Jewish state of Israel. They forcible objected the United Nations decision through an armed struggle that followed. In a series of Jews-Arab wars, the Jews, who ended up owning approximately 77% of the Palestine land area. The immediate result of the creation of the Jewish state was the displacement of the Arabs. Over 725,000 Arab Palestinians either migrated voluntarily or forcibly from the area that was later christened Israeli state. Most Arab emigrants from Israeli feared the repercussions of the intense wars between the two factions (Kobrin, 90). Moreover, some Israeli refugees of Arab origin have been orchestrated by the Israeli psychological warfare. Israeli has been adamant in accepting back into her territory the evicted members of the Palestine Arab origin. The Arab states have significantly contested the existence of Israel in the region but due to her military power, the states have failed to organize successful military expeditions against her. Over the years, the Arabs have refused to come to terms with the reality of the Israeli residence in Middle East (Kobrin, 117). The refusal by the Arabs to accommodate the Jews freely has resulted in economic setbacks among the Arab states and Israel. Some of the adversarial effects of the strained relationships between the Jews and the Arabs include the loss of explicit markets for their produce and labor. The Palestine problem involving the contest between the Jews and the Arabs has become a pervasive phenomenon in the Arab politics hence a cause of much tension and instability in the Middle East. The Arabs have born the desire to avenge for the loss of the 1948 independence war against Israel (Kobrin, 167). Currently, Israel has forged good diplomatic and peaceful toes with her formerly antagonistic neighbors such as Egypt and Jordan but Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia remain serious enemies of the Israeli state. In conclusion, the Jewish diaspora resulted from both the voluntary and arbitrary evictions of the Jews from their homeland and later exiled in several regions of the world. Some of the places in which the Jewish were exiled include the Middle Eastern states, England, and Spain. The voluntary dispersions and forcible evictions of the Hebrews from their homeland marked the beginning of the Jews diaspora. The return journey of the Jews to Israel from the Middle Eastern countries and vast regions of the world has occurred over a wider timescale. However, several Jews remained in their countries long after the exodus. The evictions of the Hebrews by the Assyrians and the Judeans by the Babylonians only exacerbated their existing diasporic nature. Due to the classical origin, endurance, and attachment of the Jews to their land, it is conceivable that the Jewish diaspora has been regarded as an archetypal diaspora. The Jewish diaspora is pockets of Jewish communities that exist in the many host countries of the world. However, the resident Jews in the host countries have retained virtually all their ethnic and national identities. The identity of the Jewish in Diaspora is intricately intertwined with their strong religious standing. The sense of Jewish identity is a product of their integrated ancestry, sociological and significant factors. The communal nature of the Jews serves as the basis of their organization and unity in action. Works Cited Ehrlich, M A. Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 2009. Print. Kobrin, Rebecca. Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. Internet resource. Simon, Reeva S, Michael M. Laskier, and Sara Reguer. The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Internet resource. Wettstein, Howard K. Diasporas and Exiles: Varieties of Jewish Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Print. Read More