Zionism is the Greatest Decolonization in History
by Hadar Tennenberg, Times of Israel
Zionism is unique and unprecedented – the story of an indigenous nation returning to the land that was violently stolen from them by colonizing empires. A land they have never stopped yearning for, and have had a continuous presence in despite 3000 years of efforts to the contrary.
Arabs, by comparison, are indigenous to the Arab Peninsula. So is Islam. How did they become the overwhelming majority in the Middle East and North Africa, once a culturally diverse region? Violent colonization and forced conversion.
The Levant has been colonized by empire after empire. The Jewish Kingdoms of Israel were taken over by the Assyrians, followed by the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans (who’s emperor Hadrian changed the name from Judea to “Syria Palaestina”, in order to sever the Jewish connection to our homeland), the Byzantine empire, THEN the Arab empire, followed by Crusaders, the Ayyub and Mamluk Sultanate, the Ottoman empire, then the British.
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- We have always yearned to return.
- Every year at Passover we say “Next year in Jerusalem”.
- We always pray facing the site of the ancient holy Jewish Temple (now the site of Al-Aqsa, a mosque built over the Temple ruins when the Arab empire conquered Jerusalem)
- We have kept the language despite attempts to eradicate it- a trademark imperialistic move.
- Now, thanks to the decolonization by Zionists, we are finally able to practice our ancient laws applicable ONLY in the land of Israel, like “Shmita”, the agricultural sabbatical which commands us not to work the land every seventh year in order to let it rest without human intervention.
- We have reinstated the currency our ancestors used in this land.
- We have reinstated the language.