Joshua, the Settlers and the International Court in the Hague
June 2007
[Published in Hebrew on Hagadah Hasmalit, June
2007]
The Zionist state rests on three pillars: the Bible, the Holocaust and the nuclear bomb. Each of these pillars is surrounded by a thick roll of barbed wire, deterring anyone who dares to approach or challenge it.
My concern here is the first 'pillar' - the Bible. The other day a group of settlers rampaged in a Muslim cemetery in the West Bank village of Kifl Hares, to celebrate their earlier visit to the supposed tomb of Joshua son of Nun. The media responded in a variety of ways. Some commentators noted that the biblical Joshua was responsible for the genocide of the Canaanites, thus it was not surprising that his admirers are prone to such behaviour.
I find this interpretation disturbing for a number of reasons. First, I'm uncomfortable about the application of modern concepts to figures and events in the distant past. I don't know how many historical heroes would emerge unstained from such anachronistic evaluation. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Saladin, the kings of the Indian empires in America, George Washington, not to mention Napoleon - which of them would have been cleared of war-crimes by the international court?
Secondly, I'm bothered by the tendency to accept the biblical story at face value, to regard Joshua as a historical figure, the leader of the Israelite tribes when they conquered Canaan, while at the same time examining this 'history' in modern terms. The inescapable conclusion is that this nation of Israel was conceived and born in war-crime and genocide. Is this the history we wish to teach Israelis? What is it, if not a pseudo-scholarly retroactive justification of the worst events in the history of Zionism and the State of Israel?
Clearly, the original sin belongs in the Israeli educational system. Presenting the Bible as an historical document is a crucial element in Zionist ideology. The Bible, we are told as early as in kindergarten, is our freehold title-deed, showing that this is our ancient homeland. And whether or not it is said that it was given to our ancestors by God, the categorical statement that our ancestors were the inhabitants and lords of this country has always been the basis for the Zionist claim to Palestine. Yet anyone who takes the trouble to study the history of this country soon discovers that it was not so straightforward. The Israelites (or the Judeans - since we're supposed to be the heirs of the Kingdom of Judea) ruled this country for relatively short periods, and some of these under the dominance of various empires. Jerusalem was under sovereign Jewish rule for not more than 400 years in antiquity. It was under Muslim rule for some 1,300 years: from the 7th century until its conquest by the Crusaders in the late 11th century, and after the latter had held it for a total of 88 years, it was taken over again by Muslims, who ruled it until 1917. As for prolonged Jewish presence - there were Jewish communities for much longer periods in other cities, such as Aleppo (Syria), Salonika (Greece), Meqnes (Morocco) and Vilna (Lithuania).
But it seems facts and 'history' do not make good bedfellows. Depicting the biblical heroes as historical figures, for better or worse, means playing into the hands of the most extremist circles in Israel. There are people who say, 'What's the difference between the territories captured in the Six-Day War and the Israel that preceded it? - Why are the inhabitants of Tel Aviv not "settlers" like the ones in the West Bank?' This argument is not easy to refute (though not impossible), but I shan't go into it here because it deserve an article by itself. My subject today is how to look at such biblical figures as Joshua son of Nun. If Joshua, Moses' chosen successor, the great commander, the conqueror of Canaan, laid the foundation for the great Israelite kingdom, then our origin as a nation begins in an enormous crime. The implications of such a belief are far graver than the argument, 'Since we've always dispossessed the Arabs, anyway, we might as well keep the lot!'
But the Bible is not a historical document. It is an ancient literary work, rich with a great variety of materials, put together hundreds of years after the periods described in its narrative passages. Nowadays the leading scholars, archaeologists, historians and philologists agree that the narrative books were written no earlier than the end of the First temple period. (Even the late archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni, who supported the 'Whole Eretz Israel' movement, admitted that there was absolutely no evidence to back up the biblical description of the conquest of Canaan.) These texts must have served the religious, political and psychological purposes - the agenda, if you will - of the late authors. The nation which was crushed and disheartened by the fall of the kingdom of Israel and after it the kingdom of Judah, needed these texts in order to continue to believe in its past, its leaders, its identity as one nation despite the diverse elements. The authors also felt the need to strengthen their belief in the one god, a belief which was badly shaken by the defeats, along with its complex of laws and religious rules designed to preserve its distinct identity among the other small nations which had been beaten and dispersed by the empires of Babylon, Assyria and Persia.
'You can't have it both ways,' says a leading authority on Ancient Israel/Palestine with whom I discussed the issue. 'It is not possible on the one hand to reject the political utilisation of the Bible as the basis for our claim to rule this country, while at the same time to use biblical - whether mythological or even historical - figures in order to attack the nationalist camp.' The criminal behaviour of the settlers who rampaged in the Muslim village cemetery is not a consequence of an ancient historical crime committed by Joshua, but a direct product of the occupation and of Zionist colonialism.
It's been said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The moment one group dominates another it begins to undergo a process of moral corruption. There have been a number of practical experiments that demonstrated this quite rapid process (for example, Philip Zimbardo's famous experiment at Stanford University in 1971.) Today the position of the Jews in this country gives them almost unrestricted power over the Arab population, and the results were foreseeable. We must confront the reality in which we live without recourse to mythology, not even against the occupation and its evils, while we reject its use in its justification.
*
The Zionist state rests on three pillars: the Bible, the Holocaust and the nuclear bomb. Each of these pillars is surrounded by a thick roll of barbed wire, deterring anyone who dares to approach or challenge it.
My concern here is the first 'pillar' - the Bible. The other day a group of settlers rampaged in a Muslim cemetery in the West Bank village of Kifl Hares, to celebrate their earlier visit to the supposed tomb of Joshua son of Nun. The media responded in a variety of ways. Some commentators noted that the biblical Joshua was responsible for the genocide of the Canaanites, thus it was not surprising that his admirers are prone to such behaviour.
I find this interpretation disturbing for a number of reasons. First, I'm uncomfortable about the application of modern concepts to figures and events in the distant past. I don't know how many historical heroes would emerge unstained from such anachronistic evaluation. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Saladin, the kings of the Indian empires in America, George Washington, not to mention Napoleon - which of them would have been cleared of war-crimes by the international court?
Secondly, I'm bothered by the tendency to accept the biblical story at face value, to regard Joshua as a historical figure, the leader of the Israelite tribes when they conquered Canaan, while at the same time examining this 'history' in modern terms. The inescapable conclusion is that this nation of Israel was conceived and born in war-crime and genocide. Is this the history we wish to teach Israelis? What is it, if not a pseudo-scholarly retroactive justification of the worst events in the history of Zionism and the State of Israel?
Clearly, the original sin belongs in the Israeli educational system. Presenting the Bible as an historical document is a crucial element in Zionist ideology. The Bible, we are told as early as in kindergarten, is our freehold title-deed, showing that this is our ancient homeland. And whether or not it is said that it was given to our ancestors by God, the categorical statement that our ancestors were the inhabitants and lords of this country has always been the basis for the Zionist claim to Palestine. Yet anyone who takes the trouble to study the history of this country soon discovers that it was not so straightforward. The Israelites (or the Judeans - since we're supposed to be the heirs of the Kingdom of Judea) ruled this country for relatively short periods, and some of these under the dominance of various empires. Jerusalem was under sovereign Jewish rule for not more than 400 years in antiquity. It was under Muslim rule for some 1,300 years: from the 7th century until its conquest by the Crusaders in the late 11th century, and after the latter had held it for a total of 88 years, it was taken over again by Muslims, who ruled it until 1917. As for prolonged Jewish presence - there were Jewish communities for much longer periods in other cities, such as Aleppo (Syria), Salonika (Greece), Meqnes (Morocco) and Vilna (Lithuania).
But it seems facts and 'history' do not make good bedfellows. Depicting the biblical heroes as historical figures, for better or worse, means playing into the hands of the most extremist circles in Israel. There are people who say, 'What's the difference between the territories captured in the Six-Day War and the Israel that preceded it? - Why are the inhabitants of Tel Aviv not "settlers" like the ones in the West Bank?' This argument is not easy to refute (though not impossible), but I shan't go into it here because it deserve an article by itself. My subject today is how to look at such biblical figures as Joshua son of Nun. If Joshua, Moses' chosen successor, the great commander, the conqueror of Canaan, laid the foundation for the great Israelite kingdom, then our origin as a nation begins in an enormous crime. The implications of such a belief are far graver than the argument, 'Since we've always dispossessed the Arabs, anyway, we might as well keep the lot!'
But the Bible is not a historical document. It is an ancient literary work, rich with a great variety of materials, put together hundreds of years after the periods described in its narrative passages. Nowadays the leading scholars, archaeologists, historians and philologists agree that the narrative books were written no earlier than the end of the First temple period. (Even the late archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni, who supported the 'Whole Eretz Israel' movement, admitted that there was absolutely no evidence to back up the biblical description of the conquest of Canaan.) These texts must have served the religious, political and psychological purposes - the agenda, if you will - of the late authors. The nation which was crushed and disheartened by the fall of the kingdom of Israel and after it the kingdom of Judah, needed these texts in order to continue to believe in its past, its leaders, its identity as one nation despite the diverse elements. The authors also felt the need to strengthen their belief in the one god, a belief which was badly shaken by the defeats, along with its complex of laws and religious rules designed to preserve its distinct identity among the other small nations which had been beaten and dispersed by the empires of Babylon, Assyria and Persia.
'You can't have it both ways,' says a leading authority on Ancient Israel/Palestine with whom I discussed the issue. 'It is not possible on the one hand to reject the political utilisation of the Bible as the basis for our claim to rule this country, while at the same time to use biblical - whether mythological or even historical - figures in order to attack the nationalist camp.' The criminal behaviour of the settlers who rampaged in the Muslim village cemetery is not a consequence of an ancient historical crime committed by Joshua, but a direct product of the occupation and of Zionist colonialism.
It's been said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The moment one group dominates another it begins to undergo a process of moral corruption. There have been a number of practical experiments that demonstrated this quite rapid process (for example, Philip Zimbardo's famous experiment at Stanford University in 1971.) Today the position of the Jews in this country gives them almost unrestricted power over the Arab population, and the results were foreseeable. We must confront the reality in which we live without recourse to mythology, not even against the occupation and its evils, while we reject its use in its justification.
*