From myths to reality: Understanding the birth of Israel

I think it was 2012. During the days when Israel was once again bombarding Gaza, I overheard a conversation between two older gentlemen from the congregation as I was leaving an Istanbul mosque after the evening prayer. One of them said to the other, "Look, can't you see? They sold their land to the Jews, and now they're reaping the consequences!" It was disheartening to hear such a crude and inaccurate generalization from someone whose life was clearly dedicated to devotion and prostration. At one point, I even thought, "Should I take them aside and explain that it's not really like that?" But the distortion in their minds had become so deep and interconnected that explaining things coherently would have required starting from the very first human, Adam. So, I reluctantly gave up.

In these days when Israel is once again bombing Gaza, the rumor of "selling their land" has resurfaced and spread throughout the country. In our country, where everyone, informed or not, chimes in, where brave ignorants parade around as "opinion leaders," and where unverified and unconfirmed nonsense is considered "wisdom," it's important to continually remind people of certain truths.

The Zionist occupation that culminated in the establishment of Israel in historic Palestine proceeded on three fronts: 1) Massacres, terrorism, and displacement, 2) Plunder of public lands, 3) Land and property transfers. To explain it chronologically, let's start from the end:

In the 1800s, while the Ottoman Empire was still relatively stable, people from various races and religions from many countries around the world began to appear in the land of Palestine. Within the framework of the state's politics and balance policies at the time, privileges were granted to various states and their subjects, allowing them to build temples, rights to buy real estate, and leniency for real estate transactions. Besides the Jewish communities who had been living in the Palestinian land for centuries, Jews coming from Europe and other regions bought land within this framework and established settlements. In that atmosphere of the time, no one ever imagined that these Jews would one day expel the local population from their homeland and establish an occupying state there. But during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid, the Ottoman Empire took every precaution to prevent the sale of property to Jews when Political Zionism emerged as a danger. We have many fatwas from the Arab scholars of the time that stated that selling property and land to outside Jews was "religiously forbidden."

(Note regarding land and property sales: It's essential to note the following: Especially in the northern regions of Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt, there were extensive territories belonging to Arab landowners, mostly non-Muslim. For example, the Merc Ibn Amir Valley in the southeast of Haifa, along with dozens of villages and thousands of Arab farmers living in these villages, belonged to the Sursuk family from Lebanon. The Sursuks, who were Greek Orthodox Christians, bought the valley from the Ottoman government in those years, and between 1912 and 1925, they sold it to Zionist organizations. Likewise, the land where the Israeli Parliament building was constructed in Jerusalem was once the property of the Jerusalem Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.)

Starting from the early 1900s, as the empire began to falter in its final days, it started to lose its effective control over the region. Jews who flocked to Palestine from all corners of the world took the opportunity to squat on state lands and focus on protecting the farms ("kibbutzim") they established on the lands they surrounded through paramilitary militias. These armed militias, under various names, would organize during the process of Israel's establishment, some of which would be eliminated, and others would come together to form the foundation of the Israeli army.

The acts of massacre, terrorism, and forced displacement against the civilian and indigenous population living in Palestine were the most commonly used and most effective methods of the Zionist occupation. From the second half of the 1930s until 1948, the Palestinian territories experienced one of the bloodiest and most conflict-ridden periods in its history. More than 750,000 people had to migrate to different regions, over 20,000 civilians were killed, villages were set on fire and plundered, and all that was left behind were terrible pain, dramas, and traumas. The establishment of Israel included much more than the "losses" that could occur during the establishment of any state. Nearly a thousand Palestinian settlements were wiped off the map, and everything left behind by the local people was seized by Jews. The foundations of Israel were laid in the midst of a sea of blood.

In addition to all this, following the wars with Arabs in 1948-1949, 1967, and 1973, Israel seized numerous properties and lands that belonged to Palestinians. In this context, the colonization system that we briefly mentioned as "settlements" deserves to be discussed separately. If all goes well, we will continue from there in the next article.