The Druzes are a national-religious sect found within the borders of Israel, Syria and Lebanon.
Like the Jews, they are both a nation and a religion that the nation is coupled to. Unlike the Jews, there is no joining their nation by conversion. A central tenet of Druze belief is reincarnation: Druzes believe the soul of every deceased Druze is reincarnated in a newborn Druze.
Throughout the years, the Druzes have had periods of independence followed by life under Islamic rulers. As an offshoot of Islam, the Druze faith like Baha’ism and Ahmadiyyah is considered heresy by the mainstream Sunni and Shi’a authorities.
In the course of their history, the Druzes have stuck to two political doctrines that have kept their cohesion while minimizing friction with the surrounding society:
- A Druze must be loyal to fellow Druzes.
- A Druze must be loyal to the state in which he or she resides.
The similarity to the Jews can again not go unnoticed.
The Druzes are an exception. The Jews too are an exception. Nations with a doctrine of accepting all the laws and rules of the host state are exceptions to the rule. In most cases, a guest nation will not for long be at peace with the host state unless it is assimilated to it; national pride will give rise to demands made of the host state, with the resultant civil strife. Only a tyrannical hand could keep the lid on such strife, as was the case for Yugoslavia before its break-up and Iraq before Saddam was ousted from power.
The Jews in the Diaspora were conspiratorially accused of plotting against their host states despite the doctrine against doing so. They were also accused of drinking the blood of children despite the Torah’s prohibitions against both cannibalism and the drinking of blood.
The Jews were tossed from host state to host state. Sometimes they were tossed out of the world.
The host nations were under no obligation to like their Jewish guests, but without a state of their own the Jews could only wander from state to state.
The Jews prayed for the end of statelessness and the return to their one and only homeland: The Land of Israel, also called Palestine. In the 19th century, with the pressure of pogroms increasing and the possibilities opened by new means of communications and transport, Jews finally set out to realize their dream.
We, like the Druzes, are exceptions. As the nations of the world can see, whether the white nations of Europe or the black ones of Africa, most nations do not take well to having other nations inside them. Especially not those whose religion commands them to impose their laws on the host nation.
What the other nations do in their own states is their business only, but the Jews cannot acquiesce to an assault on their national rights.
The Jews can complain at the hard-heartedness of the world closing its gates to Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, but the actions of Britain then were of a totally different nature: Britain had no right to close the gates of Mandate Palestine before Jewish refugees.
Why is that different? Because Palestine is the Jewish nation’s land. It is ours to do in it as we wish, just as Hellas is the Greek nation’s land to do in it as they wish, and the Netherlands is the Dutch nation’s.
The Arab nation has over twenty states to do as they wish in them. Although most of those states are well outside the indigenous Arab territory of the Arabian Peninsula, we are not going to call for them all to “go back home” the way Helen Thomas demanded of the Jews in their own homeland.
But as the German nation was not entitled to pieces of Poland and France, belonging to other nations, so the Arab nation has no right to the land of the indigenous Palestinian nation—the Jewish nation.
As the Jews have no intention of going back to their previous statelessness, peace in the Middle East is contingent upon the recognition of the Jews’ national rights.
The Jewish nation, like every other nation, has the right to its protective space within the bounds of its indigenous territory of Palestine. Anything less and it is as if we had never returned from the Diaspora.
The histories of even the exceptions, the Druze nation and the Jewish nation, show that is the best for all parties involved to have states of their own. The nations that once tossed us to and fro have no right to complain, or obstruct things, when we Jews decide we have finally had enough and go forth to renew our political sovereignty on our one and only homeland.
The Jews are here in Palestine by right, and setting up their state on the Land of Israel has been their right from day one. The world does not owe the Jewish people a thing, and the Jewish people does not owe the world a thing.