Understanding the Middle East, part 10 - Oranges and dates, part 2

(Note: This is part 2 of a two parts post. If you didn't read part 1 yet, please find it in my blog )

If you want to understand why I claim that Rabbi Yehuda Ha’Levi of Ragusa have changed the course of History, you just have to look across the road from the Tel Aviv residency that now stands where his orchard used to be, to the reconstructed Templar village, Sarona.

The Templar movement was established in Württemberg, in the mid 1800’s. They started arriving to the Holy Land in the late 1860’s. Unlike George J Adams's community, the Templars did not anticipate the return of the Jews as a precursor of the second coming. They believed that they, through their special lifestyle and their colonization of the Holy Land, can create the mystic conditions that will hasten the return of Christ.

They were German, industrious and precise. Their first colony was in Haifa and they soon built other colonies in the Galilee, in the area of Jaffa and in Jerusalem. They have dried swamplands, introduced the first tractors and other agricultural machinery to the land and built the first modern factories. They were not anti-Semitic and lived in good relations with the growing Jewish population, that at first was very inspired by them, built colonies similar to the Templars’ and adopted their agricultural methods. Yet it is clear that the forming Zionist movement and the Templars were competitors for the same lands and that the Zionist activity greatly moderated the German colonization of the Holy Land.

The Zionist movement was of course very motivated to buy lands in the Levant (some of them, BTW, outside the current borders of Israel), but the Templars were second only to it in their motivation. Now imagine what would happen if Rabbi Yehuda Ha'Levi of Ragusa would not insist on seizing the opportunity, immediately after the change in the Ottoman land ownership regulations and before the Templars started arriving. Even if the Zionist movement would still come into existence, suffice that the whole process would delay in a decade for history to take a completely different course.

So what if there was no Zionism and no Israel? We can't know for sure, but a very likely possibility is that by the beginning of the 20th century, there would be a large German population in Palestine, backed by the strengthening allay between Germany and Turkey. What would then happen to balance of powers in world war I ? It is likely that the allies would still win, but would they be able to take over the Levant? And what would that mean for the outcome of world war Ii? What if the Germans would be in complete control of the Levant with France of the Vichy regime in control of Syria and Lebanon, and a German stronghold in Palestine?

For us, as Jews, this possibility is unthinkable as it would probably mean the extinction of the Jewish people, but I dare say that it would be a disaster for the rest of the world. Of course any historian would tell you, that the speculation I just made here is not scientifically valid. No one really knows how history could evolve other than how it really did. My point is that the situation in the Middle East would not be necessarily better without Israel. On the contrary, the area would be just filled with more foreign influences, and probably not for the benefit of the local population.

Zionism was successful because it changed the faith of the Jewish people while reconnecting the Jews - in practice and not just in a spiritual manner, to their enchant homeland. By doing so, it reinstalled the Jews as one of the native groups of the Levant. So why did the surrounding Arab world did not accept Israel and Zionism? Is it all just because of blind hatred? We will discuss that in the next chapters.