By denying that there was a powerful and definitive Zionistic relationship between the Jews and the land of Israel prior to the 19th century, those who repeat the Zionism-began-in-Europe fallacy lend their support to the best known and longest standing attempt at religious genocide in history - the quest by the Church and the Mosque to erase the Jews, a supposedly conquered people whose "stiff-necked" obduracy subsequent to the arrival of Jesus and Mohamed constituted an afront if not a full blown metaphysical typo.

According to these triumphal creeds, it was their own faithful flocks that were to inherit the divine covenant from the vanquished Jews. Israel's children had been replaced and were to convert or be converted out of existence. A remnant was tolerated as historical detritus, offered as icons of the demonic (the New Testament is particularly good at this), and even lent a small modicum of respect as fellow monotheists (Islam is said to have been more generous than Christianity here), but it was thought to be a matter of time before all traces of the defeated Jews would finally be eliminated.

The notion of Israel's rebirth was either discounted, transformed beyond recognition into an essential element of Christan eschatology or dealt with as a repressed theological nightmare. Evidence for the latter can be derived from the efforts of European rulers (e.g. Napoleon) as late as the 19th century to coerce the Jews into renouncing their loyalty to Zion. By the time Israel's rebirth loomed as a possibility in the 20th century it represented an impending theological disaster for both of these religious superpowers. For what would it mean for Islam and Christianity, both of whom had erected their spiritual identities on the foundation of historical triumph and succession, if the children of Israel returned to Judea and Jerusalem to claim their covenant and inheritance? Thus the desperate effort to define "the Zionist entity" as a modern invention of European origins unrelated to the people of the Bible.

The new story was conjured by the Islamic clerics of the Mandate era, promoted as Gospel by the British, and recently returned to with a vengeance by the Europeans. Fearful of Islam and envious of America, 21rst century Europe apparently envisions a partnership with Islam based on trade, nonbeligerency, and the return of the Jews to their disinherited status. The predominantly Christian continent has apparently forgotten its wholesale slaughter of six million European Judeans in the 1940's, and with it the reason that the UN voted in '48 in favor of re-establishing a Jewish sanctuary (reaffirming the earlier League of Nations decision to create a Jewish homeland in the desolate sanjeks of Palestine formerly administered by the Ottomans.) Thus two thousand years after the birth of Christ (who one must assume to have been an ardent Zionist himself) Zionism-began-in-Europe has emerged as the jointly promoted misrepresentation of two aging hegemonists still prosecuting an age-old religious genocide. Too bad it holds as much truth as the theory of spontaneous generation.

By pronouncing Zionism's origins to be in Europe, Israel's enemies also set the stage for tarring the Jews with the absurd accusation of being "colonizers" of so-called "Arab lands." (Of course, if there was no Zion prior to the 19th century, who else would it belong to?) Colonies aren't allowed in the current world order and one must assume that anyone who is construed to own them must either relinquish them or face the wrath of the community of nations. If this sounds like a prospective case for Europe's new 'World Court' and a prelude for another confrontation with Israel it should. Europe's church-fed hatred of the Jews is indigenous, its pretexts for Jew-slaughter reliably absurd.

One shouldn't need to point out that colonizing the Middle East is something that the Europeans did, that they did it numerous times and without the help of their hapless Jews. The sheer crust of the indictment is stunning when one considers that the Greek and Roman conquests of Judea constituted the dawn of the continent's colonizing habits, and Israel was among the colonized entities. Indeed, would the Jews have ever arrived in Europe if not for being exiled by their European conquerors? Nor was Europe's thirst for colonization limited to the Middle East. They carried on around the globe for thousands of years and only gave up their colonies after the Second World War. Despite their ostensible retirement from world domination and present military weakness, European influence continues to be felt. Today's crusaders of hypocrisy are at once the erstwhile butchers of Israel's exiled children and the authors of the present day map of the Middle East.

For insight into why the Israelis themselves promote the self-destructive fallacy that Zionism originated in Europe, read Yoram Hazoni's revealing history of "The Jewish State." Suffice to say that the rejection by many "intellectual Zionists" of the religious Jewish roots of their movement is the worst case of Stockholm Syndrome on record, and a reflection of the repressed knowledge that the 'Christian and Islamic world' would murder a reborn and religiously defined Israel before it could escape from the cradle. The mixed up message of this crowd remains: "you see, we aren't really the Jews." This would be worthy of a footnote if it weren't for the fact that these 'non-Jews' were well represented among the founders of the modern state and today comprise the majority of Israel's political and intellectual leadership.

The truth is that the Jewish longing for Zion - the land that according to both Jewish and Christian scriptures G-d gave to the children of Abraham's grandson Israel - began well over two millenia before the birth of Theodore Hertzl and was the direct result of their forcible exile from their Judean homeland, first by the Babylonians (Iraq) and then by the Romans.

Heralding the genocidal practices of the 20th century, the Roman conquerors did everything imaginable to eradicate the memory of this kingdom and its hugely influential religion, first by renaming the land "Palestina" and later by co-opting, altering, and repackaging the Jewish religious book of law, the Tanach, as the Christian Bible. Not long thereafter, Islam - following the Christian model - triumphantly erected a mosque/tombstone on top of the ruins of the Jewish Temple.

To see how deep and enduring the Jewish desire to return home was, one only need compare the psalms of the Bible to the poetry written by the Jews of Spain over a thousand years later. In both texts the yearning for Zion is profound, palpable and moving.

The 126th psalm reads -

Jehudah ben Samuel Halevi's 11th century poem, also written in Hebrew, reads -

Through the West's adoption of the Jewish Tanach as "its own", the longing of Israel's children for Zion became the Western paradigm for a lost and longed for state of perfection. Wordsworth, Keats and Dickinson didn't have to wait for Theodore Herzl to remember Zion. They had already internalized the Biblical record. Whether or not one was religious, the loss of Jerusalem was mythic in proportion, akin to the tales of King Arthur and Atlantis. For religious Westerners however, the Bible record of the Jewish journey soared in importance beyond mere mythology - it edified their souls and shaped their political ideals.

For the Jews, of course, exile was painfully real. Zionism would dominate the normative Jewish weltanschauung for thousands of years (even to this day the most popular Jewish holiday greeting is "Next year in Jerusalem.") This remained the case right up until the desperate generation or two that preceded Theodore Herzl (see The French Are Not A Nation.) It was these exhausted Jews who finally succumbed to the endless centuries of state and church-sponsored terror (that included physical torture, forced conversions, massacres, inquisitions, ghettoing, etc.) and, per the demands of their hosts, legally exchanged their allegiance to Zion for "full citizenship" in the newly "enlightened" European states. Those who passed on doing it legally, did so informally. Most assimilated. Many finally converted. It was in fact the failure of their unworthy experiment in self-abnegation, as evidenced in the Dreyfus affair, that prompted Herzl and his gymnasium-educated generation to return to Zionism. In the final analysis, whatever may be said about "modern Zionism's" repression of its religious roots, it in no way effected its immutable religious reality. However limited or ironic, Hertzl's movement was and remains fully and integrally a part of the epic Jewish march to redemption.

Can NPR's reporting really be explained as some cross-Atlantic osmosis of the religious triumphalism of European Christianity? Hardly. Its editorial roots lay in the American debacle in Vietnam, not the Roman one in Judea. But like many Western media outlets, NPR suffers from a tragic misreading (and underestimation) of the religious perspective and thus most certainly, the American one. By dismissing the religious as "irrational" and "fundamentalist", they dismiss themselves and their well-trained powers of observation and language from a realm of concerns and metrics that absorb most Americans on a daily basis, issues like sanctity, redemption and yes, Israel. How curious that a news organization funded by a people that inscribes 'In God We Trust' on their legal tender, bedecks its landscape with signs for New Canaan and Bethlehem, and gives its presidents names like Abraham and Samuel is unable to find evidence for the Jewish yearning for Zion any further back than "more than a century ago." Until NPR bones up on the other than secular world, it should reconsider whether it really wants to stand with Iran, Rome, Europe and (sadly) many "modern Zionists" in trying to suppress the reality of Judea and Jerusalem. Its audience knows where these names come from and who gave the Land of Israel to the Jews. They also sense that they have an important role to play in this amazing story. Here is an excerpt from the first NPR installment with our italics and [comments.]

Today, standing against billions of determined Muslims, European Christians and Guardian-BBC Leftists who continue to try to white-out the Jews from the transcendent scroll of the Middle East, there's a handful of Israeli soldiers, a few Christian sympathizers (mostly Americans not the least of which is their fearless president), a heavenly King, and eleven well-known and unmistakably Zionist words from the Bible:

Looks like the odds are with Israel.