Debunked: Claim Golan is not part of Biblical Israel

ISRAEL 365 NEWS

In the wake of the fall of the murderous Assad regime, Israel has taken up defensive positions inside Syria. While some anti-Israel commentators claim this is fueled by an extremist “messianic” and colonial agenda to increase Israel, a closer look shows that the Golan has always been an integral part of historic Israel.

In an interview with L’Orient Today, Michael Mason, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics, claimed that “Israel’s messianic claims to the Golan Heights are a very recent historical invention.”

“Israel’s messianic claims to the Golan Heights are a very recent historical invention. During the 1967 war, the Golan Heights were regarded by key Israeli politicians and the Zionist right as outside the boundaries of the “Greater Land of Israel” — a point acknowledged by Yigal Kipnis, one of Israel’s leading historians on the Golan region.

“After 1967, significant efforts were made to establish archaeological evidence of a Jewish presence in the area during antiquity. Much of this ‘evidence’ was later dismissed by Israeli archaeologists, including Zvi Ma’oz (who wrote Jews and Christians in the Golan Heights),” MAson said. “It was only from the mid-1970s onward that the Orthodox Jewish settlement movement, followed by far-right politicians, began claiming the Golan as part of ‘Greater Israel.”

Mason’s credentials include editing “The Untold Story of the Golan Heights: Occupation, Colonization and Jawlani Resistance.” In a recent interview with Arab News, Mason noted the military significance of the Golan, but added that the “occupation” served a religious purpose.

“Politically, occupation of the Golan feeds the ultra-nationalist agenda of a Greater Israel and will encourage claims for further territorial expansion,” Mason said.

Greater Israel is an ideology based on the ideal borders of Israel as described in the Bible. However, the regions included are the focus of the dispute as the Bible contains three geographical definitions of the Land of Israel. The first definition (Genesis 15:18) includes a large territory “from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” A narrower definition (Numbers 34:1–15 and Ezekiel 47:13–20) refers to the land divided between the original Twelve tribes of Israel after they were delivered from Egypt. A wider definition (Deuteronomy 11:24, Deuteronomy 1:7) indicates the territory that will be given to the children of Israel slowly throughout the years, as explained in Exodus 23:29 and Deuteronomy 7:22.

These geographic descriptions determine where Jewish law prevailed and exclude territories where it was not applied.

In the political arena, the Jewish nation’s aspiration to have sovereignty over its Biblical homeland is seen as an extremist agenda.

Elder of Ziyon, a pro-Israel blogger,noted that Mason’s premise was accurate at face value but essentially false.

“Most maps of the Twelve Tribes during the Biblical period do not include the Golan, even though it was meant to be part of the Promised Land in Deuteronomy – for most of the Biblical period it was not conquered,” Elder of Ziyon wrote. “However, the Golan Heights came under Jewish rule in the first century BCE.”