Eminent historian and Christian theologian James Parkes rightly wrote in this book that the “heroic endurance of those who had maintained a Jewish presence in The Land all through the centuries, and in spite of every discouragement,” had written today’s Israelis’ “real title deeds.” Katz in Battleground and others have cited this in making the historical presence side of our Jewish people’s homeland case.
Citing Parkes, Katz states that “the gap between what is generally known and the facts of the continuity of Jewish life in Palestine since the destruction of the Jewish Temple” is an “astonishing area of Jewish neglect.” In his Foreword to the 1977 edition of Katz’s wide-ranging defense of our Jewish homeland, then Israeli PM Begin commented that “the most moving chapter in the book is that on the continuous Jewish presence in Palestine.”
So taken was I with Parkes and Katz, and with the pressing need to refute that “the Romans exiled the Jews” and “they were gone for close to 2000 years,” that I researched and wrote my own book documenting our people’s almost two-millennia uninterrupted homeland-claiming physical presence. We lived in our four holy cities, in Galilee farming villages and elsewhere, again became Jerusalem’s majority in pre-Zionist times and throughout those millennia nobody called Jews residing in Jerusalem “settlers.”
Not for casual readers, but if you really want to read in inspiring depth all about what Jerusalem means and has meant to our Jewish people as our homeland’s capital for 3000 years, you’ll find it here. A definitive account.
