Time to Put an End to the Fantasy of a Palestinian People. By Mordechai Kedar. NJBR, March 9, 2014.
Small Homogenous States Only Solution for Middle East. By Mordechai Kedar. IMRA, April 1, 2011.
Righting a historic wrong: “Aramean” officially recognized as nationality in Israel. By Dror Eydar. Israel Hayom, September 17, 2014.
Kedar:
Are the Israeli Christians part of the
ancient Aramean people rather than Arabs?
One of
the last things Israel’s Interior Minister Gideon Saar did before resigning
from the Knesset was to recognize the Israeli Christians as members of the
Aramean nation. The decision caused a media uproar, especially in the Arab
sector, with most critics saying that there is no Aramaic nation and that the
real reason for this step was an attempt to cause a split in the Arab
population of Israel so as to “divide and conquer” and gain control of the Arab
sector.
This
calls for an investigation and an investigation into the veracity of an Aramean
nation’s existence must be conducted on two planes: the
historic-lingual-religious one and the civilian one.
The Historic-Lingual-Religious Sphere:
Middle
Eastern history talks about an Aramean nation from the second half of the
second millennium B.C.E., a Semitic people living in the Fertile Crescent of
the western and northern Levant in an area that today includes the Land of
Israel, northwest Jordan, Lebanon, north and west Syria, northern Iraq and
lands along the Euphrates River. In the Bible and later Jewish sources there is
mention of Aramean kingdoms, with geographic references: Aram Naharayim, Padan
Aram, Aram Tzova, Aram Damascus and more.
The
Aramaic language became the lingua franca in these areas, also spoken by other
nations such as the Hebrews – even some of the books of the Tanach are written
in that language.
During
the first century B.C. E., the Assyrian people came onto the world stage, but
their physical conquest of the area did not affect a change in language, and
Aramaic continued to be the language prevalent in the Fertile Crescent for
hundreds of years. For example, the Babylonian Talmud that was formulated over
the first five hundred years C.E., is replete with Aramaic, as is Jewish
writing of the Gaonic period beginning in the ninth century. Jews, a defined
religious and ethnic group, continued to use Aramaic as a language for study
and prayer and still do.
Under
Assyrian rule, there were clearly defined Aramean groups that preserved their
lingual and religious heritage and tradition, a central fact in explaining the
connection between Aramean people and Assyrians up to the present.
Greeks
and Romans, who ruled the area from the fourth century B.C. E. until the fourth
century C.E., did not bring about the disappearance of those Aramaic-speaking
communities that embraced Christianity as a result of the Byzantine (Eastern
Orthodox) takeover as the fourth century C.E. came to a close.
It is
important to mention that Arabic originated in the Arabic peninsula, the
southern part of the Middle East, whereas the historic languages of the Fertile
Crescent are Aramaic, Assyrian, Persian and Hebrew.
The
Muslim Arab tribes conquered the area in the seventh century, causing most of
the population to convert to Islam and melt into Arab-Islamic culture. The
Muslim religion and Arabic language became the norm in the region, replacing
the original identity of those groups that Islamised into the Arab-Muslim groups,
and thereby lost their unique characteristics.
In
contrast, groups that remained loyal to their Christian religious tradition
continued to be loyal to the Aramaic language that remained the liturgical
language in their churches and was preserved in the written alphabet of their
religious writings.
The
Syriac-Aramean people are Eastern Orthodox Christians, but over the years they
split into several denominations: the Marronite-Syriac, Greek Orthodox, Greek
Catholic, Assyrian Catholic and the Assyrian Orthodox of Antioch.
The
different denominations are the result of geographic distances and alliances
with one of the three patriarchates that developed with time – Rome,
Constantinople and Antioch. This variety is an indication of the long term
presence of the Aramean peoples in the Fertile Crescent.
A
unique language and religion preserved these groups – each one on its own –
from being absorbed into the Muslim majority, mainly due to the prohibition of
marrying out of their religion, similar to that of Druze, Allawites and Jews.
That is how Aramaic communities, defined by ethnic, lingual and religious
practice were preserved in the Fertile Crescent, as guarding over their culture
led to their survival.
That is
also why there is no reason not to recognize the existence of these Aramean
groups, which have unique linguistic and religious definition as well as their
own folklore.
In 1942
Dr. Edmond Mayer wrote a paper on the Lebanese and Assyrian Marronites in which
he clearly stated that they were descendants of Syriac-Aramean peoples who
lived in the area during the seventh century Muslim conquest. In 2005 Al Azhar
University published a research project by Dr. Ahmad Makhmad Ali al Jamal in
which he speaks of the Syriac-Aramean people as an existing fact in Lebanon,
Syria and Iraq.
Neighboring
countries have Christian communities where the spoken language, and not only
the liturgic one, is Aramaic. In Syria, there are Maalula, Bakhia, Hassake,
Qamishli. In Turkey, Tur-Abdin, Mardin. In northern Iraq, Qaraqoush, Alqosh,
Irbil (the Kurdish capital), Ankawa. There is evidence that until the late 10th
century, the towns of Basri, Zarta, and their environs in the high Lebanese
mountain area spoke Aramaic.
In an
article broadcast on the Russia Today channel in 2008 about the Aramaic
community of Maalula, a school for studying Aramaic was seen, and the writing
on the blackboard was Assyrian square script, identical to the script
introduced to the Jews by Ezra the Scribe in the early days of the Second
Temple that replaced the ancient Canaanite script they had used until then.
Spoken
Arabic in the Christian communities of the Levant differs from that of the
Muslim, Druze and Alawite communities and emphasizes the cultural segregation
of the Christian communities wishing to preserve their cultural autonomy as
they managed to do throughout the period of Arab-Islamic rule in the region.
These cultural attributes have given rise to the name
"Syriac-Aramaic" or Syriac for short. The most famous of the Syriac
groups are the Maronites, most of whom live in Lebanon. Some of their prayer
texts are in Aramaic.
The Civil Sphere in the Fertile Crescent
Syriac-Aramaic
communities are to be found today in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and northern Israel.
What they have in common is the combination of the Christian religion and the
Aramaic language, the latter used mostly for prayer, and the recognition as an
official, definitive group.
The
modern states of Iraq and Syria, founded about 70 years ago, tried valiantly to
create a sense of united nationhood, Arab-Iraqi in Iraq, Arab-Syrian in Syria.
This national consciousness was expected to erase tribal loyalties, ethnic,
religious and sectorial loyalties and planting in their stead a modern sense of
brotherhood that would result in civic tranquility and regime stability. For this reason, modern ideologies such as
nationalism, patriotism, Arab and Baath socialism were copied from European
ideologies that filled the intellectual vacuum of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Syrian attempt to erase particularistic identities and turn all the country’s
citizens into Arab Syrians who believe in the Baath with all their heart, is
described clearly in my doctoral thesis on Syrian media, titled “The Public
Poitical Language of the Assad Regime in Syria,” 1998.
For the
past three and a half years, from the beginning of the “Arab Tempest” (what was
once naively called the “Arab Spring”), the ability to rule as an established
modern state in Iraq and Syria declined, and it became obvious to all that the
imported European ideologies were not really absorbed by the masses who stayed
by and large loyal to their traditional frameworks, the tribe, the ethnic
group, the religion and the sector.
Most
Muslims define themselves in words that are more and more religious and ethnic,
and as a result the Christian minorities have turned into strangers and
heretics rather than fellow citizens. Persecution and damage to churches,
property and lives have made many of them immigrate to other countries, mainly
Europe.
In an
attempt to stem the Christian exodus from Iraq, in 2014 the Iraqi Parliament
passed a law that gives the Syriac-Aramaic language official status, parallel
to that of Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmanic and Armenian. This is important for our
thesis as the Iraqi government does not need to find reasons that will distance
the various groups in the country from one another, it would rather stress
unifying factors in an attempt to create a unified Iraqi national
consciousness. With this in mind, the decision to recognize the Syriac-Aramaic
language bears witness to the existence of a viable Aramean group.
The
terrible conditions under which they live and the persecutions they endure have
caused many of the Christian communities of the Middle East to emigrate to the
West, where they continue to preserve their culture and language. Aramaic is
their language for prayer and spirituality wherever they are on the globe:
Sweden, Cyprus, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Romania, Brazil,
Argentina, Mexico, America, Canada, Australia, Western Europe, South Africa and
any place with a Syriac-Aramaic community and church, whether Maronite,
Orthodox or Catholic, that hails from
the Middle East and especially from Syria and Lebanon.
The Situation in Israel
In
Israel, there is no unified definitive community of Arabic-speaking Christians
and the state sees them as Arabs for the most part, part of the Arab sector.
However, as the years passed, the state recognized two groups: the Cherkassians
and the Druze. The Cherkassians, who are Muslim, were defined because of their
language, ethnic origin and cultural heritage which originated in the Caucasian
mountains. The Druze are recognized because of their religion, social norms and
marriage customs that serve to isolate them from the Muslims that live in their
neighborhoods. A similar situation exists within the Aramean community, where
the tendency is to marry only Aramean people,
The
Aramean people do not have a unique religion, but are Christians like all other
Christians. They are not a specific Christian subgroup or sect either because
some are Catholic and others Orthodox. All that is left is their self-defining
ethno-lingual characteristic as the communal basis for their collective
existence, based on their history and not on the civilian reality in the
Fertile Crescent.
They
share many similarities with the Jews:
● They
are a minority with deep roots in the history and geography of the region
● They
are different from the demographic majority of the region in which they live
● They
have their own language for liturgical purposes
● They
are persecuted for being “different”
● They
have the ambition to be recognized as a definitive group
That is
why it would be the right thing to do if Israel would recognize the
Syriac-Aramean groups as an ethnic group like the Druze and Cherkassians and
allow those Christians who belong to Eastern denominations to be recorded in
the population registry as Arameans of the Christian religion, if they so wish
and if they have the defining characteristics of the Aramean sector:
●
Membership in one of the Eastern churches: the Syriac-Maronite (Aramaic), the
Greek Orthodox, the Greek-Catholic, the Syriac-Catholic of Antioch, as opposed
to the Coptic. Armenian, Ethiopian and Provoslavic churches.
●
Identification as “Aramean,” as opposed to other nationalist identities in the
area, such as Arab, Palestinian, Cherkassian, Armenian and Druze.
