Zionism Has No Inalienable Right

● Arnold J. Toynbee, one of the foremost living historians, cannot be credited with faith in the Bible as God’s inspired Word. He holds that Christians should recognize “all higher religions as revelations of what is good and right,” and not claim exclusiveness. It is therefore of interest to note how Toynbee, on the basis of the Bible, points up the weakness of Zionism’s claim to Palestine. Toynbee accuses Zionists “of an importunity which verged upon impiety in their attempt to take out of God’s hands the fulfillment of God’s promise to restore Israel to Palestine on God’s own initiative.” He points out that Israel was given no inalienable right to Palestine but that her possession of that land depended solely upon God’s favor and Israel’s obedience to God’s commandments and that Zionism ignores these conditions. “In thus leaving God’s will and Israel’s conduct out of his reckoning, the Zionist parted with the spiritual ground which was the only sure basis for the Jews’ title to the soil of the holy land,” according to him. Toynbee goes so far as to say that the surest way for Israel to lose title to the holy land is for Zionism to stray into the delusion that a conditional “grant from Almighty God was an inalienable birthright.” (A Study of History, Vol. VIII, page 601) No question about it, the great Giver of every good gift and every perfect present sets his conditions: “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword.”—Isa. 1:19, 20, AS.