THE KING OF MECCA ACKNOWLEDGED THAT JEWS WERE COMING HOME 🇮🇱
There is a chapter of Middle Eastern history that deserves to be remembered, especially today.
On March 23, 1918, Sharif Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca and King of the Hejaz, published a remarkable message in Al Qibla, the official newspaper of his kingdom.
Writing about Palestine and the Jewish people, he described the land as a “sacred and beloved homeland” for its original sons and spoke positively about Jewish return.
Think about that.
This was not a Zionist newspaper in Europe.
This was Mecca.
And Hussein was no insignificant figure. He was one of the most powerful Muslim Arab leaders of his era, guardian of Islam's holiest cities and leader of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire.
Yet in 1918, he could recognize something that many people today desperately try to erase:
Jews were not strangers to that land. They were returning to an ancestral homeland.
That matters.
Because Israel's history did not begin in 1948.
The Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Land of Israel stretches back thousands of years. Jewish civilization developed there. Jewish kingdoms existed there. Jerusalem remained at the center of Jewish prayer, identity and longing throughout centuries of exile.
Zionism did not invent that connection. It transformed an ancient connection into a modern movement for Jewish national restoration.
Hussein's son Faisal later pursued Arab-Jewish cooperation with Chaim Weizmann in 1919, although Faisal's commitments were connected to his expectations for Arab independence.
History ultimately moved in a far more tragic direction.
But we should not rewrite the past simply because it is inconvenient to today's politics.
As a Muslim, I refuse to participate in the erasure of Jewish history.
I can recognize Palestinian humanity without pretending Jews appeared in the region yesterday.
I can respect Arab history while recognizing Jewish indigeneity and the Jewish right to self-determination.
And I can say without hesitation:
Israel is not some foreign accident planted in the Middle East. 🇮🇱
The Jewish people have an ancient connection to that land, and the State of Israel has the same right to exist in security and peace as every other sovereign nation.
You can argue about borders, wars and political decisions.
But you cannot erase thousands of years of history because it complicates a modern political narrative.
More than a century ago, from the heart of the Muslim world, the King of the Hejaz could acknowledge Jewish return.
That history exists.
And no slogan can erase it.
Am Yisrael Chai. 🇮🇱
Ben Allen
