"Zionism was founded due to the urgent need for a solution for a people scattered throughout the nations,” Eldad explained. "Due to the urgent need for a homeland, they pushed off the problem of ending foreign rule over the areas of the Jewish homeland.”



Professor Eldad was speaking at a plenary discussion entitled, “A New National Agenda: The State of Israel As A Jewish-Zionist State In The Post-Zionist Age” at the Jerusalem Conference in the Regency Hotel in Jerusalem.



Eldad said that the “forefathers of Zionism” had no doubts regarding the Jewish right to the Land of Israel, but put off asserting complete Jewish hegemony due to outside influences. “But now," he said, "the pragmatism of ‘painful concessions’ has been transformed into the ideal, and our absolute right to the Land of Israel has been turned into a weak argument.”



He said that the results of this transformation are already on display by the Jewish State. He cited the expulsion of Jews from their land and the selling of Jewish National Fund land to Arabs as two such examples. “It is only a matter of time until the Jewish People will have to sue the State of Israel for selling off national lands bought by Jewish communities," he said, "who collected the money cent by cent.”



Eldad also condemned the fact that Arabic remains Israel’s national language alongside Hebrew. “They simply erased English when the British left and left Hebrew and Arabic,” he said. “It needs to be made clear that the official language of the State of Israel is only Hebrew. The Arabs now seek to add a crescent to the state’s national symbols in their struggle to erase Judaism from the State of Israel.”



He ended his address with a call for the restoration of Jewish rights at Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount. “Israel without the Mount is not Israel,” Eldad said, quoting poet Uri Tzvi Greenberg.



The schedule of the Jerusalem Conference, which will take place through Wednesday, can be viewed by clicking here.



A live video broadcast of the speeches can be viewed, in the language they are given in (there are both English and Hebrew speakers – check the schedule for details) at http://www.media-line.co.il/video_jc.htm