Our base is broader
A recent op-ed penned by Michael Freund promotes the idea of an immediate annexation of all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria to Israel. His reason, and seemingly his sole reason, is that "these areas are ours by Divine right ... the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel because the G-d of Israel said so." He further writes:
I also consider a religious right a justification for claiming territorial rights (after all, the Temple Mount, once it becomes the Haram E-Sharif, is then Muslim property, right?) and I would never ignore the primary formative element of Jewish nationalism which, as Professor Harold Fisch discussed in chapter two of his The Zionist Revolution: A New Perspective, is the Covenant. There is a contractual configuration between the Jewish people and the ideals which define them as a people, a community, a religio-ethnic group. "Israel's strange existence," writes Fisch, "is defined by the Covenant ... [it] is the central experience of Israel ... it became, for Israel, the key to the understanding of all reality: political, social, historical ... it endowed the whole people with a common task, a sense of unity and purpose ... [and it] has a bearing on the moral history of the world as a whole...." A Jew's relationship to his homeland is different than any other community-nation-people and, in fact, Menachem Begin never employed the term "annexation" for, as he said, "how can one annex one's own country?." True, that relationship is intrinsically religious with commensurate ritual obligations, commandments and practices, some which are kept solely as a searing reminder even though their source no longer exists, as in the case with many of the Temple rites. Most of all, there is the most unique of all realities in the definition of the physicality of the land as a sacred and holy element. Nevertheless, that relationship of the Jewish people and its land evolved also as an historic one, one that is quite apparent and could be proven without necessary recourse to divinity. That is, one need not be religiously observant to recognize that Eretz Yisrael is the Jewish national homeland - or even Jewish! 'The Jewish Terrorist'
Here's just the first paragraph of the Reuters story on Jack Teitel:
Is that The Jewish Terrorist? Or is that The Jewish Terrorist? Or is that The Jewish Terrorist? Or is that The Jewish Terrorist? I am fed-up with all this accusatory scriptwriting by Reuters. What a month
The holiday season is over, but what a month. The Goldstone Report. Upcoming J Street convention. Attempts to strike at Jewish communities through tax exemption status. Campaign to apply a political apartheid character to Israel. Obama's attempt at "freezing settlements." Temple Mount provocation by Islamic radicals. And much more. It's difficult to gauge what's really important, and therefore what would interest readers of blogs. In fact, I don't really know how many people read this blog. Many perhaps think that bloggers are narcissists. While that may be true, as for me, I prefer an inter-relationship - at least a minimal one. Was I clear enough? Did I note enough facts? Is my reasoning seemingly logical? Are the topics I deal with interesting? More religion? More sex? Less Israel? Deconstruction of a text
I find President Barack Obama's recent pronouncement on the question of Jewish residential communities in Judea and Samaria to be odd, awkward and and morally deficient. On September 4, the White House Office of the Press Secretary released a statement that reads, in part:
The use of "legitimacy" bestirs my political sensors. Is "legitimacy" worse, or better, than "illegality"? How the double standard Is applied
The weekly Bilin fence protests have just picked up some major support. Here's a quote taken from a quite sympathetic New York Times report:
I would take issue with that characterization. Only "a few" throw stones? Need it be inevitable that stones be thrown? Why initiate such violence? Stone-throwing constitutes neither "peaceful protest" nor civil disobedience - stone-throwing is violence. Does Monsieur Wettach think we're idiots?
In a letter to The Jerusalem Post on August 11, Pierre Wettach, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) head of delegation to Israel and places east, defends his organization against a critical article by Moshe Dann published on July 24 on how "settlements" became illegal. Wettach's defense consists of three points. First, that "the ICRC did not 'make up the law' which considers the settlements to be illegal." But he obfuscates. What Dann meant, obviously, was that at the time the Red Cross ruled that Israel's actions violated the Fourth Geneva Convention, no formal court or international legal body had delivered any judicial decision on the matter. By adopting the position of "illegality" as regards Jewish communities, the ICRC was indeed making up the law. And where were you born? Pt. II
In my previous blog post, I pointed out what I consider to be the rather biased attitude in US State Department regulations regarding American citizens born in Jerusalem (their place of birth is basically a stateless one as Israel will not be included) and in Judea and Samaria ("West Bank," a fictitious term, and not Judea & Samaria, is used). Perusing the Web site of the Consulate-General of the United States in Jerusalem, the one that reports back directly to Washington, not to Tel Aviv, I was struck by two more examples of what seems like bureaucratic discrimination. And where were you born?
The Jerusalem Post informed its readers on Tuesday that the US State Department considers Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem as included in the US demand that Israel halt "settlement" construction, including for natural growth purposes as State Department spokesman Ian Kelly admitted. And that is an appropriate introduction for me to expand on a matter of State Dept. deviousness. As American citizens are aware, their children, if born in Jerusalem, whether west Jerusalem or east, I emphasize, are not recognized by the US State Department as being born in Israel. Their birth certificates and subsequently, their passports, will list the "place of birth" as simply "Jerusalem", a seemingly stateless location. Imagining Palestinian settlers
In a recent Jerusalem Post op-ed piece Imagine Palestinian settlers in Israel, the idea was suggested to Israelis and others who support a Jewish civilian presence in the areas of Judea and Samaria:
Of course, did it not occur to the writer that many Israelis have actually not only imagined that but, especially over the past decade, truly feel that that is the situation with Israel's Arab minority. Why do you think Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Beiteinu party achieved 15 seats in the Knesset? It is no imagination that forests were burned down, that religious fanatics are copying the Mufti of Mandate times and claiming Jews are trying to destroy Al-Aqsa, that illegal construction is in the thousands of units, that aid and assistance to terrorists have been extended and that Arab MKs openly identify with the goals of the most radical Muslim nationalists and have been particularly foul-mouthed in the Knesset. A topsy-turvy world; at least for the Jews
I have spotted two additional linguistic oddities that confound me. As you have read at this blog previously, I prefer "revenant" rather than "settler", or, at the least, "resident". I use "community" and not "settlement". I live in Samaria and not in the "West Bank". Well, it seems that language is fluid and different standards of semantics are being used. For example, Israel is pilloried for supposedly being a "colonialist" power lording over "occupied territories." |
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